‘Sure. A little bit of Belfast nightlife. But as you know, drunken vendettas aren’t exactly my thing at the moment.’
Hessian shook his head. ‘Wait until you see.’
He fast-forwarded the tape, stopping it a few minutes later. The man on the ground started to move. His hand went up to his face, touching his nose, inspecting the blood on his fingertips. He stood up, steadying himself against the wall before staggering off in a similar direction to his assailant.
At no time during the whole episode could anyone’s face be made out.
‘We can’t follow them into the Markets,’ O’Neill said.
‘No.’
‘OK. So why am I so interested in all this?’
‘Take a look. You think I’ve shown you the good stuff. That’s just the trailer.’
Hessian rewound the tape as the images started to scroll backwards. A series of cars reversed down the road. He typed on the keyboard in front of him, pulling up a video of Victoria Street.
‘This is a couple of minutes before he went down.’
O’Neill could make out the same tall figure, swaying drunkenly towards the camera. He got closer and you could almost make him out. The man lifted his hand, rubbing his face, obscuring the camera’s view.
‘Come on. Stop teasing, you bastard.’
After a second the man on the screen dropped his hand. Hessian hit pause and zoomed in on the face. After a second the pixels adjusted and the blurred outline crystallized into a face.
‘Sean Molloy,’ O’Neill announced.
‘Bingo.’
Molloy was held in freeze-frame, looking sidewards, his expression part-snarl, part-grimace. O’Neill watched intently. Who had the balls to take out Sean Molloy? Moreover, why would you let him live? Molloy wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted getting up and coming after you. It was a one-time deal. You had to put him in the ground, first time of asking.
‘OK. You can start practising the Oscar speech now,’ O’Neill said. ‘So what about our friend? Who’s the shadow with a death wish?’
‘Shadow is the right word. Wait until you see this.’
Hessian pulled the tapes of Cromac Street, Victoria Street and High Street and put them up on separate screens. He slowly wound the footage back, retracing Molloy’s progress. Sporadically, in the corner of each shot, a diminutive figure could be made out stealing along, just out of shot. He’d come into view for a split second, before ducking down an entry or sliding into a doorway. He would wait, out of view, and then make another move. When he did step out, he stayed tight to buildings. He had on a black beanie and his collar was pulled up high. When he passed directly beneath the camera on Victoria Street he put his hand up to hide his face.
‘You’re kidding me. It’s like this the whole way down the street?’
‘Four city-centre streets. A dozen cameras. There is not a single clear shot on any of them.’
Hessian pulled up a blurred profile. ‘It’s the best I’ve got.’
With the black hat and the collar of his coat up high he could have been anyone.
‘He knows exactly what he’s doing. He doesn’t want Molloy to see him but he also doesn’t want us to see him. Where did Molloy come out of?’
‘A nightclub called Mint. It’s on the edge of the Cathedral Quarter.’
Hessian produced up a piece of footage from outside the club. It showed two stocky doormen with shaved heads checking IDs. The clock in the corner of the screen read 11:28.
‘This is three hours earlier. Can you see him?’ Hessian asked.
‘No.’
‘Doorway across the street. Forty yards along.’
O’Neill looked. He couldn’t see anything. Hessian rewound the tape to 11:24 and the slight figure walked backwards out of the doorway. Again, he was at the wrong angle for the CCTV. The hat was pulled tight and you couldn’t make out his face.
Hessian spoke. ‘Four hours. Never moves. He just stands there, watching, waiting.’
It was after nine and O’Neill decided to put a call into the Cathedral Quarter, to pay a visit to Mint. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been in a nightclub. Since joining the PSNI he had stopped drinking in the city centre. You couldn’t go anywhere without clocking a couple of guys you’d arrested. The problem was they normally clocked you as well. They’d be looking over, talking to their mates and you wouldn’t know what might be waiting for you outside.
From the cobbled street he heard the dull thud of dance music coming through the thick walls. The club was part of the Belfast regeneration. An area of old warehouses between the docks and St Anne’s Cathedral had been restyled with bars, restaurants and designer shops. A large neon sign flashed MINT in 4-foot yellow letters, a dollar sign forming the dot over the ‘i’. On the door, two bouncers stood guard. They had shaved heads and no necks and would have passed for a couple of rugby props. The doormen were smartly dressed in black suits and long overcoats.
Inside, the bar was a plush mix of dark wood and leather furniture. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and O’Neill felt as if he’d walked into an MTV video. Men in Armani suits sat on sculpted chairs, while women with fake tans sipped cocktails on bar stools. House music piped into the bar from the club upstairs, making folk shout into one another’s ears.
‘Whatever happened to a quiet pint?’ O’Neill muttered to himself.
He lifted the menu from the bar. Champagne by the bottle. Moet —?76. Veuve Clicquot —?92. An attractive brunette set a napkin on the bar in front of him.
‘Beer?’ he asked.
She turned to reveal a fridge full of imported beers. O’Neill didn’t recognize any of them.
‘One of those will do,’ he said dismissively.
The girl opened the bottle and set it down, announcing, ‘Four-seventy,’ without batting an eyelid. O’Neill laughed, glad that he wasn’t buying a round. His change came back on a round silver disk and was left sitting.
Along the bar a couple of men in their fifties filled champagne glasses for two giggling blondes in short, sparkly dresses. The men looked twice their age. One of them was boasting about taking a Maserati for a test drive. The blondes listened intently, eyes wide, pretending to be impressed. O’Neill doubted they’d know a Maserati if it ran over them in the street. Still, the guys were full of shit and so were the birds. They were welcome to each other.
O’Neill left his beer and went to the gents’. The room was like something from a luxury hoteclass="underline" floor-to-ceiling mirrors, sculpted glass sinks, automated taps. He stepped up to the polished chrome urinal. As he finished he heard a long drawn-out snort from a closed cubicle behind him.
A few seconds later, a man in a Hugo Boss suit opened the door and stepped out. O’Neill looked at him over his shoulder. Hugo Boss stared back as if he owned the place. He took a step forward, pulling himself up to his full height.
‘Got a problem, mate?’
O’Neill turned round and pulled out his warrant card.
‘CID, dickhead. But by the sounds of things, I’d say you are the one with the problem.’
Hugo Boss swallowed hard, immediately backing down.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean. .’
O’Neill didn’t have the energy to bust him. He’d be booking him in for hours and it would take him away from Laganview. He fed Hugo Boss his lines.
‘You’ve got a cold. That’s what you’re telling me?’
‘Er. . yeah. That’s it. Haven’t been well.’
‘An early night then, probably the best thing for you, don’t you reckon?’
The man nodded.
‘So when I come out of here, I don’t want to see you. .’
Hugo Boss nodded vigorously. O’Neill turned his back and began rinsing his hands at one of the sinks. The suit backed his way towards the door and out.
O’Neill went back to the bar. His bottle of beer was sitting where he had left it but he ignored it and headed back to Musgrave Street.
O’Neill had spent most of the night buried in Laganview. At 4 a.m. he had gone back to the cupboard and looked over the tapes of Sean Molloy getting done on Cromac Street. Who would want to send Molloy a message? And why do him there? Why not somewhere quiet, more out of the way? And why wouldn’t you just kill him?