O’Neill looked around CID, wondering if someone had put two more desks in when he wasn’t looking. It felt that way.
Kearney and Larkin were leaning back on their chairs.
‘Did I tell you about going to the ice hockey last weekend?’ Kearney asked.
‘No. I never had you down for all that carry-on.’
The Belfast Giants were the latest must-have ticket. They had started up the year before in the Odyssey Arena. It was a new sport, free from the religious baggage of football and charging enough money to make sure the riff-raff stayed out. The Giants were made up of Canadians and Americans and played against teams from such exotic locations as Nottingham, Hull and Dundee. They won their first season and journalists had fallen over themselves, writing that it showed what Northern Ireland could do, now that the dark days of the past were behind them.
‘The kids had been on at me to take them for weeks,’ Kearney said. ‘Guess how much it cost?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Fifty quid.’
Larkin raised his eyebrows.
‘Yeah — fifty quid. To watch a bunch of Americans beating the crap out of each other. I mean,’ Kearney continued, ‘for fifty quid you’d want to beat the crap out of your own American.’
Both men laughed. O’Neill rolled his eyes. It was as well they had something to laugh about.
Kearney and Larkin chatted on, talking about the jobs they were on. They schemed and plotted, figuring out ways to catch folk out. O’Neill couldn’t stop himself from listening in. He was jealous. Jealous of the variety, the different bits of work, the pace of things. Right now, anything looked better than Laganview. One body, no name, no suspects.
The phone rang on O’Neill’s desk.
‘DS O’Neill? John McBurnie down at Forensics. I ran through those additional footprints you had us cast at Laganview last week.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you were right. The Nike prints coming over the fence were the victim’s. Looks like that is where your boy came in.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Location? Parallel pair of prints, 2.8 metres out from the fence. Suggests he was in a bit of a hurry. If he’s sneaking over you’d imagine he lowers himself down. The prints would also be facing backwards, towards the fence. They’d be closer too.’
‘Agreed.’
‘He’s not hanging about. He climbs, jumps down and is off again. Someone’s chasing him.’
‘Yeah. There were other prints in that area as well.’
‘That’s right. There is one set which have a similar pattern. Quite deep and facing outwards. Someone following him over the fence, most likely. They have the kind of sole you see on an Army boot. I can’t trace the make from the prints though — they aren’t good enough. I am getting someone to drop the pictures over to you in the next hour or so.’
The prints confirmed what O’Neill had guessed. The chase and the jumping of the fence. The military boot though — where did that leave him? Maybe there was an army connection. Maybe it was nothing. You could buy Army gear in a load of shops in Belfast. He grabbed a set of car keys.
‘Oh, O’Neill,’ Kearney said. ‘Forgot to tell you. Some girl called in for you. No name, foreign accent. Said she saw the boy from the river in a nightclub. Some place called Mint. Sounds like a hoax though. That place is pretty ritzy. I’m sure they’re not letting wee hoods in these days.’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
O’Neill thought about the call as he drove into town. Kearney was right. He doubted Mint were letting wee hoods in. Sean Molloy drank there though. Maybe that was the connection. O’Neill had also seen someone hovering in the toilets, so there was the possible drug angle. The phone calclass="underline" it might have been a vendetta. It might have been some wee girl. She gets knocked back by the bouncers and decides to stir things up, create a bit of trouble for the place.
O’Neill parked the car on a double yellow line. Police privilege. He thought more about the call. Most people used the Crimestoppers number. It rang through to a call centre, so you were guaranteed anonymity. This one had come through to CID’s direct line. She’d asked for him by name and all. How did she get the number? And how did she know it was him she needed to speak to?
O’Neill thought about all the people he’d left his card with since the investigation started. He couldn’t remember any young girls, and none with foreign accents. He could almost hear the culchie accent of Fr Mullan, somewhere in the background. ‘Forty years in Belfast. A life sentence by any man’s reckoning.’
O’Neill left the car illegally parked and took the photographs of the boot-print to Alcatraz in Corn Market. The place sold ex-Army gear, along with an array of compasses, camping kit and knives. O’Neill looked at the 12-inch bowie knife in the window, wondering what kind of a Boy Scout needed one of those.
Inside, the shop had the stale fug of second-hand clothes. It mostly sold to students and grunge kids. It was old German stock, and small flags — black, red and gold — adorned the shoulders of green shirts. Along the wall hung pairs of combat trousers with large leg pockets. At the back of the shop they kept the boots. O’Neill pulled one down, feeling how heavy it was. He recalled his own Magnums from his days in uniform, remembering the confidence he felt putting them on and lacing them up. The leather on the Army boot was worn but still in good condition. He thought about the places that it might have marched: Bosnia, Belgrade, Baghdad. He went through each boot on display. None of the soles matched the photograph.
‘Can I help you there, mate?’ A man in his mid-thirties with a large beard came from behind the counter.
‘Trying to match a boot-print.’
The man looked at the photograph.
‘It’s none of these,’ he said, pointing to the wall. ‘They’re too old. You see how thick the treads are on the boot you’re holding? It is standard issue, German Infantry. Leather. Durable. The photograph is probably something lightweight. Goliath. Viper. Magnum. One of those makes. It is the kind of thing you find with Special Forces. You can run all day in them. Run across entire countries if you need to. A lot of police wear them as well.’
O’Neill looked sidewards at the man. He put the leather boot back on the wall.
‘What do you want to know for?’ the shop assistant asked.
‘Just curious,’ he said, cutting him off.
O’Neill threaded his way out, through the racks of clothing. Freed from the shop, the air felt fresher and cleaner.
O’Neill didn’t want to start thinking about the possibility that the PSNI were involved in this. Still though, it might explain the utter lack of evidence. And Kearney had said it himself, it was one less hood on the streets. He thought back to breakfast with Sam. She hadn’t taken to her new posting. Jennings had great instincts about people and she’d deliberately held back, not wanting to tell tales on the rest of her shift. Going back, the police in the North always had a reputation for bending the rules. On a good day a suspect took a beating, on a bad day it was worse. But that was the past. The PSNI were different, they had to be. Whiter than white, that was the promise.
O’Neill imagined himself as the cop who investigated other cops. Nobody came out of that a winner. There was no surer way to career suicide. Fuck it though. If there were dirty cops in Musgrave Street, if they were involved in Laganview, they had to go down.