All the way to the black heart of the Troubles.
A secret. Ostensibly, the rival paramilitary forces of the Protestants and the Catholics, the UDA and the IRA, were deadly enemies; but in the late eighties and early nineties, while they were killing each other in bombings, shootings, massacres, something brought them together.
Heroin.
Ireland was an island and it was impossible to get drugs there, especially when the paramilitaries had a thing for killing drug dealers and proving that they were as legitimate of respect as the police. But in 1993 at a secret meeting in Jake’s Bar in Belfast, it was decided to divide up Ulster between them. Heroin was just too big a moneymaker to ignore. Had to be secret. Had to be hush-hush. The IRA’s backers in Boston and New York and San Francisco would have been upset if they had known the IRA was in the drug-dealing business. And the UDA’s backers in Belfast and Glasgow would have had similar qualms.
After six years as a police officer I was appointed DC/DS, Detective Constable/Drug Squad.
Heroin, the gateway drug, was giving the paramilitaries millions and they were still bombing bars and factories and driving people into their arms for protection. That was why people like Victoria Patawasti had to leave Northern Ireland in the first place.
Yes, thinking, remembering it.
Lying here, in this bed, Pat bringing me soup.
“Are you ok, son?”
“I’m ok, Pat. Hey, it’s snowing.”
“No. It isn’t, Alex. It’s just ash from the wildfire, don’t worry about it, just relax, they have it eighty percent contained.”
“Look, Pat, the snow,” I say, but he’s gone and it’s night. I put my head out the window and the snow stings me in the iris making tears that skitter down the lines of least resistance on my face, half-freezing before they slide off my chin.
I can stare right through the clouds, through the dark. The snow is coming not from the sky but from the blue-faced moon, where the Celts believed the dead go. You sent it, Ma. Drizzling from the ether and the high atmosphere and down the roof onto this bed. It moistens my lips.
Morning.
“Eat your soup,” Pat says, and kisses me on the forehead.
“The case,” I tell him.
I followed it for months, it wasn’t that important, but it led to a suspect. Was it all a setup? My mentor was Chief Superintendent William McConnell. Big man, forties, old school. I trusted him.
“Alex, follow this where it leads, I’ll back you up.”
“I will, sir. I will.”
Stakeouts, undercover, but more the paper trail. Made an arrest. Stuart Robinson, a CPA. Ha. Just like how they got Capone. Does no one ever learn the lessons of history? I cracked him, I broke him, I trapped him in his own lies. He gave me names and I found it out. It was waiting to be found out. I don’t flatter myself. I saw it, a black secret. The IRA, the sworn enemies of the police, worked with a tiny corrupt unit within the police to control the flow of heroin into Ireland. The IRA and dirty cops. The bad guys and the good. Samson was on the right track. Buck McConnell, Commander Douglas were on the right track. It was all true. It went to the highest levels of the cops. Dangerous information. And what did I do, reading the accounts, that rainy night in Carrickfergus in my apartment overlooking the marina. What did I do?
I could take the evidence outside the RUC, to Special Branch in England, and forever live my life a fugitive, knowing that one day they’d get to me, they always do.
One bright morning in Perth, Australia, I go out to get my paper and a man with an Irish accent says hello, Alexander, and shoots me in the head.
Or I could bury the case, pretend it never happened.
Maybe I am a coward. I sat on it, in indecision, and that night…
Pat comes in with tea. Chitchat. I stroke my beard. I have a beard again. It’s been days. Weeks?
“You were saying?” Pat asks, liking when I talk, he says it helps me.
“That night…”
Heavy fog had smothered the wind and for once the gossipy yachts, dinghies, and small craft were silent.
My apartment at the marina. The quiet woke me. Gulls and distant foghorns up in Belfast. I sat in the bed and weighed my options. I was sweating, afraid. Death and exile on the one hand, or do nothing and forever live in shame. I heard the sound of hobnail boots on the marina pontoons. I grabbed my service revolver, but I put it down again.
The interrogating room. Classic twist. The roles reversed.
“I’m saying nothing until I see a lawyer.”
“You won’t be seeing a lawyer, Alex, you’re being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.”
“I want to speak to Buck McConnell.”
“Chief Superintendent McConnell has taken early retirement as of this morning.”
And I knew if I blabbed they’d kill me. They suspected that I knew the names of the corrupt cops but if I confirmed it, I’d be dead. They held me for two days and I said nothing and they released me. It gave them and me time to think.
What do I do, go to Scotland Yard, Special Branch, to the newspapers? I’d be hunted, killed. Say nothing, wait for the shoe to drop, I’d be hunted, killed. Run? Where?
I walked home from the barracks, afraid of every passing car.
Yes…
Pat sponges me down and cleans me off. Gives me green tea that he says is loaded with antioxidants, I throw it up. Why was it so hard going off junk when I wasn’t a junkie? Pat helps me to the toilet and I drizzle diarrhea and sob.
The bed.
The apartment overlooking the boats. Death one way. Death the other. Racking my squirreled-up brains.
And I hit upon a solution.
A third way.
Brilliant. The scourge would save me. The biter bit.
I found my undercover stash and like I’d watched, but never done, I injected myself with heroin and tracked up and down my arm until it looked like I was a junkie. Hit, rest, hit, rest, needle marks. And then I signed into the police station, broke into the evidence room, and got caught stealing half a click of heroin under my jacket. I was arrested on the spot. They found the track marks and it was such an obvious cliché, they bought it, the drug squad officer who uses. Maybe to establish credibility with dealers undercover, maybe because he was tempted, maybe he was weak. But it happened. Pathetic. Caught fucking red-handed. Where do these eejits come from?
And the higher-ups saw too. I was a junkie drug-squad officer. Caught stealing. How to handle it? Prosecute me?
No.
I would resign in disgrace, my file would be closed, we would hush it up.
Perfect. If I shut up and behaved myself, we’d leave it at that. And if I tried to whistleblow, I would have no credibility, no one would believe me, a junkie peeler caught stealing ketch from the police evidence room.
No need to kill me now. I wasn’t blabbing, I wasn’t going to anyone. I could never make my case. I had a record and no moral weight and I would live.
I had saved my life. And every day I kept using and I kept buying and I was safe.
Heroin had saved my life.
Or it had for six months till Commander Douglas from the Samson Inquiry came along and made me an offer I had to refuse….
Pat nods. Rambling and arse backward, but Pat has got the gist of it.
“So why can’t you go home now?” he asks.
“They think Commander Douglas will compel me to testify anyway, my evidence alone would not be credible, but it will add to the overwhelming weight of evidence Samson has compiled. They have to plug the hole in every dyke. Have to kill me, just in case. I’m not safe anywhere.”