Matt McGuire - Dark Dawn

Belfast, 2005

It was January. It was raining. The kid was dead.

DS ONeill pulled on his cigarette as rain drummed on the makeshift roof of Laganview Apartments. They were only a shell: steel girders, concrete foundations. The latest luxury in waterfront living. The new Northern Ireland. Least thats what the billboard said.

Thirty yards away a couple of uniforms stood behind a band of yellow police tape. They were in a hurry. They always were. Coming off a nightshift, the last thing you wanted was to end up babysitting a stiff. It was solid peeler logic. Protect and serve, so long as youre not freezing your balls off in the rain for six hours.

ONeill looked at the body. The arched back, the pale face, the empty eyes that stared down the river and out to sea. He took a drag of his cigarette. Yeah. There was no rush. The kid was dead. He was dead when they arrived. Hed still be dead in ten minutes.

It was eight oclock, Monday morning. Half an hour earlier the call had come into Musgrave Street suspicious death. A low buzz went round the station. You couldnt say it, but CID liked a body. Burglary, robbery, theft sure, they had their moments. But a body? A body was the real deal. Sharpened the mind. Put an inch to your step. You spent weeks, months, wading through the same bullshit. The same bag-snatching, same robbery, same aggravated assault. A body though, a body was a headline-grabber. Even in the North. There was something about a body, something that couldnt be denied. In a world of no comment, of wheres my lawyer, of half-truths and outright lies, a body was irrefutable. It was a fact. It couldnt be ignored.

ONeill looked at the wall of grey cloud that pressed down upon Belfast. It was January, almost February. Christmas was a distant memory. There was still no sign of spring. A line of police tape sealed off the entrance to the building site. CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. Behind it the two uniforms swayed from foot to foot. They wore black boots, dark trousers and high-vis jackets. Fluorescent yellow was cut in two by a belt holding a pair of bracelets and the standard issue Glock 19. At the gates to Laganview two armoured Land Rovers stood guard like a couple of bouncers. They were dirty white with heavy grilles across the windscreen. One of them was scarred down the side charred from some community relations work in the Ardoyne the previous week.

The apartments overlooked the River Lagan as it gathered pace before spilling its guts into Belfast Lough. Across the water, the morning rush-hour crawled along Oxford Street. People huddled in their cars listening to Radio Ulster, oblivious to the contorted figure that lay on the far side of the river.

Detective Sergeant John ONeill was anything but oblivious. He was thirty-four, but looked closer to forty. Six years of shift-work would do that to you. Beneath the suit ONeill wore a medal, the size of a twenty-pence piece. St Michael, the patron saint of peelers. He didnt believe in saints. Didnt believe in God either. Catherine had given it to him when he joined up and he thought, What the hell, might as well have someone watching your back. ONeill was six foot with black hair, going grey at the side. Catherine, his wife, used to joke about George Clooney. He told her: Keep dreaming, love. Its as close to him as youre likely to get.

That was a couple of years ago. When there were still jokes. Now there were lawyers or at least, it was heading that way. Every smartarse comment might end up costing ONeill another couple of grand. They were on a break. Catherines words. It had been six months and still no one in the station knew. ONeill was in a flat on the Stranmillis Road. Catherine had stayed in the house with Sarah, their five-year-old daughter. ONeill had asked Jack Ward, the DI, what he knew about lawyers.

Expensive.

Thats what he figured.

It might not come to that though. There was hope. There was Sarah to think about. Shed just started primary school at St Thereses. ONeill saw her on weekends, when his shifts allowed. Divorced at thirty-four. Christ, ONeill thought, you fairly fucked that up in a hurry.

He looked at the body next to the river. Six years with the Police Service of Northern Ireland. It wasnt the first time ONeill had seen death. Hed seen it ooze out of people, a dark sickly red, as the lights slowly went out behind their eyes. Hed smelled it rotting, an old man on his sofa, six weeks before neighbours noticed the stink. Hed heard it gurgle and choke a teenage joyrider who left a stolen car, doing seventy, via the front windscreen. At Laganview though it was the stillness. The perfect stillness. The river ran on, the rain poured down, the cars rolled by. The body, however the body lay completely still. ONeill kept waiting for the kid to blink, to get up and start rubbing his head. Hed look round, dazed, confused, and wonder what had happened. What was all the fuss about? ONeill knew better though. The kid wouldnt sit up. Wouldnt rub his head. Wouldnt look round him. Hed lie there. Dead still. At least until someone did something about it.

Six years. ONeill had seen things. You couldnt not see things, that was the job. When he signed up, he thought thats what he wanted. To see things. To be the guy that got the call. The guy that didnt walk away, that didnt look away, like everyone else. He looked at the body of the twisted teenager and thought to himself: Be careful what you wish for.

ONeill took his time, working his way down a second cigarette. You never rushed a crime scene. He knew this. Knew it deep down, like a form of muscle memory. When hed first stepped out of the car, his stride automatically slowed and his gestures had become deliberate, more measured. His eyes changed. He stopped looking at things and started to stare. He stared at objects. He stared at sightlines. He stared at people. Bystanders, witnesses, onlookers. ONeill knew the nightmare stories. A detective not controlling his scene. Some uniform, three weeks out of Police College, picks up a knife Ive got something here. Yes, you do, mate. Its a Get Out of Jail Free Card for some lucky bastard. Plus a months paperwork and a ball-chewing for me. And Uniform wondered why CID didnt always like them.

ONeill remembered a conversation with the DI, Jack Ward, three weeks after he first came over to CID. The shift was asking itself the usual question: was ONeill just another monkey out of uniform, better suited to wrestling drunks and handing out parking tickets? Ward was ex-RUC. He was in his fifties and had earned his stripes during the Troubles: 25 years, 300 dead peelers. The numbers didnt lie.

A robbery had come in and ONeill grabbed his coat. He needed to prove himself, show he was a worker, that he had what it took. He hadnt popped his cherry and was still chasing his first collar. Ward stood in the doorway, smiling.

Detective ONeill. A question for you. But only if you have time. .

Sir?

Why dont they put blue lights on the cars in CID?

ONeill paused. The other DCs had been taking the piss since he arrived and it sounded like more of the same.

Sir?

Why dont CID have blue lights, like everyone else?

ONeill didnt answer.

Ill tell you, Ward continued. Because. . by the time we get the call, the emergencys over.

The other DCs in the room, Kearney and Reid, laughed. The Charge of the Blue Light Brigade. That was what Ward called it.

Chasing guys down streets. Rugby tackles. Rolling in the dirt. Jesus. You guys watch too much TV. He looked round the room. Were the clean-up crew. We walk. We dont run. By the time they send for us, the partys always over. Our jobs to find out who made the mess.

Three weeks later, ONeill was up to his elbows. Hed ten jobs open. Five assaults, three thefts and two robberies. Ward asked: What do you thinkll happen as soon as you clear one of those?