But she didn’t comment. She gave them nothing save a few terse phrases. She wouldn’t get involved. You asked only the questions you really needed to ask round here. They told her whom they wanted to see and she said, ‘Up the stairs. Second door on the right on the first landing.’
Northcott tapped lightly on the scratched brown paint of the door. It opened immediately, which meant that the room’s occupant had probably been listening to the exchanges in the hall below. He nodded them inside, then took the single chair whilst they perched uncomfortably on the side of the newly made bed. He was in his fifties, with short-cut, grizzled hair and deep lines in his face. It was two days at least since he had shaved. His narrowed brown eyes watched their every move, as if challenging them to make a wrong one.
‘Patrick Riordan?’ said Peach.
‘Pat to my friends. You can call me Mr Riordan.’ It would have been a small, hostile joke if he’d smiled, but he didn’t.
They showed him their warrants. He held them for a moment under his eyes, as if he wished to retain the information, but his expression didn’t change. Peach studied him in turn for a moment. Silence was a weapon he used to build tension with many of the people they interviewed. It wasn’t going to work with this man. He said, ‘You work for the IRA Provisionals.’
‘I don’t work for them: I’m a member of the army. I believe in the Cause. We shall have the united Ireland Parnell fought for and Gladstone promised us. It’s almost with us now.’
He’d been watchful and alert since he’d opened his door, but this was the first sign of animation he’d shown. Peach said, ‘May we ask what you are doing in this country?
‘You may ask, but you won’t get a reply. I don’t have to answer your questions. Arrest me, if you fancy it. I still won’t answer and I’ll have you for wrongful arrest.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you’d do that, Mr Riordan. You don’t want a high profile. It wouldn’t help your work and your masters wouldn’t like it.’
The brown eyes looked at him balefully. ‘There’s nothing for you here.’
‘I’ll tell you why you’re in Moss Side, since you aren’t inclined to reveal it yourself. You’re here to kill people.’
‘I would deny that. Of course I would. I’d say you hadn’t got the right man. But I’d agree that the Cause needs revenge. There are people who’ve been traitors to the Cause. They need to be eliminated. That is justice. We kill as an example for others as well as to bring to traitors the punishment they merit.’ He was mouthing phrases he’d used many times before, but his lined, mean face was suddenly alive with passion.
‘And Dominic O’Connor was one of your victims.’
‘Both the O’Connor brothers were traitors. They were in positions of power and they ratted. They failed the Cause.’
‘And now both of them are dead.’
‘They got what they deserved.’
‘We’ve arrested a man for Jim’s murder. We’re here this morning to talk to you about Dominic’s death.’
‘Nothing doing. Someone got to him before us, same as they did with Jim.’
‘You don’t wish to claim the death of Dominic O’Connor as a glorious victory for the Cause?’
Riordan didn’t seem to notice Peach’s contemptuous irony. He looked for a moment as if he would indeed like to claim this success, like a Battle of Britain fighter pilot notching up another Luftwaffe victim. His head lifted and his eyes were raised towards the dusty ceiling for a moment. Then caution reasserted itself and he said, ‘You can’t have me for this.’
Peach looked round the narrow, shabby room, with its chipped sink and its ancient Baby Belling cooker. He looked at the wardrobe with its door askew, at the small attache case on top of it. He was wondering where this man kept his weaponry, whether indeed he had more than one killing tool. A pistol and an Armalite, perhaps? He didn’t know what was standard issue for an IRA avenger. He turned back to the watchful face with its black stubble. ‘You were seen in Brunton last week. You were seen near Dominic O’Connor’s house.’
He was pushing the scanty information Colin Davies had been able to give them as far as it would go, chancing his arm a little on times and places. Riordan said sullenly, ‘I’m a free citizen. I can go wherever I like.’
‘You were making your preparations for what happened on Friday. Dominic O’Connor had arranged to hire a bodyguard. He knew that you were around and were planning to kill him.’
‘I don’t have to tell you what I was doing. This is a free country. It’s just not my country.’
‘You watched and you waited. And when your moment came and he was alone, you twisted a cable around the neck of your target and killed him.’
‘It’s not our way, that. We prefer the bullet through the traitor’s brain. The soldier’s way.’
‘The coward’s way. Soldiers fight face to face. You’d have been happy enough to twist the life out of O’Connor with a cable, so long as you got clear away afterwards.’
‘You’re right! I’d like to have done just that. I’d like to be the patriot who choked the life out of that cheating traitor! But some sod got there before me. I hope you never catch him.’
Patrick Riordan, assassin, was buoyant at last. He was breathing hard, glaring at the men who had come here in pursuit of him, trumpeting his warped form of patriotism rather than troubling to disguise it. But was he indeed the man who had killed Dominic O’Connor, his declared target, or had someone else got there before him as he claimed?
Clyde Northcott said in his quiet, deep voice, ‘It’s much better that you confess to this now if you did it, Pat. You’ll get the glory back in your own country. The men you work for will make you into a hero. You’ll be on rolls of honour. Maybe your name will be remembered a hundred years from now.’
It was a strange prospect to hold out to him in that shabby room in Moss Side, but for a moment it seemed to beguile Riordan. The deep-set brown eyes glittered with the light of military glory. Then he looked at Peach and his face changed. ‘You might get me for a killing at some time, but it won’t be this one.’
The stocky man who sat ridiculously on the edge of the bed was ready for this. ‘That sounds like a challenge, Riordan. I like a challenge. You’re right in the frame for this. We shall go away and set about gathering the evidence for an arrest. Don’t leave the area without letting us know your new address.’
It was a useless instruction to a man like Patrick Riordan, of course. He would move when he wished and where he wished. But the routine instruction seemed to drag him more firmly into the middle of the case. He was a man who would have killed O’Connor without a vestige of conscience. Neither of the CID men could decide as they journeyed the thirty miles swiftly back to Brunton whether he was guilty, but both of them hoped he was.
The police machine had produced a little more information for them by the time they reached the station. Patrick Riordan had hired a car in Manchester for four days, from Wednesday to Saturday of the previous week. It had been sighted in Brunton on Thursday and on Friday and returned to its Manchester base on Saturday.
Job done?
The late Dominic O’Connor’s PA was keeping things going in his section of the firm, as all good PAs seem able to do. The managing director at Morton Industries had his own office staff, but after the death of his Financial Director he needed Mrs Jean Parker to hold the fort in that division, during the confusion which inevitably followed.
The MD said four days after the death of Dominic O’Connor, ‘You’ve done splendidly, Jean. You’ve kept our clients happy and explained things very well to them. But I know it’s a holding operation and that you can’t take decisions. We’ll need to appoint a new financial director as quickly as possible.’