Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection

Chapter 33

Before Ross and Drake left headquarters, they were called over by D.C. Ferris, sitting as usual at his desk, his fingers dancing over the keys of his computer keyboard.

“You have anything for me, yet, Ferris?”

“I do indeed, sir. I was about to come and find you. You asked me to look into this relative of James Doyle?”

“That"s right, Bryce, or Price, wasn"t it?”

“It was Bryce actually, sir. Patrick Bryce. Born in Belfast in 1941. Lots of petty crime in his teens, four arrests, three convictions and was first suspected of being a member of the Provisional IRA in nineteen sixty three. Like a lot of those suspected of involvement in the troubles over there, the Royal Ulster Constabulary could never pin a thing on him. He was thought to be involved in at least a dozen sectarian murders but fell off the authorities" radar in the early nineties.”

“Well, well, well,” said Ross, slowly and deliberately as the gears of his investigative brain kicked in. “Looks like our friend James Doyle has a few questions to answer.”

Izzie Drake added, “I should say so, sir. The man has a potential IRA man in his family and Bryce was apparently in Liverpool just before Marie went missing.”

“And more importantly, just before Brendan Kane was killed, if the timeline holds firm,” said Ross.

“Makes the kneecap shootings fall into place, sir,” Ferris added.

“It does, Ferris. And it also possibly reveals just why Doyle is such a religious bigot. If his philosophy is the same as the IRA"s, it"s bloody easy to see why he was so set against Brendan Kane and his daughter Marie being romantically involved.”

“But James Doyle was born here in Liverpool, sir. Why the hell would he subscribe to such sectarian rubbish when he"d never lived in Ireland in his life?”

“Because his family is rooted in Ireland, Ferris. I don"t know why, but it seems Liverpool in the sixties was still quite a divided city in terms of religion. Most folk couldn"t care less, but in certain areas of the city people still clung to the old divisions. You"re too young to remember Scottie Road in its heyday. Loads of Irish Catholics settled there in the eighteenth century and it almost became a city within a city. Even later generations kept up the old religious divides well into the sixties, when modernisation gradually dragged Scotland Road kicking and screaming into the twentieth century, over half a century too late. The place you see today is nothing like it once was, with all the old red brick terraces stretching for miles along the A59. Did you know, Cilla Black was raised on Scottie Road?”

“No, I didn"t know that, sir,” said Ferris. “So in a way, it"s hardly surprising there are people like James Doyle around, even today. His ancestors probably came over and possible lived in the Scottie Road area over a hundred years ago, and a few of them have obviously perpetuated the old hatreds. It"s almost unbelievable.”

Ross nodded and replied, “Sounds crazy, I know, but it was there, just under the surface. It was never extreme though, as far as I know, and certainly the nineteen sixties helped bring all that sort of nonsense to an end. You"ve done well, Ferris. Any word from the others?”

“Yes, sir. Derek McLennan has had no luck trying to determine what happened to Brendan Kane"s car. It was a pretty thankless exercise really, given that we had no registration number for the vehicle. He even tried DVLA in Swansea but they couldn"t do a thing without either a registration number or a vin number.”

“Well, he tried, and I didn"t expect much after all these years, but it was worth a go. How about D.C. Gable?”

“Still out sir, probably talking to the Oxleys again as you ordered.”

“Good, we"ll see what, if anything she comes up with when we meet up later. If the boss or anyone wants to know where we are, Sergeant Drake and I are going to talk with James Doyle again. It"s time for him to be a little more honest with us, I think.”

As Ross and Drake motored across town to the home of James and Connie Doyle, the inspector confided his private thoughts to Drake.

“Right from the beginning, something has bugged me about the kneecapping of Brendan Kane. It was typical IRA justice, but we could find no connection at all between Kane and the terrorists. It was never something that criminals on this side of the water went in for, not even the London gangs, so there had to be something, somewhere, even though no evidence existed to confirm it. I think we dismissed it all too easily after the anti-terrorist boys told us they had no information relating to IRA activity in the city at that time. Even Porteous virtually told me to leave that avenue of investigation alone, not wanting to add a political angle to the case.”

“And you think there may have been such a connection, now, sir, is that it?”

“Not quite, Izzie. I"ve said all along that I thought the solution to this case lay much closer to home than we all thought. I don"t think Brendan Kane had any links to terrorism or the IRA or any so-called "Loyalist" organization, but I do think that we might just have uncovered a personal reason for what happened on that wharf. I"m speculating now, but let"s say, knowing James Doyle"s bigotry towards the prospect of Protestants having anything to do with his daughter on a romantic level, that he brought his cousin Patrick over here to "sort" Kane out, scare him off, or give him a warning.”

“But, isn"t shooting a young man in the kneecaps a bit of an extreme way of warning him off, sir, especially as it would probably lead to someone making an instant connection to IRA involvement?”

“But it didn"t, did it, Izzie, because we never found Kane"s body, at least until now? Maybe killing him was an accident, I don"t know, but I"m sure as hell going to put some pressure on bloody James Doyle, until we get the truth out of the old bastard.”

“But, even if you"re right, it doesn"t do anything to explain Marie"s disappearance, does it, sir?”

“No, it doesn"t, Izzie. You"re quite right, and that"s the side of the puzzle that"s confounding me a bit. I"m pretty sure Doyle wouldn"t have hurt his own daughter, so we"re still in the dark there. Maybe when we talk to him, we"ll find a clue or two to what happened to that poor girl.”

“We"re here, sir,” said Drake, as she pulled over and parked as close to the Doyle"s house as she could.

“Right,” said Ross, his face set in an impassive mask. “Let"s see if we can get some truth out of Mr. James Bloody Doyle, shall we?”