Ли Чайлд - Belfast Noir

“Yes. It states, Pleaded guilty to twenty-three counts of obtaining electricity by fraudulent means. Fined one hundred pounds, with time to pay, and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment on each count, sentences to run concurrently. ”

“Thank you. Now, I believe you also have a copy of the victim’s criminal record?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Mr. Stoke, the victim, had five convictions for violent crime?”

“It appears that he did, yes.”

“And three of those were for common assault?”

“Yes.”

“One of those convictions was for assault occasioning actual bodily harm roughly three years before his death?”

“Yes.”

“One conviction for assault occasioning grievous bodily harm just six months before his death?”

“Yes.”

“In actual fact, he spent two and a half years on remand before that conviction for GBH and was released just a week before his murder?”

“It seems so, yes.”

“Mr. Hamill, the narrative for each of those convictions records the identity of the victim of all five of those violent assaults, does it not?”

“It does.”

“And the victim is identical in each and every case of assault committed by the deceased?”

“Yes. The victim was Elizabeth Stoke.”

“The deceased assaulted his wife, regularly, throughout a five-year period?”

“Yes. It appears that he did.”

Several jury members shook their heads. Two female jurors appeared horrified. It was as good as I could’ve hoped for.

“Thank you, Mr. Hamill.”

Fozzy flapped to his feet and said, “That is the prosecution’s case.”

The rear doors opened and Mr. O’Neill reentered the fray. I was pleased to see a thick bundle of papers tucked beneath his trusty arm.

“Your Honour, we call the defendant, Mr. Michael Flannigan.”

The custody officer opened the glass-covered dock and let Mickey make his way toward the witness box. As he passed me I whispered, “Remember what I told you.”

He nodded. “I know, tell the truth, don’t say fuck .”

I winked and patted his shoulder.

* * *

“Mr. Flannigan, did you know the deceased, Mr. Stoke?”

“I did. We were from the same area, I would have spoken to him the odd time in the street or in the bar.”

I fetched the copy of the photograph found next to Mr. Stoke’s body.

“Do you know the woman in this photograph?”

“Yes, that’s Betty Stoke. Willy’s wife.”

“And did you know Betty Stoke?”

“Yes.” He hung his head.

“How did you come to know her?”

“I did a bit of work for her.”

“When you say work , what do you mean?”

“I fixed her electric meter so she wouldn’t have to pay for any electricity.”

“So we can all follow what you’re saying—you mean you tampered with her electric meter illegally?”

“That’s right.”

From my brief, I removed Mickey’s criminal record. Fozzy wasn’t in the least bit interested. The jury members were paying close attention.

“I have your criminal record here. In 1981 you pleaded guilty to a number of counts of obtaining electricity by fraudulent means. Tell the jury exactly what happened.”

Mickey turned in his seat and looked at the jury while he spoke, just as I’d told him. “I figured out a way to stop your meter turnin’ when you put in your money. If you opened up the electric box and slotted a wee piece of card into the right place, like, the meter wouldn’t turn. So you could put ten shillins into the meter and it would last you all year.”

“And did you offer this electrical-engineering expertise to your fellow neighbours?”

“Aye, I wasn’t workin’ so I would do your meter for a couple of quid.”

“How was your little enterprise discovered?”

“Wha’?”

“You were arrested, yes? How did the police discover your crime?”

“Well, turns out the IRA tipped off the peelers. The Ra’ robbed the electric man the odd time, after he’d been round the houses, emptying the meters. After I started up they robbed him expecting to get a few hundred quid, but they only got about £4.50 and then they caught on to what I was doin’. They threatened me with a punishment beatin’ but I was too well liked in the area. So they shopped me to the peelers—I mean, the police.”

At that moment Mr. O’Neill placed into my hand the first of the clippings from the Belfast Telegraph that I had sent him off to find. The paper keeps all its past editions on microfiche and sends them across the road to the Central Library.

“The Belfast Telegraph learned of your exploits and a particular facet of your case became widely reported. Please read out, for the benefit of the jury, the headline of this piece from the 5th of November 1981.”

He coughed and read aloud, “ Electricity Fraudster Is Secret Love Rat.”

“We shall let the jury read the article in a moment, but give us the basics, please.”

“I’m not proud of that, Mack, you know I’m not. At the time, me and the wife weren’t gettin’ on the best so some of the wee jobs I done in houses, on the meters, like, the women couldn’t pay any money. So they paid me in other ways, you know. Voluntary, like—I’m not a rapist!” he added emphatically.

“Not one of the housewives ever said that you were. But, on those occasions that you weren’t paid with money, when you were paid . . . in kind, shall we say, in what way were those jobs different to the jobs in which you were paid cash?”

“Well, I found out that the best thing to use to stop the meter was a Polaroid photo. It was just the exact size that you needed to stop the mechanism. So in those wee jobs, I would bring my camera and take a photo of the woman. Just a cheeky photo, like. And I’d put the photo in the meter. They liked that, some of them. They got a wee thrill knowin’ there was a sexy photo of themselves stuck into their electric meter and their husband knew nothin’ about it.”

I paused as Mr. O’Neill handed copies of the article around the court. My finger itched like mad. The cut looked angry and swollen. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Mickey’s wife Agnes, her face drawn tightly together by her set lips. She didn’t want this brought up and I guessed she knew where we were headed.

“And the photo of Betty Stoke, did you take that?”

Tears formed at the corner of Mickey’s eyes and he seemed to grow pale.

“Aye, Betty was different. I loved her. She put up with so much from that oul’ bastard she was married to. He beat her for years. Even when she started reporting it to the peelers, he kept on. But she loved him, she always took him back. I wanted to change her mind so I took her to Newcastle, the week before he got out. We were goin’ to run away. She got afraid and said that he’d find us. When we got back to the flat, I put the photo in her electric meter and took out the bit of card I’d used before. I just . . . I just wanted her to know that I loved her, that somewhere in that house there was a wee bit of her that he didn’t know about. I must have cut my finger, and that’s how my blood came to be on the photo. And I opened the cupboard door, so my fingerprints would be on that too.”

“He found the photo?”

“Aye, I got a phone call from Betty, not long after he got out. I drank in the Hatfield on a Thursday and she phoned the bar, she was screaming and crying. He found the picture, he was going to kill her, he’d almost killed her the last time, broke her jaw and everything. But this time, he was really going to kill her. She told me she had lifted the coal shovel and hit him over the head. He was dead when he hit the floor. She told me all this on the phone, in hysterics. I told her to write tout on the wall, get rid of the paintbrush and the shovel in the Lagan, and get out of the house, go and stay with her sister.”