James Benn - Evil for evil

I decided I'd be testy too if I had to spend more than an hour down here. Cold concrete floors, army green paint job, and black iron bars. What a cheery place to work.

I grabbed the first file. Jenkins, Andrew. A strip of blue tape across the top and the word RESTRICTED in bright yellow. Beneath that was a memo stapled to the file folder. It said the file was not to leave the file room, and that access was restricted to MI-5 personnel. I felt honored.

Jenkins's file contained a section on his personal history. Evidently the Jenkins clan had lived in Armagh for generations, and his grandfather had started the family business. During the War of Independence, Andrew's father had targeted the Catholic competition, creating opportunity out of chaos. After the partition, the more prosperous Catholic farmers had been burned out, and the only other vegetable wholesaler was dead. Andrew Jenkins inherited a thriving business and the thanks of the Protestant farmers who had divided the spoils. Not very pleasant or too surprising.

Another section dealt with his association with the Red Hand. Each page was headed by dates. The first was 1925-1929. He had joined as a young boy after the partition, and enthusiastically took part in suppressing the Catholic minority. He was a suspect in the murder of a Catholic whose body was found beaten to a pulp in 1928. No arrest, lack of evidence. Another run-in with the law in 1930 over the shooting of an IRA suspect who had turned out to be a businessman from south of the border with no known IRA links. Again, no witnesses, no evidence, no arrest. By 1938, Andrew Jenkins was a well-respected businessman himself, and commander of the Red Hand. He had risen within the ranks through a combination of brutality and the ability to evade the law. The RUC did arrest some of the Red Hand mob when the killings were too public and distasteful even for them. As I read the file, I noticed some of those arrested had been Jenkins's competition within the Red Hand. Like his father before him, he was good at coming out on top.

I turned to the page headed 1938-1940, where the file ended. There was no entry for any of the last three years. The final note was dated March 1940. Jenkins had been brought to Stormont for questioning in the death of a British soldier, a Catholic from Birmingham, suspected of selling arms to the IRA. He hadn't been taken by the police but by MI-5. Why?

They had his bank records too. According to the Northern Bank, he had a fair-sized savings account. Nothing out of the ordinary for a successful businessman. If he had dirty money, and I was sure he did, it was probably in his mattress or an overseas account.

The door opened and I watched a private wearing an apron carry a stack of photographs to the counter. They looked shiny and new, as if he'd just pulled them from the developing tray. He handed them to the marine through a slot in the steel mesh.

"Here you go, Hawkins. More photos for your collection, all ready to be signed off. Some of my best work, I think."

Hawkins barely nodded, apparently not in the mood for conversation with this guy either. The private shrugged and left. Hawkins shuffled through the photos, checking the back of each and sorting them into separate piles.

I went back to the file, working through a section labeled SURVEILLANCE. Notes and photos from various stakeouts, including one taken in Portadown, similar to the RUC surveillance photo that had caught Subaltern O'Brien meeting with Jenkins. It showed her and Jenkins entering the pub but from a different angle. On the back was a label marked FILE: JENKINS, ANDREW. Below that a written notation: Meeting with A. Jenkins, the location, and the date, three days before the arms heist. Plus a section for "Officer's Name." Subaltern S. O'Brien had been typed in, and beneath that was the signature of Slaine O'Brien. It looked like MI-5 documented contacts with characters like Jenkins, probably so no one later could accuse them of unauthorized activities. And for their own protection. I looked at the photos Hawkins still had in his hands. They seemed to bear the same filing label as the ones in front of me.

"Here's another for one of your files, Lieutenant," Hawkins said. He held out a glossy through the slot. I got up and took it. It was the same pub, the same two people. The same notations were on the back, except it was dated yesterday. Slaine hadn't signed it yet. I gathered that she and Lynch had gone to Portadown after I'd seen her at Clough. Why hadn't she mentioned meeting Jenkins again?

"Do you want this back or should I put it in the Jenkins file?" I asked, looking up from the photo. Hawkins had taken one of the piles he'd sorted and was bent over a file drawer a few rows to the right.

"In the file, Lieutenant." He didn't waste a word or look up as he pawed through the drawer, which was crammed with manila folders.

I looked at the piles of photographs he'd left on the counter. There were five, facedown, in alphabetical order. The first was Connolly, the last Wilson. Right next to Wilson was a label that read FILE: TAGGART, JACK. Hawkins seemed all business, not the type to forget he'd pulled Taggart's file for me. I gave the Taggart file on the table a quick glance. No blue label, no filing indicator of any kind. I figured that meant Taggart's file was also restricted but they didn't want anyone to know.

Hawkins had two files pulled and was placing photos in each. I reached through the slot and took the Taggart photos, two of them, looking as brand-new as the one he'd handed me. The scene was darker, maybe late afternoon. The note on the back gave the location as Castlewellan. I recognized it as one of the towns I'd driven through on my trip to Lurgan a few days ago. It was outside a restaurant. The first shot showed Slaine and Sergeant Lynch entering together. Behind them was a tall man with the brim of his hat pulled down low over one side of his face. His hand was up, scratching his nose, so his face was unrecognizable.

I saw what the photographer had done. The guy must have spotted him, so he changed positions and waited for the man to emerge from the restaurant. This time his cap was pulled down to conceal his face in the direction where the photographer had been, revealing his full profile to the hidden photographer's new angle. He'd gotten a clear shot of Red Jack Taggart, fresh from sharing a meal with Slaine O'Brien and the late Sergeant Cyrus Lynch.

I put the Taggart photos back just as Hawkins closed the file cabinet drawer. He walked back stiffly, as if he had a cramp in his leg.

"In the file, did you say? Couldn't hear you," I said, holding up the Jenkins photo.

"Yes, Lieutenant. In the file, please." He looked at the piles on his counter and back at me, his forehead wrinkled in thought. I smiled my best dumb smile, which must have been convincing, since he picked up the Connolly photos and went limping off to do more filing.

Jenkins and Taggart. One a thieving brute and likely murderer, the other the very man we were after. And Slaine O'Brien breaking bread with him on the same day she complained that I hadn't found him yet. I'd had the evidence in my hands. But I never would have gotten it out of this room and would probably have been tossed in an even deeper cell if I had tried. I had to figure some way to find out what she and Taggart were up to, and whose side each of them was on. The prospect made me dizzy.

I went through the Taggart file I had been provided. It was obvious it was only part of what they had on him. The file cover was blank and smelled of fresh-cut paper along the edges, as if it had just come out of the box. I thumbed through what they'd given me, certain that anything important was sitting in the original restricted file on the other side of those iron bars.

There was the standard background history about his family in Dublin. The first surprise was that his mother, Polly, had been Protestant, disowned by her family when she married Brian Taggart, a Catholic. Jack Taggart had been raised a Roman Catholic and left home in 1916 when he joined the Irish Volunteers to fight for independence. His father died two years later in the influenza epidemic, and in 1920 his mother remarried-to a Protestant this time. The report noted that the marriage had been arranged by her family, so she must have been taken back into the fold at some point.