Belfast Rules
Chapter 15

Copyright© 2015 by RWMoranUSMCRet

BELFAST – 2015

There was a bit of chill in the air when Molly came home that evening. It was a bit too early for the really cold weather but the wind made the sudden drop in temperature feel colder than it really was. Danny dug out his wooly-pulley from the back laundry room where it had hung for several months out of sight and out of mind. He enjoyed the feel of the familiar cloth on his shoulders and thought that the thing was a bit like him being stuck away out of sight and hopefully out of mind like an unneeded tool or possession stored away for possible future use.

He was certain nobody who was interested in a lasting peace wanted to hear the name "Butcher Boy Danny Hogan" on either side of the continuing conflict and it was just as well from his point of view. The truth of "Letting sleeping dogs lie" was never more valid than right now when peace seemed at long last possible.

He had started a fairly successful security business that specialized in securing the entryways into a residence or a small business like a pub or a barber shop with telephone wires that hooked up either to the owner's location or to a local police station. For those that did not have a lot of confidence in the public law enforcement response system, he offered a service that he ran from a former pool hall that acted like a clearing house for the dispatch of immediate response teams of two armed guards to sort it out. He kept a contingent of at least a dozen men on call at all times day and night and had never had a circumstance where that was not enough to cover the need for immediate response.

His men were all vetted by the constabulary for carrying a handgun properly registered and they were all fingerprinted for offense records to assure their lack of criminal intent. In fact, most of them were former military types and ex- police members who had tired of the thankless task of defending an ungrateful public.

Of course, he had never included his own name for the issuance of a sidearm not wanting his name to come under scrutiny of any kind. The fact his name and credentials were all made up by a master document maker were good enough for ordinary processes but he had no desire to draw attention to himself even though decades had passed since his heyday.

The business was just a cover for his continuing operations in smuggling items into Northern Ireland and finding safe houses and refuges for evaders to elude the authorities. It seemed perfectly normal for him to have a few of his employees around him at certain functions when he was unable to keep his distance from strangers.

Molly was entirely immersed in her own complicated dealings with the Whitehall agencies that sifted through the "rubble" for old enemies and continued infiltration activities that disregarded the call to peace. As long as her husband was not actively supporting the anti-UK element, she saw no conflict with the situation and was quite satisfied that he had not gotten involved in any way since 1995. As far as what he had done before that, she turned a blind eye and he was eternally grateful for that.

Danny was more than pleased to have a wife twenty years younger than he at his age of sixty-five. He was so determined to keep her at his side that he doted on her wishes and made certain she always went to sleep with a satisfied smile on her pretty face.

But all good things must come to an end and it happened in the form of a young dedicated female agent working for MI5 that finally put two and two together and came up with the new edition of Danny Hogan as the actual original "Butcher Boy Danny Hogan" on the MI5 most wanted list for crimes against humanity during the Troubles.

Her name was Brittany and she had graduated from Oxford with honors.

Primarily she was a researcher working on "dead" cases just to give her something to do to earn her pay because the head supervisor was reluctant to put such a pretty young female into the midst of dangerous field work. Besides, he was a bit of an old fuddy-duddy and he didn't like the idea of having a female of her obvious sexual inexperience being used as "bait" or even worse in pursuit of dangerous criminal elements. Not that he was in any way looking for her favors or even considering an affair of sorts because he was far too afraid of his assertive spouse to even harbor the depraved thought.

In any event, poor Brittany was destined to a long period of working in the file rooms rooting out unfollowed leads and trying her best to make the connections that would lead to an arrest of a dreaded PIRA member with blood on his hands. It was just unfortunate that she came across the report from Belfast that mentioned Danny's name several times in connection with the disappearance of several RUC enforcers that had never been found and thought long dead and buried in a landfill or under a parking lot in a shallow grave.

Brittany taped all the available photos of Danny on the whiteboard on her office wall. There were not many of them and in fact two of them were drawings made from witness descriptions. The supposed oldest photo was from 1968 and she had a few from the early years but most were from the early seventies ending with a drawing from a report done in 1984 after the terrible attempted assassination in Brighton on the Prime Minister's life. The report was not complete because the author had disappeared along with his informant who was reputed to be a foreign female hotel worker with dodgy connections.

She was surprised there were so many leads from that bombing that had never been properly followed up but after all it was not their primary responsibility at that time. There was an internal analysis that was done by a predecessor of hers from the same department that was filled with speculation and short on actual facts. The now retired investigator had been one of the groups that had followed the theory that the PIRA was already split into several factions and that Danny was the lead enforcer for the more moderate group that had already indicated their intention to seek peace.

 
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