Nine Inches

by Colin Bateman

  I shook his hand.

  ‘Like the dog,’ I said.

  He had a needlessly strong grip. He was about the same age as Hood, but looked as if he’d been around a few more corners.

  ‘He’s the senior investigating officer,’ said Hood.

  ‘Mad but lovable,’ I said.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Springer.

  ‘Springer spaniels. You would only get one as a guide dog for the blind if you wanted rid of someone. I’m sorry – have a seat. Both of you. You’re lucky there’s only the two of you, because I only have two seats. If there were three of you, one of you would have to stand, and that would be awkward. I should invest in a third seat.’ I nodded at them. They nodded back. ‘If there were four of you, it would be absolute chaos.’ I sat down. They sat too. ‘Senior investigating officer for what?’

  ‘The murder of Jean Murray,’ said Hood.

  ‘Oh yes. Poor Jean.’

  ‘What is it exactly that you do?’ Springer asked.

  ‘Good question,’ I said. ‘With no easy answer.’

  ‘We believe you spoke to her shortly before her death,’ said Springer.

  ‘Day before,’ I said.

  ‘Did she intimate any particular fears to you? Threats received, et cetera.’

  ‘Intimate, no. State bluntly, yes. But you know this.’ I nodded at Hood. ‘You know who’s responsible. She was round the station often enough telling anyone who’d care to listen.’

  ‘Well we’re interested in your take on it,’ said Springer. ‘Who do you think was responsible?’

  ‘Apart from the bleeding obvious, I have no idea. Who do you think caused it?’

  Springer ignored my question.

  Hood said, ‘Would you be prepared to come in and make a statement about what Jean Murray said to you, when you met her?’

  ‘You mean about her accusing the Miller boys of shooting her son in the leg, and them threatening her and trying to burn her house down on previous occasions?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, no, obviously.’

  ‘It would help us build a case.’

  ‘Well come back and see me when you’re putting the slates on, because I’m pretty sure if I give you a statement it’ll be the only one you have, which means I’m down in the foundations somewhere, which is where I’ll end up if the Miller boys get wind of it.’

  ‘You’re refusing to cooperate?’ Springer asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You can be compelled to, by a court of law. You’re withholding information.’

  ‘Really?’ I looked at Hood. ‘Does he always talk like this? He doesn’t exactly have a winning way about him.’

  ‘We’re serious,’ said Hood.

  ‘You can give us a statement now, or we can take you in.’

  I nodded some, and contemplated the skylight. It was more of a skydark, but that wasn’t a word.

  ‘Have you ever heard the expression, you can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink?’ I asked. ‘Or maybe, you can take a whore to culture but you can’t make her sing?’

  I put my feet back on the desk. I clasped my hands behind my head. It was supposed to give the impression of being relaxed and cool. They didn’t look overly impressed. But I wasn’t of a mind to care. Besides, I didn’t believe they were the slightest bit interested in my statement. And almost immediately they proved it.

  Springer said: ‘When you were at the Murray house, did you speak to her son, Bobby?’

  ‘Bobby with the one leg?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you spoken with him since the fire in which his mother was killed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know his whereabouts?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘I think no pretty much covers it.’

  Springer shifted forward in his chair. ‘Cards on the table here, bucko. You were seen with him.’

  ‘Bucko?’

  ‘You were spotted with him in a café just a few doors down. He’s hard to miss.’

  ‘But seriously, bucko?’

  Hood shifted forward too. ‘Dan, don’t mess around. We’re trying to help him. You were spotted together.’

  ‘You may think that, but it wasn’t him,’ I said. ‘You see, I do a lot of charitable work amongst the one-legged community. I’m getting a team together for the paramilitary Paralympics. He’s probably been mistaken for someone else, or vice versa, seeing as how they all have the same affliction and wear the same tracksuits and shit.’

  ‘You should know,’ Springer said, ‘that at this moment the Millers are not the focus of our inquiry.’

  Now that surprised me. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘There is certain evidence to suggest that Bobby Murray may have been complicit in the death of his mother.’

  ‘Complicit by annoying the Millers?’

  ‘Complicit by setting the fire himself,’ said Hood.

  ‘You’re serious?’

  They did appear to be.

  Springer said, ‘Bobby Murray not only has drugs-related convictions, but he also has one for arson. He was known not to get on with his mother; they were heard to be fighting by neighbours on the night of the fire. You could make the case.’

  ‘You mean, you could make the case.’ Springer kept his gaze steady on me. ‘And it would be laughed out. You know that’s just crazy bollocks.’

  Springer raised an eyebrow. ‘We want to talk to him. If you know where he is, you tell us. If you know someone who’s sheltering him, you should let them know we want to talk to him. And if you do know that someone, well maybe they should think twice about leaving him alone with a box of matches.’ He nodded. I nodded. ‘You may consider this a courtesy visit,’ he said. ‘We know you know where he is. Do yourself a favour and either wire us off or bring him in.’

  ‘Duly noted,’ I said.

  Springer stood, put his hands on the table and leant forward. ‘I was told you had an attitude problem. I was told you used to be a big-shot reporter. That you thought you could get away with murder because you were someone. Well you’re before my time. I’ve never heard of you. And whatever you were, you aren’t now. So if I were you, bucko, I’d watch out for myself.’

  At that, the buzzer sounded.

  ‘Your taxi’s here,’ I said.

  Springer made a sudden feint forward, as if to attack.

  I moved an involuntary fraction. He smiled. He turned. Hood raised an eyebrow and went with him.

  I sat back. The buzzer sounded again. When I pressed it, a gruff voice said, ‘Mr Starkey? Can we come up?’

  ‘That depends,’ I said. ‘Who are we?’

  ‘We’re here representing Jack Caramac and Cityscape FM.’

  ‘Representing? Are you like his agent? Or his estate agent?’

  ‘I’m his solicitor,’ said the man.

  And then another voice chipped in: ‘And I’m from Malone Security.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘it’s my lucky day. Okay, you can come up. Any friends of Jack’s are friends of mine. Just let me tell you the password.’

  ‘Password?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, can’t be too careful. Two of my security guys are about to open the front door. Just say to them, You’ll never take me alive, copper, and they’ll let you right up.’

  I took my finger off the buzzer, replaced my feet on the desk and awaited developments.

  25

  ‘Come on, on, on, on in,’ I said. ‘It’s like Piccadilly station round here this day.’ I indicated the chairs. ‘You’re lucky there’s only two of you, because I only have the two seats. If there were three of you, one of you would have to stand, and that would be awkward. I should invest in a third seat.’ I nodded at them. They nodded back. ‘If there were four of you,’ I said, ‘it would be friggin’ anarchy in the UK.’

  They jus
t looked at me. I was hoping that a different audience might appreciate me better, but it was looking as if it was the material that was the problem. The fact that they were an ill-matched pair shouldn’t have been a surprise, given their respective professions, but it was. Because the big, muscular man in the zip-up Puffa jacket introduced himself as Conor Wilson, from Wilson and Maguire Solicitors, and the small, bony-looking guy in the trendy black boutique hotel manager’s suit said he was Paddy Barr, from Malone Security.

  I sat down and said, ‘No trouble downstairs?’

  ‘Ah, no,’ said Conor Wilson. ‘They didn’t seem very interested.’

  ‘It’s an act,’ I said. ‘They’ll be checking out your bona fides as we speak.’

  Paddy Barr glanced at Wilson. Wilson kept his eyes on me. So I concentrated on Paddy Barr.

  ‘Malone Security, is it?’ I asked. ‘At a wild guess, would that be providing security up Malone direction?’

  Paddy Barr nodded. ‘We provide a bespoke service . . .’

  ‘Gotcha!’

  ‘. . . for clients in the Malone area, yes.’

  ‘Sorry, yes. I’m just excited to meet someone else in the bespoke trade.’

  His nose had been broken at some time in the past and had mended crooked. Now that I looked at him he wasn’t so much bony as wiry, an important difference. There was some evidence of scarring around his eyes. I checked out his knuckles. Two of them were missing.

  I said, ‘What weight did you fight at?’

  ‘Bantam,’ he said.

  ‘Olympics?’

  ‘Commonwealth.’

  I nodded. I like my boxing.

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘Bronze. You?’ He indicated the eye.

  ‘The wife,’ I said. ‘Punches above her weight. I used to be best buds with Fat Boy McMaster, remember him?’

  ‘Must be before my time.’

  ‘Most everything I know seems to be before everyone’s time,’ I said wistfully, and shifted back to Conor Wilson. ‘What about you? You remember Fat Boy? He fought Tyson for the world heavyweight title, New York, St Patrick’s Day, fifteen years ago, must be.’

  ‘I’m not here to discuss boxing.’

  ‘Are you sure about that? Because we could outvote you.’ Conor Wilson shook his head, slightly. There wasn’t a lot of animation in him. Or personality. Or humour. There wasn’t much of it in Paddy Barr either. I gave him a shrug, and sat back and clasped my hands in what I hoped was a mildly professional manner. ‘Okay, folks, what can I be doing for you? Is it a case, a job, a crime that needs solving? I’m kind of busy, but if it was sufficiently interesting, I’m sure I could find a window. My rates are competitive and my service is . . .’ I showed a hand to Paddy Barr. He did not take the bait. ‘. . . bespoke.’

  ‘No, Mr Starkey, I am not here to offer you a job,’ said the solicitor. ‘I am here on behalf of my client, Mr Caramac, and his employers, Cityscape FM, to give you due notice that if you continue to harass Mr Caramac and his family, we will commence legal proceedings against you.’

  ‘Harass?’

  ‘We seek that you should desist from approaching our client, his wife, any of his employees; we seek that you should desist from entering his property uninvited; we seek that you should desist from loitering outside his property and accosting any members of his staff as he, she or they leave said property; we seek that you should desist from following said employees to their places of residence; we seek that you should desist from harassing said employees at said place of residence.’

  ‘My, that’s a lot of seeking,’ I said, ‘but I like it.’

  ‘You like what, Mr Starkey?’

  ‘Your turn of phrase. It’s not really how humans speak, is it? We seek that you should desist. In a letter or maybe a court order, I understand, but not face to face, one-on-one. Those are words you don’t often hear out loud. I like them, but you should have just written them down and stuck them in the letter box. The desisting loses something spoken out loudy.’ I nodded. ‘Not that I have a letter box, but you get my drift.’

  ‘We wished to give you the option of desisting before we formalised matters.’

  I looked at Paddy Barr. ‘You don’t look like a man who asks many people to desist.’

  ‘No, Mr Starkey, I prefer a more practical approach. You might almost say physical.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Let me see then if I understand this correctly. There’s kind of a twin thing going on here – on one hand, I’m being threatened with legal action; on the other, I’m being threatened with what you might call a good diggin’. Is that a fair summation of what we have discussed here this afternoon?’

  ‘Mr Starkey,’ said Conor Wilson, ‘this isn’t a joke.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s a little bit of a joke.’

  ‘No, sir, it is most assuredly not . . .’

  ‘Desist,’ I said.

  Conor Wilson stopped. I leaned forward. I smiled from one to the other. ‘You have to remember, Mr Wilson, Mr Barr, that I worked with Jack Caramac for many years, indeed before he became Jack Caramac. I know him very well, and he knows me, likewise. As reporters, he would know that if we were ever threatened with legal action or physical violence, our reaction was always to dig deeper, because it was surely a sign that there was something to hide, that we were on the right path. So what I interpret from your visit here is that Jack is actually making a cry for help, that he’s in some trouble but can’t talk about it, that he is in fact asking me to look into this whole situation even more thoroughly.’

  ‘Mr Starkey, that is the very opposite of—’

  ‘Well you would say that, because you’re not in on the joke. Oh, I’d say he knows exactly what he’s doing.’

  Conor Wilson cleared his throat. ‘Mr Starkey . . .’

  ‘Or,’ I continued, because when you’re on a roll, it’s best to keep rolling, ‘there’s also the possibility that he’s not sending me a coded message at all, but that he has disappeared so far up his own arse that he actually thinks that sending in you two eejits really will frighten me, in which case I’m sorry to tell you that you may seek to inform said fuckwit that I’ve no intention of laying off, and that in fact I’ve a fair mind to crank it up. So you see, whatever way you want to interpret it, the result is the same. I’m on it, I’m going to stay on it, and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it.’

  Paddy Barr stood up. His hands were at his sides, but bunched into fists.

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘you were a bantam; that’s about two ounces above pixieweight.’

  He was all ready to come over the desk at me, but the solicitor put a hand on his arm. ‘No, Paddy,’ he said.

  Paddy kept glaring at me, but didn’t come any closer. Instead he growled, ‘Funny fella.’ He pointed a finger. ‘Well I’m telling you, sunshine, this is a warning, so watch your back. There’s plenty more where I come from.’

  ‘Where’s that, Pixie Land?’

  ‘Funny fella,’ said Paddy, ‘fun-ny fella.’

  Conor Wilson stood up. He said, ‘Very well, Mr Starkey, we have delivered our message, you have given us your response. I appreciate that taking umbrage is a natural response when presented with such demands. But I would suggest you take a little time to think about it more thoroughly, and if you decide to change your position, then your cooperation will simply become apparent to the parties involved.’

  He turned for the door. Paddy gave me a sneer and went after him.

  ‘One thing,’ I said. They stopped. ‘Umbrage. Is that where the Archers live?’

  26

  It was, by any standards, a remarkable half-hour: two groups of visitors, two threats of legal action and two of physical violence. And they had all come from the supposedly right side of the law – the police, a solicitor and a security guard. Clearly I was doing something right. It was intriguing on so many levels that I felt compelled to adjourn to the Bob Shaw to think about it.

  Lenny was behind the bar. She looke
d surprised, and then somewhat cool. She had said she absolutely believed my explanation for having a one-legged teenager in my bathroom, but now I wasn’t so sure. She had read the graffiti on my car, and then jumped to a conclusion. It stood testament to the power of advertising. She kept herself busy and away from me. On the few occasions she did pass within range and I attempted small talk, her response was smaller.

  I didn’t let it bother me, much. I had bigger fish to fry. I sat in the corner with a Harp. It used to be the drink of choice in Belfast because it had virtually no competitors, but the city has opened up since what passes for peace was declared, and now the auld Harp is under siege. I take seriously my responsibility to support it, sometimes above and beyond the call of duty.

  I sipped and pondered. As threats went, these latest ones were genuine, but mild. Of the two, Springer and Hood’s had to be taken more seriously, because they had the power to do more than just repeat the word desist at regular intervals. If the PSNI was trying to twist my arm, then it didn’t take a huge imagination to, uhm, imagine what the Miller brothers might do if they got wind of my role in protecting Bobby. It was a small city, and people talked. I’d a former Shankill Butcher downstairs from my office and a possible spy in my local café. If either the cops or the Millers were serious about finding Bobby, then they wouldn’t have to employ a rocket scientist to track him down to either my apartment or what Patricia fondly imagines is her house.

  Bobby having a conviction for arson was somewhat worrying. I was pretty sure Springer had only mentioned it to try to get me to open up, but still, I’d handed the boy over to Trish to get me out of a hole without really thinking about how it might impact on her. She had a heart of gold and tended to think the best of people. If someone literally bumped into her on the street, it was always Trish who said sorry. Bobby could be standing over the smoking embers of her house, with a can of petrol in one hand and a box of matches in the other, and she still wouldn’t quite be convinced of his guilt. I, on the other hand, trusted few people, always suspected a dark side, and I was pretty sure that there was more to Bobby’s fallout with the Millers than the fact that he owed them a few quid.