Back outside. Beemer. Ninety mph on the two-minute journey to Coronation Road. Parked the car, grabbed my half of the coke, got out. Timex said 3:55 a.m. Light drizzle. No cars. No pedestrians.
Inside 113 Coronation Road. I grabbed a torch, went out to the shed, and hid the coke in a nail box next to a slab of engine grease so ancient and rancid that even the best sniffer dogs wouldn’t go near it.
Inside again. I undressed quickly in the hall and walked naked up the stairs.
I lit the paraffin heater. Lights off.
I tossed and turned for an hour and finally gave up.
Downstairs again. Vodka gimlet. Sam Cooke on the stereo. Sam The Man Cooke whose raw masculine power was so intense that he seemed to bring to a climax half the audience during the medley of “It’s All Right/For Sentimental Reasons.”
When the record was done I let the silence wash over me. I put the chilled pint glass against my forehead. I lay there on the sofa in the pallid starlight, in that light of other days . . .
And the house was quiet.
And the street was quiet.
And my eyelids were heavy.
And the rain was falling.
And the phone was ringing.
3: MURDER WAS THE CASE THAT THEY GAVE ME
I picked up the phone. “This better be good.”
“Sean, is that you?” Detective Sergeant McCrabban asked.
“Anyone else would have told you to fuck off by now. Course it’s me. Do you know what time it is, Crabbie?”
“Uhm, about six o’clock?”
“Aye, six o’clock, and I haven’t even been to bed yet.”
“I’m really sorry, Sean, but we’ve got a situation.”
“What sort of situation?”
“It’s a double murder in Whitehead.”
“Ecoutez, my esteemed colleague. Isn’t that why they promoted you from humble flatfoot to detective sergeant? So that you could handle double murders in Whitehead without involving me on my so-called night off.”
“The murder isn’t the problem, Sean.”
“OK, I’ll play along, what is the problem?”
“It’s a jurisdictional dispute.”
“That’s a new one. Go on.”
“Larne RUC are saying that this is their case because the road the house is on is technically in their patch. But the house itself is over the line in Carrick RUC’s turf. It’s our case, Sean.”
“Jesus, Crabbie, if they want it so badly let them have it!”
“Husband and wife shot in the head. The husband is a bloke called Ray Kelly; he’s got a lot of money.”
I sighed. “So you don’t want Larne to have it because it’s a dead rich guy?”
“Well, Sean, first of all, it is our case. Larne have no right to be here at all. Secondly, it’s an interesting one: a dead millionaire and his wife in a whopping big mansion in Whitehead, you know?”
“And what has all this got to do with me?”
“I need you, Sean. I’m a detective sergeant; you’re an inspector. I can’t hold Larne RUC off by myself. I’ll owe you one, mate.”
I groaned into the receiver. “All right, Crabbie, I’ll come down. I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”
“You might want to wear something respectable. There’s a full-of-himself Chief Inspector Kennedy from Larne RUC here.”
“What’s the address?”
“64 New Island Road, Whitehead, just beyond the lighthouse. Do you want me to send a constable for you?”
“I’ll find it.”
“May I ask how your trip to Derry went last night?”
“The gunrunners?”
“Aye.”
“As fine an example of RUC-Gardai-Interpol cooperation as I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh dear. That bad?”
“That bad. See you in fifteen, Crabbie. Hold the fort, don’t let those Larne culchies tramp their dirty boots all over our crime scene.”
“I won’t.”
Crabbie hung up and I put the kettle on and pushed the preselect on the stereo for Radio 1. I rummaged in the cupboard above the sink for the RUC map of East Antrim, found it, and unfolded it on the kitchen table. The kettle clicked off and I made myself a cup of tea. I grabbed a couple of McVities chocolate digestives and examined the map.
I noticed that the boundary line between Carrick RUC and Larne RUC districts skirted through Whitehead town itself, but 64 New Island Road, on the Blackhead cliff, was just over the line in our manor. I might have to do some yelling and screaming but Crabbie was right; for better or worse, if we wanted it, this was our case.
Radio 1 began playing “Ever Fallen in Love with Someone?” by the Buzzcocks. I poured a dash of Lagavulin into the tea and lit a Marlboro.
Tea, ciggies, McVities chocolate digestives, Lagavulin: the breakfast of bloody champions.
“All right, Duffy, time to get serious,” a croaky voice that sounded a bit like mine said aloud. I found a sweater and a pair of jeans that didn’t look too minging. I laced up my Doc Martens, grabbed my revolver and a black raincoat, and went out onto Coronation Road.
I looked under the BMW for bombs and got inside.
I turned on Radio 1 and The Cure’s “Close To Me” began its jaunty but cunningly irritating melody. I drove up Coronation Road, turned right on Victoria Road, and drove to the bottom of the hill where the Antrim Plateau met the sea. There was no traffic at this hour and I paused at the junction; to my right Carrickfergus Castle was lit up by spotlights, and behind the castle Belfast was a wet film of light and shade under the Black Mountain.
I turned left, and, as there were no other cars on the road, I let the Beemer’s big M30 straight-six engine stretch itself.
The speedometer was registering a ton and change as I zoomed past the abandoned factories in Kilroot, and before Robert Smith had even got to “Wish I’d stayed asleep today,” we were deep in the Irish countryside.
I made it to Whitehead in less than four minutes, coming suddenly on that great cliff bend in the A2 known as the Bla Hole, where for a dazzling second you could see all of the North Channel and a good chunk of Western Scotland.
The road curved to the left and on the passenger’s side there were fields filled with sheep, and on my side a hint of sun now in the eastern horizon . . .
Pink sky.
Blue sky.
“Close To Me” ended, and because no one was listening at this hour anyway, the DJ put on the twelve-inch of “Blue Monday,” which would comfortably take me all the way to my destination.
I turned right on Cable Road.
Whitehead, County Antrim.
Imagine Vernazza in the Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera. No, wait, don’t imagine that. It’s nothing like that; this is Northern Ireland we’re talking about here. OK, but maybe imagine it a little. A town under the cliff, a town with brightly painted houses on the seashore.
I took out the map and found New Island Road.
The crime scene was not difficult to locate.
Sergeant McCrabban had brought down two Land Rovers from Carrick RUC. Larne RUC had shown up with a couple of Land Rovers of their own, and there were two Land Rovers from the forensic unit in Belfast. Add to that a couple of cars from local media, a dozen lookie-loos from surrounding streets, and the outside broadcast van from BBC Radio Ulster.
The house itself was a kind of folly, a scaled-down copy of Dunluce Castle, which famously had fallen into the sea a few miles up the coast. There was a central “keep” in thick grey stone with turrets and flying buttresses, high arched windows, and a flat walled roof. There were several outbuildings and a guest cottage and all around the property a thick nine-foot-high stone wall.
The hundred-foot cliff protected the property to the east, south, and north, so if an intruder was going to get in he’d have to come over the wall to the west or through massive iron front gates.
I parked the BMW behind the BBC radio car and walked up to those huge wrought-iron gates where Crabbie was waiti
ng for me.
“Morning, Sergeant McCrabban,” I said cheerfully.
“Morning, Sean.”
“Jesus, this is some pile,” I said. “These people must indeed be loaded.”
“You can see why Larne RUC want it, can’t you? It’s the sort of case that newspapers like, the sort of case that builds careers.”
“Or sinks them,” I said with a significant drop in cadence.
“Aye, but most of us don’t have your luck, Sean,” Crabbie pointed out.
“What did you say this guy did? He was a bookie?”
“He runs a chain of bookies.”
“Who reported the killing?”
“Mrs. McCawly, the housekeeper.”
“How did she get in?”
“She has a code for the front gate.”
“When did she get here?”
“Five on the dot.”
“Bit early for a cleaner, no?”
“She worked from five until eight every day. Mrs. Kelly liked to have the place spick and span first thing in the morning.”
“Doesn’t the Hoover wake them up?”
“Well, not today it doesn’t.”
“So Mrs. McCawly gets here at five and finds Mr. and Mrs. Kelly shot dead?”
“Yes.”
“Were these gates open when she got here?”
“No.”
“How did the killer get in? You’d need a siege tower to get over that wall.”
“Or a ladder.”
“Yeah, true, but what self-respecting hit man drives around with a ten-foot ladder?”
“A well-prepared one?” Crabbie said with Jeevesian sangfroid.
“So you’re thinking an outside job?”
“No, quite the opposite in fact.”
Crabbie was getting on my nerves. “Let’s see this crime scene, eh?”
He led me through the gates, along a gravel drive, into a wood-paneled entrance hall, and finally into a large, open-plan, living room that overlooked the North Channel. The place was full of coppers and other hangers-on, some of whom turned to look at me the moment I stepped into the room. I ignored them.
The sun was up now and Scotland was so close that you could see chimney smoke from the villages on the other side of the sea. The living room itself was hung with tasteful, presumably original, artwork. Furniture: big stylish sofas, comfy chairs, a nice mahogany dining-room table on to which a whole bunch of police forensic equipment had been placed. Floor: hardwood with massive, expensive-looking Persian rugs on top. The TV was on, but at this time of the day the only thing showing was the BBC test card: the little girl and the creepy clown playing noughts and crosses forever in a nursery hell.
Of course the focal point of the mise-en-crime were the two bodies sitting facing one another on two armchairs either side of the TV set.
The man was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a Ralph Lauren lime-green polo shirt. He was in his fifties. Chubby. Grey curly hair, a goatee, a signet ring, and a wedding ring. The bullet had made a tiny impression on his left temple and a presumably larger exit wound on his right temple. His mouth was half open. He was facing the television, not the assassin. The killer had shot him first.
His wife had been shot next. Twice. Once in the heart. Once in the forehead. She was a deeply tanned, dark-haired, trim woman in a white bathrobe over blue pajamas. She was about forty-five years old. You wouldn’t say attractive but perhaps once she had been. She had attempted to get out of the chair after her husband had been shot, but the killer had immediately plugged her in the chest to gentle her condition; and before she could get going with the screaming, he had crossed the room, gotten real close, and single-tapped her in the forehead, blowing the top fifth of her head off. He’d been so efficient that there wasn’t even a defensive wound on either one of her hands. (Normally when you know your number’s up, instinct brings your hands up to cover your head, but this guy had been quick.)
“What’s your take, Crabbie?”
“The killer shot him first and her a few moments later.”
“Did you notice that she has no defensive wounds?”
“Yes.”
“Which means?”
“Either there were two shooters or the guy was fast.”
“I’d bet one shooter but forensics will tell us for sure.”
“Aye.”
I examined the bodies. Nasty exit wounds. Death would have been instantaneous. The undertaker would have a real job with both of them if the family wanted to go open casket.
“Kids, relatives?” I asked McCrabban.
“One son, Michael, who is missing.”
“Missing, how?”
“His car’s gone from the garage,” McCrabban said significantly.
“It’s normally in the garage?”
“Yes it is.”
“How old is this kid?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Quite the difficult age for a young man.”
“Aye.”
“And he was living here with his mum and dad?”
“Yup.”
“He was living here and now he’s vanished in his car?”
“His Mercedes Benz.”
“Everything quiet and peaceful chez the Kellys?”
“Mrs. McCawly didn’t think so.”
“Did she not?”
“No she didn’t. There were arguments. Especially arguments between father and son.”
“Ah, now you’re talking.”
“Heated arguments, she says.”
“Pushing and shoving?”
“No, but yelling matches.”
“About?”
“The boy’s future. The boy’s friends. Late nights, the usual thing.”
“What does this kid do for a living?”
“He’s unemployed.”
I nodded. “OK, so that’s one track. But leaving that to one side for the moment, what about signs of forced entry?”
“On an initial inspection, none.”
“Firearms in the house?”
“Shotgun for rabbits, nine-millimeter handgun for personal protection.”
“Whose personal protection?”
“On the license Mr. Kelly said that he feared that he would be subject to kidnap because of his wealth.”
“Where is this nine-millimeter now?”
“It’s not in the drawer where Mrs. McCawly says he kept it.”
“Do you think these victims were shot by a nine-millimeter?”
“Again forensics will tell us for sure, but if you ask me the wounds are consistent with a pistol of that caliber.”
“Yeah. Almost certainly.”
“But you’re not happy?” he said, reading my expression accurately.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Crabbie, I can see where you’re pointing me, but this thing has a professional killing vibe about it, don’t you think?”
“It’s certainly very clean and those head shots are impressive.”
“But you still like the son for it, do you?”
“I’m not jumping to any conclusions just yet, Sean.”
“You have alerted our stout comrades in Traffic Branch about this kid and his car?”
“Of course. Would you like to talk to Mrs. McCawly?”
Before I could answer that a big vacant-eyed arsehole with a black ’tache got in my face. “Are you Duffy?” he asked, looking at me with slow-boiling fury.
“That’s what they call me. Sometimes The Space Cowboy or the Pompatus of Love,” I said, winking and offering him my hand. He let the hand dangle.
“I’m CI Kennedy, Larne RUC. Listen to me, Duffy, your fucking sergeant won’t let my men get started because he says this is your case. This isn’t your case. The cleaner, Mrs. McCawly, called Larne RUC. We were the first responders, and if you look at the map you’ll see that this is . . .”
I let him drift out. His ’tache, his big red face, his trousers too short for his ankles, and his ankles swollen by too-tight shoes are the e
arly signs of congestive heart failure. Chief Inspector Kennedy was that most common and dangerous thing, the old man in a hurry. Passed over for promotion and keen to retire with a rank and commensurate pension that would allow him to pay his golf club dues and get his missus her winter bronzing holidays in Tenerife.
The Cure’s “Close to Me” started replaying in my head. It would really be a much better song if they cut the saxophone. Most pop songs would be better without the saxophone. Bruce Springsteen’s works the prima facie case for this, and perhaps Live At The Harlem Square Club a rare counter-example.
“Duffy?”
Kennedy had ceased his initial rant.
He was staring at me in a way that could get a civilian sectioned under the Mental Health Act. In fact the whole room had fixed their peepers on me. Half a dozen bleary-eyed coppers. A photographer. Men in boiler suits from the new forensic unit in Belfast waiting to get started. Classic zugzwang situation. As long as I stood here nobody would do anything and everything would be fine, but any move I made was going to piss someone off. If I let Kennedy have the case, Crabbie would resent me for months, and Kennedy looked like he’d throw an atomic eggy if I tried to poach this juicy murder from under him.
“Wait one second, please,” I said to Kennedy.
I took McCrabban out onto the living-room balcony which overlooked the Gobbins cliffs and the bottle-green Irish Sea beyond.
I clapped him on the shoulder, partly just to see the uptight eejit shudder at the touch of a fellow human.
“Let’s let them have it, eh, mate? That Larne copper’s clearly demented. If we insist on the strict letter of the law he’ll likely pop a blood vessel in his brain and add to the carnage in there,” I said.
Crabbie thought about this and then shook his head. “No, Sean. It’s not fair. It’s not their case. They’ve got no right to be here. It’s a question of justice.”
“You know there’s no such thing as justice.”
“Says you.”
I shrugged and looked the big Calvinist ganch in the eye. He was unflinching.
“You feel strongly about this?” I asked.
“I do. And besides, they’ve been very high handed to our men. They want taking down a peg or two.”
Gun Street Girl Page 3