Gun Street Girl

by Adrian McKinty

  “You didn’t think to tell us any of this before!” Lawson exclaimed.

  “I’m no squealer, so I’m not!”

  “You think you can describe this person?” I asked.

  “Only seen him from the back and the side but he was pretty tall, wearing a leather jacket, wee baseball cap or a flat cap, something like that for the rain, you know.”

  “I’ll get the sketch artist,” McCrabban said, and left the interview room.

  Deirdre and the sketch artist drew the profile of a nasty-looking, hatchet-faced man with hollow cheeks and narrow slits for eyes. You wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night. Or indeed on a sunlit morning.

  “Are you sure this is the man?” I asked.

  “Look, like I said, it was dark and I was on the other side of the street, but it’s not a bad likeness.”

  “You’re not just making all this up to get off the GBH, are you?”

  “No. I seen that man. Sleekit-looking fella and no mistake,” she said.

  “This is good stuff, Deirdre, very good stuff,” McCrabban said.

  “I told youse. It’s enough to get me off my GBH, right?”

  I smiled at her. “I’ll have a word with the Queen Street detectives in the morning.”

  “And I’ll be across the water until you catch him?”

  “I’ll arrange that too.”

  “Ach, you’re awful good, Detective Duffy. You know, for a Fenian, like.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was about to leave the interview room when I had one final thought.

  “You don’t know someone called Nigel by any chance? Maybe a friend of Michael’s?”

  “Oh, aye. Nigel Vardon. Seen him with Michael a few times down the Whitecliff. Good friend of his, I think. Lives up Ballycarry way. In the country. That any help?”

  “Yes, Deirdre. That’s very helpful indeed.”

  18: NIGEL VARDON

  Home. Bed. Sleep on the sofa. Awake at 4 a.m. Car alarm going on the BMW. Grabbed my revolver. Outside into the freezing rain. Coming down in buckets. Something wrong with the car. Closer look.

  “Wee shites! Fucking wee shites! If I catch you!”

  Both rear tires of the Beemer had been let down.

  Back inside. I huddled in front of the electric fire, turned on the World Service, lay there listening to bad news until eight when the phone rang. Whoever it was was going to cop it because I was in a foul mood. “Yeah?”

  “Sean, please tell me you weren’t at Conservative Party Central Office yesterday threatening one of the young Treasury researchers.”

  “Complained about me, did he?”

  “Sean, why don’t you just drop this ridiculous case you’re working on, resign from the RUC, and come and work for me.”

  “Even if I do resign, Kate, Sergeant McCrabban will still pursue every bloody lead in this case, or are you going to offer him a career in MI5 to keep him quiet too?”

  “What are you talking about, Sean?”

  “What are you talking about, Kate? Your Colditz coroner didn’t do his job. Oxford CID didn’t do their job. We, however, we plodding Paddies in the RUC, we did do our bloody jobs. We found your little Conservative Party Central Office researcher and he told us he was the one who took Anastasia Coleman to the party where she died. He was the third man in Gottfried Habsburg’s house.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t worry, if he’s tangential to the inquiry his name won’t come up again, but if he’s not I don’t give a shit who’s protecting him.”

  “Sean, I wasn’t suggesting—”

  “If your little friend in Conservative Party Central Office wants to complain about me, let him fucking complain, he’s got more to lose than I do.”

  “Sean, please. No one’s complained about you. Not officially. I’m just concerned that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew here. In the big scheme of things your little murder investigation is a drop in the ocean. It’s not worth making waves for.”

  “When I make waves you’ll fucking know it,” I said, and slammed down the phone. I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  “Fucking wee Tory shite,” I muttered.

  I went outside to get the milk and saw the sad state of my Beemer resting on its wheel rims.

  Mrs. Campbell was bringing in her milk. Hair askew, fag end dangling out of mouth, nightgown slightly ajar.

  “Is there something wrong with your car, Mr. Duffy?”

  “Who lets down a man’s tires? A mercury tilt switch bomb under the driver’s seat I can understand. That’s an assassination, I get it, but who lets down a man’s tires? I ask you.”

  “Probably weans.”

  “Aye, weans. They better not let me catch them.”

  “I’ve never seen you so upset.”

  “You don’t mess with a man’s wheels, Mrs. Campbell.”

  Inside. Shower. Shave. Walk to Carrick. Grey sky, boarded-up shops. Tarkovskian dystopia. Mean, damp, menacing.

  Into the station. No one around. Just a couple of reservists I didn’t know.

  Dawn over the lough. Coppers filtering in. A stack of paperwork. I fictionalized the CID overtime claims, signed off on McCrabban’s hardship allowance, put in a request for a new dress uniform, and made up a whole bunch of bullshit for Lawson’s performance review.

  Chief Inspector McArthur came in with blow-dried hair, a pink shirt, and a police college tie.

  “Hello, Duffy, you’re in early.”

  “To catch the worm, sir.”

  “How was your England trip?”

  “Extremely productive. We were able to more or less eliminate an entire wing from our inquiry, and we established an excellent rapport and working relationship with Thames Valley CID. We also liaised with a representative of the City of London Police and even with Conservative Party Central Office.”

  His face beamed. “That’s terrific, Sean. I look forward to reading your report.”

  “Interesting fact about the City of London Police. Lawson tells me they’re the reigning Olympic tug-of-war champions, and speaking of Lawson, here’s his performance review. I gave him a superior grade. He’s shaping up to be a very capable detective.”

  McArthur took the performance review and frowned.

  “Don’t make him sound too brilliant, Duffy, or he’ll get noticed by the higher-ups and they’ll steal him from us. Tone this down a bit.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  “And what’s this about a safe house for one of your witnesses, Duffy?”

  “Deirdre Ferris asked for protection in a safe house over the water. I had to give it to her. I took it out of discretionary CID budget, but we’ll split the cost with the host force.”

  “Who’s the host force?”

  “Strathclyde Police. We have a good reciprocal relationship with them.”

  “Good thinking. Where will you put her?”

  “Ayr. Near Glasgow.”

  “And the Kelly case is proceeding well?”

  “We’ve several very good leads. An artist’s impression that I’m going to circulate.”

  “Ooh, an artist’s impression. Will you try and get us on the news?”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  “Very good, Duffy, don’t let me keep you . . . And I’m very glad to see that you’re still with us; we need experienced officers at a time like this.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard, sir, but I’ll be staying with Carrick CID for as long as I’ll be needed.”

  He smiled. “Glad to hear it.”

  I looked up Nigel Vardon in the electoral register, and when McCrabban and Lawson came in we signed out a Land Rover and I drove us to his house, which was in wild back country of County Antrim near Ballycarry.

  Radio 3 was playing an unknown Haydn symphony—at least unknown to me—Symphony no. 34 in D minor, which turned out to be a masterpiece; the courtly third movement so ingeniously constructed that I found my mood lifting a little.

 
; Vardon’s house was a turn-of-the-century farmhouse that had been much expanded upon and “improved” to include a semi-enclosed patio, a double floor extension, and a glass conservatory. It was a thing a lot of people around here did, taking a beautiful little farmhouse and progressively fucking with it until it wasn’t a farmhouse or beautiful anymore. There were tiles missing from the roof and the walls hadn’t been painted in a long time. The renovation had been done a few years ago, but recently money had been tight chez Vardon. Interesting . . .

  “OK, lads, game faces on. Let’s see what Mr. Vardon has to say for himself, eh? Nice and gentle with him at first.”

  Out of the Land Rover. Doorbell. Doorbell again.

  Two vicious Alsatians bounding round the back of the house toward us.

  “Bloody hell!”

  Back into the Land Rover. Sharpish.

  The dogs snapping and snarling, slobber coming from their mouths.

  The front door opened.

  Vardon standing there with a coffee cup in a light blue dressing gown, white underpants, one foot in a slipper, one not. Very long blond hair, two-day growth of beard, blue eyes, tan. He was a handsome lad, but possibly not as handsome as he thought he was.

  “What do you want?” he said with a sniff.

  “Mr. Vardon?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Who else pulls up to your front door in a police Land Rover, Mr. Vardon?”

  “Oh, is that a police Land Rover? I haven’t got my lenses in.”

  “Can you control your dogs, please, Mr. Vardon?”

  “Look, there’s no need for this. I’ve told you everything I know. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Can we come in and talk, please, sir?”

  “I’ve told you everything a million times already! I didn’t do anything. I’ve never done anything in my life.”

  “Mr. Vardon, there must be some mistake you’ve never talked to us before about—”

  “I’m the victim here. I’m the fall guy. Somebody in senior management fucked up big time, but of course nobody in senior management is going to take responsibility so they get rid of me. I did nothing. And what about Tommy Moony, eh? I’ll bet you brave boys in the RUC don’t go around asking him questions non-stop. Nah, only yours truly. Everybody’s afraid of Moony, afraid of the union, but no one’s afraid of me, are they?”

  One of the Alsatians tried to jump in the open window of the Land Rover.

  “Control your dogs or I’ll fucking shoot them both. I’m in no mood for this today,” I said.

  He ordered his dogs inside and we got out of the Land Rover.

  “We just want to ask you some questions, Mr. Vardon,” I said. “Just to establish a few facts about your whereabouts.”

  “Facts? Facts, is it? I’ll tell you the bloody facts! I’m suing Shorts for wrongful dismissal! I’ve done nothing wrong. Those are the facts.”

  “If we can come in and talk . . .”

  “I’m done talking with the bloody peelers! You can talk to my solicitor,” he said, and attempted to close the door on McCrabban’s size-twelve foot.

  “Mr. Vardon, we’re here to talk about Michael Kelly,” I said, pulling the door wide open.

  “Michael Kelly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You don’t know who Michael Kelly is?”

  “It doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “That’s odd, isn’t it, Sergeant McCrabban?”

  “Very odd,” McCrabban agreed.

  “Why is it odd?” Vardon asked.

  “It’s odd because you went to school with him. You were in the sixth form together. Good friends by all accounts. And it’s odd because he called you on the telephone quite regularly. It’s odd because you went over to Oxford and took some friends of his to the MoD range at Dartmoor.”

  Vardon looked at the ground, shuffled his feet, sighed. “All right. Big deal. So I know him. So what?”

  “You do know that he was murdered?”

  “Heard it was suicide. Heard he jumped off a cliff.”

  “We think it’s possible that someone pushed him off the cliff.”

  “Oh, you think I did it, do you? Yeah, pin that one on me too.”

  “May we come in, Mr. Vardon?”

  He sighed again. “If you must . . .”

  I looked at Crabbie. “Oh, I think we must.”

  The interior of the house was relatively unspoiled: original stone walls, nice original fireplace and chimney equipment, wood floors, Persian rugs, comfortable sofa, a very impressive quadrophonic sound system, and a high-end CD player.

  “Where are the dogs?” Lawson asked nervously.

  “Locked in the back kitchen,” Vardon said.

  “What’s your relationship to Michael Kelly, Mr. Vardon?” I asked, sitting down on the sofa.

  “Not much of a relationship. Friends at school but we drifted apart. I went into Shorts management program after my A-levels and he went off to Oxford.”

  “You went over to visit him?”

  “It wasn’t really like that. We’d lost contact for a while and then he calls me up out of the blue asking if I could get him a pass to the MoD range in Dartmoor for a corporate hospitality thing.”

  “That’s a very unusual request,” McCrabban said.

  “Not that unusual. He knew I worked at the Shorts Missile Division and he knew we did all our range testing at Dartmoor.”

  “So you organized a little trip for his Oxford pals.”

  “Good PR for Shorts. Those lads are the future movers and shakers. The future buyers of missile systems for the Ministry of Defense.”

  “How long did you spend with Michael?”

  “Oh, that was just a long weekend. December of last year.”

  “But after that you and Michael had re-established contact and remained friends?”

  “Yeah. Not close friends to tell the truth. But friendly enough.”

  “So why deny him to us?” McCrabban asked.

  “Are you kidding? Last thing I need is to be mixed up with the Michael Kelly story at a time like this.”

  “What exactly is going on with you? What’s all this talk about Shorts and unions and the like?” I asked.

  “As if you don’t know,” he said skeptically.

  “We don’t know.”

  “I’ve been interviewed by RUC Special Branch no less than three times. Twice at the station. Once here.”

  “About what?” Lawson asked.

  “The stolen missiles. The allegedly stolen missiles,” he explained.

  “What stolen missiles?” McCrabban asked.

  “What stolen . . . All right. For the hundredth time. They did an internal audit and they found that six Javelin missile systems had gone missing.”

  “That sounds pretty serious!” McCrabban said.

  “I think I heard about this on the news.” I vaguely remembered. “So what happened to you, Mr. Vardon?”

  “I was in charge of plant security at the Missiles Division, so naturally they gave me the sack. Except there’s only one problem. I’ve only been in that particular job two months and the missiles could have gone missing at any time since the last inventory, which was fourteen months ago! And you can’t fire Harry Tapper because he’s dead, and you can’t fire Tommy Moony on the shop floor because he’s union. So what do you do? You get rid of me. The new guy on the totem pole. Junior manager. Expendable.”

  “Plant security was your job,” Lawson said.

  “I’ve done a great job over there. I’ve tightened security. The missiles did not go missing on my watch! And I’ll tell you something else, I’ll bet you they’re not even missing. Have you actually been over there? They don’t know their arse from their elbow. They have a pre-war system of accounts, the shipping isn’t even done on computer; it’s all in these big black double-entry books. And you think when the missiles do show up in wooden crates in some corner of the factory à la Indiana Jones, you think
I’m going to get my job back? Will I, fuck? I’ll still be out on my ear with my reputation ruined!”

  He seemed genuinely upset by this, as you would be if you’d got the can for someone else’s mistake.

  “And you’ve told all this to Special Branch?” McCrabban asked.

  “I have. Three times.”

  “And what have they said?”

  “No criminal charges. They think I’m innocent. And you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am innocent! What would I do with half a dozen Javelin missile systems?”

  “Get rid of them through your friend Michael Kelly, a growing presence in the international weapons market?” I suggested.

  “Rubbish! Stuff like that is far too hot to move and you know it!” he scoffed.

  “What was your reaction to the murders at the Kelly home, Mr. Vardon?” I asked.

  “Honestly? I saw it coming. He was always rowing with his da back when I knew him. Don’t want to speak ill of the dead but his da was a bit of a fucking head case. Old-school hard man. You don’t get to run a chain of bookies without bashing a few skulls.”

  “Did he bash Michael’s skull?” Crabbie asked.

  “Oh yeah. When he was younger. Smacked him about quite a bit.”

  “What about Michael’s mum?”

  “What about her?”

  “Usually the mother steps in to stop the violence,” I said.

  “She didn’t do shit. She was too far gone in the drink by lunchtime to do much of anything.”

  “So you think years of simmering resentment finally spilled over and Michael killed his parents?” I suggested.

  “I do. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, then Michael tops himself.”

  “Because?”

  “He’s grief-stricken. You don’t go round killing your ma and da and not feel something.”

  “You do if you’re a psychopath.”

  “Michael was no psychopath. He just snapped is all . . . That’s my theory, anyway.”

  He’d blinked a hundred times since we’d started this conversation and he’d sniffed half a dozen times. His pupils were dilated and he had the jitters. Evidently he and me and our actor buddy, Mr. Dwyer, all enjoyed the Peruvian marching powder. But how did you pay for a cocaine problem on the dole? Could a cocaine problem make you risk everything by stealing a bunch of missiles? Nah. Heroin I could see fucking with you like that, but not coke. And he was right—where in the name of God would you unload a bunch of missile systems? It would be too hot even for the paramilitaries, wouldn’t it? Even for someone as connected as Michael Kelly?