I could not focus, could not settle.
I took it out on Mother. She said, ‘Why don’t you get a grip, you stupid little prick?’
As a result of this, and for the first time, I refused to give her a bath. She had to pull herself up out of her wheelchair and tumble into the tub, and only then run the water. She yelled, ‘Stop looking at my tits and bring me the soap.’
I did neither.
Alison did her best with me, but it was a losing battle. If anything, I was getting worse. I had risked a lynching, then had my triumph ripped away from me by political and criminal shenanigans. She attempted to make love to me, but I put her in her place. It was not the time. It might never be the time again. It was as if aliens had waved at me, and me alone, and then gone home, leaving me convinced and the rest of the world either uninterested or disbelieving. She tried to tempt me with Twix and Starbucks, but the only appetite I had was for justice.
Jeff especially felt the wrath of my tongue. He had once again returned to my employ, but now armed with an official police caution. He seemed to think this put him on a par with some of the poor un fortunate bigmouths he championed through Amnesty International. I soon put him right on that. I used many swear words. He said very little in response. A couple of times I caught Alison and Jeff in close conversation, which they would then quickly drop. I knew they were talking about me, or plotting. The whole world was constantly plotting against me, including through fluoridation, but this was a little too close to home.
I raged on into February. It is one of the most forlorn months, together with June and September and April and March and October and November and December and January and May and August and July. Sales failed to pick up. I sacked Mother from the shop. She was verbally abusing the customers, accusing them of lingering, and stealing, and casting lustful glances at her. I knew of many other small bookstores across the country that had given up because of this miserable financial climate, and they didn’t even have a mother to drive customers away. Cases for me to solve continued to trickle through the door, and I took several of them on, but I was barely interested. I either solved them quickly or passed them on to Alison. She was good, and happy in the solving of them.
She said one day, towards the end of the month, ‘I’m becoming a big fat lump.’
‘Yes, you are,’ I said.
She burst into tears. She said, ‘You are mean and spiteful.’ She was wrong. I just do not sugar my almonds. ‘I’m eating for two, you know,’ she said.
I raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
She said, ‘You know, you look like Mr Spock when you raise your eyebrow like that. In fact, you may actually be Mr Spock. That’s exactly what you’re like. Cold and logical and heartless.’ I would not rise to the bait. She added, ‘You know, some pregnant women eat coal.’
I would probably have snapped something at her if the door had not opened and a customer entered. I glared at her instead, and she glared back. If my dysfunctional tear ducts had not let me down again we could have been there for ever. I sighed and turned from her. The customer was already perusing the books opposite.
I said, ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’
He turned.
It was the Chief Constable.
Plenty of people who come into No Alibis think they’re pretty powerful – writers, sales folk, customers who seem to believe that membership of my Christmas Club automatically gives them rights; even the likes of Billy Randall, or Greg, the possibly rogue MI5 agent – but none of them have ever made me particularly nervous. Rather they inspired me to do great things. This Chief Constable was different; even standing by himself, in my little shop, he had an aura, a presence that made you feel guilty just by being in his orbit. I had a sudden tremor that he had come for my nail for the scratching of cars with personalised number plates, or had CCTV of me standing in bushes, watching. Alison also looked a bit weak at the knees, but it was nothing to do with her weight.
He was in plain clothes. At least, you tend to think of a policeman not in uniform as being in plain clothes, but I suppose he was just in clothes. They were not remarkable clothes, which made them normal rather than plain. They weren’t dull. They were ordinary. Average. The meaning of average has changed over the years. No, not the meaning, the perceived meaning. The meaning of average has stayed the same, but people think it means less than it actually means. When you describe a kid’s school report as average, you tend to think of it being not good enough. The Chief Constable was wearing an average, ordinary, plain black suit, with a not too garish red tie. He looked buff and his skin was smooth and his greying hair was cut short.
He said, ‘Well I would like to buy a book, but mostly I’d like to have a little chat.’
‘What sort of a book?’ I asked.
‘What would you recommend?’
‘Something with a complicated plot and an un satisfactory ending.’
He smiled. His teeth were photogenic, and hence not his own.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Alison asked.
‘That would be nice.’
Alison nodded at Jeff. ‘Go make,’ she said.
Jeff kept his eyes down and scuttled into the kitchen. The Chief Constable watched him go. ‘Well,’ he said, turning his attention back to me, ‘you have been a busy little beaver, haven’t you?’
I was still nervous, but also seething. This man, this top cop with the false smile, had perverted the course of justice and robbed me of my moment of triumph.
I said, ‘You helped to destroy vital evidence. Because of you she’s still—’
‘If I could stop you there,’ he said.
‘You can’t handle the truth,’ I said.
It didn’t sound that fearsome. Others have said it better. In fact, my voice sounded a little querulous. I might have expected Alison to snort, but she remained focused. She moved to my side.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s why I’m here. Detective Inspector Robinson has explained to me how helpful you have been in the past. He has asked me to clarify some details of this matter. He also said that if I didn’t, not only would he leak them to the press, but also you would not leave us alone. You would annoy us until this case of yours was satisfactorily resolved.’
‘That’s my boy,’ said Alison. ‘Annoying till the end of time.’
But she placed a supportive hand on my behind. He couldn’t see that. I liked it. I wished he could have seen it. It was proof that we were intimate.
‘You’re being blackmailed by your own officer?’
‘I wouldn’t say blackmailed.’
‘I would.’
‘My job,’ he said, ‘is a highly politicised one, I have to keep a lot of people happy, listen to many and varied opinions, pat a lot of heads. I also have to solve crimes, and ignore all of those people I’m supposed to keep happy. I have to be my own man, or I’m everyone’s man. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ said Alison.
‘There are a lot of people who would like to bring me down. I have to be constantly on my guard. I in herited a lot of problems, historical ones, and new ones, people fighting their own corners, defending their own interests. It’s difficult to know who to trust and sometimes you end up trusting no one. Forgive me if I sound a little paranoid.’
‘You’re in good company,’ said Alison. I would have said something, but she squeezed my cheek, which was therapeutic.
‘I’m going to explain to you what really happened at the funeral, and why, on the understanding that it will go no further. Do I have your word?’
Word is a curious concept and not one that I have ever adhered to. However, I nodded. Alison too.
‘My wife believes I’m quite obsessive-compulsive. I think I’m just aware of how the world works. I have always been obsessive about my own security and my own privacy. Particularly at home. I don’t want anyone else listening to my private conversations. I don’t want anyone else watching me make love to my wife. I don’t want a
nyone standing in the bushes peering into my house.’
He didn’t particularly look at me with this last comment. I could have argued with him. I think privacy is overrated. If you don’t want someone to observe you, close the curtains, or build a bigger wall I can’t slither over in the rain in the middle of the night.
‘So when we moved in, I made a point of sweeping the house and grounds regularly for evidence of surveillance. I never found anything until—’
‘The Jack Russell.’
He nodded. ‘It was quite clever of them.’
‘MI5.’
‘Of course, although I didn’t know that then. It could have been any one of our political parties, the Irish Government, gangsters looking for something to hold over me, big business, small business, anyone. I found it by a process of elimination, really – whatever was in the device, it was interfering with our television, flipping the channels. Once I had it, I brought some experts of my own in. It was quite a rudimentary device, really, used for recording only, not broadcasting. It meant that eventually someone was going to have to come for it. I had no interest in the messenger, as such, but in who he was reporting to. So, with the aid of my team, I merely replaced their own device with one of my own, almost identical, but much, much superior, one capable of broadcasting pictures and sound.’
‘So Jimbo and Ronny were bribed by MI5 to retrieve it, but before they could hand it over they were murdered by Pat, and you have it recorded, so you do have the evidence, it’s not gone . . .’
‘Well, yes, up to a point.’ He delved into his pocket and produced a memory stick. He held it up. ‘Can you play this?’
I took it and plugged it into the PC. I sat in front of the screen, Alison at my shoulder. The Chief Constable did not attempt to join us, instead leaning on the counter. As I called the file up, he said: ‘This is obviously an edited version.’
‘Thought it might be.’
‘I mean, there were hours and hours of me and my wife sitting watching television, amongst other things. This segment shows purely what happened around the time of the murders.’
The images, when they appeared, were rather shocking in their clarity. We tend to think of surveillance pictures as being gritty and remote, but these were HD quality. The Jack Russell had been positioned a little to the right of the TV: it showed Jimbo and Ronny, sitting on their sofa, watching the screen and sharing a spliff. They were talking, about nothing much, but it was still a shock to see and hear them. Just the very fact of their being alive, and not knowing that death was approaching. They had solidly working-class Belfast accents and the sarcasm that goes hand in hand with living here. Then there was a doorbell and Jimbo got up. Voices could be heard in the background, but they were blurred by the television commentary. Ronny got up. Now we were looking at the empty sofa and listening to Masterchef. The voices continued, but louder. Then there were shouts, and screams, horrific-sounding and frustratingly off camera, as if the drama was taking place in the wings of a theatre.
And then silence.
I glanced back at the CC. He nodded at the screen again.
A new figure entered the frame.
He sat on the sofa, his white short-sleeved shirt splattered with blood. He leaned forward to a small coffee table and lifted the half-smoked spliff out of an ashtray. He took a drag. He shook his head and said, ‘Fuck.’
It wasn’t anyone I thought it would have been, and it certainly wasn’t Pat.
‘He’s one of Smally Biggs’ little helpers,’ said Alison.
‘His son,’ said the Chief Constable.
42
Eventually, eventually, a rather sheepish Jeff returned with the tea. Later he admitted he’d gone outside for a cigarette before even putting the kettle on. The Chief Constable catching him in his house had clearly given him a bigger fright than he’d let on. Alison said, ‘Will I be mother?’ and then contorted her face as if she’d had a stroke as she poured. It was quite funny. There was even a plate of Jaffa Cakes. The image of Smally Biggs’ son was frozen on my computer screen.
Alison said, ‘He was a cheeky little shit. And he tried to feel me up.’
‘Name of Darren. No record, but been raised in his father’s image. We were aware of him doing some dealing, but this was a bit of a surprise. We enhanced the sound; they were arguing over an unpaid drugs bill. Jimbo and Ronny were trying to fob him off, and he lost his temper.’
‘God,’ said Alison, ‘he looks so calm.’
‘So Pat didn’t . . .?’
‘We have footage of her coming in and discovering the bodies. Frankly, no one should see that. It would break your heart.’
I licked chocolate off my fingers and said, ‘I don’t understand. If you have this, why is Darren Biggs still out and about?’
‘He’s not. We picked him up this morning. We can’t use any of this footage, obviously, but I’m pretty confident we’ll be able to get a DNA match. Because he was under our radar he was never checked out, but from what little I know of him, even if we don’t get the match he’ll crack pretty soon.’
‘But why didn’t you pick him up immediately? Why put me, us, through this charade?’
‘Because we had the Jack in place; we just thought we’d shake the tree and see how many apples fell. We could sit back and wait, pick out the rotten ones. There was no immediate panic.’
‘You owe someone an apology,’ said Alison.
I nodded along, at least until I realised she was talking to me. ‘Who?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Who do you bloody think? Standing up at her man’s funeral and accusing her of murder? Wanting to rip the coffin open?’
‘I wasn’t that far out. It was her nephew, wasn’t it? She was covering for him, she had to be.’
‘We don’t know that,’ said the CC.
‘You bloody tell her you got it wrong.’
‘Right. I’m going to do that.’
‘You’ll do it. I’m telling you.’
‘You’re not the boss of me.’
The Chief was looking from me to her. ‘Well,’ he said. He put his hand out and clicked his fingers in the direction of the memory stick.
‘Not so fast,’ I said. ‘It still doesn’t explain what happened to the Jack. She said it was stolen out of her house.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘But her house was burgled?’
‘Yes, by Darren, who’d heard rumours about the Jack through his dad, who knew MI5 were after it. He went looking for it, but didn’t find it. Pat had hidden it well.’
‘Why?’ Alison asked.
‘Because she heard the same rumours; she thought the Jack might have been stuffed full of drugs and wanted Jimbo to be remembered as a nice boy not as a dealer. So she decided to have it cremated with him. She asked the undertaker. It was an unusual request, being cremated with your favourite dog, but perfectly legal.’
‘And you were quite happy to have your device cremated with Patch and Jimbo, because you already had your pictures. Except,’ and I pointed an accusing finger at him, ‘you made a mistake; you didn’t realise your bug would explode in the heat and help cremate the crematorium. Isn’t that right?’
‘Well, no, actually. It wasn’t our bug that caused the fire.’
‘You would say that. Well I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a malfunctioning furnace, like they said.’
‘You’re right. It was something more arbitrary than that. Nothing to do with this case at all, in fact.’
He nodded at me.
It was a challenge.
Although really, when I thought about it, none at all.
I should have thought about it much, much earlier.
Because I have one myself.
‘He had a pacemaker.’
‘He had a pacemaker. Since he was a teenager. Pat never knew.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Alison. ‘How would that . . .?’
‘They’re radioactive, they have a lithium battery, they explode under intense heat
.’ My brow furrowed then. ‘But they would have found it at the autopsy and removed it.’ The Chief raised an eyebrow. ‘They did find it, but you had them leave it in. You wanted it to explode, you wanted to cause mayhem, you were . . .’
‘Shaking the tree.’
Alison was aghast. ‘You . . . at a funeral . . . you . . . caused that . . . You’re supposed to be our Chief Constable, you’re supposed to be . . .’
‘. . . a lot of things. Listen to me. I’m sure you’re perfectly decent people, in your little bookshop, and your nice lives. Yes, you dabble in your private investigations, so maybe you’ve seen a few things, but you don’t understand what’s really going on, you don’t see the bigger picture. People think the Troubles are all over, but they’re not, they’re just different Troubles, some of it historic, some of it imported, most of it we just won’t know about till it comes up and bites us on the arse. But it’s my job to keep watch, and it doesn’t help when people are constantly trying to undermine me. So I have to flush them out, because keeping an eye on the likes of MI5 there’s a genuine danger that the forces of evil will slip through. I, we, cannot afford that, so sometimes I have to do something that shows them who’s boss. Do you understand me?’
I nodded. It was the first time I’d ever heard someone say forces of evil outside of a comic book.
Alison said, ‘You blew up a funeral.’
The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) Page 24