Текст книги "I Hear the Sirens in the Street"

Автор книги: Adrian McKinty

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I hesitated at the top of the ladder for a moment and then decided to climb down. Twenty rungs to the bottom. A narrow passage lead to a door which said: No Entry Except By Authorised Personnel.

I pushed on the door and entered the chamber. It was like a cave really and everything a cave should be: big, cathedral-like, sonorous, intimidating and impressive.

Two bright arc lamps lit the white, chalky and oddly beautiful walls and cast shadows deep into the back recess of the cavern. To one side there were several metal cupboards and in the middle of the room Emma McAlpine was sitting on a sofa next to a generator which didn’t appear to be running. (How the lights were working was the first of the several mysteries.)

She must have heard me coming down the ladder but she did not look up.

“What are you reading?” I asked. “It’s not the Bible, is it?”

“Inspector Duffy,” she said, and set the book on her lap. It had yellow binding; not many Bibles had yellow covers, not even The Good News.

She was dressed in jeans, an Aran sweater and a wax jacket. Riding boots, of course, but she had kicked those off. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail. Under the fluorescent lights she looked wan, sickly, not a million miles removed from Elizabeth Siddal in Ophelia.

I walked towards her. “I get the feeling that you were expecting me,” I said.

“Why would I be?”

“Because you heard the news.”

She nodded. “Inspector Dougherty. I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?”

“Dougherty was a brother officer, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like some tea? I brought a flask. It’s already made up with milk and sugar. Scandalous, I know.”

“Sure.”

“Have a seat.”

I sat next to her on the leather sofa. She smelled of horse and sweat and leather. The sofa was covered in a layer of powdery white shit from the crumbling ceiling; I brushed myself a space with the back of my hand and sat down. She produced a flask with a paisley design on the side, unscrewed the plastic lid and poured a cup of tea into a white plastic mug.

“I also brought a flask of gin, if you want to slip that in there,” she said, as if that would be the most natural thing in the world.

“No, you’re all right, thanks.”

I took the tea, which was weak and very sweet. The way I liked it. The type of tea you were supposed to give to people to stop them going into shock.

“Dougherty came to see you, didn’t he?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What about?”

“I think he may have been drunk. He had certainly been drinking.”

“What did he talk to you about?”

“In an extremely vulgar manner he demanded to know exactly where I had been when Martin got shot.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him that I was in the kitchen.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He said that he didn’t believe me. He said that I wasn’t telling him everything.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I told him that no one could call me a liar in my own home and I asked him to leave.”

“And did he leave?”

“No. He did not. He abused me in the most disgraceful language. At one point I felt that he was going to strike me.”

“And then?”

“Well, then he did leave, but not before melodramatically promising that he would return.”

I rubbed my chin and leaned back into the sofa cushions.

“But he didn’t return, did he?”

“No.”

“Did he call you or have any other communication with you?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t go see him?”

“Of course not.”

She looked at me. Her blue eyes were not entirely pleasant. They radiated an icy quality. Not quite contempt but not far off it. Distance, a lack of concern.

“What are you reading?” I asked in a lower register.

“It isn’t the Bible, since you ask.”

“The Bible was on my mind. Someone called me up and asked me to meet them and when I went there they had left a note,” I explained, leaving out the chase scene.

“That sounds like fun,” she said. “What did the note say?”

“It was a Bible verse.”

“And?”

“‘Now I see through a glass darkly.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

She grinned and slapped her thigh. “Oh, I get it. You thought I was reading the Bible and that maybe I was the person who left you the note, is that it?”

“It was a woman on the phone. But it was an English woman.”

“Maybe I was disguising my voice.”

“Maybe you were.”

“I didn’t call you and I didn’t leave you a note. How would I get your number anyway?”

“I’m in the book.”

“Oh.”

“And I went to see your brother-in-law.”

“Why?”

“Just to be nosey.”

“And what did you find out?”

“His cars are in a bad way.”

“His cars?”

“The Bentley and the Roller. Beautiful machines sadly gone to pot. He should at least keep them in a garage.”

“Are you aware of the Japanese concept of mono no aware, the bitter sweetness of things?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“The Japanese sages say the best way to appreciate beauty is to focus on its transient, fragile and fleeting nature.”

I nodded. “Is that what your brother-in-law’s doing? I thought he was just a careless fucker.”

“And what else did you learn from your visit to Red Hall?” she asked.

“He’s a knight. It’s Sir Harry McAlpine. He’s been to see the Queen. Somebody gave him a knighthood.”

She shook her head. “Nobody gave him a knighthood. He’s a baronet.”

“What’s a baronet when it’s at home?”

“It’s the lowest order of peerage.”

I must have looked blank because she elaborated. “It goes Prince, Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, Baron, Baronet. It’s hereditary. It goes to the eldest son. Harry is the third Baronet. It means very little.”

“I wouldn’t say that. He’s got a title and he’s got money.”

“Money!” she laughed. “He’s as poor as a church mouse.”

“He’s got that big house, all this land …”

“Heavens, Inspector. This land? Well, yes, he owns everything from here to the sea and I’m a tenant and there are half a dozen farms on the other side of the hill, but none of that matters: it’s all bogland, it’s practically worthless and that big house is a shambles. The top floor is shut up, the walls are crumbling …”

“The house isn’t in great nick, but with all this property he’s hardly a candidate for the poor house, is he?”

“That’s where you’re wrong again. Red Hall is entailed. He can’t touch the freehold or sell it or lease it out. It’s all going to his eldest son.”

“He has kids?”

“Two.”

“One of each?”

“Two boys. They live with their mother. Actually they’re both at Harrow.”

“Harrow over the water?” I asked stupidly.

“Do you know any other Harrow?”

“He’s divorced, then.”

“You really are a detective. A regular Poirot,” she said, with a sweet teasing smile that got her back into my good books. She snugged her legs up underneath her body. Riding horses had given her powerful thighs and done wonders for her complexion.

“I’ll take that,” she said, holding my wrist and removing the empty tea cup. I’ve known judo instructors with a less impressive grip. And that assurance, too. This was no blushing, weeping widow. Not now.

“What about you? How are you doing for money?” I asked.

“Since my husband’s murder, you mean? Is this also part of your investigation? Could I be compelled to answer?”

“Perhaps.”

“Don’t you find question and answer a rather tedious form of discourse? Wouldn’t you rather have a conversation?”

“When time is a factor there’s really no other way, I’m afraid.”

“Is time a factor here? My husband was killed in December. It’s April.”

“Time is always a factor in police work, Mrs McAlpine.”

She sighed. “I live on Martin’s army pension of seventy-five pounds a week. I pay twenty-five pounds of that to Harry. For rent.”

I nodded. “And how much does the land bring in?”

She laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Aye.”

“I have forty sheep. Shorn, I’ll get perhaps three pounds a fleece; come lambing season, perhaps another five pounds a lamb. This year I may make two hundred pounds from the entire acreage.”

“Can’t you grow something? I’m always hearing things about the high cost of wheat.”

“No arable crops will grow here. It’s a marsh. This whole part of Islandmagee is one enormous swamp.”

“Where were you last night, Mrs McAlpine?” I asked, abruptly changing tack.

“When Dougherty was killed, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I was at home. Reading. In other words, I have no alibi.”

“What were you reading?”

“Middlemarch.”

“I see.”

“George Eliot.”

“I know … Is that what you’re reading now?”

“Yes.”

She passed me the book. I flipped through it and gave it back.

“Why would I kill poor Inspector Dougherty?” she asked while I was thinking of my next question.

“Why indeed?”

“No, let’s not play that game. Why do you think I may have done it? What possible motive could I have had?”

I was looking for a little more outrage from her: How dare you accuse me of such a terrible thing! Not that that would have had much probative value one way or the other. Maybe she just wasn’t the demonstrative type.

“Because I got him all riled up about your husband’s murder. Because I put a seed of doubt in his head that maybe you weren’t telling everything you knew and because he came barging down there to ask you a whole bunch of questions,” I said.

She smiled. “Then I got a gun from heaven knows where, found out where he lived and shot him?”

And then dumped the weapon, drove to a phone box and claimed the hit on behalf of the IRA using a recognised IRA code word.

“The assumption, naturally, is that I killed my husband for whatever reason and I was worried that Dougherty was getting close to discovering that I had done it and so he had to go too. Is that it?”

“I suppose so,” I agreed.

“Let me dissect this theory of yours a little … if I may.”

“Be my guest.”

“First of all, I didn’t kill Martin. Everything I’ve told you about his murder is completely true. I loved him. He loved me. We rarely argued. And what possible motive could I have had to do it? Fiduciary? For the pathetic lump sum I’ll get years from now from the compensation board? For the army pension? We had no life insurance—”

“Why didn’t he take out life insurance?”

“The weekly rates for a serving army officer are astronomical.”

“Of course.”

“Let me continue … So, no life insurance, a pathetic pension and then there’s the farm. What’s to stop Harry from kicking me out once Martin’s dead? I lose my husband, his income and my house? For what?”

“There are other motives.”

“Like what?”

“Like the oldest motive in the world.”

“Martin wasn’t having an affair.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Quite sure, he wasn’t the type.”

“All women think that about their husbands right up to the moment when they receive undeniable proof and quite often after they receive undeniable proof.”

“Even if he had been having an affair I wouldn’t have shot him.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not the type, Inspector.”

I felt a crick in my neck and I was getting a stress headache in this uncomfortable sofa. I got to my feet and stretched. “What is this place, anyway? Some kind of salt mine?” I asked.

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“Do you come down here often?”

“I do. I read down here. It’s so quiet. No planes, no cars, nothing. Not even wind. They could have a nuclear war out there and I wouldn’t know about it.”

“I was wondering how you power the lights.”

“We steal electricity from the grid. Harry rigged it up.” She patted the generator. “This thing is only to pump out water.”

“I suppose if I’m to buy into this theory of family poverty then I can only assume that the seams are worked out.”

“They are. For all commercial purposes anyway. The mines incidentally are what got Sir Harry his ‘Sir’. His grandfather supplied salt for the Empire. It’s also why Harry couldn’t sell this land even if he wanted to. You can’t build on it.”

I smiled and she looked at me strangely.

“What are you thinking right now, Inspector?”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“I’m thinking, Mrs McAlpine, that most people would be keeking their whips if they were being questioned about a murder for which they had no alibi and a possible motive. But not you. You’re as cool as a cucumber.”

“Because I didn’t do it. I’ve nothing to be worried about. Why do you think I did it? Is it one of those policemen’s hunches I’m always hearing about?”

“Hunches are overrated.”

“How does one solve crimes, Inspector?”

“Most criminals aren’t that bright. They screw up and we find the screw up pretty quickly and we can usually go to trial, except if the screw up involves eyewitness testimony.”

“What happens if it’s eyewitness testimony?”

“The eyewitnesses are intimidated into not testifying. Those cases usually collapse.”

“And what about the hard cases? Like your body in the suitcase? That’s still your case, isn’t it? Or have you turned your attention to me and Inspector Dougherty now?”

“No, that’s still my case. My only case. A colleague of mine is looking into the death of Inspector Dougherty, and your husband’s murder, I’m sorry to say, is probably never going to be solved.”

“I see,” she said and pursed her lips.

“Have you ever fired a pistol before, Mrs McAlpine?”

“A pistol, no. A shotgun many times.”

I looked at my watch. I had been at this for twenty minutes and I wasn’t really getting anywhere. If this was my case, maybe Crabbie and me would make more progress down the station in a windowless interview room. But it wasn’t my concern, was it? I looked at her for a beat or two. “Well, I suppose I must be going. Thank you for the tea,” I said.

“That’s it, you’re not going to cuff me and drag me off?”

“No.”

“Why not? Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know. But you’re tangential to my investigation. Chief Inspector McIlroy may want to interview you about Dougherty, but I’m done here.”

“I’ll walk you out, if you like,” she said.

I’d been hoping for some sign of relief from her – a blush or a sigh or anything, but grief had washed everything out of Mrs McAlpine already.

I climbed the ladder and she followed me up. Out into sunlight. Or more exactly into the ambient light and rain. The horse whinnied excitedly when he saw Emma and she gave him a sugar lump.

There were several dirty-looking gulls in the fields taking shelter from the wind.

“Do you think those are fulmars?” I said absently.

“Fulmars?”

“Ful from the Norse meaning foul, mar meaning gull.”

She grinned at me. “A man of many interests.”

“Not really.”

We walked the horse back across the bog to the farm. We didn’t speak because half a dozen Army Gazelle helicopters were flying south east, at a low ceiling, in a tight menacing formation.

When the choppers had gone she asked me if I’d always wanted to be a policeman. I told her no. I’d been studying psychology at Queens.

She told me that she had done a degree in history.

We talked a little about the university. We’d had no mutual friends and our paths hadn’t crossed in the Students’ Union. It wasn’t surprising. She was seven or eight years younger than me.

“Is Queen’s where you met Martin?”

“Well, I’m a local Islandmagee girl so I already knew Martin, but that’s where we started going out. He was doing law but he dropped out when he joined the UDr I stayed on for a bit, and then, well … we got married.”

She was blushing. There was a story there, too. A pregnancy? A miscarriage? We reached the farmhouse. My car was there and next to it a shining female constable in a dark green uniform and a dark green Kepi.

“Your chauffeur?” Emma asked.

“Indeed.”

She offered me her hand. “I assume this is where we take our leave?” she said.

“I expect so,” I said, shaking her hand.

She looked into my eyes. “You’re disappointed, aren’t you? You think I’ve gotten away with something.”

I said nothing.

“I promise you, Inspector Duffy, I did not kill my husband, and I had nothing to do with the killing of Inspector Dougherty.”

“Okay,” I said, “how about we just leave it there.”

17: THE TREASURY MAN

I dropped Reserve Constable Sandra Pollock back at Larne RUC and drove on to Carrickfergus in the Beemer. Somewhere in County Antrim an Army Puma helicopter had been shot at with either an RPG or a surface to air missile and as a result the highways and byways were flooded with angry soldiers in green fatigues idiotically stopping every third car. Of course, I was one of the lucky stopees. I showed the squaddies my warrant card but they ignored it. Two of them pointed FN FAL rifles at me while their mates went through my boot.

“What’s this?” an acerbic Welshman asked me, holding up a flare gun.

“A flare gun.”

“What’s it for?”

“For firing flares.”

This could have gone for a while or until one of Taffy’s mates shot me, but they decided to let me go instead.

Back in Carrick the peelers were yukking it up over a fake version of the Belfast Telegraph that a Republican group must have printed up samizdat fashion. One of the headlines was “Polar Bears Capture Falklands Task Force”, which wasn’t even geographically astute.

“Take a look at this, Duffy,” Sergeant Quinn said.

“Uh, no thanks, some of us have work to do,” I said pointedly.

In the CID incident room McCrabban had news. After a bit of prodding the Consul General in Belfast had sent us a second, slightly lengthier FBI file on Bill O’Rourke. We knew most of it already. O’Rourke had worked for the IRS his entire life. He was not involved in any fraudulent or other criminal activities and as far as the FBI could see his only offence was that speeding ticket the local cops had told us about. The report was really rather curt. Three paragraphs. A couple of spelling mistakes. It was signed by a Special Agent Anthony Grimm. Something about it still didn’t feel quite right.

“Maybe we should talk to him,” I said.

“Who?”

“Grimm. Sounds like another fake name to me.”

“You and your fake names. You’re still not happy?” Crabbie asked.

“Clearly they did the bare minimum here. I want you to lean on the Consul again and see if anything else squeaks out,” I said.

“The consulate is fed up with us already,” McCrabban complained.

“You’ll do your best, I’m sure,” I insisted.

I filled him and Matty in about my day’s adventures in Larne and Islandmagee. While they were digesting that I told them about the anonymous note and the verse from the Bible, the mysterious woman and her arrest.

“Yeah. So what do you think, lads? Is it something or is it nothing?”

Matty was unimpressed. In his experience women were capable of any kind of madness just to get in your head, but McCrabban lapped it up, liking anything which involved Biblical exegesis.

“Have a wee think, boys, will ya?” I said, and went to the kitchen, made three mugs of tea, got some chocolate biscuits and brought them back to the lads.

“Well? Any brainwaves?” I asked.

“The McAlpine angle seems more and more like a distraction. The note is slightly more interesting, but not much. The woman? Someone you met in a pub stalking you? It’s probably not relevant for us, in this particular case, is it?” Matty said.

“Your take, Crabbie?”

“I agree with young Matty. The McAlpine angle might be something but it’s Larne RUC’s something. Or Special Branch’s something. The note? Well, I’ll have to have a think about that. There’s some really good stuff in Corinthians.”

“Should we drop the McAlpine angle?”

“I don’t think that’s the best use of our resources, Sean. The fact that O’Rourke’s killer used Martin McAlpine’s old suitcase that he picked up in the Salvation Army is neither here nor there. If he’d used Princess Diana’s old suitcase we wouldn’t spend all this time investigating her.” Crabbie said soberly.

“Knowing Sean, I’d say that he definitely would, the old horn dog,” Matty chipped in.

They were both content to close the book on Emma McAlpine, at least for now. I took a chocolate digestive and we had a collective think about the note, but it was impossible to say if someone was messing with us or not. I wrote it all up in the case file anyway, in case it became significant.

No one could think of anything else. I went to my office and pretended to work, but really spent time drawing glasses and moustaches on every wanker in the Daily Mail, and that is a lot of wankers.

A knock at the door. It was McCrabban, jacket off, revealing a yellow shirt and green paisley tie underneath.

“Come in.”

“Fallows from the Consul’s office called.” McCrabban said. “They want the body released from the morgue. They’d like to bury O’Rourke in the Arlington National Cemetery. It’s a big deal apparently. A real honour.”

“I don’t trust that Fallows guy. I wasn’t entirely happy with some of his answers,” I said.

“Aye, he looked shifty,” McCrabban agreed.

“You think everybody not raised in the Free Presbyterian Church religion is shifty. Still, maybe the Consulate are trying to sweep this under the rug? What say you?”

Normally Crabbie would leap at any hint of conspiracy, but I could see the scepticism in his eyes. He knew and I knew that the avenues were beginning to close one by one. The whole McAlpine diversion had been an attempt to hide the fact that this entire case was slowly grinding to a halt.

“I don’t know, mate,” he muttered.

“Tell them they can have the body,” I said.

“Okay.”

I ate a biscuit, looked at the sea, continued my work on the Mail.

Time passed.

Maybe somebody somewhere would come up with something.

Another knock at the door and Crabbie came in.

“Well?”

“I talked to your man, Fallows. I don’t think he knows anything. He’s just a functionary. I told him he could ship the body home. He seemed happy with that,” Crabbie said.

I yawned. “All right, I’ll write this all up tomorrow. Tell Matty we can head on home,” I said.

“I’ll stay and write it up. I want to study for my sergeant’s exam anyway,” McCrabban muttered.

“Suit yourself, mate,” I said, but later I thought that I should have said “Thank you very much, Crabbie.”

I went outside, turned the collar up on my raincoat.

I got inside the BMW and had a reasonably straight run home. Only one patrol stopped me this time. A bunch of Gurkha rifles who were a long way from Nepal. None of them could speak English, which made explaining my cop I.D. a barrel of laughs.

When I finally got back to Coronation Road the street was full of kids playing football. I didn’t have the heart to break up their game so I parked on Victoria Road and walked the rest of the way.

I was turning into the house when Bobby Cameron saw me at the door.

“Oi, Duffy, need your help,” he said.

Bobby was not only the local paramilitary commander but also a man that I owed my life to when he had shot a man shooting at me a year ago. He knew that I was obliged to him and he loved that.

“Yes?” I said.

“Follow me,” he muttered.

“Where?”

“Just follow me. We have a wee problem.”

“Tell me what this is about.”

“Just come!”

“Not until you tell me.”

He glared at me. The rain was light but we were both getting soaked. “Fine! When the trouble comes just remember that I fucking tried to prevent it and you couldn’t fucking be arsed,” he said.

“What trouble?”

“Too late! You had your fucking chance, peeler. You had your fucking chance!” he said huffily.

I went inside and closed the door. I took off my raincoat and let it fall on the floor. It had been a psychically draining day and I was shattered. I made myself a vodka gimlet and plonked myself down in front of the TV. I watched The Rockford Files. You had to like the fact that Rockford got shat on all the time and was living in penury with his old man in a caravan. Seemed about right for a detective.

The phone rang. “Tell me about the bint and her alibi,” Tony asked.

“No alibi. She said she was reading George Eliot.”

“Animal Farm and all that?”

“You’re thinking of George Orwell.”

“Did Dougherty come to see her?”

“He did. She said that he was drunk and raving, not making a lot of sense.”

“Does that sound like him?”

“Yeah, it does. I asked her if she’d ever shot a pistol,” I said.

“And what did she say?”

“She said she hadn’t, but she’d fired a shotgun many times.”

“Who hasn’t? So what do you think? Did she kill him?”

“Which ‘him’?”

“Dougherty.”

“I don’t know.”

“You gave her the third degree?”

“Yes. Well, maybe the second degree.”

“And?”

“I have no idea.”

“Jesus. You’re no help, are you?”

“No.”

“I suppose I’ll have to see her too, then.”

“I suppose you will.”

Tony decided to let it go at that. He detected some note in my voice that he didn’t quite like. “Are you all right, mate? I mean, are you doing all right?” he asked in a big brother tone.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

A long pause.

“When I’m over the water I can look for a place for you, too, you know,” he said.

“Thanks…but you know how I feel.”

“Have a wee think. I mean, really, this place is finished, there’s no future here. Especially not for bright boys like you and me.”

“Sure, Tony. I’ll think about it.”

“I know you won’t, but you should. That doctor friend of yours. She’s doing the right thing.”

“I know.”

“Any more mysterious women leaving you Valentines?”

“Not today.”

“If it was anything serious she would have just told you, she wouldn’t have left you a cryptic note. That stuff’s strictly for the flicks.”

“I was thinking the same thing myself.”

Dead air for a second or two. “Don’t let the job get to you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Take care now.”

“I will.”

He hung up. I made another vodka gimlet, dimmed the lights and put on Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. I moved the stylus to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” – the song about Syd Barrett’s mental breakdown – and put the record player on repeat. I called up Carrick RUC and asked for DC McCrabban.

“McCrabban,” he said.

“Christ, are you still there?”

“You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name. And yeah, I am still here.”

“What are you doing, Crabbie, studying?”

“Aye. Got the old law books out. It’s quiet here, although intelligence has been coming through about prep for trouble in Belfast.”

“You better get out of there before you get dragooned into riot duty.”

“I wouldn’t mind riot duty. Double time and danger money. We could do with the cash.”

“Just don’t put in for triple-time, that wee shite Dalziel will be all over you.”

“I’ve been working on the case, too,” he said, without much enthusiasm.

“What are your thoughts?”

“Not just thoughts. I just spoke to your man. The FBI guy. Special Agent Anthony Grimm.”

“How?” I said stupidly.

“The time zones. They’re five hours behind.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Nothing new about O’Rourke. War hero. Adjusted well to civilian life. Good civil servant. There were a couple of other speeding tickets that weren’t in the file. Thirty years in the IRS.”

“Anything controversial? Did he ever audit the wrong guy?”

“Nothing controversial. He was a mid-level IRS inspector. He wouldn’t have been a prosecutor or have made any enemies.”

“What was this Grimm like? Weird tone of voice, evasive, anything like that?”

“Nothing that I noticed. Happy to speak to me, it seemed like. Broke the routine. Sounded a bit bored by his lot.”

Not what I was hoping for.

“There was one thing …” McCrabban said.

“Yes?”

“Well, when I called up the FBI’s number in Virginia and asked to speak to Special Agent Anthony Grimm, I was put on hold and then the operator said that she was transferring me to the Secret Service.”

“The Secret Service? Shite! What’s that all about? Aren’t they the ones that protect the President?”

“I asked Grimm and he laughed and he said that it wasn’t as dramatic as it sounded. He’d just been seconded to the currency protection department of the US Treasury. The most boring possible assignment in the entire FBI, he said. Even more boring than preparing data sheets on dead IRS inspectors. I don’t think that really means anything, but I thought you’d like to know.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll write that down. As long as he sounded legit?”

“He did.”

“Okay. Good. So where are we, Crabbie?”

“I think we can rule out anything from O’Rourke’s past. He was a model citizen. He paid his taxes, he didn’t have a record, looked after his wife.”

“I had no idea he was a serial killer, he was a very quiet man, he kept to himself,” I said in a Yorkshire accent.

“Stop it, Sean. He’s no ripper. I really feel for the bloke. His missus dies and he takes a bloody holiday to Ireland to get over his grief and while he’s here some bastard tops him. It all seems very random to me.”

“Random except for the fact that A) he was poisoned and B) the murderer chopped up the body, froze it for an unknown amount of time and then dumped it in a suitcase. That is not your standard mugging gone wrong, is it, Crabbie?”

“No.”

“And then there’s all the distractions, as you call them. The women and the note, the deal with the widow McAlpine …” I said, and took a big drink of the vodka gimlet.

“Ach, mate, the note’s a prank, and I never thought the McAlpine angle would get us anywhere.”

“You should have told me that before I went down to Islandmagee twice,” I said.

“You’re the inspector and I’m the detective constable.”

“All right, Crabbie, thanks. Go home now, okay?”

“Aye. Okay, bye, Sean.”

“Stay frosty and drive safe.”

“I will.”

I hung up and rummaged in the bookshelf for my King James Bible. I made myself another pint of lime and vodka and put on Radio Albania. A five-minute rant about Ronald Reagan and the evils of American capitalism. A rant about the Soviet Union and the decadence of the Brezhnev regime. Praise only for Pol Pot, a true friend of the workers in Cambodia.

It was midnight and I was only two sips into the new vodka gimlet when somebody started banging the front door.

“Will this madness ever end?” I said, storming down the hall.

I opened the door to Bobby Cameron, who had come by with a lynch mob.