Jayne's Blue Wish - A Sean Duffy Story

1

Belfast in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty eight.

December.

A cold rainy late 80s December on the edge of Europe.

Late in the year, late in the decade, late in the century, late in the millennium.

Everyone was tired. Even the sun was fed up. Like Ra, exhausted by obeisant pharaohs, the humans of twentieth century Earth amused it not.

But the planet continued on its ellipse. Be not alarmed, this dark time in the northern hemisphere is known as winter, it assured its inhabitants.

Duffy was not assured.

Duffy dreamed of engines. Duffy dreamed of escape. Duffy dreamed of harnessing the 170 horses of his 2.5 liter straight six and driving far, far away from here. He saw himself behind the wheel, crossing the border, driving south and west.

Driving music on the stereo: Zep, the Kinks, the Stones, maybe some 80s stuff creeping in because he’s an older man and has lost some of his ancient prejudices.

He’d only make it to the pointy tip of County Kerry before remembering that Ireland is an island and there is nowhere else to go.

Nowhere else to go. Aye. Get the wanderlust in France and start driving and eventually you could end up in Saigon or Bangalore or Leh. Get the wanderlust in Cleveland and you could find yourself in Costa Rica.

In Ireland you’re always five hours away, at most, from your relations.

Balls to that.

And balls to thinking of yourself in third person like some wanker on late night BBC 2.

I woke to the sound of the baby crying.

It was my turn.

I padded down the hall in my bare feet, picked her up, changed her, fed her, rocked her, sang to her in Irish and put her down again.

Jet the cat stared at me through this entire process.

He had come upstairs, away from the fireplace, just to give me what I suppose he thought was a withering look.

I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking, mate, in the old days you and me we were a team, we used to play with wool, we’d translate Pangur Ban.

When the bairn was asleep I closed the door and walked on tip toe into the hall.

Jet followed.

Again with the look and a cocked head this time. “There’s no point saying anything, we’re keeping her and that’s an end to it,” I said.

Cats are adaptable and resilient. Jet said nothing but finally crossed his paws, lowered his head and went to sleep.

I was, however, definitely awake now.

I went downstairs, removed the fireguard and threw another peat log on the embers. The rain was pouring down in sheets.

A sleekit wind was penetrating the chimney flue and the cracks around the doors and windows.

The house was baltic. I got closer to the fire, one ear out for the bairn.

These terraces were built in the 1950s.

My grandmother’s house was thatched with bloody straw and built by peasants in the post famine apocalypse of the 1850s and it was sturdier and warmer than this. Ever slept in an attic room under thick winter thatching while a turf fire burns below in the parlour grate? You’ve never been so warm.

I made instant coffee and sat on the living room floor staring at the records.

What kind of a day was it?

Kinks or Velvets?

Safe bet with either. Maybe the—

Was that a knock at the door?

I looked at my watch.

6.30. Too early even for the milkman or the postie.

I was about to cock my service revolver when I recalled that assassins seldom knocked.

Besides, I relied on Jet as watch cat to get his hackles up, like Alain Delon’s attack budgie in Le Samourai. Jet was still sleeping upstairs so the point was moot.

“Hold your horses,” I said.

I walked down the hall and peered through the peephole.

A grey faced man in a dark blue raincoat distorted amusingly in the peephole fisheye.

No shotgun in his hands. But he was carrying a shoebox. That was interesting.

I opened the door.

2

The man shook his head. “I’m so sorry about the hour,” he said in a gravelly deep South Armagh accent that was pleasing on the ear. That kind of voice only let you down when it belonged to an avatar of Death and he was bringing some contract you’d signed with him in a vulnerable state of mind.

“Early time to be selling shoes,” I said. “I like it though. Not normally done door to door. I mean even if you get a buyer, what’s the chance it will fit? Bold strategy.”

“Can I come in for a moment? I have a proposition for you. It won’t keep you long, I promise.”

I looked at him again.

My wife, child and cat were in this house. Who was this fucker with a shoebox?

“What’s in the box?” I asked.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

I stepped backwards to let him into the hall.

“Living room is just into the right,” I said.

I put my service .38 in my dressing gown pocket and followed him.

“There’s coffee,” I said, sitting opposite.

“No. Thank you. I’ll come straight to business. My name is Mr Harrington. This box and its contents were delivered to my employer last night. It is a set of photographs recently printed from a stolen set of negatives. My employer was wondering if you could find the person who delivered the box and return the negatives to him.”

I nodded, sipped my coffee. “Doubtless the photographs are of rare migrating birds your employer spotted in his garden?”

“No, Inspector Duffy, they are not. They are photographs of my employer’s wife in her younger days when she was exploited by older men. . .prostituted would not be too strong a word; pimps would not be too extreme a word for the men.”

I nodded.

I could see most of the trajectory now but there was a missing piece.

“Your employer is a wealthy man, a man of standing in his community. He fell in love with this woman and she confessed her past. Her past meant nothing to him. He was living in the now and the future. He was in love. He sought out this pimp/pornographer and bought the photographs and their negatives. Yes?”

“Something like that,” Harrington agreed.

“He didn’t destroy them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ok, so that implies that he put the pictures and negatives in a safe or a safety deposit box. And the safe or safety deposit box was broken into. And a few days later the blackmail began?”

“It was stolen from the Northern Bank last week. They drove a bulldozer into the cash machine.”

“And then they ransacked the safe deposit boxes and got away before the police arrived?”

“Yes.”

“How many safe deposit boxes?”

“More than twenty had their contents taken.”

This type of bank job had become increasingly common. Stolen bulldozer though the bloody wall at 3 in the morning. Almost certainly a paramilitary gang. Probably they hadn’t been looking for Mr Harrington’s employer’s safe deposit box; but when they rifled through their ill-gotten gains they realized that they had just hit paydirt.

“How long after the robbery did the blackmail demands begin?”

“Six days.”

I rubbed my chin. “But here’s the bit I keep coming back to Mr. H. Why did he keep any of the photographs? Why not burn the lot and give the ashes to his new bride as part of her wedding present. I mean, that’s what a man of honour would do.”

Harrington sighed. He couldn’t deny it

“Why keep ‘em, why leave this hostage to fortune?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr Harrington said.

“Well, I think I do,” I said. “Your employer is not the nice guy he thinks he is. He’s a man of the world. He’s in love and he does the right thing regarding his wife’s past but at the back of his mind, he’s wondering if it might be useful to have those photographs and negatives just, you know, in case of divorce or something like that.”

Harrington pursed his lips.

He was a trim, fit, watery-eyed fellow, who could have been anything from fifty years old to seventy. There was a little bit of menace to him. A fixer rather than an amanuensis or personal assistant. He also was a man of the world. He was wearing black leather gloves that you could imagine attempting to get purchase on your throat.

He offered me the shoebox. “Do you wish to see the photographs?”

I shook my head. “Not my cup of tea I’ll bet. Where did this happen? Where does your employer live?” I asked.

“The safety deposit box was stolen in Larne last week from the Northern Bank on High Street.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that one. Well mate, this is a job for Larne RUC. Here’s what you do: you take the note and the shoebox to them. But don’t go round their houses at six in the morning. That lot are not as tolerant as I am. Just go down the station. After nine when they’ve had their tea or coffee. You can’t miss the cop shop, big armoured building next to the harbour.”

Harrington did not bestir himself. “My employer does not wish this to become a police matter. My employer has no faith in the abilities of any of the detectives working at Larne RUC.”

“Nobody does, truth be told.”

“You however, come highly recommended. My employer was wondering if you could take care of this affair in a personal and private capacity.”

I laughed. “Nah, mate. That’s not how this works!”

“You have a new baby, I hear. Money around this time of year is always tight,” Harrington continued.

“So?”

Mr Harrington reached into his jacket pocket and removed two envelopes and handed them to me.

“Five thousand pounds for merely agreeing to take the case. Another ten thousand for a successful resolution.”

I tried hard to conceal my astonishment. “Fifteen thousand quid?”

“And five thousand for merely agreeing to look into it.”

“Hmmm.”

“And then there is the question of the lady’s honour too,” Harrington added.

I nodded and leaned back in the chair.

Five grand for just looking into this business? With a kid upstairs and a car to fix and bloody mortgage payments.

And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t done a wee bit of moonlighting before. Security guard gigs at concerts mostly but still. . .

The guy sounded like a proper wanker, but it wasn’t the lady’s fault that her husband was that way.

I stared at the fire and my records and my books.

I thought about Walter Benjamin unpacking his library every time he moved or was moved on from place to place. The books on one’s shelf were an attempt to capture something of the order of the Old World. And wasn’t that the job of a peeler too? An attempt to set the world to rights?

“Let me see the blackmail note,” I said.

3

The note was old school and I respected that. They had cut letters from a newspaper and pasted them onto a piece of cardboard.

IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THIS FROM WIDER DISTRIBUTION, KENNEDY, RAISE 100,000 IN CASH

WE WILL CALL YOU IN 72 HOURS

“You’re probably going to have to tell me who Kennedy is,” I said.

“My employer would rather remain anonymous if that is at all possible.”

“I mean, they know who he is. Shouldn’t the person looking for them have as much information as they do?”

Mr Harrington could see my point. “I’ll communicate your request to my employer,” he said.

I looked closely at the note.

“Every letter in this seems to come from The Sun newspaper,” I said.

I recognized the typeface. It was the only paper the lads read down the station. Just between us, they weren’t too bright, the lads down the station. Not talking about CID of course – compared to the other peelers in there we were the Solvay Conference 1927. (Look it up, mucker.)

“How was this delivered?” I asked Harrington.

“Left at the gate of my employer’s home. And then someone rang the gate bell.”

“Who else has touched this box?” I asked.

“Only myself and my employer, both of us were wearing gloves,” he said with some satisfaction.

“Hold on a minute,” I said and ran out to the shed for my fingerprint kit.

I put the box on the dining room table and dusted it and the note for prints.

None.

I opened the box and grabbed some of the photographs. They were of a striking young woman no more than 20, blonde, thin, attractive, in various hard-core scenarios. They too were fingerprint free.

“No prints at all,” I said. “That’s a little surprising. Local hoods aren’t normally this careful. This is going to be tricky.”

Mr Harrington looked at me. “Can I tell my employer you are taking the case?”

“Yes. I’ll take it. If the blackmailers call with further instructions you are to call me, immediately. I can be reached at the station or here. This is my private number,” I said, scribbling it on a piece of paper.

I handed the shoebox back. “I’ve no further need for this, but it might be necessary for me to talk to your boss at some point. And listen, I’ll have to walk you out. The missus will be getting up in a bit.”

“Of course.”

I took the money and put it behind my four volume set of Gibbon which I suspected wouldn’t be getting an airing for a while.

“I may need to consult with my colleagues on this,” I said.

“Discretion must be the watchword.”

“That’s why you came to me, right?”

Mr Harrington offered no opinion on my discretion or my other skills. I was guessing that he had suggested someone else for this wee gig but had been overruled by the boss.

I watched him drive away in a silver Mercedes. I memorized the license plate, went inside and carried the phone into the living room. I sat next to the fire and called traffic with the plate. They told me that Kevin Harrington lived in Greenisland on the upper road. I wrote down the address and called Larne RUC.

A sleepy duty sergeant answered.

“Inspector Sean Duffy, Carrick RUC, are there any detectives in yet?” I asked.

“Aye. Grace is in, I mean Detective Hunt. She’d be upstairs. You want me to patch her through?”

“Please.”

“Detective Sergeant Hunt,” she said.

She sounded young and enthusiastic which meant she wouldn’t last long at Larne.

I introduced myself and told her I was working a possible Carrick angle of the recent bank robbery. “I supposed you’ve no suspects at all?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. We know who did it. That’s no secret.”

“How? Who?”

“Larne UVF. They had a big party to celebrate the night after the robbery.”

“They did?”

“Yup. But you know what it’s like Inspector Duffy. No one will ever testify against the UVF so we’ll have to get some actual physical evidence to convict them in court,” she replied.

“And do you have any forensic or other physical evidence?”

“Not yet.”

“But you know who did the bank robbery?”

“I think we have the entire crew.”

“Can you not execute a warrant and find the stolen dough and round them up?”

“The money’s gone. Already laundered over to England. And the safety deposit boxes are being held at quote a secret location, according to our informer. So it’s going to be tricky. We’ll only get a judge to issue one comprehensive house warrant and if we go to the wrong house. . .”

She was biding her time, trying to draw out the threads. Made sense. And Larne UVF were probably braggarts and drinkers – an undisciplined bunch who would screw up eventually.

But Detective Hunt could afford to bide her time. I would need to move a wee bit faster to prevent some unpleasant photos appearing in grubby little scandal sheets.

“Mind if I drive over this morning, get a few names from you?”

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“Blackmail case maybe. Early stages.”

“Something from the safety deposit boxes?” she surmised.

“Maybe.”

“Oh dear. I was hoping for a simple little bank robbery to start the year,” she said. “Of course you can come over, but you’ll have to be here by 10. I’m on nights. And that’s when I leave for the day, no exceptions unless you’re paying over-time.”

I laughed and then she laughed. As a humble inspector I could shoot someone, get a warrant to search someone’s house, call out the riot squad, stop a plane from taking off, but authorize over-time? Fat chance.

I thanked her and told her I’d be right over.

I could hear Beth moving around upstairs.

I made my way up there and filled her in on Emma’s sleep and feeding situation.

“I have to go down to Larne in a bit, are you ok?” I asked her.

“Why Larne?” she asked.

“Work,” I explained. The only reasonable explanation for going to Larne.

4

I wasn’t going to fill my partner Detective Sergeant John McCrabban in on this little escapade but on the back road to Larne I found myself driving past the little scrabble dairy/sheep farm he had inherited from an uncle. Crabbie was a country lad but not a natural dairyman or cowboy so it had been a difficult few years for him.

It was beautiful but tough country up here: steep stony fields facing a chilly indigo sea. Wet, miserable looking sheep, even wetter cows wondering how they had been incarnated here rather than on the balmy emerald banks of the fertile Krishna estuary.

I wondered, as I drove up to Crabbie’s house, if he’d like to split the five grand with me and come in on the moonlighting gig.

It was losing half the money, but Crabbie’s company, ideas and moral compass would make up for that.

I rang the doorbell and the man himself answered. He was in his dressing gown and pajamas but he was wearing Wellington boots that were covered with mud. He’d been up to milk the sheep or mow the cows or whatever one did up here.

“How do?” I said. “Wife let you sleep with those things on?”

“Million things to do on a farm, Sean.”

“Don’t you have help? Where is everyone?”

“Patrick’s in Armagh and the wife and kids are at my mother in laws in Portavogie.”

“Well if you’re busy, I’ll just jog on then,” I said.

“What’s up? It can’t be the job. The station would have called me in.”

“How does twenty five hundred quid sound?”

“What for?” Crabbie asked suspiciously.

“Not murder or disposing a body or anything like that.”

“Come in and have a cup of tea,” Crabbie said.

“Quick one. We’re going to have to go to Larne and you’re going to have to change out of your Wellies.”

Tea. Roaring fire. His wife’s homemade scones. My explanation. Crabbie a simple nod and then upstairs to shower and change. Crabbie’s neo-Puritan sartorial clothing choice for the day was black and grey. I’ve seen mourners at a Presbyterian Moderator’s funeral with more colour in their ensemble.

“Shall we go?” he said, knotting his black hole black tie.

Out to the Beemer and down onto the shore road where a British Army patrol stopped us and squaddies from Essex impertinently asked us for our IDs. They were so irritating that even a dyed in the wool Proddy like Crabbie had a momentary vision of himself joining up the IRA and murdering them.

Larne RUC was near the harbour in the part of town that smelled of fish and diesel. The station itself had an odor of decay, mildew, ciggies, spilled beer and fish and chip packets stuffed down the back of sofa cushions. You wouldn’t think we were in the hot part of a low level civil war here in Larne. You’d think we were in a cop shop out of a Flann O’Brien novel in the sleepy Irish 1930s. Red faced old stagers sipping gin and eating sausage sandwiches at 9 in the morning. On the stairway to the second floor there were boxes of computers that we’d been assigned two years ago and were not even unpacked here.

Huge bubbles in the paintwork. Pencils, beer cans and even darts hanging precariously from the dropped tiled ceiling. A radiator bleeding steam and water. Condensation dripping from the windows. A radio somehow only playing creepy B sides from the 1950s.

Larne town had an off kilter Twilight Zone vibe to it.

Larne police station was more like a shitty bottle episode of The Outer Limits.

Many years later, in a surreal moment on a break from a film, Bjork, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke would walk the streets of Larne together looking for a sandwich shop.

But that was in the far far future. We had to get out of the 80s yet.

Crabbie and I found Detective Sergeant Grace Hunt getting ready to knock off her shift.

We shook hands and sat in her office. We tried to decline a cup of tea but couldn’t refuse when it was offered with a piece of her birthday cake from yesterday.

“Happy birthday,” Crabbie said, remembering his manners.

We didn’t ask her age. Not polite. And this place aged you artificially. She looked 35 but might only be 22 for all we knew.

“So, Larne UVF, robbery suspects. . .” I said.

“You can just photocopy my whole file if you want, what’s the blackmail angle?”

“I don’t want to reveal the victim’s name at this stage, but some part of your robbery crew may have gotten compromising pictures of his wife from her younger days,” I explained.

“Oh dear,” Grace said.

“I know.”

“They’re all the sort of wee spides who would love humiliating a woman like that. Prominent woman now, I suppose?”

“I wouldn’t like to say,” I muttered.

She nodded. She got it. Loose lips sink ships. Especially around here.

“Well I’m on my way out. I’ve left the files here in the red folder. You can photocopy whatever you want. And if you make an arrest or get any breaks. . .”

“Your name will be in the first paragraph of the report,” I said.

She smiled. “Excellent! Have a good morning, Inspector Duffy, Sergeant McCrabban.”

We photocopied the file and drove to a café to read it.

The café was down near the harbour overlooking the ferry port.

Maybe it was the very spot where Bjork would end up a few decades from now.

Neither of us were hungry so we just got coffee and toast. Tea and toast in your local cafe is probably a bit shite, but here the bread was made by some wee country lass from Magheramorne and the butter was Dromona - the best butter in the world.

“She’s very good,” Crabbie said, reading through the file.

“Too good for Larne, if no one kills her, she’ll be poached and sent to Belfast.”

She had a list of suspects for the back robbery, an experienced robbery crew within the East Antrim UVF. The local commander was a man called Johnny “The Turk” Tomasino. I’d never heard of him, Crabbie hadn’t either. He was thirties, in and out of the joint. A couple of supposed murders and a dozen armed robberies to his name. If he was the boss he’d be lawyered up or at the very least too smart for our tricks, no sense calling on him, but the youngest member of the crew was a wee mucker called Barry Dunleavy who was only 17. Not even out of school yet.

“What about young Barry?” I asked Crabbie.

“What about him?”

“Lean on him, might be the most vulnerable member of the crew.”

Crabbie considered it. “Nothing illegal, Sean, he’s a minor, we can’t do any rough stuff or arrest him or anything like that.”

“Come on, you know me, mate.”

“Yes, I do and that’s what I’m worried about.”

The rain got heavier. An army Land Rover drove menacingly along the street, a squaddie with a machine gun pointing it at us through the plate glass.

“This farm you have Crabman. Doesn’t the Bible say something like you can’t serve two masters or you’ll get hit with a hurley stick or something? You know what I mean: being a farmer and being a cop? Gotta pick one or another, no?”

Crabbie shook his head. “It’s little more than a hobby farm but it’s an inheritance and a duty. The police is my career, Sean. You caught me on a bad day with no one around.”

“If you say so. And if you ever want me to come over and help you with the cows or whatever.”

I could see him bite down the laughter at the very idea of that. He turned his head so I couldn’t see him corpse.

The Sugarcubes came on the radio.

“Do you like this, Crabbie? They’re from Iceland,” I asked jerking my thumb toward the speaker.

He shook his head. “Not, er, really my cup of tea,” he said.

“All right, mate, calm down, enough bloody chit chat about the top of the pops, let’s go see young Barry Lyndon, eh?”

Barry lived on the outskirts of Larne on the Antrim Coast in a rather quaint little blue and white painted house facing the water. It was clearly a nice, rather posh upper middle class community and why Barry had got himself mixed up with a bunch of gangsters was a mystery. It almost certainly wasn’t for the money. Rebellion? Boredom?

We parked the Beemer outside his house, walked the path, rang the bell.

Mrs Dunleavy answered the door, clutching her house coat, apparently amazed that anyone would have appeared at her front door for any reason. She was a prematurely grey haired, slender woman with watery blue eyes that broke your heart a wee bit. Her lot hadn’t been easy these last few years it seemed.

There were empty milk bottles on the porch and she did have a letter box so her amazement at this early call couldn’t entirely be justified or believed.

“Mrs Dunleavy?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, suspiciously.

“I’m Detective Inspector Sean Duffy and this is Detective Sergeant John McCrabban, we’ve come—

Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh my God what’s he done now?” she replied.

“I’m not sure that he’s done anything, but we would like to talk to him if we can,” I said gently.

“He’s upstairs in his room,” she said on the verge of tears. “Come in! Come in!”

She put the kettle on and brought down young Barry who was wearing a Liverpool football shirt and black trackies. His hair was blonde and floppy. He didn’t look like a master thief or blackmailer, but maybe that was his genius.

After his mom had served the tea and biscuits I made sure she wasn’t listening at the living room door and sat down opposite him.

I showed him my warrant card and shook my head.

“I’m sorry, Barry,” I said.

“Sorry for what.”

“You’re seventeen, not sixteen so they can try you as an adult. Send you to real prison.”

“Prison for what?” he said, alarm starting to show on his spotty cheeks.

“They found a fingerprint,” I said.

“A fingerprint on what?”

“On a gate post in Greenisland. When you left off that box of blackmail material,” I gambled.

Crabbie was keeping a stony face through all of this, which I respected.

“What are you talking about?” Barry said, actually sweating now, God love the wee shite. No not a master thief and not cut out for a life of crime. How then did he get involved?

“How on Earth did you get yourself mixed up with Larne UVF?” I asked. “Sheer bloody boredom? What?”

“I’m not involved in—”

“Are you doing your A levels?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Uhm, biology, chemistry, physics.”

I turned to Crabbie. “An intelligent young man who is clearly going places. Why would he throw that all away?”

Crabbie shook his head. “Weans today,” he said. “They don’t know on which side their bread is buttered.”

“How much would you get for bank robbery and blackmail if the judge decided to sentence you separately and we try young Barry as an adult.”

“I don’t know,” Crabbie said. “Ten years?”

“Ten years? This young buck, ten years in the Maze? My God he’ll come out looking like he’s fifty.”

“It was my Uncle Andy,” Barry exclaimed. “He said I could earn a few quid helping out at the Rangers club! That’s how it all started.”

Big tears were welling up in Barry’s baby blues. I moved to the opposite sofa and put my arm around him.

“It’s all right son, it’s all right,” I said. I was feeling bad now, the kid was part of a bank robbing crew and he had participated in a blackmailing, but he was just another lost wee boy in a generation of lost wee boys and girls whose childhoods had been wrecked by the Troubles.

Fuck the paramilitaries, fuck every one of the selfish, narcissistic bastards.

“I couldn’t have left a fingerprint,” Barry said.

“Why not? Were you wearing gloves when you left off the parcel?” I asked

“Yes, I was!”

“Sometimes they don’t work. All depends on the material,” I said.

“I didn’t know that,” Barry said.

I handed him his teacup. “Never mind all that now. Take a sip of your tea.”

He took a gulp of the brew.

I rubbed my chin and considered my options. I had Harrington’s address in Greenisland and my original plan had been to take care of all this business in Larne first and then stake out Harrington’s place and follow him to his employer’s house. But this kid looked ready to spill everything. The blackmailer, the blackmailed, the whole kit and caboodle. Something so satisfying about a stake out. Harrington being so bloody coy about his boss and me just waiting there smoking, drinking bad coffee from a flask, flipping between Radio 3 and 4 and out he comes in that big ugly Merc and I tail the eejit right to his boss’s doorstep. But. . .if I went carefully with Barry now I could save myself a ton of legwork. Romantic cool proper cop legwork but legwork none the less. Get this thing sorted tout de suite and have Crabbie back to his sheep.

I took out my warrant card and showed it to him again.

“Carrickfergus RUC, you see that? The robbery was not in my jurisdiction. I’m not interested in the bloody robbery. What I am interested in is the blackmail. If you tell me everything you know about that I think me and Sergeant McCrabban might be able to forget we ever met you today. We might be willing to let you quit the crime business for which you so clearly have no aptitude. We might ask you to tell your Uncle Andy that you have too much homework to do now your A levels are coming up and if you do that and stop going down the Rangers Club permanently that might be end of it for you as far as law enforcement is concerned.”

His eyes widened.

“I never had anything to do with the robbery in the first place. All I did was nick—”

I stopped him and put my finger over my lips.

“Ssshhh, lad. We don’t want to know. All I want is your promise that you’re done with all that. Can you promise us that?”
“Yes! Oh yes, please! Of course.”

“Good, now. Tell us everything about the blackmail side of things.”

“Ginger was in charge of everything, so all the safety deposits went to him. Everyone was drinking and celebrating. But he wasn’t. He was sorting it all out in the back bar there, you know?”

“Back bar of the Rangers Club?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t even have a safe house?”

“What’s a safe house?”

“Oh brother. Who’s this Ginger?”

“Ginger McDaid!”

On the sheets Sergeant Hunt had provided us, a Colin McDaid was supposedly the number 2 man in the robbery crew. The number 1 guy was Johnny the Turk Tomasino. I needed to get this sorted out.

“What about Johnny?” I asked.

Barry shook his head. “Johnny The Turk? Oh God. The Turk is supposedly the boss, but he doesn’t do anything. He just drinks and watches the football. Johnny is Tommy Tomasino’s first cousin so he’s untouchable like. So Uncle Andy says but Ginger runs the show.”

I nodded. They had a relative of some big Belfast chief nominally in charge but the ideas man was this other guy Colin “Ginger” McDaid.

“Where are the safety deposit boxes now? Still at the Rangers Club” I asked.

“Nah, Ginger fenced all the jewelry, watches and stuff already. He did it all fast.”

“But the photos?”

“He took a roll of film home with him. He takes pictures of birds so he has his own dark room. He must have developed the photographs there,” Barry explained. “Don’t even know if anyone else knows about it. I doubt it.”

“And how did you get involved with that little sideline?”

“He called me up and asked me if I wanted to earn a few quid.”

“Didn’t you make enough from the robbery?”

Barry laughed. “Are you joking? Ninety percent of the take went to Belfast. Ginger and Tommy split most of the rest. I got a hundred quid for getting a car.”

“And how much did you get for delivering the blackmail shoebox?” I asked.

“Another hundred quid.”

I looked at Crabbie. “Two hundred quid for ten years in prison?”

He shook his head. “It boggles the mind, Inspector Duffy, boggles the mind.”

“I’m done with all that! I promise. Done! I’ll tell Uncle Andy today! This morning! My A Levels. . .”

I took out my notebook. “What’s Ginger’s address?”

“14 Nuneaton Mews, near the High School,” Barry said.

“And just to confirm, the address where you delivered the shoebox?”

“Clarington House, Greenisland,” Barry said.

I nodded like I knew that all along.

“And the poor bloke’s name?”

“Marcus Kennedy.”

“His wife, I mean.”

“Jayne Kennedy.”

“And one final thing - in the blackmail note, Ginger said he would call with further instructions regarding payment, do you know if he’s done that yet?” I asked.

Barry shrugged. “I doubt it. I only delivered the box yesterday and the Kennedy bloke has to get the money together doesn’t he?”

I nodded. Ginger would make the call tonight or tomorrow. And have young Barry here do the pickup in case anything went wrong. Probably offer him another hundred quid to put his life on the line. And the victim’s name was Marcus Kennedy. A name and an address – that will do nicely. I looked at the Crabman. Did he have any questions?

“Does Ginger have a garage or a lock-up?” he asked.

Barry shook his head. “Nah, Ginge don’t drive. But he has a big shed at the bottom of his garden.”

Crabbie nodded. The stuff was probably in there. This was not the most professional of schemes.

I got to my feet.

Crabbie stood.

“Keep your nose clean, stay out of trouble, tell your Uncle Andy you need to study and you won’t be hearing from us again,” I said.

Barry thought it was too good to be true. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“What about the two hundred quid? Do I get to keep that?” Barry asked.

“Give it to charity. Good karma,” I said.

Crabbie and I saw ourselves out. We looked under the Beemer for bombs and drove a little ways up the coast to the Ballygalley Hotel to have some lunch, a pint of the black stuff and a wee think about the case.

5

Respect for the Ballygalley Hotel – during the darkest days of the Troubles when pubs, hotels, restaurants, cafés were being blown up, petrolbombed and having their windows smashed by protection rackets – they never closed.

Always a nice little Sunday lunch, always a decent bar to watch the waves and have a quiet pint. And if you wanted to stay the night there was always a room, even if it was that “ghost room” in the turret that has had reported hauntings since the 1600s.

The sea was high and the rain was belting down so Crabbie and I made an undignified sprint from the car park to the restaurant.

We ordered two bowls of the Irish stew and two pints of Guinness.

They’d recognized our natural authority, charisma and charm so they’d stuck us in the best table facing the road and the sea. Good place to get the noggin going. End this stupid case, collect our money, move on with real police work.

“Next steps?” I asked him.

“Ginger McDaid,” Crabbie said. “But we also have to keep DS Hunt in the know.”

I nodded. “Hunt’s away home to her bed by now I’m sure, so Ginger first?”

“How did you know Barry left off the shoebox? Crabbie asked.

“He was the youngest member of the crew. Most expendable? Just a gamble,” I said.

Crabbie nodded. “Poor kid. Sucked in like that.”

“When we see DS Hunt maybe I could tell her that her intel is wrong, Barry left the crew weeks ago,” I said.

Crabbie nodded, clearly a little conflicted about lying to a colleague but concerned about the lad’s future if he did get lifted as an accessory to an armed robbery.

“He hasn’t really done anything malum in se, has he?” I suggested.

Malum in se was something that was always immoral, not just because the law said so, kidnapping, rape, murder and the like. . .

Crabbie shook his head. Theft and blackmail were definitely malum in se. If we were going to let the wean go it wasn’t because he hadn’t done anything – that was too easy.

I liked looking at the moods blowing across Crabbie’s face as he wrestled with the point. It was almost as fascinating as the dour and moody Irish Sea just behind his left ear.

“So, mate, we’ll we go see this Ginger then?” I asked, finishing my pint.

“Aye,” he agreed.

We drove to the address Barry had provided us. It was still a typical Larne day: a cold damp cross wind from the North Channel, smoke blowing over the town from Ballylumford Power Station and a relentless greasy rain from the low grey clouds.

Ginger lived on the last house of terrace on which a mural had been done of Willem Hendrik, prins van Oranje riding his white (sic) pony (sic) over the Abhainn na Bóinne at the famous 1690 battle. The mural was what you might call naïve art with a kind of forced perspective and a garish paint scheme that might have given Roy Lichtenstein pause.

Typical late 80s low rise social housing all around with the ubiquitous ragamuffin children playing in the rain and a desolate horse tied to a shopping trolley.

As we drove past McDaid’s house Crabbie pointed out a large metal garden shed at the bottom of his garden.

I nodded. “Aye, in there or an attic maybe, somewhere stupid like that.”

We parked the Beemer and ran to the front door.

It was an interesting front door. There was a thick metal plate bolted to the front of it and he’d drilled a peep hole as if he was expecting assassination from the IRA, or, more likely a rival Protestant paramilitary gang.

After a couple of rings a big man in a purple trackie answered it.

He had a lock forward’s build and he must have been six four or five. If he went for Crabbie and me at the same time I think he could have taken us.

He had a scruffy bit of orange beard and bright red hair.

“Mr McDaid?” I surmised.

“Who’s asking?”

“Inspector Sean Duffy, Carrick CID. Sergeant John McCrabban of the same outfit,” I said.

“Carrick CID?” he asked.

“Yes. We’re not here about the robbery.”

“What robbery?”

“Can we come in? It’s bucketing down out here.”

“I’m making chili,” Ginger protested.

“You can turn the ring off, surely,” I said.

“It’s a delicate process,” Ginger said. “One slip and your recipe is up the spout.”

“We won’t interfere. We just have a couple of questions.”

“About what? I don’t know anything about any bank robbery.”

I sighed and looked at Crabbie. “Why did you say bank robbery?” Crabbie asked.

Ginger looked uncomfortable. He was firm of jaw and he hadn’t shaved for a few days which gave him Desperate Dan quality that I liked. Not exactly a charmer of course – a blackmailer of innocent women and a corrupter of youth but somehow I could tell he wasn’t one of the real UVF racist sectarian scumbags.

He shuffled his feet. “It’s been in the papers,” he said. “But I don’t know anything about it.”

“We’re not here to talk about that,” I said. “If you could let us in for a minute we could bloody explain. We don’t have a warrant and you’re not under arrest, you can kick us out any second you’d like.”

He rubbed the stubbly ginger jaw for a sec.

“Suppose you better come in then,” he grunted. “I’ll turn the ring off and put the kettle on.”

“Ta.”

“In there to the left,” he said and went off to make tea.

The living room was bedecked with Formula 3 and Go Kart racing memorabilia and trophies. Photos of a younger Ginger in England and Europe winning cups for his driving. I liked that too. You think of villains as one dimensional types on the dole or whatever but you forget that they’re actual human beings with, you know, interests. Maybe that’s how he got started – getaway driver? Before becoming the head of a robbo squad? Aye. Pity the motor racing hadn’t worked out though. Detective Hunt was onto his crew and I had a feeling she was going to bring them down. As de facto ring leader he’d be looking at five large in the big house.

Also on the wall were some arty black and white photographs he’d taken of scenes in and around Larne. Birds, boats, sunrises, people with interesting faces.

I pointed at the photos. “Photography buff.”

“And a photography buff will likely have a darkroom,” Crabbie said.

I nodded. “And look at all those driving trophies. I hope this doesn’t end with us chasing him down the motorway with our flashing lights on.”

“I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that, but you probably secretly do,” Crabbie said.

I tried to look hurt but he knew me too well, the big plank.

Ginger came in with two mugs of tea.

We accepted them and put them on the coffee table in front of us. High probability he had spat in the mugs so we’d have to pretend to drink them when they’d cooled down.

“So what’s brought you lads all the way up from Carrickfergus RUC?” he asked.

“The compromising photographs and negatives you have of Jayne Kennedy out in your garden shed,” I said.

“I, I, don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I’ll explain then,” I said cheerfully.

“Last week your robbery crew knocked over the Northern Bank,” I began “Alas most of the proceeds of this heist got kicked upstairs including the jewels in the safety deposit boxes. But you found a nice little earner you could keep to yourself. Negatives in the safety deposit box belonging to well-heeled and connected local businessman Marcus Kennedy. Once you developed the photographs you did a little research and you realized that these were pics of his bloody wife in her younger days.”

“What, what, are you. . .I want to talk to. . .My solicitor will. . .”

I shook my head, leaned across the coffee table and put my hand on Ginger’s wrist.

“Mate. No. You really want to get your solicitor involved? I can imagine who his other clients are. You really want the UVF command to know that you kept part of the proceeds of the job for yourself? That you didn’t tell anyone about it? How many other times have you done that? Skimming from the bosses? Bet they don’t take kindly to that. They might, in fact, want to make an example of you.”

Ginger put his head in his hands.

I looked at Crabbie. Bloody hell if they were all this easy to crack we’d both be Chief Superintendents by now.

“And you have to admit, it’s pretty fucking despicable. Developing photographs of this woman who was trafficked into prostitution in her younger years—” I continued.

“I don’t know anything about it!” he said, sharply.

“Here’s the thing, Ginger. We can’t help you with the bank robbery. That’s Larne RUC’s case. That’s out of our jurisdiction and there’s nothing we can do about that. But the blackmail. . .That’s my case and I will lift you for it and you’ll go to prison. . .”

Ginger peaked out between his fingers in a way that couldn’t help but be adorable on the big lug’s face.

“I’m sensing a but. . .” he said.

“What you’re sensing is an ellipsis. But you are correct to surmise that this is one of those Two Roads Yellow Wood moments. I’m offering you a choice here,” I said.

“What’s the choice?”

“Give me the photographs and the negatives and I’ll return them to their rightful owner and that’ll be the end of it,” I said.

“What do you mean, the end of it?”

“No charges, no case. He’s a prominent citizen is Mr Kennedy. He doesn’t want his name dragged through a High Court proceeding.”

Ginger was suspicious. “What if I just chuck the pair of you out now and deny everything?”

I nodded. “And in the meantime, rush out to your shed and burn the evidence before we can get a search warrant?”

“Something like that, if I was involved in any of this, which I’m not admitting that I am. . .”

“That’s a good plan too, but I’d still come after you and the search warrant would be bloody thorough so if you’ve any other contraband or stolen goods around here we’d get those and just for badness I would still arrest your for blackmail and get forensic to try to reconstruct the physical evidence from what traces you have left.”

“And there’s a magistrate I know lives right around the corner from here,” Crabbie added, evidently truthfully, “So we could have that warrant in about fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes would be all I’d need,” Ginger said looking at the fireplace.

“And all the other contraband in the house?” I said.

Ginger thought about it.

He got up, walked into the dining room and walked back again.

“What would be the deal?” he asked.

“You give us all the stuff from Kennedy’s safety deposit box and any photographs you might have developed from the negatives and we forget the whole thing,” I said.

“You just leave, no questions asked?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“I don’t trust you,” Ginger said, sitting down again.

And now it was my turn to think. How could I get the galoot to trust me. Crabbie you’d trust until the cows came home but I looked dodgy as all hell. Sleekit wee shite, he was no doubt thinking, correctly.

I turned to the Crabman. His brow was furrowed. This was a tricky one. We’d raised the stakes here. If we left without the pics he’d burn them which would end the blackmail but our gig was to retrieve the negatives. . .

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you go to the toilet and while you’re on the bog, I’ll nip out to your shed and get the negatives. Now I can’t suddenly charge you with what I’ve found out there because it will be an illegal search and thus inadmissible. You did not give me permission to search your shed, I don’t have a warrant to search your shed and I cannot use in court what I find out there. Anything I find out there will be, what is known in the rules of evidence, the “fruits of the poison tree.”

Ginger got it. “So if you nick me after what you find out there my solicitor throws the illegal search thing at you and the case collapses.”

I nodded. “You have it. Humiliation for me, Carrick CID and the RUC in general.”

“But what you really want to do it is just take the stuff and go and then we’ll both forget the whole thing?” Ginger said.

I offered him my hand.

He hesitated a moment longer and then shook it.

“Give me five minutes to, uhm, put everything in its proper place and then I’m going to the toilet. You do not have permission to search anywhere in my house or shed,” he said.

He left and we heard him tramp upstairs to what was presumably his darkroom. Then we heard him go downstairs and out to the shed. Then we heard him come back in and shut the bathroom door.

“I’m on the bog!” he said.

I went through the house to the back shed which had “Yogi’s Cave” marked on it in cheerful yellow letters.

The photgraphs and negatives were in two shoeboxes on a workbench. Ginger was a builder of model aeroplanes and there were a number of nicely painted ones hanging from the ceiling. A particularly good Spitfire.

I took the shoeboxes, walked back into the house.

“We’re leaving now Mr McDaid,” I said loudly outside the bathroom. “You have yourself a nice wee day. Stay out of trouble, now. You won’t be hearing from us again.”

6

We drove back into Larne.

Crabbie was looking grim.

“Did you hear about the man who was addicted to brake fluid?” I said.

“Please, Sean. . .”

“It was ok, because he could stop any time.”

Crabbie said nothing but his look. . .his look, was a delicious mixture of disappointment and world weariness.

I put the radio on.

It must have flipped to some oldies or pirate station because they were playing the Yardbirds and no one played the Yardbirds. It was one of those psychedelic numbers from 1967 with Beck and Page as dual leads. At the same time on the other side of London Nick Drake and Syd Barrett were taking jangly English folk into psychedelia. What were the Fairports doing around that time? I liked all that shit. When I got a moment I’d have to take a deep dive into my records. No point spilling all this inner monologue on the Crabman. Not his cup of tea at all.

“We have to go back to Larne RUC,” he said.

“Why?”

“The only way to get that wean off the hook is to tell DS Hunt that he wasn’t involved,” Crabbie said.

He’d been thinking about this.

“Aye, but wouldn’t that mean lying to a colleague?” I said.

I stole a glance at him. Anguish was what I expected and it was what I got. Not a pretty sight at all on his man of the earth countenance.

“Ok, mate, don’t give yourself a seizure, I’ll do the lying. I’ll leave her a wee note in her pigeonhole.”

We drove to Larne RUC. I expected Hunt to have left for the day long ago but she was still in doing over-time. She looked utterly shattered. They’d probably stick her on riot duty next.

“Inspector Duffy,” she said, offering me a weak smile.

“I won’t keep you, Sergeant Hunt, I just wanted to fill you in on what we found that that might have a bearing on your case.”

She nodded and took out her note book.

“Uhm, well, it’s nothing really just about that that wean Barry Dunleavy. Apparently he’s not with the crew anymore. Chucked out a week or so before the heist by some guy called “Uncle Andy” who apparently told him “go home, stop playing with the big boys and study for your A levels”. I don’t know who this Andy fella is but I believe the kid.”

DS Hunt nodded. “That’ll be Andy Burnham. He’s a bad one. I imagine he wanted a bigger cut of the heist for himself rather than actual concern for his nephew. Duly noted. Anything else?”

“Again this is your purview, but it looks like everyone was sort of screwed on the robbery as most of the cash was passed up to high command. So they might be looking to do another job for themselves.”
The last part was just chicken feed to bury the info about the kid but Sergeant Hunt was too knackered to see that.

We thanked her for her help, found the Beemer, looked underneath it for bombs and drove back to Carrick.

7

I cruised us past the station and out the A2 to Greenisland. We went up the Trooper’s Lane Road and up onto the top road. We found Kennedy’s house easily enough.

It was a nineteenth century baronial manor with substantial acreage in the hills close to Knockagh Mountain. It was a foggy miserable old day but on a clear day the views up here must be spectacular. You could certainly see Scotland and probably all the way down to the Mourne Mountains.

To get up to the Kennedy Manor you had to park your car and push a buzzer at the gate.

We pulled in front of the buzzer.

“What time did you get this case, Sean?” Crabbie asked.

“What do you mean? What time of day?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Seven o’clock this morning? Something like that?”

Crabbie was pointing at his watch. It was not yet 4pm.

“Ecclesiastes 2:24,” he said.

“You’ll have to remind me. . .”

“’There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God’.”

“What are you getting at Crabbie?”

“Sean, you got the case, found the blackmailer, got the incriminating documents back, hopefully saved some wean from a life of crime, and it’s not yet five o’clock. Not a bad day’s work that,” he said.

“We found the blackmailer, we got the documents back. Couldn’t have done it without you, mate. Now let’s get this bit over and we can get back to our nearest and dearest with some Christmas spending money too, which might be a wee bit more useful than the Lord’s pleasure.”

I got out of the car and rang the little buzzer device next to the gate.

“Hello, this is Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrick RUC, I’ve come to see a Mr Marcus Kennedy,” I said into the intercom.

“Oh my God has something happened to Marcus?” a woman answered.

“No, ma’am sorry to alarm you. This is an entirely routine call. It’s about an unpaid parking ticket. Apparently its past due and with Mr Kennedy being such a prominent citizen the boss sent us out to have a wee word. We can’t have even the impression of favoritism in these troubling times,” I improvised.

“Oh dear! Of course! Marcus will be so embarrassed,” the woman said.

A buzzer sounded and the gates swung wide.

I got in the car and drove up a gravelly drive that had been lined with ash and sycamore trees about a hundred and fifty years ago.

A livered servant was waiting for us in front of an attractive red sandstone manor house that looked even cooler close up.

“This must be Jeeves,” I said to Crabbie.

“Yes,” Crabbie said with his natural suspicion for men in uniform who weren’t peelers.

We parked the Beemer and got out. I had the box of incriminating materials in a Marks and Spencer shopping bag.

“Your credentials, please,” the butler said.

I showed him my warrant card and he scrutinized me and the card for several moments. Same trick with the Crabman.

We were led along a corridor bedecked with rather nice oil paintings. Landscapes mostly and landscapes from nowhere round these parts judging from the volcanic mountains and triremes.

Mrs Kennedy was a tall, handsome blonde lady in her early forties who I recognized immediately from the blackmail photographs. Her look was horsey/fox hunting lady on her day off: brown sweater, tan slacks, bespoke leather Oxford shoes.

She was wearing a thick gold wedding ring and an engagement ring next to that which had a diamond only slightly smaller than the iceberg that had sunk the RMS Titanic.

She was waiting for us in a drawing room with uncomfortable looking antique furniture and books so old and valuable they were locked away in glass cases.

She smiled warmly and pointed to two rickety chairs opposite an ottoman.

Crabbie glanced at me and hastened his pace to make his way toward the sturdier of the two.

I tried to brush past him but the big galoot could really put a stride on when he wanted to.

I sat down gingerly while the chair creaked and strained.

Before she could say anything Jeeves brought in a tea tray with tea pot, milk, sugar, cups and little cakes.

He set it down on a table and exited. He shimmered out, PG Wodehouse would have observed.

“Tea?” she said.

You couldn’t say no. Not in Belfast. Not anywhere in Northern Ireland.

We nodded.

When we had sipped our cups from delicate bone china and she had inquired about the weather, she came round to the business at hand.

“So this is about my husband’s car?” she said, with piercing, skeptical blue eyes.

“Yes,” I said before Crabbie could crack and tell the bloody truth.

“I could take care of that with my check book,” Mrs Kennedy said with a winning smile.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but it’s not just the money. We have to give Mr Kennedy a formal caution. And that, of course, can only be done in person.”

“Oh,” Mrs Kennedy said, alarmed.

“It’s not that big a deal really if I’m honest. Five minutes and we’re done. I take it Mr Kennedy is not at home at the moment?”

“No, but. . .” She looked at her watch. “He should be home soon, if you’d care to wait.”

“That would most agreeable. But you don’t have to sit with us. We’re used to waiting. We’re peelers.”

“Yes,” she said. “Well, look, we do have someone in fixing the plumbing in the back kitchen. Would you mind terribly if I were to leave you for a few minutes?”

“Not at all, ma’am,” I said.

Crabbie and I stood as she left.

“She didn’t ask about the box,” Crabbie said.

“Do you think she knows what’s going on?” I asked.

“Wives know. I have no secrets from Helen,” Crabbie replied.

“Yeah I know. But you’re not typical. Me and the Bethster. Deep waters, all that.”

“Yes,” Crabbie agreed.

We sipped the tea, ate the delicious little cakes and thought about time’s arrow marching us all to our graves until the door opened half an hour later and Mr Kennedy came in.

Not sure exactly what I’d been expecting but definitely an older man than this.

Marcus Kennedy was mid forties, tanned, tall handsome, with curly sandy hair. He was dressed in some sort of cricket get up. White trousers, a white shirt and a cricket jumper. I was puzzled by this. I didn’t know much/anything about cricket but wasn’t it a summer sport?

“Ahh, yes,” he said. “Bessie said there were two policemen here and I see she wasn’t in fact pulling my leg.”

“Would you mind closing the door, sir,” I said.

“What? Oh, yes. Just a sec,” he said.

He had one of those posh South Belfast accents that the BBC Northern Ireland people used for reading the news.

When the door was closed he crossed the room and sat beside us.

“I see you have some tea, already. Apologies for the get up, I was in the nets at the leisure center taking some practice. It’s my day off,” he said, whatever that meant.

“I’m Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrick RUC, your man Harrington hired me to deal with a blackmail demand you received yesterday.”

“Hmmm. Harrington was supposed to keep my identity out of it until I gave him the ok. In fact everything was supposed to be done through him. This is a very delicate matter,” Kennedy said.

“Your name was on the note, sir, it didn’t take much sleuthing to put the rest of it together. Anyway, here’s the blackmail materials,” I said handing him the shopping bag.

He took it, utterly amazed.

“This is everything?”

“Yes. This is the lot. All the photographs and all the negatives. The blackmailer has been persuaded to end his activities and you won’t be hearing him from again.”

“Good God! How much do we have to pay him?” Kennedy asked.

“Nothing. I threatened him with the full force of the law and he decided that it would be a mistake to get on my bad side.”

Kennedy carried the bag to a side table, opened the box, gasped. “It’s all here,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s was an unpleasant piece of business but it’s all over now. To avoid getting your wife upset we told her that we were cautioning you about unpaid parking tickets.”

“What? Oh, yes, of course. Very good. My God, yesterday my whole world was falling apart, my man Harrington mentions your name last night and the whole thing’s taken care of by dinner time. Good Lord, you’re as brilliant as they say.”

I shook my head. “Actually this whole thing was incredibly straightforward.”

He walked back to the Ottoman and offered his hand. I shook it. He shook Crabbie’s hand too. “Gentlemen, I owe you my thanks. More than thanks! There was a fee, I believe.”

“Yes,” I said. “This was all done off the books on our day off.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to bring in a. . .” Kennedy began.

“Sergeant McCrabban is my partner. I have absolutely no secrets from him and he has none from me. Our lives depend upon it,” I said.

“Of course. Harrington should have known that. Well, well, well. Wait here.”

He left the room and came back with two envelopes filled with bank notes. I have had dealings with rich people before so I’m not ashamed to say that I counted the dough. Five grand in fifties in each envelope. I gave one to Crabbie.

“Can I ask who the blackmailer was?” Kennedy said.

“You can ask but I won’t tell you. That was part of the deal we made. He won’t be bothering you again though. I’m quite certain of that.”

Kennedy nodded. “Can I ask one more question?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Did either of you make copies of the photographs or show them to anyone else or anything like that?” he said.

There was an odd quiver in his voice but I was able to put him mind at rest.

“Absolutely not. It was not pertinent to our investigation. And we in no way wished to further invade the privacy of the person in those photographs.”

Kennedy smiled.

“Can I offer you a piece of advice, Mr Kennedy?” I asked.

“Please. . .”

“Burn everything. Tonight.”

He nodded sadly. “A bloody good idea. Thank you Inspector Duffy, Sergeant McCrabban.”

“Thank you Mr Kennedy. I very much doubt our paths will cross again, so have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” I said.

“You too.”

Kennedy shook our hands again and the butler showed us out.

Crabbie and I scooted down to Ownies for a quick pint.

Roaring fire, two very slow pulled pints of the black stuff.

“Not a bad’s day work,” I said, sipping the Guinness.

“Aye, as long as that’s the end of it,” Crabbie said, as a hedge against fate.

“Aye,” I agreed.

8

It was a month later in the grim mid January days of 1989 when the second shoe dropped. They call 1989 a hinge year for history with the Iron Curtain coming down, but it was a bad year for Belfast. A bad year for Northern Ireland.

January had begun with bombings, riot, murder.

We were swamped with cases and Crabbie and I had forgotten all about Mr Kennedy and the blackmail.

The money, of course, had come in very handy, but when you’re spending money you don’t recall where it came from.

Who it came from.

It was the last year of the 80s, the second full decade of the Troubles. It seemed likely that the 90s would continue in the same manner.

Endless war apparently was good for somebody’s business.

Not that we peelers cared about the end game or the big picture or anything like that. Survive the day, survive the week, survive the month – that was about as far as it got.

Saint Patrick slept.

The old gods slept.

How else to explain the rain and the darkness? The darkness and the rain. The gutters running with blood.

I was in my office at Carrick RUC listening to Mahler, looking at the gunmetal sky and the black sea and the sea spray flinging sand and seaweed onto the Marine Highway.

I was drinking a 20 year old Bowmore whisky which was a gift from another rare satisfied customer whose stolen car we’d found intact. You’re not really supposed to take such gifts, of course, but exceptions have to made for the only whisky allowed in the afterlife.

Knock at the door.

Alexander Lawson’s face in the door jam.

Good copper Lawson. Smart, honest and those were rare commodities around these parts.

“Yeah?” I said.

“While we were out at lunch a detective sergeant from Larne RUC was on the blower looking for you, sir,” Lawson said.

“Oh aye?”

“Yeah, Jenny just handed me the note. There’s been a murder down there this morning. She thought we might be interested.”

“A murder in Larne? Out of our jurisdiction?”

“Apparently.”

“We have enough on our plate. Come on, Lawson. You have to keep this stuff away from my desk.”

“All right. I was just passing on a message, sir.”

“We have more than our fair share with poaching on Larne RUC’s parish. Go on now, I’m very busy.”

He gave me the slightest eye roll which seemed to suggest that I didn’t look very busy with my feet up on the desk, a glass of whisky in my hand and the record player blaring away some classical malarkey. But after the eye roll he went out and shut the door behind him.

I closed my eyes and gradually the mechanism began to work.

The big gears turned. . .

Murder in Larne, why on Earth would I be. . .

Shit.

The kid or the blackmailer.

I called DS Hunt in Larne but she wasn’t in.

Of course she wasn’t. One of her robbery suspects had just copped it and she was at the crime scene.

I ran out of the office and found Crabbie and Lawson.

“We need to go to Larne,” I said.

Out to the Beemer. Rain and oil in the puddles. Not trusting police security I still got down into the dirt and looked underneath the BMW for mercury tilt switch bombs.

Crabbie got up front with me, Lawson in the back.

“What’s all this about, sir?” the kid asked.

“I don’t know. But it might connected to a little PI work Crabbie and I did before Christmas,” I said.

I filled him in as we drove north east on the A2.

When we got to Larne it was not difficult to find the crime scene. The army were flying a Gazelle helicopter eight hundred feet above it and there were a dozen police, army and forensic Land Rovers parked in the street.

When we reached Ginger McDaid’s house at least the rain had eased but everything else was pure chaos.

There had been a gun battle here a few hours ago.

Ginger’s front door had been blasted off its hinges and the front living room window was smashed. Shell casings were everywhere. There were bullet holes in nearly vehicle near Ginger’s garden. A horse was lying dead in the wasteland four doors down. They had come to kill Ginger and they had botched it and Ginger had fought back with some kind of automatic weapon.

DS Hunt was having a smoke under an overhang by the forensic vans.

I introduced Lawson but she already knew him from some training course. The young ‘uns were always going on bloody training courses. That’s how they would leapfrog us in the promotion stakes. A worry for a different day.

“What happened here?” I asked DS Hunt.

“Standard loyalist feud stuff turned very bloody when Ginger decided he wanted to go down fighting. They tried to execute a forced entry, he shot at them through the living room window. He killed one of them but they eventually killed him.”

“He had a metal plate in his front door,” I said.

“Aye. The hit team hadn’t scouted the place properly beforehand. Thought they could just march in and shoot him,” Hunt said.

“What was the nature of the feud?” I asked.

“Ginger was UVF but this street is mostly UDA territory. I imagine they asked Ginger to move or switch allegiances and he declined their kind offer and they decided that instead of a protracted negotiation, why not just kill him. Something like that.”

I nodded. That kind of thing happened in Northern Ireland every single day.

“Why call me?”

“It looks like you were the last policeman to talk to Ginger. I just wondered if you might have any additional insight into his. . .I don’t know. . .well being, plans, anything?”

I looked at Crabbie and Lawson and give them a minute shake of the head. They were not to discuss the blackmail without my explicit say so.

“Ginger stonewalled us. He knew I was there on a fishing expedition and he said that he would be happy to cooperate when I came back with a warrant,” I said.

Hunt pursed her lips. She didn’t buy it. I had sold it wrong. Maybe confess something to her?

“I was a wee bit heavy handed with him, if I’m honest. I blew it. Softly softly catchee monkey with this type, you know? Smarter than he looked,” I said.

She nodded. “Aye, these guys today thought they could take him easy and he showed them.”

“Any witnesses, anything like that?” Crabbie asked.

“The entire street saw everything, but of course nobody saw nothing,” Hunt said.

“Recover any of the bank robbery stuff?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yes, it looks he did have some of the stuff from the safeties and he even had some banknotes.”

She looked at me askance – both of us trying to mind read the other. It didn’t work.

“Case closed I suppose,” I said as casually as I could muster.

She could have said “We’ll see about that,” but she merely nodded. Her work load was, no doubt, as piled up as mine.

She would be able to pin the thing on a dead man and add it to her ‘solved’ file. It would look good in her record. That would her best play. Leave me and whatever I was up to out of it. I outranked her and I had a reputation for recklessness – she didn’t need any of that.

I offered her my hand.

“Sorry not to be of any more help,” I said. “If I think of anything pertinent of course I’ll phone you. Hope you catch these murdering bastards.”

“They killed a horse too,” Lawson added.

“Aye, they did, the barbarians,” Crabbie said. He was sentimental about horses was Crabbie. I suppose all Irish people are but he had it worse than the rest of us.

“I’ll do my best, gentlemen,” DS Hunt said.

We drove back to Carrick RUC and I let the boys get on with their work. They didn’t know I was furious.

I was doing my Steve McQueen in Bullitt thing. You know what I mean. . .Up top: calm as a crispy poppadom dipped in mint. Down below: raging like a vindaloo revenge special cooked by an angry chef who’d had it up to here with loutish customers.

“Going out to get some ciggies,” I told the lads.

I went to the Beemer, looked underneath it and found myself driving along the shore and up Trooper’s Lane to the Kennedy household.

I buzzed the gate thingy.

“Inspector Duffy, Carrick RUC,” I said.

There was no response but the gates swung open.

I parked the car outside and the butler chap met me at the door.

“Mrs Kennedy is waiting in the east sitting room,” he said.

“Oh, uhm, I wanted to see Mr Kennedy,” I said, flustered.

“Mr Kennedy is at his office,” the butler said.

“And where might that be?” I asked.

“The Royal Foundry Building, Belfast.”

“Please convey my apologies for the inconvenience to Mrs Kennedy. I should, of course, have phoned first,” I said.

The butler gave me a look that I think he hoped was not condescending. It was.

I drove back down the driveway and caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview.

You’re nearly forty. You have a child. And here you are acting like a hothead, barging in on people, embarrassing yourself. What were you going to do if Mr Kennedy had been home? Accuse of him of murder? Why would he do it? Why would he risk everything to kill an ex-blackmailer?

“You’re a damned fool,” the Duffy in the mirror said.

A buck eejit in the vernacular.

I let the Beemer make the decisions at the junction and like a dowsing rod sensing water it turned right and headed into Belfast.

Another buck eejit move.

Up the motorway and into town.

Some kind of incident in West Belfast. Police Land Rovers and fire engines racing to the scene. My guess an incendiary bombing but it could be anything.

The Royal Foundry Building was on High Street near the Albert Clock.

I parked in an underground lot that charged me three quid an hour for the privilege. That was a new one on me. A couple of years back Belfast had more car parks than any comparable city in Europe. Car parks that were in cut throat competition with each other and had very cheap rates. This was because all the bombed out buildings became car parks after the rubble was removed and while the owners waited until their insurance claims were processed.

It made me think that perhaps not as many businesses were being blown up or torched these days, which was probably a result of the paramilitary protection rackets becoming more effective.

Kennedy’s office was on the top floor of the building.

Kennedy Investments in fact occupied the entire floor.

You walked out of the lift into a reception area. There were two young women behind a desk, answering phones and directing people from the lift.

“Hi, how can I help you?” a woman, whose name tag said “Carol” asked.

“Well Carol, I’m a police officer. I’d like a word with Mr Kennedy. It’s a matter of some urgency,” I said and flashed my warrant card.

Carol, a complete pro, was unflustered by the warrant card.

“Have a seat over here, Inspector Duffy,” she said. “And I’ll let you know when Mr Kennedy becomes available.”

Mr Kennedy became available an hour after I arrived.

This was unusual.

Normally when cops show up at your place of work you see them immediately. If you’re innocent you’re curious what this is all about, if you’re guilty you want to appear innocent so you see them quickly. Sometimes people really are in meetings and the like, of course. but keeping a detective kicking his heels for an hour. . .I wasn’t sure what that meant. Was he so fucking guilty he’d been on the phone to his team of lawyers or was he so unconcerned that he actually forgot I was here?

I was shown into a corner office with a panoramic view of Belfast from big plate glass windows that would cost a fortune to repair the next time they did a car bomb on High Street. You could see right the way down the lough past the shipyards, all the way out into the North Channel. If you squinted a bit you could probably see Carrick Police Station too.

His desk was an enormous piece of some exotic hardwood but there was nothing on it. Not even a telephone. He had black bookcases filled with some books on business but mostly with well curated pieces of pottery and sculpture.

The floor was hardwood too, covered with expensive looking Persian rugs that you were reluctant to stand on.

He showed me to a leather sofa.

He sat opposite in a plush leather chair and an assistant unasked brought in a tea pot, milk, sugar and petit fours.

“Do you like my offices?” he asked.

“Some view. What is that you do here?”

“We’re an investment and development group.”

“You invest in Northern Ireland?” I asked, surprised.

“Someone has to repair the roads, rebuild the buildings, think about the future.”

“I suppose,” I said.

He wanted to be seen as a public servant or philanthropist not a war profiteer but I was in no mood for that sort of game and did not offer the bugger any encouragement. I had a sip of my tea and took out my notebook.

“So what’s this all about?” he asked.

As I told him about what had happened in Larne I watched his face.

He was good.

Very good.

But I was better.

He already knew what had happened in Larne this morning and he was pretending not to know. When I finished talking he was going to say something like, “what’s this got to do with me?” I would tell him that I wanted to know the same thing. And he would ask me if I was insinuating that he was involved in the murder of some scumbag in Larne? And then he would demand proof. And of course I had no proof of any kind. There would be many dead ends and layers of redundancy between his man Harrington and Ginger’s killers.

A man like Kennedy, if not actually sleekit himself, surrounded himself with people who would be sleekit for him.

Layers of redundancy, fixers, lawyers. . .I would be wading into a minefield.

But I had to at least try, didn’t I?

“What’s this got to do with me?” he asked when I was done.

I took another sip of the excellent tea. Some kind of fancy first flush tea from the highlands of Sri Lanka I reckoned.

I let my idle thoughts about the tea slip away and I fixed him with a cold eye.

“I just don’t understand the why,” I said.

“What why?”

“It was over. You’d got the photos back. You got the negatives back. He was never going to bother you again. So. . .why?”

“I had nothing to do with what happened to Mr McDaid. I was in my office here all—”

“I know. I’m sure you have a great alibi and if we ever catch the leader of the gang that shot Ginger he will have got his instructions from some guy he never met, who in turn will have gotten his instructions from some guy he never met. . .You’re completely safe from a criminal prosecution. This. . .this is for my own curiosity. As a detective you’re always trying to get a better understanding of human nature. So if you could just tell me why, I’d really appreciate it.”

He leaned back in his chair.

There had been alarm in his soft blond brows and light blue eyes for a moment or two but that had evaporated when I told him the truth about any possible criminal charges. Now he gave me the same smug, complacent, kinda charming smile that was most likely his default smile for dealing with gamekeepers, servants, investors and policemen.

“If there’s no other business. . .” he said.

“Does your wife know you had a man killed because he saw some naked pictures of her?”

“I’d like you to go.”

“What about your man Harrington and me and Sergeant McCrabban— are we safe from your jealous rage, if that’s what this was?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

He stood and an assistant came in to escort me out.

“If there’s nothing else. . .” he said. The eyes were cobalt blue now. Executioner cold.

Had he had Ginger murdered, for reasons I didn’t really understand?

Had he done it just because he could get away with it?

“Thank you for your cooperation Mr Kennedy, I’ll find my own way out,” I said.

9

I know the book on me. Drinks too much, smokes too much, never give him the key to the evidence room.

And not really an intuitive coppers. No sudden insights, no flashes of brilliance.

But I’m a grinder amn’t I?

Blessing/curse – can’t ever let things go.

New cases. Everyone moving on.

Larne RUC moving on.

No one thinking about this anymore.

Ginger was a bank robber and a paramilitary and a player – he got what was coming to him. No witnesses willing to testify. No forensics.

Another killing. Another bombing. This is the 80s. . .

But it’s not over.

For me.

Because I had taken his money. He had bought me.

I tried to shower it off.

I went to confessional. Talked to the priest.

Then I talked to an old and respected retired colleague down the pub.

And then I talked to a dog I met on the beach.

They all said the same thing.

Move the fuck on, Duffy.

But you know me.

I bloody didn’t move on.

Instead I started driving up Troopers Lane, parking in the lay-by and following him.

Following him to work, to squash, to functions at City Hall and Stormont, to interviews at the BBC, to the airport, to a house in East Belfast where a woman in her twenties let him in.

I followed the woman from East Belfast. She was a graduate student in chemistry at Queens. Life was full of surprises.

One Tuesday night I was parked in the lay by listening to Fanny Mendelssohn’s charming overture in C major when I saw the butler fellow come out of the house and walk over to the Beemer. He tapped the window.

“Yeah?” I said not putting the glass down.

“Mrs Kennedy is worried for your well-being on such a cold night. She wonders if you’d like to come in for a drink by the fire,” he said.

I shook my head. “Nah, you’re alright, pal. I’m fine here.”

“Mrs Kennedy thought you might say that, she wanted you to know that Mr Kennedy has already left.”

“No he hasn’t.”

“He left in the back of Mr Harrington’s car.”

“Was he lying down or something?”

“Apparently.”

Sneaky bastard.

“She wants me to come in for a drink?”

“That is what she said.”

“All right then.”

10

A completely different living room from the one I’d been in before. This one was more intimate, book lined, a writing desk by a window, tasteful watercolours on the wall. I got the feeling that this was her space, one she had carved out for herself and no one was allowed in here without her permission.

She was dressed in her night clothes. A thick much loved dressing gown, old mens slippers. Her head was wrapped in a towel. Jazz piano was coming from a stereo – Monk, of course, but which album I could not tell.

I sat down in a leather chair by the fire while she poured me a whisky from a crystal decanter. She added a little cold water unasked and handed it to me.

It was a twenty five or thirty year old something from Islay. One of those thousand quid bottles you hear about that rich men collect but never actually open.

A beautiful woman, the perfect drink, the perfect music, a roaring peat fire.

I was being buttered up for something.

She poured herself a glass of whisky and sat adjacent to me.

“You’re probably wondering why we haven’t reported you to your superiors yet,” was her opening salvo.

“Reported me for what?”

“Harassment.”

“I’ll bite. Why haven’t you reported me to my superiors yet? Does your husband have a guilty conscience about something?”

“No. He doesn’t. Nor do I. We had nothing to do with the death of that person in Larne.”

“Ginger McDaid.”

“Indeed. We had nothing to do with his death. Why on Earth you suspect my husband utterly baffles me.

I took another sip of the whisky. “I’d be happy to explain, ma’am, but unfortunately I can’t. I was working for your husband in a confidential matter that I am not at liberty to discuss with you.”

A red hair slipped from the towel and fell over her face. She pushed it back.

“The blackmail? He’s told me all about that. And he told me how you resolved it. How promptly you resolved it. We were well pleased with you, Inspector Duffy until you began this bizarre campaign of persecution against us.”

“I don’t think your husband was content to leave it there.”

“Why?”

“My gut tells me. The hit on Ginger had something behind it. These men had motivation. Normally in a loyalist feud when the person you’re after starts firing back at you with a machine gun you leg it. But these men didn’t leg it. They stayed and finished the job.”

She sipped her whisky.

“That’s it? Your gut? Are you kidding? It’s 1989. You’re doing all of this because of a hunch that my husband is what. . .a jealous vengeful fanatic?”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

She finished her whisky and when I was done she took my glass.

The butler came in

“I trust we won’t be seeing you again, Inspector Duffy.”

“I have agreed to no such thing,” I said.

“Even after my assurance that we had nothing to do with McDaid’s death?”

“Even after that.”

“Show him out, Brown.”

The butler showed me out.

11

Ownies Bar for lunch. Well, liquid lunch if I’m honest. Pint of the black stuff while I gazed into the fireplace. Dark talk from the pipe smokers behind me about Lockerbie and Pan Am 103.

Back to the station through sleet and a cold wind.

Thinking, brooding.

My phone was off the hook. I was in my chair at the office gazing out at the lough and listening to bloody Béla Bartók when Lawson came running looking paler than usual for a Thursday.

“What’s the matter, son? A fire? We’ve run out of milk? Did Debbie Harry just show up downstairs?”

“Debbie who? No, sir, the phone! I’m trying to transfer you. Oh my God, sir, please!”

I lifted the needle on the record and put the phone back on the crook.

It rang immediately.

“Duffy?” a voice said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“This is Jack. Look, Sean, I’m calling as a friend for this first phone call. You’re a young officer many of us thought was going places.”

The voice was familiar but I couldn’t quite—

“I’m sorry. . .Jack?”

Just then Lawson came in with a note that said. “It’s the Chief Constable!”

Holy shit. The Chief Constable of the RUC, Sir John bloody Hermon.

I coughed, took a sip of water, tried to recover, turned off the stereo.

“I’m sorry, sir, what is this in relation to?”

“Marcus and Jayne Kennedy. Friends of ours. I’m told you’ve been hassling them over some unpaid parking tickets or something. I know you’re in an out of the way station with not much to do, Duffy, but surely you can see the big picture. Eh? There’s a good lad. I don’t want to hear your name from them again. In fact I don’t want to hear your name again full stop. Am I making myself clear?”

“Very clear, sir.”

“Excellent. Goodbye, Inspector Duffy.”

“Good bye, sir,” I said but he had already hung up.

Lawson put down his sign.

“What was that about? Are we in trouble?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“No, we’re not in trouble. It’s my mistake. I forgot what a warning shot looked like. Now I get it,” I said.

Lawson was still standing there.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t nothing me. What is it?”

“It’s my career too, sir. I’m still starting out,” he said.

I nodded. “It’s going to be fine, son. Trust me, I’m not a complete idiot.”

He tried to smile, tried to look reassured, and left the office.

Crabbie wouldn’t have smiled. Crabbbie wouldn’t have left the office. But Lawson didn’t know me well enough yet.

12

I left the Kennedys alone for a full calendar month.

But then I found myself in Greenisland cruising past their house on the way to other business. Sometimes the house would be floodlit at night and the turning circle in front was full of cars. They were giving dinner parties or just party parties for the great and the good – those clever people who somehow managed to thrive while the rest of us attempted to survive.

I’d watch those beautiful and connected people and then I would drive back to Coronation Road and park my admittedly very nice motor and go inside to my newborn babe and stressed out missus and I’d fix the paraffin heater and fry up some sausages and potato bread.

It wasn’t that I envied them. I had a good life. And I’d been very lucky.

But. . .they annoyed me.

He annoyed me.

War profiteer, murderer, man who called your boss on you to put you in your place.

And into your place you went like a beaten dog.

And so I began parking in the layby again on my evenings off.

Waiting, watching and listening to mix tapes.

Marcus Kennedy had bought a border collie pup and I began following him through Greenisland up into the hills or parkland or down to the shore. He threw sticks for the dog and petted it when it brought them back. And I waited for another shoe to drop, for a hidden agenda, for him meeting some ne’er do well.

But it never came. It was a man and a dog.

I watched. Waited.

And one night when I followed him, two men stepped out from behind a tree with sawed off shotguns and I heard another man behind me and I put my hands up and the man behind me hit me with a cricket bat and when I went down all three men began kicking me.

I reached for my revolver.

“No you don’t, peeler!” someone said and kicked me in the back of the head.

I didn’t black out completely but, dazed, I felt myself being dragged into a van.

I fought hard but I must have lost consciousness for a few minutes because the next thing I knew I was on an ottoman in one of Mrs. Kennedy’s living rooms.

I sat up. The room was empty. There was a carafe of water and a glass in front of me. My hands were not tied. My gun was next to the carafe.

The hell?

I poured myself a glass of water and drank it and splashed some water on my face.

I put the gun back in its leather holster.

I self-triaged.

My back and head hurt. Possibly a cracked rib on my left hand side. My lip was split. My jeans were torn and filthy. The bastards had dragged me not carried me. Probably scraped all over too. Beth would notice that.

Shit.

I drank more water.

The room focused.

No doubt my advent had been blurted to Jayne Kennedy.

The door opened, Mrs Kennedy came in, handed me two white pills and sat down.

“What are these?” I asked her.

“Aspirin.”

I swallowed them.

“Did you know,” I began, “That assaulting a police officer in pursuance of his duty is a criminal offence liable on summary conviction to a term of imprisonment up to six months?”

“Were you in pursuance of your duty?” she asked.

She wearing a cool khaki number today. A beautifully cut retro linen jacket and slacks that gave her an air of someone who was about to game hunting with Hemingway.

Wardrobe is character and the impression of course was that I was the hunted who could still get it in the bloody neck if I played this wrong.

“Can I ask you a question that’s been bothering me,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

“Why did your husband keep the photos and the negatives?”

She smiled. “Because I asked him to.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I was very young and I was scared and I was on junk for most of that period and my memory wasn’t as clear as it is today. But the photographs helped me remember faces and names.”

I nodded.

I’d been slow on the uptake but now I finally got it.

Shit.

It was her.

It wasn’t just Ginger McDaid. Now that she had power and money she had been dealing with all those men who had humiliated and abused her all those years ago.

The pimps. The johns. The dealers.

Her eyes were very green.

Intelligent, beautiful, vindictive eyes.

King Duncan was right - there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

Her husband did as he was told. She was the player.

She saw that I understood and smiled.

“Did you never think about just letting it all go?” I asked.

“Would you have let it all go?”

“I don’t know. I think most people would have,” I said.

“I am not most people.”

“I can see that.”

“No. You can’t. Not yet. You are like many of the men in this lost province.”

Lost province, I liked that. Not so keen on the “not yet” bit.

She looked at her watch. She didn’t care about the time. Events evolved around her. Other people adjusted their schedules for her. What the glance at the watch was attempting to convey was the hint that this interview was at an end.

“I’ll see myself out if you don’t mind,” I said.

She nodded. “Do you require assistance?”

“No.”

I staggered into the hall, out the front door, along the drive. I found the Beemer, looked underneath it for mercury tilt switch bombs, didn’t find any, drove him.

Beth was at her book group and Karen the baby sitter was in.

I poured myself a vodka gimlet, heavy on the vodka and went upstairs to the bath with a couple of codeine pills.

Everything ached.

It would, I knew, be much worse in the morning.

13

Some people never learn, do they?

It still bothered me.

But the months went by.

Other cases.

Other beatings, other defeats.

Still, this rage for order, for closure, was eating me alive.

The grind of the day to day. Belfast on fire. Murders, riots and other fun stuff.

Lawson leading me downstairs to Interview Room 1 where he had apprehended a couple of teenage car thieves.

“The taller of the two is a lad called Killian, no surname, apparently, his accomplice is someone called Michael Forsythe. They’ve both been in our files before. Several warnings for the pair of them. I’m afraid that this time, sir, we’ll have to throw the book at them.”

I took my seat and looked at the lads. Crabbie came in. Lawson handed him the file. Crabbie read it and glanced at me. I knew what he was thinking. We can’t let these two off as well as that wee shite in Larne. There’s the Royal Prerogative and there’s being a bloody fool. We were the peelers after all. It was our job to lock up ne’er do wells.

But I was bored with all of it. My ennui was a 9.6 on the Camus/Sartre scale. I bollocked out the teenage thieves, shook my finger at them and let them go.

Before Crabbie could object or Lawson said something stupid about “misplaced noblesse oblige” I went up the stairs and back out to my Beemer.

I found myself in East Belfast watching Kennedy’s girlfriend’s house.

I long lensed the dumb bastard. Kissing her on the porch.

I developed the pics in the police darkroom.

I sent the photographs to Mrs Kennedy.

It was a petty, malicious thing to do but it was the sort of thing a crushed and routed opponent would do.

Whatever I was hoping for was not what I got back.

Four days later an envelope addressed to me via Carrick CID.

I opened the package. It was the photos I’d taken of the husband and with them were photographs of Beth and Emma at the park. Also long lens, lots of close ups of my baby girl smiling on the swings.

The threat was implicit and clear.

With the two sets of photographs there was a note:

“Don’t ever fuck with me again.”

And you know what?

I never fucked with her again.