Murder in the Red Barn - A Sean Duffy Story (work in progress...)
1
March 1992 on a faery hill by the holestone in Doagh.
Probably several words in that sentence that don’t make sense to you which is a problem a narrator always has. I mean how specific can you get? What can you skip over and what do you have to unpack? Ever read Thucydides? He’s the bloody gold standard. He didn’t unpack everything but he knew he was writing for the future so he unpacked plenty.
I suppose I’ll have to explain Doagh and holestone and faery hill.
And the year doesn’t really matter but the month does.
Snow was in the forecast and it was cold, with an ominous wind cutting across the fields from the north.
There are thousands of faery hills all over Ireland. Mounds that local folklore say are the dwellings or otherwise belong to the faery folk. Farmers don’t plant crops on them or cut down trees on them. No one messes with them. All of them have at least one story about some priest or Presbyterian minister who went out there to prove that it was all just pagan superstition. You can imagine what happened to the priest after that. A series of traumatic, painful, but also, somehow, hilarious accidents that did not end well for the man of the cloth.
This particular faery hill was near the village of Doagh (pronounced doke) not too far from the town where I was based, Carrickfergus.
The Doagh Holestone was a unique and beautiful object that is worth looking up in an encylopedia if you’ve got one. It’s a stone megalith that was dragged to the top of the hill by unknown people, but probably the Neolithic tribes who lived in Ulster back then. After they got it to the top of the hill they then carved a perfect circle into its upper third. The Doagh Holestone was a place of long standing magic with disputed interpretations about the nature of this magic amongst local folklorists. Some said that if young lovers put their hands through the holestone they would be instantly wed and protected in this wedlock by the fey. Others said that objects put through the holestone at special times of the year would themselves become magic. Still others said that the holestone allowed you a glimpse into the future, again only at certain times of the year.
I’d driven past it many times on the Doagh Road and it occurred to me that, like most megaliths, it was aligned with either the solstice or equinox or perhaps some other quarter time of the year.
So here I was on March 19 half an hour before sunrise testing a theory about the equinox.
I was fortunate in the cloud cover. The snow clouds were coming from the north and west. But in the east there was nothing.
There was no one else here either. No farmers, no hippies. A few skeptical sheep and cows wandering over the scrabble fields without stone walls.
I was comfortable with most farm animals but I had to admit that I did feel a bit foolish standing out here in me skinny jeans, white t shirt and not very warm leather jacket.
No doubt it would contrive to rain on me despite the forecast.
A cow wandered over and nuzzled my leg.
“Níl aon rud le tabhairt agam duit, a bhean uasail,” I said.
I have nothing for thee.
The cow didn’t quite believe me. It backed away a pace or two but lingered in case I had some sort of treat.
The sky began to lighten in the east, the sun transmuting its components into various golds, yellows and reds.
A harrier hovered over a stone wall, apparently fixated on a mouse.
The nearby cow mooed.
The sun finally rose in a gap between the Antrim hills.
And, as I suspected, after a moment or two it rose through the four thousand year old circle in holestone.
It wasn’t the find of the century or anything. It wasn’t a bedazzled Howard Carter stumbling into Tutankhamen’s tomb or Hiram Bingham moving aside a fern or two and finding Maccu Picchu. But it did mean something, surely, the sun rising directly through the holdstone on the equinox? Cool, right?
I’d been ready to be a bit underwhelmed but I was not underwhelmed.
This was badass. An important discovery. I should it report it to Queens University Archaeology Department or something.
I looked through the holestone circle at the sun.
There was something odd about it. A kind of blurring distortion. Never look directly at the sun TV astronomers tell us and I have no reason to doubt them.
It was weird.
The light didn’t look quite right.
It was not showing me a glimpse of the future before it moved out of the circle.
It was definitely not doing that.
But that was an odd shadow that looked a bit like something on fire, like a police Land Rover on fire. . .
A bird flew overheard.
Were the more interesting songbirds coming back? No. Not until April. They were in Africa now. Some, like the nuthatch, all the way down in Angola. God bless the wee shites.
I felt what could be a snowflake on my face.
The sun was continuing to rise. In a minute its light would illuminate Lough Neagh and then the Sperrin and Blue Stack Mountains and then the indigo Atlantic and then perhaps the Land of the Lost in the west where the Ones That Were Here Before wait patiently for us.
Aye.
More possible snowflakes.
More moos.
I stopped looking through the holestone and rubbed my eyes.
I left the faery hill and the megalith and walked back to the Beemer.
I looked under the Beemer for bombs and got inside.
“There’s a lot of snow in the forecast, folks. Stay home if you can,” they were saying on Downtown Radio.
I wasn’t so sure. Ireland never gets “a lot of snow”. You know how many snow days I can remember as a kid?
Maybe two.
There’s a famous poem by Louis MacNeice about snow but it’s not falling outside the window of his house in Carrickfergus. It’s falling outside the window of his house in London. Ireland is much farther north than London, indeed more northerly than most of Europe, so why the paucity of cold white fluffy stuff?
It’s because of the Gulf Stream innit? Come on. That was an easy one. There are going to be harder ones. You better brush up your ideas if you’re going to be hanging out around these parts.
“It’s March 19, four days after the Ides, two after St Pat’s and coming up New Order,” they said on the radio.
The Equinox, aye. A turning point for the year. The days would get longer and spring would come. I put the car in gear and drove to Carrickfergus. After New Order they played Roxy Music. That one about the blow up doll so reminiscent of the Velvets but with Brian Eno providing some cool distortion.
When I got to the station Lawson had nothing for me. Crabbie wasn’t in.
I pretended to work for an hour and slipped away for a long lunch.
Pint in Ownies. Another pint in Dobbins.
“Snow in the forecast, Sean,” Derek said as he caught me hunched by the fire doing the Times crossword.
“Aye,” I said, skeptically, gazing out the window.
“You should tell John McCrabban to keep his cows in,” Derek said.
“Me tell Crabbie anything about farming? Him and the missus would have a good laugh about that.”
“Aye, well. . .snow. . .”
I finished the pint and walked around Carrick in my DMs, skinny jeans, jacket.
Quiet now in the lanes, alleys, back streets.
I’d been expecting something to happen. The magic of this morning and this being in Ulster with a civil war still going on.
But nothing doing.
The world and his wife were quiet.
I took my Walkman earphones out of my pocket and put them on my ears. I normally hated to do this because any thug or gunman could get the drop on you.
But sometimes you had to give the fuckers a sporting chance. I pressed play on the Walkman and listened to the tape I’d made of Vycpálek’s The Cantata of the Last Things of Man. It wasn’t exactly my šálek čaje but I could roll with it.
Some more Vycpálek and then the other side which was Etta James.
A Sunday Kind of Love got me to the bookies on North Street where they had odds up for the Grand National. There was an eight year old called Romany King they had at 20:1. I put twenty quid on it without much optimism.
Back outside and along West Street. Sammy closing up his barber shop.
“How do, Sean Duffy?”
“Well and you?”
“Can’t complain,” he said.
“Are you even allowed to complain in your Marxist utopia?” I said, joshing him because I knew he was rushing home to listen to the 5 o’clock bulletin from Radio Havana. He’d been a Radio Albania devotee for many years but recent events in the Adriatic had forced him to switch to Radio Havana on long wave.
He grinned. “Oh Sean, still buying that Western propaganda, I see. Come in for a haircut on Saturday and I’ll set you right,” he said.
“I might just do that,” I said, waved, and slid through St Nicholas’s churchyard which had been standing here in one form or another for about seven hundred years.
I stopped at a few of the gravestones and continued on in a loop that took me to the harbour .
More gentle snowflakes. But with every minute they began to get a little heavier.
I walked quickly back to the station, avoided everyone and got the car.
I was supposed to get the tires changed this weekend but if snow really was coming. . .
I checked underneath for bombs, drove down to the garage and found Danny.
“Bout ye, Daniel.”
“Bout ye, Sean, what’s amiss?”
“An extra twenty quid if you can do the tires today,” I said.
“The weather is it?” Danny asked. “You reckon we’re going to be snowed in?”
“Maybe a bit of that and also the fact that I’m about to be flush with cash, mate.”
“How so? A claim in against the council or something?”
“I did some magic shit this morning and stuck a big bet on the Grand National.”
Danny was an old flower child interested in magic and horses. He stuck one hand in his dungarees and stroked his long Gandalf beard with the other. The beard was red, was there another one of those wizards with a red beard? Not Gandalf. . .Redbadgardh. . .Radbraghedge-
“What did you bet on, Sean?”
“Gypsy something.”
“Romany King?”
“Aye, that was the one.”
Danny shook his head and made a little laugh. “Money down the drain, mate. This year it’s Party Politics. Gorgeous stallion that one. A descendant of Hyperion.”
“A good lineage?”
“Hyperion won the Derby! Jesus, Sean, next time you want to make a bet on the horses come to me. Tsk, tsk.”
“I will,” I said and vowed that I would not come see the big know-it-all wizardy shite. I mean, really, if you want to embarrass an Irishman mock his knowledge of whisky or horses.
Hurrying along the sea front trying to zip up my jacket. The zip of course would only go a third of the way to the top. There had been a time when the reliability of zips had been questioned by coat manufacturers so they always provided buttons or duffle coat style togs as a fail-safe. But zips were a thing now, had been for most of the century so buttons had been dispensed with. And this is when the zips had seized their moment and began – deliberately – to fail, so you’d come home wet and soaked and cold.
What the zips’ agenda was was obscure but I was working on a theory or two - they were plotting something. Zips probably in cahoots with the robots.
Snow. The real deal. Heavier and heavier as I went up over the railway bridge, Taylor’s Avenue and Barn Road.
Every kid in the street was out in their front yard, analyzing the sky. It was a Thursday. A possible snow day would kill Friday – giving them a long weekend, maybe even the Monday too.
I turned up Coronation Road.
Mr McFerrin eight doors down was also looking skyward. When he saw me he handed me a plastic bag.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Tomatoes from the greenhouse. Small of course but we have to eat them now. Storm’s coming.”
“Can you not just put a space heater out there?”
He glared at me under big black beetle brows. “Are you serious, son? Tomatoes are delicate. Solanum Lycopersicon, Sean! You can’t blast a heater at them. Eat these. The Aztecs swore by them.”
“I will do that,” I assured him.
I arrived at 113 Coronation Road, opening the black swing gate and went down the path. Mr McFerrin might have had some luck with his winter tomatoes but nothing I had planted was coming up. No tulips, no snowdrops. Other gardens even had daffs coming up but not here. It’s possible that because I was a peeler someone was sneaking into the front yard at night and pouring lime or ammonia on my flowers but more likely I was just shite at gardening.
I liked the paranoid explanation though. It’s good to be a paranoid copper – people really are trying to kill you and MI5 and army intelligence probably are listening in on your phone calls. . .but you can’t let it drive you insane. What’s that quote Crabbie always says from William Burroughs? “A paranoid is a man who is beginning to see what’s really going on. . .”
I kid – Crabbie’s never heard of William Burroughs and wouldn’t like him if he had heard of him.
The house was quiet.
Beth and Emma of course were safely ensconced in Scotland.
I was a part-time peeler now, only here seven days a month. I called myself Detective Inspector Sean Duffy but I did very little detecting these days. I’d handed over the reins of Carrick CID to my protegee, Alexander Lawson and he ran a tight little ship.
It was the 1990s now anyway and something different was in the air. Crime was down, terrorist attacks were down, I didn’t exactly know what was happening but it looked to me like negotiations were going on behind the scenes to end all this madness. I hoped so. Freud talks about the narcissism of the small differences and to me that was the only reason for the enmity between Ulster’s Prods and Catholics. They were the same people divided by religion. Religion has a nice way of doing that.
The house wasn’t cold.
Mrs Campbell next door, who had the key, had sent in one of her weans to add some peat to the fire.
Definitely a Nick Cave kind of evening. I put on Kicking Against The Pricks which is a covers album that I’d only ever played once but I remember liking Nick’s version of All Tomorrow’s Parties.
I pulled up an armchair close and poured myself an Islay.
The door kept banging in the gale so I found the heaviest book I didn’t care about and wedged it. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason which the Jesuits tried to physically beat into me. Not that they agreed with Kant but their take was that you have to intimately know your enemy.
As soon as I was settled the phone rang.
I swallowed the whisky, moved aside Mr Kant and marched into the hall.
“Duffy,” I said.
“Sean, its Alex, I was wondering if you could give me half an hour of your time,” he said.
“I’ve clocked off,” I said.
“I know.”
He didn’t say any more. It was a good move. He knew my copper’s curiosity would get the best of me. Like presenting a cardboard box to a cat, I was unable to resist.
I bit my tongue. Be strong, Sean.
I didn’t have to do anymore detective work if I didn’t want to, but cases pulled at ya and Lawson knew that. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’ve got an insurance investigator in my office. He’s got a few suspicions about one of his policies.”
“Some poor bastard fiddling his car payments? No thank you! I’m—”
“It might be a murder case, Sean,” Lawson interrupted.
“A murder case? Why aren’t you taking it?”
“I might take it, but it’s delicate. I’d like your opinion, Sean.”
“What about Crabbie?”
“Sergeant McCrabban is here already. We both thought you might be interested in this one.”
“You know it’s supposed to be heavy snow today? I left me motor in to get the tires changed.”
“Maybe you could walk down?”
“Alex, mucker, I just did me walk! I can’t do two walks in one day. Upsets the whole system.”
“See you in fifteen minutes?”
“I’ll need to find me boots.”
“Is that a yes?”
I sighed, coughed, did my best dramatic pause, and finally said, “Aye, ok.”
2
As soon as I put the phone down it rang again. It was Beth in Scotland. I asked how she and Emma were.
They were both good.
Beth was worried. She’d heard there was a storm coming.
“They’re not going to make you go out in the snow are you?”
“What? Me? Who do you think you’re married to? I’m not a traffic cop. I’ll be snug inside the whole weekend doing the crossword.”
“Wrap up warm. Do you have that scarf I knitted?”
“Uhm, yeah, I have that somewhere. . .”
“It’s in the cupboard under the stairs.”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
I’d hidden it there for three reasons. Beth had gotten a bit carried away with the scarf and it was a length now that would have given Tom Baker pause during his Dr Who heyday. Secondly it was in Everton’s colours. Or Chelsea colours. You wouldn’t want people to think you were an Everton, or worse, a Chelsea supporter. . .The third reason I’d hidden it was related to the first reason: Isadora Duncan’s death by scarf in Nice. . .
“Promise me you’ll wear the scarf,” Beth said.
“Yeah, I will,” I said. “I’ll need it.”
“Take care. I love you Sean.”
“Love you too.”
I looked out my boots and black beanie hat and lined leather jacket and I hooked the long woolen Everton Dr Who scarf around my neck like a hangman’s noose.
As I stepped outside it was full dark and the snow was already beginning to fall.
I got to the end of Coronation Road before being noticed by young Samantha McCallister. “Have you become a Glasgow Rangers fan now, Inspector Duffy?” she asked.
“No, I have not!” I said but it would of course be the natural progression for the Catholic copper who had betrayed his comrades by joining the RUC. No doubt by summer, like every good Protestant, I would be marching in an Orange Parade, burning effigies of the Pope and keeping my toaster in a cupboard.
I turned down Victoria Road musing on the accordion – certainly the instrument I would be given in hell by Dr (sic) Paisley for my Orange Parade.
No one could ever know this, but I can actually play the accordion. Indeed I had become pretty good at it when I thought there was an off chance I could get into Tom Waits’s backing band during his tour of Ireland.
At the bottom of Victoria Road I crossed the busy carpark, darted into Victoria chippie and got myself a fish supper.
“You seem lost in thought, Sean,” Marjory said.
“I was thinking about that Mark Twain story about his experiences learning to play the accordion. . .it’s uhm, very funny,” I said.
“I don’t know that one. Salt and vinegar on your chips?”
“Aye.”
“But I suppose you know that Mark Twain’s grandfather is from just up the road in Ballyclare. Samuel Clemens,” Marj continued.
“I did not know that.”
“You need to brush up on your local history if you’re going to pass the Carrickfergus Citizenship Exam.”
“I thought I was already long accepted into this fair community?”
“You still have to pass the formal written examination,” she joked. “Salt and vinegar on your fish?”
“Please.”
“There you go. See you Sean, stay off the roads, my Donny says there’s going to be five inches tonight.”
“Isn’t Donny your cat?”
“Aye and he’s never wrong about the weather.”
I ate the fish supper as I walked down to the station.
Straight from the fryer it was bloody delicious.
I looked up at the sky. It was an odd grey black that stretched from here all the way up the Glens and over to Scotland. But five inches at sea level? No chance.
I must have been bloody starving. I’d eaten the whole shebang by the time I arrived at the cop shop on the Scotch Quarter.
“No car, Inspector Duffy?” Dave asked as he let me into the police station.
“No. Apparently the roads are closing cos of the weather.”
“Beemer can’t handle it, eh?”
“It can handle anything. Just being cautious,” I said somewhat defensively.
“The wife’s coming for me after my shift in the tractor,” Dave said.
I nodded. The old joke about Protestants round my way was, it’s easy to spot a Protestant – he’s the one on the tractor or the horse. . .I mean did all of these country coppers know someone who owned a bloody tractor?
I waved, went in the station and up to Lawson’s office.
Minstrel Boy was on the radio. I made a face.
“Don’t you like that one?” Lawson asked.
“I prefer the original, Mozart's Flute Quartet K. 298.”
“Uhm, I think it's an old Irish tune, Sean,” Lawson said.
“Aye, that’s what that Byron burning plagiarsing eejit Tommy Moore would have you believe.”
Crabbie was filling his pipe. The insurance inspector was nowhere to be seen.
“This insurance guy, he’s not invisible is he?” I said in a whisper.
“Mr Vincent had to go because of the snow,” Lawson said. “But he left his report. Sergeant McCrabban and I have read it and we both think further action may be needed before Tuesday.”
“What happens on Tuesday?” I asked. “It’s that rare event every hundred years or so when an insurance company finally has to pay out on a bloody policy?” I asked.
“Mr Vincent has already paid the policy,” Lawson said. “But Smith and his family are emigrating to Canada on Tuesday. Vincent thought he would have one last try at convincing the RUC before they left. This is his file.”
Lawson handed me an insurance investigator’s report, double spaced, well typed, complete with coroner’s report, autopsies, maps, photographs. I put it back on Lawson’s desk.
“Where’s the police file?” I asked.
“In Larne,” Lawson said. “Larne RUC already investigated this case and concluded that there was no foul play.”
“Ah but you see,” I said, leaning back in the chair, “We can’t go around instigating murder investigations in their parish. You know what they’re like.”
Lawson nodded. “I thought you might say, but look at this. . .”
He unfolded an ordnance survey map on which he had drawn RUC district boundaries in red felt tip pen. There were two Xs on the map one of which was just in the boundary of Carrick RUC’s district.
“What happened here?” I asked, pointing at the second X.
“That’s where Bree Smith supposedly killed herself. As you can see the farmhouse is over the line in the territory of Larne RUC which is why they investigated it and the other suicide but if you look closely at this, the barn where she did the deed is actually in our district.”
I shook my head and looked at Lawson.
“This is pretty thin gruel, Alex,” I said. “What exactly did Larne RUC conclude?”
“Two suicides, 2 days apart,” Lawson explained. “James McDonald and Bree Smith were having an affair. McDonald couldn’t take the guilt anymore and hung himself. Forty eight hours later Bree Smith went to her barn, attached a hosepipe to the exhaust of her car, put it in through the driver’s side window and poisoned herself.”
“And what does Mr Vincent think actually happened?” I asked.
Crabbie handed me the report again. “He thinks Charles Smith forced McDonald to hang himself, probably at gunpoint while McDonald’s wife was out and the kids were at school,” Crabbie began. “And then two days later when his own kids were at school Vincent thinks Smith gave his wife sleeping pills, carried her out to the garage and poisoned her to make it look like they were having an affair.”
“Were they having an affair?” I asked.
Crabbie shrugged.
“I know divorce is a hassle but it’s always less of a hassle than a murder,” I said.
“Unless you’re Henry VIII,” Crabbie offered.
“It does seem a rather baroque solution to an old problem,” Lawson said. “But if you look at the autopsy report there were traces of heavy narcotics in Bree Smith’s system. More than enough to knock her out. How did she even get out to the garage?”
I started thumbing through the report. “Wait a second. Doesn’t suicide invalidate a life insurance policy?”
Lawson shook his head. “Bree and Charles Smith had a life insurance policy that had a no claim pay out clause for suicide for up to the first ten years after signing and then a fifty percent claim policy after that.”
“So Charles Smith got percent of the money,” Crabbie said.
“Which was how much?”
“Two hundred thousand quid,” Lawson said.
I nodded. A tidy sum. “Where did all this take place?” I asked Crabbie.
“Deraskmore,” Crabbie said.
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“Tiny little townland near Kilwaughter,” Crabbie said.
“Just read the report, Sean,” Lawson said.
I moved over to the sofa by the heater and began on the report. Lawson went to the drinks cabinet and poured us all a measure of the 16 year old Lagavulin.
It tasted like a homemade cough elixir that went down with the Titanic, was washed up on a beach 80 years later, and distilled into alcohol by Ben the Tramp from Local Hero.
It was excellent.
The report however was a lot of supposition.
“Well?” Lawson said.
I looked at Crabbie.
“It’s possible,” he said, adding hastily “Not that I’m prejudiced.”
“Prejudiced about what?”
“It’s a Catholic townland surrounded by Protestants so they can be a bit ornery and hostile,” Crabbie explained.
“I don’t blame them,” I said.
I continued to read. “So six months after the deaths he marries Jane McDonald and they combine the farms and blend the families,” I said.
“Uh huh,” Lawson said.
“Six children between them,” Crabbie muttered.
“He must have planned it with this Jane McDonald,” I said. “There’s no way you kill your wife and your lover’s husband on the off chance that she will go along with it. If they did it, they did it together.”
Lawson nodded.
“Moving to Canada, eh?” I said, as I continued to read.
“Next week,” Crabbie reminded me.
“But all this happened, what two years ago? Any physical evidence will be long gone,” I said. “How are we supposed to investigate? Trick them into a sudden confession after all this time?”
Neither Lawson nor Crabbie had an answer to that one and the mysterious Mr Vincent had palmed this off to us with the nonchalance of Pontius Pilate.
The wind rattled the office. Snow was coming down harder now.
“The insurance company has paid out the policy. They’re leaving the country. One strong argument would be that maybe it’s best to just let sleeping dogs lie?” I suggested.
“Why did we join the peelers in the first place if we don’t want to catch criminals?” Crabbie said.
I stood, put down the report and the whisky and walked to the window.
“A cold coming we had of it/Just the worst time of the year/For a journey and such a long journey/The ways deep and the weather sharp,” I muttered.
“Sean?” Lawson said, slightly concerned.
“By tomorrow it’s going to be impassable up there,”I said. “It might be like that for days. If we’re going to go we should take a police Land Rover and go up there tonight.”
Lawson looked first at Crabbie and then at me.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
3
I let the Crabman drive. He lived up in the hills and his experience with snow was a bit more extensive than mine. Lawson and I sat in the back. This was a 1990s RUC Traffic Land Rover rather than a bog standard 1980s job. They had removed the RPG cage from the sides and had even installed a little slit window, made from thick bullet proof glass, that allowed you to see out a little.
Crabbie was driving in a low gear and being very careful but we could still feel the wheels sliding around in the slush and snow.
“Don’t get us in a sheugh, mate,” I said to Crabbie through the back partition.
“Don’t disturb me when I’m driving, please!” he replied.
He sounded stressed so I let it go.
“How is it being the boss?” I asked Lawson.
“You made it look difficult, Sean. But it’s easy peasy,” Lawson said.
“Cheeky wee skitter,” I muttered.
“George Joseph Smith,” Lawson said after a minute or two.
“What about him?” I said.
“He was a bloke who preferred murder to divorce,” Lawson said.
“Oh yeah, the infamous Brides in the Bath case,” I said dimly remembering the name now. He preferred murder, bigamy, desertion, fraud, anything really to divorce.
“Too many Smiths,” I said. “I don’t like it. I don’t buy it. There’s probably a reasonable explanation.”
Lawson looked at me the way young people look at their elders to get on their nerves.
“This is getting tricky. I’m going to have to take the Ballynure Road,” Crabbie said.
“Never been to Ballynure,” Lawson said.
“There’s a good chippie,” Crabbie said.
“From the Irish Baile an Iúir 'homestead of the yews' no doubt,” I contributed.
“What does Deraskmore mean?” Lawson asked.
The village of Derask was a new one on me. I’d never heard of it in all my time in Carrickfergus. “In Irish Darach is oak, uisige is water, maybe oak water? Mor means big so literally big oak water or big oak?” I speculated.
Lawson nodded while I continued to think about it.
“There’s a Norse word drekkja that means swamp,” I said.
“So if we get out and it’s a swamp I guess the Vikings made it up here and killed everyone, but if it’s oaks and a nice wee stream I guess they didn’t,” Lawson said.
“If we make it at all,” I said. “It’s really coming down now. Whose idea was this malarkey?”
“It was a collective decision, Sean. We’re all taking the blame for this one,” Lawson said.
“If we lose one of Traffic’s brand new Land Rovers we’ll never hear the end of it, though,” Crabbie said.
“John McCrabban I am confident you will get us there in one piece, just you wait and see,” I said and made a quick silent prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, the patron saint of policemen.
Saint Michael almost always comes through and when he doesn’t it’s only because he was busy helping other coppers elsewhere. And sure enough a mere twenty minutes later we were at the Smith farm with its extensive outhouses, byres, fields and possible murder barn.
“We’re here,” Crabbie said. “How we’re getting back, I dunno, but we’re here.”
4
The Vikings must not have made it up here. We were in the hills. Scrabble farms, whitewashed cottages, a strand of oak and willows lining a little river.
The snow was about three inches deep now. Perhaps in somewhere like Canada this would be considered a light dusting but here, in Northern Ireland, the place was going to be paralyzed for days. The airport would close, trains wouldn’t run, there would be car accidents all over the shop.
A wind was whistling off the mountains further north. I buttoned my coat and pulled down my hat.
Crabbie had parked the Land Rover in a lane on the edge of a farm yard. “All right gents, let’s go in and do our due diligence before these folks blow the jurisdiction. Alex, you wanna lead?” I asked.
“Nah, Sean, you’re the senior inspector you run it and we’ll try and keep up with your moves,” Lawson said.
“No need to be sarky,” I said.
“Sorry Sean. Honestly, I’m fine with you running it, ok?”
I looked at Crabbie. He nodded. That was fine with him too.
“I’ll be Buddy Rich, you guys can be Bird and Diz,” I said before realizing that neither of them would ever get that ref.
We walked into the farmyard and I saw that Crabbie had noticed something already.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“Look how pristine it all is. Spotless. Everything squared away.”
“They’re neat farmers?” I suggested.
“No. They’ve sold practically everything. The livestock, the chickens, the feed, the machinery. And they’re making this look pretty for a buyer or the new owner,” he replied, pointing at the barns and outhouses which had been painted an attractive burgundy shade of red
“How much would a place like this go for?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. They have a good few acres by a watercourse, three hundred thousand?” he said.
“So with that money and the life insurance policy he’ll be taking over half a million quid with them to Canada,” I said.
“Aye,” Crabbie agreed. “Get yourself some land in the prairie with that.”
I put the file under my arm and we hurried through the snow to the farmhouse which did not have a doorbell, but it did have a large iron knocker which must have been on that door since the nineteenth century.
I knocked and within seconds a tiny, cute, blonde child wearing a jumper several sizes too big answered it, took one look at us and ran away shouting “daddy!”
Inside there were the yells of more children and a couple of blonde blurs ran past the door.
A toddler in a nappy appeared next, hastily pursued by a tall extremely handsome brown haired woman about 35 years old.
“Sorry about this, I’ll get Kevin,” she said, grabbed the toddler and ran off.
More laughter from the other rooms and an older child yelled, “Daddy! There’s somebody at the door!”
My morale had sunk completely now. Did we really want to bust all this up with our nosey peeler questions?
“Seems like a nice family, maybe we should head back before the snow closes the—” I began, but stopped when the man of the house appeared.
He was a curly brown haired, pasty faced Mick with green eyes and a sort of aquiline Roman nose. On another face the combination might not have worked but with Mr Smith it did and his easy smile didn’t hurt either.
“What can I do for you gents? Hope you haven’t come about the Defender. I just sold it this afternoon,” he said.
I reached into my wallet and produced my warrant card.
“We’re police. Carrick RUC,” I said.
“Oh?”
“I’m Detective Inspector Sean Duffy and these are my colleagues Detective Inspector Lawson and Detective Sergeant McCrabban,” I said.
“Is there something the matter?” Smith said.
“Could we come in and have a very quick word?” I asked. “It’s getting quite chilly out here.”
“Oh my goodness, of course, come in gents! Come in.”
We went inside a lovely, airy farmhouse filled with children’s toys and the smell of baking.
Boxes had been stacked up in the hall with shipping labels attached.
“This way,” Mr Smith said.
He took us upstairs to a tiny study overlooking the river.
It was an interesting place to take us. If he had nothing to hide, why not the living room? How was he going to offer us tea up here? Was he going to traipse downstairs and come back with a scalding hot tea pot on a tray? Strange.
We sat on a ratty but comfortable sofa opposite Smith who turned around the swivel chair that was facing his desk.
“Some weather, eh?” he said.
“Yes, the weather is going to be a limiting factor here. We want to get back before the roads close,” I said.
“Fire away,” he replied cheerfully.
“There’s no way to delicately to begin this Mr Smith, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to launch in,” I continued. “We’re looking into the death of your first wife two years ago. You found the body, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if you could take us through your recollection of that day.”
“What’s this about?”
“Just inquiries. We heard you were leaving the country and we have to tie up a few loose ends before you go.”
Smith looked surprised but quickly composed himself.
“I’ll never forget anything of that day,” he said.
“Please tell us, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“I got the kids off to school. And I just popped over to see Jim McDonald’s family. They were all over there. His wife, his brothers, his mum. They were still in pieces as you can imagine. No one had any clue as to why Jim might have done it.”
“Why he might have killed himself?” Lawson asked.
“Aye. Exactly. His farm was doing well. He seemed happy enough, it was only later that. . .” he said and his voice faded away.
“You came back from seeing Mr McDonald’s family and then. . .” I continued for him.
“Wife wasn’t feeling too great so I checked in on her and she seemed to be doing a wee bit better and I told her I was away to the hardware shop to get some feed, you know?”
“And then what?” I asked.
“I got the feed, came back, noticed her wee Ford had been moved inside the barn.”
“How did you know she hadn’t driven off?” I asked.
“I heard the motor going. I couldn’t see the car because she’d driven it into the barn and closed the doors behind her. I was a wee bit surprised at that, I suppose, because the doors are quite heavy and normally I had to help her.”
“Could the doors have closed accidentally?” Lawson asked.
He shook his head. “Oh no. Not these doors. Big heavy wooden jobs.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“I heard the engine still going in there and that surprised me too. I wasn’t panicked yet. I thought she might be just warming up the motor, you know? So I went in the side entrance of the barn and that’s what I saw what I saw,” he said.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“She’d let the horses out and I saw a hose going from the exhaust of her car to the driver’s side window. The whole car was filled with smoke.”
“What did you do then?” Crabbie asked.
“I opened the car door, pulled out Mary. She wasn’t breathing but I’d done first aid in the Boys Brigade so I knew how to do CPR. I did that for a couple of minutes and then ran inside and called for an ambulance. Ran straight back outside and started on the old CPR again.”
“Where were your children?” I asked.
“It was a Monday so they were at school.”
“When did they leave for school?” I asked.
“Seven twenty, to catch the school bus,” he said.
“Your wife and you got them ready for school together?” I asked.
“No. Like I said she was a bit under the weather,” Smith said. “So I did it all. Got them dressed and out.”
“Was she often under the weather?”
“No. Very healthy. But she’d been a bit. . .”
“A bit what?”
“A big weepy since Jim’s death,” Smith said.
I read from the insurance investigator’s report. “When the ambulance arrived from Larne they found you still attempting CPR on your wife.”
“Aye, I didn’t stop,” Smith said.
“The ambulance drivers told Larne police that when they arrived both garage doors were open and you had turned off the Ford Escort’s engine off. At what point did you do that?” I asked.
“I dunno. Maybe straight away?” Smith said.
“Before you began administering CPR?” I asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know it’s all a bit of a blur. What’s all this about?” he asked.
I looked at him and tapped my pen on the report. “It’s not a big deal I suppose but it is a contradiction,” I began. “You said just a few moments ago that you’d never forget anything from that day but now you can’t remember when you opened the garage doors or turning the engine off on the Ford Escort? Would you have taken the time to do it while you were rushing to get your wife outside and administer CPR?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I did it while I was waiting for the ambulance?”
I shook my head. “It can’t be that. Because you said that you took just one break from CPR to make a phone call and ‘didn’t stop’ until the ambulance arrived.”
Smith rubbed his chin. “Uhm, well, I’m not sure. I guess I was exaggerating a wee bit when I said I’d never forget anything from that day, because I don’t remember the barn doors or the car.”
I nodded. In truth it wasn’t a big deal at all.
“When did you find out that your wife Mary and Jim McDonald were having an affair?” I asked.
“The police told me about that,” Smith said.
“How so?”
“We’d gotten a computer to do our accounts on the farm. I’m useless at those sort of things but Mary adapted very quickly to it. And it was one of the police officers who found a kind of journal that she’d written in one of the files detailing her affair.”
The ‘journal’ was barely that. A few pages of hastily typed entries.
Met J. We can’t keep our hands off each other.
I love him so. He loves me too but he cannot bear to be with me. The guilt is killing him.
It was possible that it was authentic but it was also possible that it was written by Smith himself. The report from Larne RUC said that the journal had only begun a month before the final entry and Mary’s ‘suicide’. That raised some alarm bells but it wasn’t what you might call proof.
“And after you read Mary’s journal, what did you think?” I asked.
“I began to put two and two together,” Smith said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I’d seen them very friendly together over the last year and she was always going over there to bring them tray bakes and that kind of thing. She always seemed so happy when she came back. Whereas around me and the weans. . .well, you know?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Depressed, anxious. . .that kind of thing.”
Lawson cleared this throat and held up a piece of paper from the file. “You told the coroner’s inquest that you thought Mary had killed herself because she couldn’t live without James McDonald,” Lawson said. “And McDonald killed himself because he was consumed by guilt about the affair.”
“Aye and I stick by that,” Smith said sadly.
“Jim didn’t try to work his fingers into the noose even though strangulation is one of the most painful deaths imaginable,” I said.
It wasn’t a question but it invited an answer.
“He was determined was Jim,” Smith said. “Once he set his mind to something, he did it.”
I looked at Crabbie and Lawson. Was there anything more to add? Sad details about the two funerals. Vulgar questions about the life insurance?
The door opened and Mrs Smith, formerly Mrs McDonald came with a tea tray. A china pot, four cups and saucers and shortbread that she had evidently made herself.
We all stood and thanked her.
“Anything the matter, gents?” she asked. She was smiling and relaxed. She hadn’t been listening at the door. She had no idea why we’d come. Three detectives in the middle of a snowstorm with night settling in.
“They’re asking about Mary’s death,” Smith said.
There was the slightest flicker in her eye, a look at her husband, and then the return of the smile.
She exited and we all sat back down again as Smith poured.
“It’s not stopping,” Crabbie said looking out at the weather.
“Aye,” Smith said. “Do you have chains for your Rover? Could be tricky on the hills on the way back.”
We did not have chains for the Land Rover and even if we did I doubt we’d know how to apply them.
“So how many kids do you have now?” Crabbie asked.
“I had the twins and Shirley, Bree had the two girls and a boy. So six now.”
“I hear you’re all moving to Canada,” Crabbie continued. I could see what he was doing. It was an old police tactic. Not exactly good cop/bad cop but you soften the witness up with some more conversational inquiries. Unfortunately we didn’t have time for any of that with the snow coming down.
“Did she leave a note? There’s nothing in the file,” I interjected.
“Mary?”
“Aye.”
“No. She didn’t leave a note. There was the journal but no note.”
“That’s quite unusual. Most suicides do leave a note,” I said.
“But not all?” Smith inquired.
I looked at him. That was a smirky out of character thing to say. So far he’d projected up front, blunt, smiley, honest. . .
“Not all,” I agreed. “But most.”
I looked through the printed pages of the journal.
Declarations of love, guilt. . .It was an odd document. Nothing about Jim’s physical characteristics, no stolen kisses, no love making. . .A lot of “I love hims.” Was it the sort of antiseptic thing Smith might have written or was it just the sort of Jane Austen thing you’d expect from a repressed woman living up in the wilds of County Antrim sheep country?
“This is a bit of indelicate question Mr Smith,” I began. “But do you think their affair was platonic or could it actually have been consummated?”
Smith blushed and looked at the floor. “I have no idea.”
“Is it possible they could have had time alone together with you both so busy with the farm?” I persisted.
“It’s possible. I was often away at the markets. Mary kept it all together here and with the weans at school. . .”
“Was Jim McDonald often away at the markets and his wife Bree left alone?” I asked.
Smith raised his head and anger flashed briefly like the The Maidens Lighthouse.
“Yes. She would have been alone too, when Jim was at the market,” Smith said.
I again picked up the investigator’s report.
“The night before your wife died, do you remember who prepared dinner?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“Did you sometimes prepare dinner for the family?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“On what occasions?” I asked.
“I don’t know. When Mary was knackered or depressed or whatever, or just as a wee treat.”
“Inspector McKenna, from Larne RUC, who investigated this case, says that you did indeed prepare the family meal the night before your wife died. You made Irish stew because your wife quote seemed down following James McDonald’s death, unquote.”
“Yeah, now you mention it, that sounds right.”
“Did your wife have a cup of tea every night before she went to bed?” I asked.
“Why do you ask that?”
“The autopsy found traces of tea in her system. I’m assuming she drunk it the night before? If you’re going to hang yourself and there’s a limited window of opportunity while your husband is out at the shops, I don’t think you’d make a cup of tea first.”
“You might if you wanted to think about your options,” Smith said.
“I’m sorry, Mr Smith, I should have been more direct,” I said, “Did you make your wife a cup of tea the night before her suicide?”
“Uhm, thinking about it now, yes,” he said.
“Your wife had traces of Seconal in her liver,” I read from the report.
“Aye. She used to take that to alleviate her epilepsy. She’s been taking different drugs for the last decade or so for but she must have some of that old stuff squirreled away. I told all this to the coroner.”
“There was quite a bit of Seconal in her system. I’m surprised she wasn’t completely conked out,” I said.
“Not quite,” Smith said. “But she was very groggy in the morning. That’s why she really couldn’t help with the kids.”
“To reiterate it was mostly you who got the kids dressed and ready for school?”
“Yes.”
“And did they come in to give her a kiss goodbye before they left for school?”
“There wasn’t time. I had overslept, the kids had overslept and Mary wasn’t feeling well at all. I got the kids out to the bus.”
“And then what happened?” I asked.
“Well, I’d promised Bee McDonald I’d come over, so I went over there and had a wee word.”
“How did you get over there?”
“In the tractor. It’s just two fields down. I could have walked but I took the tractor.”
“How long did you spend at the McDonalds?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes. There was plenty of folk there. I was surplus to requirements so I came home.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“I asked Mary how she was doing. She said she was feeling better. And I told her I was away to Ballynure Farm Supply to get some chicken feed,” Smith said. “We were almost out.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“Nine or so?”
“And how long would that normally take you?” I asked.
“Twenty minutes?”
“There and back?”
“If I floored it?”
“Did you floor it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What time did you get back?” I asked.
“I don’t know that either.”
“Before ten?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you expressly told her you were leaving?”
“Aye. I told her I was away in the Land Rover.”
“And when you left her, she was conscious?” I asked.
“Yeah. She said she was going to get up and do a few chores while I was away.”
“So in that very brief window, your wife who had taken a tranquilizer, managed to walk across the farm yard here, get into the barn, rummage around for a hose, connect it to the exhaust of the Ford Escort, turn the car on and poison herself with carbon monoxide?”
“Yes. Somehow she did!”
“The autopsy on Jim McDonald found a rope burn on his hands,” I said, reading a different part of the report.
“So?”
“Hard to tell apart a rope burn and ligature marks,” I said.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Smith said.
“Someone could have tied his hands behind his back. Put his head in a noose and tossed him off that chair.”
I looked at Lawson and Crabbie. The snow was really coming down now. It was probably time to confront him and get his reaction. And if it didn’t elicit a Perry Mason style confession it was time for us to head the fuck back to Carrick.
“Let me put to you, Mr Smith, one alternative explanation for these extraordinary and tragic events,” I said.
I looked at Lawson who gave me the nod. We had to get on with this shite or pack it in.
“Please,” Smith said.
“Your wife and James McDonald were not having an affair,” I began. “You and Bree McDonald were having the affair. It had been going on for some time and you couldn’t keep seeing one another around school schedules and her husband’s occasional trips to the market. You wanted to be together. Of course divorce in the Catholic church is not easy and certainly not a contested divorce where you wished to keep your kids. And then there was the question of the money. The suicide clause had long since expired on your family life insurance, so that was a quarter of a million quid to be taken into account, plus the uniting of the two farms and the two families.”
“No,” Smith said, simply.
“No what?”
“You’ve got it all wrong. You’re spouting madness.”
“Yes, it was madness. Pre-meditated madness, or what we peelers like to call first degree murder with mens rea. This was all intricately planned, wasn’t it?”
“What? No.”
“The first step was dealing with Jim McDonald. You waited until the kids were at school and then you left with your shotgun to deal with the foxes on the hill, or some bullshit like that. In fact you went over to the McDonalds and you ordered Jim McDonald out to his barn at the point of a gun. Then you and possibly Bree as your accomplice tied his hands, rigged up the noose in the barn and hanged him. You took the rope off his wrists as quickly as you could but there was still the hint of ligature marks. Then you hurried up the hill and fired your shotgun a couple of times and came back home again. His suicide was a shocking mystery to the entire community until your wife’s suicide two days later and the discovery of her journal. But then it all made sense.”
“And I killed her too?” Smith said.
“That was the second part of the plan,” I began, “But, of course, this murder was easier. You knew she had those old Seconal pills which you dissolved into the tea she had that night. Perhaps you hoped that might do the trick, but she was still alive in the morning. Very groggy yes, but very much alive. So Plan B kicked in. After the kids had left, you carried her out to the garage, attached the hose and left for the farm supply place in Ballynure.”
I looked at him.
There was no outrage. He did not burst into tears and say “it’s a fair cop, gov.”
He merely sighed and shook his noggin in a way that I felt he had been rehearsing for a year or two. He’d been expecting this challenge from Larne RUC and it had never come. Maybe he’d been expecting it from the insurance investigator too. When it finally had come he was ready for it.
“Is there one shred of proof of any of this?” he asked.
“Nope. No proof at all.”
“So coming up here, at night, in the snow was all just – what’s the word for it – a fishing expedition?” he asked with a slightly sleekit tone to his voice.
I nodded. “Something like that. With you leaving the country for good, we thought we should do our due diligence.”
“I’d like you to get out of my house now and not come back,” he said.
I turned to Lawson and Crabbie, but they had nothing.
Crabbie finally shrugged.
Lawson got to his feet and offered Smith his hand.
“Well thank you for your time, Mr Smith,” he said.
“No problem,” he replied to Lawson while keeping his eyes fixed on me.
5
We trudged back to the Land Rover through what was now a complete white out. A blizzard you might even have called it were we in some place that got blizzards. I wrapped myself up in the blue and white treasonous Everton scarf but it was only a tiny bit helpful.
“Christ on a bike this is something,” Lawson said.
The snow was about three four or five inches deep already.
“Does Larne council have a snow plough by any chance?” I asked Crabbie.
He shook his head. “It does not,” he said.
“How are they going to clear these roads?” I asked.
“They’ll do what they do every year it snows,” he said. “Wait until melts.”
“We should be ok, though, right, in the Land Rover, eh?” Lawson asked.
The Crabman’s face so usually a stern anchor of comfort looked now more like a toy anchor in a bath boat.
“Crabbie, Lawson’s right, isn’t he? Our Rover’s not going to let us down.”
Crabbie shook his head. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “A regular Land Rover, aye, but with all the armor plate on this thing and the low gravity suspension. . .”
“I’m freezing, let’s hope the heater doesn’t fail us at least,” Lawson said.
He was out in his jeans, jumpers and some kind of light windbreaker. The eejit. And to think I’d let him mind the store? Crabbie and I were at least wearing proper jackets and boots.
All three of us climbed in the cab. The back of the Rover was not heated but we’d be fine up front. Bit of a squeeze but we’d be ok.
“You better drive, Crabman, you’re the expert,” I said.
He got behind the wheel but he didn’t turn the thing on.
His face was grave.
“What’s the matter me old mucker?” I asked.
“I’ve been to Nolan’s Farm Supplies in Ballynure many times. It doesn’t open until 11. 11 to 8 every day except Sunday. Those have been the hours since the 1950s,” he said.
“Your point being?” Lawson asked. He was being particularly young and thick today it seemed.
“His point being, laddie, Smith said he was going to drive over to Nolan’s at 9.15 and he said it was a ten minute run there and a ten minute run back. I asked him if he made it back by ten and he said yes.”
Lawson was shaking his head. “No way. Larne RUC must have checked on a detail like that.”
“Must they? Larne RUC?”
Lawson looked at his watch. “I suppose one more round of questions Columbo fashion wouldn’t hurt. I mean we’re never going to get up here again before they—”
“Suspiciously flee the jurisdiction,” I said.
“Close the roads,” Lawson said.
“They can extradite people from Canada, Sean,” Crabbie said.
“You and I both know that will never happen,” I insisted.
“Then it’s now or never,” Lawson said, opening the cab door.
6
Back across the whiteout barnyard.
“How many inches now, Crabbie?” I asked him.
“Must be nearly half a foot now,” he said.
We reached the farmhouse door and rattled the heavy knocker.
Smith opened it. He was wearing a bright red sweater and a cheerful grin.
“Car won’t start?” he said.
“Still police business, I’m afraid, Mr Smith,” Lawson said.
“We just have a couple more quick questions, and then we’ll go, five minutes no more we promise,” I said.
He looked dubious. “Five minutes?”
“No more. Cross my heart.”
“Ok, come in, we’ll just go to the living room there, it’s empty, the kids are playing some game with Bree,” he said.
We went into the living room which looked like all the farms up here I imagine. Comfy old fashioned prewar furniture made by the locals themselves. A roaring turf fire in a stone fireplace. Cast iron torture devices hanging on the wall that were probably ancient pieces of farm machinery. . .
We sat in a semi circle around the fire.
Me, Crabbie and Lawson took out our notebooks. I gave Lawson the nod. “Well, Mr Smith here’s the thing,” he began. “You said you left the house at around 9 to go on a ten minute run to Nolan’s Farm Supply in Ballynure.”
“That’s correct,” he said.
“And just to confirm you told your wife that?” Lawson continued.
“Yes.”
“And the call to the ambulance comes in at 10:05, so you actually did get there and back in less than half an hour,” I said.
“That’s right. It was a quiet run. Sometimes in the morning up here you can get stuck behind a school bus or something, but between nine and three it’s usually ok.”
The wind rattled the rafters.
“Some weather, eh?” Smith continued.
He hadn’t quite twigged our line of attack yet which was annoying. He went to that farm supply place all the time, he knew its hours. Surely he must know that we know. Unless Crabbie had messed up but it wasn’t like Crabbie to mess up.
I examined my notes. “This was Nolan’s Farm Supply on the Kilwaughter Road?” I asked.
“Aye.”
“And what did you get there again?” I asked.
“Chicken feed.”
“Did you happen to keep the receipt?”
“Two years ago, I don’t think so. It’s possible but I don’t think so,” he said.
“But you definitely bought chicken feed there and were back before 10 am?” Lawson said.
His face fell. Now he realized his mistake. We were not Larne RUC. We actually looked into things.
“Uhm, I’m not a hundred percent sure about the hour,” he said.
I nodded at Crabbie.
“The shop doesn’t open until 11,” Crabbie said. “I’ve been there many times. It’s 11 to 8 every day except Sundays. You made the phone call to the ambulance at 10:05.”
“So you lied to the police about going to Nolan’s and getting some chicken feed. You didn’t do that,” I said.
“I, I must have got the time wrong, that’s all,” Smith said.
I rubbed my chin. “Are you suggesting you went to Nolan’s and bought the chicken feed after you discovered your wife was asphyxiating in the car? While the paramedics were working on her, perhaps?”
“I’m not saying that at all. I maybe got the day wrong. It was a very stressful time. Maybe I got the feed the day before. Mixed it up in my head,” he said.
Lawson had picked up the case file and turned to the appropriate section.
“Mr Smith,” Lawson began. “When Detective Constable Colbert of Larne RUC asked you where you where while your wife was committing suicide you said and I quote ‘I was out getting chicken feed’.”
Smith saw a little opening here. “It doesn’t say where I went to get the chicken feed does it? Maybe that morning I’d driven in to Larne.”
Unfortunately for all us Constable Colbert had not done the obvious and called Nolan’s to check the alibi so we only had old memories and surmises and statements that maybe could be explained away in front of a jury of Mr Smith’s peers.
This was something but it wasn’t exactly a coup de grace. It wasn’t a coup de anything. With a clever lawyer it would be Scottish tea, weak beer, thin sliced pan bread rather than thick sliced veda bread.
None of it amounted to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I put it to you Mr Smith that you didn’t drive into Larne. You said you were there and back in twenty minutes,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair. There was a hint of a smile on his face. “Well, like I say, it was a couple of years ago. I don’t really remember.”
Suddenly the door burst open and half a dozen giggling little kids poured into the room followed by Bree Smith. The oldest was about seven, the youngest a toddler.
“Sorry gents, they got away from me when my back was turned,” Bree Smith said.
She ushered the children from the room.
“All yours?” I asked her husband.
He nodded. “The twins and Shirley are from my marriage. Bree had two boys and a girl. So it’s a nice wee mix.”
“Four boys, two girls? All under, what, seven?” I asked.
“Aye.”
“A handful.”
“It can be. Sometimes. But we’re making it work.”
A turf log cracked in the fire.
I couldn’t think of anything else to hit him with just then. I looked at Crabbie. He had nothing else. Lawson handed me the file and pointed to a highlighted section in Smith’s bio.
When he was 17, he had been arrested for aggravated assault in Ballymena. He’d been given a suspended sentence that time. There was violence in his past. A lot of people had some teenage violence in the past. And that was the kind of thing that the rules of evidence prevented you bringing up in court.
I shook my head at him.
But Lawson’s blue eyes were still glaring furiously at me.
What the hell was he—
“When you were seventeen, Mr Smith, you assaulted a man in Ballymena,” Lawson said.
“And?”
“That man was James McDonald, wasn’t it?” Lawson continued.
Smith nodded and smiled. I was starting to hate that bloody smile. “Which is it, officers? My motive was either a love affair with Bree, or it was me waiting for the ten year period to pass on our life insurance, or it was a long standing antagonism with Jim McDonald?”
“Perhaps it was all three?” I suggested.
Smith got to his feet.
“All right officers, I think that’s enough,” he said. He folded his arms and we had no alternative but to get up ourselves. He began herding us out the door like he probably did with his frigging sheep. “You’ll have to go gentlemen,” Smith continued. “We have a lot of packing and preparation to do. We’re making a new life for ourselves away from the endless gossip and suspicious bloody bullshit of Northern Ireland. If you want to talk to me again, you can make arrangements through my solicitor. And you better talk fast cos we’re on flight on Tuesday night.”
We had no warrant. There was really no option but to leave a second time with our tails between our legs.
Outside the weather was as bad as ever. Worse.
“Bollocks!” Lawson said, as snow and grit from the yard poured into his face.
We ran in the general direction of the Land Rover until we practically bumped into it.
We jumped in the cab and turned the engine on.
Of course the starter chose this moment to fail.
“Is it the spark?” Lawson asked.
Crabbie looked at the younger man in mild amazement before his face refound its equanimity. “It’s a diesel engine,” Crabbie said softly.
“The cold has probably. . .” I began and tailed off, I wasn’t exactly sure what the cold would have done to the engine either.
We tried it again and again and again.
We let it rest and tried again.
“I’ll take a look,” Crabbie said.
He went outside and popped the bonnet.
He came back five minutes later.
“The ignition system hasn’t been prepped for low temperatures,” Crabbie said and went on to explain the problem in some detail.
Lawson and I nodded and pretended to understand.
“What does this mean?” Lawson asked.
“We’ll have to try again in the morning,” Crabbie said.
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Quite sure,” Crabbie insisted. His hair was white from the snow and his face was blue. His hands were shaking.
Shite.
I was already on the radio but the battery hadn’t charged it sufficiently and it wouldn’t turn on.
No vehicle, no radio. Now what?
“Sleep in the back tonight?” Lawson said.
Nominally he was the boss of our little expedition but he had fallen back into the role of subordinate. I didn’t mind so much except for cases like now when I was expected to magic up a solution for us.
“It’s supposed to be minus eight tonight. It’d be a metal coffin back there,” Crabbie began. “And the roads are impassable so the only place we can walk to is. . .”
“We can’t,” Lawson said. “Back to Smith farm for a third time? The embarrassment, the shame. . .”
Crabbie shuddered. “No, I suppose you’re right there, Alex, we can’t do that. The looks they’ll give us.”
“And it’ll get back to Larne RUC, we’ll be a laughing stock,” Lawson said.
“Aye,” Crabbie agreed.
But I wasn’t going to let those two bloody lunatics kill us.
“Crabbie, Alex, a wise man once said, ‘a policeman’s lot is not a happy one’. I’m sorry lads, but it’s back to the farm for the three of us. I’m afraid we’ll have to throw ourselves on Mr Smith’s hospitality,” I insisted.
7
Sean Duffy is like a drug, just keep needing more and more!!
I keep worrying that you might abandon Sean. Such a relief that he’s still on the job and that there might be a murder (in the red barn, no less). Thank God. We’re at war and the world is crumbling but at least I can look forward to more Duffy.