We nailed another couple of smokes and got back in the Land Rover. Matty drove us out of the car park and the Constables at the gate gave us the thumbs up as they raised the barrier to let us out.
Matty drove through Larne past a massive UVF mural of two terrorists riding dragons and carrying AK 47s.
We turned up onto the A2 coast road.
“Where to now, Sean?”
“Carrickfergus Salvation Army,” I said. “It’s a long shot but maybe they’ll remember what happened to that suitcase, if she really did bring it in there.”
“Why would she lie about that?”
“Why does anybody lie about anything?”
Matty nodded and accelerated up onto the dual carriageway. The Land Rover was heavily armour plated and bullet-proofed, but the juiced engine still did zero to sixty in about eight seconds.
We put on Irish radio again. It was the same programme as before; this time the interviewee, a man called O’Cannagh, from the County Mayo, was talking about the mysterious behaviour of his cattle which baffled the local vets but which he felt was something to do with flying saucers. The man was explaining this fascinating hypothesis in Irish, a language Matty didn’t speak, so I had to turn it off. Neither of us could stand the constant jabber about the Falklands on news radio so we went for Ms Armatrading again.
Matty drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. “I know what you’re thinking, Sean, you’re thinking we should stick our noses in here, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“Listen, Sean, what if she’s telling the truth about the suitcase but she was, for whatever reason, lying about her husband’s murder?”
“What about it?”
“Then it’s not our case, mate, is it?” he said.
“And if she killed the poor bastard?”
“If she killed the poor bastard, it becomes, in the coinage of Douglas Adams, an SEP.”
“Who’s Douglas Adams? And what’s an SEP?” I asked.
“If you were down with the kids, Sean, you’d know that Douglas Adams has written this very popular radio series called
“I’m not down with the kids, though, am I? And you still haven’t answered my question. What’s an SEP?”
“Someone else’s problem, Sean,” Matty said, with a heavy and significant sigh.
I nodded ruefully. Ruefully, for it was the sorry day indeed when my junior colleague felt the need to remind me that in Ireland you swam near the shore and you kept your mouth shut and you never made waves if you knew what was good for you.
“SEP. I like it. I’ll bear it in mind,” I said.
7: SHE’S GOT A TICKET TO RIDE (AND SHE DON’T CARE)
The Salvation Army was a bust. The lady there, Mrs Wilson, said that they sold dozens of suitcases every month, especially now that everyone was trying to emigrate. They didn’t keep records of who bought what and she did not recall a red plastic suitcase or a Mrs McAlpine.
“Have a wee think. You might remember her, she was a recent widow. She brought in her husband’s entire wardrobe.”
“You’d be surprised how many of those we get a month. Always widows. Never widowers. Cancer, heart attack and terrorism – those are the three biggies.”
“Well, thank you for your time,” I said.
When we got back to the station Crabbie’s dour face told me that Customs and Immigration had not yet given us the list of names of all the Americans entering Northern Ireland in the last year.
“What’s their excuse?” I asked him.
“They’re transferring everything from the card file to the new computer.”
“Jesus, I hope to God they’ve haven’t lost them. We’ve had enough of that today.”
“Nah, there was no note of panic in their voices, just bored stupidity.”
“Par for the course, then,” I said under my breath, staring at the other policemen and women in here who seemed to have jobs to do but God alone knew what the hell they were. Crabbie, Matty and myself were detectives, we investigated actual crimes, what these jokers did (especially the reservists and the part-time reservists) was a fucking mystery.
“No luck on the Abrin either. I called the Northern Ireland horticultural society, the Irish Horticultural Society, the British Horticultural Society and no one had any records of anyone growing rosary pea or one of its varieties. It is certainly not a competition or show plant. I phoned UK Customs HQ in London and asked if they had ever impounded any seeds and of course they had no idea what I was talking about. And, you’ll like this, I called up Interpol to see—”
“Interpol?”
“Yeah.”
“I do like it. Go on.”
“I called up Interpol to ask them to fax me any cases of Abrin poisoning that they had on file in any of their databases.”
“And?”
“Three homicide cases: all from America: 1974, 1968, 1945. Half a dozen suicides and another two dozen accidentals.”
“That’s very good work, mate,” I said, and told him about our interesting day.
I treated the lads to a pub lunch. Steak and kidney pie and a pint of the black stuff and after lunch I retreated to my office, stuck on the late Benny Britten’s “Curlew River” and read the Interpol files on the Abrin murders:
1974: Husband in Bangor, Maine, who was a chemist, poisoned his wife.
1968: Husband who was a banker in San Francisco who grew tropical plants, poisoned his wife.
1945: Young woman, originally from Jamaica, poisoned her parents in New York.
I read the suicides and the accidentals but there was nothing significant or interesting about them. There were no Irish connections or intriguing links to the First Infantry Division.
I called up Belfast Customs and Immigration and politely harangued them about their abilities and their propensity for sticking their heads up their own arses.
They said that they were working on it but the new computer system was a nightmare and did I know that it was a Saturday and there were only two people in the office, one of whom was Mrs McCameron?
I said that I knew the former but not the latter and asked them to do their best. I avoided the obvious Mrs McCameron lure, which sounded like a standard civil service crimson clupea. There probably was no Mrs McCameron.
At around three o’clock someone put on the football but I grew bored and found myself at another table listening to a reserve constable called Wilkes who was also in the Royal Navy Reserve and who’d just gotten a phone call telling him that he was on his way to the South Atlantic as a fire control officer on
“That’s going to be the fucking Admiral’s ship!” he said, with obvious excitement.
“Aye and the best target in the fleet for the Argie submarines. Classic frying pan/fire situation for you, my lad. This time next month you’ll be some penguin’s breakfast,” Sergeant Burke muttered. I gave him a cynical grin and went to get a coffee.
The lads plied Wilkes with questions and when the clock finally got its bum round to five we hit the bricks.
Since it was indeed a Saturday I got a Chinese takeaway and ate it with a bottle of Guinness back in Coronation Road. It was the dinner of sad single men across Ireland. To really trip on the mood I scrounged up some fuzzy Moroccan black and dug out the copy of the ancient
