The smell of lard and Ajax. Flypaper hanging against the wall. Clothes drying on an internal clothes line. A checkered linoleum floor: the kind that blood cleans up easily from. Mrs McFarlane, a small birdlike woman, is making tea, humming to herself contentedly.
She’s not a stranger to unusual guests or peelers with machine guns.
McFarlane’s smoking Bensons. Relaxed.
Let’s unrelax the fucker.
“You know why we’re here?”
“No,” McFarlane says, unconcerned.
“Mr Coulter’s account charged seven hundred pounds on one of your guest’s American Express Cards last November. A Mr Bill O’Rourke from Boston, Massachusetts,” I say.
“What about it?”
“Your room rates are twenty pounds a night and he checked out after two nights. It doesn’t compute, does it?”
William McFarlane is not fazed. He rubs a greasy fist under his chin. “I charged that bill. Mr Coulter has nothing to do with it and I’ll thank you not to mention his name again.”
“You charged the bill? So you admit it?”
“Aye. I remember yon boy. He wanted Irish Punts. He wanted six hundred quid’s worth of Irish Punts. I got them for him, legally I might add, from the Ulster Bank in Belfast. In fact I think I might have the receipt right here.”
He produces a piece of paper from his trouser pocket.
What a joke. What a frigging laugh riot. He knew we were coming and why we were coming. Someone tipped off his boss and his boss tipped him.
I take the receipt and read it.
It’s exactly what he says it is. A receipt for six hundred and fifty Irish pounds from the Ulster Bank on Donegall Square, Belfast. Transaction dated 25 November 1981.
I bag it and put it in my jacket pocket.
“What did he want the money for?” I ask.
“He didn’t say.”
“He just stayed here two days and left?”
“That’s right.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No.”
“He paid his bill in full?”
“Aye. No problems.”
“How many other guests did you have?”
“At that time?”
“Yes.”
“None.”
“You’re a bit out of the way here, aren’t you? A bit off the tourist trail.”
“Aye, I suppose so.”
“How many guests do you get a month, would you say?”
“Well, it depends.”
“On average?”
“I don’t know. A dozen. Maybe more, maybe less.”
Hmmmm.
Mrs McFarlane brings me a mug of tea, a Kit Kat and a publication called
“Eat that up, love, you’re skin and bones and you look hungry enough to eat the beard of Moses,” she says.
I drink the tea and light a cigarette. McFarlane and I look at one another and say nothing. I read Mrs McFarlane’s pamphlet. There’s a nice exegesis of the wedding feast at Cana which explains that Jesus Christ turned the water not into wine but into a form of non-alcoholic grape juice.
McCrabban comes back downstairs.
He shakes his head.
Brennan and Sergeant Burke appear from wherever they’ve been. Mrs McFarlane offers to make them tea. Brennan accepts. Sergeant Burke goes outside to have a smoke.
I let McCrabban ask McFarlane all the questions I have already attempted in order to ascertain if there are any inconsistencies.
There are none.
We drink our teas and assume that Edwardian Belfast fake politeness that coats this city like poison gas. Matty finally comes down with his fingerprint books and forensic samples.
“Are you all done, mate?”
“Aye,” he says. He’s got something in his hand. He shows it to me. It’s from the pantry. A Chicken Tikka Pot Noodle.
“Well done,” I tell him.
Perhaps a flash of concern flits across McFarlane’s eyes.
I go up to bedroom #4 and ask Crabbie to follow.
Chintz wallpaper on the staircase, thin orange carpet, pictures of Belfast that look as if they are framed postcards. There’s a smell too: vinegary and sour.
I pause on the top step.
“What was O’Rourke staying in a place like this for?”
Crabbie shrugs. “He was only here for two nights.”
“Why here? Why Dunmurry? No one visits Dunmurry.”
“Some people must do so otherwise there wouldn’t be a bed and breakfast,” Crabbie says.
“Wise up, mate, this place is clearly a money-laundering scheme.”
We go along the landing to room #4.
Typical Belfast terraced bedroom: small, damp, depressing, with an old fashioned bed covered in many layers of itchy woollen blankets. Also: a grainy window that does not open; a huge Duchess chest of drawers with a large fixed mirror; an elm desk and a plastic chair next to the window; fleur de lys wallpaper from a bygone age; sepia prints on the wall of 1920s Ireland. And that smell: mildew, vinegar, cheap cleaning products. I look under the bed and examine the Duchess chest of drawers which is a monstrosity of a thing, the wood dyed to look like mahogany, but really pine. The drawers are empty and the mirror could do with a good wipe down.
I examine the desk but there’s nothing there and again we look at the chest of drawers. There are strange wear marks on the carpet, an ugly case of rising damp on two of the walls.
“We found nothing, either,” Crabbie says.
“McFarlane says he wanted Irish currency. That’s why there was such a big bill,” I tell Crabbie.
“So he went down to the Republic?”
“Could be.”
“Maybe he was murdered down there?”
“How did the body end up here?”
“A million ways. They dump the suitcase in a truck or a bin lorry going north?”
I shake my head. “We’re not getting off that easy. The suitcase came from here and the body was found here. This is
We take a last look around.
“What do you think those marks are on the carpet?” I ask Crabbie.
He shrugs. “Is that where people kick the chair over when they hang themselves from the light fitting?”
We go back downstairs.
Brennan looks at me. “Well?”
“Well what?”
