“When do we depart this royal throne of shit, this cursed plot?”
“We’ll go when I think we’re done,” I say.
“Some of these men are on overtime, Duffy.”
“I didn’t ask you to bring them, sir.”
“It’s a tough manor.”
“Everywhere’s a tough manor.”
Brennan pulls a pipe out of his raincoat pocket and begins to fill it.
“How long, Duffy?” he insists.
“Give me five more minutes. Let’s see if the bugger’s got a greenhouse at least … Matty, come with me!”
We push through the kitchen into the wash-house where more clothes are hanging out to dry and coal is piled high in coal buckets and an old bath.
Sergeant Burke is leaning against a wall, vomiting.
“Are you okay, mate?” I ask him.
“Have you got any hair of the dog, Duffy?” he asks.
I look at Matty, who shakes his head.
“Go get the hip flask from Inspector McCallister,” I tell Matty. “Tell him it’s for me.”
He nods and goes back inside.
“Are you okay?” I ask Burke.
“I’m all right. I’m all right. Collar’s too tight or something.”
“Shall I get a medic?”
“I’m fine!” he says.
Matty comes back with McCallister’s brandy. Burke grabs it and swallows half of it. He wipes his mouth and nods.
“Knew that would sort me,” he says, with a unpleasant smile.
He goes back inside on unsteady legs.
When he’s gone I whisper to Matty: “You and me a few years from now, if we don’t watch out.”
“I’ve got fishing, what have you got, mate?” Matty asks.
“Uh …”
“You should get a pet. A tortoise is good. They’re lots of fun. You can paint stuff on their shells. My sister’s looking to get rid of hers. Twenty quid. It’s got a great personality.”
“A tortoise isn’t my idea of—”
“Hey, boy! Does your warrant cover the back garden?” McFarlane yells at Matty from the kitchen window.
“Show him the warrant, will you, DC McBride? And tell him that if he calls you boy again you’ll lift him and bring the fucker in for a comprehensive cavity search.”
Matty shows McFarlane the legalese and yells back to me: “Inspector Duffy, it sounds like somebody’s not keen for us to investigate his back yard.”
“Aye, I wonder what we’ll find,” I say.
What we find is a back garden which is a dumping ground for assorted garbage: old beds, old tyres, mattresses. In many places thin reed trees and ferns are growing through a thicket of grass. Along the wall there seems to be an ancient motorbike; but more importantly, there in the north-west corner, there’s a greenhouse.
We open the door and go inside. It’s clean, humid, well-maintained and all the windows are intact. There are a dozen boxes of healthy tomato plants growing in pots along the south-facing glass.
“Tomatoes,” Matty says.
Matty puts on his latex gloves and begins digging through them to see if there’s anything else growing in there, but in pot after pot he comes up only with soil.
“Nowt,” Matty says.
“Look through those bags of fertilizer.”
Nothing in there either. We stand there looking at the rain running down the thirty-degree angled roof in complicated rivulets.
He looks at me.
“You’re feeling it, too?” I ask him.
“What?”
“A feeling that we’re missing something?”
“No.”
“What were you looking at me like that for?”
“I just noticed all those grey hairs above your ears.”
“You’re an eejit.” I examine the plants, but Matty’s right: these really are genuine tomato plants and there is nothing secreted in the pots.
McFarlane gurns at us through the glass before going back towards the house.
“He’s lying about something, Matty, but what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s Lord Lucan. Maybe he shot someone once from a grassy knoll. Do we head now? The Chief’s getting shirty,” Matty asks.
I walk outside the greenhouse and do a thorough three-sixty perimeter scan – and low and behold, between the greenhouse and the wall I spot a plant pot sitting on a compost heap: red plastic, hastily thrown away. There’s no plant in it now but clearly there once was and perhaps residue remains.
“What do we have here?”
“What is it?”
“Gimme a bag, quick,” I tell him.
We put the plant pot in a large Ziploc to protect it from the rain.
We march back into the house.
“What have you got?” the Chief asks.
“Evidence, boss!” Matty says with an unconcealed note of triumph.
I look at McFarlane.
His face is blank.
The complaining, however, has dried up, which can only be a good sign.
I thank Mrs McFarlane for the tea and her hospitality.
We file outside.
A crowd.
A rent-a-mob. Three dozen youths in denim jackets.
The reserve constables looking nervous.
“SS RUC!” a kid yells and the chant is half-heartedly taken up by the others. Someone from the back throws a stone.
“Time to head, gentlemen, these fenian scum will make it hairy in a minute or two,” Brennan says.
These fenian scum.
The word throws me. Gives me a strange out-of-body dissonance for the second time today. How did it happen that I’m on the side of the Castle, on the side of the Brits? One of the oppressors, not the oppressed …
“Come on lads, let’s go!” Chief Inspector Brennan says.
We get back into the vehicles as a hail of bricks, bottles and stones came raining down on the Land Rover’s steel roof.
We make straight for the M2 motorway, the shore road, Carrickfergus Police Station.
“What now, boss?” Matty asks.
“Take a Land Rover and a driver and get this plant pot up to the lab. I want it examined by the best forensic boys on the force and I want you to stay with those fuckers until the job is done. If they find any rosary pea material in here at all it’ll be enough to hang McFarlane.”
Matty takes the plant pot and streaks off like Billy Whizz.
