out.”
“They are. For all commercial purposes anyway. The mines incidentally are what got Sir Harry his ‘Sir’. His grandfather supplied salt for the Empire. It’s also why Harry couldn’t sell this land even if he wanted to. You can’t build on it.”
I smiled and she looked at me strangely.
“What are you thinking right now, Inspector?”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“I’m thinking, Mrs McAlpine, that most people would be keeking their whips if they were being questioned about a murder for which they had no alibi and a possible motive. But not you. You’re as cool as a cucumber.”
“Because I didn’t do it. I’ve nothing to be worried about. Why do you think I did it? Is it one of those policemen’s hunches I’m always hearing about?”
“Hunches are overrated.”
“How does one solve crimes, Inspector?”
“Most criminals aren’t that bright. They screw up and we find the screw up pretty quickly and we can usually go to trial, except if the screw up involves eyewitness testimony.”
“What happens if it’s eyewitness testimony?”
“The eyewitnesses are intimidated into not testifying. Those cases usually collapse.”
“And what about the hard cases? Like your body in the suitcase? That’s still your case, isn’t it? Or have you turned your attention to me and Inspector Dougherty now?”
“No, that’s still my case. My only case. A colleague of mine is looking into the death of Inspector Dougherty, and your husband’s murder, I’m sorry to say, is probably never going to be solved.”
“I see,” she said and pursed her lips.
“Have you ever fired a pistol before, Mrs McAlpine?”
“A pistol, no. A shotgun many times.”
I looked at my watch. I had been at this for twenty minutes and I wasn’t really getting anywhere. If this was my case, maybe Crabbie and me would make more progress down the station in a windowless interview room. But it wasn’t my concern, was it? I looked at her for a beat or two. “Well, I suppose I must be going. Thank you for the tea,” I said.
“That’s it, you’re not going to cuff me and drag me off?”
“No.”
“Why not? Do you believe me?”
“I don’t know. But you’re tangential to my investigation. Chief Inspector McIlroy may want to interview you about Dougherty, but I’m done here.”
“I’ll walk you out, if you like,” she said.
I’d been hoping for some sign of relief from her – a blush or a sigh or anything, but grief had washed everything out of Mrs McAlpine already.
I climbed the ladder and she followed me up. Out into sunlight. Or more exactly into the ambient light and rain. The horse whinnied excitedly when he saw Emma and she gave him a sugar lump.
There were several dirty-looking gulls in the fields taking shelter from the wind.
“Do you think those are fulmars?” I said absently.
“Fulmars?”
“Ful from the Norse meaning foul, mar meaning gull.”
She grinned at me. “A man of many interests.”
“Not really.”
We walked the horse back across the bog to the farm. We didn’t speak because half a dozen Army Gazelle helicopters were flying south east, at a low ceiling, in a tight menacing formation.
When the choppers had gone she asked me if I’d always wanted to be a policeman. I told her no. I’d been studying psychology at Queens.
She told me that she had done a degree in history.
We talked a little about the university. We’d had no mutual friends and our paths hadn’t crossed in the Students’ Union. It wasn’t surprising. She was seven or eight years younger than me.
“Is Queen’s where you met Martin?”
“Well, I’m a local Islandmagee girl so I already knew Martin, but that’s where we started going out. He was doing law but he dropped out when he joined the UDr I stayed on for a bit, and then, well … we got married.”
She was blushing. There was a story there, too. A pregnancy? A miscarriage? We reached the farmhouse. My car was there and next to it a shining female constable in a dark green uniform and a dark green Kepi.
“Your chauffeur?” Emma asked.
“Indeed.”
She offered me her hand. “I assume this is where we take our leave?” she said.
“I expect so,” I said, shaking her hand.
She looked into my eyes. “You’re disappointed, aren’t you? You think I’ve gotten away with something.”
I said nothing.
“I promise you, Inspector Duffy, I did not kill my husband, and I had nothing to do with the killing of Inspector Dougherty.”
“Okay,” I said, “how about we just leave it there.”
17: THE TREASURY MAN
I dropped Reserve Constable Sandra Pollock back at Larne RUC and drove on to Carrickfergus in the Beemer. Somewhere in County Antrim an Army Puma helicopter had been shot at with either an RPG or a surface to air missile and as a result the highways and byways were flooded with angry soldiers in green fatigues idiotically stopping every third car. Of course, I was one of the lucky stopees. I showed the squaddies my warrant card but they ignored it. Two of them pointed FN FAL rifles at me while their mates went through my boot.
“What’s this?” an acerbic Welshman asked me, holding up a flare gun.
“A flare gun.”
“What’s it for?”
“For firing flares.”
This could have gone for a while or until one of Taffy’s mates shot me, but they decided to let me go instead.
Back in Carrick the peelers were yukking it up over a fake version of the
“Take a look at this, Duffy,” Sergeant Quinn said.
“Uh, no thanks, some of us have work to do,” I said pointedly.
In the CID incident room McCrabban had news. After a bit of prodding the Consul General in Belfast had sent us a second, slightly lengthier FBI file on Bill O’Rourke. We knew most of it already. O’Rourke had worked for the IRS his entire life. He was not involved in any fraudulent or other criminal activities and as far as the FBI could see his only offence was that speeding ticket the local cops had told us about. The report was really rather curt. Three paragraphs. A couple of spelling mistakes. It was signed by a Special Agent Anthony Grimm. Something about it still didn’t feel quite right.
“Maybe we should talk to him,” I said.
“Who?”
“Grimm. Sounds like another fake name to me.”
“You and your fake names. You’re still not happy?” Crabbie asked.
“Clearly they did the bare minimum here. I want you to lean on the Consul again and see if anything else squeaks out,” I said.
“The consulate is fed up with us already,” McCrabban complained.
“You’ll do your best, I’m sure,” I insisted.
