right, mate? I mean, are you doing all right?” he asked in a big brother tone.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
A long pause.
“When I’m over the water I can look for a place for you, too, you know,” he said.
“Thanks…but you know how I feel.”
“Have a wee think. I mean, really, this place is finished, there’s no future here. Especially not for bright boys like you and me.”
“Sure, Tony. I’ll think about it.”
“I know you won’t, but you should. That doctor friend of yours. She’s doing the right thing.”
“I know.”
“Any more mysterious women leaving you Valentines?”
“Not today.”
“If it was anything serious she would have just told you, she wouldn’t have left you a cryptic note. That stuff’s strictly for the flicks.”
“I was thinking the same thing myself.”
Dead air for a second or two. “Don’t let the job get to you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Take care now.”
“I will.”
He hung up. I made another vodka gimlet, dimmed the lights and put on Pink Floyd’s
“McCrabban,” he said.
“Christ, are you still there?”
“You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name. And yeah, I am still here.”
“What are you doing, Crabbie, studying?”
“Aye. Got the old law books out. It’s quiet here, although intelligence has been coming through about prep for trouble in Belfast.”
“You better get out of there before you get dragooned into riot duty.”
“I wouldn’t mind riot duty. Double time and danger money. We could do with the cash.”
“Just don’t put in for triple-time, that wee shite Dalziel will be all over you.”
“I’ve been working on the case, too,” he said, without much enthusiasm.
“What are your thoughts?”
“Not just thoughts. I just spoke to your man. The FBI guy. Special Agent Anthony Grimm.”
“How?” I said stupidly.
“The time zones. They’re five hours behind.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Nothing new about O’Rourke. War hero. Adjusted well to civilian life. Good civil servant. There were a couple of other speeding tickets that weren’t in the file. Thirty years in the IRS.”
“Anything controversial? Did he ever audit the wrong guy?”
“Nothing controversial. He was a mid-level IRS inspector. He wouldn’t have been a prosecutor or have made any enemies.”
“What was this Grimm like? Weird tone of voice, evasive, anything like that?”
“Nothing that I noticed. Happy to speak to me, it seemed like. Broke the routine. Sounded a bit bored by his lot.”
Not what I was hoping for.
“There was one thing …” McCrabban said.
“Yes?”
“Well, when I called up the FBI’s number in Virginia and asked to speak to Special Agent Anthony Grimm, I was put on hold and then the operator said that she was transferring me to the Secret Service.”
“The Secret Service? Shite! What’s that all about? Aren’t they the ones that protect the President?”
“I asked Grimm and he laughed and he said that it wasn’t as dramatic as it sounded. He’d just been seconded to the currency protection department of the US Treasury. The most boring possible assignment in the entire FBI, he said. Even more boring than preparing data sheets on dead IRS inspectors. I don’t think that really means anything, but I thought you’d like to know.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll write that down. As long as he sounded legit?”
“He did.”
“Okay. Good. So where are we, Crabbie?”
“I think we can rule out anything from O’Rourke’s past. He was a model citizen. He paid his taxes, he didn’t have a record, looked after his wife.”
“I had no idea he was a serial killer, he was a very quiet man, he kept to himself,” I said in a Yorkshire accent.
“Stop it, Sean. He’s no ripper. I really feel for the bloke. His missus dies and he takes a bloody holiday to Ireland to get over his grief and while he’s here some bastard tops him. It all seems very random to me.”
“Random except for the fact that A) he was poisoned and B) the murderer chopped up the body, froze it for an unknown amount of time and then dumped it in a suitcase. That is not your standard mugging gone wrong, is it, Crabbie?”
“No.”
“And then there’s all the distractions, as you call them. The women and the note, the deal with the widow McAlpine …” I said, and took a big drink of the vodka gimlet.
“Ach, mate, the note’s a prank, and I never thought the McAlpine angle would get us anywhere.”
“You should have told me that before I went down to Islandmagee twice,” I said.
“You’re the inspector and I’m the detective constable.”
“All right, Crabbie, thanks. Go home now, okay?”
“Aye. Okay, bye, Sean.”
“Stay frosty and drive safe.”
“I will.”
I hung up and rummaged in the bookshelf for my King James Bible. I made myself another pint of lime and vodka and put on Radio Albania. A five-minute rant about Ronald Reagan and the evils of American capitalism. A rant about the Soviet Union and the decadence of the Brezhnev regime. Praise only for Pol Pot, a true friend of the workers in Cambodia.
It was midnight and I was only two sips into the new vodka gimlet when somebody started banging the front door.
“Will this madness ever end?” I said, storming down the hall.
I opened the door to Bobby Cameron, who had come by with a lynch mob.
18: NOT EXACTLY SCOUT FINCH
There were a dozen of them wearing balaclavas, ski masks or scarves; they were carrying cricket bats, sticks and baseball bats – the last always an impressive get in a country that didn’t play the game.
They had banged the front door rather than smashing the windows, so that gave me the feeling that they weren’t here to kill me.
“This is your last chance. If you want to prevent violence, you’ll have to fucking come, Duffy,” Bobby Cameron said in his unmistakable burr.
“Why don’t you take that thing off your face and we’ll talk like civilised men,” I said, pointing at the bandana over his mouth.
“Come with us, Duffy, or it’ll be on your conscience,” Bobby replied.
I liked that – whatever they were about to do was somehow going to be my fault.
