“Who’s that?” I asked.
She sighed dramatically. “That’ll be two pound for the fags.”
“Your da gives me a policeman’s discount,” I said, with a smile.
“Me da’s a buck eejit, then, isn’t he? About the only person guaranteed not to kneecap you is a peeler. That’ll be two pound for the fags and if you don’t like it you can fuck off.”
I paid the two pounds and was about to drive down to Islandmagee when an incident report came in on the blower about two drunks fighting outside the hospital on Taylor’s Avenue. It wasn’t a detective’s job but it was my manor so I told the controller that I’d take care of it. I was there in two minutes. I knew both men. Jimmy McConkey was a fitter at Harland and Wolff until he’d been laid off, Charlie Blair was a hydraulic engineer at ICI until it closed. “For shame. What are you lads doing, blitzed out of your minds, at this time of the day?” I asked them.
Charlie attempted to shove me and while he was off balance Jimmy pushed him to the ground.
With difficulty I got them both in the back of the Land Rover and took them home to their long-suffering wives in Victoria Estate, where the women were using a cameo appearance by the sun to hang clothes from lines and chat over the fences. The men behaved themselves when they got out. We had gone from the adolescent male world of pushing and shoving to the feminine universe of washing and talk and order. There would be no more hijinks from them today.
There was no point writing the incident up. It was nothing. It was just another sad little playlet in the great opera of misery all around us.
I got back in the Land Rover and drove to Islandmagee in a foul mood.
There was a gate across the private road. It was chained up and I couldn’t break it without causing trouble for myself so I parked the Land Rover and walked to Mrs McAlpine’s cottage carrying Martin’s stuff in an Adidas bag.
Cora barked at me, giving Mrs McAlpine plenty of warning.
She opened the door gingerly.
There was blood on her hands.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello.”
“Is that blood?”
“Aye.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“This whole question question question thing is very tiresome.”
“Bad cop habit.”
“I’m butchering a ewe, if you must know,” she said.
“Can I come in?”
“All right.”
Her hair was redder today. Curlier. I wondered if she’d dyed it or was that a reaction to sunlight and being outdoors. She looked healthier too, ruddier. You would never call her Rubenesque but she’d put on weight and it suited her. Perhaps she was finally getting over Martin’s death. Looking after herself a little better.
I went inside carrying the green army shoulder bag.
“Do you mind if I finish up?”
“Not at all.”
We walked to the “washhouse” at the back of the farm where a sheep carcass lay spreadeagled on a wooden table. She began sawing and butchering it into various cuts of meat.
“This’ll last you a while. Do you have a freezer?”
“Harry does.”
“I’d help you carry it over, but I’m supposed to stay away from your brother-in-law. I got a shot across my bows from the Chief Constable no less.”
She laughed at that. “My God. I suppose his Masonic contacts are the only thing left in his arsenal.”
She cut long strings of sinewy meat from the bone and trimmed the fat and threw it into a box marked “lard”.
“So, uh, let me tell you why I’m here today. I was down at Carrickfergus UDR base and they asked me to take you some of Martin’s things. I brought them in the bag out there.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“It was no trouble. Interesting place, that UDR base. Bit grim.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never went there.”
“Like I say, pretty grim. Hard job, too, I expect,” I said.
She hacksawed off the sheep’s head and put it in a tupper-ware box. She looked at me.
“What are you getting at, Inspector?”
“Did Martin ever talk to you about his work?”
“Sometimes.”
“He was an intelligence officer. Did you know that?”
“Of course.”
“Did he ever talk to you about specific cases?”
“Hardly ever. He was very discreet.”
“He ever mention the name Woodbine, or talk about Dunmurry or the DeLorean factory?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Are you sure?”
“If he did, it didn’t make an impression.”
She finished butchering the aged ewe and I helped her bag the meat. We washed up and went inside the cottage.
“I was baking today. You want a fifteen while I put the kettle on?”
“Sounds delicious.”
“Wait till you taste them. My mother was the baker.”
“Your mother’s passed on?”
“Aye, passed on to the Costa del Sol,” she said with a laugh. She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. She caught me looking at her. She held my gaze a second longer than she should have.
“Its ages since I had a fifteen. How do you make them?”
She laughed. “Well, when I say baking, that’s a bit of a fib, isn’t it? The flour’s only for rolling them on the board.”
“What do you do?”
“They’re so easy. Fifteen digestive biscuits, crushed, fifteen walnuts, finely chopped, fifteen maraschino cherries, fifteen coloured marshmallows, a can of condensed milk. Flour and flaked coconut. Mix everything except the coconut. Roll into a ball. Divide the ball into two and make two log rolls.”
“And then what?”
“Scatter a chopping board with flour and the coconut.”
“Something about a fridge, isn’t there?”
She smiled. “Roll the sausages in floury coconut and then wrap each log tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two hours. Couldn’t be simpler. My secret ingredient is Smarties or, for Harry’s friend, M&Ms, which is the American equivalent.”
“The fifteens are for Harry too?”
“You have to keep the landlord happy don’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“They’re for a friend of his. An American lady.”
“A rich American lady? A potential bride?”
“I didn’t ask.”
She handed me a plate of the treats. “I must warn you,” she said. “They’re sweet.”
