selection of records that would get me through the evening: “Unknown Pleasures” by Joy Division, “Bryter Layter” by Nick Drake and Neil Young’s “After The Goldrush”. Yeah, I was in
I lay on the leather sofa and watched the clock. The children’s game ended. The lights come on all over Belfast. The army helicopters took to the skies.
The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Is this Duffy?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I was looking for you at work, Duffy, but apparently you’d left already. Lucky for some, eh?”
It was the weasly Kenny Dalziel from clerical.
“What’s the matter, Kenny?”
“The situation is a disaster. A total disaster. I’ve been pulling my hair out. You don’t happen to know who started all this, do you?”
“Gavrilo Princip?”
“What?”
“What’s this about, Kenny?”
“It’s yet another problem with your department, Inspector Duffy. Specifically Detective Constable Matty McBride’s claim for overtime in the last pay period. It’s tantamount to fraud.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Constable McBride cannot claim for time and a half danger money while also claiming overtime! That would be triple time and believe me, Duffy, nobody, and I mean nobody, is getting triple time on my watch …”
I stopped paying attention. When the conversation reached a natural conclusion I told him that I understood his concern and hung up the phone. I switched on the box. A preacher on one side, thought for the day on the other. This country was Bible mad.
Half an hour later Dick Savage called me with info about Abrin. It was an extremely rare poison that he said had never been used in any murder case anywhere in the British Isles. He thought that maybe it had been used in a couple of incidents in America and I might want to look into that.
I thanked him and called Laura, but she didn’t pick up the phone.
I made myself another vodka gimlet, drank it, turned off the soup, and put “Bryter Layter” on album repeat and then changed my mind. Nick Drake, like heroin or Marmite, was best in small doses.
As was typical of Ulster’s spring weather systems, a hard horizontal rain was lashing the kitchen windows now so I switched the record player to its 78 mode and after some rummaging I found “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall” by The Ink Spots with Ella Fitzgerald.
I tolerated the Ink Spot guy singing the first verse but when Ella came on I just about lost it.
The phone startled me.
“Hello?”
“You know the way you’re always saying that I’m a lazy bastard and that I don’t take this job seriously?”
It was Matty.
“I don’t believe that I’ve ever said any such thing, Matty. In fact I was just defending your honour to that hatchet-faced goblin, Dalziel, in clerical,” I said.
“That sounds like a bold-faced lie.”
“You’re paranoid, mate.” I told him.
“Well, while all you lot were copping off with female reservists and buggering away home I’ve been burning the midnight whale blubber.”
“And?”
“I’ve only gone and made a breakthrough, so I have.”
“Go on.”
“What’s that racket in the background?”
“That ‘racket’ is Ella Fitzgerald.”
“Never heard of him.”
“What’s going on, mate? Have you really found something out?”
“I’ve only gone and cracked the bloody case, so I have,” he said.
“Our John Doe in the suitcase?”
“What else?”
“Go on then, you’re killing me.”
“Well, I was on the late shift anyway to cover the station, so I thought instead of breaking out the old stash of
“Yes . . ?”
“No forensics at all. No liftable prints. Blood belongs to our boy. But you know the wee plastic window where people write their addresses?”
“McCrabban already checked that window – there was no address card in there. No one would be that much of an eejit.”
“That’s what I thought too, but I cut it open and I noticed a wee sliver of card scrunched up in the bottom of the window. You couldn’t possibly have seen it unless you cut open the plastic and shone a torch down into the gap.”
“Shite.”
“Shite is right, mate.”
“It was an old address card?”
“I got a pair of tweezers, pulled it out, unscrunched it and lo and behold I’ve only gone and got the name and address of the person who owned the suitcase!”
“Who was it?”
“Somebody local. A bloke called Martin McAlpine, Red Hall Cottage, The Mill Bay Road, Ballyharry, Islandmagee. What do you think about that?”
“So it wasn’t the dead American’s suitcase, then?”
“Doesn’t look like it, does it? It’s like you always say, Sean, the concept of the master criminal is a myth. Most crooks are bloody eejits.”
“You’re a star, Matty, my lad.”
“An underappreciated star. What’s our next move, boss?”
“I think, Matty, that you and me will be paying Mr McAlpine a wee visit first thing in the morning.”
“Tomorrow? It’s a Saturday.”
“So?”
He groaned.
“Nothing. Sounds like a plan.”
“See you at the barracks. Seven sharp.”
“Can’t we go later?”
“Can’t go later, mate. I’m having me portrait done by Lucian Freud and then I’m off to Anfield, playing centre back for Liverpool on account of Alan Hansen’s injury.”
“Come on, Sean, I like to sleep in on a Saturday.”
“Nah, mate, we’ll go early, get the drop on him. It’ll be fun.”
“All right.”
“And well done again, pal. You did good.”
I hung up the phone. Funny how things turned out. Just like that, very quickly indeed, this potentially tricky investigation was breaking wide open.
4: MACHINE GUN SILHOUETTE
