Sandy was yet another fenian fifth columnist in Proddy Carrickfergus. Decent bloke. A bald wee fella from County Donegal. Rap sheet for smuggling cigarettes across the border but who hasn’t got one of those?
“Bless him, he’s on the mend, he’ll live to see a hundred,” Sandy said.
“I’ll put a tenner on that. Cheers, Sandy,” I said and headed for the door.
“Are you not buying a paper?”
“Improve the news, mate, and then I’ll get one.”
I walked past the Oak and stopped to look at a big convoy of army trucks and APCs going south along the Marine Highway. They were fresh painted and obviously coming straight from the ferry in Larne.
The soldiers were nervous and seemed about seventeen.
I gave them the black power salute just to get in their heads. Several of them looked suitably terrified and I had a bit of a laugh to myself.
The RUC barracks.
First one in again. Keep this up and I’d get a reputation.
I went to the coffee machine and got a coffee choc and then I checked the faxes but there was no news from Belfast. I followed up with a phone call.
Yes, they had both sets of fingerprints.
No, they had no results as yet. Yes, they knew it was a murder investigation. Did I appreciate that they were very very busy?
At nine o’clock Brennan came in with sergeants Burke and McCallister and asked if me and my CID lads wanted to earn some riot pay. It was Frankie Hughes’s funeral this morning, all RUC leave had been cancelled and trouble was expected.
“No thanks, chief, some of us have an actual job to do around here,” I said.
Brennan didn’t like that but he didn’t bust my chops.
“You’ll mind the store?” he asked.
“Aye,” I said.
The station emptied. Just Carol, a couple of part-time reservists, Matty, Crabbie and me.
I told the boys about the Puccini and both of them saw the same angle that I did.
“He’s taking the piss,” Matty said.
“He’s drawing attention to himself. That’s his method. Like Bathsheba combing her hair. There’s a reason for it,” Crabbie said.
I liked Crabbie. The sixth of nine boys. The rest of his brothers were farmers and farm labourers except for one who was a Free Presbyterian missionary in Malawi. He was the family brainbox. He had bucked the trend by not leaving school at sixteen and immediately getting married. Instead he had done his A levels, got an HND certificate at Newtownabbey Tech and joined the peelers.
He was married now, though, to a twenty-two-year-old from the same Free Presbyterian sect and she was already pregnant with twins. Doubtless they were planning to sire an entire clan.
“He? You’re thinking solo? One guy?” I asked him.
He nodded. “If they’re topping an informer it’s going to be a team of hit men from the UVF or UDA, but if it’s some pervert I reckon he’s a loner.”
He was dead right about that.
Double acts were rare in this kind of case.
The three of us talked evidence, ran theories and got nowhere.
We waited for the fingerprint data or ballistics or any good ideas.
Nothing.
“Do either of you know anything about women?” I asked them as I made a fresh pot of tea.
“I’m the expert,” Matty claimed.
Without mentioning Laura’s name I told him how I’d been turfed out this morning.
“You underperformed, mate. Simple as that. They say it’s all about having a good sense of humour and a nice smile and all that bollocks but when push comes to shove it’s all about what you do upstairs. Some of us have it, Sean, some of us don’t. You clearly don’t,” Matty said.
Crabbie rolled his eyes. “Don’t listen to him, Sean, he hasn’t had a girlfriend since he took Veronica Bingly to
The rioting at Frankie Hughes’s funeral began exactly at twelve and we could see black smoke from hijacked buses five miles across the lough in the centre of Belfast.
“My treat for lunch,” I said and took the lads to the Golden Fortune on High Street. We ate your typical low spice Irish-Chinese chips, noodles and spare ribs. We were the only customers.
I got us a trio of brandies and we milked the lunch hour well past two o’clock.
On the way back to the barracks I sent the boys on and I stopped off at Carrick Library.
There was a preacher outside who tried to give me something as I went in. It was a pamphlet about the imminent “Second Coming”. He was young and had the insolent air of the recently converted. I refused the pamphlet and went straight to see Mrs McCawley. She was wearing a yellow polka-dot dress that I hadn’t seen before. You don’t expect old folks to go swanning around in polka-dot dresses, yellow or otherwise, but somehow Mrs McCawley pulled it off. She’d been a beauty in her day and had run away to America after the war with some GI, only returning after his heart attack in the ‘70s.
I told her she looked nice and then my problem.
“Dewey 780–782,” she said right off the top of her head.
I got the score of
I sat next to her. “Good afternoon,” I said.
She gasped, surprised, and then she smiled. She slid the dictionary entry across to me.
She was looking at the entry on
“How did you?”
“I had to ask someone,” I said.
“I had a pretty good idea. At St Brigid’s we did a musical and an opera every year.”
“You were in
“No, I auditioned for Mimi and didn’t get it. Still, I recognized it.”
“You should have said something yesterday.”
“I didn’t want to until I was completely sure.”
She bit her lip. She seemed pale and she looked like she’d been crying. I remembered her appointment at the coroner’s office. “Did you go up to Belfast?”
“Nah. They called it off until tomorrow. Nobody could get into town because of the funeral.”
“Makes sense.”
She put her hand on mine. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“About what?”
“You know. Us.” She made a dramatic face and put her hand on her forehead like a silent-movie actress: “What might have been!”
“What still could be.”
She shook her head firmly. “No, definitely not. I just can’t. I went out with Paul for two and a half years. It’s a long time.”
“Of course.”
“He went to London. He wanted me to go with him. I said no.”
“You don’t have to explain,” I said.
She cleared her throat and slipped her hand from mine.
“You can get on with your wee thing if you want,” she said.
“Wee thing! It’s police work, darling, serious police work.”
I read the libretto for
