I could tell Brennan wasn’t too happy about that but he didn’t say anything. And besides he was getting worried about the time and he had one other fish to fry.
“Have you thought about the press?” he asked.
“Uh, obviously, we’ll need to brief the press at some point,” I said. “But we can probably put it off for a bit. It’s not exactly a slow news week.”
Brennan sighed. “This is going to blow up in our faces, Sergeant Duffy. If we don’t go to the papers you can be sure that our anonymous note writer, or one of Mr Young’s neighbours, or someone will. Do you have a media strategy?”
“Uh, no, not as such, not a, uh-” I stammered. I looked at Matty and McCrabban who had both discovered something fascinating about the wall-to-wall carpet.
Brennan looked at McCallister. “What about you, Alan? It’s a bloody thankless task but we need someone and DS Duffy has quite a full plate by the looks of it. You could do a good defensive briefing to a couple of the local hacks. Seen you do it before. “
McCallister smiled at me and shook his head. “No, no, fellas, that’s not the way to handle this at all. No defensiveness. We present this as a triumph. Through clever police work we have linked two murders. We talk about modern forensic techniques and how even during these difficult times we hard-working honest peelers are able to spend due care and attention on every single case.”
Brennan nodded. “I like it.”
“We won’t get TV because of all the other nonsense going on but we can call in some of our pals from the
Brennan looked at me. I shrugged. When I’d thought this was a nothing case I was keen for the telly but now it had got more complicated there was, at the very least, an element of stage fright; however, if big Alan McCallister wanted to help out. “If Alan wants to do it, that’s great,” I said.
“Ok, we’ll defer everything to Sergeant McCallister,” Brennan said.
Hold the phone. Defer everything? What did he mean by that?
Fortunately Alan saw my face and did his best Uri Geller: “Nope. I’m not CID. This is not my case, it’s Duffy’s. Run everything through Sergeant Duffy. I’ll only be his press officer. He tells me what to say and I’ll say it and that’s that.”
“Well said, Alan. These CID boys are flighty, sensitive creatures who don’t like their toes stepped on,” Brennan said. He got up and put his arm around me. “What kind of a loony are we dealing with here, son?”
“We’re dealing with a type none of us have encountered before in an Ulster context. A careful, intelligent, non-sectarian, serial murderer.”
“A total freak psycho,” Burke said.
“Not in the way you think. Sociopaths tend to have no regard or empathy for the feelings of others but they may in fact be personally charming with considerable charisma. I expect that our boy (and I’m pretty sure he’s a boy) will challenge us, but we’ll get the bastard, I’m confident of that,” I said and looked Brennan in the eye.
“That’s good to hear,” Brennan said. “But let me just say something here. Sean, I want you to tell me if you think we’re in over our heads. It’s not a weakness to admit the truth. You yourself were saying it the other night. You’re relatively new at all this and we are understaffed … we can always get a real expert in from Special Branch or even someone from over the water …”
The thought of having this case snatched from under me sent a chill down my spine. Because Carrickfergus was a Protestant town most of the mischief was expected to come from the Loyalist paramilitaries who were not as efficient at carrying out attacks as the IRA and who, anyway, were unlikely to attack the cops. As safe postings went, there were only four or five better ones in Northern Ireland, which is why I had initially not been that excited to end up here, a relative backwater. If you wanted to make your name you had to be in Belfast or Derry, but it would be worse if they were going to take all the good cases away from me …
“You yourself told me that resources are stretched thin. Belfast needs every available man until the hunger strikes and the riots are over. And running to mummy in England would be embarrassing for the whole RUC. No, I think we can handle this here in Carrick, sir, we really can.”
“Ok,” he said, not completely convinced. “I won’t ask you again. I’ll trust you to come to me.”
“I will, sir.”
“Any other comments?” Brennan asked but nobody could think of anything.
Brennan whispered something in Matty’s ear and he got up and came back with a bottle of Jura single malt. He poured us all a healthy dose in plastic cups and raised his glass.
“Unlike some stations that have been radically transformed with fairy gold from London, we’re still a small barracks, a small barracks with a family atmosphere, and this is going to be a challenge, but we can handle it if we all pull together. Can’t we, fellas? Can’t we, Sean?”
“We’ll have to, chief.”
We drank our whiskeys. It was the good stuff and it tasted of salt, sea, rain, wind and the Old Testament.
“Ok, boys, get that dram down your neck and get out there. Get working! I’ll have to tell Superintendent Hollis before I tell the media and it would be nice if I had one crumb to throw at his fat, dozy face. I may pop in after the wedding but now I have to go,” Brennan said.
“Yes, sir,” we all replied.
We skipped lunch and made phone calls. We discussed the postcard and the music but we made no headway.
Brennan came back from the wedding and demanded progress but we had none to offer him. He went into his office to change.
I had just finished a conversation with Andrew Young’s boss who denied all knowledge of Andrew’s homosexuality (sensible because he could have been charged as an abetter under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which considered homosexual acts to be “gross indecency”) when a now uniformed Brennan put his big paw on my shoulder and sat down on my desk.
“Do you know Lucy Moore?” he asked.
“No.”
“How long have you been here now, Sean?”
“Nearly a month, sir.”
“Lucy O’Neill was her maiden name. Local Republican family, the O’Neills. Big deal in these parts. Fairly well off Catholics. Her dad’s a human rights lawyer, her mum is high up in Trocaire — that big Catholic charity. Ringing a bell now?”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” I said.
“They both met the Pope when he came to Ireland in ‘79. Come on, you know who I’m talking about.”
Brennan had that unfortunate habit of assuming that all Catholics went to the same mass in the same chapel at the same time.
“Nope.”
“Ok, well, anyway, Lucy’s husband Seamus goes up to the Maze Prison last year for weapons possession and for one reason and another they get divorced.”
“He’s IRA?”
“Of course.”
“They don’t like it when their wives divorce them and they’re in prison.”
“No, not in theory. But apparently he didn’t mind too much because Seamus Moore has a wee woman on the side. More than one.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Anyway. They’re divorced. He’s up for his stretch. She’s living back with her ma and da and everything’s normal until last Christmas Eve. And then she goes missing. The family can’t find her so they put out feelers in the community and when that doesn’t work they call us.”
“Seamus had her killed from the inside?”
“No, no, nothing like that. Seamus doesn’t have the power for that. He’s a pretty minor player. She just goes
