None of my clothes were clean so I pulled on my jeans and a battered red New York Dolls sweatshirt that I had picked up in America.
We ate and I looked under the BMW for bombs and I drove Laura to the hospital.
I went to the paper shop, listened to Oscar complain about the paramilitaries, scanned the headlines in the newspapers: The Pope was out of hospital, a dress designer had been picked for Lady Di’s wedding, no hunger strikers had died overnight. I rummaged in the glove compartment and found the mix tape I’d made of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, John Lee Hooker and Howlin Wolf.
I put the windows down and drove up into the country to clear the cobwebs. When I finally got back to Carrick police station Matty and Crabbie were expectantly waiting for me in the CID incident room.
Matty was holding something in his hand.
“News,” he said.
“Have we got a break in the bicycle theft case?”
“Better. The letters and postcards Lucy Moore sent to her sister in Dublin.”
“What about them?”
“You asked her sister Claire to send you the letters, right?”
I put on latex gloves and took them to the desk by the windows in the CID incident room. Two letters, two generic white postcards and one picture postcard of the Guinness brewery.
“We read through them a couple of times. She only says the blandest things. ‘I’m doing well, it rained today, I had toast for breakfast,’ that kind of thing,” Crabbie said.
“It’s as if she had someone looking over her shoulder censoring ever single word,” Matty said.
“Here’s a typical one,” McCrabban said. I picked it up and read it:
Dear Claire,
I hope you are good. I am well. Things are nice here. Don’t worry about me. I’m looking after myself. I saw The Horse of The Year Show on TV last night. Your favourite, Eddy Macken was the quare fellow.
That’s all for now.
Lucy
“Ok, so why are you so excited?” I asked. “Fingerprints?”
Matty shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. No prints and I checked the stationery, same as the others, nothing special. I ran the letters under the UV light. Nothing. But then I did the same with the envelopes … I don’t know if you’re still interested, Sean, but have a wee gander at this …”
He handed me one of the envelopes and a copy of the UV photo.
“In visible light there’s nothing on the envelope, but under the UV light you can just see an ‘S’ in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope.”
I was electrified. “How did that get there?”
“In your bog-standard Irish way some diligent person had been writing the return addresses on all the envelopes in a stack. Top left-hand corner, name and address,” Matty said.
“Of course they kept the envelopes that Lucy used free of a return address,” McCrabban added.
“But whoever was writing the return addresses on the regular envelopes leaned all the way through to the envelope that Lucy used for this letter to her sister. Cheapo paper and a heavy hand. Only the ‘S’ though. You can just see traces of the rest of the address, but nothing else is legible.”
I nodded. “So what do you think we have here, lads?” I asked.
“I think we have the first letter of the name of the person Lucy was staying with. You always do the name first. Name and address in the top left-hand corner, that’s what I was taught,” Crabbie said.
I rubbed my chin. I wasn’t entirely convinced and Crabbie could see that.
“I mean, Sean, it’s only the first letter of a first name, but it’s still a lead, isn’t it?” Crabbie insisted.
“It could be that,” I said sceptically.
“Come on, Sean!” Matty said.
“I don’t want to piss on your cornflakes, boys, but the imprint of an ‘S’ in the left-hand corner of an envelope isn’t exactly Nathan Leopold’s glasses prescription, is it? And I know what the Chief’s going to say. He’s going to say that this case is closed, isn’t he?”
“Do you still think Lucy’s death is connected to Tommy Little’s?” Crabbie asked.
Of course I had told them my bullshit theory about the line from
I shook my head. “Nah. Lucia, Lucy? I was just spouting off, Crabbie. It’s a coincidence,” I insisted, but Crabbie looked me in the eyes and he saw that I wanted to be convinced.
“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that there’s a link between these two cases. These two murders that occurred at approximately the same time, not a million miles away, where does that get us?” Crabbie asked.
“There are two ‘S’s in the Tommy Little case, aren’t there?” Matty said.
“Aye. There are. Freddie Scavanni and Shane Davidson.”
The three of us stared at the envelope. Outside rain was lashing the windows. A coal boat was struggling out of Carrick harbour. An ambulance roared by on the Marine Highway.
Crabbie filled his pipe and lit it. “So,” he said.
“So,” I seconded and lit another ciggie.
“What do we do with this?” Matty asked.
“What can we do?” Crabbie asked.
“I don’t know. If I or either of you go near Scavanni or Shane Davidson we’ll get a bollocking.”
Matty jabbed his finger into the envelope. “But we have something here!”
Suddenly the incident-room door was kicked open. Chief Inspector Brennan was standing there larger than life. Eyes wide, fag end drooping from his mouth. I immediately hid the envelope under a sheet of A4.
“Oi, Sergeant Duffy!” Brennan bellowed.
“Yes, sir?”
“Remember in the dim distant past of yesterday you gave me this big fucking speech about how there wouldn’t be any more queer murders? About how the queer angle was only misdirection? A false trail?”
“Yes.”
“Well, wise guy, they just found another dead poofter. You’re fucking brilliant, aren’t ya?”
“Where?”
“Loughshore Park, near Jordanstown. In the bogs. Somebody just called it in.”
Loughshore Park.
The toilets.
“Is there a description of the victim?” I asked.
“Young white male, twenty, Elvis quiff, black hair, what’s it to you?”
I grabbed my leather jacket and my revolver. I pushed past Brennan. He grabbed at me.
“Where the fuck are you going, mate?”
“Loughshore Park.”
“This isn’t your case any more, arsehole!”
I ran down into the car park and reversed the Beemer out of its spot.
I hit 80 on the Shore Road.
I made it to Jordanstown.
Todd was there with his team. Ten officers in all. White boiler suits, photographers, the whole thing. I was impressed.
I showed my warrant card, kept out of Todd’s sightline and went down into the bog.
Of course it was him.
He was lying there in the foetal position with his hands ducttaped behind his back.
Billy and Shane had silenced him.
They’d tortured him first to get any information out of him. He’d been stripped and beaten black and blue. This also was a lesson for Shane. A lesson in the way the world worked.
I walked closer to the body.
His face was bloody but there was no blood pool around the corpse. He hadn’t been shot.
“How did he die?” I asked one of the forensic officers.
