“Crabbie! It’s so bloody good to see you. Jesus, can’t I leave you alone for two days without someone trying to kill you?” I said, pumping his hand.
“No one tried to kill me, Sean. Mrs Deauville was just a little upset that I asked her to keep away from the body until the forensic officers came. Where are they, by the way?”
“Came and went mate, like the pack of wankers they are,” I said. “Lawson, the goat, please! So how’s your shoulder, mate?”
“It’s completely fine. No stitches, just a plaster and a tetanus shot. No hard feelings on my part – the woman was clearly distressed. Where is Mrs Deauville, by the way?” Crabbie asked.
I filled him in on the whole sorry business, leaving out my observations on Kenny Dalziel’s competence. “… so she’s back in Carrick now, but we’ll need a Bulgarian speaker if we’re going to interrogate her,” I said.
“That’s going to be tricky, Sean. I’ve checked. There is no Bulgarian consulate in Northern Ireland. I called up Queens and they don’t have anyone on staff who speaks the language – they suggested that we contact the school of Slavic languages in London or the Bulgarian Embassy in Dublin.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. What about this first victim who you said got shot by this crossbow maniac? What’s his name and where’s he?”
“Morrison is his name. Unpleasant wee toerag. He’s down in Larne hospital. A dozen stitches, lost a bit of blood but he’s fine.”
“He see anything?”
“He told me he didn’t see who shot him and has no idea why anyone would target him.”
“But he’s definitely a drug dealer too?”
“Oh yes. Eleven convictions for possession over the last five years and he’s in the files as a current dealer.”
“Was he shot from a car?”
“He quote didn’t see anything unquote. And quote, even if I had, I’m no bloody grass, unquote.”
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Him and Mrs Deauville, if we can get a Bulgarian speaker.”
Two Land Rovers pulled up and a team of forensic officers got out, led by the grim lardy face of Chief Inspector Payne.
I shook his hand and he shook the hands of Lawson and McCrabban, who he remembered from the sad case of Lily Bigelow.
“Good to see you, Sean. You’re looking well … for someone twice your age. Is your man going to lynch that goat, Duffy? It looks like a nasty piece of work,” Payne said, lighting a ciggie and smoking it with the kind of determination you seldom saw any more in cops under fifty.
“This goat will not be harmed on my watch. He reminds me of me: determined, obstinate, omnivorous. Take him round the back of the house and tie him up, Lawson,” I said.
When Lawson had gone Crabbie said in an undertone “It’s not a ‘he’, it’s a nanny goat, Sean,” which brought a hideous cackle from Payne.
“Duffy thinks of himself as a she-goat. Hilarious!” Payne said.
“Don’t you have work to do, mate?”
“Aye I suppose I better get cracking. You lads need to see how a professional does his job.”
The crowd-control officers from the police station finally arrived and I gave them a mini seminar on how to canvas for witness statements: no leading questions, keep everything as general as possible and the old who, what, when, where, how. Incredibly and depressingly this was news to most of them.
I let them all get to work and went inside to make some phone calls.
The Bulgarian Embassy in Dublin was very cooperative and said that they would send up a translator and consular representative first thing in the morning.
Payne found me reading the first completely unhelpful statements from Mr Deauville’s neighbours in the living room.
“I determined the cause of death,” he announced.
“Yes, well, that one didn’t exactly take Dr Gideon Fell.”
“Who?”
“What did you find out?”
“You plods in CID won’t have realised it but your victim was actually shot twice!” he said with unconcealed triumph. “He was shot in the back, of course, but it was a crossbow bolt in the stomach that killed him. It nicked what I believe to be the superior mesenteric vein and he bled to death. Even if he’d made it inside here he would have died.”
“Tell me about these crossbow bolts.”
“Well, I’m no expert on that, but they look normal to me. Barbed crossbow bolts for target shooting or hunting. I’ve got the shoulder one in an evidence bag for you. The pathologist will need to remove the other one.”
“Time of death?”
“About one this morning. I’m not going to be more specific than that. The last time we had a case together the medical examiner gave me an awful bollocking for being too specific about the time of death,” he said, again recalling the Lily Bigelow case.
“Very good, Francis,” I said, shaking his hand again.
“The boys from the morgue are here if you want to give them the nod.”