I went outside and gave permission for the body to be removed as I read the last of the witness statements. None of Deauville’s neighbours would admit to anything. They didn’t really know the deceased, he had kept to himself, they didn’t know any of his acquaintances, had never heard of any threats to his life or person.
This was also the bog-standard response to pretty much any murder in Northern Ireland, especially a murder that seemed to have a paramilitary connection. For what seemed like the millionth time in my career I had encountered Belfast’s code of omerta that babes must learn at their mother’s knee.
I looked at the crossbow bolt in the evidence bag. Didn’t seem remarkable but I’d find out more about it.
I put Lawson in charge of a couple of constables to thoroughly search the Deauville residence before Crabbie and I returned to the station in my mercifully unfucked-with Beemer.
Mrs Deauville had been returned to Carrick CID. She was literally spitting with fury and they had put her back in the cells rather than Interview Room 1 where she couldn’t wreck the two-way mirror and video-recording equipment. She wasn’t bad-looking, if you didn’t mind chain-smoking peroxide blondes. I’m a Debbie Harry fan, so, you know …
Crabbie and I tried a few questions but she appeared to have only a few stock phrases in English: “You fucking shit … Six pack beer … Move your arse, grandma … Your clothes shite …” which were probably enough to get you through six months of life in Northern Ireland but wouldn’t really do in a murder inquiry.
Her name was Elena and even after tea and biscuits she was visibly upset so I sent down a brave WPC to comfort her with a blanket and more tea and biscuits.
“How do we know she didn’t do it?” I asked Crabbie. “She has a temper.”
“No sign of a crossbow in the house.”
“She shoots her husband and throws the murder weapon in the sea?”
“And leaves his body outside the house all night?”
“She was drunk when she did it. Wakes up this morning. Oh my God, what have I done? Calls the cops, gets the waterworks going.”
“Why would she do it?”
“They had a fight? He was having an affair?”
“She seemed genuinely upset to me.”
“Remorse?”
“Maybe,” Crabbie conceded. “But we didn’t find a receipt for a crossbow in the house.”
“Who keeps receipts? Oh wait, he does. Still, let’s bring a picture of Deauville and his wife to every shop selling crossbows in Ulster. If the shopkeeps recognise either of them we probably are dealing with a domestic,” I said.
“You could be right. But then there’s the other case.”
“The other case, yes, damn it.”
I made some more phone calls. Special Branch informed me that there was indeed a vigilante group called Direct Action Against Drug Dealers (DAADD) who occasionally killed drug dealers in Belfast and environs. DAADD, of course, was just one of many cover names for the IRA and its offshoots and splinter groups.
“If this was a DAADD killing they probably would have already claimed it so they could make the evening news. They’re very media savvy,” Trevor Finlay from Special Branch intel informed me.
“We haven’t had any claims of responsibility, yet,” I told him.
“Nor us.”
“Meaning?”
“Might not be DAADD. Unlikely they would drive all the way up to Carrickfergus, anyway. If I was to guess, Sean, I’d say that this was something else.”
“Thanks, Trevor.”
I called up Roy Taylor in statistics and he told me that there had been twelve deaths by crossbow in the last thirty years, all of them manslaughters or non-prosecutable accidents.
I found out that there were two shops in Northern Ireland that sold crossbows. Both in Belfast. I called both and was told the rather disheartening information that they had sold over two hundred crossbows each in the last year. The shops were not legally obliged to keep the names and addresses of their buyers and none had. I gave them the make and serial number of the bolt in the evidence bag and unfortunately this was the most common type of crossbow bolt. Tens of thousands of them were sold in Europe every year.
Around five o’clock Lawson came back with the PCs from the house and area search. The house, rubbish bins, Mill Stream and skip search had revealed no dumped crossbow. The house search had revealed no more drugs or useful enemies list or even more useful address book but Lawson had found about a thousand quid in a paper bag under the oven and an old .455 Webley semi automatic pistol that had to be fifty years old if it was a day.
“This thing’s an antique,” Crabbie said, impressed.
“It looks like he never cleaned the mechanism, I doubt it would even fire,” I replied.
“Should we take it to the range and find out?” Lawson suggested eagerly.
Crabbie and I shook our heads together. The dodgy-looking old thing would probably explode in our hands and Carrick CID had suffered enough today.
“Oh go on, sir,” Lawson pleaded.
“We take that down the range, it misfires and gets me right in the kisser.”
“You’re a glass-half-empty kind of guy, sir, aren’t you?”
“I don’t even acknowledge the existence of the glass, son.”