I looked at the Chief Inspector for an uncomfortable five seconds. This kind of talk annoyed me no end.
“I am going to give a damn about him, sir. My men are going to give a damn about him. Carrick CID is going to give a damn about him,” I said and with the rule of threes ringing in his skull I finished the whisky, set the glass down on his desk, and exited the office with enough fizzy melodrama to have made the heart of the octogenarian Bette Davis in far-off California skip a beat.
I was still grinning when I made it back to Coronation Road ten minutes later.
3: THE BIG SHEEP
“What are you so pleased about?” Beth asked as I waltzed through the door kissing girlfriend, baby girl and cat, in that order.
“Oh nothing. Just something I said to the Chief Inspector.”
“Is that whisky on your breath? You know I worry about you driving with the liquor in you.”
“The Chief Inspector was pouring so it barely covered the bottom of the glass.”
She handed me a cold can of Bass. I popped it and took a gulp. A cigarette would have gone down well here but I was limiting myself to half a pack a day and I only had two left to get through the night.
“How was the cat in our absence?”
“He’s fine, but Niamh overfed him. She gave him two tins a day.”
I stroked him on the head again. He was a long, lean cat who burned off a lot of energy. “He looks OK to me.”
“How’s your big case?” Beth asked.
“It’s a murder all right. Some lunatic going around shooting drug dealers with a crossbow.”
“Will you be able to solve it?”
“I very much doubt it. No eye witnesses either because there were no eye witnesses or because they think the paramilitaries killed him and everyone is afraid to blab. Add in the fact that the murder weapon is an extremely common piece of equipment and that Mr Deauville was a drug dealer so he had many enemies and rivals … Nope it’s not looking good for a resolution.”
“And yet you seem cheerful enough?”
“Well we’ll give it the old college try, won’t we? You know how many murder cases I’ve successfully brought to trial since moving to Carrickfergus?”
“How many?”
“Zero.”
“And again you’re smiling, what’s up with you, Sean?”
I pulled her close and got a whiff of her perfume. I brushed a line of red hair from her forehead and kissed her on the lips.
“A man’s nothing without a purpose. For the last couple of months we’ve been treading water but now I’ve got something solid to work on and by God I’m going to work on it no matter what that idiot Chief Inspector has to say about it.”
“You want a purpose? Change Emma and take her for a walk before the rain comes on again. Dinner will be up in half an hour.”
“OK.”
When I changed Emma’s nappy and powdered her she fell asleep on the changing table so I transferred her to the cot.
“OK to let her nap?” I called into Beth.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Hey, Niamh told me a joke. What do you get when you cross an agnostic, a dyslexic, and an insomniac?”
“Uhm—”
“An eejit who stays up all night wondering if there really is a dog,” I said.
I smiled and went out to the shed to “work on rebuilding my Triumph Bonneville”, a fiction Beth and I both accepted.
Shed.
Paint tins.
I had no idea sniffer dogs had gotten so sensitive so I moved my stash out of said tins and put it in a block of engine grease.
I picked up the extension phone and called Johnny Freeman, my marijuana dealer.
“Hello?”
“What’s that noise in the background. Is someone murdering cats?” I asked.
“It’s Kylie Minogue, as you well know.”
“I suppose you heard the news.”
“Of course. It was all over the Daily Mirror. Ian Rush is unhappy at Juventus and would love to come back to Anfield.”
“Not that news. What do you know about this dead drug dealer?”
“Oh, him? Unaffiliated independent operator. Only a matter of time before he got kneecapped or topped or threatened with kneecapping and topping.”
“You don’t sound particularly worried, Johnny.”
“I pay for protection. Twenty per cent. And still my prices cannot be beat in all of East Antrim … Did the drug squad seize any merchandise?”
“Nope. Nothing in the house. He must have a lock-up somewhere.”
“And when you find the lock-up?”
“Everything will be under lock and key in the property room. Weighed and catalogued. Destined to remain there until the investigation is concluded. This is a murder case.”
“What do they do with narcotics evidence after the case is over?”
“They destroy it.”
“Who destroys it?”
“Forget it, Johnny. There’s a whole procedure for illicit goods. A team from Belfast will come down for it and they’ll take it with them and then it’ll be incinerated.”
“Crying shame.”
“Johnny, if I could bring you back to the matter in hand. A man’s been murdered here. What do you know about Deauville?”
“Nothing. Moved here from Bangor a few months ago. Worked out of Sunnylands and Castlemara. Not my turf, so I didn’t care.”
“Whose turf was it?”
“The UVF runs them estates, as you well know.”