“Victor McClusky will be made the new Chief Super and I’ll get his old job.”
“Congratulations, sir. Superintendent. You deserve it.”
“No, they’re not making me Superintendent just yet but I assume that will come with the new responsibilities.”
“Still, congratulations. Divisional level.”
His jaw clenched. “I’m not a complete fool, Duffy, I know what you’re thinking. Here am I languishing at the rank of Inspector for the last five years …”
“Promotion isn’t the be all and the—” I tried but McArthur was a salesman who couldn’t leave your door until he’d finished his spiel: “I know what you all think in CID. Sean Duffy collars the villains and Chief Inspector McArthur takes the credit if there is any credit.”
“That’s not what we think at all, sir!”
“Well, it won’t be me for much longer. I’ll be gone. And I’m sorry to say that I’ve been told that they are not going to promote you into my place even though you have effective seniority. They will never promote you, Sean. You know that, don’t you? I’ve seen your confidential HR file. It actually says that on it. ‘Not to be given additional responsibility’.”
“I was told that by someone else who’d seen it.”
“Red lines all over it. You have some powerful enemies and I suppose some powerful friends too for them not to have tried to boot you out before now.”
McArthur wasn’t to know that all my powerful friends had been killed in a helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre two years earlier. Now I only had powerful enemies.
“Oh they’ve tried to boot me out, sir, but I keep hanging on. So who’s getting your job? New broom?”
“Nope. That’s why I made you apologise. Dalziel will be made Chief Inspector and he’ll be running the show from August onwards. You’re going to have to learn to work under him, OK?”
“Kenny Dalziel is being promoted to Chief Inspector a few months after being promoted to Inspector?”
“Yes.”
“And he is going to be put in charge of the whole station?”
“Yes.”
“With all due respect, sir, he’s got no talent for command.”
“That’s the kind of talk I don’t want to hear, Sean. I don’t want any more comments like that from you or anyone who works for you. OK?”
“Yes, sir.”
McArthur shook his head. “I share some of your reservations. I saw his wife once with a bruise on her cheek.”
“The fucking bastard.”
“I know … Look, he’s going away this week for his annual leave to Eastbourne and when he comes back I expect relations between you and him to be completely different. Certainly they will need to be fixed by the summer or your life here is going to be untenable.”
I said nothing. The rain was lashing the window behind the Chief Inspector’s head and in the stormy lough beyond boats were struggling to make headway up the deep water channel to the port of Belfast. This was all some kind of metaphor for my own life.
“Maybe Dalziel will fail the promotion board. Surely they’ll see that he’s an eejit.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He’s been practising for the promotion board for years. He’s the sort of pencil pushing, risk-adverse type who’ll slowly go up the ranks until he’s Chief Constable.”
I nodded sadly and finished my vodka gimlet.
The Chief Inspector stood up. “You’ll remember what I said. No more smart-alec remarks. Make nice. OK? And remember this is just between us.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, feeling thoroughly beaten now.
“Oh and report to the doctor downstairs. He’ll go through your blood work with you and take your pulse. You know the drill.”
“Do I have to do that now? I have a witness to interrogate.”
“It’ll only take five minutes, Sean,” he said.
I nodded and when he was gone put on a fresh shirt and tie to look respectable for the doctor.
The phone rang in my office. Switchboard said it was a reporter but I didn’t have the time to talk to reporters. “Shall I say you’re too busy?” Eileen asked.
“Yeah, that’ll do,” I said absently. Reporters, of course, hated to be told that you were too busy to speak to them.
Of course the doc’s visit did not take five minutes. Not even close. I’d been avoiding Kevin Havercamp for some time, now the bugger was going to get his money’s worth.
A sallow-faced, balding, heavy lidded, Uriah Heep of a man, Kevin could take the wind from the sails of even the breeziest of chaps and he caught me when I was already vulnerable.
He made me strip to my boxers and vest. He weighed me, listened to my lungs and took my blood pressure. He stuck me in a dangerous-looking X-ray machine that seem to have been trundled out of 1955 and a grim-faced nurse took a photograph of my internals.
“What’s the verdict, doc?” I asked as I put my clothes back on.
“You’re 10 stone nothing and your blood pressure is 150 over 95. Are you on hunger strike or something?”
“No.”
“So you’re just living on cigarettes and whisky now, eh Sean?”
“No. I’ve cut down on both, actually.”