“How so?”
“He was clean as a whistle. He was a dealer but not a user.”
“Didn’t smoke the profits. Smart guy. Oh I should tell you both that Carrick’s paramilitaries are not going to be claiming this one. Neither the UVF nor the UDA say they did it. My informant tells me that although Mr Deauville was an independent contractor he dutifully paid his protection money.”
“But he actually didn’t get any protection,” Crabbie said.
“No.”
“Who was this informant?” Crabbie asked.
“Andy Young.”
“Well, he would know.”
“Yeah he would.”
“So if the UVF and UDA didn’t kill him who did?” Lawson asked.
“Young could have been lying to me. There’s no honour among thieves and even less among drug dealers and paramilitaries,” I said.
“I just can’t see anyone else driving into the heart of UVF territory to execute some random drug dealer,” Crabbie said.
“There’s been no statement at all so far from this Direct Action Against Drug Dealers group, which there probably would have been by now if they’d been involved,” I said.
“So that leaves Mrs Deauville,” Lawson said.
Crabbie shook his head. “I don’t think Mrs Deauville did it either.”
“Why? We haven’t even talked to her yet. And she is violent, as you can testify,” I said.
“Remember that other drug dealer I was telling you about who was shot on Tuesday but survived?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, forensic confirms that all three crossbow bolts came from the same weapon,” Crabbie said definitively.
“How did they know that?”
“The way they know things.”
“You talked to someone over there?”
“Yeah. Jimmy Nichol.”
“When was this?”
“When you were in with the doctor.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Apart from the victim’s blood there was no DNA on the crossbow bolts.”
“And all three bolts came from the same crossbow?”
“Yup.”
“Where is that other victim? Morrison something, right?”
“Ivan Morrison. He’s still in Larne Hospital. Lawson and I got a full statement out of him on Tuesday night.”
“And he doesn’t know who shot him?”
“He’s not talking. Says he didn’t see or hear anything. They shot him from behind and drove off in a car.”
“Well, I’d like to talk to him,” I said.
“Better do it soon, Sean. If some bloke shot me in the back and was going around shooting other drug dealers I’d be on the boat to England pretty sharpish.”
“Good call. We’ll go see him today. But I don’t see how you think that the attack on Morrison rules out Mrs Deauville. How do you know she didn’t shoot Mr Morrison first on Tuesday to establish a pattern and then shoot her husband on Wednesday?”
Crabbie conceded the point. “If that’s true it’ll be a murder charge then,” he said.
Lawson seemed puzzled by this statement of the bleeding obvious. “We know it’s murder,” he said.
“If it was a crime of passion, we could have charged her with manslaughter, but if she really did shoot Morrison too then it establishes a mens rea and we have no choice but to take a murder rap to the DPP.”
Lawson nodded. “Oh I see. So by being too clever by half to throw us off the scent she’s got herself done for murder.”
“I still don’t think she did it,” Crabbie insisted.
I looked at him squarely in the face. He had good instincts, McCrabban. He smiled at me and started his filling his pipe.
“Oi, didn’t you get a lecture from Dr Havercamp about smoking?”
“He said I was as fit as a fiddle,” Crabbie said.
“Did he? He said I was a mess.”
“You should switch to a pipe.”
“He told me to cut out tobacco completely.”
“Aye. Well, he has a point, King James was against tobacco and he translated the Bible,” Crabbie said.
“A hundred years from now we’re going to discover that tobacco is good for us.”
“No we won’t,” Lawson said.
“Anybody find Deauville’s criminal record?” I asked.
“Yes, I looked that out for you and put it on your desk,” Crabbie said.
“Run and get it, will you, Lawson?”
When Lawson was out of the room I told Crabbie about Dalziel’s coming apotheosis.
McCrabban nodded dourly. “I could see it in the cards as soon as they promoted Strong to ASC. Strong to ASC, McClusky into Strong’s place and McArthur into McClusky’s job. That would leave a gap here and although you’re the senior officer they can’t promote you because you’ve ruffled too many feathers. They can’t promote me because I have no administrative experience and I’m only a detective sergeant so it has to be Dalziel. They can’t bump him from Sergeant to Chief Inspector so they make him an Inspector for now and Chief Inspector in August when McArthur leaves.”
“That’s a fine bit of detective work. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to spoil your holiday. I know it’s not very Christian for me to say but I don’t particularly like Kenny—”
Lawson came back in with Deauville’s file and we killed our mutinous conversation.