“Jesus! Strong has seen this?”
“Sean, be under no illusions, by the end of the day the Chief Constable will have seen this.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What can I do?”
“Don’t do anything. Have a cup of tea. No booze! Sit tight. I’ll see what—”
Another knock at the door.
“Who is it?”
“Duffy, is that you in there?” Strong asked and then came in without waiting for a reply. I’ve seen less purple beetroots than Strong’s cheeks and forehead. Always a tall man, he looked even taller somehow when he was pissed off. His nose was a furious red and his ginger beard and salt-and-pepper hair were almost standing on end. As an ex-boilermaker who’d apprenticed in the Clydeside yards before transferring to Belfast in the early 60s he had impressively massive hands and shoulders. All this combined with his tight dark green uniform and Chief Superintendent’s pips meant that he cut an imposing figure on even his good days.
Strong looked at the Chief Inspector and the spilled newspaper on the floor.
“Make yourself scarce, McArthur, I’ll talk to Duffy here,” Strong said in that gravelly Govan accent of his.
“Yes, sir,” McArthur said.
When he’d gone, Strong went over to the drinks trolley and poured us both a healthy measure of Jura. He handed me a glass and sat down.
“Details, lad. Don’t leave anything out even if it looks bad for you and your men. If you lie to me now it’ll go much worse for you in the long run.”
I told him everything in as cool and dispassionate voice as I could muster. The Jura helped, as Jura always does. But in truth my bap was ringing and I was having trouble keeping it together. Strong listened, drank his whisky and asked a few pointed questions along the way.
When I was done he nodded to himself and stood. “Right. It looks like you did all you could, Duffy. It was just an unlucky set of circumstances, that’s all. I’ll get the PR boys to formulate a response to the Bel Tel and any other media who pick up this story. And I’ll talk to the Chief Constable when he calls.”
“Is he going to call?”
“He’ll have to. The minister will be on him and he’ll be looking for blood. But he’s not going to get it. I’m not having some jackal in the gutter press taking down one of my men.”
A huge wave of relief washed over me. John Strong – son and grandson of Clydebank shop stewards – was a good man to have on your side.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are to talk to nobody, Duffy.”
“No, sir.”
“If anyone from the press calls you have no comment.”
“No comment. Understood, sir.”
“Do you have a suspect in this case?”
“No, sir. Looks like the wife didn’t do it, so it’s a bit of a mystery.”
“That’s the last thing we need. How so, a mystery?” Strong asked.
“Well, there’s the unusual murder weapon and no claim of responsibility from any of the paramilitary factions or that DAADD group that sometimes kills alleged drug dealers.”
“You can rule out the wife? I hear she’s an immigrant? And she’s clearly violent.”
“Well, there’s no ‘definitely’ in a case like this, but we were all pretty impressed by her testimony. A second man, also an alleged drug dealer, was shot a few nights ago. He lived. I was just on my way to interview him.”
“Second man, eh? Also with a crossbow?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aha! So this is some kind of vigilante out to get drug dealers?”
“Could be, sir. I had young Lawson check to see if there had been any heroin overdoses or deaths in Carrick or Belfast lately.”
“How would that tie in?”
“Revenge? Kid overdoses and the parents seek revenge on the dealer. Or on all the dealers. But there have been no overdose deaths of heroin this year. And Lawson says that the deaths from last year don’t link back to Deauville.”
“And before that?”
“Deauville wasn’t in the heroin trade. He was in England in the bank-robbing trade … So I suppose that brings us back to DAADD.”
“If one of the paramilitary groups or DAADD was to take responsibility for the murder, would the case go away?”
“It wouldn’t be solved, sir, but—”
“But what?”
“We’d probably yellow the file. Case like that almost never gets solved unless there’s eyewitness testimony or forensic evidence.”
“So I could then tell the Chief Constable that the case was closed?”
“It wouldn’t be closed but it would be yellowed – no further action by Carrick CID, pending additional evidence.”
Strong nodded to himself. “That would satisfy him. And it would probably satisfy those bastards in the press.”
“Yes, sir. About that. They said some very inaccurate things about me. Maybe I should contact a lawyer or—”
“No! No lawyers. No comment. All you will do is work diligently and quietly on getting this case out of your inbox as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And no doubt – this being bloody Belfast – there will be some kind of atrocity along in a few days to get the press slavering for someone else’s hide.”