“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll deal with the Chief Constable. Don’t pick up your phone. In fact get out of the office, now. You say you have more following up to do?”
“Yes, sir, in Larne, sir. Interview the first victim.”
“Good. Go!”
“Yes, sir … uhm, thank you, sir.”
Chief Superintendent Strong stood up and offered me his big hairy boilermaker’s paw. “Aye, like I say, I remember your work in the Lily Bigelow case. You did right by her and by Eddie McBain. Ed was my mentor and you did right by him. You’re a good policeman, Duffy. A good copper. I don’t care what the file says on you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And I am not going to have some scumbag drug dealer and some vermin journalist destroy your career, Duffy.”
“I’m very grateful, sir.”
“Now get out of here before your phone starts ringing and they draw you deeper into the bloody web.”
8: IVAN MORRISON
The sun setting behind the Antrim Hills. Rain pounding the windscreen. Sea spray on the side windows. The Land Rover swaying in the twenty-knot crosswind as we drove along the Acreback Road.
We had no radio reception at all and Crabbie wasn’t talking. He could go a thousand years and not mention the embarrassing story in the Belfast Telegraph. If someone was going to bring it up it would have to be me and I didn’t feel like it.
“I was down here earlier this morning,” I said as we drove through Magheramorne.
“Oh aye?”
“Beth had me down looking at a house.”
“Where?”
“The Ballypollard road.”
“Oh I know that road very well. You’d only be ten minutes from me. Well, ten minutes the way you drive. Lovely wee road, that. Have you got a view?”
“I’m not sure I want to move down here.”
“It’s a lovely wee quiet spot.”
“I like Coronation Road.”
“But Beth doesn’t?”
“She says no one talks to her.”
“Stop me if I’m being too personal but she’s a Protestant, isn’t she?”
“Oh yeah, Prod as the day is long. It’s not that. It’s a class thing, not a religious thing. They’re working-class Prods, she’s some kind of posh Prod from Larne.”
“So you don’t want to move?”
“Not really. But the house is going to take two years to build anyway. Lot could happen in two years.”
“That it could,” Crabbie said reflectively. “But it is very nice around here.”
“Beth and I had a row about it. I overreacted.”
“Not like you, Sean.”
I laughed. “Oh you think you’re funny, do you?”
He cleared his throat. “There’s a wee place down this way I’m thinking of buying.”
“Oh yeah? An extra field or two?”
“Considerably more than that. In fact, I’m thinking of throwing my hand in, if that’s the correct expression.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, old Kerry McBride is looking to sell her acres now she’s turned seventy, and she’d give them to me for a good price. That’s all cattle land of course.”
“Of course.”
“It would put me up to 150 head and even if I got rid of the sheep, which I would, that’s still a full-time job, isn’t it?”
I looked at him. “What are you talking about, Crabbie?”
“I’m more of a hobby farmer at the moment. Helen does most of it, but if I take this plot, well, I’ll have to come in full time, won’t I?”
“You’re quitting?”
“Thinking about it. Thinking seriously about it.”
“You’ll leave me and Lawson in the lurch?”
“Carrickfergus is more of a two-man station anyway.”
“What are you talking about? We’ve got a murder on our hands.”
“Our first murder in nearly a year.”
“The Troubles could spiral up at any moment. You know they could. These things come in waves.”
“Sean … I know. But with the farm. I have a young family,” he said guiltily.
“Crabbie, mate, you can’t leave because of one bad day. One bad shellacking in the press.”
“Oh it’s not that. I don’t care about that. I’ve been thinking about this for some time. I’ve been neither one thing nor the other for a few years now. A man cannot serve two masters. A house fernenst itself cannot stand. I cannot do the farm and be a Detective Sergeant in the RUC.”
Not this on top of everything else. Crabbie couldn’t go. I needed him. Was that panic I was feeling?
Fear?
It was a dangerous job, a dangerous job for a man with a young daughter and you needed a steady hand by your side. Crabbie had always been that steady hand. Crabbie would always be the guy going down into the engine room to fix the warp drive and save the ship. I liked Lawson, Lawson was good, but he wasn’t the Crabman.
Jesus, having trouble breathing again.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
“You can’t go. You can’t go and let Kenny Dalziel run the station. You just can’t.”
“The man’s a fool,” Crabbie agreed.
“And a scoundrel. McArthur as much as told me he beats his wife.”