“Hey,” he said. “You can’t do that!”
“You know what I’ll have to do next? I’ll have to arrest you and hold you as a material witness and maybe I’ll throw in a charge of trafficking. I’ll personally turn up for your bail hearing and I’ll oppose bail and you, my son, will be inside, where anybody can get you for the next six months.”
“Why would you do all that?” Ivan asked, still giving me that I-thought-we-were-friends look.
“Cos you’re not cooperating.”
“What is it you fucking want to know anyway?”
“I want to know who shot you.”
“I didn’t see who did it and by that I mean I really didn’t bloody see who did it. I was walking home from the leisure centre and they just plugged me in the fucking back. That’s it. End of story. Now if you don’t mind I have to get back to my packing.”
“Whither goest thou?”
“Getting the night ferry to Stranraer.”
“Has someone told you to leave the country?”
“No. I think the message was clear enough.”
“Where are you moving to?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“Lucky you.”
“Lucky me.”
I gave him my card. “Well, if your memory suddenly clears up please don’t hesitate to call. You can reverse the charges if you’re over in England.”
He examined the card and leaned in close to me. “I paid off every week like a choirboy. Thirty per cent of my gross. Not my net. My gross. There was no sense in killing me. Killing me was killing the goose.”
“What are you saying?”
“The paramilitaries didn’t shoot me. This is something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not sticking around to find out.”
“Come on then, we’ll give you a lift to the ferry terminal.”
We drove him down to the docks and saw him into the ferry terminal.
Instead of heading back to Carrick I found myself driving out along the Old Glenarm Road and then along the Coast Road.
The rain was still pouring down hard and a light mist was coming in from the sea. Crabbie thought that I’d gotten us lost again.
“Carrick’s back that way, I think, Sean,” Crabbie said diplomatically.
I stopped the Rover in front of a large, rectangular modern house right on the seashore. It had its own pier and mooring dock and a couple of boats were tied up there. It had big windows facing north and east and although it was all right angles its stylish minimalism worked well with the sea and sky. It was easily three times the size of my parents’ cottage in Donegal. And down in the basement there was a twenty-metre three-lane swimming pool.
“Why have we stopped?” Crabbie asked and when I didn’t respond he reluctantly spoke to fill the silence. “So who lives here, Sean? It’s not Dalziel’s house is it? I know he comes from money.”
“It’s Beth’s father’s house. She’s taken Emma to stay with them for a couple of days.”
“Oh.”
“Do you think I should do a wee surprise visit?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You had a row?”
“Aye.”
“She’s with her mother and father. She wants her space, doesn’t she? Away from you.”
“Is that what Helen would do?”
“Helen and her father don’t get on.”
“How come?”
“His new wife, May, hit Thomas for bringing mud in on the kitchen floor.”
“Wee Tommy? My godson? The cheek of her. Helen and May had words, then?”
“Helen said that if May ever raised a hand to any of her children again she would put her in the hospital.”
I nodded. “She would, too.”
“Aye, she would,” Crabbie agreed. “A remarkable woman.”
I looked at the house for a couple of minutes. A light came on in an upstairs window and there was a brief glimpse of what might have been Beth’s silhouette before the light went off again.
I turned the key in the ignition.
“Come on, let’s get out of here, I’ll drive you home.”
Crabbie’s house.
Quick hello to Helen and the boys.
Back along the Coast Road and the Old Glenarm Road. Back past Magheramorne and Whitehead and Eden and all the way back to the station Night shift.
Skeleton crew.
“Have you seen this, Duffy??????????” said a post-it note pinned to a copy of the Belfast Telegraph that had been placed on my desk. I binned the paper and examined the note: of course it was Dalziel’s handwriting.
I walked down to his office, but he wasn’t in.
I took a piece of A4 paper and penned a reply.
“In answer to your note, yes I have seen it, Kenny. Nice work with the question marks by the way, most people would only do three or four, leaving me baffled as to their intent,” I wrote.
I left it in the middle of his desk, checked for witnesses, fought the urge to piss in his Yucca plant, and left.
I was about to head home when I saw Yavarov, the Bulgarian translator.
“What are you still doing here? Didn’t we let Mrs Deauville go home hours ago?”
“You did. There is a bomb scare on the train lines. No trains to Belfast or Dublin, tonight.”
“Do you want me to drive you to a hotel?”