“Well, I’m most grateful, sir.”
“Forget it, Duffy. Tell me about the developments in the case,” he said eagerly. I was a little surprised that one of the Greats of Mount Olympus would be interested in muckety-muck police work, but he had stuck his neck out for me, so no wonder he was keen.
“Well we interviewed the wife and released her.”
“Released her?”
“It was our feeling that she was not a suspect or a material witness.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Nothing, really. She doesn’t know who killed him or why.”
“She saw nothing?”
“Apparently not.”
“And you definitely don’t like her for it?”
“… uhm, like I say, I’m not completely sure, sir. But my instincts and the evidence tend to suggest that she is not to blame.”
Not to blame for the murder, anyway. She’d almost certainly been smuggling in Turkish heroin – somehow – but that wasn’t my concern and if CI O’Driscoll couldn’t pin that on her it was no skin off my nose.
“I’d like to see the transcripts of your interview.”
“I’ll have Lawson fax them to you, sir.”
“What else?”
“At the time of the arrest we didn’t find Mr Deauville’s heroin laboratory on site so it was reasonable to assume that it was at an off-site location and that she might lead us there in an attempt to destroy evidence.”
“And did she?”
“No. But we found the lab by other means. An old receipt he’d kept.”
“Good work! Were there drugs in it?”
“Oh yes, sir. A lot of drugs. A couple of pounds of heroin. More than we could handle, sir, so we called in the drug squad.”
“Brilliant, Duffy. Who was the drug-squad liaison?”
“CI O’Driscoll, sir.”
“How do I know that name?”
“Maybe from the poem, sir?”
“What poem?”
“The Yeats poem, sir. O’Driscoll drove with a song the wild duck and the drake—”
“Jesus man, I didn’t tell you to start reciting it.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“What else, Duffy? What’s this I hear about a DAADD connection?”
“Uhm, you’ve heard about that, sir, have you? Well, it’s slightly unusual, DAADD have not claimed responsibility for the killing with a recognised codeword, but there was a story in Republican News strongly suggesting that they did it.”
“The bastards. So it really wasn’t the wife at all?”
“It’s looking unlikely.”
“Tell me, Duffy, do we ever catch any of those DAADD murderers?”
“If they’re IRA men and there are no witnesses or forensic evidence I’d say it’s going to be very tricky, sir.”
“So not totally unprecedented if they get away with it, eh? If the Chief Constable starts breathing down our necks asking—”
“The Chief Constable?” I asked with alarm.
“Relax, man, I’m your shield, remember?”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
“So what’s going to happen next in the case?”
“CI O’Driscoll is going to arrest Mrs Deauville for the drugs smuggling.”
“Maybe I’ll watch it through the glass.”
“The interview, sir?”
“Yeah, why not. I’ve taken an interest in this case and I’d like to see it through to the end now.”
“That’s fine by me, sir. And I’m sure Chief Inspector O’Driscoll won’t mind. I believe he’s based at Antrim RUC.”
“Very good, Duffy, you’ve done well today, better than yesterday. Have a good night.”
He hung up and I called O’Driscoll to warn him that acting ACC Strong might swing by to watch him work his interview magic, which alarmed him nicely. I went home, fed the cat, called Beth and got the engaged tone. I called again and I got Beth’s mum, who said that Beth was out with “some old friends” and that Emma was sleeping.
I made a pint glass vodka gimlet, easy on the ice, lime and soda, heavy on the vodka.
I called up Belfast International Airport and checked to see if there were any direct charters to Bulgaria. Of course there were. Two a week from Belfast to Varna on the “Black Sea Riviera”. That’s how she smuggled the drugs. You bribe the officials at the Varna end and confidently walk through customs and immigration at the Belfast end. There was a chance of a random pat-down, but I knew that the immigration officers at Belfast’s ports and airports were on the alert for known terrorists and the sniffer dogs at the airport were the ones who’d been trained to look for explosives not drugs. Northern Ireland’s drug problem wasn’t of sufficient concern yet to have narco canine teams and officers at the airports. Eventually it would be, but not yet.
I thought about telling O’Driscoll this information, but decided against it. It was his case to make and no concern of mine. I was doing the murder, he was doing the drugs. And I felt sorry for Elena Deauville.
I looked out “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”, stoked the peat fire in the living-room grate and lay down on the floor to listen to it.
The cat crawled onto my stomach.
By the second vodka gimlet and the second iteration of the concerto much of the bad shit was going away.
Of course the real bad shit was still to come but I didn’t know that then.
At midnight the phone rang.
Beth?