“Hello?”
“Sean, it’s Seamus O’Driscoll, just wanted to let you know that we’ve arrested Mrs Deauville and taken her to Antrim RUC.”
“It’s midnight, Seamus.”
“I thought you would want to know.”
“Fine. Thanks. But there’s no need to call me with further updates. You can call DS McCrabban at the station. I think he’s duty detective.”
“I will. Listen, Sean, Chief Super—I mean Acting Assistant Chief Constable Strong’s here right enough, how do I handle him?”
“Jesus, mate, it’s not Cardinal ó Fiaich. He’s just another dozy peeler.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Goodnight, Seamus.”
“Night, Sean.”
The cat was looking at me expectantly and since no one else wanted to hear it I gave him the last two stanzas of “The Host of the Air”: “O’Driscoll scattered the cards/And out of his dream awoke: Old men and young men and young girls/Were gone like a drifting smoke/But he heard high up in the air/A piper piping away, And never was piping so sad/And never was piping so gay.”
The cat yawned, not very impressed by this at all. “I learned that when I was eleven. Give me some credit,” I said. “I suppose it’s too old-fashioned for you, is it?”
But the wise little creature was already asleep.
10: DEATH ON THE ROCK
Sunday morning. No girlfriend, no baby girl, cold house, rain so hard it was bouncing eight inches off the pavement. Coronation Road was wet and empty and I felt isolated and alone.
With the family around and the sun shining and the kids out playing, this street seemed to lie at the centre of the earth, as Jerusalem does on medieval maps. The living room of #113 Coronation Road was the centre of the centre and the record player spinning Peetie Wheatstraw’s “Police Station Blues” was the axis around which the whole universe curved.
But not today. Today #113 Coronation Road was just a cold little ex-council house with ashes in the grate and a hungry cat whining in the kitchen.
I called Beth but Hector answered the phone and claimed she was down at Larne Marina working on their boat the Grania.
“At this hour? In this weather?”
“Yes. You know Beth, she loves sailing.”
First I knew about that, I nearly said. “Yeah, I know. She’s not out on the water though, is she? It’s supposed to storm later.”
“Of course not.”
“OK, I’ll try her later. Tell her to call me and tell her I miss Emma.”
I lit the fire in the living room, found a record, put it on, and thanked God for Ella Fitzgerald and a case to occupy my brain and keep away the blues.
The IRA proxy group DAADD were sort of claiming the Deauville murder and we could yellow this file soon enough but there were a few things about the case I did not like.
I took a hit on my asthma inhaler and had a cup of coffee and settled in front of the fire to think.
Think until ten anyway when I would try Beth again.
Item #1: would the IRA or its DAADD proxy really have driven deep into a Loyalist area like Sunnylands Estate to kill some random drug dealer?
Item #2: would they really have used a weapon as exotic as a crossbow when they were plenty of guns available in Ulster?
Item #3: what did Elena Deauville know about the murder that she wasn’t saying?
I considered the problems one at a time:
Item #1: on the surface it didn’t make a whole lot of sense for the IRA to come to a housing estate in Carrickfergus. The IRA’s preference was always for soft targets. Would they really drive deep into a twisty Loyalist housing estate to kill a random pusher? The only reason they would do such a thing would be for the PR value: to prove that they could go where they pleased. Bam! We drive into Protestant Larne to shoot a drug dealer. Bam! We drive into Protestant Carrickfergus the very next night. Look at us, we can be anywhere! Yes, that worked as a reason, but then why not claim it with a recognised codeword and shout it from the rooftops? You don’t want to antagonise the Loyalists and jeopardise a truce, fair enough, but then why kill Deauville and shoot Morrison in the first place? So maybe you shoot Morrison to establish a pattern, then you shoot Deauville, then you tell Republican News that this was the DAADD and they believe it. Everyone’s happy: the press is happy, the RUC detectives are happy, parents concerned about evil doers selling drugs to their kids are happy … And of course the real killer is happy because he or she has gotten away with it …
Item #2: the crossbow is weird. Sure, the shop man could talk about its effective range and its silence, but still, why wouldn’t the killer use a gun? The IRA had plenty of guns. Was it really because of the noise?
Item #3: Elena Deauville. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like her testimony. That little look she gave. That hesitation. She was hiding something. Something important. Something beyond the fact that she was a brilliant heroin mule.
I called the station and asked for the duty detective.
“CID,” Crabbie said.
“Fill me in,” I said.