James McKeen had had a stroke and had good days and bad days but Judith McKeen was clear-eyed and angry and sharp as a tack.
“Maria was a mezzo soprano. Very cultured wee girl. Very beautiful. Such a voice. They were going to the Grand Opera House to see Tristan and Isolde. Patrick had got his father’s car especially. Such a good boy. The idea that he could ever have a run a checkpoint …”
“Even if they were late?”
“Even if they were late.”
“What do you think happened at that checkpoint?” I asked across the tea cups in that little house in Cushendun village.
“Old Jackie Finnerty the undertaker told James that she’d been interfered with. Now James never told me that at the time. I suppose he thought that it was better I didn’t know, but it came out years later on one of his bad mornings. Jackie Finnerty was ninety by then but when I put it to him he said it was true.”
“I’m sorry to be so indelicate but what do you mean interfered with?”
“She was raped. Raped by those three B specials is my belief.”
I looked at Crabbie and Lawson. Both of them would normally be scribbling in their notebooks, but notebooks can be seized by Special Branch and by your station chief.
“I’m sorry to press the point but how do you know it wasn’t Patrick who did it?”
“Patrick wasn’t that sort of boy. Patrick was a very shy, very good boy. And it wouldn’t make sense, would it? He rapes her and then she goes on with him to the opera house?”
“Definitely rape, not just ordinary sex?”
“Jackie Finnerty is dead now but he saw a lot of bodies in his time and he said rape. He said you always know.”
“Why didn’t you go to the coroner with this story?”
“My husband James did go to the coroner but the coroner said that she’d probably had sex with Patrick and did he really want his daughter’s reputation dragged through the mud? And that was that. James wasn’t a fighter and I didn’t know at the time.”
Judith McKeen looked at us and we looked at her. Her strong dark eyes and her thick grey hair and her strong bony hands.
“Are youseuns looking into this?” she asked.
“We are,” I said.
“The police investigating the police?” she said sceptically.
“The police investigating the police,” I insisted.
“Can I tell you what I think happened?” she said quietly.
“Please do.”
“They were drunk. The three of them. Drunk on duty. The coroner said there had been some ‘light drinking on duty’, whatever that meant. And they stop this car on the coast road and Maria’s all dressed up to the nines, looking gorgeous and one of them touches her and Patrick yells blue murder and they shoot him and rape her.”
“Would you give us permission to have Maria’s body exhumed? Recently there have been a number of successful prosecutions following the recovery of what is known as DNA evidence. That seems very unlikely in a case like this but you never know what—”
“When they had to move the cemetery to Ballycastle because of the new road James said he didn’t want poor Maria to be all dug up and jiggered about and reburied miles away from all of us. So we had her remains cremated and scattered in the sea just out there. When my time comes that’s what I want too.”
“I see,” I said.
“We have no one here now. Maria’s brother, Kevin, is in Canada. He has a hotel in Calgary. We never see him. He’s very busy.”
“Grandchildren?”
“Not yet. Not ever, I think. It’ll be a lonely few years when James goes.”
I looked at Lawson and McCrabban to see if they had any questions but neither of them had anything.
“Where are these men now? The men who done this?” Judith asked.
“One of them’s dead and we’re investigating the other two,” I said.
She nodded.
“You’ll do your best. I can see that. All three of you,” she said. “Now I better go see to James. This has been one of his bad afternoons.”
“Will you do me one more favour?” I asked at the door.
“What’s that?”
“If anyone asks you about this conversation I’d prefer if you didn’t say anything about it,” I said.
“They’ve got you afeared these men? Have they?”
She could see it in my eyes, so there was no point in denying it. “There is an element of risk in this investigation so it’s probably best if we keep it quiet until we’re sure of the facts,” I said.
We drove back to Carrickfergus RUC along the coast road, to give us plenty of time to talk.
“Thoughts, gentlemen?” I said.
Lawson leapt right in. “They were drunk, like Mrs McKeen said. They were probably patting her down or grabbing her arse or something, the boy goes for them and they shoot him. In for a penny in for a pound, rape the girl, and then kill her.”
“And then what?” I said.
“They concoct their story, everyone believes it, they get off,” Lawson said.
“That’s not what he means. He means how has this led to Deauville’s death?” Crabbie said.
“Any thoughts?”
“Do you have a hypothesis, sir?” Lawson asked.
I looked at both of them. “I believe I do have a working hypothesis that fits with the information we have available.”