‘When I was a boy, quite a few years ago now, my dad used to bring me home those wee bookie’s pens from there. The red ones. I loved them.’
Keirns’s skin grew waxy. He touched his hands together then moved them like he was lathering soap.
‘I see you remember those wee Carson’s pens too, Garry.’
‘What if I do? It isn’t a crime, is it?’
‘No, it’s no crime.’ Valentine reached out for the folder and opened it. He let a few seconds pass before he turned over the first page and proceeded to read.
‘That’s forty-three bagged up and a further five loose, so that makes forty-eight little red bookie’s pens in total . . . retrieved from your old home this very day.’
Keirns looked smaller before the detective, sitting hunched up and shrunken in the chair. ‘You searched the farm. Why would you do that?’
‘I’m asking the questions, Garry, if you don’t mind. You see that’s how we do these things. That’s how we investigate the murders of little boys. That is, Garry, how we interrogate murder suspects.’
Keirns’s head jerked. ‘I didn’t kill them.’
Valentine wasn’t listening. ‘Did you hear that total? Forty-eight little bookie’s pens tucked away under the floorboards.’ He sat back and put his hands behind his head as he called out to DS McAlister. ‘Why would any grown man have so many pens hidden away like that, Ally?’
DS McAlister approached the table and perched himself on the edge beside the DI. He stared directly at Keirns as he spoke. ‘No good reason I can think of, boss.’
‘I once knew a suspect who kept a great big tub of lollipops under his bed . . . but he was a paedophile.’
‘A beast?’ said McAlister.
‘Yes, Ally, I believe that’s what they call them inside. Our lollipop man is in Peterhead now, by the way. Having a terrible time of it too. He was stabbed with a chicken bone and beaten to a pulp a couple of times.’
‘They don’t like beasts inside, boss.’
The conversation was interrupted. ‘I didn’t do it!’ Keirns lunged forward, banging his hands on the table. His chair fell down behind him, crashing loudly on the hard surface.
McAlister grabbed Keirns by the shoulders and yanked him away from the DI. He pressed Keirns into the corner and pinned him there whilst he roared above the suspect’s rantings. When Keirns quietened McAlister stepped away and retrieved the chair from the ground.
‘Get back here now, Garry,’ said Valentine.
Keirns retraced his steps. His breathing grew more stertorous with every pace. When he sat down he was sweating. He gripped his arms around his stomach like he was suffering cramps.
‘Now, Garry, I think we both know what those bookie’s pens were for because there was one in the barrel with those poor wee boys we found murdered on your old farm.’
‘I never touched those boys.’
‘Oh, come on, Garry. Do you expect us to believe that? I said we found one of your pens with the victims.’
‘It could have come from anywhere – you said so yourself that you had them.’
‘Ah but, Garry, I haven’t had two wee lads murdered in my back garden. That’s what you call creating an element of doubt. The courts are big on that kind of thing.’
‘Right, that’s it. I want to get a solicitor now. I’m telling you I want a solicitor, do you hear me?’
Valentine cleared his face of all expression and reached out once again for the folder on the table. As he drew it to him he spoke softly. ‘Your response to the pens has been duly noted, Garry. I’d now like to get your impression of another item we found secreted in a manila envelope, beneath the floorboards of the property you arranged to sell to Freddie Gowan two years before Sandy Thompson died.’
Keirns was following the DI’s words as if he was lip-reading. He seemed almost unaware that the photograph of the headless man had been presented to him. When he looked down, towards the table and the photograph, he fell silent. The image didn’t seem to create the confusion it had done for everyone else. There was no head twisting, eye shifting or balancing of the abstruse elements of the picture. Keirns pushed the item away.
‘Well?’ said Valentine.
There was no reply.
‘Do you know the man in this picture, Garry?’
Keirns looked towards the wall. ‘Put it away.’
‘A yes or a no would do, Garry.’
The suspect continued to stare at the wall but refused to speak any more. There was a brief, repeated demand for a solicitor, which the officers rebuffed. When it became clear Keirns had given his final words, the DI and DS collected their files and left the suspect alone.
Outside the interview room Valentine halted to address McAlister in the corridor.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘He’s shitting it, boss.’
‘He knows we’re on to him.’
‘Did you see the way he looked at that picture?’
‘Yes, like he’d seen it before. Nobody else could make hide nor hair of it.’