He rose and showered, got dressed and struggled with the knot of his tie for several minutes. It seemed either too big or too small and never quite attained the optimum balance between opposing ends. For a moment he trialled the idea of giving up, perhaps wearing an open collar, but it didn’t feel right.
In the kitchen, Clare sat at the breakfast bar staring on to the lawn. When he looked out the window her gaze was falling on nothing more than the bird table and the shamefully ignored decking with its dulled varnish. She seemed distant, and he knew why.
‘Morning, love,’ he said.
‘Oh, you’re up. I didn’t see you there.’ Some husbands would have asked what was wrong, prodded her for answers, but that wasn’t Valentine’s way. He knew any answer he received would be forced and far away from the truth. There’d been enough conflict at home recently, and all he wanted was a ceasefire.
‘Coffee?’ said Valentine.
Clare shook her head and put down her cup. ‘This transfer, Bob . . .’
‘Not now, love.’
‘Well when?’
He filled the kettle from the tap. Too much pressure sprayed water on the wall tiles. ‘Soon. I’ve made the request – it’s out of my hands now.’ Valentine tried to make light of the matter, stepping away from the kettle and collecting his mobile phone from the shelf next to the fridge where he always kept it.
He was scrolling through a list of new messages when he felt Clare squeeze past him on her way to the stairs.
‘Clare . . .’
‘I’m going for a shower.’ The words sounded matter of fact, innocent even, but backed with her actions they told Valentine his wife was running out of patience.
The latest message on his phone was from DS McAlister, delivered at close to midnight. Three previous messages were sitting there from McAlister too. The detective was opening the first message when the phone started to ring.
‘Hello, Ally,’ said Valentine.
‘Finally. You’ve been incommunicado.’
‘Hardly. I checked in with the office before I went to bed last night and all was quiet on the western front.’
‘Didn’t your wife pass on my message?’ McAlister sounded flustered and Valentine parried the question.
‘I had a hell of a lot to think about last night – I crashed out. Look, what’s up, Ally?’
‘Eh, I don’t quite know where to start.’
‘How about the beginning?’
‘Well, that would be when the chief constable showed, I suppose.’
‘Bill Greaves came to the station?’
‘It gets better – or should that be worse?’
‘I can’t think how but go on.’
McAlister’s voice came low and rasping over the phone. ‘Well, Greavsie did his nut about Fallon being in custody and demanded we release him.’
‘Oh shit.’
‘That’s not the worst bit, boss. I signed Fallon out and handed him over to uniform because there was only me left on – and the DCs tailing Garry Keirns.’
Valentine sensed a placatory excuse unfurling. ‘Go on, Ally.’
‘Well, uniform were taking Fallon home, but they took him out the front door . . .’
‘Tell me there wasn’t still press there.’
McAlister paused. ‘I assume you haven’t seen the papers.’
Valentine felt the phone weighing heavy in his hand. ‘They got him, I take it?’
‘There could only have been one snapper hanging on. He must have wired it to the news desks, boss.’
‘You’re right, that’s worse, Ally.’
‘Sorry, sir, but that’s not all.’
‘Spit it out then.’
‘Garry Keirns is dead.’
Inkerman Court’s one entrance road was sealed with blue and white tape when Valentine arrived. He motioned to a uniform in a high-vis vest and asked him to lower the tape. As the DI drove to the parking area – a small strip of road squeezed between a sparse patch of green belt and the municipal swimming baths – he spotted DS Donnelly directing the operation.
‘Phil, over here,’ yelled Valentine.
‘Boss . . .’
‘What’s the SP?’
‘There was no movement after lights out so the DC on the handover took a closer look. And saw Keirns’s Hush Puppies swinging in the hallway when he looked through the letterbox.’
‘Do we have the time of death?’
‘He’s been cold for nine or ten hours, they say.’
‘And Bill and Ben saw nothing?’
‘They were watching his car and the front door.’
‘What about the back door?’
‘It’s a bloody rabbit warren around here. You’d have to go through the close and sit in the courtyard to even see the back door. You couldn’t get a car round there.’
‘And of course nobody thought to do that?’
Donnelly shrugged and Valentine headed for the property.
The hallway was small. A cramped staircase led on to further floors. On the ground level was a little laundry room, a bedroom with patio doors and a further corridor leading to the back door. In the garden, DS McAlister and DS McCormack were standing with the SOCOs. Everything was viewable from one point in the vestibule, where Valentine was forced to ease himself into the hallway and around the dangling corpse of Garry Keirns as he headed for the other officers.
‘Cometh the hour . . .’ said McAlister.