Hang on St. Christopher (The Sean Duffy #8)

2. A Sort Of Homecoming

CHAPTER 2

A SORT OF HOMECOMING

I left the Beemer in the car park and went upstairs to turn in my time sheet. As a part-time reservist, I no longer had an office. Just a desk in the CID incident room that I shared with Sergeant McCrabban, another part-timer. Crabbie was a low-maintenance deskmate, and it was no problem to share a space with him if you didn’t mind his pipe smoke, which I didn’t.

I turned the sheet in to Mabel in admin.

“Oh, Inspector Duffy, everyone’s been looking for you,” she said.

“Have they?”

“Oh, yes, Chief Inspector McArthur was on the phone. Very particular, so he was. ‘Where’s Inspector Duffy, then?’ he says.”

“Me? He was looking for me?”

“Yes.”

“What have I done?”

“I’m not privy to the details. I’m like the mushrooms here, Sean—they keep me in the dark.”

I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock now. “Sorry, Mabel, I’m catching the midnight ferry to Stranraer. Is it CID business?”

“He wants you, that’s all I know.”

I shook my head. “Like I say, I’m off the clock. Sergeant Lawson is the full-time CID officer here, as you know, so?—”

“He’s on his holidays.”

“Is he?”

“He is. Tenerife.”

“Tenerife? Who goes to Tenerife?”

“Everyone, Sean. Everyone goes to Tenerife. He won’t be back till next week.”

“Oh, well, then you’ll have to get Sergeant McCrabban. I’m catching the ferry.”

“He asked specifically for you,” Mabel insisted. She rolled up her red sweater sleeves and crossed her arms in a way that made her seem a bit like Velma from Scooby-Doo . Early-1970s adorable Velma, not redrawn 1990s trying-to-be-less-of-a-dork Velma.

“Mabel, look, I have to go. You haven’t seen me, okay?”

“Don’t be starting that, now, Sean,” she said, her brows furrowing.

“Starting what? It’s our running gag. You pretend to be annoyed with me, but when I’m gone you mutter to yourself tsk tsk, that Sean Duffy, what a character ...”

“That’s enough, now. Wait in the chief inspector’s office and I’ll see if I can find him,” she said, a cross, unpleasant sanctimonious note in her voice now.

If I waited in the office, I was doomed. I shook my head and pointed at my time sheet. “Sorry. I’m off the clock. I have a boat to catch!” I said.

Quickly back downstairs to the Beemer.

I drove to 113 Coronation Road, where there was a For Sale sign in the front yard—a For Sale sign that had been there for over a year. It was a nice three-bedroom house in the middle of the terrace on a pretty nice street in a pretty nice housing estate. The problem wasn’t the house. The problem was the asking price. I wanted twenty-five grand so I could buy one of those fancy new apartments they were building down at the marina and have a bit of change. I lived in Scotland for all but six days out of the month, and all I needed was a little one-bedroom flat overlooking the water, where I could store a few select records, keep a few tins of soup and some clothes. But nobody, it seemed, wanted to give me twenty-five grand for a three-bedroom house in the middle of a pretty nice terrace on a pretty street.

Now, a part of me knew that this was all bullshit: if I wanted to sell the house, I could do it easily if I knocked six grand off the asking price. But the real question, the deep Freudian question, was whether I really wanted to sell the house. I told Beth I did, told the real estate agents I did, told myself I did. I imagined how great that little flat at the marina would be. But truth be told, I loved this house, this street, and these people. We’d been through a lot together: a bomb defused under my car, assorted calls for my assistance following domestic disputes, an attack by the Loyalists and the IRA...

I got out of the car and helped a staggering Harry Blackwell to his front gate.

“Bit early for you to be in a state like this, Harry,” I said to him, for indeed the pubs were all still open.

“Wedding. Wife still there. She sent me home.”

“Wedding? Which one of your brood was the lucky?—”

“Irina. The redhead. The difficult one. Glad to get her out of the bloody house,” Harry said, doing the worst Tevye ever.

I helped him in his front door and walked back to the street.

Yes, we’d been through a lot together, Coronation Road and me. This was the first house I’d ever owned. Crazy thing for a Catholic peeler to buy a house in a working-class Proddy housing development, but at the time I’d bought it in 1980, it was perfect for my needs. Close to the Carrick cop shop, a big living room for my records, three bedrooms upstairs, and a shed out the back where I could smoke Turkish black unmolested. Furthermore, back in the early eighties this was the very last street in the Greater Belfast Urban Area, which was kind of romantic. The last street in Belfast—who wouldn’t want to live there? Head south and you were in the Belfast suburbs; head north and you were in untouched, ancient Irish countryside. Changed since then. Carrickfergus town had expanded into the fields north of Coronation Road, and a lot of new people I didn’t know had moved onto the street, but still, as the cat in that singing-cat show was wont to say: “Memories...”

I walked down the path, put the key in the lock, and went inside.

Precautions to get you through life in Ulster: lock pick and razor blade embedded in jacket sleeve, always look under your car for mercury tilt switch bombs, never sit with your back to a window or a door, always check the front and back door for break-ins.

No bombs, no break-ins.

I picked up a couple of letters from the hall floor and scanned them for anything interesting.

Nowt.

I walked into the living room and checked my albums. I’d left about a fifth of my collection here (four hundred or so records) so that I’d have something decent to listen to on my six nights a month back in Ulster.

I checked the clock in kitchen. It was 9:15.

Plenty of time for a can of soup and one side of an album before the drive to Larne.

The soup was tomato, the album was Brian Eno’s Music for Airports , which was good lie-on-a-rug-on-the-floor-and-chill music.

I had the soup, and I was lying on the floor and chilling when there came a loud banging at the front door.

Instinctively I reached for my sidearm, a revolver, and from the coffee table I lifted the rather more effective Glock 17 9mm Safe Action pistol. I crunched to a sitting position and peered through the living room window, holding both weapons. I didn’t see anyone in the garden, and I could see only the very back of the person waiting on the porch. Usually, assassins came in pairs, but not always.

I crept down the hall and peered through the peephole.

The person standing there was Chief Inspector McArthur, my boss.

I took a step backward and began tiptoeing my way back up the hall again.

“I know you’re in there, Duffy. I see your car and I can hear your music!” McArthur said.

I hid in the living room, keeping perfectly still.

“Duffy, open up! I know you’re in there! No one but you would have put that record on!”

Back along the hall a third time.

I opened the door. “Yes?”

“There you are! I knew you’d be home, and I knew you wouldn’t answer the phone!” he exclaimed.

“You’re a regular Uri Geller. What playing card am I thinking of?” I said.

“Three of clubs.”

“No, the jack of fuck off. I have a ferry to catch.”

He was wearing jeans and an anorak and Wellington boots. He’d been in the middle of something outdoorsy when they called him to the crime scene. Which meant it had to be something serious. Had to be a homicide. And the reason he was here was to convince me to be lead on that homicide, what with Lawson being away.

No chance. I am not one of those men who pray for storms and believe that storms will bring them peace.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“You can come in, but there’s not much point. I’m heading out for the ferry.”

He ignored that and walked into the living room. I put the revolver back in the shoulder holster under my sport coat, and the Glock back down on the coffee table.

He sat down on the sofa while I stood, and we stared at one another for a very uncomfortable fifteen seconds. “Nice evening in Belfast?” he asked.

It was a poor opening gambit. I was tempted to paraphrase Groucho: I’ve had a very nice evening, but this wasn’t it, and you showing up like Banquo’s bloody ghost is the icing on the shitecake.

I said nothing and glared at him.

I didn’t even offer him a cup of tea—a hanging offense in most of Northern Ireland.

“I’ve helped you out many times, Duffy, when the higher-ups were gunning for you,” was his second salvo.

“The way I remember it is that I’ve bailed you out with our overlords many times and when it came to my own problems with the higher-ups, you kept your bloody head down and let me sink or swim by myself,” I said.

“Yeah, well, we could be Rashomoning the past all night if we wanted. The point is, we’ve helped each other.”

The verb “Rashomoning” from his unlikely lips was sufficiently arresting to make me sit.

He looked at me for another ten seconds and took out his pack of Silk Cut. He offered me one and I shook my head. I gave him the Tuborg ashtray that I kept for guests I didn’t like.

“What the hell is this music? Is this music? Can you turn it off, please?”

I switched it off.

The tea thing had become untenable. Even if it was your worst enemy, you couldn’t bloody escape the tea-and-biscuit-asking ceremony.

“Tea?” I asked.

“No time. Look, Duffy, there’s been a murder.”

“I can’t go. I’m off duty. My shift finished at noon. I’ve done my six days this month and I’m off until next month. I was going to take the afternoon ferry, but I stayed to hear a poetry reading in Belfast.”

“Duffy, you don’t understand the situation. There’s been a murder and our head of CID, your protégé, isn’t even in the country. Gallivanting in Italy.”

“Spain.”

“Doesn’t matter where he is, does it? He’s out of the country and we’ve got no detective to investigate a murder. What are we supposed to do?”

“WPC Warren. I know Lawson has recommended her for the CID branch, and I hear?—”

“She’s still in training in Belfast. Won’t be available until the end of the year.”

“Pity. She’s smart as a whip, that one.”

“Well, she’s not here and neither is your chosen successor.”

“Call in Sergeant McCrabban.”

“Sergeant McCrabban has also done all of his days this month, and anyway he is at some kind of farm auction in Ballymena.”

“That sounds like a likely story.”

“Well, that’s what his wife said.”

“So I’m the only detective in all of Carrickfergus?”

“Yes.”

“And like Cinderella, I’ll be gone by midnight.”

“It has to be you, Sean.”

“I can’t do it. I already solved Sean Duffy’s Last Case. Everything else would be anticlimactic. You cannot, as Paul McCartney says, reheat a soufflé.”

“If you won’t do it, we’ll have to call in Larne CID,” he said, fixing me with his dark eyes.

“Larne CID?”

“What other choice do I have?”

“But... Larne ? You know what they’re like.”

“I’ve already checked. Chief Inspector Kennedy is available.”

“But he’s a... you’ve met him...”

“If you won’t do it, it’s got to be him.”

“You’re trying to bait me.”

“I’m not trying to bait you. If you won’t do it, I’ll have to call Larne RUC.”

Easy, Sean, don’t let him suck you in. This is someone else’s problem, nothing to do with you .

But then again, I couldn’t let Larne CID come into our manor and bollocks up a murder case right in front of our noses.

“What are the particulars?”

“It seems to be a straightforward little homicide. Joyriders stole a man’s car from outside his house on the Belfast Road. Apparently he resisted, and they shot him in the chest. The neighbors think he’s some kind of painter.”

“A house painter?”

“A painter painter. Like Hitler, you know?”

“Interesting that that’s the name you come up with out of thin air when you were trying to think of a painter. Not Monet or Van Gogh. Hitler.”

“Christ, Duffy, do you always have to be such an arsehole?”

“So they shot him in the chest and took his car. What type of car?”

“Jag.”

“Aye, makes sense. There have been a lot of carjackings tonight. There have been riots in Belfast. The joyriders must be racing each other. Jag is a good car to race.”

“Shame a man had to die for it.”

“Aye.”

“So will you take the case?”

“Forensics are over there now?”

“Yup.”

“When does Lawson get back?”

“Sunday, I think.”

“Okay, I’ll need to ask the missus if it’s all right. And I’ll need to be on at least time and a half for the course of the investigation. Every minute I work on it will be overtime.”

“Time and a half?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

“And if I can get Crabbie to work the case with me, he’ll have to be on time and a half too. And when it’s overtime or extra duty it’ll be above that. You know the union rules.”

“Bloody hell. How much is all this going to cost me?”

“I haven’t said I’m going to take it. I’ll need to see what Beth has to say.”

“Well, can you call her, please?”

I went into the hall, took a discreet hit on my asthma inhaler, and called her.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Hi, Sean, where are you?”

“Coronation Road.”

“Ooh, have we got an offer for it?”

“No offer. Beth, look, there’s been a murder and Lawson’s on holiday, so they want me to run it.”

“A case. Well, well, well, this is your dream come true. A case. A murder case at that.”

“I told them I’m getting the midnight ferry, but they’re desperate. The chief inspector is standing here right next to me.”

“Oh, tell Peter hi from me.”

I turned to McArthur. “Beth says hi.”

“Tell Elizabeth hello from me.”

“He says hi back. They’ll pay me time and a half while I’m working on the case if I take it.”

“How long would you be over there?”

“I don’t know. With a murder case, you never know. But Lawson will be back on Sunday, so I can hand it over to him if it goes on that long.”

“I’ll miss you and Emma will miss you, but I can’t say no, can I? Looking at you moping around the house. You’ve been itching for a case for the last year at least.”

“No, I haven’t. I don’t miss detective work at all.”

“Ha! Are you a terrible liar! Go on, do your case. Come over for the day if you can.”

“It’s a simple one. I might even have wrapped it up by tomorrow.”

“Okay, Sean, if you say so.”

“Kiss Emma for me.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you too. Bye.”

I hung up the phone and looked at McArthur.

“The little lady’s given her permission?”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from someone who has to get forms signed in triplicate from Tina to go on the piss with the lads.”

“That is a willful slander.”

“One more call,” I said, and rang Crabbie’s house and told Helen that I would need the big man’s help in a murder investigation.

“He’s done with all that now, Sean,” Helen said.

“It’s only for a few days, and they’ll be paying us time and a half,” I explained. “Double time if we go over eight hours a day.”

The chief inspector grimaced, and Helen audibly brightened up.

“Well, we could do with a bit of extra cash,” she said.

I gave her the crime scene address and told her to tell Crabbie to meet me there when he could.

I called forensics to see who they had assigned to the case and was relieved to find that it was Frank Payne, who, despite his dyspeptic demeanor, was one of the better FOs in the biz.

I hung up and caught myself grinning in the hall mirror. A man was dead, and the dead man was crying out for justice, and Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrickfergus RUC was going to go and get that justice for him. Detective Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrick RUC.

I slapped McArthur on the back. “Right, then, me old cock, let’s go see this crime scene, shall we?”