10. Dead Reckoning
CHAPTER 10
DEAD RECKONING
I finally hit the hay at seven-thirty a.m., and woke up four hours later fetally curled in the bed, shivering, discontented, but somehow, oddly, well rested. When I made it downstairs, I tried to call home, but Beth and Emma had left for nursery school.
The answering machine kicked in, and I left a message: “Hey, guys, all’s well here. The case is going well. I’m safe. I’ll come see you on the weekend if it’s not all wrapped up by then.”
I knew that the cat was listening to the message with chilly indifference, as was his wont. I stared out at Coronation Road. Rain was pouring out of the gutters and bucketing against the windows.
My back was covered in bruises, and it hurt like hell.
My teeth were chattering.
I tapped the thermometer on the wall. The mercury was hovering around the four degrees Celsius mark. This didn’t surprise me. It would never snow at sea level at this time of year, but just about every other type of miserable weather was possible.
Downstairs, wrapped in the duvet. Open the front door. No milk. Didn’t understand it. Trevor, the milkman, knew to leave me a bottle of Gold Top every day that I was staying on Coronation Road. And he knew what nights I was staying on Coronation Road, because I lifted the little flag over the milk box. I checked that the wee “Antrim Dairies” flag was raised—it was—but no milk.
“Are you looking for your milk?” a voice asked.
I looked over to the house next door. New neighbor. The house had been vacant for six months, but Mrs. Campbell on the other side said a woman had recently moved in.
This was evidently the woman.
Pretty, late twenties, black hair in a little bob, aquiline nose, blue eyes. She was wearing pajamas and fluffy slippers.
“Morning. Yes, I was looking for my milk.”
“Yesterday was the last-ever delivery. Antrim Dairies are exclusively selling through the supermarkets now.”
“You talked to Trevor about this?”
“Who’s Trevor?”
“The milkman.”
“No. Mrs. Campbell told me.”
“No more milk delivery ever ?”
“No more milk delivery,” she said.
“And the bottles?”
“I think bottles are over. I think it’s all cartons now.”
“What’ll the kids use for their Molotov cocktails?”
“That’s the kind of unintentional side effect that no one ever thinks of.”
I looked at her. Those eyes were really something. “If there’s no milk, what are you doing outside, then?” I asked.
She waved a couple of letters at me. “There’s still the post.”
“Yeah, but for how much longer? Have you heard of this thing called email? First the milkman, then the postman. You’ll see.”
“You’re quite the gloomy customer, aren’t you?” she said, smiling.
I nodded and reached my hand over the fence. “Sean Duffy,” I said.
“Rachel Melville.”
“So what do you do, Rachel?”
“I teach English up at the new school. It’s an integrated school. For Protestant and Catholic children.”
“I heard about that place. What are they calling it?”
“We’re calling it the Sweeney School.”
“After the cop show?”
She did not smile.
“The barber, then?” I attempted.
She shook her head. “After King Sweeney, who was from around these parts.”
Sweeney was the King of Dál nAraide, who ruled this neck of the woods until the Battle of Mag Rath (Moira) in AD 637. If I’d wanted to show off, I could have quoted the story of Mad Sweeney in Irish, or I could have given her Seamus Heaney’s translation. I could even have given her a bit of T. S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Among the Nightingales.”
I did none of those things. Instead, I just smiled and nodded.
“No school today?” I asked.
“It’s July.”
“Oh. Yeah. The weather. Feels like bloody winter.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a part-time policeman.”
“Oh, really?”
“Aye.”
“I haven’t seen you about much,” she said.
“I’m only here six or seven days a month, normally. But I’ll be around for the next week or so because I’m on a case.”
“Where do you live the rest of the time?”
“Scotland.”
“Nice?”
“It is nice.”
“Well, lovely meeting you,” she said.
“Likewise.”
She took her letters and went inside.
Shame about the milkman. I would have left him a tip if I’d known it was his last day. That’s what they do to you. With the one hand, they build an integrated primary school almost in your own backyard, but the other hand stops delivering milk to your door. Progress.
Good-looking woman, though. Interesting that in our brief conversation I never mentioned the fact that I had a wife (sort of) and child in that house in Scotland.
I took a step back into the hall and looked at myself in the mirror.
“Got to watch that, Duffy. I know you of old.”
Mirror Duffy nodded back and said nothing. Mirror Duffy couldn’t resist bragging and muttered, “The silent vertebrate in brown/contracts and concentrates, withdraws/Rachel née Rabinovitch/Tears at the grapes with murderous paws.”
The really quite brilliant Anthony Julius had recently spilled a lot of ink in the Times Literary Supplement talking about those last two lines. Evidence, Julius suggested convincingly, of Eliot’s polite but insistent anti-Semitism.
My spidey senses told me that Rachel next door was a Catholic. I wondered if she was married or single. Another line bobbed to the surface of my postconcussion brain.
“The devious-cruising Rachel ,” I said to myself. “The devious-cruising Rachel in her search after her missing children only found another orphan.”
I showered, got dressed in a white shirt, navy blue sweater, black jeans, shit-kicking Doc Marten boots.
I made myself fried eggs, potato bread, coffee.
Looked under the Beemer for bombs.
BMW to the cop shop.
No Crabbie, so I sifted the leads and FO drops myself. The Range Rover had vanished. The AK slugs were not a match with any used in previous crimes. There was no further information on Alan Locke. He didn’t have a residential address in either the Republic of Ireland or the UK.
I ran him through all the databases, and nothing came up relating to him in the past five years. He’d just more or less dropped off the radar.
No hits on our supposed teenage joyride killers either.
I called Jill Dumont at RUC Operational Research, and after going through a secretary and a bloody assistant, I was put through.
I chewed the fat and asked after her weans and got to the point, but she’d never heard of Locke. She asked why I was asking, and I told her that he was a murder victim in a case I was running in Carrick, and I thought that perhaps he was an IRA assassin.
“Then who killed him?” she asked.
“That’s the question.”
“Can’t be the Protestant paramilitaries—they’d be celebrating the killing of an IRA iceman with fireworks and a lot of calls to the media.”
“An IRA feud?”
“Again, calls to the media claiming the hit.”
“So who would kill him and not call the media?”
“Two kids who tried to steal his car and things got out of hand, it looks like,” Jill said, obviously having pulled up the case notes on her computer.
“It’s not that, Jill; it’s deeper,” I said.
There was a long pause over the phone. “Well, look, you’re not usually wrong about these things, Sean. If you get anything solid, I might be able to help you.”
I thanked Jill and hung up.
Black clouds through Lawson’s window. Black clouds over a gunmetal sea. Other news occupying the front pages now: riots in Derry, riots in Portadown, the looming British and American elections. Not interested in any of it.
In the previous couple of years since I’d had a murder case, the Cold War had ended, Thatcher had gone, Reagan had gone, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and Nirvana had kicked Michael Jackson off the charts, but here in Ireland, the men of violence kept plying their merry game.
I opened my shopping bags and put the whisky bottles in Lawson’s drinks cabinet. Now he could at least offer someone a decent glass when they came to see him.
“How do?” Crabbie said, knocking on my door at lunchtime.
“I told you to come in, in the afternoon.”
“It is the afternoon.”
“Whisky?” I said.
“I don’t think young Lawson has?—”
“I stocked up for him.”
We had a glass of Islay and looked at the vicious black rain squall making its way down the lough. Hail started banging off the station windows.
“If Ireland were anchored off the south coast of France rather than in the North Atlantic, I think a lot of our problems would be conveniently solved by a nice spot of sunshine,” I mused.
Crabbie shook his head. “The butter from them parts is shockingly poor. My wife’s sister was down there, and she said the butter was white . Can you believe it? White butter.”
“The cheeses, though, Crabbie, the cheeses...”
“Aye, the cheeses,” he said thoughtfully. He liked a bit of cheese, did the Crabman.
We chased leads all afternoon, but it was nothing doing.
No Norton. No Range Rover. Zilch on Locke.
The chief inspector arrived when we were gazing at the whiteboard in the incident room. All our blue arrows were pointing at Brendan O’Roarke in Dundalk.
“I heard you found out the name of your victim at last, Duffy,” he said.
“We did.”
“Any suspects?”
“Still pursuing leads on that front.”
“Motive?”
“We’re running with the theory that Locke was an IRA hit man, possibly working for Brendan O’Roarke out of Dundalk.”
“And the assassin got assassinated?”
“That’s our working hypothesis.”
“Really?”
“It seems to point that way, sir.”
“What happened to the teen-joyriding hypothesis?”
“The teen joyriders are long gone, sir. This is a bit more interesting than that.”
“Interesting can sometimes be dangerous,” the chief inspector said.
“Well, it’s progress, sir.”
“Good. Very good. Progress at last. Yes,” he said with a strange, unpleasant, conspiratorial look to his face.
“Sir?”
“Hmmm,” he said, practically winking at us. You could tell that he wanted us to ask him what was afoot, but this was so obvious that Crabbie and I had no problem telepathically communicating the importance of not asking him anything.
The silence lasted a full minute before the chief inspector blurted out, “Actually, I may be the source of some of your progress,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow in his direction.
“What did you do, sir?”
“I called Lawson in Spain. I told him the case was up against a brick wall. And he said he’d see what he could do to help. And now, low and behold, we have the suspect’s name and his whole story. Eh?”
I was aghast. Angry. “Sir, our progress has nothing to do with Lawson. Sergeant McCrabban did some old-fashioned legwork yesterday?—”
He raised a hand to stop me. “Now, now, Duffy. Don’t be flying off the handle because you got a little help from the new broom.”
“Sir, I’d be perfectly willing to admit to Lawson’s help if he had, in fact, helped, but he didn’t. We found the victim’s caravan ourselves. From old-school police work.”
The chief inspector stood up and headed for the incident room exit. He shook his head condescendingly. “We’re all on the same side, you know,” he said, closing the door behind him.
I looked at Crabbie. “Do you think he’s deliberately trying to get on my nerves?
“No.”
“I’m calling Lawson in Spain.”
“Don’t do it, Sean. He’s on his holidays.”
“I’m bloody calling him.”
I rang the number he’d given me, and they said they’d look for him at the pool. A minute went by, and a breathless Lawson came on the line.
“Oh, sir, is that you? Do you want me to fly home?”
“No. I’ve a question for you. Times crossword. ‘Tragic female turning up in boys’ school might be reversed.’ Eight letters. It’s been annoying me for the last?—”
“Cosseted,” Lawson said immediately.
“How do you get that?”
“If she’s turning up at a boys’ school, the school must be going coed and if she’s a tragic female familiar to Times readers you just go through the list, don’t you, sir? Helen, Desdemona, Juliet, Little Nell, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. And if you reverse Tess and sandwich it between co and ed, you get cosseted.”
And the wee shite had done all that in a second.
“Very good, Lawson. Well, I’ll let you go back to the pool.”
“Do you need any other help?”
“We may not have your brilliance, but me and Sergeant McCrabban are old hands at this, and we’ve got some good leads, so I’m sure the whole thing will be settled by the time you get back.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. When are you coming back again? Sunday?”
“Sunday evening.”
“That’s right. Well, we’ll have it sussed by then. Enjoy the rest of your trip.”
“I will, thank you, sir.”
I hung up.
“That backfired a bit on you, didn’t it, Sean?” Crabbie said with a slight twinkle in his eyes.
“You’ve become very disloyal lately.”
“Sean, come on. It’s like what the chief inspector says. We’re all on the same side.”
I picked up the phone again and called Inspector O’Neill at Dundalk Garda Station.
“Aye, Duffy, I got your fax. Very good police work. Well done, ID-ing your victim.”
“Listen, O’Neill, I want you to do a favor for me.”
“What?”
“I want to interview Brendan O’Roarke.”
“Why?”
“One of his men got topped and I want to know why.”
“We don’t know that Locke was working for O’Roarke.”
“We can surmise it. It was black-ops shit. He was a trained marksman. An assassin. He tried to kill the Irish PM in the seventies. He was a black-bag specialist living undercover in Northern Ireland, in my manor, and I want to know the reason for it all.”
“What do your Special Branch people say?”
“They don’t know shit. Look, will you ask him if he’ll talk to me?”
“He’s got a whole gang of high-powered Dublin, Dundalk, and Drogheda lawyers that look out for him wherever he goes.”
“Nevertheless, I’d like to arrange an interview with him whenever it’s convenient.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Sean.”
“Thanks, mate.”
I hung up and stared at Crabbie’s long face until the big hand got its arse in gear and eventually got around to pointing at the “5.”
When I went to gather my stuff in the incident room, I discovered one of the Picassos lying on the floor, where it had been knocked down by a cleaner or a clumsy copper. If I left them here, some ganch would knock a hole in them. Same story in the property room with its rising damp. I decided to take them back to 113 Coronation Road for the interim.
BMW home. Radio 3, where I hit paydirt. Arvo again, Tabula Rasa . Nice.
Carried the paintings inside. It could only be a temporary solution until the next of kin showed up, but a nice temporary solution. As I understood it, the Repos du Sculpteur series was basically a bunch of etchings of a naked bearded guy lying around his studio with a young woman. The two that Mr. Locke had were the sculptor in his bed, and another where he was sitting on a sofa. Presumably, this was an idealized Picasso with his then mistress. I hung them on the living room wall where, with the light coming in from the back garden, they looked fantastic.
Dog barking across the way.
Dog doesn’t bark like that unless there’s trouble.
Look out the window to see that big bloody skinhead from the other night leaving a bag of burning dog shit on my new next door neighbor’s front doorstep. Obviously, this dog-shit bonfire had been aimed at me, but the skinhead was so bloody dense, he’d gotten the wrong house. His mate was waiting for him in a green Reliant Robin, which was maybe the crappiest getaway car ever devised by a human mind.
I marched out the front door and hopped the fence.
“Oi, you! Put that out!” I yelled at the guy, whose name, I remembered, was Pete something.
Pete was surprised to see me coming at him from the side. He hadn’t prepared for that.
“Son, you don’t have to go through life being this stupid,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Pete asked, standing up to his full height.
“This isn’t my house. This is my neighbor’s house.”
“Isn’t this number one-thirteen?”
“No. That’s number one-thirteen. Now, pick up that bag and take it away with you.”
“Or you’ll—” he began, and I kicked him in the nuts.
He sank to his knees, and I two-handed clubbed him on the side of the head. I marched across the garden to the Reliant Robin and pushed the three wheeled monstrosity over onto one side.
I went back to Pete.
“Grab the shite and go. And don’t come back if you don’t want to deal with Bobby Cameron, who lives in that house there and who is a friend of mine.”
“You know Bobby?” Pete winced.
“Aye, I do. Now, grab the shite, right your bloody wee car, and fuck off.”
Pete slowly got to his feet and went to pick up the flaming bag of dog excrement, which was now a crispy disgusting mess.
“All of it,” I insisted.
He cradled it in both hands and walked to his getaway car.
I helped him right the Robin and shoved him inside. “Be gone and don’t come back, eejit.”
“You’re a big fruit, so you are,” Pete said as he climbed into the car.
“And you, my friend, are a little pea. A little pea in a green quiver, oblivious to the wider currents. Things are afoot. As of today, no more milk. The post will be next, mark my words. The future is taking us along in its bow wave, son. Forget all this atavistic Nazi stuff, eh?”
“You’re a maddo, pal,” Pete said as they drove off.
He must have been discombobulated, for he forgot the customary finger and the “fuck you, RUC!”
“Kids today, eh?” I said to the much-calmed dog in the middle of the road.
Back inside.
Pasta. A Lou Reed bootleg from the Berlin days.
A knock at the door.
Rachel Melville.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi.”
“What was all that about?” she asked, a little taken aback.
“Oh, you saw that, did you?”
“I couldn’t help but see it; it was in my front yard.”
“It was nothing. Just explaining the geography and power dynamics of Coronation Road to an outsider.”
“Was he trying to put a bag of shit on my doorstep?”
“Apologies for that. He thought it was my doorstep. He won’t be back, at least not to your house.”
“Does that sort of thing happen often ’round here?”
That and much, much worse, sister. “No, not really; quiet wee street. You’ll like it here.”
“And yet you’re leaving?” she said, gesturing toward the For Sale sign.
“Yeah, sort of have to go. Big house, three bedrooms. All I need is a wee flat down by the water, as I’m here so little.”
“You sort of saved me from getting shit all over my feet.”
“You could look at it that way, or you could say that I was responsible for bringing that skinhead into your orbit in the first place.”
“What did you do to him?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, uhm, look, I was wondering if you weren’t doing anything, if you wanted to come over for dinner.”
I know what a younger Sean Duffy would have said, but the older one was just that little bit wiser.
“I just made myself pasta,” I replied.
She nodded and smiled. A really fetching, groin-tightening smile. “Perhaps another time, then.”
“Yeah, another time,” I agreed.
She waved and went back next door.
Mirror Duffy: “You still didn’t tell her about the common-law wife and bairn in Scotland, did you, Sean?”
No. I fucking didn’t.
I ate the pasta, listened to the Lou Reed, and admired the Picassos in the living room. They fit the room well. I put on Miles Davis, and I stood on one foot. I reckoned I was the only person in the world listening to Miles Davis on one foot while looking at an original Picasso.
With, it must be said, a massive hard-on.
Kill the music. Kill the yoga. Go next door and fuck her brains out.
No. “No, no, no.”
But maybe.
No.
Phone call.
“Sean, Emma misses you. I was wondering if?—”
“I’ll be right over.”
Outside to the Beemer. Look underneath for bombs. No bombs. Fast down Coronation Road.
So fast I barely registered the stranger lighting a cigarette under the overhang of Mr. Benn’s pigeon coop. I noticed him but I didn’t process it, because I had other things on my mind just then.
I could have missed him completely because he was very good.
One of the best. And I was going fast. But I registered him and later I remembered him. That wasn’t his fault. He was a professional surveillance goon standing a good hundred meters from the house, in shadow, at dusk, but he didn’t know that I knew every single person who lived on this street. I knew by heart Coronation Road’s geography, history, and sociology. This stretch of road (or possibly the Song Book records of Ella Fitzgerald) would be my Mastermind specialist subject. I had made a deep map of this place, and if anything was ever even slightly askew, I saw it.
I didn’t process the man then, that night. But I would.
Coronation Road, Victoria Road, Shore Road, Motorway, Belfast, Ferry Terminal, Ferry, Stranraer, Portpatrick, home.
Squeal of brakes in through the back door.
“Emma’s asleep now,” Beth said.
“How are you?”
“What’s that look in your eyes?”
“What look?”
“I dunno. Mad?”
“I’m fine.”
“Rapey.”
“Rapey?”
“Yeah, rapey. And, Jesus, is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you?—”
“Both.”