14. Superintendent Clare
CHAPTER 14
SUPERINTENDENT CLARE
Discontented, unhappy sleep. How could it be otherwise? I woke up at eight and stared at the rain hammering the windows for a long time.
“You know this is supposed to be summer,” I said to no one in particular.
I sat up in bed and listened to the water tumble through the gutters and into the drains.
So many mistakes in this case.
In this life.
The arc was all wrong.
Wrong arc.
Wrong lessons learned.
No bloody lessons learned.
Fuck it.
Coffee. Toast. Black T-shirt. Black sweater. Raincoat. Out to the Beemer. Check underneath. No bombs... more’s the pity.
No radio today.
Just get in to work.
Upstairs, avoiding gazes, and into Lawson’s office, where Crabbie and another man were waiting for me.
“Inspector Duffy, this is Superintendent Anthony Clare from Special Branch,” Crabbie said before I came out with a “Who is this fuck?”
He stood up and shook my hand.
“Delighted to meet you,” he said.
Superintendent Clare was a lanky, posh-voiced bastard in a well-cut pin-striped three-piece suit. On the stand in the corner, he had parked an umbrella and a bowler hat, of all things.
And here was I with no shower, no shave, and a mayonnaise stain on my raincoat. Lieutenant Columbo would have made a better first impression.
“Would either of you gentlemen care for a drink?” I asked, heading for the drinks cabinet.
“No,” Superintendent Clare said. He had watery blue eyes, big nostrils, and the weak chin you’d expect in a toff. No mustache, though—that would have been too much to ask.
Don’t ask me how I knew, but I knew he was a fellow Catholic immediately. A Catholic who refused a whisky—what an abomination.
“I’ve already got us a cup of tea,” Crabbie explained.
“Right, then,” I said sitting down again.
“So Sergeant McCrabban here has filled me in on the extraordinary document your team found in that Gypsy caravan,” Clare began. “We in Special Branch have absolutely no choice but to take this very seriously indeed. This looks for all intents and purposes like a hit list of senior Republican politicians, IRA men, and former IRA men. And that, I’m afraid, comes well within our jurisdiction.”
“Yes.”
“So the killing of Mr. Locke, and what exactly Mr. Locke was up to in Carrickfergus, will become part of a case that we will need to initiate. Your investigation will need to be subsumed into our investigation, I’m afraid.”
“I’m aware of that,” I replied.
“Jolly good. I’ll have some men come and look through your case files this afternoon. I’d like them in as orderly a fashion as possible by then.”
“Okay.”
“May I ask you for your interpretation of the situation?” Clare said, softly.
“My interpretation?”
“Yes.”
“I do have a rough, er, working hypothesis,” I said.
“If you’d indulge me.”
“Locke was Brendan O’Roarke’s personal hit man lying low in Ulster, waiting for the word to unleash a coup against Brendan’s enemies on the IRA Army Council and take it over. Brendan being opposed to all these peace feelers we keep hearing about.”
Clare’s face went pale. “You seem remarkably well informed for a junior detective.”
“All deduction, mate,” I said, tapping my head. “That and the papers—you gotta read the papers.”
Clare was not fazed by my attempt at glib mateyness.
“So who do you think killed Locke?” he asked.
“Who indeed? The hit man got hit before he could get started. That’s thrown Brendan on his uppers, I’ll bet.”
Clare looked at a collection of notes on his lap. “Now, what’s this Sergeant McCrabban said about a phone bug in your?—”
I plonked it down onto the table in front of him. “There it is. No idea where it came from.”
“How did you find it?”
I took a deep breath and told him about how I had found the bug, and my attempt at entrapment. I expected him to be pissed, but he wasn’t.
Clare looked at me and at the device and smiled. “That’s really quite good police work. Well done, Sergeant Duffy.”
“Inspector Duffy.”
“Yes, well done indeed. It’s not every officer who acts on their own initiative like that. Some people are a bit stuck in the mud here at regular CID.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do say. It’s nice to see some creative thinking occasionally.”
Clare had bought the story, and the rest of his questions were pro forma. Nothing about drunk driving, nothing about drunkenly firing my Glock. Nothing about all the mistakes. He asked me detailed questions about the case files, and when he was satisfied, he excused Crabbie and me from his office. I was a bit stunned to have received praise and positive reinforcement from Special Branch, and if I hadn’t been so badly hungover, I might have been a bit suspicious.
An hour after our meeting, a youngish Inspector Gillian Bain and three more Special Branch goons showed up late in the morning and photocopied all our evidence for what was now their investigation. Clare and Bain and the goons had a word with my gaffer, Chief Inspector McArthur, on their way out, and when they left with the boxes, the chief inspector came to see me.
We repaired to Lawson’s office.
“Drink, sir?”
“Yes. Why not?”
I poured myself a soda, and him a whisky and soda. I was feeling off the drink today.
“Clare was very impressed with you,” McArthur began.
“Was he?”
“Yes. He said that he’d like you to keep working the case from your angle if I didn’t mind. He’s left you all your files and just photocopied the ones he needed for the wider investigation.”
“I saw that.”
“I take a bit of a different view.”
“Oh?”
“I told him that you could work the case until my full-time detective returned on Sunday, but after that you’d have to return to regular duty. I can’t afford to pay you to work on a case that another team is now working, can I?”
“But Superintendent Clare asked you to.”
“He did,” the chief inspector said slowly. “And the compromise I have come up with is that you’ll work the case with Sergeant McCrabban until Lawson’s return, and then all three of you will return to regular duty.”
“Uhm, what day is today?”
“Friday.”
“I see.”
“As you said yourself, we’ve already had Duffy’s Last Case, haven’t we? You don’t want to be like Sinatra, do you? A new ‘Farewell Tour’ every year.”
“No, sir. Friday. Well, I suppose we better get cracking, then.”
It took me fifteen minutes to find Crabbie up on the roof with a mug of tea, looking at the lough.
He was clearly avoiding me.
“I brought you some biscuits,” I said.
“Thank you,” he replied politely.
“Whatcha doing up here?”
“Thinking.”
“Good spot. Up on the roof between the rain showers. Nice. Get a wee gander at the lough and Belfast.”
He frowned. “Maybe we should just keep things on a professional level for now on, Sean. Restrict our conversations to police work.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Perhaps that would be for the best. Things were said that were best left unsaid.”
“Things were said that were complete bollocks.”
“So police work only, please? If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
I stood there next to him for a while. He cleared his throat. “Was there anything else?”
“Nope.”
I went downstairs and closed my office door.
Lawson’s office door.
Half an hour later, Crabbie opened it.
I could tell from his expression that he hadn’t come to make up. He was all business.
“What’s happened?”
“We got a phone call from Inspector O’Neill from Dundalk Garda. They’re having a wake for Alan Locke in the bowling club in Dundalk tonight. Apparently, they’ve discovered an old membership card, and the club members want to pay their respects to him.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I’ve informed Superintendent Clare about it, but he doesn’t think it’ll be worthwhile going through all the bureaucratic hassles to send down some men there to mingle,” Crabbie said.
“He does things by the book, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“And yet earlier, he was praising our creativity in this investigation.”
“Indeed.”
“You know, you and I could just drive down there and join the crowd and see what we could pick up informationwise.”
“Sounds dangerous, Sean. Two undercover policemen at an IRA hit man’s wake?”
“In that case, I’ll just go down there and nail them on my own.”
Crabbie sighed. “You know I can’t allow that either.”