by Paul Charles
“It’s just,” McCusker started, trying really hard not to burst her bubble. “Look Lily…”
“Ah you used ‘Lily’ – I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“No, look, it’s fine – you go and have a fine night, off you go.”
“Oh no, don’t do that to me!” she protested loudly. “Don’t patronise me! Say what you were going to say – you’re my partner and if you don’t tell me the truth, who will?”
“Well look, all I was going to say...” he hesitated again. “But before I do say anything I should qualify it by saying that I haven’t exactly got the best track record in the romantic stakes. I’ve been out with one woman, married her, didn’t love her, ignored her so much she left town with all our assets, don’t you know.”
McCusker paused for thought; that was a very brief, not to mention strange, summary of a woman he was married to for nearly twenty-five years. But then Anna Stringer had been a strange woman. He wondered if strange men attracted strange women. Or maybe, if he was prepared to look at the situation from her point of view, did strange women attract strange men. He couldn’t remember ever feeling a need to find a woman. If anything he’d tried to give them a wide berth. He’d been hurt beyond his imagination as a teenager when his first attempt at a relationship with a girl had crashed in flames around his ankles. Jet-black-haired Angela Hutchinson had been a great teenage friend. A friend whose sultry stunning looks had launched a thousand of McCusker’s daydreams. She was one of those girls who didn’t have to utter a single world because she gave off the air of someone who was always preoccupied with not only seeking her own pleasure but with sharing it with others. Angela and McCusker had been barely seven weeks away from becoming more than just good friends. However, her mother had apparently been reading Angela’s diary, and was aware of just how special a present her daughter was going to offer up to McCusker on the day of her eighteenth birthday. She quite literally nabbed Angela from McCusker’s greedy (but amateur) paws, and deposited her in Wimbledon, in faraway London town. Apparently over in London town there was a better chance that the eligible boys might be of the same religion as Angela. And even if they weren’t, none of the nosey neighbours would ever notice. Sadly Angela, after all her mother’s trouble, and maybe even because of all the trouble her mother had gone to great pains over, had been deflowered by a SW19 cad, and Angela boasted as much when she and McCusker next bumped into each other by accident in Portrush, their home town. At that point Angela had given up on the London boys and was back home looking for a father for her one-year-old daughter, and she seemed to be enjoying immensely the process of auditions, deductions, and eliminations. McCusker kept his broken heart hidden, feigning career priorities as his excuse. But the truth was he’d never forgiven her for not saving herself and delivering her maiden self, wrapped in birthday ribbons, and not much else, as promised. He wouldn’t even have worried if the present she’d originally offered had been, one, or two, or, heck, even three, years late, just as long as it was delivered…well…intact as it were. He accepted now, but not then, that he’d been guilty of some double standards.
There had never been a similar physical attraction between him and Anna Stringer. As McCusker thought this he was overcome by sadness at the fact of how true it was, and if he hadn’t been considering Angela and Anna Stringer in the same thought, he’d never have realised it. He also still had great difficulty trying to work out how he went from a grilling style first date with Anna Stringer, to marriage in ten short months. And all of that without even the threat, or even a hint, of the patter of tiny feet. This patter of tiny feet excluded, of course, the patter of the tiny feet of her cat (one interchangeable cat replacing the other when they got to be too old and lethargic). The cat had always been Anna Stringer’s last line of defence when it came to McCusker’s amorous overtures. The cat in the lap meant no chasing the butterfly and the cat was always, but always, in the lap.
Anna Stringer looked like she permanently felt sorry for herself. On the troublesome first date McCusker felt like he was being interviewed for a post in the civil service. Their one sided conversation was peppered with, “Your eyes look too hungry for me.” Or, “If you think I’d be interest in any of that auld carry on, you’ve got another thing coming.” Then the big, big downer, “I wouldn’t be interested in being intensely in love with anyone. My Ma says all that does is give you a migraine.” McCusker felt that Anna Stringer had been taking great pleasure in failing him on all points and would take even greater pleasure in reporting as much to her ‘Ma’. But then didn’t she only go and concluded the interview by saying, “Oh go on, you can kiss me now if you want to.” And it hadn’t exactly been a request! It hadn’t been a request at all in fact. McCusker felt that their relationship would have been entirely different if only she’d said, in conclusion of that first disastrous date, “I’ve been dying to kiss you all night,” and then risked her migraine by trying to tickle his tonsils.
At least then they might, just might, have stood a chance.
McCusker still couldn’t really understand why he and Anna Stringer had married ten months later, a month after his twenty-seventh birthday. He did accept though that as you get older, and this applied to both men and women, you started to consider partners you would never have considered earlier in your life.
“Get on with it McCusker, what were you going to say?” O’Carroll asked, drawing him out of his trip down memory lane.
“Well, it does seem to me that the only time you are not thinking about finding a man for yourself is when you are thinking about finding a man for Grace.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing!” she replied in amusement. “Listen, I’ve got news for you McCusker: that’s all anyone normal thinks about. You know, careers, ambitions, promotions, bigger bank balances, nice clothes, pampering – I’m talking about the whole shebang that preoccupies all of us, and it’s all leading to setting us up for the most important part of our lives. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the only reason we’re put on this earth is to find a fella, or in your case, McCusker – in case you’re still confused – a woman.”
“But it can’t be?”
“A woman?” she snapped. “Now I am surprised.”
“No you eejit, I meant it can’t be the reason we’ve all been put on this earth.”
“Think about it McCusker, and I have thought about it a lot and nothing else makes sense.”
“And even if that is true, do you really need to go chasing it so aggressively, would it not be better to just let someone come into your life more naturally?” McCusker offered, showing perhaps that he’d also thought about this subject a lot as well, “and in the meantime there are other things we can enjoy?”
“Really? Like what, for instance?” she asked, in clear disbelief.
“Like your work, like movies, like books, like walking around Belfast,” McCusker said, warming to his own answer. “You…you realise what an absolutely amazing city this is? Don’t you see – just to walk around slowly, soaking everything up, all these spectacular buildings, and enjoying those experiences.”
She rolled her eyes.
“So my point would be,” McCusker continued unperturbed, “it’s better to enjoy all the pleasures that are already plentiful in our lives and then…well, surely there is a much better chance of finding true love if you let things happen more naturally?”
“Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God! McCusker, I don’t believe it – not only are you an innocent but you’re also a romantic!”
McCusker exhaled loudly.
“Okay McCusker,” she began patiently, “let me put my case. You have two people out there living this life. One, as in myself, grabs every opportunity to meet someone and because of that will no doubt, a) have a much better level of experience to call on, and b) a much greater number of partners to pick from than the man, such as yourself, who married the first girl he slept with and was so interested in walking around looking at buildings that he didn’t
notice his life go by or his marriage slip out of the door. So, my question to you would have to be: who of the two is better equipped for the most important part of our lives? QED and toodableedin’loo.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thirteen hours later on Wednesday morning they met up again on the steps of the Custom House.
“Hi O’Carroll – how did last night go?”
“He’s a through-other culchie – a cad, a dinosaur in sheep’s clothing, a drunk! He’d horrible breath, BO, massive hands, didn’t even bother to shave. He’s hair implants, he wore odd socks, his shirt looked like he’d fished it out of the dirty linen basket just before he came out and his shoes were scuffed and his trousers wrinkled. I’ll tell you this for nothing, McCusker, if I never see another man again it will be too soon. To top it all I had far too much to drink so if you’re very good to me McCusker and don’t shout at me again until the hammer in my head runs out of steam – I’ll let you take me out at lunchtime and show me some of these…” she took her first pause and then whispered, using her fingers to signify quotation marks “‘beautiful buildings’ of yours around this wonderful city of ours. Now...how are we getting on with this case of yours?”
“Well, funny you should ask but I visited the Errigle Inn up on the corner of Ormeau Road and Jameson Street last night on the off chance,” McCusker started, keeping his voice to a level that her eyebrows seemed comfortable with.
“Okay,” O’Carroll whispered, “now you’ve got my total undivided attention and I swear to you I’m going to allow nothing into my head today apart from the facts of this case.”
“Okay Lily,” McCusker continued happily. “As I say, after a bite of supper at Deanes I went to the Errigle Inn yesterday evening. The entertainment establishment was friendly and cheerful. There was a great wee girl called Isobel Anderson performing when I was there. The venue was quite packed.”
“McCusker can we, ah…”
“Sorry, okay,” he said smiling happily at the fact that she was interacting again. “I just wanted to see if 57 Joe had performed there on Saturday and then pick up their contact details so that I could check out Richard Robinson’s alibi.”
“And?”
“And not only were 57 Joe playing there on Saturday, but the manager and one of the members of the band, the drummer, were down last night as well.”
“And?” O’Carroll said. “I feel I would be enjoying much more success if I was using a syringe and a stone.”
“They think Richard is a Rodney – according to the drummer that’s the new word for plonker – and they think that his lyrics are crap, ‘laboured’ was the word they used. They told me they’ve never used any of Robinson’s lyrics, nor will they ever, they claim. They also said that Robinson had boasted that if 57 Joe do one of his songs, his wife could get them on Radio Ulster.”
“And they still didn’t?”
“They still didn’t,” McCusker said, raising his eyebrows.
“But was he down at the Errigle on Saturday?”
“That’s the only bit of bad news...” McCusker admitted. “They say they certainly didn’t see him on Saturday night but the place was so packed there was a fair chance he could have been in the building and they’d just not seen him.”
* * *
“Why are you in such a rush to get to the Europa, and why do we have to walk?” O’Carroll asked, as she followed McCusker, who’d insisted on walking to the hotel, which in the seventies and eighties had had the cheapest heating bill of any hotel in the UK.
“You tell me?” McCusker teased.
“Which?”
“Both?” he insisted as they hit Donegall Square.
“McCusker, please, my head...you promised you’d go easy on me this morning.”
“Okay. Well, if I’m not very much mistaken, breakfast at the Europa finishes at 10.30 and you know Belfast, particularly the city centre – it’s really very small, so when you factor in the traffic and parking it’s just as quick to walk.”
O’Carroll still struggled to keep up with him.
“Besides, it’s a truly beautiful morning and this fresh air will blow the cobwebs out of your head.”
“So would a blast from a double barrel shotgun, but I’m not going to try that route either,” she moaned. “McCusker, please…at least slow down to a rate humans can keep up with.”
Barr had arranged to do the interview with Whitlock Junior but he’d got caught up on another part of the case and had to shy off, so McCusker was happy to step in for his Detective Sergeant. Unfortunately for McCusker the only thing Jaime Whitlock was offering was the Europa’s complimentary coffee and a cellophane-wrapped Danish pastry. He claimed his room wasn’t anywhere near as grand as his father’s, insisting that they conduct the interview in the Europa’s spacious, busy, and windy lobby.
McCusker secured them three comfortable seats by the fireplace as Jaime produced a sighting of his room key in exchange for the meagre breakfast.
O’Carroll poured herself a large cup of strong-smelling coffee, took a swig, produced her notebook and appeared as though she might settle into an eyes-open nap.
“How is the investigation progressing?” Jaime asked, getting down to business.
Whitlock Junior – the deceased’s younger brother – had a preppie image in his chinos, blue shirt, Red Sox jacket, brown and white leather brogues, and Harvard scarf. He was clean cut, with short well-tended hair and had the demeanour of a wannabe Wesley Whitlock III.
“At this stage it’s all about amassing information; we really can’t get enough of it,” McCusker replied, happy to ignore his coffee after his first sip. “So the more information you can give us now, the more helpful you’ll be to us.”
“Shoot.”
“Okay,” McCusker started, deciding to bite the bullet and go straight for it. “We now know quite a bit about Adam’s background, but there are two areas I’d love your help on. Firstly, the Cindy Scott incident and then…look, Jaime, I’m really not looking to dig the dirt on Adam but I really need to find out what was going on in his life. From what we can gather, he’d no enemies, no problems at work, he wasn’t romantically involved with anyone, and he wasn’t involved in anything shady. From all the info we’ve gathered, he really was a model citizen.”
“And your point would be that model citizens aren’t brutally murdered?” Jaime asked.
“Well in a word, no,” McCusker replied, admiring his apparent no-nonsense approach. “Unless of course it’s mistaken identity.”
“But you don’t believe it’s that, do you?”
“Most definitely not,” McCusker agreed. “Can I be blunt with you?”
“Absolutely,” the American confirmed immediately.
“Okay. Your brother was killed by the first knife wound...” McCusker said, his gentle Ulster accent making it sound less solemn than it actually was. “Whoever murdered your brother wanted to make a statement and continued to stab him viciously and repeatedly.”
“Which kind of rules out mistaken identity?”
“Most likely,” McCusker agreed. “I suppose a clever lawyer could argue the opposite if they needed to, but I’m thinking the person who murdered your brother felt he needed to and wanted to make a statement.”
“A statement to those of us left behind?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” he admitted, as O’Carroll, having now caught her first breath, looked mighty impressed at him. “Otherwise, why bother?”
“He could have also been making a statement to himself,” O’Carroll suggested.
“Or herself?” Jaime Whitlock added.
O’Carroll shrugged as if to suggest a woman would or could not have carried out this murder. McCusker was inclined to agree.
“Okay,” Whitlock said, “let’s think about it. My father and I agree that Bing Scott was long over his sister’s death and that he’d never held Adam responsible in the first place, but if we need to be out there looking for suspects, you’d ha
ve to say that none of us really ever know what goes on in another person’s head.”
“When was the last time you spoke to Bing?” McCusker asked.
“I would have bumped into him a month or so back. He was always friendly, always asking after Adam and Julia.”
“So he would have known they were both in Belfast?” O’Carroll asked.
“Most definitely.”
“Would he have travelled to Europe in his line of work?” McCusker asked.
“I don’t believe so, but I can ask my father’s firm in Boston to check it out,” Jaime offered, as he pulled a notepad out of an inside pocket and made a note.
McCusker made a mental note to also have Bing Scott checked out by the FBI or the CIA, he was never sure which– anyway, that was a task for Superintendent Larkin.
“Was there any chance at all that Adam might have been carrying on with Cindy?” McCusker asked, sheepishly.
“No, not a chance, not a chance in the world,” Jaime claimed. “Adam was never really interested in girls, particularly girly girls. I don’t mean he was interested in boys, but he’d only date girls who were either mature or pretended to be mature. So no, and whereas he most certainly wouldn’t have been rude to Cindy, neither would he have led her on. I was too young for that group as well, but I believe she was infatuated with my brother and it was quite simply a terrible, terrible accident.”
“Okay, we’ll regroup on Mr Scott,” McCusker said. “Anything else?”
Jaime stared McCusker straight in the eye.
“What?” McCusker eventually felt compelled to say.
“Well...it’s probably nothing and I do hate to stir up a hornet’s nest but…”
“But?” McCusker coaxed.
“Well, I often told Adam that he should stop messing around with Angela.”
“Define ‘messing around’?” O’Carroll said, finally blowing the end of her hangover away.
“You know, I honestly never really knew what was going on between the two of them; they went way back. Adam claims to have known her from before she met her husband, claimed they were just great friends. But they were close, very close and when I stayed with Adam once in Belfast, Angela spent the night.”
