Outside to my Beemer. Home to Coronation Road in Victoria Estate.
I parked the BMW in front of my house: #113, a three-bedroom former council house that sat in the middle of the terrace.
‘Hello, Mr Duffy.’
It was Janette Campbell, the jailbait daughter of the thirty-something, chain-smoking, dangerously good-looking redhead next door. Janette was wearing Daisy Dukes and a T-shirt that said Duran Duran on it. She was smoking Benson and Hedges in a way that would have cheered the heart of the head of marketing at Philip Morris.
‘Hello, Janette.’
‘Did you see Muhammad Ali right enough?’
‘Yes, I did,’ I said, wondering how she knew where I’d been today.
‘Me boyfriend Jackie says Tyson could take him easy.’
‘Your boyfriend is an idiot, Janette.’
She nodded sadly and offered me a ciggie. I declined and went inside my house.
There was the smell of cooking from the kitchen and there were three suitcases in the hall.
Beth was in the living room, coiled on the sofa like some exotic cat, an ocelot, perhaps, reading Fanny Burney’s Letters.
‘How’s the Fanny Burney?’
‘The burny fanny’s much better, thanks. You know, since I started taking the antibiotics,’ she said, with a grin.
‘That gag must be fifty years old,’ I said and sat beside her on the sofa.
‘Here’s a brand new one, Janette next door told it to me: why do French chefs make omelettes with only one egg?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because one egg is un oeuf.’
I put my face in my hands and let the riot helmet drop to the carpet. Beth poked me between the folds of my body armour.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well what?’
‘Well, did you meet him?’
‘Who?’
‘The Champ – as you’ve been annoyingly calling him all week.’
‘It wasn’t really about meeting him. I was just there to do a job is all.’
‘Ha!’ she said, with obvious disdain. ‘As if you didn’t pull every string you could. You said “Ali” in your sleep last night.’
‘Did not,’ I said, blushing.
‘How was his speech?’ Beth asked, handing me a still-cold can of Bass.
‘Speech was fine. What’s with the suitcases?’
‘Moving out.’
‘You’re moving out?’
‘Yes.’
‘What? When?’
‘Tomorrow morning. Rhonda’s brother’s coming for me.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘We’ve discussed this, Sean.’
‘We have?’
‘You’ve known all along that this was only temporary. I have to be near the university, my classes. And this, frankly, is probably the least interesting street in the least interesting town in the world.’
‘It’s had its moments in the last few years. Trust me.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not for me.’
I drank the rest of the beer and took the book gently out of her hands. Beth and I had been going out for nearly seven months and she’d been living here for the last few weeks. Sure, there was an age gap but I wasn’t dead yet and I made her laugh and we got on well. We’d met at the Stone Roses concert at the Ulster Hall, but apart from an affinity for Manchester bands we had little in common. She was a Prod from a wealthy family, who, after working for her da for a few years, was now doing a master’s degree in English at Queen’s. Short red hair, slender, pretty, with a boyish androgynous body, which, if you know me at all, shouldn’t surprise you. Her legs were long and strong and there was something about her deep green eyes.
‘I thought we had a good thing going here, Beth?’
‘Do you ever listen to me? I mean, ever? I told you this was just until Rhonda got the wee house on Cairo Street.’
‘I thought that fell through.’
‘No. It didn’t.’
‘So that’s it? We’re … what? Breaking up?’
‘Come on, Sean. Has the weed destroyed what’s left of your noggin? We talked this over two weeks ago.’
‘Yeah, but I thought things had changed, you know? I thought you might want to stay. We’ve been getting on so well.’
‘There’s no future for us, Sean. In a couple of years you’ll be forty.’
‘You’ll be thirty!’
‘It’s not the same. Look, we’ll still be friends. We’ll always be friends, won’t we?’
‘Friends. Christ.’
She put her arms round me and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Come on, Sean. You didn’t think I was staying here permanently?’
‘Actually, I sorta did.’
‘Oh Sean, sweetie … Look, you must be starving, let me give you your dinner. I made it special, so I did. A last supper.’
Cooking was not one of Beth’s talents, but it didn’t matter. It was hot and it would have taken a culinary genius to screw up an Ulster fry.
‘How do you like it?’ she asked, watching me eat.
‘It’s good.’
‘You don’t think the potato bread is burnt?’
‘That’s the way I like it.’
She leaned over and kissed me again. ‘You say all the right things.’
I put down the fork. ‘Stay. Stay here with me. You won’t regret it.’
She shook her head and got a beer from the fridge. ‘Come on, let’s watch the news and see if we can spot you in the crowd.’
Ali’s Northern Ireland peace initiative was the lead story. He was 46 years old, but he was made for the telly, standing out like a black Achilles among the pasty, blue-white Micks.
‘Oh my God! There’s you!’ Beth screamed delightedly, and it was me, coming down from the platform with the Sergeant.
‘You were on the TV! I don’t believe it! You’re famous.’
‘Yup. I’m famous.’
‘Now get in there famous man and do the washing-up while I finish off me packing.’
I did the dishes and went out to the garden shed. I rolled a fat joint with a leaf of sweet Virginia tobacco and a healthy flake of Turkish black cannabis resin.
I’d smoked half of it when I saw that it was snowing. Sunshine in Belfast in the afternoon, snow in Carrickfergus in the evening. That was Northern Ireland for you. I finished the weed and when I went back in Beth had added two toiletry bags to the three suitcases in the hall.
‘That’s it?’ I asked.
‘That’s all of it.’
‘Let me lend you some records. Rhonda probably doesn’t have much and I’ve seen your collection.’
‘Nah, it’s OK, Sean, I’m not into that stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Old stuff. Elvis and crap like that.’
‘Bloody hell, have I taught you nothing? Lemme play something for you.’
She groaned as I put on my rare bootleg of the From Elvis in Memphis sessions, where hit followed hit in the King’s last great flowering. You know the stuff I mean: ‘In the Ghetto’, ‘Suspicious Minds’, ‘Kentucky Rain’ …
‘And to think that this was recorded in the same month as Let it Be, the last Beatles album – it’s crazy, we’ve got the end of the fifties and the end of the sixties recording at exactly the same time,’ I said.
She sighed, shook her head and smiled that lovely Beth smile. ‘I’m going to miss you, Sean Duffy.’
Later that night I lay there in the double bed, looking at her pale cheeks in the blue light of the paraffin heater.
‘Honey, I’m going to miss you, too,’ I said.
2: THE THEFT THAT WASN’T
Phone. Early. Its insistent ring through a fog of post-pot lethargy.
Brrrrriiiiinnngggggg.
‘You see? This is why I have to move in with Rhonda. No one ever calls her. Ever.’
‘She sounds like the life of the party.’
‘You can talk.’
‘Do you want me to get it?’<
br />
‘It’s obviously for you, Sean.’
‘Maybe it’s some kind of emergency with your da?’
‘That’s a nice thought. Go and get it. Your beeper’s going as well.’
Normally, I would have wrapped the duvet about me and burrowed into it and gone downstairs like a Russian soldier in Stalingrad, but I couldn’t take it from her, so, shivering in my pyjama bottoms, I jogged along the landing and down the chilly staircase to where the phone was ringing madly in the hall.
I picked up the receiver. ‘Hello.’
‘Inspector Duffy?’
‘Yup.’
‘Sir, it’s me.’
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s just after six-thirty, sir.’
It didn’t feel like six-thirty, but when I opened the front door, sure enough there was a band of light in the eastern sky and the milkman had been and left two bottles of silver top. It was a chilly morning and there was frost in the front garden and a sprinkling of snow on the Knockagh. I brought in the milk and closed the front door.
‘Is this early morning phone call about a case, or are you just in the mood to chat, Lawson?’
‘Oh yes, sir, I wouldn’t have –’
‘Fine. I’ll go into the kitchen. Wait a minute.’
I carried the phone into the kitchen, turned on the radio and put two pieces of bread in the toaster. ‘Gimme Shelter’ was getting its millionth play on Atlantic 252, but because they were pirates broadcasting from a boat in the Irish Sea they didn’t have to pay the Stones anything, which made you feel a little better about it.
I attempted to turn on the shiny new kettle. The one Beth had bought. A really fancy job whose element looked like something from the engineering deck on Star Trek. Beth came from money. Not exactly Scrooge McDuck swimming through the gold coins in his vault money, but pretty comfortable. I looked at the clever piece of equipment and remembered Beth’s words. ‘It couldn’t be simpler, Sean. You push the blue button and then the red button and the light goes green and the water boils.’ But when I pushed the blue button nothing happened and nothing happened when I pushed the red button either and there didn’t appear to be a green light anywhere on the infernal device.
‘Damn it.’
‘Sir?’
I gave up on the kettle, lit a ciggie and buttered and marmaladed the toast. ‘Tell me about the case, Lawson.’
‘Well sir, there’s been a theft at the Coast Road Hotel.’
‘A theft?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘A burglary?’
‘No. A wallet went missing from a guest hotel room.’
‘Was there violence?’
‘No.’
‘How much money?’
‘Approximately twenty pounds and credit cards.’
‘Is this the real Detective Constable Alexander Lawson, or is this perhaps some other detective constable, a constable who is new to the ways of Carrickfergus CID?’
‘It’s me, sir.’
‘It must an imposter. Because there’s no way the real DC Alexander Lawson would ever have woken me up on a Sunday morning to deal with the theft of twenty quid from a room in the Coast Road Hotel. Where is he? What have you done with the real Lawson, you fiends!’
‘Sir, it is the real me!’
‘And you’ve called me up because you are unable to handle a petty larceny?’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
Beth had come downstairs now and was looking at me from the hall. ‘Give me a minute,’ I said to Lawson and put my hand over the receiver.
‘Who is it?’ Beth asked.
‘It’s Lawson.’
‘Is he the one who looks like he puts on latex and gets spanked?’
‘That’s Dalziel.’
‘Well, it must be a good case for this hour of the morning,’ she said.
‘It’s a theft. I’m not going.’
‘You should go and then I can be safely gone when you get back,’ she said.
‘There’s no need for you to leave this early. You’ve got all day. Relax. Have some breakfast. Put the kettle on for us.’
She folded her arms and shook her head.
‘I’ll help you move,’ I said.
‘No. You won’t.’
‘Seriously, there’s no rush, honey. Some of your stuff’s in the wash. And I shelved your records alphabetically in our … my … the collection,’ I said.
‘Donate the clothes, keep the records, I’m switching to CDs anyway.’
‘CDs are a fad.’
‘Fads are a fad.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Look, Sean, we’re over, OK?’
‘Over like the Roman Empire’s over, or over like Graeme Souness and Liverpool are over?’
‘Who’s Graeme Souness? Actually, it doesn’t matter. Go to your case, Sean. Better for both of us,’ she said.
‘Beth please … You’ll be contributing to a stereotype which from your literary theory essays I know you hate. The policeman with dependency issues and girlfriend trouble. Come on, cliché city,’ I said.
‘Everything isn’t always about you,’ she said, kissed me on the cheek, took one of my slices of toast and went back upstairs.
‘At least show me how to work the kettle!’ I shouted after her. I took my hand off the receiver. ‘It looks like I’ll be there in ten minutes, Lawson,’ I said.
I dressed in jeans, black polo neck, black leather jacket, got my gun and went outside to the BMW. I checked underneath it for mercury tilt switch bombs, didn’t find any. I was about to get in the car when I remembered that I needed to get the riot gear spray-cleaned at the station, to get the whiff off it. I went back inside, got my riot gear, put it in the back seat of the car, locked it and returned a final time.
‘I’m leaving,’ I shouted upstairs.
‘Look after yourself, Sean,’ she said.
‘That’s it?’
‘C’est tout.’
I closed the front door, checked under the Beemer, got inside and drove down Coronation Road and along Taylor’s Avenue.
‘Beth! Jesus! How can you do this to me? What went wrong?’ I said to the good-luck Snoopy she had stuck on the dashboard. Snoopy kept his own counsel and I was still nonplussed when I parked in front of the Coast Road, Carrickfergus’s only hotel.
Lawson was standing outside, waiting for me.
‘I’m very sorry about this, sir, only the Chief Inspector told me to call you,’ he said, as soon as I got out of the car.
‘The Chief Inspector is here?’ I asked, surprised. He occasionally showed up when there was a murder. But a theft case?
‘Yes, sir. And Chief Superintendent McBain and you just missed Superintendent Strong.’
‘Oh shit. What the hell’s going on, Lawson?’
‘Perhaps you should come inside, sir.’
‘All right.’
We went inside the rather smart seaside hotel that would have been thriving but for the fact that this was bloody Carrick, and bloody Carrick during the bloody Troubles.
‘I noticed the riot gear in the back seat of your car, sir,’ Lawson said.
‘Yes?’
‘I heard you were on crowd duty at the Ali event yesterday?’
I gave him a hard look. Was he taking the piss? His eyes were steady and there was no trace of a grin.
Probably wasn’t trying to mess with me. He was a good lad, Lawson. Handsome if you liked cadaverous and pale (and if you did, I could sell you a morgue pass for a tenner). He was tall and blue-eyed, with dyed blonde hair that he had gelled into a series of gravity-defying peaks. Sergeant McCrabban and myself had ordered the gel out ages ago, but he had been surreptitiously sneaking it back in over the last couple of months. Today he was wearing a sober, well-tailored dark blue suit with brown oxfords and a dark grey raincoat. He was observant, too. The riot gear. Damn it. I should have put it in the boot. As a detective, I considered myself above such things as crowd control and I encouraged the o
ther detectives in Carrickfergus CID to think likewise: ‘esprit d’corps, boys, we’re a special breed, selected not for our muscle, but for our nous’. Very fine talk, and yet I had begged Superintendent Strong for the Ali detail and now Lawson had caught me red-handed.
‘Yes, I was up at the Ali event. It was a favour for Strong, he wanted an experienced hand.’
‘Of course, sir,’ Lawson said, serenely.
Inside the hotel we were met by an exhausted-looking Chief Inspector McArthur and a rosy-cheeked, ginger-haired concierge.
The Chief Inspector shook my hand. He was a trim, blue-eyed, dark-haired Scot, younger than me, something of a high-flyer, but still very much in the adjustment phase to war-torn Ulster.
‘Thank God they found you, Duffy. It’s action stations here,’ McArthur said.
‘What’s happening, sir?’
‘Someone lifted a wallet from one of the guest rooms.’
I looked at Lawson. Had everyone in the world gone completely mad?
‘A wallet, sir?’
‘It must have been one of the cleaning staff or something,’ McArthur muttered. ‘Chief Superintendent McBain is upstairs with them now, trying to calm things down. It’s a very volatile situation.’
‘I don’t think I’m really getting this, sir. We’re talking about an ordinary wallet here, are we? Not a magical wallet that dispenses wishes?’
‘It was nicked from Mr Laakso’s room! It’s the dignitaries, Duffy,’ McArthur said, lowering his voice to a panicky stage whisper.
‘The dignitaries?’
‘The Finns.’
‘From the factory visit?’
‘Yes! That’s why me and you and the Chief Super are all here at this unholy hour! What did you think was going on?’
‘I don’t know. Some kind of Masonic thing?’
‘Masonic – This is a serious matter, Duffy.’
‘I thought it was Swedes, sir. Volvo, Saab that kind of thing,’ I said.
‘No. Not Swedes. Finns, Duffy. Phones not cars.’
‘Why are these VIPs staying in Carrickfergus, not Belfast?’
‘They’re going out to the old Courtaulds plant. I suppose it’s convenient,’ McArthur explained.
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