Rain Dogs

by Adrian McKinty

  ‘Do you think your dogs could tell me where she spent the night, at least? She must have been hiding somewhere?’

  Big Mike Mulvenny scratched his brown beard and nodded.

  ‘Maybe, Duffy, maybe. I’ll see what I can do.’

  While this search was going on and the forensic team continued to work, I had McCrabban and Lawson review the CCTV footage from the harbour-master’s office and the rear entrance to the Northern Bank.

  An hour later, Detective Sergeant McCrabban’s dour visage told me that this exercise had borne little fruit.

  ‘No one came in over the walls,’ he said, with certainty.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘This is probably going to be very important at the inquest, Crabbie.’

  McCrabban explained that the castle had clearly been illuminated all night by spotlights. During this time, there had been no ladders leaned up against the wall, no balloon landings, no UFOs, no microlights, nothing out of the ordinary at all.

  ‘A couple of seagulls came and went. And I think I saw an owl at one point,’ Crabbie said.

  ‘A massive human-sized owl?’ Lawson asked.

  Crabbie shook his head. ‘Nope. An owl-sized owl. No human being came over the walls into Carrickfergus Castle last night,’ he said, confidently.

  ‘What about the bank’s footage, Lawson?’ I asked.

  The CCTV from the Northern Bank apparently told a similar story on the seaward side and at the front gate.

  ‘After Mr Underhill locked up last night, no one came near the front gate until I showed up this morning,’ Lawson said.

  I looked at both of them. ‘And Mike Mulvenny’s K9 teams found no one hiding in the castle, which means, gentlemen, that she must have done what Lawson’s friend did: slipped off one of the tours, hid in the castle somewhere last night and jumped off the keep roof sometime between 10 pm and 6 am.’

  Lawson and McCrabban both concurred.

  ‘Did the actual jump show up on the CCTV footage?’ I asked.

  ‘The angle’s wrong for the harbour-master’s camera,’ Crabbie said. ‘If she’d come to the south part of the keep I would have seen her but if she just went up there and jumped off the north wall the camera wouldn’t have caught her.’

  ‘I’ll check the footage again, sir, but I don’t think the Northern Bank’s cameras are positioned high enough to cover the roof of the keep. Didn’t notice on a preliminary view, anyway,’ Lawson said.

  ‘We’re going to have to go through all the footage from last night again and again, until we’re satisfied,’ I said.

  ‘Are there any actual eyewitnesses?’ McCrabban asked.

  ‘Our fine trainee detectives are canvassing the area, but there’s none so far,’ I explained.

  ‘I suppose we’ll also have to go to the keep roof then and have a thorough look round there, eh?’ McCrabban said.

  ‘I’m not a big fan of heights,’ Lawson said nervously.

  ‘Me neither, actually,’ I agreed and Crabbie looked at us as if we were a big bunch of jessies.

  ‘I’ll lead you up there,’ Mr Underhill said. ‘The thirteenth step in the spiral staircase is a trip step.’

  We climbed the narrow medieval spiral staircase inside the keep. It was lit by electric lights, but even so, without Mr Underhill’s help we would have been caught out by the trip step, which was half as big as the other steps.

  ‘What’s the purpose of the trip step?’ Lawson asked, stubbing his toe.

  ‘To trip up invading knights running up the stairs,’ Underhill explained. ‘The Normans did it in nearly all of their castles.’

  I avoided coming a cropper on the trip step and reached the keep roof just as the snow began to fall again.

  ‘Bloody freezing,’ I said, buttoning up my coat.

  ‘It’s some view though, eh?’ Crabbie said, turning up the collar on his wool trenchcoat.

  Indeed it was. Despite the snow clouds you could see clearly down the chilly lough all the way to Scotland across the even chillier Irish Sea. Belfast lay to the south and east, and beyond the city were the foothills of the Mourne Mountains.

  ‘Forget the view, let’s look for some evidence,’ I said. ‘Let’s line-walk the roof. Mr Underhill do you want to help?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll help,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll form a line and slowly pace out the roof in sections. Walk next to Sergeant McCrabban and if you spot anything which isn’t birdshit, let us know.’

  We line-walked the roof and found nothing. It was extremely windy up here and the roof had been blown clean of snow, cigarettes and potential suicide notes.

  ‘If she’d left a note it would have blown away,’ McCrabban observed.

  ‘Aye.’

  I walked to the north wall of the keep and looked down into the courtyard where the forensic officers were continuing their work.

  ‘She must have jumped from here,’ I said, gingerly peering over the four-foot-high keep wall. I looked for cigarette butts, a pen, ash, chewing gum, anything at all, but there were no clues.

  ‘Thoughts?’ I asked Lawson and McCrabban.

  ‘She probably didn’t hang about. No cigarettes or matches or anything. She came straight up and just jumped,’ Lawson said.

  McCrabban shrugged. ‘We don’t actually know that. She might have been up for hours thinking about it. Like I say, we’re in a CCTV blindspot on this side of the keep.’

  ‘If she was up here for a while pacing, thinking about it, could she possibly have slipped into a frame or two?’ I asked.

  He lit his pipe. ‘As you say, we’ll have to go through the footage carefully, but I didn’t notice her at all.’

  The spiral staircase exited near the north wall of the keep, so she could have come up and jumped without its being captured by either CCTV camera at the harbour-master’s office or the Northern Bank.

  I looked down into the courtyard again.

  Dizzying.

  So easy just to slip over the edge. End all your bloody problems in an instant. Girlfriend trouble. Career trouble. Drink problems. Give Chief Inspector Payne a story to tell for years: ‘Here I was, investigating a bloody jumper and fucking Duffy – always an odd fucking fish and no mistake – jumps from the castle keep almost bloody braining me …’

  ‘Let’s get down from here, lads, we’ll send up an FO to see if they can get prints from this wall,’ I said, with a shiver.

  Back in the courtyard none of the search teams turned up any hidden suspects, clothes or murder weapons, so I had no choice but to send them all back to the station.

  Sergeant Mulvenny had at least some interesting news from the dungeons.

  ‘Well Duffy, don’t make me swear on it, but it’s possible that your Jane Doe spent the night in the dungeon near the gatehouse.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up too high. If she did spend the night, there wasn’t any physical evidence, but one of the dogs seemed to get quite excited down there.’

  ‘Excited how?’

  ‘Well, I asked the FO – Chief Inspector Payne – if I could let Moira, my best bitch, sniff the body and he said OK, cos he was nearly finished, and Moira got the scent and I took her all over the castle again. Sometimes it’s better in the snow, you wouldn’t think it, but there something’s about a scent carrying in the snow.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, anyway, Moira had the lass’s scent and she was calm until we got down to the dungeon, but down there she barked and whined a bit.’

  ‘She barked and whined?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And that’s proof the dead girl was down there at some point?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t say that that was proof that the lass was in the dungeon at some point last night, but she might have been.’

  ‘Can you show me where you’re talking about?’

  Mulvenny took McCrabban, Lawson and myself to the dungeon near the gatehouse. It was a dank little hole, 20 feet by 10 feet, in a ho
llowed-out fissure in the bedrock. There were iron rings hammered into the wall, where, presumably, the prisoners had been chained. Formerly, there had been a door that locked the dungeon from the outside, but this door had been removed and concrete steps added, to provide easier access for tourists. The dungeon was slick with moss and had the revolting sulphur stench of centuries of urine.

  ‘Are you sure Moira could smell anything over this stink of piss?’ I asked Mulvenny.

  Mulvenny shrugged. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Maybe she smelt another dog, or one of the visitors?’ McCrabban asked sceptically.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Is she in heat?’ McCrabban asked.

  ‘Definitely not,’ Mulvenny said. ‘And she’s normally pretty reliable.’

  ‘I can’t imagine spending the night down here,’ McCrabban said.

  ‘And don’t forget Mr Underhill says he checked down here,’ Lawson added.

  ‘Checked how, I wonder?’ I said. ‘A quick shoofty with a torch or a real solid look around the room?’

  ‘I think we should ask him,’ McCrabban said.

  ‘Well, thanks mate. Good work,’ I said shaking Mulvenny’s hand. We traipsed back to Mr Underhill’s cottage, where he was in the middle of giving a formal statement to a PC. We took a smoke break outside until it was done. Lawson wasn’t a smoker so he pulled out a Walkman and clicked in a cassette while Crabbie relit his pipe and I lit another ciggie.

  ‘Sir, you told me to watch the cigarette count,’ Lawson said.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said stubbing the ciggie out and putting it back in the box. ‘Watcha listening to on your machine?’ I asked, for a distraction.

  ‘The new U2 album,’ he said, innocently.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Lawson saw the eye roll. ‘Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s not good,’ he protested.

  ‘What’s the record called?’

  ‘The Joshua Tree.’

  ‘Stupid name.’

  ‘It’s really ace. You wanna listen to it?’

  ‘What’s the difference between listening to U2 and shitting yourself? … If you shit yourself you’ll smell but you can deal with the self-loathing,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, sir, that’s just a recycled Depeche Mode joke!’ he protested.

  I coughed and shook my head ruefully. I used to have better material. Crabbie noticed the cough and took me to one side. ‘You look a bit rough. Are you OK, Sean?’ he asked, in what for him was a bold venture into the realm of the personal. I could never tell with these crazy Presbyterians whether he was just being polite or whether this was an opening for me to spill all my troubles.

  ‘Didn’t sleep well, mate. Beth’s left me.’

  ‘Is she the young one?’ Crabbie asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ he said.

  ‘Neither am I … well actually, I am surprised. I thought things were going OK.’

  ‘She was quite a bit younger than you, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Ten years – is that a lot?’

  Crabbie considered it. ‘Insurmountable, I would have thought.’

  The PC finished taking Underhill’s initial statement and we went inside the cottage and sat opposite the old man at his kitchen table. He looked quite tuckered out now by the interviews and the questions and the hike up and down the stairs. But still he got up and offered us a cup of tea. ‘Really it’s no trouble. It’s good tea. It’s from Yorkshire,’ he insisted.

  We assented to the tea and Crabbie lit his pipe. ‘Didn’t know you could grow tea in Yorkshire,’ Lawson said to himself. Crabbie was flipping through his notebook as he smoked. ‘Could someone have raised the portcullis last night without Mr Underhill noticing?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve been through all that. It makes quite a racket, Crabbie, more importantly, it can only be raised and lowered from the inside. This morning Mr Underhill found it exactly where he left it last night.’

  Mr Underhill brought our tea and biscuits and I went through his written statement. It wasn’t different from what he had already told us.

  ‘Mr Underhill, I wonder if you would mind showing us exactly how you carried out your search last night. Grab your torch and show us exactly your routine, please,’ I said.

  We went outside into the now-strengthening snow.

  We followed him through the courtyard and the gatehouse and the keep. Without commenting we watched him go down the steps into the dungeons. He flicked the torch around both dungeons and then walked back up to the courtyard again.

  ‘You searched the dungeons every night exactly like that?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘That was pretty fast, Mr Underhill. If someone had been hiding in the left-hand corner there do you think you would have seen them?’

  ‘Aye, I think so. I know this place backwards and forwards, anything out of place and I’ll ken it. That’s why Buttoncap doesnae try his tricks with me,’ Mr Underhill said.

  ‘Who’s Buttoncap?’ McCrabban asked.

  ‘The castle ghost,’ Lawson explained.

  ‘Why do you check the castle twice before going to bed? Surely once would be enough, no?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s always been that way. Old Mr Dobbins did it that way and Mr Farnham afore him and afore that it was the army way. An inspection at six and one at ten. It’s always been done and I’m no going to buck tradition.’

  ‘This second inspection. Do you go up to the keep roof for that one?’

  Mr Underhill shook his head. ‘No, not usually. I do check the dungeons, though, and the courtyard!’

  ‘And last night, did you go up on to the keep roof?’

  ‘No I cannae say that I did.’

  ‘But you checked the courtyard, and just to reiterate, there was nothing unusual?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Underhill.’

  I waited until he had walked back to his cottage before turning to the lads.

  ‘Well?’ I said to Lawson and McCrabban.

  ‘Aye she could have been hiding in the dungeon. Up against that back left-hand wall. He wouldn’t have seen her,’ McCrabban said.

  Lawson nodded. ‘I agree with that.’

  ‘And that’s what the dogs think, too,’ McCrabban reiterated. ‘She bought a ticket, hid in the dungeon, waited until the coast was clear, and then went up to the keep roof.’

  ‘And at some point after ten she jumped,’ I said.

  ‘We know where she hid, where she jumped, we just don’t know why she did it,’ Lawson said.

  When we got back to the courtyard I could see that the forensic boys were finally done. They’d stripped off their boiler suits but were still unmistakeable as cops because of their good teeth and bad haircuts – RUC men got free dental and somehow, invariably, always ended up at the worst barber in town. Interestingly, terrorists also had bad haircuts, but that was because their fashion sense had been frozen around 1973 – the era of the Che screen print and the Red Army Faction wanted poster. Chief Inspector Payne, the big bald 50-something forensic officer, had lit himself a cigarette and was taking off his boiler suit with controlled aggression. He put his hand out to catch the snowflakes, as if noticing them for the first time.

  ‘I suppose we’d better have a chat to Frank Payne,’ I said, reluctantly.

  ‘Nothing else for it,’ Crabbie agreed.

  Payne looked up when we approached.

  ‘Ah Duffy,’ he said, without any warmth.

  ‘Long time, Frank,’ I replied. ‘These are my colleagues. I think you’ve met Detective Sergeant McCrabban; this is young Detective Constable Lawson.’

  Payne gave a curt nod to McCrabban and Lawson. ‘Nice day, eh? Fucking freezing, so I am. Calling us out at this time of the day, in a blizzard, no less. Your men should have covered the whole crime scene with tarpaulin. Sloppy work, Duffy.’

  ‘Hardly a blizzard, Frank, a –’

  ‘Did you send one of my boys up
to the roof of the keep, Duffy?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘Aye, to see if there were any prints on the ledge where she jumped. Or, you know, anything that we might have missed. You guys in forensics are always a bit sharper than us regular CID,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t try to butter me up, Duffy. If you want one of my men to do something, you ask me first, OK?’

  ‘OK, Frank.’

  He spat on to the cobbles and took another draw on his ciggie. A Gallagher’s long, by the nasty pong off it.

  ‘I heard you went to see Ali yesterday,’ he said to me.

  ‘Christ, you’d think there’d be some other gossip in the RUC besides me doing a routine bit of crowd-control duty.’

  ‘What the hell was Ali doing over here, anyway?’

  ‘He was on a peace mission with the Reverend Jesse Jackson.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Muhammad Ali and the Reverend Jesse Jackson bring peace to Northern Ireland! PR stunt. That’s all it was, Duffy. Jackson’s running for President. Did you know that? Needs the Irish vote, that’s what they said in the paper.’

  ‘If it’s in the paper it must be true.’

  ‘Ali’s overrated, anyway.’

  ‘You think Muhammad Ali is overrated as a boxer?’ McCrabban asked, incredulously.

  ‘He was OK, McCrabban. Just OK. Look at Tyson. Now there’s a brawler for you. He’s got the hunger. Murder ya for a Cup-A-Soup, so he would.’

  ‘I don’t think they have Cup-A-Soup in America,’ Lawson said.

  ‘No Cup-A-Soup indeed. Who doesn’t like soup in a cup? Jesus. The point is, Ali talked his opponents to death. Tyson just knocks ’em out,’ Payne said.

  ‘That’s what made Ali so great. He used psychology,’ McCrabban protested, but Payne cut him off with a snort.

  ‘Psychology! Listen to him! Psychology, he says.’

  This was the kind of rubbish peelers talked about when they didn’t have a case to focus their attention, but I’d had enough of this blather. ‘Time’s pressing, Frank, do you want to walk us through the crime scene?’ I asked.

  ‘If you insist,’ he said, reluctant to leave the shelter of the overhanging battlement.

  Payne, Lawson, McCrabban and I walked over to the body. It had been covered by a grey forensic blanket, which would have to serve as protection until they came to take her away for the autopsy.