‘It’s certainly a nice idea,’ I said. ‘And I definitely want you to keep thinking laterally, Lawson, but you also have to learn not to overcomplicate things. There are two problems with your theory.’
‘Only two?’ Crabbie said.
‘Problem one. Look around you, son. This is Ulster in 1987 – the criminals are not that smart. They get away with so many murders because they know that no one will ever testify against them. Your sophisticated diabolical murderer is quite a rare animal round these parts. Problem two: the killer can only be Underhill because anyone else could not have got out of the castle, or hidden himself anywhere in the castle. Because we searched that bloody castle from top to bottom and there was no killer. He did not hide in a priest’s hole, or get over the walls, and the dogs found no trace of anyone else but Lily Bigelow and Clarke Underhill.’
‘I’m not suggesting that Mr Underhill didn’t do it,’ Lawson said. ‘What I’m suggesting is that the possibility of you getting two such similar crimes in your career needn’t worry you. If you take a Bayesian approach the statistics aren’t quite as formidable as they seem.’
I smiled at him the way one did with a precocious child. ‘Well it’s certainly food for thought, Lawson. Food for thought.’
12: EAST TO THE SMOKE
Office. Window. Lough. Coal boats. Rain.
McCrabban and Lawson sitting there on the sofa, Gregorio Allegri’s comforting (for a Catholic) Miserere on the record player.
‘I don’t like it,’ I said.
‘What don’t you like?’
I pointed at Lawson. ‘He has put a seed of doubt in my head. A seed which has grown into a virulent little shrub of doubt.’
I was sitting with the Lily Bigelow file in front of me.
Crabbie took a sip of tea.
Lawson ate a biscuit.
They both knew a second shoe was going to fall. No pun intended.
‘It’s not sitting right, is it?’ I said.
I waited for the scorn and the dour Presbyterian scepticism, but instead he nodded slowly. ‘I feel it too.’
‘You feel it too?’
‘Yes.’
‘But what is it?’ I asked.
He thought for a long time. ‘It’s the fact that Underhill has refused every deal that’s been offered to him by the DPP. He’s not pleading guilty to manslaughter, he’s not pleading self-defence. He wants to go to trial,’ Crabbie said. ‘That sounds like the play of an innocent man.’
‘Or a crazy man,’ Lawson said.
‘Or a crazy man who killed a girl and convinced himself that he’s an innocent man,’ I added.
‘And yet …’ said McCrabban.
‘And yet …’ I agreed.
‘If Underhill didn’t do it, who did?’ Lawson asked.
‘How many suicides do we get a year?’ I asked.
‘No idea,’ Crabbie said.
‘Me neither. But it would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it? I think we’ll do another little statistical analysis on the number of suicides, murders and accidental deaths that Carrick CID has had to deal with over, say, the last ten years.’
‘To what end?’ Lawson asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Let’s reconvene here in two hours, when we have the figures. I’m sure it will be interesting. Lawson, will you do the heavy lifting?’
‘It’ll be actual heavy lifting, sir, those seventies files are down in the basement,’ he said.
‘You are the youngest,’ McCrabban said.
He sighed.
‘And use those maths skills of yours, Lawson. I’d like you to break down the suicides by gender. I’d like to know how many women committed suicide in, say, the last ten years, and the manner of their deaths. And your Bayesian diabolical murderer … I’d also like to know exactly how many elaborate murders we’ve had to deal with. Non-terrorist-related murders. Murders where they tried to get away with it by passing it off to look like either suicide or an accident. Have you got that?’
‘An analysis of the suicides and the murders? I’ll get right on it,’ he said.
I stared at my teacup and then at the ships out on the lough and when that got boring I read the sports pages in the papers. Hugh McIlvanney, as usual, with some good observations on the beautiful game.
It took Lawson an hour and a half to get the statistics and type up a little presentation on his Apple Mac. He came into the conference room with renewed vigour.
‘I told you it would be interesting,’ I said.
‘Yes, it was,’ he agreed.
I called Crabbie back in.
‘You sit here,’ I said, moving from my seat behind the desk.
Lawson sat in my seat and gave us both a copy of his report.
‘Summarise the data for us, will you?’ I asked.
‘Well sir, in our area of jurisdiction, Carrickfergus CID, from 1977 to 1987 there have been fifty-two murders, forty-one suicides and 152 accidental deaths. Almost all the accidental deaths were house fires, road accidents, accidents in the home and drownings.’
‘The number of suicides seems high.’
‘Twelve of the suicides were police or army officers who killed themselves with their personal weapon. There were eleven more of these deaths categorised as accidents,’ Lawson said, with a significant look at me and McCrabban.
‘How many female suicides in the last ten years?’
‘Nineteen, sir.’
‘How did they die?’
‘Seven by hanging, four by jumping from a high building, two by gunshot, two by gas, two who jumped in front of a train, one who drowned herself and one who burned her house down around her – that was Mrs Donaghy from just last year, sir.’
‘I remember the case,’ I said frowning – an unpleasant murder-suicide that had taken Mrs Donaghy’s two infant boys, as well.
‘We also had a case back in 1981 that you initially categorised as a suicide and recategorised as murder. Girl hanging in Woodburn forest. Jane Doe it said on the file, but I think you ID’d her later,’ Lawson said.
‘That was murder. An unsolved murder,’ Crabbie said. ‘Although possibly attributed to Freddie Scavanni.’
I added nothing, for neither Lawson nor McCrabban knew the full extent of my involvement in Scavanni’s subsequent death.
‘And then there’s the case of Sylvie McNichol, which we also initially thought may have been a suicide, but was actually also a murder,’ Lawson said.
‘Aye, the wee girl who supposedly gassed herself in her car, but was really done in,’ McCrabban said.
‘How could I forget?’ I said.
‘And Michael Kelly himself. A case everyone initially thought was a suicide, but in fact was also a murder,’ I added.
‘So what does that amount to, Sean?’ McCrabban asked.
‘How many non-terrorist-related murders in the last ten years?’
‘Twenty-three,’ Lawson said. ‘Of which eight were domestic violence.’
‘So we’ve dealt with fifteen non-terrorist, non-domestic-violence murders and of those, three of them, one fifth, were cases where the murderer tried to make it look like a suicide. One fifth, gents. Now I know what you’re going to say, Lawson, you’re going to say that the sample size is too small to be statistically significant. Go on, say it.’
‘Sir, the sample size is too small to have any significance whatsoever,’ he said.
‘But the fact remains that we’ve all encountered cases like this before. Men who have killed women and tried to cover up their deed by making it seem like the quote silly bint unquote topped herself.’
Crabbie tipped his pipe into the wastepaper basket.
‘What are you getting at, Sean?’
‘In Carrickfergus there have only been four suicides committed by women who have jumped off tall buildings in all of the last ten years,’ I said, looking at McCrabban.
‘Rare,’ he agreed. ‘But not unheard of.’
‘And then we have Lawson’s Bayesi
an theory about Lily Bigelow’s death,’ I suggested.
‘Where’s all this leading?’ McCrabban asked.
‘It’s leading to this: I think, for the sake of all our consciences, we need to look into the possibility that Lily was murdered by someone else. Don’t roll your eyes at me, Crabbie. We won’t spend a lot of time on it and we’ll keep it from the Chief Inspector, but we’ll keep working at it unless something else pressing comes up.’
‘How could a different murderer have done it?’ Lawson asked.
‘I don’t know. We’ll need to think about that. I want to investigate motive. Why would anyone kill her? We’ll look at boyfriend trouble, job trouble. Crabbie, I want you to call up the Financial Times and speak to Lily’s boss and see if you can get any of her friends on the blower.’
‘No problem.’
‘And Lawson, you and I will try to figure out a way of reverse engineering Lily’s death. If we were going to kill her in those circumstances, how would we do it? First of all, let’s just make one hundred per cent sure that the locked-castle problem really is a locked-castle problem.’
The incident room, an hour later.
I had just had a very interesting phone call from a Professor Wallace of Queen’s University Belfast’s archaeology department. Carrickfergus Castle definitely had no secret rooms or secret tunnels. He had done the survey himself, back in the seventies. Locked-room scenario confirmed.
‘Lawson, any thoughts in that big brain of yours?’
Lawson shook his head. ‘I couldn’t think of anything reverse engineering wise. We’re ruling out magic, are we?’
‘Yes.’
‘Crabbie?’
McCrabban looked troubled. ‘I had a very strange wee chat with Lily’s boss on the phone. Weird, evasive, I didn’t like it at all. He said he would call us back.’
‘Maybe he was just busy?’
‘Not everyone can stop work at the drop of a hat to talk to a copper, but it seemed to be more than that.’
‘If he doesn’t call back today, we’ll try him first thing in the morning.’
He didn’t call back and after this bit of excitement the rest of the day ebbed away in rain and coffee and cigarettes.
A sad, damp, lonely night back at Coronation Road.
A knock at the door. Mrs Campbell from next door standing there in a rather fetching red dress. She appeared to be wearing make-up and her hair was elaborately done up. She was holding a Tupperware container.
‘Hello, Mrs C. Are you on your way out?’
She adjusted her hair. ‘No. Not at all. I was just wondering … I couldn’t help but overhear … Well, what I mean is, your girlfriend having gone … would you like some dinner? Lancashire hotpot. I’d invite you over, but Kenneth’s having one of his turns.’
I took the Tupperware container. ‘Thank you. Be nice to have some good grub.’
‘I know. She wasn’t much of a cook was she? You could smell the burning skillet through the wall. Look at you. You’re skin and bones. You’re better off, Mr Duffy, if you don’t mind me saying. She had airs and graces … Anyway, I thought you might be hungry.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Campbell. This looks good.’
‘I must be off. Kenneth, you know?’
‘Thanks again.’
TV and Lancashire hotpot and the drink and the dark and the rain … that was it, was it?
That was life now?
Yeah, I think so.
Next morning.
Corduroy jacket, white shirt, brown tie … miserable seventies look to go with my miserable seventies mood.
Phone light flashing in my office.
Line one.
‘Duffy, CID.’
‘Oh hello, my name is Andrew Graham, uhm, am I speaking to the police officer in charge of the Lily Bigelow, uhm, investigation …?’
‘Yes. The case is now with the DPP’s office but we’re taking another look at the evidence ourselves.’
‘Are you the chief investigating officer?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was Lily’s editor at the Irish and Scottish desk. I, uhm, spoke to your Sergeant McCrabban yesterday and he said that if I had any information relating to Lily’s death I should contact you.’
‘Do you have any information relating to Miss Bigelow’s death?’
Silence.
‘Sir, do you have any information relating to Miss Bigelow’s death?’
‘I might have, yes.’
‘Well do you, or don’t you?’
There was a pause on the line.
‘Please continue sir, I’m listening,’ I said.
‘Well that’s the thing, you see, who else is listening? We heard it was suicide and now your Sergeant is saying that it was murder. If Lily was, uhm, well, if Lily was murdered, then that puts a different complexion on things, doesn’t it?’
‘I can assure you no one else is listening and what you say to me will be in complete confidence.’
‘Well, yes, it’s not just me being alarmist though, is it? There’s also the question of slander. We’re dealing with some very well-connected people here. People who have sued newspapers in the past for much less.’
‘Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you could just come to the point.’
‘Well, the point is that we were cleaning out Lily’s desk and one of our techs came across the file she was working on before she left for Belfast. He shouldn’t, of course, have read her work, but he did. And then he came to me. And I, uhm, had a look into it and, well, in the best interests of the paper I just decided to leave it. Until your Sergeant called again yesterday and, well, it’s a tricky dilemma for us, isn’t it? Legally I mean.’
‘Mr Graham, I’m none the wiser.’
‘Look, it’s all on the computer. I took this to legal affairs and they made me contact counsel immediately. Counsel, as you can imagine, was horrified.’
‘What council? What are you talking about?’
‘Peter Carter-Ruck. Now you must understand, Inspector Duffy, none of us here know anything about it. Lily never discussed this story with us. Indeed, she would not have been allowed to pursue this story had she brought it up with me. It’s my belief that she asked to cover the Finnish visit to Northern Ireland entirely because of this private story that she was working on. A story which came from the tip line, not the most reliable of sources, as you can imagine.’
‘Can you hold on, one moment please, sir, I’m going to see if my Sergeant has come in yet. I’d like to bring him into this call and put you on speaker-phone if I may.’
I found Lawson and McCrabban in the incident room.
‘Lily’s employer. He says she was working on a story that might have a bearing on her death. Important people involved. He’s scared.’
‘Shit,’ Lawson said.
I led them into my office, took Graham off hold and put on the speaker-phone.
‘Please continue, Mr Graham.’
‘Continue? No, you haven’t been listening. Mr Phipps and Mr Carter-Ruck have been quite insistent on that. We’ve got nothing more to say, Inspector. Lily, apparently, was working on a scurrilous story on her own time. A story that would never have been printed in the Financial Times. The story is on her computer with sketchy details and is quite preposterous. It’s not so much a story as a series of bullet points, most of which are libellous. I do not wish to recite the story over the phone to you, nor do I wish to print it out and fax it to you. I have consulted with counsel and Mr Carter-Ruck says that if we were to print this out here, in this building, and were its contents to leak, the Financial Times could be held legally accountable in a potential defamation suit. It is the advice of counsel, therefore, that if you believe that Lily’s computer may have evidentiary value, then you or your representative should come and take the computer away. If you do not believe that the computer has any bearing on Lily’s death, then we have been advised to destroy the machine before the Financial Times can become implicated in
a libel suit.’
‘How big is this computer?’ Lawson asked.
‘It is a 1986 model Macintosh Plus,’ Graham explained.
‘About the same size as the ones we use in the office. We could fit that into a moderate-sized sportsbag,’ Lawson said.
‘Let me get your number, Mr Graham. I’m going to have to call you back in half an hour. Is that OK?’
Graham gave me his number and I hung up the phone.
‘Well, lads, this is a fair old to-do. Thoughts?’
‘Peter Carter-Ruck is that guy who’s always suing Private Eye. If he’s telling the newspaper to destroy the computer then the stuff on it must be incendiary,’ Lawson said.
‘We have to get them to print it out and send it to us,’ Crabbie said.
‘I agree,’ Lawson said.
I called Mr Graham back. ‘You’re going to have to print out whatever’s on those files and send them to us,’ I said.
‘No. We’re not going to do that. Mr Carter-Ruck has made it clear to us that we are not to print out anything from Lily Bigelow’s computer in this building. Mr Carter-Ruck says that if you wish to impound said computer and print out its contents at a police station then we would have no objection to that.’
‘I’ll call you back in ten minutes,’ I said and hung up.
‘We gotta get that computer,’ Lawson said.
‘Aye,’ Crabbie agreed.
Five minutes later, in the Chief Inspector’s office.
‘I know it’s expensive, sir. But the DPP will call us negligent if we don’t get our hands on all the evidence.’
‘The DPP doesn’t have to pay for it out of his budget. You don’t understand the budgetary pressures we’re under. Have you seen Dalziel’s memo about the use of toilet paper? We’re using more toilet paper in this station than in any other barracks in East Antrim.’
‘That may be true, sir, but I bet we have the cleanest arseholes.’
The Chief Inspector frowned. ‘… And you have your suspect anyway. What this can possibly add to the case, I don’t know …’
I let him grumble on, as it gave the useless ponce something to do.
An hour and a half later.
Belfast Harbour Airport.
British Midland BM34 to Heathrow. It was one of those buytwo-get-one-free deals, so just to annoy Dalziel, all three of us went.
Rain Dogs Page 14
