Rain Dogs

by Adrian McKinty

The bar. Niamh. Red-haired, pretty. Almost as pretty as Beth. She poured me a vodka gimlet, easy on the vodka.

  Ronnie and Mrs Dunwoody together.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They left at 9.45 pm,’ Ronnie said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘We’ve got a time stamp on the video.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to take that tape into evidence.’

  ‘What about the privacy of our customers?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but the tape is going to be an important piece of evidence in a murder investigation. I’ll only need to ever show the bit with the Finns and they won’t be back, will they?’

  ‘No,’ Mrs Dunwoody conceded.

  ‘I’ll be very discreet. You know me,’ I said to Mrs Dunwoody as Ronnie handed me the tape.

  ‘What does it mean if they left at 9.45?’ Mrs Dunwoody asked. ‘It means, Mrs Dunwoody, that it took them over an hour, well over an hour, to make the ten-minute drive from here back to Carrickfergus.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘That means that they went somewhere else first.’

  BMW to Belfast. Park outside Tony McIlroy’s Detective Agency.

  Upstairs: the same bored receptionist, the same bored secretary.

  ‘Is Tony around?’

  ‘He’s out on a job,’ Donna said, flipping through the pages of Elle.

  ‘Know when he’ll be back?’

  ‘Probably back for lunch.’

  ‘Lunch is?’

  ‘Twelve,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘I’ll come back. Tell him Sean was here to see him, please.’

  ‘OK.’

  Beemer to Queen Street RUC, which was a safe place to park and central to everything.

  Walk down to the Forensic Unit HQ. Show my ID. Upstairs to the labs.

  Prissy, pretty receptionist called Siobhan. Catholic from West Belfast.

  ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

  ‘Waiting for a blood-sample result.’

  ‘Case name and number?’

  ‘Lily Bigelow CRUC#333718.’

  Tapping on a keyboard. Green letters on a computer screen.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector Duffy. That case is with the DPP now. You’ll have to speak to them for any results.’

  ‘Look, I’m in a hurry. I was the investigating officer. We found blood on one of the dungeon walls in Carrick Castle. I just want to know if it was Lily Bigelow’s blood or not. You’ve been processing this case for ages. Please, if I go through the DPP it’ll take even more time.’

  Siobhan relenting.

  ‘It says here that there wasn’t enough material for what’s called a “DNA match”, but the blood type was B negative. Miss Bigelow was also B negative.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Back downstairs. Quick juke into Matchett’s Pianos.

  Patrick groaned when I came in. I had been circling this piano shop for about five years now, occasionally tinkling on a baby grand, or looking at some sheet music, but never once buying anything.

  ‘What about you, Patrick?’

  ‘Not too bad, you, Sean?’

  ‘Days: they come, they wake us, where can we live but days?’

  ‘I’ll take that as an “I’m OK”. So are you in to tease me, or are you seriously interested in a piano?’

  ‘I hear you got a bit smoke-damaged from the firebomb at the Athletic Stores.’

  Pat shook his head sadly. ‘That we did.’

  ‘Entire stock a write-off?’

  ‘Total write-off. You know what heat and smoke does to a piano.’

  I looked around to see if there were any other customers in the shop. It was empty. I lowered my voice. ‘If I was looking to get one of those “write-off” pianos …’

  Patrick smiled. ‘Well, Sean … officially they’ve all been sent to Belfast dump. The insurance company insisted on that. No resale or recycling.’

  ‘And unofficially?’

  ‘How much were you looking to spend?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Just a good standing piano.’

  ‘Somewhere in the region of four or five hundred pounds?’

  ‘Sounds about right.’

  ‘We might be able to come to some kind of arrangement.’

  ‘I’d have to play it first. See if I like the tone.’

  Patrick eyed me suspiciously. ‘Are you sure this isn’t some sort of police investigation?’

  ‘I’m hurt, Patrick. Seriously. I thought we were friends.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sean … of course you wouldn’t … look, come over here, out the back.’

  He took me to a storage room out the back and set me down in front of a gorgeous pre-war Bechstein.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Patrick said.

  I played Liszt’s La Campanella and, just to annoy myself, Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G Minor. The piano had a beautiful tone and wasn’t damaged in the least. When I played the last bar of the Prelude, Patrick thought I was money in the bank.

  ‘You play very well, you know,’ he said.

  ‘I’m rusty.’

  ‘No, Sean, you’re really good.’

  I looked at my watch. It was 11.45.

  ‘Well? Will I put it aside for you?’ Pat asked.

  ‘Nah, I’ll have to think about it, mate,’ I said.

  ‘I knew it!’ Patrick groaned again. ‘I fall for it every bloody time.’

  I walked to the door. ‘Hey, Pat, why could Beethoven never find his music teacher?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was Haydn.’

  ‘Get out of my shop!’

  Back to Tony McIlroy’s Detective Agency.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mr McIlroy’s still not back. He should be here in about half an hour or forty-five minutes. Do you want to wait?’

  ‘No, it’s not a problem. I’ll come back.’

  Drive down to Cairo Street. Find number 13 in the middle of a student terrace. Unafraid of clichés, there was a bunch of beardy students hanging out on stoops and front yards, smoking ciggies, strumming guitars, reading Penguin paperbacks. I parked the car and took Beth’s records out of the boot; records which I had carefully removed from my collection and put in a milk crate for just such an opportunity as this. Culture Club, The Boomtown Rats, Paul Young, Ultravox … nothing that I would miss.

  Knock the door.

  A sleepy girl with peroxide hair and bags under her eyes.

  ‘Hi, I brought, uhm, Beth’s records.’

  ‘She’s not in.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So, you’re Sean?’

  ‘You must be Rhonda.’

  ‘You better come in, I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  She brought me into an impressively filthy lounge and made me a cup of tea.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the mug.

  ‘Should I leave these records up in her room?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think she’d want you going in her room.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  Silence. Someone practising scales on a trumpet outside.

  ‘You miss her?’ Rhonda asked

  ‘I do.’

  ‘She has ambitions. She can’t be a policeman’s wife. She wants to get her masters.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She’s a modern woman.’

  ‘I understand that. Does she ever talk about me?’

  Rhonda nodded. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘What does she say?’

  Rhonda shook her head. ‘Ach, you know.’

  ‘Has she met someone else?’

  ‘Nobody serious. She liked you, Sean. It wasn’t you. She just doesn’t want to be tied down.’

  ‘The last thing I wanted was for her to feel trapped,’ I said.

  A long silence.

  I took a sip of my tea and set the mug down on the sofa arm. ‘Well,’ I said, getting up.

  ‘Take the records up and leave them outside her door, if you want. I don’t want to carry them up there. First on the left.’ />
  Upstairs. Door open. A neat little bedroom. Blue bedspread with clouds on it. Converse gutties tucked under the bed. U2 poster, CND poster, picture of a young Beth on a sail boat, Free Nelson Mandela poster. Sailing? Nelson Mandela? She’s never mentioned Nelson Mandela to me. Desk covered with books: the usual English curriculum stuff and mystery and science-fiction novels I’d never heard of. A brush with long black hairs on it. Black?

  Back downstairs.

  ‘Better head on, then, Rhonda.’

  ‘Yeah …’

  Out to the BMW. Look underneath it for bombs. Back to Tony’s office. Tony there, waiting for me. Charcoal grey suit, shiny shoes, weird, nervous, pointed look to his face. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Sean, if I’d known you were looking to see me –’

  ‘Not a prob, Tony mate. Take you to a late lunch?’ I asked. ‘I’ll buy. Crown OK?’

  ‘Thought we were going to go out for drinks? A real old-fashioned session.’

  ‘We’ll still do that. Late lunch, now.’

  ‘OK.’

  The back snug of the Crown Bar. Irish stew and Guinness.

  Small talk for half an hour, and then I hit him with it:

  ‘Tony, listen, I’m having a few problems with the timeline on the Lily Bigelow case. Remember that night you took the Finns to the brothel?’

  ‘Yeah, course.’

  No change of expression. No flicker.

  ‘You were waiting outside for them, isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘Yeah. I didn’t want to go in. No temptations, you know? And that place is pricey.’

  ‘So the boys did their business and the men played cards and they all came out.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you remember what time that was?’

  ‘I thought I told you. What did I say? Nine? Nine-thirty? Who knows?’

  ‘After they left the brothel, you drove them back to Carrick, yeah?’

  ‘No they had their own car. They followed me.’

  ‘Did you go especially slowly, so they didn’t lose you?’

  ‘I drove them back at a normal speed,’ Tony said a little defensively. ‘What are you getting at here, Sean?’

  ‘OK, so normal speed then. Ten, fifteen minutes to get back to Carrick?’

  ‘Maybe a little less,’ Tony admitted. ‘I’m not an old biddy.’

  I finished my bowl of stew and stood up. ‘Well that’s tidied that up,’ I lied. ‘Drink tonight? Tomorrow night? The famous Carrickfergus Fifteen?’

  Tony’s worry evaporated. His face broke into a grin. ‘The famous Carrickfergus Fifteen? Haven’t done that for years. You’re on. Tomorrow night.’

  ‘Great. Let’s meet at the Tourist at six. Early start,’ I said.

  ‘Early start. Happy days, Sean. Be like old times.’

  ‘That it will,’ I agreed.

  ‘Before you go, speaking of driving, I’ve got one for you.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Last night the peelers stopped me for speeding and they said, “Don’t you know the speed limit is 70 miles an hour?” I said, “Yeah, I know, but I wasn’t gonna be out that long.”’

  I’d heard it before, but I laughed anyway. It might be my last laugh with Tony for a long time.

  I drove back home, grim-faced.

  Tony McIlroy. Jesus Christ.

  I thought about telling Crabbie and Lawson what I had learned, but I didn’t want to cast suspicion on Tony until I knew for sure. Until the case was rock solid. This was still an impossible crime. An impossible crime and an improbable crime that were linked together – the killing of Lily Bigelow and the killing of Chief Superintendent McBain. And, of course, that little attempted murder of yours truly.

  Ek had motive and opportunity and form. To cobble together a plan like that on short notice defied belief, but if he had help …

  I remembered something Lily’s landlady, Mrs Singh, had said back in London.

  ‘That’s what I told all the other detectives. They were very thorough. They came twice.’

  I looked in my notebook for her number. I dialled it, apologised for bothering her and explained who I was. She remembered me.

  ‘Mrs Singh, you said that two sets of detectives came to ask about Lily Bigelow and went through her stuff.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did one of them have an Irish accent?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘And was he with another man, skinny, older?’

  ‘No, he was on his own.’

  ‘Do you think you’d recognise him, if I showed you a picture of him?’

  ‘I think I would. He was quite handsome.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Singh.’

  I hung up.

  A knock at my front door.

  McCrabban’s long face. Lawson’s eager one.

  ‘What are you lads doing out here? Little early for carolling. Come into the living room, it’s good to see you.’

  Lawson glanced at the words ‘Motive’ ‘Opportunity’ ‘Form’ and ‘Irish detective’ in the notebook on the coffee table and gave me a strange look. But I wasn’t ready to blurt out my suspicions just yet.

  ‘So, what’s up lads?’

  ‘Sean, we just got a weird call from CI Farrow. They’re going to make an arrest. They want to know if we want to go along on the collar. Joint publicity. Them and us,’ Crabbie said.

  ‘Who is CI Farrow?’

  ‘From the Sex Crimes Unit. I’ve been liaising with her.’

  ‘Farrow’s a she?’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘And who is she going to arrest?’

  ‘Colin Jones from Kinkaid Young Offenders’ Institution.’

  I put down my coffee cup. ‘Holy fuck! I knew it. I fucking knew it!’ I said.

  ‘Aye,’ Crabbie agreed.

  ‘What are they saying that he did?’

  ‘They’re saying that he allowed the Tara branch of the Rathcoole UVF to get access to Kinkaid, to take away some of the boys at night for what the informer described as “sex parties”.’

  ‘Why would the boys do it?’ Lawson asked.

  ‘Coercion, money, drugs?’ McCrabban said.

  ‘What did I tell you,’ I said. ‘No walls. No security. Anybody could get in and out. How did Farrow get the info?’

  ‘They put the word to grasses they knew in the paramilitaries and one of the grasses was willing to spill for a reduced sentence on an unrelated crime. It’s an informer case, so it’ll come down to whether Jones confesses or not.’

  ‘Any of the boys talking?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Of course not. Paramilitaries will keep them in line. The Tara branch of the Rathcoole UVF are particularly ruthless. Sex parties – that’s a sinister expression. What does that mean, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno. That’s the phrase the informer used.’

  ‘It’s the rape and abuse of children is what it is. We get an opportunity to talk to this informer?’

  ‘No chance. He’s in a safe house. Only Farrow and trusted members of her team are getting access to him.’

  ‘It’s not our friend Lenny Dummigan, is it?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Informers, though …’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was a high-risk strategy. In the early part of the Troubles, informers and so-called Supergrasses were responsible for putting dozens of suspects behind bars, but in the last few years Supergrass testimony without supporting forensic evidence had been increasingly thrown out by the courts.

  One informer in a case like this probably wasn’t going to cut it.

  ‘Do you want me to tell Farrow we want in on the arrest? It was our tip. It’s half of our collar,’ Crabbie said.

  ‘No, we don’t need to be in on the arrest, but I want to be in on the interrogation.’

  ‘I’ll tell her.’

  Crabbie and Lawson to the front door.

  ‘How are you holding up, by the way? The lads down the station we
re asking about you,’ Crabbie said.

  ‘Holding up?’

  ‘Bomb under your car.’

  ‘Oh? That? That’s old news. I’m way past that now.’

  Sunset at 4 pm behind thick rain clouds.

  Carrick to Newtownabbey in the Beemer.

  The interrogation of Colin Jones at Newtownabbey RUC.

  Jones had demanded a solicitor and within forty-five minutes a senior solicitor appeared from McKenna and Wright, and along with her the infamous Charlie McGuirk, a well-known police-hating barrister from the Belfast bar. But that wasn’t all. Also in the station was a fuming Betty Anderson and her family lawyer, a dangerous-looking bloke who had just got off the shuttle from Glasgow.

  ‘Wise move, not being in on this arrest, Sean,’ McCrabban said sotto voce. ‘I think everyone in Newtownabbey RUC is about to experience the wrath of Mrs Elizabeth Anderson.’

  Wrath indeed and much shouting.

  Writs and threats from each of the disputation of lawyers.

  It took a full hour until the interrogation of Mr Jones was allowed to get underway.

  No, Mr Jones hadn’t heard that young men were leaving Kinkaid at night to go to these ‘sex parties’.

  No, he didn’t think there was a problem with security at night at Kinkaid. No, the paramilitaries did not have access to Kinkaid YOI. Kinkaid was a very secure and respectable place …

  We watched the efficient and dogged CI Farrow go at it for two hours, but there wasn’t any headway. Jones admitted to nothing.

  CI Farrow out, McCrabban and Duffy in.

  ‘Mr Jones, did you know that boys from your home were leaving the institution at night?’

  ‘I certainly did not! I don’t believe it. It’s a lie concocted by an informer.’

  ‘Why would an informer lie?’

  ‘To get us all into trouble. To see this experiment in rehabilitation get destroyed. It’s in the paramilitaries’ interest that these young men become recidivists, not functioning members of society. And it’s in the interests of the prison officers’ union that we get closed down. A lot of people don’t want us to succeed.’

  ‘And if young men in your care are being raped and abused? What will you say then?’

  ‘They’re not! It’s a lie!’

  We asked the same questions again, in a dozen different ways, but got back variations of the same answer. Jones didn’t know anything. Jones wouldn’t admit to anything. There was no evidence of anything.

  ‘I’ll bet you if you ask each of the boys in Kinkaid about these ridiculous allegations, they’ll deny everything,’ Charlie McGuirk said.