‘I get the picture, Brainiac. Except, of course, this is real life.’
‘All that means, Alison, is that we can’t fast forward to find out if our McGuffin has any relevance to the murders. But at this moment in time it’s all we have.’
‘It is all we have. Okay, Sherlock, just to make sure we’re on the same wavelength, which is, frankly, scary, we’re thinking Jimbo gave Pat the Jack Russell not because he was all romantic, but because he wanted it out of the house, but not so far away that he couldn’t get hold of it if he needed to? Right? So it’s a stuffed animal, what’s so important about it? Is it a favourite pet that they stole for a laugh? Or is it stuffed with something valuable? They were into drugs, weren’t they? What about a Jack Russell stuffed with cocaine? We had a Jack Russell once, they’re fucking manic, I wouldn’t like to see one on cocaine.’
‘Concentrate.’
‘Right. The burglars at Pat’s house. We have to presume there is no intrinsic value to a stuffed JR, so either they were specifically looking for it or they took it for badness. They’re frustrated, nervous, probably drunk, they wreck the joint, one takes a dump on the bed, the other takes the JR and they either take it home with them or toss it over a hedge somewhere. Or they forced the whereabouts of the JR out of Jimbo or Ronny before they killed them, and then just waited their chance to nip in and get it, causing a mess to make it look like they were common or garden burglars. So far so good?’
‘Not bad. But if you’re leaning towards them going there with a purpose . . .’
‘I am.’
‘. . . and these are bad guys, murderers, and they very probably have criminal records so they’ll have been careful not to have left fingerprints . . .’
‘Agreed.’
‘. . . then why would they leave a poo in the middle of Pat’s bed?’
‘Well maybe it’s a warning. Like don’t the Mafia . . .?’
‘Dead fish, or horses’ heads. Yes. Untraceable. But you can trace a poo back to . . .’
‘The pooer.’
‘Unless . . .’
‘They brought it with them. It’s somebody else’s poo.’
‘They’ve covered their backsides.’
‘If it was anyone with a criminal record, you could still trace it back to them, make a connection.’
‘They would have thought of that. It has to be a random poo or a poo without a record. An innocent poo.’
‘It’s an awful lot of trouble to go to.’
‘Which underlines how important the JR must be.’
‘Or brings us back to them just being nervous burglars.’ Alison sighed. ‘She got rid of the poo. She wasn’t to know it might have been vital evidence. You can’t blame her. You don’t want a strange poo hanging about your house. And certainly not on your bed. She burned the lot.’
The cogs turned.
Eventually I said, ‘We’ve been thinking about paramilitaries and drug-dealers because it’s that neck of the woods, but let’s not forget how we got into this.’
‘Billy Randall.’
‘Exactly. He employed me to find Jimbo and Ronny, and as soon as I do, they wind up dead. Simple doesn’t make it wrong.’
‘He has an alibi. It’ll be good, or the best money can buy, otherwise they wouldn’t have let him go.’
‘But it might fall apart if we could establish a connection to the JR. What if Jimbo and RonnyCrabs, as part of their misguided campaign against him, stole his JR without realising what it meant to him or contained. Then when he saw your photos, with the JR in one of them, that’s when he blew a gasket and decided to have them killed. Except when he or his hired hammer went there, the JR was gone.’
‘I like it,’ said Alison. ‘The proof, of course, would be to find that the JR was back in his possession.’
I was about to agree with this when I caught myself on. ‘No, Alison.’
‘No what?’
‘You know what.’
‘I’m not a mind-reader.’
‘Repeat after me.’
‘What?’
‘Just repeat after me.’
‘Christ. Repeat after me.’
‘We are not . . .’
‘We are not . . .’
‘Breaking into . . .’
‘Breaking . . . Oh now I get you.’
‘Say it.’
‘I never say what I don’t mean. Except in matters of romance and sex.’
‘Just say it. We are not breaking into Billy Randall’s house.’
‘We are not breaking into Billy Randall’s house.’
‘I swear on the life of my unborn son.’
‘No. That’s just sick.’
‘I want you to swear. You’ve already turned him into a burglar by default.’
‘I have not, he just went along for the ride.’
‘You corrupted a minor, and you’re not doing it again. Agreed?’
Alison sighed. ‘Okay. Agreed. Absolutely. We will definitely not break into Billy Randall’s. Absolutely defin-tootly.’
‘Alison.’
‘What?’
‘I mean it.’
‘Okay. Point made.’
We were both quiet then. At least until: ‘I don’t suppose . . .’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You had your chance.’
She hung up.
19
Even before he had fully exited Starbucks, I’d already made my mind up about Billy Randall’s minder. He had an aura of suppressed anger and violence. His eyes darted about like a paranoid, but there was also an innate cockiness to him, an ego based on steroid muscle and vanity. It didn’t make him a murderer, but it would make you think twice about pushing his buttons. He had gone to Jimbo and RonnyCrabs’ home with Billy Randall and there had been a falling-out. Perhaps he’d gone back later and killed them before removing the Jack Russell. It was a hunch based on nothing much, but he was certainly someone I needed to know more about.
His full name was Charles Hawk, Charlie Hawk to his friends, though who knew if he had any. You don’t really need them. I’ve gotten by for years without them. Friends stab you in the back, sometimes literally. Mother never allowed friends around to the house. She said they would steal and break things. Her friends were different, of course. They would sit in the front room and drink sherry until they were legless. And then they would steal and break things. I asked one time what the difference was between my friends and hers and she slapped me and locked me in the cupboard. Pretty soon I was too big for the cupboard. Fortunately, she had a wardrobe.
I used my contacts in the police and found out that Charlie Hawk had a record for assault and demanding money with menaces. Actually, that’s a lie. I have no contacts in the police – a few nodding acquaintances, but nobody I could phone up and ask sensitive information of. I relied on my old friend Chief Inspector Google. The Belfast Telegraph had carried a court case. The judge had called him ‘nothing more than a thug’, which in his line of work probably wasn’t a bad review. The report also told me where he lived, the street, though not the house number. There probably wasn’t anything to be gained by watching him, but seeing as how I never sleep and I had nothing better to do, I thought I would at least see if I could pinpoint his actual house, just for future reference.
I drove up in the wee smalls. It was damp and cold and I had my gloves on and a pompom hat. I drove as I always drive, slow, methodical and always mindful of the Highway Code. To me amber is red, and not just because of my colour blindness. I found his street, a long terrace close to the City Hospital, and parked and opened a Twix and sipped from a flask of Vitolink and began to try to work out if I could guess which house was his purely by deduction. But I had been parked for barely two minutes, and was still getting my bearings, when I jumped at a rat-a-tat on my window and there was Charlie, glaring in, his slap cheeks blazing.
‘What’re you doing? Are you watching me? Are you watching my house? What the hell are you playing at? Wind the window down.’
&nb
sp; ‘No.’
‘What?’
‘No!’
He was clearly a mentalist.
‘Wind the window down! I have a wife and children in there, and you’re watching my house! Think I don’t see you, I know you’re watching me, you in your murder van. Open the window!’
‘No!’
‘What?’
It wasn’t a very practical way of having a conversation, even a threatening one, especially as he seemed to be a little deaf. I wound it down a fraction.
‘I’m not watching your house. I just pulled in to make a call and eat a Twix.’
‘Balls! This is my house, my street, what are the chances of that? You’re watching me when you should be finding out who killed those boys.’
‘No, really.’
‘Balls! You’re watching me. You’re watching the wrong man. I have a wife and children who can vouch for me. Even my neighbours. I was having a barbecue when they were killed . . .’
‘It was Christmas!’
‘Exactly! Everyone is sick of it. I have a barbecue every Christmas. Most of them got food poisoning, so they will remember.’
‘Okay. If you say so.’
‘Which means you’re on a hiding to nothing, watching me day and night.’
‘I wasn’t, I just happened—’
‘Shut your fucking face! If I ever, ever see you in this street again, I will break you up into little pieces. Do you hear me? Break you up.’
He aimed a kick at the van. Later I would find that he had stove it in, even though I saw in the mirror that he was wearing slippers. I wasn’t sure if steroids could make your feet tougher, or maybe it was just the muscles that powered them. I started up and drove off. He continued to yell after me as upstairs lights winked on all along the terrace.
20
In the morning I knocked another fifty pee off one of the sale books I was advertising in the window, but when it failed to produce an immediate stampede I retired to my place behind the counter and went surfing. When that failed to yield the desired results I turned to the Yellow Pages and found listings for three local taxidermists. I phoned the second one, because I didn’t like the pattern of letters in the first one’s name, and asked him why he didn’t have a website.
‘Because I choose not to,’ the man replied gruffly. His business was called William Gunn and Son, but I didn’t know if I was speaking to the boss or the son of. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘There are very few businesses that don’t have them these days,’ I said, ‘very few.’
‘Really?’
I don’t like sarcasm, and have no patience for impatience.
‘Just saying,’ I said, ‘because I prefer to suss someone out via their website before I actually make contact. It’s much easier, no awkwardness, no pressure. If I were you, I’d get yourself a website. It’s good for business.’
‘Uhuh? Well thanks for sharing that with me. Do you design websites by any chance?’
‘No, I’m a private detective.’
‘Well you must be a crappy one if you’ve time to phone me up and give me a hard time for not having a website. Now fuck off.’
He hung up.
I had meant no criticism, but sometimes people take my well-meaning observations the wrong way. I debated whether to phone him back, but being allergic to confrontation I opted to phone the third of our taxi-dermists, a Michael Streeth. He was much friendlier and actually quite excited to be talking to a real live private detective. We got on well enough for me to ask why he didn’t have a website either and also to mention my brief conversation with William Gunn.
Michael – for we were on first-name terms, although I’d told him I was called Mario, after Mario Puzo; his The Godfather happened to be sitting on the counter, and I have a bookselling business and its reputation to protect – laughed at the mention of Mr Gunn and described him as a cantankerous old shit. He explained that local taxidermists had taken their websites down because they were continually being bombarded with abusive e-mails and occasionally viruses by animal rights groups. ‘The phone’s okay,’ he said, ‘because it’s not quite as anonymous; calls can be traced, and anyway, they’re not so brave when it comes to actually talking one on one. Gunny has had it worse than me; his place got its windows put in a couple of times, so yeah, he’s nervous, and touchy, although I think he was a shit to start with.’
I had asked Michael some general questions about taxidermy before pressing ahead with the real reason for my call. Had he at any time – because it was impossible to know how long the animal had been dead – stuffed a Jack Russell terrier for Billy Randall?
Michael let out an exasperated groan. ‘Please, before you go any further with this, and particularly because I know this will lead back to Willy Gunn, don’t ever, ever make the mistake of saying to him what you just said to me. We do not stuff animals. We remove the skin, preserve it, then arrange it around a model of the original body. It’s not about stuffing, it’s about anatomy. A good taxidermist is a sculptor, an artist and a naturalist, all rolled into one. And Willy Gunn is the best in the business. If this Jack Russell you’re looking for was done in this country, then Willy’s your man. I don’t touch pets – their owners get too emotional. I do mostly wildlife that’s been accidentally killed or animals that have been legally hunted. It’s all well regulated these days – though there are a few rogues out there offering cheap deals for shit work. Most of them don’t know their arse from their elbow, which is unfortunate, from an anatomical point of view.’
It was also unfortunate that he wasn’t the man I needed to talk to, because he seemed like a decent sort, and we got on well, which for me doesn’t happen very often.
‘I’d call Willy for you,’ Michael said, ‘but I had a fallout with him myself last year. He’s fine, really – just tread easy with the stuffing.’
Michael also ruled out the first name on my list of local taxidermists. I was still working off my out-of-date Yellow Pages, due to a dispute I had with the company, which I need not go into now but which involved them ripping me off. Seems Scott Parker had retired two years previously and gone off to live in Spain.
I told Alison of my predicament over lunch in the hope that she’d volunteer to call Willy Gunn on my behalf, but she said no, we should go and see him. She said she was an artist but entirely self-taught and her anatomy was useless and it might be instructive to go and see him at work.
‘We could kill two birds with one stone,’ she said.
‘That’s not funny,’ I said.
I argued with her that all we needed was a couple of questions answered, but she wasn’t having it. She said that if we hadn’t actually gone out to Jimbo’s house, but stayed at home like I wanted, we wouldn’t have found out about the burglary at Pat’s, and hadn’t my sneaky visit to Charlie Hawk paid dividends?
‘He damaged my car.’
‘You heard his alibi.’
‘He vaguely alluded to a Christmas barbecue; it’s hardly an alibi.’
‘He must have thought it was.’ I sighed. ‘So we’re going to go wild in the country, are we?’
‘No,’ I said.
I don’t like the country, with its potholes and cows of winter. I don’t like animals alive, and no better dead. I fear fleas and ticks and bluetongue, mange and maggots and rabies. I detest wildlife, farm animals and pets. I once knelt on a gerbil. The roads weren’t straight. There was black ice. It was a nightmare, especially in Alison’s suspension-free little Beetle.
‘This is a complete waste of time,’ I said, ‘and please keep both hands on the steering wheel.’ She took the other one off. For badness. ‘Please remember, there are three of us in this car.’
She laughed and rubbed her belly and said little Rory was in her corner and I was forced to leave it or there would have been a shouting match, which would have meant her taking her eyes off the road, which was all I needed. So I sat on my hands and applied the imaginary brake and kept my mouth closed while
we drove out to William Gunn’s address on the outskirts of Hillsborough. It was only twenty minutes from the city, but that was nineteen more than I preferred. His workshop was a variation of what people of my parents’ generation would have called a Nissen hut. Its curved roof was rusted and moss strewn. Jagged plants grew up the walls and hung down over the entrance and I had to be careful not to get stabbed by thorns and blinded by twigs. Alison opened the door and a bell jangled. We stood on one side of a counter and looked at a dead squirrel. The squirrel was holding a small card in its paws that read: Please do not ask for credit, as refusal often offends.
‘What kind of credit could a squirrel give, anyway?’ Alison asked.
‘Nuts,’ I said.
An elderly man appeared from behind a small curtain, rubbing his hands on a towel. He looked annoyed. ‘Yes? I’m just closing.’
Mother could have taught him a thing or two about customer relations. I held my tongue. Alison stepped in. She can be very good when she puts her mind to it. She apologised for calling without making an appointment, she’d heard wonderful things about his work, we have a pet dog who’s on his last legs, and forgive me if this is being morbid, we’d really like to have him preserved, do you do pets, is it possible to see your workshop and examples of any other dogs you might have done, how much does it cost, we’ll pay whatever it takes.
That changed his tune pretty quick. Couldn’t be more pleasant. Please, come this way.
William Gunn led us – slowly, I might add, for he appeared both fragile and arthritic – through the curtain and into the workshop beyond. Long wooden tables were festooned with bottles of chemicals, animal skins were pinned out to dry. There were half-built skeletons and a fox that looked as if the merest spark of electricity might bring it snarling back to life. There were stag heads with antlers mounted on the wall. In one corner there were rats kitted out in little suits and seated around a picnic table. One was wearing sunglasses. It was meant to be cute but just looked odd. The whole place stank of death and formaldehyde and blood and fur and guts and pain. I hated it. I had only recently been researching concentration camps, and this reminded me of the photographs of the hideous experiments crazy scientists had performed with Hitler’s blessing. It was Auschwitz for squirrels. The whole time we were there I was on the verge of throwing up. I was allergic to virtually everything in the room. At any moment my head might swell up even further.
The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) Page 10
