Gun Street Girl Read online

  I turned on my pager and carried the phone into the living room. If they really were looking for me they’d keep trying until they got me.

  I got some ice and poured myself a pint glass of vodka gimlet and put on the best album of 1985 so far: the much-delayed release of Sam Cooke’s Live At The Harlem Square Club.

  I drank half the pint and cranked the volume on “Bring It On Home,” which built to the vibe of an old church revival. When I was sufficiently solaced I dialed the station. “Duffy,” I told Linda at the incident desk.

  “Thank God, Inspector! Chief Inspector McArthur has been looking for you.”

  “I’m not supposed to be on tonight. Sergeant McCrabban is duty detective.”

  “Chief Inspector McArthur specifically asked for you. He’s been very insistent. Where have you been?”

  “I was up in Derry. I just got in. I’m shattered. I really need to go to bed, Linda, love.”

  “I’m sorry, Sean, but the Chief Inspector has been pulling his hair out. He’s got a real situation on his hands. He’s asked for you specifically.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Uhm, the, uh, the Eagle’s Nest Inn on the Knockagh Road . . .” she said with more than a trace of embarrassment.

  “McArthur is there right now?”

  “That’s what I’ve been led to believe.”

  “And he’s got himself into some kind of trouble?”

  “I’m not, er, privy to the details, Sean.”

  “All right, if he calls again tell him I’m on my way.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Uh, yes, I’ve been there before . . . in a professional capacity.”

  “Of course.”

  I scarfed another couple of chips, pulled a leather jacket over my jeans and sweater, and went back outside. Bobby and his cronies were playing petanque with scrunched-up beer cans, and Mickey Burke was walking his aged toothless lioness on a leash at the other end of the street, something he promised me he would stop doing.

  “Ah, they found you, Duffy!” Bobby said triumphantly.

  I held up a finger to tell Bobby I’d deal with him in a minute.

  “Mickey, what have I told you!”

  “Just getting her some air, Inspector Duffy,” Mickey said apologetically.

  “Get her back inside! We’ve discussed this!”

  “She’s got no teeth, she’s harmless and—”

  “Get her inside!”

  Mickey hustled the full-grown lioness back indoors.

  “There should be a law against keeping lions in a council house,” Bobby said, his face now like Brian Clough after he’d found a dead bluebottle in his Monster Munch.

  “There should be,” I agreed, and looked under the BMW for mercury tilt bombs.

  “There’s no point doing that, Duffy. We’ve been standing here the whole time. No one put a bomb under your car.”

  “How do I know you didn’t put a bomb under my car?” I replied, and kept checking under the chassis.

  “You’re my pet copper, Duffy. I wouldn’t kill you.”

  I ignored him, finished the search, and opened the car door.

  “And besides, if I wanted to kill you you’d already be dead, mate,” Bobby added.

  “Shortly followed by you, pal. I’ve seen to that,” I told him with a wink.

  I drove out of Victoria Estate and along the Greenisland Road to the Eagle’s Nest Inn, which was halfway up Knockagh Mountain.

  The B road became a private road that wound its way through light woodland and then a broad piece of manicured parkland before it arrived at a seventeenth-century Scottish baronial house overlooking Belfast Lough. The house was converted in the seventies into first a hotel, then a spa, and was now a high-class brothel. It was all completely illegal, of course, but the owners paid off at a level so elevated that you’d need a Sherpa to get close to them. A criminal investigation out here would suck you into some really heavy shit: Internal Affairs, Special Branch, the local MP, government inquiries . . .

  I parked the Beemer next to two Mercedes Benzes and a Roller.

  I was met at the entrance by a bright young man in a three-piece suit with a name tag that said Patrick on it, which was a likely story.

  “Are you Inspector Duffy, by any chance?” he asked in an English butler accent which also sounded bogus.

  “Yes.”

  “If you’ll come with me, please,” he said.

  He led me through the building in a manner that can only be described as a kind of fastidious, subdued panic.

  I followed him up a wide oak staircase to the second floor. There were pictures of horses on the wall, hunting scenes and the like, all originals or pastiches of Stubbs and John Frederick Herring. Chandeliers illuminated the corridor and light classical music was playing from discreet speakers. It was a chilly, unerotic environment, but they probably thought that was what the well-heeled punters wanted. Hell, maybe it is what they wanted. Maybe the madam had handed out questionnaires.

  There were several male bouncer types waiting for us at the top of the stairs. They pointed at an open door and we went inside Room 202, to quite the little diorama.

  A half-naked young man was sitting on the floor with blood oozing from a wound on his scalp. He was crying and being attended to by a bald man in a bathrobe and another much younger man in jeans and a sweatshirt. A girl wearing a basque and black stockings was sitting in a chair by a writing desk. An older woman in a harsh red wig was sitting next to her. A glum-looking Chief Inspector McArthur was sitting on the edge of the bed. Behind them all there was an open French window that led to a balcony, an elaborate fountain, and a manicured lawn.

  Peter McArthur was my new boss, new being the operative word here as he’d been the station commander at Carrickfergus RUC only for about six weeks. On paper he was very much the high flyer: Cambridge University, Hendon Police College, a Chief Inspector at the age of only thirty-one, but in person he was less impressive. Long nosed, weak chinned, and a dreamy, soft vagueness to his girlish, brown eyes. He was Scottish but the fey New Town Edinburgh type rather than Glasgow roughneck.

  “Thank heavens, Duffy, where in the name of God were you?”

  “Derry. Special Branch op.”

  “I can’t have you gallivanting off to Derry. Can’t you see we’re in big trouble here?”

  “There are plenty of constables at the station.”

  “Uh, loose lips sink ships. This is, uh, a rather delicate matter, don’t you think?”

  “I can’t tell what the matter is yet, sir.”

  The man in the sweatshirt got up and looked at me. “And who is this?” he asked in a pleasing American accent.

  “Inspector Sean Duffy. He’s the head of our CID unit. You can trust him.”

  The man looked dubious.

  I raised my eyebrows at the Chief Inspector. What the hell is going on here, Chief?

  McArthur lowered his voice as a stab at some kind of intimacy. “Look, Duffy, you’ve been around longer than I have, what are we going to do? I don’t want to pass it up the chain. Not yet. It doesn’t have to become a big issue, does it?”

  He was sweating and looking anxious in his sharp brown suit and crimson tie. McArthur was only about three calendar years younger than me, but he avoided the smokes, the sun, and the booze, so he looked about twenty. And if he was already out of his depth here I’d hate to see the eejit in a real emergency.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Perhaps you could apprise me of the situation, sir?”

  “Ach, I’ll tell ya, so I will,” the girl said in a chainsaw West Belfast argot.

  “All right. What happened, love?” I asked her.

  “The gentleman and I were about to get down to business. And he said I should have some . . . rocket fuel, he called it. I said no. He said come on and try it; it would make us go all night. I said no. He gets all eggy and starts screaming and yelling and I says, right, I’m calling security. He goes bonkers and tries to
bloody choke me and I pick up the lampshade and clock him with it.”

  “Good for you,” I replied.

  “And I immediately called Carrickfergus RUC. I’ll have no nonsense like this in my establishment,” the woman in the red wig said. Obviously the lady of the house. A Mrs. Dunwoody if I recalled correctly.

  “Where is this rocket fuel?” I asked.

  Chief Inspector McArthur handed me a large bag of white powder. Enough to power an army. I tasted it. High-quality coke cut with nothing. Probably pharma cocaine manufactured in Germany, worth a bloody fortune. I sealed up the bag and put it in my jacket pocket.

  “Have you weighed the cocaine?” I asked the Chief Inspector.

  “No.”

  Excellent. “I’ll do it at the station and enter it into evidence.”

  “Is it cocaine?”

  “Oh yes. Very high-quality gear too. And there’s a lot of it. We could get him on intent to deal if we wanted. Not that we’ll need to. Possession alone of this much is at least six months.”

  Chief Inspector McArthur shook his head. “I’m not sure you’re seeing the big picture, here, Duffy . . . Do you recognize who this is?”

  “No.”

  “He’s an actor. Famous. American.”

  I looked at the half-naked guy. He seemed vaguely familiar. Strong jawed, bright eyed. I might have seen him in something. Now his tears took on another dimension. Fake. The Chief Inspector gave me the do-you-catch-my-drift nod. Aye, I do. Celebrity was the coin of the realm even in far-flung places like Northern Ireland. We wouldn’t be prosecuting this character. We won’t be bringing the wrath of the higher-ups and the long beaks of the media into our little parish. But on the other hand, Mrs. Dunwoody, or her employer, was clearly protected, and she wanted justice . . .

  “Actor? Were you in The Swarm?” Mrs. Dunwoody asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Are you sure? You look awful familiar.”

  “I wasn’t in The Swarm!”

  “What is your name?” I asked the actor.

  “David Dwyer,” he said. And yeah, I recognized it. He’d been in the tabs for assaulting a photographer and beating up an ex-wife, but in Tinsel Town that counted for nothing next to his million-dollar acting chops.

  “What are you doing in Ireland, Mr. Dwyer?”

  “I was researching a movie,” he said, slurring his words slightly. But I could see that he wasn’t that drunk. I wondered for a moment whether he ever stopped performing. When he was alone in his room, perhaps, with no audience but himself.

  “Well, Mr. Dwyer, I suppose you realize that you’re going to be charged with possession of cocaine and with common assault.”

  “I never saw those drugs in my life!”

  “Now, now, Mr. Dwyer, we know that’s not true, don’t we?” I told him, the policeman’s we throwing me fully into my character.

  “And what about that bitch? She attacked me first!” he squealed, looking at me and then the Chief Inspector in a relentless shot/counter-shot scheme.

  “She attacked you and someone planted that cocaine, is that your tragic tale, sir? It’s a good job my sergeant isn’t here; he’s a weeper. That one would have him bawling his eyes out.”

  “It’s true!” he insisted.

  “The young lady was acting in self-defense, sir, and take it from me, any Irish jury you care to find is going to see it that way.”

  The bald man in the bathrobe got to his feet and addressed the Chief Inspector. “I’m done here, OK? No internals, the bleeding’s stopped and he’ll need a couple of stitches. Be right as rain in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Doctor . . .?” McArthur asked.

  “I’d rather my name didn’t come into this, if you don’t mind.”

  “You probably should get back to your friend, Doctor. They charge by the hour,” I said.

  “No! This one’s on the house; be sure and tell Samantha,” the madam insisted.

  The doctor smiled meekly and exited the scene . . .

  “I don’t know what kind of an operation you guys are running here, but you do not want to piss me off, believe me. I could buy and sell you people ten times over!” Dwyer snarled, getting to his feet. He was quite short but there was a tremendous physicality to him. I didn’t know whether he’d ever done stage work, but if he had he must have commanded the room. He poked a finger into my jacket. “When Ireland is finally free you fuckers will be first up against the wall. You know that, don’t you?”

  I took the finger and bent it backward. He winced and his knees buckled. I forced him back down onto the ground more aggressively than I needed to just to make transparent the true power dynamic in the room.

  The Chief Inspector looked at me with alarm. I shook my head so that he didn’t open that gob of his. “You’re quite the dangerous hombre, Mr. Dwyer, but me and the Chief Inspector are your only friends here. We’re the only obstacles between you and several years in a Northern Irish jail,” I explained before letting his finger go. He gasped and fell into the fetal position.

  The man in the sweatshirt helped Dwyer to a more comfortable sitting posture and then stood and smiled apologetically.

  “I’m Thomas, Mr. Dwyer’s assistant, and I can assure you we didn’t mean to cause any offense. Please tell us what we should do to facilitate this inquiry and help resolve this situation as quickly and as amicably as possible,” he said.

  I looked at the Chief Inspector, who shrugged. The ball was in my court.

  I lit a Marlboro.

  “The young lady has received quite a shock and will no doubt want to take a vacation to get over her distress. I would say that a personal check to her for, say, two thousand—”

  “Five thousand!” she interrupted.

  “Five thousand pounds will cover her expenses. And the lady of the house will have to replace the damaged—”

  “Antique,” she said.

  “Antique lamp and I expect that two thousand pounds would cover the cost of that?”

  Mrs. Dunwoody nodded. Two grand would be quite sufficient.

  “We will expect you to leave the jurisdiction immediately and we must stress that it is in your best interests that you do not return.”

  Thomas was smiling deferentially, pleased that his boss had got off so lightly. “Thank you very much, Officers, Mr. Dwyer is very appreciative of all your trouble,” he said.

  “I want him to thank us for our trouble. And I want him to apologize to the young lady for scaring her.”

  “Like hell I will!” Dwyer muttered.

  I pulled the little shit to his feet by the scruff of the neck.

  “You’ll do it, sunshine! The last wee bastard that gave me your attitude pisses blood through a catheter to this very day. Do you get me?”

  “I get you. I get you. Relax, buddy. I get you.”

  Dwyer apologized.

  Thomas wrote checks.

  The lady of the house and the girl thanked me.

  The Chief Inspector walked me back to the lobby and wondered whether perhaps I went a bit overboard with the celeb. I ignored him. He asked me if the thing with the catheter was true. I said it wasn’t. He seemed relieved so I didn’t tell him that in fact the last guy who gave me attitude like that I ended up shooting and leaving for dead in a village north of Brighton, just before I got blown up with half the Tory Cabinet in the bombing of the Grand Hotel . . .

  “Any time you’re feeling lonely and you want a friend, you know where to come. It’ll be on the house. We’ve got girls to suit every taste,” Mrs. Dunwoody said.

  “That’s OK, I—”

  “Or maybe in your case, Inspector, you’d prefer boys, young men I mean, attractive young men.”

  I looked her in the eye. How did she know about that weird, out-of-character, one-time experience all those years ago? How did madams always know your innermost secrets?

  “Uh, no thanks,” I said.

  She put her arm in mine and walked me outside.

  “A
ll sorts in here,” she mused.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Had one gentleman last week wanted Veronica to throw darts at his bare arse.”

  “Really?”

  “But I wouldn’t let her. She’s left handed. They’d go all over the place, wouldn’t they? Into me nice pictures.”

  I opened the BMW’s door and got inside.

  “Have you heard this one, Inspector? A man goes to a taxi driver in North Belfast and he says, ‘Ladas Drive,’ and the taxi driver says, ‘No way! You’ll have to sit in the back like everybody else.’”

  I’d heard it before but I laughed dutifully.

  Mrs. Dunwoody smiled. “Come back if you’re lonely; even if you just want to chat, we’ve got some very good listeners,” she insisted.

  I nodded, closed the door, and drove home along the water into Carrickfergus.

  The big Norman castle spoke of English power as it had been doing very effectively for the last eight hundred years. I angled the Beemer into the castle car park. No prying eyes. A coal boat from Latvia at one pier and the pilot boat tied up on the other. I took out an evidence bag, removed the bag of pharma coke from my pocket and poured out about half of it, sealed it, and put it in the glove compartment.

  I drove the half-mile from the castle to the police station.

  Empty but for Sergeant Dalglish, huddled by the electric fire and reading a book.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “Well it’s not the Ghost of Christmas Future if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Ah, Duffy. The Chief Inspector was looking for you.”

  “He found me.”

  “Wee bit lonely here, Duffy, do you want to stay and chat? I’m working my way through Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians; it’s fascinating stuff. Pull up a chair.”

  “Uh, no thanks, pal. I think I’d rather fucking shoot myself. I’m away. And do please remember that DS McCrabban is duty detective tonight, not me, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “After I type this report up, I don’t expect to be bothered again until tomorrow.”

  “Relax, Duffy, no one’ll bother you. Go on home and get your beauty sleep; looks like you need it.”

  I typed up a quick incident report for the Chief Inspector to sign. Under “Officer Action” I wrote that Mr. Dwyer had been let off with a caution. I went to the evidence room, weighed the coke, marked 3.1 ounces on the bag, and put it in the night locker.