Rain Dogs Read online

  ‘No! I’ve read all the CVs myself. Nothing like that. Unemployment’s so high in Carrick we have our pick of the staff.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  The Chief Inspector looked at me anxiously. ‘Do you think you’ll find the wallet, Duffy? The Chief Super is quite worried about the impression we’re giving off here.’

  I concealed another yawn. ‘The arc of the universe is long, sir, but it bends towards justice.’

  ‘Does it really, Duffy?’

  ‘So they say, sir.’

  ‘They haven’t been to Northern Ireland though, have they?’

  ‘No, sir. Well, I must be off.’

  ‘Goodbye, Duffy.’

  ‘Goodbye, sir.’

  I went outside. The sun was well up over the blue line of Scotland. I walked to the Beemer and looked underneath it for bombs. There weren’t any, so I unlocked the driver’s side door. I was about to get inside when I saw another BMW pull in behind me. New one. Black. Personalised plate: ‘McIlroy1’.

  Out of the Beemer stepped Tony McIlroy, late of the RUC and now of Scotland Yard. Tony was my age but he didn’t look it. He was tanned and fit and his clothes hung well on him even at this ungodly hour. His hair was wavy and black without a trace of grey and his eyes were clear and bright as always. He was wearing a sharp tailored midnight blue suit, fancy brogues and a really expensive-looking shirt. His watch was gold. Life across the water clearly agreed with him. He’d been a Chief Inspector in the RUC Special Branch, but Northern Ireland hadn’t been a big enough stage for his talents and he’d moved over the water to join the Old Bill. We’d met up and had a drink in London during the Lizzie Fitzpatrick case, just before my rendezvous with destiny and a couple of kilos of Semtex in Brighton … Always ambitious was Tony, but a real character, somebody who left an impression, not like all the other boring-as-shit peelers around here.

  ‘Well if it isn’t Sean Duffy!’ he said, grinning.

  ‘What in the name of God are you doing here?’ I asked, genuinely pleased to see him.

  ‘I could say the same, mate,’ he said, shaking my hand.

  ‘Well this is my manor,’ I said.

  ‘Still?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied defensively.

  ‘Jesus, Sean, I thought you’d be a Chief Super in Belfast by now,’ he said.

  ‘Nope still a humble Detective Inspector. Tip of the spear. I like it,’ I said, trying to sound like I believed it.

  He nodded dubiously. ‘Come on, Sean … You can tell me,’ he said and gave me a little dig on the shoulder.

  I sighed. ‘It’s been a tough few years, mate. Problems with the boys upstairs, you know how it is.’

  He shook his head, took a silver cigarette case out of his jacket and offered me a ciggie.

  ‘Nope. Trying to cut down,’ I said.

  ‘Let me guess. You’re going out with a nurse?’

  ‘Just trying to cut down. Bad for you. Yul Brynner, you know?’

  ‘Sad,’ he agreed lighting up. ‘So you’re still a Detective Inspector. Well, well, well. And you were the best of us. This bloody country. They don’t know talent when they see it. You should be running the CID, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘What about you, mate? Still in the Met? I suppose you are a Chief Super …’

  ‘You didn’t hear?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  Tony shook his head. ‘I resigned. I’m off the force completely. I’m running a private security firm now. Back over here for now. Private security is where the money is. Lot of contracts with American firms, the government, that kind of thing,’ he said.

  ‘Resigned from the Met? Jesus, I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘Six months now.’

  ‘And you’re back living over here? What about Liddy? I thought she hated it over here.’

  ‘Liddy and I went splitsville,’ he said, ruefully.

  ‘Bloody hell. I’m shocked. You always seemed to get on so well,’ I said, and I was surprised, for although Tony was a notorious ladies’ man, Liddy came from money and her father was a well-connected Tory MP who could have advanced Tony’s career in the Met all the way up to Commander, or even higher. Obviously, the sweet, long-suffering Liddy had finally had enough of his shenanigans, or possibly caught him more or less in flagrante. The rest wasn’t difficult to compute: bitter divorce/angry father-in-law/gloomy portents about Tony’s future with the Yard/no possibility of a transfer back to the jilted RUC/ergo the private sector …

  Now it was Tony’s turn to sigh. ‘Liddy? Yeah, sometimes people just grow apart don’t they, mate?’

  ‘Private security, eh? Is there money in that?’ I asked, looking at the new Beemer.

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe, son. That’s why I’m here this morning. Apparently one of my clients has been robbed. This place was supposed to be safe.’

  ‘Mr Laakso? I’ve just been dealing with that.’

  ‘My firm’s in charge of security for the whole delegation. Here, take a look at this,’ he said, handing me a card.

  McIlroy Security Services

  The #1 Northern Irish Private Security Firm

  ‘We Never Sleep.’

  Founder Anthony McIlroy,

  ex Det Chief Inspector Scotland Yard

  Tel. Belfast 336 456

  ‘Nice,’ I said, giving him the card back.

  He shook his head. ‘Keep it, we’re always looking for people, Sean. Someone like you? We’d jump at the chance to have you. What are you earning now?’

  It was a vulgar question and he saw the disgusted look on my face.

  ‘No don’t tell me, I can guess. We could pay you twenty per cent more, plus bonuses.’

  ‘How many people do you have working for you?’ I asked, pocketing the card. Anthony might be a good man to know if the RUC’s bullshit finally forced me to resign. Again.

  ‘We’re new, Sean. Just a start-up. Half a dozen, all told. But we’re going to double in size by the end of spring. Double again by the end of the year. And we’re hoping to open a Derry office in July. Security is the one growth industry in these troubled times. You can’t make an omelette without shoving some eggs in the back of a van and smacking them around, eh?’

  ‘I like the Pinkerton quote on the card.’

  Tony grinned. ‘Bit cheeky, eh?’

  ‘I like the car even more.’

  ‘Oh yeah. She’s a beaut. The 535i. ’87 model. 3.4 litre 6-cylinder engine.’

  ‘What’s your top speed?’

  ‘I’ve had her up to 125.’

  ‘I’ve done a ton and fifteen in mine and I thought I was flying.’

  ‘I took her apart and put her back together. Engineering degree comes in a bit more handy than your … what was the wanky thing you studied, philosophy?’

  ‘Psychology.’

  Tony looked at his watch. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better get upstairs and find this wallet.’

  ‘Already cracked that case, mate. My psychology training. Check in Nicolas Lennätin’s room. Some sort of joke, it seems.’

  ‘Oh really? Great.’

  ‘Hey, let’s go for a drink later, catch up, eh?’

  He sucked his teeth. ‘I can’t this week. Security for the delegation and then I’m flying to London.’

  ‘Another job?’

  ‘Sort of. Signing the papers on the old D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Glad to get it behind me at last. Shit you’ve no idea, Sean. Liddy’s da’s lawyers … But I’ll call you, OK?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ I agreed and we warmly shook hands again.

  He waved and ran inside the hotel.

  Poor bastard. Nice to see Tony after all these years, but I didn’t envy him his life. At least a real cop occasionally got to push around the great and the good, but a private dick had to be polite to every arsehole in the room. Who’d want that? I’d stand him a round, though, Tony was an old friend and those were hard to come by.

  I drove back to Coronation Road and wen
t inside the disturbingly empty house.

  No Beth.

  I went upstairs. Her stuff was gone from the wardrobes and there was a note on the bed. I unfolded it.

  This is my number: Belfast 347 350. Please don’t call. I’m not coming back. If anyone rings up looking for me, please pass on the number and my new address: 13 Cairo Street, Belfast. These last few months have been lovely, Sean, and you’re a nice man and I’m sure you’ll find someone your own age to settle down with.

  All my love, Beth.

  As these things go, it wasn’t a terrible note. A terrible note was ‘Fuck You Sean Duffy’ attached to a half brick that gets thrown through your BMW windscreen.

  The ‘someone your own age’ crack hurt, though. It was a ten-year gap, which was pretty much insurmountable, except if you were those lovebirds Charles and Diana or Van Morrison and the reigning Miss Ireland, Olivia Tracey. But I was no Van Morrison, or a Prince of Wales.

  I avoided pouring whisky into my coffee but I did go out to the shed and have a puff or two. At nine o’clock the phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sir, it’s me.’

  ‘What is it, Lawson?’

  ‘The cleaners found the wallet, sir. Nothing was missing.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘It was under the bed in Mr Laakso’s room.’

  ‘We looked under the bed, didn’t we, Lawson?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘There was no wallet under the bed, Lawson, was there?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘All right. Case closed. Type up the report and give it to the Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Mention your suspicions of young Mr Lennätin in the report?’

  ‘No I don’t think so. That would be a potential charge of wasting police time and we want this to go away, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes, sir. What about your friend, sir?’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘Mr McIlroy, sir.’

  ‘He’s at the station, is he?’

  ‘Yes, sir. What should I tell him, sir?’

  ‘Oh you can tell him everything. He’s a good copper. Or was, anyway. Don’t let him recruit you, Lawson, by the way. You’re young, you’ve got your whole career ahead of you. You’re not washed up like me and him.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And remember this is my day off, Lawson. If anything else happens call Sergeant McCrabban.’

  ‘He told me not to call him. He said it was lambing season.’

  ‘It’s always bloody lambing season with that one. Call him. He’s duty officer.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I mean you can handle it all, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir … Except you know, with the Chief Super hanging around …’

  A long silence down the phone.

  ‘Am I really going to have to come in on my off day?’

  ‘No sir, I … But, well, he makes everyone nervous.’

  ‘All right, all right, let me have a long nap and a shower and I’ll come in after lunch, OK?’

  ‘OK, sir.’

  I hung up. An Extra edition of The Belfast Telegraph flopped through the letterbox. On page 2 there was a picture of me escorting Muhammad Ali on to his bus. I called up the Tele photo editor and ordered an 8x10. I’d frame it and put it up in the kitchen and if anyone ever asked me what I’d done with my life I’d say, ‘Come here and take a look at this, mate, look it’s me and the Champ.’

  And with that happy thought I broke out the Bowmore, smoothest of the Islays, got a blanket and settled down on the sofa in front of the record player as Ella Fitzgerald decanted some of that old-time religion and lulled me over into a well-earned nap.

  3: LIZZIE FITZPATRICK REDUX?

  I woke up around one in the afternoon and called Beth at her new number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hey Beth, I just wanted –’

  ‘Didn’t you read the note? I told you not to call me! Jesus.’

  ‘You forgot your extra-sensitive toothpaste. You know how upset that makes it.’

  I could hear her grinning, but she still hung up.

  I rang again. ‘Beth, listen, I just want to see if you’re OK.’

  ‘Fer fucksake I’m fine. Don’t call again. Please, Sean. You’re making it hard for both of us.’

  Phone slam. OK, I get the message.

  I showered, dressed, skipped lunch and went into the station.

  The Chief Super was still lurking there and everyone was on edge. But he was happy to see me. He shook my hand. ‘Good work, Duffy, your team cracked the case.’

  ‘Apparently so, sir.’

  I took him into my office and poured him a Glenfiddich and soda, which I knew was his tipple of choice.

  ‘That fellow McIlroy was hanging around after you left. Do you know him?’

  ‘I did, sir, when he worked for us.’

  ‘He said he knew you. He said he was a friend of yours.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Although I haven’t seen him in a few years.’

  ‘I remember him too. High-flyer. He left us, went across the water to join the Met, didn’t he?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Didn’t work out though did it? Divorce and a scandal is what I’ve heard. Now he’s back here and set up business for himself, eh? As if we don’t have enough problems without private bloody detectives and private bloody security firms. I don’t approve of that sort, Duffy. I don’t want him poaching my tax-payer-trained officers.’

  ‘No, sir. I already told young Lawson that we –’

  ‘The VIPs will be gone tomorrow and once they are gone, we’ll give Tony McIlroy and the likes of Tony McIlroy short shrift. You hear me, Duffy? Friend or no friend.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘I do say so, Duffy.’

  He finished the Glenfiddich and got to his feet.

  ‘Well, everything seems to be in hand here. I’m having a coffee with that reporter – I’ll tell her we’ve cracked the case and then I’ll head back to the old homestead in Glenoe, Duffy. I expect I’ll run into you at the police club.’

  ‘Yes, sir. At some point, sir.’

  ‘See you, Duffy.’

  ‘I’ll see you soon, sir,’ I said as he left my office, not knowing, of course, that I would never see the poor bastard again.

  It was a dreary day at the station. Nothing was on the board and Lawson and I caught up with the paperwork until it was quitting time.

  Kenny Dalziel wanted to see me, so I called him on the internal line.

  ‘Sergeant Dalziel.’

  ‘How do you keep an idiot in suspense?’ I asked and hung up.

  Childish, I know. The temperature dropped and it began to sleet as I drove back to the sad, cold, empty house on Coronation Road.

  I lit the paraffin heater and put on the telly.

  Maybe this was for the best. Beth with someone of her own age. Me with someone my own age. Try to mind-flip it. An opportunity to grow for both of us. Everybody wins. I remembered an old and typically dark Harland and Wolff joke: ‘Life is all about perspective. The sinking of the Titanic was a frigging miracle to the lobsters in the ship’s kitchens.’

  The mind flip didn’t work and I found myself lurking around the telephone waiting for the cute reporter, Lily, to call; but, unsurprisingly, she didn’t.

  Beans on toast. The inane void that was the BBC One TV schedule. A Question of Sport. Beans on toast and A Question of Sport – hardly the examined life.

  A Valium and a vodka gimlet. Paraffin fumes. Death-sleep and then:

  Briiiinnngggg.

  Another early morning call. Burrow down the stairs, wrapped in my duvet. Snow falling outside again today.

  I picked up the phone, dropped it, picked it up again. ‘Yes?’ I said trying to convey in that one syllable as much world-weariness as I possibly could.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I don’t believe it! It can’t possibly be you again, Lawson. Not two days in a bloody row.’
/>   ‘Sir, there’s been a, well, I suppose it’s a suicide, or an accident, or possibly a murder, hard to say at this stage … Suicide, if you had to pin me down.’

  ‘I’m duty detective today am I? I know I definitely was not duty detective yesterday.’

  ‘No sir, I’m very sorry. It is you. I wouldn’t have called you, otherwise.’

  ‘You know it’s snowing outside?’

  ‘I see that, sir.’

  ‘Whereabouts is the crime scene?’

  ‘Carrickfergus Castle, sir.’

  ‘Well, I won’t have any trouble finding it. Forensics on their way?’

  ‘Already here, sir.’

  ‘Are they indeed? What time is it, Lawson?’

  ‘I waited until seven before I called you, sir.’

  ‘Thank you for your compassion. Who found the body?’

  ‘The caretaker found the body just after six and called us.’

  ‘What caretaker?’

  ‘The castle caretaker.’

  ‘Didn’t know there was a castle caretaker.’

  ‘There is. He has a cottage inside the castle. Mr Underhill. He lives there.’

  ‘And what was he doing up at six in the morning?’

  ‘He does a full inspection of the castle first thing before opening the doors at seven.’

  ‘The body was found inside the castle?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Wait a second, I’m carrying you into the kitchen.’

  I put two slices of bread in the toaster and two scoops of Nescafé in my Liverpool FC mug. I faced down the sinister-looking kettle and attacked its various buttons.

  ‘The gender of the victim?’

  ‘A woman, sir.’

  ‘Do you have a cause of death, or do the forensic boys need more time?’

  ‘I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but the cause of death seems pretty obvious, sir.’

  The toaster popped and I lifted out a slice of toast.

  ‘Don’t keep me in suspense, Lawson.’

  ‘Blunt force trauma. It looks like she jumped off the roof of the castle keep into the courtyard below.’

  ‘How big a drop is that?’

  ‘Ooh, uhm, a hundred feet?’

  ‘That’ll kill you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The body was found exactly where?’

  ‘In the central courtyard just in front of the keep itself. Do you know where that is, sir?’