Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly (Detective Sean Duffy #6)(9)

“What does this all mean, Sean?” Dad asked.

“I’ve got to get back. It’s all hands on deck. We’ll have to do Saint Patrick’s Purgatory another time.”

I could see the look of relief flit across Dad’s face. “Oh dear. Dear oh dear. I’m disappointed, son. I really wanted to go,” he lied like a trooper.

“I know, Dad. I wanted to do it, too. We’ll just have to go in the summer when the weather’s better. Or next year.”

“Yes! When the weather’s better.”

“A murder, Sean? You haven’t had one of those for a while,” Mum said.

“Nope. This is the first this year. Some drug dealer shot in the back with an arrow.”

“Like Saint Sebastian,” Mum said sadly.

“Saint Sebastian was shot in the front, love. Several times. You remember the painting by Botticelli,” Dad prompted.

“So who am I thinking of that was shot in the back?”

“Jimmy Stewart in Broken Arrow? He was shot in the back. He survived but poor Debra Paget, his beautiful Apache wife, she died,” Dad explained.

“Debra Paget,” Mum said thoughtfully.

“She was shot by Will Geer who, of course, went on to play Grandpa Walton,” Dad explained.

This was heading the way of all their conversations so I knew I had to nip it in the bud. I pointed at my watch. “Really sorry about the pilgrimage, Dad. I was so looking forward to it. But someone has to keep the streets safe,” I said but neither of them was really listening to me.

“Is Jimmy Stewart still alive?” Mum asked.

“He is too! And in fine fettle. He was on Gay Byrne just last year,” Dad insisted.

“Debra Paget, I know that name,” Mum said.

“Of course you know Debra Paget!” Dad insisted. “She was Elvis’s girlfriend in Love Me Tender and she married Chiang Kai-shek’s nephew. In real life that is, not in Love Me Tender.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. I remember, now,” Mum said, satisfied.

I pointed at my watch again. “Listen, guys, it’s been great, but duty calls.”

We packed our bags, gave hugs all round and ran outside into the rain.

I looked underneath the BMW for bombs, secured Emma in her car seat and got Beth comfy in the front.

I got in the driver’s side, turned the key in the ignition and we both grinned as the Beemer’s throaty, fuel-injected six cylinder engine roared into life.

Eighty-eight minutes later I was at the crime scene.





2: JUST ANOTHER DEAD DRUG DEALER

A smallish crowd had gathered in front of 15 Mountbatten Terrace in Sunnylands Estate. No doubt the crowd would have been bigger if it hadn’t been raining and this wasn’t a Monday. Monday was one of the two signing-on days at the DHSS and more or less everyone in this particular street was either unemployed or on disability and therefore needed to sign on. This had not always been the case. When the Sunnylands Estate had been built in the early 1960s Carrickfergus had three major textile plants and the shipyards in nearby Belfast employed over twenty thousand people. Now the factories had all been closed, the shipyards were down to a rump of 300 men at Harland and Wolff and every scheme the government had tried to bring employment to Northern Ireland had failed miserably. Emigration or joining the police or civil service were your only legitimate options these days. But illegitimate options were to be had joining the paramilitaries and running protection rackets, or if you were a very brave soul you could try your hand at drug dealing.

Independent drug dealers were few and far between because the Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries liked to make an example of them from time to time to show the civilian population that they, not the police, were the ones who could be trusted to “keep the streets safe for the kids”. Of course, everyone east of Boston, Massachusetts understood that this was hypocrisy. In a series of agreements worked out at the very highest levels in the mid 1980s the paramilitaries from all sides had effectively divided up Belfast between themselves for the dealing of hash, heroin and speed and the two newest (and most lucrative) drugs in Ireland: ecstasy and crack cocaine.

Such independent drug dealers that there were had to be very discreet or pay through the nose if they didn’t want to get killed. Obviously this particular dead drug dealer hadn’t been discreet or hadn’t paid the local paramilitary chieftain his cut. I’d been thinking about the crossbow bolt in the car. Guns were to be had aplenty for the paramilitaries but a private citizen might have difficulty getting one, which made you think that maybe some kid has a heroin overdose and his dad goes out looking for justice. He can’t get a firearm but you get could bows and crossbows at a sports goods shop … Something like that, perhaps?

I parked the BMW and got out of the vehicle. It was a grim little street and it must be truly hell around here in the summer when the only distractions to be had were hassling single women at the bus stop and building bonfires. Frank Sinatra’s upbeat “Come Fly with Me” was playing from an open living-room window, but the crowd of about twenty people was sullen and malevolent. I could almost smell the stench of cheap ciggies, unwashed armpits, solvents, lighter fluid and Special Brew. They were mostly unemployed young men who had been drawn away from wanking over page three by a murder on their doorsteps. I hated to leave my shiny new BMW 535i sport on a street like this, but what choice did I have?