Summoning the Dead (DI Bob Valentine #3)(47)

‘It could have come from anywhere – you said so yourself that you had them.’

‘Ah but, Garry, I haven’t had two wee lads murdered in my back garden. That’s what you call creating an element of doubt. The courts are big on that kind of thing.’

‘Right, that’s it. I want to get a solicitor now. I’m telling you I want a solicitor, do you hear me?’

Valentine cleared his face of all expression and reached out once again for the folder on the table. As he drew it to him he spoke softly. ‘Your response to the pens has been duly noted, Garry. I’d now like to get your impression of another item we found secreted in a manila envelope, beneath the floorboards of the property you arranged to sell to Freddie Gowan two years before Sandy Thompson died.’

Keirns was following the DI’s words as if he was lip-reading. He seemed almost unaware that the photograph of the headless man had been presented to him. When he looked down, towards the table and the photograph, he fell silent. The image didn’t seem to create the confusion it had done for everyone else. There was no head twisting, eye shifting or balancing of the abstruse elements of the picture. Keirns pushed the item away.

‘Well?’ said Valentine.

There was no reply.

‘Do you know the man in this picture, Garry?’

Keirns looked towards the wall. ‘Put it away.’

‘A yes or a no would do, Garry.’

The suspect continued to stare at the wall but refused to speak any more. There was a brief, repeated demand for a solicitor, which the officers rebuffed. When it became clear Keirns had given his final words, the DI and DS collected their files and left the suspect alone.

Outside the interview room Valentine halted to address McAlister in the corridor.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘He’s shitting it, boss.’

‘He knows we’re on to him.’

‘Did you see the way he looked at that picture?’

‘Yes, like he’d seen it before. Nobody else could make hide nor hair of it.’

McAlister’s eyes remained on the pacing DI. ‘So what now? We can’t charge him unless he coughs.’

‘No, we don’t have nearly enough to charge him. We need to keep the pressure on though. He knows we’re close to finding answers, I could sense it on him. Jesus Christ, I can feel it myself.’

‘Do we get him a solicitor, sir?’

‘No, we let him go.’

‘But we’ve got thirty-two hours. Sylvia got the extension.’

‘Let him go now. I’m more interested to see what he does under the influence of panic.’

McAlister’s face tightened, the features sharpening as he turned back to the interview room. ‘Are you sure about this, boss?’

‘Yes, Ally. Let Keirns walk. But not before you have two officers at his backside 24-7.’





30

February 1984

It’s getting harder to remember what Mammy’s face looked like. Sometimes, when I close my eyes and really concentrate, I think I can see her smiling, but I’m not sure. I used to say, to myself only, that she was always smiling, that was how I remembered her, but I don’t know so much now. It seems a long time ago, like in the fairy stories they tell you. Maybe that’s it, maybe I read about her somewhere or someone told me and that’s what happened. She was a princess who died, and I was just wishing she’d come back to life. She never did though. I’ll never believe those stories again – all those happy endings are just stuff and nonsense.

The car bumps over the road and the new boys laugh and joke about it. They have pop, that’s what the man with pig eyes calls it. He’s English – I know the accent because the boys say he’s posh.

‘Come on, Donal, drink some pop!’ says one of the boys. I take a sip and he says get it down you, and the man with the pig eyes agrees, so I slug a good whack of it.

‘Aren’t you mad excited?’ says the boy.

‘I suppose,’ I say, and that just makes him grin wider.

There’s four of us – five if you include Terry, who sits in the front beside the man with the pig eyes. Terry’s his favourite, we can all tell. You can always tell when the men have a favourite because there’s chocolate galore and lucky bags with the cola bottles inside that every boy likes. Sometimes – well, once – there were football stickers, but they made us hand them all back and even went through my pockets for them. I don’t know why they’d have to do that. There’s lots of things like that, though they say it’s all part of the excitement.

‘I love a party,’ says Terry.

The man driving the car turns to him and smiles and says will we have a sing-song. I don’t know the words – something about a young boy of sixteen summers. I don’t like the singing much.

When we get there it’s dark. The night sky is not quite black yet, and there’s some blue still at the edges where there’s also a white glow. The man with the pig eyes says we’ll go in the back way and isn’t that exciting too, but I don’t answer him.

I remember the last place like this. It was a big hotel in the middle of nowhere. There were lots of boys I didn’t know, all running around bare chested and with the bright red cheeks on them. All the grown-ups were men too, and they would let you try a fag on your own or give you beer if you asked. I didn’t like them; they smiled too much.