The Sister(60)

When Kennedy met Jack Doherty at reception, he cut an imposing figure. At least two metres tall and very heavily built; his head was larger in proportion to his size than might have been expected. Kennedy couldn’t help wondering if the smaller man had felled him with a headshot. The other man’s hand engulfed the DCI’s as they shook. He led him down to the interview room, where Tanner joined them.

Doherty was clearly not overly concerned with cosmetic appearances; he wore a large black patch over his missing eye. It reminded him of the cup from one of Marilyn’s bra’s.

When all three had sat down, the big man insisted on giving them some background to himself, the sort of man he was, how he’d been looking for a bit of ‘sport' as he called it that night. He described his opponent and the fight at length, and how he remembered the girl he’d since learned was Kathy in the pub. He never showed any emotion; his voice was low and flat, difficult to understand at times and there was a kind of sadness in his broad potato face. From what he’d said about himself at first, it was clear the experience had changed him, perhaps he was thinking about the girl, perhaps mourning the loss of his eye, or a combination of both.

‘What makes you think you’ll be able to give sufficient details to the technician after so many years, Jack?’

‘Do you not think I'd remember the man that did this to me?’ he said, fixing Kennedy with a look, and then he reached under the eye-patch and lifted it, exposing the stitched shut and sunken eyelid. ‘And there’s something else, let me tell you. When you fight a man, you don’t watch his hands, you watch his face.’

Kennedy acknowledged what he said. It was a perfect example of 'Flashbulb' memory, where the effects of a traumatic event burned themselves into the brain in fine, recollectable detail.

Later, when he saw the results of Doherty’s work with the E-Fit operator, he was certain that the man did indeed possess such powers of recall.

It triggered instant recognition for Kennedy. It was 'Michael,' no doubt about that in his mind. With Doherty’s positive ID of Kathy’s photograph: ‘I’ll never forget her face; it was all I could do to stop myself crashing into her.’ It meant they were in the same pub. It was all too much to be just coincidence. The interview had thrown up something else as well; Doherty had sketched the unusual belt buckle too. It was similar to the sketch he’d produced himself years back.

‘Who are you?’ he said to the E-Fit. Then he called Tanner in and briefed him.





‘I agree with you, sir, it’s got to be him. I’m not sure how we find him with what we have though. He doesn’t match any of the ‘knowns’ on the database.’

‘Have you followed up the bare-knuckle lead from Doherty?’

‘I don’t think we’ll get anywhere with that one, the travelling community doesn’t talk to the police.’

‘So you haven’t tried then?’ His eyes bored into his assistant.

‘I needed to wait until we interviewed the Irishman, sir.’

Kennedy gave him a withering look.

‘I’ll get right onto it, sir, but it’s a bit difficult to know where to begin.’ You can be so impatient and unreasonable at times, sir, he thought.





Where to start? Tanner sat in his own office thinking it all through. Even if this character, was still fighting in his mid-forties, who'd remember him twenty-three years later? Doherty gave the impression he was an accomplished fighter. What if he was that good, a legend and hero among his own people? He thought that he could pose as a writer who was doing a piece on the best bare-knuckle fighters of the last twenty-five years. If he could meet with community leaders, he could ask for any old photographs they had to support his story. He smiled to himself. Now that’s not a bad idea, Tanner.

He ran it past Kennedy.

‘It’s a good idea, but it’s a shot in the dark. I can’t justify sending you in undercover based on a hunch.’

‘I understand that, sir, but I have a friend who’s a reporter – well used to this sort of thing – and in exchange for the exclusive when it comes out—’

‘I can’t sanction that, either, and you know it. I don’t want the press getting hold of anything they don’t already know.’

I can’t sanction that, either. He frowned. Kennedy had said it with an emphasis on sanction. The expression on his face lent him to believe he wasn’t expressly forbidding it, so he decided to get his contact to dig at it from another angle, but without revealing the real reason. Tanner made a call later that night.

The result was disappointing; the journalist was too busy to help, but if it could wait... It had waited twenty-three years; a few more weeks were hardly likely to make a difference.





Chapter 47



The stranger found a newspaper picture of Kennedy on the internet. Although the photograph was grainy and at least ten years old, he had no trouble recognising him when he came out of the station.

He pretended to be working on a motorbike in a bay in the car park just over the road. At almost 6:00 p.m. the DCI drove out in his car. He sparked up the bike and tailed him home.

He watched him at varying intervals for days. Sometimes, he left with a plain-clothes man about the same age as he looked in the internet photograph. At this stage, the other man was of no interest to him.