Gun Street Girl (33 page)

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.”

I called Kate.

“Sean, how are you?”

“I've been better.”

“What are you doing?”

“Taking the day off. You want to get dinner or something?”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, dinner. People get dinner, don't they?”

“Oh, Sean, it's a lovely idea but we're just so busy here at the moment. Another time perhaps, OK?”

“OK.”

Garden shed. Place of masculine retreat. Reliquary.

Cannabis resin. Virginia tobacco. Thick multi-tracked memories of girls and cars and music. Nice.

Back inside. A piece of toast, a cup of coffee. Out to the Beemer. I found myself driving on the top road. I found myself parking outside the Eagle's Nest Inn on Knockagh Mountain.

Rain. Moody cross-fades between mountain and cop. The detective looking rueful.

I walked to reception.

Mrs. Dunwoody remembered me.

“I knew you'd be back, Inspector Duffy,” she said in low tones. “You don't look yourself. Were you in an accident?”

“Yes. Car accident.”

“Dear oh dear. Well, what can we get for you today?”

“Uhm, not really sure why I'm here, I . . .”

“A nice girl? A nice young man?”

“Girl. Just a girl. Please. That good listener you were talking about.”

“A good listener? Oh yes, I know the very person. Niamh. Spelled the Irish way. Not just a good listener but very, very discreet.”

“Niamh? Does she speak Irish?”

Mrs. Dunwoody smiled. “You know what? I think she does.”

She led me to a room on the ground floor. I lay on the big bed and closed my eyes. A hand on my chest. A plump, curly-haired redhead wearing a pink chemise. She was about twenty-five, pale, pretty with blue eyes. She kissed me on the lips and stroked my forehead.

“You look exhausted,” she said in Irish.

“I feel exhausted,” I answered in the same language.

“What do you do for a living?”

“Mrs. Dunwoody didn't tell you?”

“No.”

“I'm a policeman.”

“Ah, that explains it,” she said sadly. She stroked my hair and I talked. I told her that I was lonely. I told her about Sara and I told her about Kate. I told her that I didn't know what the hell I was doing with my life anymore. I told her that when I joined the police I thought I could help keep back the anarchy, but that every day the chaos was worse.

“What does your girlfriend say when you tell her all this?”

“Sara wanted to know about the real Sean Duffy, but there is no real Sean Duffy. There was once, but there's not now. There's just a tired, broken, compromised wreck of a man.”

Tell this to your girlfriend or your wife and at best she'll roll her eyes or nod impatiently or answer you with a platitude. Tell it to a professional and she'll gather you into her bosom and say “there, there.”

“There, there,” she said.

An hour later. Mrs. Dunwoody walking me to the car. I reached for my wallet. Mrs. Dunwoody shook her head.

“I've got money. I can pay,” I said.

Mrs. Dunwoody looked hurt. “Your money's no good here, Inspector. Feel free to come back any time.”

The BMW back to Coronation Road.

Late afternoon now. Blue sky and low winter sun burning off all the snow.

Garden shed.

Cocaine.

A neat little line of it on the workbench that I rolled inside a Rizla.

Back to the house. Two fingers of Glendfiddich to make the Rizla go down. This was called a snow bomb. The rolling paper dissolved in your stomach and the cocaine with it. The euphoria wasn't as intense as the cocaine crossed the blood/brain barrier, but it lasted much longer.

Upstairs office.

Windows open.

The Velvets on the tape deck. Bowie in reserve.

Mrs. Campbell in her back garden hanging up the washing. Yellow dress. No bra.

“Hello, Mrs. C. Did Tricksie get home safe yesterday?”

“Oh! Mr. Duffy, I didn't see you up there! I was just putting the washing out. What did you say?”

“Did Tricksie get home all right yesterday?”

“Mr. Duffy, what happened to your face?”

“Is it that noticeable?”

“Were you in a fight?”

“No. Nothing like that. Just an accident. Minor car accident. I'm fine. Did Tricksie get home OK?”

“Oh yes, your friends brought her back just fine.”

“That's good. Did the old American guy leave her off?”

“Yes. What an old charmer, eh, Mr. Duffy? Is he a friend of your father's or something?”

“Or something,” I muttered.

“Well, I'd better get back to this. These clothes won't hang themselves.”

“No.”

A wave. A flash of side boob.

Notepad. Pencil. Notes. Coke hitting. What to do? What to do? What to do? Cartoon of Connolly with big jug ears. Arrows radiating from Connolly to Michael Kelly to Sylvie McNichol to a crate of stolen missiles to Zurich.

Arrow radiating to Nigel Vardon.

Him. Has to be. He'll know. Or he'll know someone that knows.

Who does Nigel fear? Not us, not the police. Who does Nigel fear? The Loyalists. The Americans. Tommy Moony and his boys.

What does Nigel need? Nigel needs a golden parachute. Nigel needs exit money.

Does Nigel know anything? Maybe. Maybe not.

Shed. Emergency escape fund in the biscuit tin. Six bundles of fifty-pound notes. Half of it? Half of it. It was only money. What about the cocaine too? Yeah, that too.

Inside the house. Dress in character. Black jeans. DM boots. My old Dr. Ernesto Guevara T-shirt. Leather jacket. Scarf.

Out the front gate.

Quick check under the Beemer for mercury tilt bombs.

Radio 1. The Pet Shop Boys. Jesus, I'd rather have silence.

Down Victoria Road and along the A2 toward Whitehead.

Turn up the Tongue Loanen.

The back country.

Sheep. Cows. Nigel Vardon's burnt-out ruin of a house.

The Special Branch goon snoozing in the driver's seat of a Ford Sierra.

Drove past him and around the bend in the road. Parked the Beemer down an old cattle trail. Hopped the stone wall. Approached Vardon's house across the sheep field. From the back, where the snoozing Special Branch goon wouldn't be able to see me.

Crunch crunch crunch on the gravel.

Burned house. Caravan. Rap on the window.

Vardon lifted the door curtain and looked at me. He was skinny, unshaven with dark exhausted eyes.

“What do you want?”

I showed him the money. Three bundles of fifty-pound notes. I showed him the cocaine.

“What's that?”

“Pharma coke. Purest shit you've ever seen.”

“What are you going to do, plant that on me?”

“This stuff? Are you joking? This is the business, brother. This is for using, not for planting. I should know. I've got a line of it dissolving in my stomach as we speak.”

He opened the door, looked me in the eyes, saw that they were coke happy.

“Why don't you come in, Officer.”

I went in.

Couple of cats. An old WW2 revolver sitting on a fold-out writing desk.

“License for that?”

“Was me granda's. You gonna bust me for it?”

“Nope.”

“Show me this coke.”

I opened the bag and let him try it. He dabbed a little coke on to his finger and ran it around his gums. His eyes widened.

I gave him the bag of cocaine and the roll of money. “Yours to keep.”

“In exchange for what?” he snarled.

“Set us up a couple of lines,” I said.

He expertly cut two lines of cocaine on his Formica table. I rolled up a fiver and sniffed a line. The shit all right. This stuff could take you into fucking orbit.

I gave him the fiver and he sniffed his line.

“Jesus Christ!” he said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I mean, Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Another?”

“You have one, Nigel, I'm OK.”

He snorted another long rail of that beautiful German pharma cocaine. He grinned at me.

I leaned back in the little plastic chair and took one of the cats off my lap.

“As I see it, Nigel, it's all about the Americans,” I said.

“What about the Americans?”

“Connolly.”

“What about him?”

“For reasons I haven't figured out yet Connolly has been trying to get his hands on sophisticated missile systems that can be sold to rogue nations such as South Africa or Iran or Libya. Connolly needs to get the missile systems on the black market because the US Congress has an arms embargo against those nations.”

“Interesting idea.”

“It is, isn't it? Now I know what you're thinking, Nigel. What good are a couple of missiles to countries like South Africa or Iran that are fighting big-time wars? But here's the clever part: they only need half a dozen missile launchers. You know why? Because their scientists and technicians will be able to reverse-engineer the missiles and make more.”

“That
is
a good idea,” Nigel agreed.

“But where can Mr. Connolly get these missiles from, eh? He can't steal them from an American factory. FBI will be all over him. So he puts the word out, tentatively, quietly. There's a deal worth millions, maybe tens of millions, if someone can get him advanced missile systems.”

“I like this story, very entertaining,” Nigel said. “Another line?”

“Yeah, why not. Set it up, Nige.”

“Into the tale pops Michael Kelly. Burgeoning player on the international arms market. A few small scores here and there. But Mr. Connolly would represent a huge score. Like I say, millions . . . tens of millions. Mr. Connolly would represent freedom. Away from his da, away from grubby little bookie shops, away from Ireland, up into the big time. And here's the good part. One of Michael's old school friends, Nigel Vardon, works at Short Brothers, where they make, guess what, advanced missile systems.”

Vardon sniffed another line of coke and passed me the rolled-up fiver. I sniffed another line too. Vardon laughed. I laughed.

“Finish your story,” Vardon said.

“Michael needs you, Nigel. But you know that nothing can move in and out of the factory without the say-so of Tommy Moony. Fortunately for all of you Tommy Moony is not the born-again Christian he claims to be. Tommy Moony is a player. Tommy Moony is UFF up to the eyeballs. Tommy Moony is an old-school iceman who has personally killed more walking bipeds than we've had hot dinners. Tommy Moony is one scary motherfucker.”

“Go on.”

“So Michael meets Mr. Connolly in England or Ireland or fucking Switzerland or wherever. Michael tells him about you. Mr. Connolly is interested. Very fucking interested. You talk to the terrifying Tommy Moony. Moony is also very interested. The dollar amount is just too big to fucking ignore. That's why I'm thinking tens of millions here. It's the US government, for crying out loud. They can afford it.”

Nigel said nothing.

“The missiles get stolen. But something goes wrong. Before the missiles get to where they are supposed to go there's an internal audit at Shorts. Just a random security check out of the blue and Short Brothers discover to their horror that half a dozen Javelin missile systems have gone missing. They call in the Special Branch and launch an internal inquiry. You're immediately let go because you were the manager in charge of plant security. They'd love to fire Tommy Moony, too, because everybody knows that he's the one that arranged it. Tommy's the one who opened the gates and shipped the missiles out and is hiding them somewhere in deepest Ulster. But they can't fire Tommy because they're afraid of him. They're afraid of him because he's UFF and a fucking iceman, but also because he could call a strike and bring the whole plant to a halt and send Short Brothers on to Mrs. Thatcher's chopping block.”

Nigel shook his head. “I'm not completely convinced by this tale, you know.”

“Hold on, mate, I haven't finished it yet. So Michael and Moony fall out. Doesn't matter why. Maybe it's about the split, maybe it's about the delivery, maybe Special Branch has got Michael spooked. Maybe Michael doesn't trust Connolly. Maybe Michael has a big mouth. Doesn't matter why. Michael's getting to be a problem. Moony decides to take action. Decisive action. He drives down to Whitehead, kills Michael's parents, drags Michael out of the house. Gets Michael to tell him who he's been talking to, and when they're satisfied with Michael Kelly's answers they chuck him off a cliff.”

“I still think Michael killed himself,” Nigel said.

“No you don't. You know what happened. And you know what happened to Sylvie McNichol when Moony didn't trust her one hundred per cent to keep her mouth shut about Michael Kelly's various dealings over the previous few weeks. Little Sylvie didn't tell us a bloody thing, but that wasn't good enough for Moony, was it? Sylvie had to die. And when Deirdre Ferris thought she saw Moony or one of his boys outside her house, Deirdre had to die too.”

Vardon was pale now, quiet.

“And just in case you got any ideas, one of Moony's boys burned your fucking house down. Just to show you that you could be got even with the Special Branch watching you like a fucking hawk. What do you think of my story now, Nigel?”

“I think it's bollocks, Duffy. You haven't told me why. What's in it for Mr. Connolly? What's in it for the Americans?”

I put my hand on his shoulder. Looked him in the eyes. “I don't know why, Nigel, but you do, don't you? You do and that information alone makes you vulnerable. What are you playing at here in this caravan, Nigel? Hiding here, waiting for the deal to be done. And maybe when Moony gets his payday he'll swing by the caravan and remember to give you your cut. Is that what you're thinking? This ruthless killer who murdered Michael Kelly and Michael Kelly's mum and da. And little Sylvie. And sent a team all the way to Scotland to kill Deirdre Ferris. You think he's going to let you live and give you your money?”