Gun Street Girl (6 page)

Constable Lawson was writing furiously in his notebook and, copying his example, Fletcher was doing the same thing, but with less obvious enthusiasm.

“There were no signs of a forced entry at the Kelly home and Michael Kelly has been missing from the house since the incident. We have, of course, alerted traffic, customs, border patrol, and the army,” Crabbie continued.

He passed around photocopies of what turned out to be Michael Kelly's RUC file. “Teenage convictions for joyriding and embezzlement,” Crabbie said.

The joyriding wasn't terribly interesting, but the embezzlement was a sophisticated little scheme to steal money from his school ski trip fund, only rumbled because Michael Kelly's co-conspirator had blabbed. Charges dropped, of course, after Mr. Kelly had contributed money for the school's new gym . . . 

Constable Lawson, adorably, put his hand up in the air.

“Yes?” Crabbie asked him.

“How many bullets did the killer or killers fire?”

“According to a preliminary forensic report three nine-millimeter rounds. All now recovered and entered into evidence. We can't, of course, tell if it was Mr. Kelly's gun because we haven't yet recovered the weapon. On an initial examination we think that the father was shot first, followed seconds later by the mother.”

“Why do you think that?” Lawson asked.

Crabbie passed over the crime scene photographs. “Take a look, he's still watching the TV. Hasn't moved a muscle. She has partially turned to look at the shooter.”

Now Constable Fletcher put her hand in the air.

“Yes?” Crabbie asked.

“So, it looks like Michael Kelly did it?” she asked uncertainly.

“We can't make that assumption at this stage.”

“But if there's no forced entry, it's his father's gun, and he's gone missing . . .” Constable Fletcher continued.

“Yes, Michael Kelly would seem to be the obvious suspect. We'll need to find out if he has a girlfriend or other close friends that he may be hiding with. Guest houses and hotels have also been alerted.”

“How long a head start would he have
if
he did the killing?” Lawson asked.

“Patho estimates time of death at just before midnight, so he could have five hours on us before the alerts went out.”

“Plenty of time to get a ferry over to Scotland,” I said.

“Why not just go to the airport?” Fletcher asked.

“For a flight you need ID, to cross the border into the Irish Republic you need ID,” Crabbie explained. “But to get the ferry to Scotland you just pay your money and hop on.”

Fletcher still didn't quite grasp it. “But he still could have flown somewhere. No one knew to stop him until this morning.”

“They keep records on computer. We've told them his name. If he'd crossed the border or taken a flight we would know about it by now,” Lawson explained.

“I get it. So he either took the ferry or he's still in Northern Ireland,” she said.

“Exactly. There were four ferries he could have taken last night before the alarm went out. A one a.m. to Stranraer, a two-thirty a.m. to Cairnryan, a four a.m. to Stranraer, and a five-thirty a.m. to Cairnryan.”

“So he could be anywhere in the middle of Scotland by now,” Fletcher said.

“He could be anywhere in the middle of Britain,” Crabbie said. “But the alert's gone out for him and his car. So maybe we'll get lucky.”

“Lawson, you look troubled,” I said.

“I don't know . . . it, er, doesn't feel quite right,” Lawson said.

“What doesn't feel right?” I asked.

Lawson's cheeks reddened. “Well, if you're going to shoot your dad after months of provocation you're going to have it out with him first, aren't you? You're going to yell at the bastard and tell him what you think of him and then shoot him.”

“So?” I said.

“So the mother isn't just going to be sitting in the chair watching TV during all this, is she? She's going to be between the two of them, or, you know, at least out of her chair.”

“Hmmm. Inspector Duffy, perhaps you should share with our new officers the concerns you had this morning, too,” Crabbie said.

I lit another ciggie and offered the pack around. Neither of the newbies wanted one. Non-smoking was the fashion. It wouldn't last too long after their first gun battle or riot duty.

“Concerns? Well, minor concerns. I'd say the chances are that the boy did it.”

“Didn't you have an issue with the wounds on the victims?” Crabbie insisted.

I took a puff of my Marlboro Red and cleared my throat. “Well, in a similar vein to Constable Lawson, my observation of the scene was that it didn't look much like a ‘rage killing' to me. Nice clean shots to the temple and the heart. An angry man doesn't shoot that accurately. Professional killers do, but college dropout layabout sons who crack up because of constant nagging from the old man don't.”

Lawson nodded vigorously. “Don't rage killers tend to ‘overkill' too? Multiple stab wounds, multiple gunshots. He'd probably fire the whole clip at the old man, wouldn't he?” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“And maybe he'd spare the mother. I mean, it's the father who's giving him grief and it's the mum who's sticking up for him, right?” Fletcher said.

Crabbie skimmed the statement from Mrs. McCawly and slid it over the desk toward me. “It
was
the dad who was hassling him,” he said.

“Once he's shot the father, it's in for a penny, in for a pound, isn't it?” I said.

“What's your alternative theory, Constable Lawson?” McCrabban asked.

“If Mr. Kelly had a firearm for personal protection he must have had enemies?” Lawson suggested.

“That's one of the things we are certainly going to find out,” Crabbie insisted.

“Any forensic info from the shell casings?” I asked.

“There were no shell casings,” Crabbie said. “He took them with him.”

“Oh, I assumed when I got there that they'd already been tagged and bagged by the forensic officers. He took them with him?”

Crabbie nodded.

“So either a professional doing his job or a panicky son trying to cover his tracks,” I said.

Silence descended.

I got to my feet.

“Well, folks, I can see you have this well in hand. I should go.”

“Any parting words of wisdom, Inspector Duffy?” Crabbie asked.

“This professional killing angle is certainly interesting, but if I were you, Sergeant McCrabban, I would stress to our new arrivals that in your bog-standard criminal case in the greater Belfast area they'll find that Occam's razor is especially sharp; the simplest and most obvious explanation is almost always the correct one.”

“Aye, but until we find the son and have a wee chat with him we'll keep our options open,” McCrabban added.

I walked to the incident room door and gave Crabbie a little nod to let him know again that this really was his responsibility and I was not going to grab it from him. At least not for the moment. My own caseload wasn't half so exciting, but he had wanted this and if he solved it and somehow wangled a promotion out of it, good luck to him. Crabbie's undertakerish nod back was an equivalent of a high five from him.

I went to the personnel department and looked up the files on our two new detectives just to see if I'd missed anything. I hadn't, except for one thing; Lawson was Jewish rather than Protestant, which was a bit of a surprise. There were only a couple of hundred Jews left in Belfast. The community had been much larger before the Troubles, but now even Israel during the Intifada was a better bet than Northern Ireland.

I stuck the files back in the cabinet.

I read the
Sun
in the bog.

Coffee machine, office, feet on desk. Looking out the window, pretending to be interested in a series of unsolved muggings at Carrick train station.

Eventually the clock got its sorry arse round to five o'clock.

“Sean?”

The office door was open, Chief Inspector McArthur was standing there all uniformed up and rosy cheeked. He was wearing a Tyrol hat with a feather in it, and in case you didn't get the message, the hat had been placed at a jaunty thirty-degree angle on his head. He'd worn this hat before and you could see that he wanted desperately to be asked about it, which is why all the senior officers had made a silent pact never to bring it up.

“Yes, sir?”

“You want a quick one?”

“Well, I was on my way out.”

“Have a seat. I'm buying.”

We retreated to his office, which he had painted a sort of citrusy yellow. He'd moved in several palms and potted plants, and there were arty black and white photographs of boats on beaches and kids at country fares and so forth.

“Your photos?” I asked, pointing at the pictures.

“I dabble,” he said.

It was my place to be encouraging. “They're really good,” I said, and in truth they were good. Good enough to make into a calendar for American tourists, not like Diane Arbus good or anything.

He gave me a glass of whiskey. I sat.

“What are you working on at the moment, Sean?”

“Me, nothing much. Crabbie's got himself a double murder. I'll be assisting him on that one, no doubt, in due course.”

“I want to thank you for last night; you were very helpful under the circumstances.”

“Last night? Oh, that? Yeah.”

McArthur took a gulp of his whiskey and I did the same. Twelve-year-old Islay. Good stuff if you liked peat, smoke, earth, rain, despair, and the Atlantic Ocean, and who doesn't like that?

McArthur smiled. “You've had quite a wee career, haven't you, Sean?”

“Have I?”

“Oh yes. You certainly have.”

His eyes were twinkling. There was something he wasn't telling me. He looked at me significantly. “What are you not telling me, er, sir?”

“I'm just off the phone talking about you,” he said.

“You were talking to someone on the phone about me?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“Refill?”

“Sure.”

He poured us each another healthy measure.

“What were you saying about me?” I persisted.

He laughed. “Oh, don't worry, it was all good stuff. I told them I've hardly had a chance to know you, but even in my limited experience I saw that you were a first-class officer.”

“Am I getting a promotion or something?”

“Better than that, I think.”

“Better than a promotion?”

“I'm afraid I can't tell you any more, Sean. My lips are sealed.”

“You can't do that to me, sir,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nope, sorry, I can't breathe a word.”

“Come on, sir,” I protested.

“
Vulpes
,
vulpes
, Duffy,” he said with a wink.

“The common fox?”

“Actually, the not so common fox,” he insisted.

I'd been neutral on McArthur before, but last night's shenanigans and now this confirmed in my mind that I actively disliked the wee shite. I knew I wasn't going to get any more out of him so I pushed the chair back, stood, and gave him a nod.

“I have to get on, sir,” I said.

“OK. Go if you must.”

I had a slash and went to see Crabbie, who was typing up his case notes in the incident room. He was smoking his pipe and the blue tobacco smoke and a mug of bergamot tea on his desk gave the room a very pleasant odor.

He looked up at me. “Sean?”

“Crabbie, has anyone been asking about me?” I wondered.

“About you?”

“Aye.”

“Asking what?”

“Questions.”

“Not to me. Why, what's going on?”

“I don't know. A couple of oblique references from the new Chief Inspector.”

“You're not in trouble with the anti-corruption unit, are you?”

I gave him a hard look. “No, why would I be?”

“You wouldn't.”

I leaned closer. “You'd tell me, wouldn't you, Crabbie?”

“Of course. But you're not in trouble.”

“Aye,” I said dubiously.

“Sean, come on, you're untouchable with your record.”

“OK, mate. Look, I can see I'm keeping you from your work, I'll let you get back to it,” I said, and didn't move.

A half-smile crept on to his face. “You're bored, aren't you? That's what it is.”

“Not I.”

“You want a piece of this Kelly case, don't you?”

“I am not going to interfere.”

“Look, nothing's going to break until someone pulls in the son. And since they haven't, it probably means that he's already slipped across the water—”

“Have you alerted—”

“Yes, yes, but that's not what I was driving at. I have to type this up, so if you want to do me a favor you could take Lawson and Fletcher down to the crime scene.”

“You think they'll be able to help find something?”

“No.”

“So why bring them?”

“It's our, er, pedagogical duty if nothing else. And you never know,
you
might come up with something.”

“You're taking pity on me, aren't you?”

He grinned. “A little.”

“I appreciate the thought, but I can't do it, mate. I have a thing at six o'clock. I have to go home and shower.”

“What thing?”

“A personal thing.”

He gave me a slant-eyed, suspicious look.

Anybody else would have said, “What? You? A date with a real live woman?” but not the Crabman.

“All right, see you tomorrow,” he said.

“Ok . . . and listen, mate, if anyone starts asking questions about me, you lemme know, OK?”

“I wouldn't worry about it, Sean, everybody knows you're a company man now through and through.”