Page 48 of Hang on St. Christopher

I nodded at Crabbie. Now we were getting somewhere. “Do you think you can find out the name of the person who had this jacket made?”

Frankie thought about it. “It’s quite a unique cloth. A lamb’s-wool–linen blend. You don’t see that much. And the stitching is definitely from the ’forty-seven. I went back to the Singer for two years in the early eighties. 1981–1983, I believe. And the cloth should be in the records somewhere... Can you gentlemen wait?”

“We can do that,” I said excitedly.

“Why don’t you retire to our waiting area. Would either of you care for a cup of tea?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account. Only if you’re making a pot for yourself,” Crabbie said, which was Ulster Presbyterian code forI am absolutely gagging for a cup of tea.

“I’ll put a wee pot on. Follow me, gents,” he said, and led us back to a smart waiting area that resembled a gentlemen’s club from another era: ancient leather sofas, old copies ofPunchandCountry Life, dusty potted plants.

“Maybe I will take a cup of tea,” I said, sitting down on a sofa that had been softened by the bums of the gentry into the most supreme state of suppleness.

“This is nice,” Crabbie said.

“I could wait here all day,” I agreed.

“Me too,” Crabbie concurred. “Although you wouldn’t want to get used to all this softness,” he added quickly.

Frankie went to the back office, and I grinned at the Crabman. This was proper old-fashioned police work. We old seventies dinosaurs had survived into the 1990s—the age of computers and DNA and smart young men and women in lab coats—but breaking this case would involve legwork, asking simple questions, and hard graft.

A thin, handsome, relaxed young man brought us tea and Jacobs biscuits. We ate and drank, and I leafed through a back issue ofPunch.

When I finished my tea, I looked at my watch. “He’s been gone twenty minutes. Do you think something’s amiss?” I asked Crabbie.

“I don’t know,” Crabbie said. “The files are probably in old ledgers. It might take a while to go through those.”

Another twenty minutes passed, and Frankie came back with Mr. Andre and a trim, short older man with gray hair, gray eyes, and a sharp blue three-piece suit. He looked cross, and I could tell from his body language that something was wrong.

“Are you two gentlemen the northern police officers?” he asked.

“We are.”

“And you wanted to look at our files, is that right?”

“That’s right. Mr. Andre here and Frankie have kindly agreed to help us find out which of your clients had a certain jacket commissioned. Who might you be?”

“I’m Dalgetty. I’m the owner.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, standing up and offering him my hand.

He did not shake it, and I was left there looking like an eejit. Dalgetty sniffed. “I’m afraid you’ll need a warrant to look at our records,” he said tersely.

“A warrant? This is a murder investigation.”

“You’ll have to get a warrant.”

“We’re RUC,” I said.

“So?”

“So it’s going to be a huge hassle for me to get a cross-border warrant. I don’t even know what the correct procedure would be, exactly.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“Look, I don’t think you’ve completely understood. A man has been murdered and we want to identify him. We’re not investigating you or your firm or anything like that. All we want to do is notify the next of kin that their relative has been murdered.”