Page 50 of Hang on St. Christopher

“Looks pretty mellow to me,” I said as we drove past.

“Aye,” Crabbie agreed.

“Could we be barking up the wrong tree here?”

“I don’t think so. It is very suspicious that our victim would call only this one particular phone box in his whole time in Carrickfergus.”

“Very suspicious,” I agreed. I turned the car around at the bottom of Point Road and drove past the bowling club and the phone box again. I was hoping for the old prickles on the back of the neck, or something that told me that was the nexus of foulness that had come all the way to Carrick, but there were no prickles.

“Back to Belfast?” I asked.

“I think so.”

Dundalk to the border. The usual nonsense at the crossing, and then Newry. Newry to Belfast. Belfast to Carrickfergus RUC.

Up to Lawson’s office with the two Picassos. No notes or new developments waiting for us in Lawson’s inbox.

Not quite five. No progress on the case, but I couldn’t go home yet. Some of the newer lads had heard about our Dublin trip and were keen to hear stories of the old days. I told them about my famous cannonball run to Dublin back in ’eighty-four in my then brand-new BMW 325e. Back then in Northern Ireland, we got the ads for McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken and the other chains, but because of the Troubles, none of those companies had ever set up in Belfast.

“So, lads, there I was doing a hundred miles per hour down the motorway with my siren on, and Matty next to me in the passenger’s seat screaming and shitting bricks, when all hell breaks loose and I see the Irish police in the rearview mirror...”

Crabbie came in from the bog and looked at me. Only some of that story was true, and his big sour face sucked the wind right out of me.

I finished with less aplomb than I would have liked.

When the other coppers had dispersed, I told him off. “Your face, mate—sucked the wind right out of me.”

“We’ve other actual stories without making up more.”

“They don’t want the sad stories. The kids just want jokey ones.”

And that was true enough. This whole society was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, and we weren’t evenpostyet.

It was July, so it wasn’t close to being dark out, but it was teatime. “You want a lift home?” I asked the Crabman.

“No need. I’m on until the wee hours. I’m duty detective, it appears,” he said.

“Jesus, I’m sorry to hear that, mate.”

“Oh, it’s all right. I’ve checked with the union rep. It’s double time at the full-time detective sergeant rate,” he said with some satisfaction.

I did the mental arithmetic in my head. He’d be getting twenty quid an hour just to sit by the telephone. That was okay.

A knock on the door. The gleaming pink face of the chief inspector looking a little morose this evening. “Hello, Duffy, Sergeant McCrabban, I see you’re back from your jaunt over the border,” he said.

“Nothing escapes you, sir.”

“Any developments with our case?”

Ourcase? Oh, crap, was he taking a personal interest in this one?

“We went down to Dundalk to check up on those phone records, and then down to Dublin to see the victim’s tailor. Couple of promising leads there, I think. Excellent cooperation from Dundalk Garda, I must say.”

“Good, good. So who was our victim?”

“Well, I’m afraid we still don’t know that for sure yet, but like I say, we have a couple of promising leads and I’m sure we’ll have this sorted in the next day or so.”

“You still don’t know the name of the dead man?” he asked, surprised.