Page 67 of Hang on St. Christopher

“I don’t know anything about the man who was renting the caravan near the woods. Never spoke to anyone, except he told Joshy McDermott, who runs the site, that if anything ever went missing from his caravan he wouldn’t be dealing with him, he’d be dealing with the boys from Dundalk.”

“By which he meant?”

“You know what he meant.”

“The IRA high command over the border.”

“It wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. You could see it in his eyes. And no one went near his caravan. No one so much as looked in the window.”

I could see there was more. “What else?”

“Sometimes, early in the morning he’d come by the caravan and take out a long rifle and go off into the woods there and do some target practice.”

I took out my notebook and tried to write this down, but after falling off a motorbike, writing wasn’t as easy as it looked.

“We need to know everything about him. You’re not grassing on him. He’s dead. He was the man who was killed on Prospect Avenue the other night. A man who was calling himself Quentin Townes,” Crabbie said.

“But whose real name was Alan Locke,” I added.

“He never used either of those names here. He never used any name. But I seen him around town driving that big Jag of his.”

“What else did you see, Killian?”

His eyes narrowed. He was no oil painting, and with the squinty eyes he looked a wee bit more reptilian and mean. “How much has it been worth so far?” he asked.

“Twenty quid?”

“How about fifty?”

“How about fifty if you tell us something really good,” I suggested.

“The fact that he was probably IRA isn’t good?”

“We knew he was IRA already. And we’ve already been to Dundalk asking about him,” Crabbie said, and Killian could tell that Crabbie wasn’t lying.

“Something good, eh?” Killian said. “What about the Norton Commando?”

“What about it?”

“It said on the news that the police were seeking the assistance of a man riding a Norton Commando, to help with their inquiries.”

“And?”

“What if I was to tell you that a man riding a black Norton Commando came sniffing around here?”

Even my semiconcussed eyes lit up at that one.

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Nosing around Townes’s caravan. Didn’t see him break in, but you never know; he might of. It was weird. We don’t get too many casual visitors or tourists around here, so I noticed him and the bike and he sort of casually walked over to your man’s caravan.”

“When was this?”

“Not sure, couple of days ago. Way early, when he thought everybody would be asleep. But I wasn’t.”

“Before the murder?”

“Aye, few days ago.”