Page 7 of Hang on St. Christopher

“What have I done?”

“I’m not privy to the details. I’m like the mushrooms here, Sean—they keep me in the dark.”

I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock now. “Sorry, Mabel, I’m catching the midnight ferry to Stranraer. Is it CID business?”

“He wants you, that’s all I know.”

I shook my head. “Like I say, I’m off the clock. Sergeant Lawson is the full-time CID officer here, as you know, so?—”

“He’s on his holidays.”

“Is he?”

“He is. Tenerife.”

“Tenerife? Who goes to Tenerife?”

“Everyone, Sean. Everyone goes to Tenerife. He won’t be back till next week.”

“Oh, well, then you’ll have to get Sergeant McCrabban. I’m catching the ferry.”

“He asked specifically for you,” Mabel insisted. She rolled up her red sweater sleeves and crossed her arms in a way that made her seem a bit like Velma fromScooby-Doo. Early-1970s adorable Velma, not redrawn 1990s trying-to-be-less-of-a-dork Velma.

“Mabel, look, I have to go. You haven’t seen me, okay?”

“Don’t be starting that, now, Sean,” she said, her brows furrowing.

“Starting what? It’s our running gag. You pretend to be annoyed with me, but when I’m gone you mutter to yourselftsk tsk, that Sean Duffy, what a character...”

“That’s enough, now. Wait in the chief inspector’s office and I’ll see if I can find him,” she said, a cross, unpleasant sanctimonious note in her voice now.

If I waited in the office, I was doomed. I shook my head and pointed at my time sheet. “Sorry. I’m off the clock. I have a boat to catch!” I said.

Quickly back downstairs to the Beemer.

I drove to 113 Coronation Road, where there was a For Sale sign in the front yard—a For Sale sign that had been there for over a year. It was a nice three-bedroom house in the middle of the terrace on a pretty nice street in a pretty nice housing estate. The problem wasn’t the house. The problem was the asking price. I wanted twenty-five grand so I could buy one of those fancy new apartments they were building down at the marina and have a bit of change. I lived in Scotland for all but six days out of the month, and all I needed was a little one-bedroom flat overlooking the water, where I could store a few select records, keep a few tins of soup and some clothes. But nobody, it seemed, wanted to give me twenty-five grand for a three-bedroom house in the middle of a pretty nice terrace on a pretty street.

Now, a part of me knew that this was all bullshit: if I wanted to sell the house, I could do it easily if I knocked six grand off the asking price. But the real question, the deep Freudian question, was whether I really wanted to sell the house. I told Beth I did, told the real estate agents I did, told myself I did. I imagined how great that little flat at the marina would be. But truth be told, I loved this house, this street, and these people. We’d been through a lot together: a bomb defused under my car, assorted calls for my assistance following domestic disputes, an attack by the Loyalistsandthe IRA...

I got out of the car and helped a staggering Harry Blackwell to his front gate.

“Bit early for you to be in a state like this, Harry,” I said to him, for indeed the pubs were all still open.

“Wedding. Wife still there. She sent me home.”

“Wedding? Which one of your brood was the lucky?—”

“Irina. The redhead. The difficult one. Glad to get her out of the bloody house,” Harry said, doing the worst Tevye ever.

I helped him in his front door and walked back to the street.

Yes, we’d been through a lot together, Coronation Road and me. This was the first house I’d ever owned. Crazy thing for a Catholic peeler to buy a house in a working-class Proddy housing development, but at the time I’d bought it in 1980, it was perfect for my needs. Close to the Carrick cop shop, a big living room for my records, three bedrooms upstairs, and a shed out the back where I could smoke Turkish black unmolested. Furthermore, back in the early eighties this was the very last street in the Greater Belfast Urban Area, which was kind of romantic. The last street in Belfast—who wouldn’t want to live there? Head south and you were in the Belfast suburbs; head north and you were in untouched, ancient Irish countryside. Changed since then. Carrickfergus town had expanded into the fields north of Coronation Road, and a lot of new people I didn’t know had moved onto the street, but still, as the cat in that singing-cat show was wont to say: “Memories...”

I walked down the path, put the key in the lock, and went inside.

Precautions to get you through life in Ulster: lock pick and razor blade embedded in jacket sleeve, always look under your car for mercury tilt switch bombs, never sit with your back to a window or a door, always check the front and back door for break-ins.

No bombs, no break-ins.