Page 71 of Hang on St. Christopher

I ran him through all the databases, and nothing came up relating to him in the past five years. He’d just more or less dropped off the radar.

No hits on our supposed teenage joyride killers either.

I called Jill Dumont at RUC Operational Research, and after going through a secretary and a bloody assistant, I was put through.

I chewed the fat and asked after her weans and got to the point, but she’d never heard of Locke. She asked why I was asking, and I told her that he was a murder victim in a case I was running in Carrick, and I thought that perhaps he was an IRA assassin.

“Then who killed him?” she asked.

“That’s the question.”

“Can’t be the Protestant paramilitaries—they’d be celebrating the killing of an IRA iceman with fireworks and a lot of calls to the media.”

“An IRA feud?”

“Again, calls to the media claiming the hit.”

“So who would kill him and not call the media?”

“Two kids who tried to steal his car and things got out of hand, it looks like,” Jill said, obviously having pulled up the case notes on her computer.

“It’s not that, Jill; it’s deeper,” I said.

There was a long pause over the phone. “Well, look, you’re not usually wrong about these things, Sean. If you get anything solid, I might be able to help you.”

I thanked Jill and hung up.

Black clouds through Lawson’s window. Black clouds over a gunmetal sea. Other news occupying the front pages now: riots in Derry, riots in Portadown, the looming British and American elections. Not interested in any of it.

In the previous couple of years since I’d had a murder case, the Cold War had ended, Thatcher had gone, Reagan had gone, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and Nirvana had kicked Michael Jackson off the charts, but here in Ireland, the men of violence kept plying their merry game.

I opened my shopping bags and put the whisky bottles in Lawson’s drinks cabinet. Now he could at least offer someone a decent glass when they came to see him.

“How do?” Crabbie said, knocking on my door at lunchtime.

“I told you to come in, in the afternoon.”

“It is the afternoon.”

“Whisky?” I said.

“I don’t think young Lawson has?—”

“I stocked up for him.”

We had a glass of Islay and looked at the vicious black rain squall making its way down the lough. Hail started banging off the station windows.

“If Ireland were anchored off the south coast of France rather than in the North Atlantic, I think a lot of our problems would be conveniently solved by a nice spot of sunshine,” I mused.

Crabbie shook his head. “The butter from them parts is shockingly poor. My wife’s sister was down there, and she said the butter waswhite. Can you believe it? White butter.”

“The cheeses, though, Crabbie, the cheeses...”

“Aye, the cheeses,” he said thoughtfully. He liked a bit of cheese, did the Crabman.

We chased leads all afternoon, but it was nothing doing.

No Norton. No Range Rover. Zilch on Locke.