“Mind the car, Stevie, don’t let anyone put their paws on it,” I said, giving him the customary fiver and began walking towards the crowd. “Step aside there, step aside,” I said. The crowd parted reluctantly and with hostility, people muttering highly original things like “bloody peelers” and “bloody cops”.
Like Jules Maigret I arrived at the scène du crime thoroughly existentially jaded. But lucky old Jules never had a scene like this. The dead drug dealer was lying face down in his front yard, halfway up the garden path. He had orange hair and was wearing a sleeveless denim jacket that said “Slayer” on it in rivets. Under the denim jacket was a bright blue motorcycle jacket. To complete the ensemble he was wearing bleached white jeans and cowboy boots. The crossbow bolt was sticking out of his back, near his left shoulder.
I was surprised to find that the body had not been cordoned off and there was no evidence of forensic men or forensic activity. Indeed, the crowd were so close to the corpse that their cigarette ash was blowing onto the deceased, contaminating the crime scene.
My blood began to boil. In another police force you would have called this chaos. One didn’t employ words like “chaos” or “fiasco” to the fine boys of Carrick CID, at least not in my presence, but if this wasn’t chaos it could certainly do chaos’s job until the real chaos came along in the shape of Ballyclare RUC or Larne RUC or those fuckheads from over the water.
“Everyone get back!” I said, physically pushing some of the onlookers away from the body. “Back there, onto the pavement and put those cigarettes out!”
Where were the forensic officers? And why weren’t there uniformed officers on crowd control?
What the hell was happening?
Was this some kind of ambush? No, the spectators would be a lot more cautious if there was about to be a hit. A forensic officer tea break perhaps? That was more likely given their strange ways, but they’d never have buggered off leaving a bunch of eejits dropping cigarette ash over their corpse.
The crowd was nudging up again behind me. “Get back, I said. There’s nothing to see here, he won’t be doing any tricks, he’s not friggin Lazarus.”
I examined the victim while the crowd watched me expectantly and Sinatra sang “Chicago”, which he did on the British but not the US version of this album. I could take or leave Sinatra, mostly leave, and the record was getting on my nerves. “And somebody turn that effing stereo off!” I yelled and almost immediately the record got yanked with a vinyl-scraping zzzzzipppp!
Now all was silence but for the wind among the crisp packets and shopping bags and the braying of a goat attached by a brick to a piece of rope in the overgrown yard of the house next door that was attempting to reach over said fence and eat the victim’s shoelaces. It wasn’t getting close but it too was slobbering all over the crime scene.
“And somebody move that goat!” I said.
“And who might you be when you’re at home?” a woman asked with an East Belfast accent that sounded like broken glass under a DM boot.
I reached in my pocket for my warrant card but it was back with my bags at Coronation Road.
“Detective Inspector Duffy, Carrick CID,” I said flashing my video club membership card in lieu of my police ID.
Suitably impressed, the crowd moved back a little.
I pointed at a likely lad whose Liverpool FC scarf was a sign of above-average intelligence.
“Sonny, do me a favour and move that goat away from the fence,” I said.
“What’ll I do with it?”
“See that shopping trolley over there filled with bricks? Tie it to that. Here’s a quid for a good job,” I said.
He grabbed the rope, went next door and tugged the goat away from the body.
“Right! What happened here? Where did the other police officers go?” I asked the crowd, but now everyone was staring at their shoes and saying nowt. The ever present/ever tedious Belfast rule: whatever you say, say nothing had come into effect.
“There were other police officers here this morning, where are they now?”
Silence.
The rain increased a fraction and a mist began rolling down the north road from the Antrim Hills. A man on all fours, perhaps with species dysphoria, was attempting to communicate with the goat.
Christ, this was depressing. It didn’t help when an ice-cream van pulled up, parked itself at the end of the street and began playing a selection of television themes. Its haunting version of EastEnders brought a few punters over.
This police/honest-citizen liaison was getting me nowhere. I lit a ciggie and went inside the house where I was met by a distracted and visibly upset Detective Constable Lawson coming down the stairs.
“Oh, sir, thank God you’ve got here at last!”
“What’s going on Lawson? Why isn’t my crime scene secured? Where’s forensic?”
“I’m so sorry, sir, it’s been a bit of a crazy morning. I was just on the phone, I was just trying to call them, I wasn’t sure what number, I …”
“Call whom?”
“Forensic.”
“Surely they were notified by dispatch?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been and gone, sir.”
“They left?”
“Yes, sir,” Lawson said, his lip trembling and his bright blue-green eyes on the verge of tears.