Crabbie nodded at the forbidding wisdom of this remark.
I yawned. “It’s getting late. Case conference tomorrow morning, you lads can go home. First order of business on the morrow will be to question the wife,” I said.
I typed up a brief summary of all that we knew and closed my eyes for a bit in my recliner. I must have gone straight out because I heard a voice from deep, deep in the well ask “Is he asleep, do you think? Can we nudge him?”
“Speak Lord! Thy servant heareth!” I said and opened my eyes on Constables Collins and Fletcher. “Oh it’s you two. What do you want?”
“The Chief Inspector wants a progress—”
“Tell him I’ll be there in two minutes. Just enough time for him to get the good whisky out of its hiding place in the bottom shelf of his filing cabinet.”
I gathered my thoughts, ran a hand through my hair and went into the Chief Inspector’s office to give him my formal summary of the day’s events.
Chief Inspector McArthur had been our gaffer for three years now and the disappointment was beginning to show on all sides. A Scot who’d been trained at the police college in Hendon, he was a high flyer who’d probably expected to be done with his rotation in Carrickfergus RUC in about eighteen months before getting a promotion to Superintendent and a move to somewhere more interesting. It hadn’t happened and I sometimes wondered if he blamed me and my bad voodoo for his career doldrums.
“Ah, Duffy, have a seat. Whisky?”
For a while the Chief Inspector and I had been on collegial first-name terms but now it was mysteriously back to “Duffy”. Had I done something wrong? Already? I’d only been back from my hols a few hours.
“No thank you, sir, Beth hates it when I come home from duty with whisky on my breath,” I said.
“Yes, she’s right, I suppose we all should cut down on—”
“But if you insist, sir, just two fingers of that sixteen-year-old Jura would hit the spot about now.”
He made me a Jura and poured a Johnny Walker and soda for himself and I sat down opposite. He read my report while I examined him. He was a boyish-looking thirty-five or thirty-six, with no grey hair that I could see in his elegantly parted locks. I dug his Top Man black suit too. Nice cut, nice lines and if I’d been fifteen years younger and liked suits or him I’d of asked him about it.
“Before we begin I should let you know, Duffy, that Inspector Dalziel is thinking of writing up a formal complaint about you.”
“Is he now?”
“Yes. I tried to talk him out of it, but he’s pretty adamant. Says you were rude to him over the phone. Make it go away, Duffy, eh? Apologise to him, OK?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll take care of it, sir.”
“Changing the subject: your team did all those blood tests we asked for last week, didn’t they?”
“Yes, sir. For the annual fitness thing? Is that coming up soon, sir?”
“I shouldn’t really say, Duffy, but I can tell you that we’re doing things very differently this year. We’re taking officer fitness much more seriously.”
“I know. I’m always telling the men that, sir. My crew is as fit as a fiddle and I’m a model of health myself, sir. I’m just back from Donegal; you know what it’s like out there: walking on the beach, hiking in the woods, mountain-climbing, swimming.”
He lowered his voice and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Hmmm, yes, well, make sure you and all your team are here at the station tomorrow, I’ve heard a rumour that Chief Superintendent Strong is coming in.”
“Really? So it is tomorrow, is it? The fitness test thing?”
“You didn’t hear that from me but just make sure you and all your team are at the station in the morning and they don’t go on the piss tonight.”
“Crack of dawn, we’ll be here.”
“Good,” McArthur said finally skimming through the report. “So you’ve gotten a murder case, Duffy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In Sunnylands Estate, it says here. I went there once. Its distinguishing features seemed to be religious bigotry, cockfighting and despair.”
“Cockfighting?”
“So I imagine, or perhaps dog-fighting. Unsavoury place. Residents looked deranged and desperate to escape. Afraid to drive my Merc through it and I certainly wouldn’t park it there.”
“No, sir.”
He slid the report back across the desk. “All seems to be in order here, Duffy. I take it you are not going to ask for additional resources on this one or, God forbid, over-time?”
“Too early to say, sir. The case could go in any number of directions.”
He frowned. “Well, there’s no point going overboard is there?”
“Why’s that, sir?”
“It’s just another dead drug dealer, isn’t it? No family, wife’s a foreigner, he’s a bloody repeat offender. You know what everyone’s going to say around here: good riddance. Pardon my language, Duffy, but who’s going to give a damn about him?”