Gun Street Girl (10 page)

“Nope.”

“So we're looking at a newish girlfriend that Kelly wasn't particularly attached to, someone he didn't think to call on the night he murdered his parents.”

“Something like that.”

“At this interview at her flat did she provide you with any other insights into the case?”

“None at all.”

I give him the old Spock raised eyebrow. “Then why bring her in for questioning? Do you not believe her?”

“Oh, I believe her, but I was thinking that it might be good practice for the new detective constables. Let them question a witness by themselves. A witness in a homicide investigation . . . You know?”

“They question her. We observe them?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good. Sounds like the sort of thing I should have thought of.”

“They've already started. Do you wanna come see how they're doing?”

I followed him along the corridor to Interview Room 1's observation suite, which was a small office on the other side of the one-way mirror that looked into the main CID interrogation room.

Lawson and Fletcher had indeed already begun their questioning of Sylvie McNichol, who had come as a clone of early Madonna: bangles, denim, Daisy Dukes, ripped fishnets, scarves in her hair, massive hooped earrings . . . I got myself a coffee and a cigarette. McCrabban lit his pipe. Lawson was asking the questions and Fletcher was writing down notes as if she was his secretary, which was utterly unnecessary because we were taping the interview anyway.

“Where did you meet Michael Kelly?” Lawson asked.

“He come in the Whitecliff. Seen him in there a couple of times, so I did,” Sylvie replied.

“And when did he ask you out?”

“Beginning of October, he asked me if I wanted to go see Van Morrison at the Ulster Hall.”

“And you said?”

“Aye, why not. Bit of a laugh.”

“And?”

“I went there. Seen him before. He was better the last time. Bob Dylan did a surprise encore last time. This time it was just Van. Course neither of them is really my cup of tea . . . that old-man music.”

“And after the concert?”

“What do you mean, after the concert?”

“Did you sleep with him? After the concert?”

“Don't be cheeky! That's my business.”

“If I can remind you that this is a murder investigation . . .”

“I'm here cos Sergeant McCrabban asked me to come in. I don't have to tell you nothing, so I don't!”

“I'm just trying to find out how intimately you knew the late Mr. Kelly?” Lawson said.

Sylvie stood up. “Never been so insulted in my life.”

Lawson had to spend the next five minutes calming her down.

“How many times did you see Mr. Kelly?”

“I don't know. Half a dozen?”

“Six in a month doesn't sound like a lot.”

“Aye, it wasn't serious. It was just a bit of laugh, like I said.”

“When did you hear about his death?”

“Radio. Next morning. Seen it coming.”

“Seen it coming, how?”

“Well, Whitehead was full of the news about what happened with his parents . . .”

“And you thought he did it?”

“That's what all the gossip said anyway.”

“But you had no inkling at all that his mind was disturbed or that he was in any kind of trouble?”

“Look, when we went out it was just a geg. He'd plenty of money and he knew how to treat a girl right, you know?”

“He didn't seem depressed or unhappy? Anxious?”

“Well . . .”

“Well what?”

“Ach, he was fine. Levelheaded you know. That was why it was all so amazing that he lost the rag and topped his ma and da.”

“Because he wasn't the type?”

“Exactly. But people are strange, aren't they? And I suppose if he did it, he did it.”

Sylvie lit herself a fag. Lawson looked at the two-way mirror and gave a little shrug.

“What do you think?” McCrabban said to me between puffs of blue pipe smoke.

“He's not as smart as he thinks he is.”

“And the witness?”

“She's not lying but she's not telling the whole truth. She knows something she's not being forthcoming about,” I said.

“What?”

“I don't know. She's not being forthcoming about it.”

“You wanna do a tag team and go in there?” Crabbie asked.

I lit a Marlboro. “Tell me about the forensics.”

“Forensics came up with very little. A nine-millimeter. The same gun shot both parents but this gun hadn't been used in the commission of a previous crime.”

“Mr. Kelly's business was doing OK? Threatening phone calls, letters . . . ?”

“I had Lawson and Fletcher canvass the neighbors and go through the phone logs. Nothing unusual.”

“And no threats on any of his bookie shops?”

“I talked to a bloke called Derek Cole, Ray Kelly's business manager. He says that things have been running smoothly.”

“They must pay protection money.”

“That's the point, Sean. They do. They've got four bookies in UDA territory and three in IRA territory and they pay through the nose. Five per cent of the gross. Not five per cent of the profit. Five per cent of the gross revenue. Kelly was safe as houses, protected from both sides.”

“Had he missed any payments or anything like that?”

“Not a one. He hadn't a problem in years.”

“Why did he have that gun?”

“The gun was a hangover from the dark days of the late seventies when you couldn't even rely on a decent protection racket.”

“Dark days indeed.”

Crabbie relit his pipe. “Young Lawson says to me that foul play makes no sense from a
Ciceronian standpoint
 . . . I didn't like to ask . . .”

“In his early career Cicero was a defense lawyer. He was always asking
cui bono
? Which means
who benefits
,” I explained.

“Ah, I see,” Crabbie said, and puffed thoughtfully. “I suppose in the Kelly case no one benefits if the bookie shops are thrown into chaos and the protection racket money gets disrupted. It's killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”

“On the face of it nobody profits from the death of the Kellys. Unless there was a will?”

“Michael Kelly was the sole beneficiary.”

“And now that Michael Kelly's dead?”

“Relatives in Australia. Who, you won't be surprised to learn, have pretty good alibis.”

“Which are?”

“They were in Australia at the time of the killing.”

“All right. Let's talk to young Sylvie.”

Tag team. Fletcher and Lawson out. Ageing Wunderkind and the Crabman in.

Crabbie sucked on the end of his pipe. “Miss McNichol, can you account for your whereabouts the night Michael Kelly's parents were murdered?”

“I certainly can. Double shift at the Whitecliff until midnight and then home to me bed, exhausted. Me housemate Deirdre was waiting up for me. She made me toast.”

“And what time did you go to bed, exactly?”

“Don't know about exactly but maybe about one o'clock.”

“And you didn't get any phone calls at all that night?”

“Not one.”

“And when did you hear the news about the murders at the Kelly house?”

“The next morning. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was saying Michael did it.”

“Who's everyone?”

“Everyone! Deirdre. All the people in the street, all the people down the newsagent's, everyone down the pub.”

“Everyone was saying your boyfriend killed his parents and you didn't think to go to the police.”

“The peelers? What do you take me for? I'm no grass.”

Crabbie looked. Yup, there was something she was hiding, but I couldn't figure out what that something was.

“Miss McNichol, where did you think Michael had gone after the murder of his parents?” I asked.

“Scotland.”

“Why Scotland?”

“Well, he's not going to be stupid enough to go to the airport, is he? But he can just hop on one of the ferries to Scotland, can't he?” she said, and stubbed the remains of her cigarette out in the big, black, glass ashtray.

“Did he ever talk to you about going to Scotland?”

“Nope.”

“Did he have an affinity for Scotland?”

“Well, he liked shortbread.”

McCrabban looked away. I stifled a grin.

“Did you meet Michael's parents?”

“Met his ma, briefly, while Michael was looking for his car keys.”

“You talked?”

“Yeah.”

“What about?”

“She asked me if I was a Pisces.”

“What?”

“She said that I looked like a Pisces. But I'm not. I'm a Virgo.”

“And you told her that?”

“Aye.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“She said that that would have been her second guess. But it's easy to say that after I told her, you know? She said she was a Leo but she didn't look like a Leo to me. She was an older lady, though. Maybe her hormones were playing up. Speaking of hormones, do youse want to hear a joke?”

“No. We don't. Do you have anything to add to your statement that can help us get to the bottom of this case?” McCrabban asked.

“And please remember that Michael has passed on, you can't grass up a dead man. The only thing you'll be doing is helping us close this sorry chapter and let the Kellys' kin move on with their lives,” I added.

“I understand all that. I'm not an eejit. But Michael didn't tell me nothing and he certainly didn't call me after he topped his ma and da.”

“Any jealous boyfriends in your past we should know about?”

She shook her head. “Me? Nah, I only get the love-'em-and-leave-'em type, don't I?” she said with a cynical little laugh. Hard as nails was Sylvie, but there was a vulnerability behind those heavily made-up eyes.

“Parents alive?” I asked her.

“Me ma, yeah.”

“And your dad?”

She shook her head. “They done him in,” she said after a pause.

“Who did?”

“The usual.” She sniffed.

“Who's the usual?”

“They said he was an informer . . . Maybe he
was
an informer. I don't know. I was only a wee bairn.”

She sniffed again, took a hanky from her bag, and dabbed her eyes.

“I'm really sorry, Sylvie,” I said, and, reaching across the desk, gave her arm a little squeeze.

“It's all right, it was a long time ago. A very long time ago,” she said, recovering herself.

I tried a couple more questions, but the barriers that briefly had come down had firmly gone back up. After another fifteen minutes Crabbie gave me his
I think this is getting us nowhere
look.

I nodded.

“Give us a minute, will you, Sylvie?” I asked. Crabbie and I retreated to the CID incident room and I looked up the case file on Kevin McNichol. Shot in the head on the Antrim Road, North Belfast, 1974. Suspected police informer. No clues. No suspects. A case that would never be solved, like so many cases from that time. I showed the file to Crabbie.

“Even if she knows something, unlikely that she would tell us with that family history,” I said.

“But I don't think she knows anything,” Crabbie said.

I sighed. “Might as well finish it, then.”

Back into Interview Room 1.

“OK, Sylvie, what's your hormone joke?” I asked.

“Hormone joke? Oh yeah: how do you make a hormone?”

I sighed. “I don't know, Sylvie, how do you make a hormone?”

“You kick her in the cunt.”

I heard Lawson laugh behind the two-way mirror, but I was getting fed up with all this now. “OK, Miss McNichol, let me ask you just one more question and I want you to think very carefully about the answer,” I said.

“OK.”

“Do you really think, in your heart of hearts, that Michael, the boy you knew, killed his parents, in cold blood, the way everyone is saying that he did?”

It was tiny.

A blink.

That's all.

A momentary look away.

A flutter in her eyelids.

“How am I supposed to know? You're the police!”

“He was your boyfriend.”

“Well, look, I wouldn't be shocked. He said that his da was always winding him up and I suppose it's like everyone says . . . he just snapped.”

“He was a levelheaded kid who just snapped?”

“He just snapped.”

We tried several more lines of attack but she wasn't giving us anything else. We went out.

“She
is
a Leo,” Lawson said.

“What?”

“Mrs. Kelly. She wasn't lying about that.”

I nodded. “Good work,” I said, and rolled my eyes at McCrabban.

We tag-teamed Fletcher and Lawson back in again while Crabbie and I went down to my office.

I poured Crabbie a whiskey and told him about the eyelid flutter.

He hadn't seen it.

He didn't believe it.

“I think she knows something,” I insisted. “And not just about Michael's love of shortbread.”

“As you say, Sean, even if she does, she'll never cooperate with the police.”

“That's what makes this such a fun job.”

Crabbie sighed, tipped out his pipe. He looked at me. I looked at him. We sipped the Jura sixteen-year-old single malt. Outside, through the rain and wind, the afternoon was withering like a piece of fruit in an Ulster pantry.

“We serve shortbread at communion, sometimes,” Crabbie said dolefully.

I was not going to have a conversation with him about shortbread's Eucharistic qualities. I drained my glass and got to my feet.

“It's still your case, mate, but before I went and told Chief Inspector McArthur that you were closing it, I'd let it sit for a bit. Maybe bring the wee lassie in again, next week. A second time can't hurt and we might get some inconsistencies in her story.”