Gun Street Girl (21 page)

17: INTERROGATING DEIRDRE FERRIS

We asked the receptionist at Conservative Central Office to call us a taxi which we took to Paddington, where we caught the Oxford train. There was no point staying in England now.

When we pulled into Oxford station I told Lawson to pack our stuff, pay the bill, get a receipt, get two bus tickets to Birmingham International airport, and meet me at the Eagle and Child.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Don't forget the receipt. Sergeant Dalglish is a stickler for receipts.”

“I won't. Sir?”

“Yes?”

“You don't suspect Osbourne, do you?”

“No. But you never know, do you? We'll make sure we call him and follow up with him on that alibi.”

“Yes, sir. Uhm, sir?”

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do while I'm packing?”

“I'm going to go back to Oxford CID and raise just a little bit of holy hell.”

Back through the streets of Oxford again.

The same girls on bikes, the same boys rowing on the river, the same red sandstone . . . but a more sinister aspect to it all now. The Round Table Club. The AGC. This is where the elite cemented their connections, this is where deals got done, this is where you got inducted into the secret world of men with money and power. Through the looking glass indeed.

Oxford Police HQ. Piped music. Natural light. Georgian windows uncovered by grilles. Flowers on the incident desk. This was a station without armor, a station that anyone could just walk right into. The same thought: these bloody peelers didn't know how lucky they were.

What did they know about policing in a crisis zone? What did they know about fucking anything?

I went upstairs to the CID offices.

The big back room overlooking Christchurch Meadow.

The big back room overlooking one of the most beautiful places in all of Europe. Yellow wood, aurulent leaves, Jersey cows . . . 

The CID officers were gawping at me.

I asked for a meeting with Superintendent Smith, Chief Inspector Boyson, Constable Atkins. I played it low key, dropped my voice half an octave and got it low and growly like those slab-faced goons who come to your door late on foggy December nights asking whether you want to “contribute something for the prisoners.”

I told them what Habsburg had told me. Let it sink in.
Let it bloody sink
.

They had committed serious professional wrongdoing and they bloody knew it. I could end their careers if I wanted to. Even if that would entail grassing up a fellow peeler.

White faces. Panic.
Yeah, that's right, you underestimated the Paddy cop.
Either that or you overestimated Gottfried Habsburg's ability to keep his mouth shut. Either way: serious fucking mistake. Career-ending mistake. Front page of the fucking
Daily Mirror
mistake.

“You don't understand, Duffy. There was nothing in it for us; we just wanted to protect an innocent young man. It was nothing untoward. No one told us to do it or paid us or—”

“If that's true you're even stupider than you look.”

“Please, Inspector Duffy, you can see our side of it, can't you?”

“Falsifying reports. Concealing information from the Crown Prosecution Service? Concealing information from a county coroner? That's not just your career, lads, that's jail time . . .”

“No, Duffy, wait a minute—”

“That's Inspector Duffy to you.”

But I had already begun to lose interest. Busting chops was never my scene. And I wasn't going to do anything anyway. Just fuck with them. Leave the possibility of action hanging over them . . . That was the ticket. That was the way of ulcers.

“I'm going,” I said.

“No! Wait, Duffy! What are you going to do?”

They followed me downstairs.

Out into the street.

“What are you going to do?”

“Do I look like a bloody informer?”

I walked up St Aldate's, up the Cornmarket, up St Giles'.

Good-bye, English girls on bikes. Good-bye, Christopher Wren. Good-bye, Morse World.

Lawson had packed our stuff and was waiting for me at the Eagle and Child.

There was a bus to Birmingham International leaving Oxford coach station in half an hour.

Airport.

British Midland 737.

Belfast.

Crabbie met us at the gate.

“You didn't have to meet us at the airport!” I said.

“I was in the neighborhood,” he lied. “How was the trip?”

“It wasn't a total loss. Turns out our Michael Kelly was starting to become a big-time gun dealer. Networking, meeting people. And we got a name: Nigel something, possible connection to Shorts Brothers in Belfast. Oh, and Lawson was right about the conspiracy.”

“A conspiracy?”

“Aye, a conspiracy of fools to protect an idiot.”

“They always are.”

Crabbie drove me back to 113 Coronation Road.

Boys playing football. Girls pushing prams. Neighbors chatting over fences. Why is it so comforting here? I'll tell you why: poverty and a rumbling, low-level war have engendered a blitz spirit.

Vodka gimlet. Converse sneakers. Sweatpants. Ramones T-shirt. Put in a cassette I bought at the airport. The
Z and Two Noughts
soundtrack album by Michael Nyman. Bit samey. Not up to his usual standard.

At nine I called Sara but her phone just rang and rang.

I called her at the
Telegraph
offices.

“What is it, Sean?”

She sounded irritated. I asked her whether she wanted to do something after work. She said she couldn't. There'd been rioting in Belfast and the photo editor wanted to build a big story around an arc of petrol bombs sailing through the air . . .

I called my parents and told them I'd been over the water on a case. They showed polite and rather touching interest. I made another vodka gimlet. Easy on the lime.

Phone call. The Crabman. “Deirdre's been transferred down from Queen Street cop shop. We can interrogate her now if you want. Or tomorrow if you want to settle in.”

“I'll be right over. Get Lawson in for this one too. I think it's going to be good.”

The tape recorder running in Interview Room 2, Deirdre Ferris sitting there in white stilettos, leopard-print top, and a red miniskirt. She was sipping a tea with four sugars and smoking Embassy Kings.

Did I describe Deirdre before? You know the type: fake tan, dyed, straightened black hair, green eyes, chubby, pretty. There was a bruise under her right eye but you should see the other girl . . . 

“So you're the one that can get me off my assault charge?” she said, blowing smoke at me.

“Only if you've got something pertinent to offer us,” I replied.

“
Pertinent
. Pertinent, eh? That's a good word, that pertinent.”

“Well, what do you know?”

“I might have seen somebody
pertinent
to the case.”

“Who?”

“What do I get in return?”

“It depends who you saw.”

“What if I seen someone going up our garden path the night Sylvie died.”

I looked at McCrabban and Lawson.

“Tell us what you saw, Deirdre,” I said.

Deirdre shook her head. “If I tell you'll have to guarantee me no charges from them peelers at Queen Street station. They're not nice up there. Not nice like youse down here.”

“If you can give us Sylvie's murderer I'll get you off the GBH.”

She shook her head, puffed on her ciggie. “Nah, nah, nah, I'll tell you what I seen and then it's
your
job to get the fucking murderer. I get off the GBH in return for what I seen, even if you don't catch the killer.”

“All right, that's the deal, then,” I said. “I'll get them to drop the assault charge in return for what you saw.”

“And if I'm going to be blabbing to the cops about a bloody maniac who goes round topping barmaids I'll need to be somewhere safe, so I will.”

“You're safe in here.”

“I'm not spending the next six months in fucking jail while you look for the lad who might have done Sylvie in.”

I sighed. “So what do you want, Deirdre?”

“Charges dropped for that wee bitch Angela McCorey who fucking had it coming if anyone ever had it coming. And then outta here. One of them safe houses. Well away. Over the water.”

“I think we could do that,” McCrabban said. “We have a reciprocal arrangement with Strathclyde Police.”

Deirdre nodded. “Aye, Scotland would be all right. Like it over there.”

“So what did you see, Deirdre?” I said, starting to lose my patience.

She stubbed out her fag, took a drink of water. “So anyway, the night Sylvie supposedly topped herself I was away to see me ma. Wee drink at the Whitecliff and then train to Carrick, you know? Anyways, I left the house and I was walking down the street but then I realized I'd forgotten the twenty quid I owed Darren for the acid tabs, right? Wait, you're not Drugs Squad, are you?”

“We're not interested in the acid tabs. Carry on, Deirdre,” I said.

“Now Darren's UVF and if you don't pay when you owe it's double the next week, so I was going back to borrow the money off Sylvie, but then I seen someone outside our house, you know? Oh, thinks I, a gentleman caller. I knew better than to bother her. You know? All cut up after Michael's death and all. Wee bit of comfort, and anyway, Darren'll take a hand job in lieu so to speak. See what I mean?”

“So you think that someone was outside your house that night and you think that they were going to see Sylvie?”

“Aye.”

“Did you actually see this person go to your front door?”

“No, I'm not a nosy parker, so I'm not, and the rain was on so I just turned and went on to the Whitecliff.”

“How do you know it wasn't someone just out walking their dog—dog stops in front of your place to take a piss?” I asked.

“There was no dog. Let me think . . . no, if there was a dog it was a wee small dog . . . No, there was definitely no dog. He was going to see Sylvie, I know it.”

“You didn't think to tell us any of this before!” Lawson exclaimed.

“I'm no squealer, so I'm not!”

“You think you can describe this person?” I asked.

“Only seen him from the back and the side but he was pretty tall, wearing a leather jacket, wee baseball cap or a flat cap, something like that for the rain, you know.”

“I'll get the sketch artist,” McCrabban said, and left the interview room.

Deirdre and the sketch artist drew the profile of a nasty-looking, hatchet-faced man with hollow cheeks and narrow slits for eyes. You wouldn't want to meet him on a dark night. Or indeed on a sunlit morning.

“Are you sure this is the man?” I asked.

“Look, like I said, it was dark and I was on the other side of the street, but it's not a bad likeness.”

“You're not just making all this up to get off the GBH, are you?”

“No. I seen that man. Sleekit-looking fella and no mistake,” she said.

“This is good stuff, Deirdre, very good stuff,” McCrabban said.

“I told youse. It's enough to get me off my GBH, right?”

I smiled at her. “I'll have a word with the Queen Street detectives in the morning.”

“And I'll be across the water until you catch him?”

“I'll arrange that too.”

“Ach, you're awful good, Detective Duffy. You know, for a Fenian, like.”

“Thank you.”

I was about to leave the interview room when I had one final thought.

“You don't know someone called Nigel by any chance? Maybe a friend of Michael's?”

“Oh, aye. Nigel Vardon. Seen him with Michael a few times down the Whitecliff. Good friend of his, I think. Lives up Ballycarry way. In the country. That any help?”

“Yes, Deirdre. That's very helpful indeed.”

18: NIGEL VARDON

Home. Bed. Sleep on the sofa. Awake at 4 a.m. Car alarm going on the BMW. Grabbed my revolver. Outside into the freezing rain. Coming down in buckets. Something wrong with the car. Closer look.

“Wee shites! Fucking wee shites! If I catch you!”

Both rear tires of the Beemer had been let down.

Back inside. I huddled in front of the electric fire, turned on the World Service, lay there listening to bad news until eight when the phone rang. Whoever it was was going to cop it because I was in a foul mood. “Yeah?”

“Sean, please tell me you weren't at Conservative Party Central Office yesterday threatening one of the young Treasury researchers.”

“Complained about me, did he?”

“Sean, why don't you just drop this ridiculous case you're working on, resign from the RUC, and come and work for me.”

“Even if I do resign, Kate, Sergeant McCrabban will still pursue every bloody lead in this case, or are you going to offer him a career in MI5 to keep him quiet too?”

“What are you talking about, Sean?”

“What are
you
talking about, Kate? Your Colditz coroner didn't do his job. Oxford CID didn't do their job. We, however, we plodding Paddies in the RUC, we did do our bloody jobs. We found your little Conservative Party Central Office researcher and he told us he was the one who took Anastasia Coleman to the party where she died. He was the third man in Gottfried Habsburg's house.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, well, don't worry, if he's tangential to the inquiry his name won't come up again, but if he's not I don't give a shit who's protecting him.”

“Sean, I wasn't suggesting—”

“If your little friend in Conservative Party Central Office wants to complain about me, let him fucking complain, he's got more to lose than I do.”

“Sean, please. No one's complained about you. Not officially. I'm just concerned that you've bitten off more than you can chew here. In the big scheme of things your little murder investigation is a drop in the ocean. It's not worth making waves for.”