Page 49 of Hang on St. Christopher

Dalgetty folded his arms and leaned back on his heels. “It doesn’t matter what the reasons are. We hold the privacy of our clients to be sacrosanct. If you want to look into our records, you are going to need a warrant.”

I looked at Frankie and Mr. Andre. “You found out the name, didn’t you? And your boss won’t let you release it to me.”

Frankie stared at the floor. Mr. Andre pursed his lips and looked guilty.

“Show these gentlemen to the door, Terrence. Do not let them back into the shop unless they are accompanied by Irish police officers and a warrant,” Dalgetty said.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered to Crabbie outside. “The bum’s rush, that was. Very unpleasant.”

“Aye. But what can we do?”

“Nothing,” I said, distinctly disliking this feeling of impotence. Was that what it was going to be like after I retired? To be once again a civilian, to be little people...

We found the Beemer unstolen, I checked that the Picassos were still in the boot (they were) and had a discreet look underneath for bombs, and we drove off. On the journey back to Dundalk, we talked over the oddness of this little interaction. Neither Crabbie nor I had ever had any dealings with top-flight suit makers before, so perhaps this level of discretion was only to be expected, but still, our peeler radar didn’t like it one bit.

When I told O’Neill about it in Dundalk Garda Station, he also thought it was very peculiar.

“I’ll get you a warrant if you want,” O’Neill said.

“Would you?”

“Would you give us everything you find out that links your John Doe with O’Roarke?”

“Yes! Of course we will. Will a warrant be difficult?”

O’Neill shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought so. If I say it’s for cross-border cooperation in a murder case, that should be enough to do the trick. I know just the judge to approach. I’ll put a rush on it, and if I’m not busy later on this afternoon, I’ll get down to Dublin myself and have a look through these records for you.”

“Would you really do all that?”

“Not a problem, Inspector Duffy. If your John Doe was working with O’Roarke in some capacity, it’ll be better to know sooner rather than later.”

I shook O’Neill’s hand. “That would be so helpful,” I said, giving him my card and writing my home phone number on the back.

This was progress of a sort on that front, but alas, there hadn’t been any luck with the photograph. O’Neill had passed the victim’s image around the office, but no one recognized him. He wasn’t a local player or a known associate of O’Roarke. Why he’d be calling a phone box outside a bowling club that was a known haunt of a powerful IRA warlord was, therefore, an open question.

I thanked O’Neill and all the boys at Dundalk Garda and went back out to the Beemer. It was raining now and the station car park had flooded, but still I got down on the ground and took the time to look underneath the vehicle for bombs. It wasn’t completely inconceivable that the IRA had a couple of operatives or informers working in the police station, and killing a northern RUC officer in the Republic would be quite a coup.

Of course, there was no mercury tilt switch bomb, and we got inside.

On the way back to Belfast, I had a brainwave. “Hey, Crabman, you wanna swing by this famous bowling club?”

“No.”

“We could get a look at the phone box and the club and the lay of the land.”

“The local police don’t want us anywhere near there.”

“We won’t get out of the car; we’ll just drive by, you know?”

Crabbie shook his head and then, after a significant pause, sighed.

“What’s that big sigh mean?”

“When you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about something, I’ve long since given up trying to persuade you otherwise. Let’s go.”

I swung the BMW around and we found Point Road. The bowling club was halfway along it, and the phone box just outside on the pavement looked green and clean and benign. Funny sort of place, Dundalk. On the surface, it couldn’t have looked more suburban and gentle and dull. But this was where Cuchulainn launched his war against the queen of Connacht; this was where the Vikings invaded eastern Ulster, where the Normans stretched the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement, where Edward Bruce had himself crowned king of Ireland, where the IRA fought the Irish army for the soul of the Free State, and, today, where the Provisional IRA’s northern command had its headquarters. Dundalk had strong martial traditions that went back thousands of years. Point Road, however, gave evidence of none of that. Grandfathers pushing baby strollers, women pushing shopping carts, men with pipes and tweeds and flat caps looking at stories in theRacing Post.

The bowling club did not exactly seethe with evil either. A well-maintained lawn, a slightly faded club facade with red brick and bay windows, roses planted along the fence.

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