Page 9 of Hang on St. Christopher

“The way I remember it is that I’ve bailed you out with our overlords many times and when it came to my own problems with the higher-ups, you kept your bloody head down and let me sink or swim by myself,” I said.

“Yeah, well, we could be Rashomoning the past all night if we wanted. The point is, we’ve helped each other.”

The verb “Rashomoning” from his unlikely lips was sufficiently arresting to make me sit.

He looked at me for another ten seconds and took out his pack of Silk Cut. He offered me one and I shook my head. I gave him the Tuborg ashtray that I kept for guests I didn’t like.

“What the hell is this music?Isthis music? Can you turn it off, please?”

I switched it off.

The tea thing had become untenable. Even if it was your worst enemy, you couldn’t bloody escape the tea-and-biscuit-asking ceremony.

“Tea?” I asked.

“No time. Look, Duffy, there’s been a murder.”

“I can’t go. I’m off duty. My shift finished at noon. I’ve done my six days this month and I’m off until next month. I was going to take the afternoon ferry, but I stayed to hear a poetry reading in Belfast.”

“Duffy, you don’t understand the situation. There’s been a murder and our head of CID,yourprotégé, isn’t even in the country. Gallivanting in Italy.”

“Spain.”

“Doesn’t matter where he is, does it? He’s out of the country and we’ve got no detective to investigate a murder. What are we supposed to do?”

“WPC Warren. I know Lawson has recommended her for the CID branch, and I hear?—”

“She’s still in training in Belfast. Won’t be available until the end of the year.”

“Pity. She’s smart as a whip, that one.”

“Well, she’s not here and neither is your chosen successor.”

“Call in Sergeant McCrabban.”

“Sergeant McCrabban has also done all of his days this month, and anyway he is at some kind of farm auction in Ballymena.”

“That sounds like a likely story.”

“Well, that’s what his wife said.”

“So I’m the only detective in all of Carrickfergus?”

“Yes.”

“And like Cinderella, I’ll be gone by midnight.”

“It has to be you, Sean.”

“I can’t do it. I already solved Sean Duffy’s Last Case. Everything else would be anticlimactic. You cannot, as Paul McCartney says, reheat a soufflé.”

“If you won’t do it, we’ll have to call in Larne CID,” he said, fixing me with his dark eyes.

“Larne CID?”

“What other choice do I have?”

“But...Larne? You know what they’re like.”

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