Page 96 of Hang on St. Christopher

“Do me a favor, Crabbie, and see if you can contact a Superintendent Anthony Clare. He works for Jill Dumont at Special Branch Intel.”

“I’ll look him up,” Crabbie replied.

“When you find him, tell him about the phone bug in my house and get an FO team to the Knockagh Monument. I tried to lure out our suspect, and it didn’t work.”

“You went up to the Knockagh, on a stakeout, by yourself in that condition?”

“What condition’s that?”

“You’re half tore, Sean.”

“Am I?” I asked aggressively.

“Yes. Go on home to bed, Sean, I’ll handle things here. And when you’ve had a night’s kip, I’ll get Special Branch to your house.”

“Nah, no time for kip. Let’s do it now.”

“I think you should go home to your own bed, Sean. For your own good.”

I turned suddenly to look at him. “The fuck do you mean by that?”

“Nothing. Get some rest,” he said placidly.

“You said go home to yourownbed. What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing. Good night, Sean,” he said, and closed the door and left me standing there in Lawson’s office.

“That bastard. That stuck-up, holier-than-thou Proddy bastard!” I snarled.

I poured myself three fingers of whisky and drank it back neat.

I sat down.

My head was swimming.

I took another shot of whisky and got up. I stormed out of the office, into the incident room. One of the night duty constables scurried away, sensing a blowup. Good instincts.

“Where are you, John?” I yelled.

No answer.

“Where are you!”

Again no answer.

“Hide if you must! And yeah, you handle it, pal. You bloody handle it!” I yelled, and banged the table and stormed out to the Beemer to drive home drunk.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and skid off the road into the fucking sea,” I said to Mirror Duffy.

But now Mirror Duffy wasn’t even there, the sleekit conniving stupid bastard.

CHAPTER14

SUPERINTENDENT CLARE

Discontented, unhappy sleep. How could it be otherwise? I woke up at eight and stared at the rain hammering the windows for a long time.

“You know this is supposed to be summer,” I said to no one in particular.

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