The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) (28 page)

Billy Randall glanced at Charlie, who just gave a little shrug, before nodding around the mourners. ‘I did nothing wrong. With all due respect to his family and loved ones here today, Jimbo was a little shit and Charlie could have wiped the grin from his face very easily. I chose not to.’

‘But did you, during the course of your visit, notice their pet dog?’

‘The stuffed dog?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Where was it?’

‘In the living room where we were talking. Why? I don’t understand the relevance of—’

‘Because it’s what this is all about. Jimbo and Ronny stole the stuffed dog from the home of the Chief Constable. Isn’t that right, Chief ?’

I don’t know if anyone had ever addressed him simply as Chief before. He didn’t look particularly happy with it, or maybe it was the fact that he was being questioned by a bookseller and part-time private detective in a crematorium full of mourners.

‘The dog was stolen, I don’t know who by.’

‘But Jimbo and Ronny had recently completed work on your house?’

‘They worked there. Whether it was completed or not is a matter of some dispute.’

‘They stole your dog and you wanted it back, and there were no lengths you wouldn’t go to to ensure its return, including murdering them. You have the expertise; you know how to cover your tracks. You killed them; stand up and admit it.’

‘I did not and would not murder anyone. That is an outrageous slander, and when this is over I fully intend to make sure you—’

‘Were you aware that the stuffed dog contained a recording device, placed in it by MI5?’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Placed in your Jack Russell by taxidermist William Gunn, at the request of MI5.’

‘That’s simply not . . . What would be the point? It only ever sat in my lounge.’

‘Where you met with representatives of paramilitary organisations plotting to destabilise the country, foment civil war and ultimately seize power in order to proclaim a Protestant state, all of it captured by the bugged Jack Russell.’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Or do you do that kind of plotting at work?’

‘I’m not even going to dignify that with a—’

‘Which brings us to MI5, who bugged your dog, and your house, and threatened me and my staff. They’ve been running around like headless chickens looking for your dog because they’ve been caught out snooping. They claim it was a training exercise that went wrong, but frankly I’m not convinced. Greg, you’re like every Little Englander who gets posted abroad; just because you have a gob full of marbles you seem to think that’s enough to impress the natives. I think you got transferred to your nice new regional headquarters and blustered in thinking you were going to show the Paddies how it was done, except you screwed it up. Especially as according to the insurance report, it was your BMW that actually knocked down Patch, not the trainee you tried to blame.’

‘That’s simply not true.’

‘Okay.’

‘Can I ask where you’re going with this? Because you’re making a total prick of yourself.’

‘Is it not rather enlightening to have everyone involved in one room? When’s the last time you sat down with Girth Biggs, aka Smally Biggs, aka Samson Biggs, aka Willy Biggs, aka Aka for a chat?’

Greg merely shook his head, but Smally stood and gave a little bow, grinning.

‘Surely, though,’ I continued, ‘Smally’s an equally likely candidate for these murders. How old are you, Smally?’

‘Forty-two, if it’s any of your business.’

‘And how many of those years have you spent inside for violent behaviour?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘And you control the drugs business in East Belfast?’

‘I’m a community worker.’

‘The same thing, is it not?’

Smally shrugged. ‘What’s your point?’

‘My point is, Jimbo and Ronny were known drug-takers, they were fond of messing people about, and their bank accounts show they had very little money. With Jimbo having a baby due, they tried to scam you, and you had to teach not just them a lesson, but every punk in East Belfast who would even think about trying to rip you off. You slaughtered them to show everyone you were the boss, the kingpin, the Godfather, the Market Stall Don. It was you.’

‘Sorry, mate, but you’re way off the mark.’

‘Uhuh, uhuh?’

‘Jimbo is almost family. Pat there’s my sister.’

‘I knew that,’ I said.

‘And Jimbo was straight as they come, and we were all proud of him, and the reason I wanted that fucking dog was that word on the street knew it had something to do with the murders because all these suits were running around asking about it, but nobody knew what, so I tried to get my hands on it to help my sister the only way I knew how.’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘So get off the pot or fucking shit in it.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

They were still outraged by my decision to stand up and confront them with my suspicions, but I had at least managed to suck them in. They wanted to know. Even the decorators were enthralled, like they were watching the Saturday afternoon matinée. I had always planned to throw accusations out willy-nilly to see what stuck or if any of the suspects cracked under public scrutiny, and the fact that none of them had was neither a condemnation of my approach nor the death knell for my ultimate objective, the unmasking of the killer. There is a joy in making people dance to my tune, even if they don’t recognise that tune.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you didn’t do it, and you didn’t do it, and you didn’t do it, then who does that leave?’

I studied my audience. Several stared back defiantly. Others looked away. Even the decorators, innocent to a man, looked shifty under the intense spotlight of my two albino eyes. But finally my tractor beams settled where they were always going to settle. The show was over, the last dance performed, the bouncers moving in and shouting at everyone to clear out.

‘Pat? It wasn’t you, was it? Working class, you have paramilitary genes, and you’re pregnantly hormonal; isn’t that just the lethal combination? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you nothing less than a crime of passion!’ I pointed straight at her.
‘J’accuse!’

It took Pat a while to get all of the swearing out of her system. It took the decorators a while longer. They seemed to think it was a step too far, what with her being near enough a widow and definitely an expect ant mother. Yet you cannot fail to expose a murderer just to spare her feelings, although you mightn’t have thought that if you’d looked at Alison’s face, and then her feet, moving down the aisle, prepared to lead me back to my seat or out of the building by the ear to save me from a lynching. She was stopped in her tracks by DI Robinson, beating her and the lynch mob to the front and shouting out, ‘We’ve come this far, let him finish!’

He had authority, DI Robinson.

It was a good thing.

Although they were not kindly disposed to me, it did not alter the nature of the truth or my need to reveal it. Sometimes the truth is unpalatable. I do not sugar almonds.

Having quelled the crowd, Robinson glanced back at me. ‘This had better be better than good, it better be better than good.’

I was confident.

‘I believe . . .’

‘You
believe
?’

‘I believe I can
prove
that Pat murdered Jimbo.’ I raised my voice again and addressed my audience. ‘She killed him in a fit of temper brought on by his and Ronny’s failure to be paid for the work on the Chief Constable’s house and their subsequent theft of the Jack Russell.’

Pat was standing, her eyeliner all run, both hands on her pregnant stomach. ‘Will . . . someone . . . get this . . . monster . . . out of here?!’

‘Pat, I’m sorry, you told me that you wanted to remember Jimbo the way he was, so you had a closed coffin. Yet our decorator chum here has just told us that he looked down at Jimbo’s face. Can you explain that?’

‘Is that it?’

‘It’s part of it.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ she exploded. ‘I did have the coffin closed because I didn’t want to look at him. But I didn’t have it nailed shut. Anyone who wanted to look could take a look and some of them did! Is that really fucking it?’

‘No – no. It’s only about forty per cent of it.’

Robinson, still with his back to me, glanced around. ‘Are you kidding?’

‘No, look, bear with me, this works, it fits, I’ve investigated dozens of crimes, I’ve read thousands of novels. I’m convinced. It all comes back to the dog.’

‘This bloody dog.’

‘Bear with me. Please. Everyone. Apart from the murderer, the dead dog is the only witness to these killings. It’s also important as a surveillance plant from MI5. Right from the off they knew Jimbo and Ronny had it and were very quick to try and get it back, but for whatever reason – badness or money – they wouldn’t hand it over; then when they were murdered, MI5 came to Pat, wanting to know where it was, even burgling her house trying to get it. She claims burglars stole it; maybe she confided in her brother there, Smally, and maybe he even sent the burglars to get it.’

‘That’s a fucking lie!’ Smally yelled. ‘You’re a dead man!’

‘You go near him, I’ll kill
you
, you bastard!’

That was Alison.

‘Please,’ said the Revd Delargey, ‘this is still a funeral. Could we not leave this until after the cremation?’

The decorators began to applaud.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not. This is my entire point. Pat claimed that the Jack Russell was stolen. Yet she was at my girlfriend’s house this morning. That’s her over there. Isn’t she pretty? We’re having a baby too. But anyway, Pat was over with us this morning, and she got upset and she gave me a hug, and I sneezed in her face, and the reason I sneezed in her face is that I’m allergic to dogs, even the lingering traces of dogs, even dogs in the same house. She had essence of Patch on her, his hairs, and they set me off.’

‘Is
that
it?’ DI Robinson asked.

‘That’s just mental!’ Pat was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘I petted the neighbour’s dog on the way out this morning! Christ, if you’re standing there because—’

‘Because I also sneezed when I stood by Jimbo’s coffin.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Pat demanded.

‘What
are
you talking about?’ DI Robinson seconded.

‘I’m talking about Patch and the fact that Pat knew everyone was looking for him and she had to know why, so she opened him up and found electronics inside him.’ She shook her head. I persevered. ‘You might not have known exactly what it was, but I think you had a pretty good guess that it was something to do with surveillance, and you knew that if that’s what it was, then it might have recorded you killing your boyfriend and then Ronny when he stumbled in on you. You’re not stupid, you’ve seen enough movies, enough cop shows on the telly to know that if they can pinpoint a mobile phone or a heat source via helicopter or satellite, then there’s a fair chance they could track down whatever you found in Patch, so you couldn’t just get rid of it in the trash or throw it in a lake or bury it in the back garden; you had to make sure it was totally destroyed and Patch along with it. What’s better than an industrial furnace capable of generating temperatures of nine hundred and eighty degrees centigrade?’ I nodded at her, and then around my now mesmerised audience, before turning to look at Jimbo’s coffin. ‘What about putting Patch in the coffin along with your loved one, disintegrating the father of your child and the evidence that you killed him with one push of a button? Is that not what happened? Is it not? Eh? Eh?’

The ‘Eh? Eh?’ might have seemed over the top, but you must understand, I was trying to goad the suspect into an outburst that might condemn her further. I wasn’t myself excited. I was calm. I have to be. Any excitement might unduly affect my blood pressure, which constantly hovers on the verge of stroke. My manner remains serene at all times. Some people mistake it for vacancy. They have learned, often to their cost, that I am anything but vacant.

Under these circumstances, however, it was rather difficult to remain completely serene. It was not only my accusation that seemed to upset everyone further; it was my demand that the coffin be immediately opened. It was, after all, the only way to prove or disprove my theory. They must have been able to see the logic in this, but humans are not often logical creatures; they are ruled by their hearts and their emotions, and they seemed to find it reprehensible that I wished to delay the final journey of their loved one even further. It is exactly these types of people who get hot under the collar when a train is delayed or traffic is in a jam, when really they need to relax and realise that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter if a bus, or a train, or a coffin, does not adhere to some ultimately meaningless timetable.

‘What’s the difference?’ I demanded of DI Robinson as he pulled me off to one side of the crematorium. ‘He’s dead.’

‘I know he’s dead, you halfwit. And so will you be if you don’t stop your yammering.’

‘I’m only trying to—’

‘I know what you’re trying to do.’

‘I’m not wrong.’

He took a deep breath and glanced back at Jimbo. Smally Biggs, several other relatives and most of the decorators had taken up defensive positions around the coffin. The Revd Delargey was saying a prayer over it. The crematorium manager, name of McManus, had arrived and was now bearing the brunt of a verbal assault from Pat. He did a lot of nodding, and then came over to us. He was a rotund man with an in appropriate number of laughter lines. He said, ‘The cremation of a human body is a highly emotional occasion for those taking part. Our job here is to create and maintain an atmosphere of reverence and respect throughout the proceedings – and you, sir . . .’ he nodded at me, ‘have made a mockery of this day. You should be ashamed of yourself. And you . . .’ he glared at DI Robinson, ‘are scarcely any better.’

DI Robinson said, ‘That may be, but this remains a murder investigation, and if there is even a remote possibility that evidence may have been—’

McManus cut in with, ‘The Code of Cremation Practice forbids the opening of the coffin once it has arrived at the crematorium.’