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him.”
    “What’s going on, mate? Have you really found something out?”
    “I’ve only gone and cracked the bloody case, so I have,” he said.
    “Our John Doe in the suitcase?”
    “What else?”
    “Go on then, you’re killing me.”
    “Well, I was on the late shift anyway to cover the station, so I thought instead of breaking out the old stash of Penthouses and having a wank I’d do something useful and get back on that suitcase …”
    “Yes . . ?”
    “No forensics at all. No liftable prints. Blood belongs to our boy. But you know the wee plastic window where people write their addresses?”
    “McCrabban already checked that window – there was no address card in there. No one would be that much of an eejit.”
    “That’s what I thought too, but I cut it open and I noticed a wee sliver of card scrunched up in the bottom of the window. You couldn’t possibly have seen it unless you cut open the plastic and shone a torch down into the gap.”
    “Shite.”
    “Shite is right, mate.”
    “It was an old address card?”
    “I got a pair of tweezers, pulled it out, unscrunched it and lo and behold I’ve only gone and got the name and address of the person who owned the suitcase!”
    “Who was it?”
    “Somebody local. A bloke called Martin McAlpine, Red Hall Cottage, The Mill Bay Road, Ballyharry, Islandmagee. What do you think about that?”
    “So it wasn’t the dead American’s suitcase, then?”
    “Doesn’t look like it, does it? It’s like you always say, Sean, the concept of the master criminal is a myth. Most crooks are bloody eejits.”
    “You’re a star, Matty, my lad.”
    “An underappreciated star. What’s our next move, boss?”
    “I think, Matty, that you and me will be paying Mr McAlpine a wee visit first thing in the morning.”
    “Tomorrow? It’s a Saturday.”
    “So?”
    He groaned.
    “Nothing. Sounds like a plan.”
    “See you at the barracks. Seven sharp.”
    “Can’t we go later?”
    “Can’t go later, mate. I’m having me portrait done by Lucian Freud and then I’m off to Anfield, playing centre back for Liverpool on account of Alan Hansen’s injury.”
    “Come on, Sean, I like to sleep in on a Saturday.”
    “Nah, mate, we’ll go early, get the drop on him. It’ll be fun.”
    “All right.”
    “And well done again, pal. You did good.”
    I hung up the phone. Funny how things turned out. Just like that, very quickly indeed, this potentially tricky investigation was breaking wide open.

4: MACHINE GUN SILHOUETTE
    The alarm was set to Sports Talk on Downtown Radio which was a nice non-threatening way to start the day. The conversation this morning was about Northern Ireland’s chances in the 1982 World Cup. The topic, as usual, had gotten round to George Best and whether the thirty-five-year-old had any game left in him. The last I had heard of Best was his notorious stint playing with Hibernian when he was more famous for out-drinking the entire French rugby team and seducing the reigning Misses World and Universe in the same weekend.
    I turned off the radio, made coffee, dressed in a black polo neck sweater, jeans and DM shoes, went outside. I checked under the BMW for any mercury tilt explosives but didn’t find any. Right about now seven thousand RUC men and women were all doing the same thing. One or two of them would find a bomb and after shitting their pants they’d be on the phone to the bomb squad, thanking their lucky stars that they’d kept to their morning routine.
    I stuck on the radio and listened to Brian Eno on the short drive to the barracks. Wasn’t a big fan of Eno but it was either that or the news and I couldn’t listen to the news. Who could, apart from those longing for the end times.
    I thought about Laura. I didn’t know what to do. Was I in love with her? What did that feel like? If she went away it would hurt, it would ache. Was that love? How come I was thirty-twoand I didn’t know? Was that bloody normal? “Jesus,” I