Jig slouched; his arse hung off the edge of the seat. He stretched his legs out under the desk, his blue adidas runners pointing up.
Crowe pushed open the door, followed by a colleague, Detective Spain. She walked around to the other side of the desk. She had her file in one hand and three new tapes in her other hand. She avoided Jig’s eyes for a few moments as she calmly placed her file in front of her.
She looked up as Jig’s dad was brought into the room and took the seat beside his son. He was like a boxer ready for a fight, flexing his neck from side to side. He turned and glared at Jig for a few long seconds. Jig leaned away, as if waiting, or expecting, an elbow into his ear.
Crowe ran her fingers around the wrapping on the tapes, savouring the family harmony.
‘Right, Jig, this is how it’s going to roll,’ she said.
The boy tried to adjust his seating, but the chair didn’t budge, bolted as it was to the ground.
‘I’m the only friend you’ve got in here,’ Crowe said. ‘I can speak up for you. But if you play the fool, I can’t help you. And I want to help you, Jig.’
‘What’s this,’ Hunter scoffed, ‘amateur hour at garda patrol?’
Jig glanced over at his dad.
‘Once I put these tapes in, Jig, it’s on the record,’ Crowe continued, making a point of keeping her eyes fixed on Jig and ignoring Hunter. She wanted Jig to realise she wasn’t interested in what his dad said, or what games he tried to play, she was focused only on him. ‘The cameras above and in front of you will capture everything, including how you react to questions.’ She took out the three tapes. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me before we start?’
‘As I told ya at the gaff, youse are wasting yer time,’ Hunter said.
‘Just to remind you, Mr Hunt,’ Crowe said, glancing over at him, ‘you are not allowed to interfere with the questioning. You are here only to observe.’
His mouth curled at one side.
‘Okay then,’ Crowe said, putting the tapes into the three decks, and hitting record and switching on the video recorder.
‘This is an interview of Jack Hunt, alias Jig, aged ten, born 30.11.99, address 42 Evergreen Close. He is in the company of his father James Hunt. An offer of consultation with a solicitor has been declined. Present are Detective Gardaí Tara Crowe and Martin Spain attached to Canal Road Garda Station. The time is 7.15 a.m. and the date is 04.06.10. This interview is being recorded on video and is being conducted at an interview room at Canal Road Garda Station. Jack Hunt is detained under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act on suspicion of withholding information. I’m conducting the interview. My name is Detective Garda Crowe, and Detective Garda Spain is taking notes. Jack, you are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but anything you do say will be taken down and may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
No response.
‘Do you understand, Jig?’ Crowe repeated calmly.
He nodded.
‘Jig has nodded he understands,’ Crowe said. ‘Do you know why you have been arrested?’
The boy shrugged.
Crowe wanted this to be by the book, nothing any lawyer could subsequently take issue with. She had to make it clear the boy understood everything he was being asked.
‘Jig. Do you understand why you have been arrested?’
‘Youse think I know something. But I don’t.’
‘Yes. You are being held on suspicion of withholding information. You understand that? I need an answer?’
‘Yeah. I bleeding understand.’
She let things settle for a moment, now the formalities were out of the way.
‘So, I hear you’re good at football?’
Jig looked up at her, surprised at the question.
‘Under-11s, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘From what I hear, you have talent. You could go places even.’
Jig’s face softened and he tilted his head as if to say ‘yeah, could’.
‘You’re a Manchester United fan, aren’t you?’
‘How ya know that?’
‘I’ve seen your Paul Scholes poster.’
Jig raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
Crowe could see he didn’t expect this. She knew she was a bit out of her comfort zone, given her lack of footballing knowledge. But she needed to build up some basic level of rapport, before she even began to touch on the matters at hand.
‘Close one this year,’ Crowe said, recalling her googling last night.
Jig nodded.
‘Last match of the season. Chelsea nosed you out by one point.’
‘Yeah, shite it was,’ Jig responded.
Crowe was happy so far. Now she wanted to make it a bit more personal.
‘Is that who you’d like to play for?’
Jig glanced up at her.
‘Would you like to play midfield for United, like Scholesy?’
The dad laughed.
She cut him a look, but wondered if she’d made an arse of her pronunciation.
‘How come Rooney’s not your favourite?’ she asked.
Jig looked at her, then to his dad.
‘Well?’ Crowe continued. ‘He scores the goals.’
‘Nothing would happen without Scholes,’ Jig said. ‘He makes it all happen from midfield.’
‘Where do you play?’
‘Same. Midfield. And I score too, like Scholes.’
Good, Crowe thought. A couple of sentences. She could see his dad wasn’t happy. He knew what she was doing.
‘He must be due to retire soon, though,’ she said. ‘United will miss him.’
Jig nodded.
And on it went. Crowe thinking of anything she could to do with Manchester United and Canal United.
‘The thing is, Jig,’ she said, ‘if you want to follow that dream, and you have the talent to maybe do it, you don’t want things to get in your way, do you?’
Jig shuffled in his chair. She could see his forehead glisten. His dad was already sweating like a pig after an hour in the room. Thanks to the heating. Even in the summer it was on: one of the bizarre quirks in many garda stations. And in the small interview rooms, such as this one, with no functioning window, it could get very uncomfortable.
‘What I’m saying, Jig, is – if you get caught up with people, the type you shouldn’t be caught up with, are you risking your dream?’
The muscles on Jig’s face tightened. She sensed he couldn’t help but take in what she was saying.
‘I wants to go to the jacks,’ Jig said, his legs hopping up and down.
She couldn’t deny him a toilet break. She glanced over at Detective Spain, who nodded.
‘Tell you what, Jig. Let’s break for ten minutes. You have a think about what we’ve been talking about. Mr Hunt, you can take a break too.’
Maggot. Maggot. Maggot. They counted up to thirty calls to Maggot’s number from the same mobile in the space of a few days. None were answered.
‘What day was the first of those calls?’ Crowe asked.
‘First was May,’ her colleague paused, ‘the thirty-first.’
‘Time?’
‘Ten p.m.’
Two hours after the shooting, she thought. ‘How many that day?’
‘After that, two more that night. Next day looks like five or six, same the next and so on.’
Crowe looked around at her search team. They had been busy going through their finds at the house. Their eyes told her they were thinking the same as her.
‘Seems they were very eager to talk to him,’ she said. ‘Which phone belongs to who?’ she asked the guard going through the phone. ‘We need to find Jig’s.’
‘The one we just went through has Jig’s name and Hunter’s on it, as well as Maggot.’
‘So that’s the mother’s,’ Crowe said.
‘This one has Jig, Maggot and The Moth,’ another guard said.
‘Okay, that must be her charming husband,’ Crowe replied.
‘And this has Maggot, Ma, Da,’ a third colleague said.
‘Okay, so that’s Jig’s. Let’s double check and ring those names from each of those phones, see what caller ID comes up. But do one phone at a time, yeah? And put in a request for subscriber details and billing.’
Crowe smiled at Jig as she walked back in, clasping a can of Fanta and a Mars bar in her hand. She let them down on the table and busied herself with her file. The dad was brought in and resumed his seat. Crowe could see him glancing around.
‘Right, Jig. Can we continue?’
She flicked through sheets and images in her file, sensing Jig’s eyes on the can. She let some moments pass.
‘Oh, by the way, I got you a drink. Nice and cold. Here,’ she said, sliding it across. ‘There’s chocolate too, if you’re hungry.’
She saw his arm raise, but his da let out a loud cough, and his arm retracted.
‘Well, it’s there,’ Crowe said, ‘if you want it later, Jig. Okay? No catches.’
She switched on the recording and stated the time and the fact that the interview was restarting.
‘Now, Jig, what were we talking about? Oh, football, wasn’t it, and your future?’
Crowe spent the next thirty minutes probing and pushing the issue, but Jig just shrugged and nodded, not in any difficult way, just as he would normally, Crowe thought. Through it all he teased himself by eyeing the Fanta and the bar.
Time for a different tack.
‘What about your friends, Jig? Any of them into football?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied.
‘All boys? Any girls play?’
‘One or two.’
‘Yeah, camogie seems to be the big thing now with girls, isn’t it?’
‘Suppose,’ he said.
‘Like your friend Sharon?’
She saw something dance fleetingly across his face at the mention of her name. He couldn’t disguise it.
‘She’s probably not much good though, is she?’
‘She’d leave ya on yer arse any day.’
Crowe smiled.
‘And what about Taylor? Did she play?’
It was like a slap across his face. His body jolted.
The dad slammed his hands down on the table and yawned. But Crowe pushed on.
‘Well, did Taylor play camogie?’
Jig nodded.
‘She any good?’
The boy dug his chin into his chest.
‘Jig?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, but Crowe barely heard him.
‘Her mother told me,’ Crowe said, ‘God help her, she’s in an awful state, that Taylor loved the majorettes the most. Been going to them since she was five years old.’
Jig slid down in his chair.
‘The poor girl won’t be going to the majorettes again.’
Jig closed his eyes as she spoke.
‘Only ten years old. Same as yourself.’
Crowe let that lie for a while. She could feel the dad stare her out, but she ignored him.
‘You’ll miss her, I’d say,’ she said.
Jig seemed to shrink under his T-shirt as he stared down at his legs.
‘Of course, I’d imagine, like us all, like his poor mother and sister, you’d want the people who did this caught?’
He twisted in his seat. Crowe could sense he felt he needed to reply to that.
‘Yeah,’ he said, but avoided her eyes.
‘Good, Jig. Good. So, what can you tell us about the shooting?’
She knew not to ask any leading questions. Not until she needed to anyway.
‘Just a bang. And me falling, smacking me head and going into the water.’
Okay, Crowe thought, that sounded true. But he must have seen more.
‘Did you get to see who was in the car, where the shot came from?’
‘Jesus, it’s fucking boiling in here,’ his dad shouted. ‘Can youse not open that bleeding window.’
‘Mr Hunt, you are not to –’
‘Not right ya know, these conditions are inhumane for people being interviewed and all. Kids particularly.’
On he went. He only stopped when Crowe threatened to throw him out and get a different adult to take his place.
But it worked. He had tripped her up and snapped Jig back into place. The boy simply refused to respond to anything else she asked and kept his gaze pinned in the direction of the floor. Crowe could see the dad smirking. He knew he had got to her. She tried to remain composed by flicking through her file.
‘You know, Taylor’s ma is down at that canal every day, several times a day. And, her other daughter, Megan, won’t walk the dogs any more. In fact, she barely goes out. That’s not right, Jig, is it? That the scumbags who did this could get away with it? Surely, you want to show me, and everyone, that you want to help?’
Jig kicked at the bolted table leg, twisted his face from side to side.
‘Jesus, you’re a great friend, aren’t you?’ Crowe said, putting an edge into her voice. ‘Taylor was shot dead and all you can do is squirm when I ask you for the tiniest bit of information about the lowlifes that did this.’
She stopped for a moment, but there was no reaction. She could feel her heart thumping.
‘She had the bottom half of her head blown off.’
Jig buried his head into his chest.
‘Ya want to watch yer tongue there, garda,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s a child.’
Crowe looked at Hunter and wondered, just for a moment, what it would be like to drive a fist into his rotten face.
She tried to blank him from her mind. She turned back to Jig, and took an image from her file, of Taylor on the ground post-shooting, and slid it over the table.
Jig sneaked a look. His eyes widened, then looked away.
Hunter said: ‘That’s out of –’
Crowe cut him off. ‘I am cautioning you again, Mr Hunt, not to interfere or I will have to remove you from the interview. Anyway, Jig knows what happened. He was there. He saw his friend’s face being blown off.’
That shut him up.
‘Now the question is, Jig, are you going to stand up for your friend and help catch her killers?’
‘I didn’t see who done it,’ Jig muttered.
‘What? What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing, eh?’ Crowe said.
‘I said I didn’t see who done it,’ Jig said, louder.
‘You know,’ Crowe said, leaning forward, ‘I find it hard to believe that you were almost directly opposite a parked car, from where the shot was fired, on a bright sunny day, and you can’t give the slightest piece of information about who was inside it, how many, or even the slightest description of the vehicle?’
Hunter shifted in his seat. Jig slunk down.
‘You know, you could get the impression, you want to protect the killers more than protect Taylor. I wonder what her family would make of that, if they knew.’
Jig shot forward.
‘I didn’t fucking see who done it, right!’ he roared, his cheeks flushed. ‘I just heard a bang and saw Tay’s head going sideways. I saw no one.’
Jig folded his arms and tucked his chin back in, breathing hard.
Crowe felt a bit derailed. She had pushed a wedge in, but it just popped back out. The boy seemed genuine. His dad even appeared taken off guard by the outburst. After a moment, he nodded at Crowe, as if to say end of story.
‘Jig, where’s your brother at?’ she said, undeterred.
Jig shook his head.
‘He’s probably off riding some young one,’ Hunter said. ‘Bit of a ladies’ man. Like his da.’
‘That must cost,’ Crowe said.
Her colleague muffled a laugh. It wiped the sheen of smugness off Hunter’s face. Crowe enjoyed that, even if the interview was going nowhere.
‘What about the calls from your phone to Maggot’s phone?’ she asked.
No response.
‘There were ten calls from your phone. Starting after the shooting.’
Crowe leaned forward to Jig.
‘Well, why were you ringing him?’
‘Just was.’
‘Tell me, Jig, how would you feel, if it turns out that Maggot was in that car where the shots came from, and your friend minus her head.’
Jig squirmed on his arse.
‘Were you ringing him because you saw him in that car?’
No response.
She could feel Hunter staring at her, probably taking a mental note to add her to his shortlist of detectives to hate. To keep there for the rest of his toxic life. That was the lot of a real detective. She knew that now. She always thought she lacked the hardness to take on scum like Jig’s dad, the likes of the Canal Gang, face to face: that the hardness just wasn’t in her bones. But she was wrong. It just needed enough reason to show itself.
‘You need to understand, Jig, the situation you face. It wasn’t just a girl that was killed, as horrendous as that was. A garda was too, only twelve years older than Taylor. Another young garda is in a coma with a severed spine. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who is linked with the gang behind this will have the gardaí on their backs for the rest of their lives. You need to realise that, if you insist on keeping your mouth shut.’
Jig didn’t look up, so she fixed her gaze on Hunter. He was struggling to maintain that layer of smugness on his face. Even he knew what it meant for his son.
‘Jig?’ Crowe said, leaning her head low and trying to look up into his eyes, ‘you need to realise that anyone associated with the gang, say to Ghost, is included in that.’ She noticed Jig reacting to Ghost’s name and continued. ‘No matter how young they are. They are marked for life. You hear what I’m saying, Jig? Help me. Then, I can help you.’
She thought she saw Jig dart his eyes up at her from under his thin eyebrows.
‘Jesus, me T-shirt is stuck to me,’ Hunter muttered, picking the edges of it and pulling them out, his arm brushing off Jig’s shoulder.
The boy looked down, and was silent.
Crowe leaned back and tidied her file. She terminated the interview. Jig was brought away.
‘Nice try, garda,’ Hunter said, as she went for the door, ‘but even if Jig knew anything – and he doesn’t – the Hunts are no rats.’