Interrogations resumed at Corry Square the following morning. McCrink stood at the back of the interrogation room.
Mervyn Graham was the first to be brought into the interview room. He rolled a Golden Virginia from a tin using a rolling machine. He confirmed that he had offered Robert an apprenticeship as a shoemaker. That he was due to start soon.
‘McGladdery never done it.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He doesn’t have it in him.’
‘Everybody has it in them.’
‘Not this buck.’
‘The whole town seen him acting the hard man.’
‘Acting isn’t being.’
‘What makes you such a judge of character?’
‘I was in the war. I seen enough men die. Talking about judges, I hear tell Curran’s going to try the case.’
‘That’s up to the DPP.’
‘DPP my eye. If Curran wants to try it, he’ll try it. And I do believe he wants to.’
‘He might disqualify himself.’
‘He should have disqualified himself many a long year ago. He’s hunger’s mother, that boy.’
‘The case will be tried according to its merits.’
‘If Judge Curran takes the bench, it’ll be the rope for McGladdery.’
‘What was McGladdery wearing that night?’ Johnston said.
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’
‘You’ve got eyes in your head. Did McGladdery own a light-blue suit?’
‘I don’t know.’
The next witness was a small man called Donaldson who wore a white shirt buttoned to the collar, the sleeves rolled down to the wrists. One side of his face was covered by a port-wine scar.
‘That McGladdery was a bad lot.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Speers said.
‘Conceived out of wedlock.’
‘Did you know the girl?’
‘I never knew her nor any of her kin. She reaped what she sowed.’
‘What about the boy that killed her?’ Johnston said.
‘An instrument of the Lord.’
‘Do you do the bit of pulpit bashing yourself?’
‘I am a lay preacher at the Church of the Risen Christ, if that is what you mean by your reference to the pulpit,’ Donaldson said.
‘What he means,’ Johnston said, ‘is would you ever consider yourself an instrument of the Lord? I mean would you harvest what was sown in the way of nineteen-year-old girls on their way home after a dance? Are you a deviant, Mr Donaldson?’
‘You do not number yourself among the godly, Sergeant,’ Donaldson said.
‘I leave it up to God to do the numbering. That way there’s no mistakes made,’ Johnston said.
‘What do you do for a living, Mr Donaldson?’ Speers said.
‘I fix cars, lorries, anything with an engine.’
‘You like to get in among the innards, is that it?’ Johnston said.
‘It’s honest toil. You do work that you have a gift for. Mine is engines.’
‘Mine is thieves and murderers,’ Johnston said. ‘I labour among the vineyards of the depraved. Did you see McGladdery at the dance?’
‘I seen him dancing with the dead girl and others.’
‘What was he wearing?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘A light-coloured suit maybe?’
‘Could have been.’
‘Jesus, we landed ourselves in Bible country here,’ Johnston said afterwards. ‘The kingdom of heaven.’
‘What was he doing at a dance if he’s so God-fearing?’ Speers said.
‘They like to keep an eye on proceedings. Tongue hanging out for it if you ask me,’ Johnston said, ‘the forbidden fruit. Who’s next?’
The girl had a fringe of greasy blonde hair which almost covered her eyes. She kept her head down as she talked. There was dermatitis on her hands. Her name was Susan Hanna.
‘What is it with this town and skin?’ Speers said. McCrink thought it was something to do with the damp earth under their feet. There were wreathing vapours on the Marshes at night. You saw people with psoriasis and eczema, all kinds of skin flare-ups.
‘Looks like a medieval town,’ Speers said, ‘you think you’re going to see weeping sores and cankers.’
‘What do you do, Miss Hanna?’ Speers asked.
‘I work in the valley dyeworks. In the soakpits.’ McCrink looked at the girl’s hands again. You could see where red dye had seeped into the skin.
‘You were present in the Robert Thompson Memorial Orange Hall on the night of 28th January.’
‘I was there. I seen Robert McGladdery and Pearl Gamble. I seen them dancing together. She did have him tormented.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Teasing him. Leading him on.’
‘Teasing?’
‘Beguilement.’ McCrink tried to see the girl’s eyes but she kept her head down, talking in a monotone.
‘She slowdanced him dead close till she had him brave and roused and then she rose up and laughed in his face. She pushed him away. She scorned him. It was like death laughed at you the way she done it.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He walked after her as she went back to her friend. He had a black look on him. He was like a tale of vengeance from the testament.’
‘You’re making this up,’ Johnston said, ‘you’ve some detestation against the victim. Maybe you set your hat at McGladdery and you saw her dancing with him. Maybe you’re glad she’s dead.’
‘By the risen Christ I had no ill will towards her. I brung the plain news to you as we are bid. You bear witness. What else would you do? The day passes as it must. All that remains is for to tell it.’
‘What else did you see?’
‘Nothing. I heard about her dying. There was a narration of slaughter in the night. I got up the next morning. I went to work in the dyeworks. I went on my knees in the soakpits.’
‘What was he wearing?’
‘What?’
‘McGladdery. What was he wearing?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘If you had to take a guess.’
‘Guesswork isn’t called for.’
The girl lifted her head for the first time. The dermatitis had affected the skin around her eyes, the eye itself reddened and sore and the skin broken so that she looked at them through a mask of affliction. The wind outside blew hail against the window and the room darkened as a squall passed up the lough.
Johnston moved around the table until he stood in front of her and she flinched as he loomed over her like some lawbringer from the testament of her youth, a visitant authorised to bring her before the seat of judgement.
‘Leave me be,’ she said.
‘He’s not going to hurt you,’ Speers said.
‘I should never have gone to the dance,’ she said. ‘I was told and I never listened.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Speers said. ‘All we want to know is what you saw that night.’
‘Who are you to talk to me of fault?’
‘What was McGladdery wearing?’ Johnston said. ‘What was his attire? Was he wearing a light-coloured suit?’
‘I paid no heed to his attire,’ the girl said.
‘Are you certain? A minute ago you were all eyes.’
‘That’s enough,’ McCrink said, ‘we’re finished with you now, miss.’
The girl left, scurrying from the room, eyes downcast, as though released from some awful service to them. Johnston sat back in his chair and loosened his tunic.
‘I felt like I just went three hours with some hell-and-brimstone boy baying from the pulpit,’ Speers said.
‘If she was that good-living then what was she doing at an occasion of sin? Same as the last boy.’
‘They like being an outpost,’ Speers said. ‘Surrounded by unbelievers.’
‘What do you think of the scabby bitch’s story?’ Johnston said. ‘Never heard that Pearl was pulling McGladdery’s chain.’
‘You could put her in the witness box,’ McCrink said. ‘It’s the first thing I’ve heard that goes towards motive. Pearl turned McGladdery down and he took his revenge.’
‘There’s motive enough in the way he left her,’ Johnston said. ‘What more motive does he need?’
McCrink returned to the Great Northern that evening with the file containing the transcripts of the previous day’s interviews. A dinner dance was taking place in the hotel ballroom. There was a middle-European look to the dance crowd, men with hooded eyes and women in crinolines and satins, the strains of a waltz coming from the ballroom, an atmosphere of low-key intrigue running through the evening. McCrink crossed the carpet, people eyeing him, a shambling figure bringing with him the smell of the outlands. As he stood at the reception desk he felt someone touch his elbow. He recognised the man behind him from press photographs. Brian Faulkner, Minister for Home Affairs. Faulkner was wearing evening dress. McCrink was aware that there was mud on his shoes. He felt uncouth, tainted by contact with the case.
‘Good evening, Inspector,’ Faulkner said, ‘let me congratulate you on your appointment.’
‘Thank you, Minister.’
‘You look tired. You must be putting in long hours on this dreadful Gamble business. A guilty verdict is assured, from what I hear.’
‘We’re collecting evidence, sir.’
‘I have been told that an early resolution to the case is expected. That you can connect a man to the murder.’
‘Connection is not conviction, with respect, sir.’
‘You haven’t worked on a murder case in the province before, have you, Detective?’
‘No, my experience is confined to the Met.’
‘Trust me. There will be a conviction. You do your job and I’ll do mine. I must return to my company. But once again my warmest congratulations.’
McCrink looked after Faulkner. You do your job and I’ll do mine. In the case of a death sentence appeals for clemency went through the Minister for Home Affairs. Faulkner was looking for a hanging.
He brought the file to the bedroom and sat down on the bed. The file already gathering history to itself, detectives’ desks, grubby interview rooms, the cover handled and foxed. It looked as if it contained something fragile. He found himself thinking of scrolls, ancient papyrus at the edge of decipherment, containing all that there was to be known about lost times and dead races, the Aramaeans and Phoenicians, the out-of-reach languages and dialects. There was scope for awe here, he felt.
McCrink read until eleven o’clock then he closed the file and went down to the bar. He could hear waltz music from the ballroom. He ordered a whiskey and soda from a white-jacketed barman. There were men in black tie sitting in the lobby, melancholy, predatory figures. McCrink felt that he had found himself among some lost bourgeoisie. There was a between-the-wars atmosphere in the room.
He looked up to see the librarian approaching him. She was wearing a peasant-style blouse and skirt. She had taken off her shoes and was walking barefoot on the carpet. Her hair hung to her shoulders. Her fringe partly covered her eyes. He saw the wry twist to her mouth, an outgrown coquettishness in her manner. She’d been drinking. The gone-to-seed small-town beauty.
‘Detective McCrink. Are you here on sport or business?’
‘Business. I’m staying here.’
‘Have you solved the slaying of poor dear Pearl yet?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘That’s what you get when you tease a man. Lead him on.’
‘Is that what Pearl did? Lead him on?’
‘That’s what they’re whispering round the town. You want to know what they’re whispering about me? There she is. Near forty and not a man to show for it. Neither chick nor child. They’re whispering maybe broken engagement. Jilted or thrown over. Take your pick. You’re the detective. Detect a broken heart for me.’
‘I’d say it’s more a matter of you breaking hearts.’
‘That’s what I like to hear, a bit of world-weary gallantry. There’s precious little by the way of chivalry in these parts.’
The lines sounded false, committed to memory. McCrink knew he’d be able to pick her out in the drama society photographs in the Reporter, going back years. In among the grainy smudged faces. Working her way up through the chorus line. Playing the principal boy in the pantomime in her twenties. Wearing tights and a hat set at a jaunty angle, a pencilled-in moustache, bringing a brittle transgender element into play, the dames standing around in powdered wigs.
‘Come out onto the terrace with me,’ she said.
The dance had ended. People were making their way to cars parked on the pavement outside. They went out onto the terrace overlooking the lough. At the head of the lough he could see the lights of Newry reflected on the underside of the turbulent cloud. The sea was choppy, gusty northerlies blowing onshore.
‘You’ll never find out what happened that night,’ she said. ‘You can hang who you like. It’s the town’s business and the town will take care of it.’
‘What was the word you used? The one that means thief?’
‘Nyuk.’ She screwed up her face to say it. Her shoulders hunched. It made her look momentarily like some shuffling felon beckoning from the shadows.
He knew she would come back to his bedroom. She went ahead of him down the corridor. She had a loping walk. In bed she was earnest, working into the moment with deft, artisanal touches, libidinous gestures with a planned feel to them. Put your hand. Wait. Leading towards the centre, the hand-pushes and gasped biddings. Piecing together the narrative in the dark.
When she was asleep McCrink got up and took the case file over to the dressing table. He turned on the light and read for an hour. Trying to tease the outlines of a suspect from the halting accounts of the dance. Most of the witnesses careful about how they described what they had seen that night, picking their way through the shadows of it. Buses coming in from the country to the Orange hall. The shadow of rural temperance societies.
He closed the file and went to the window. He stepped out onto a low balcony facing the sea. He could see shallow waves breaking on the shingle beach. McCrink knew the lough to be dangerous. There were tidal races and undertows, sand bars at the entrance, wind sheers and deadly squalls coming off the rock faces on the southern shores. There were stories of pleasure craft foundered, boats gone aground or lost, suicides swept out to sea, drunks lost overboard. Three or four deaths on the lough every year.