I Hear the Sirens in the Street

I went to interview the widow McAlpine and she told me about her husband’s murder and the fact that shehad left her husband’s old things including that suitcase at the Salvation Army in Carrickfergus just before Christmas.”
    “What’s any of that got to do with Dougherty?”
    “He was the investigating officer on the husband’s murder.”
    “And?”
    “Well … I think he botched it.”
    “How?”
    “I think there’s at least a chance that she killed him. In Dougherty’s theory the gunmen shot at him from behind a wall twenty yards away but he was clearly shot at point blank by someone who knew him.”
    “Why someone who knew him?”
    “He let the killer walk right up to him, he didn’t draw his gun, his vicious guard dog didn’t get involved.”
    “And you went and told Dougherty about these doubts?”
    “Yes.”
    “And left it at that?”
    “And left it at that. It was a tangent. As my youthful sidekick explained to me, it was an SEP: someone else’s problem.”
    Tony nodded and rubbed his sideburns. “So, what? You think you might have shaken Dougherty out of his hammock and the old geezer went to stir some shit?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. Mind if I look around?”
    “Be my guest.”
    I walked the length of the driveway and stopped in front of the garage. I peered at the bullet holes. They were wildly far apart. Feet, instead of inches.
    “He was shot three times in the chest?”
    “That’s what they tell me. Three in the chest, three in the garage.”
    “What’s normally the next step in a case like this?”
    “Our next step, Sean, will be to attempt to trace the gun by analysing the slugs. Canvass for witnesses, of which there won’t be any, none that will testify certainly. Put the word out for tips,offer a reward …”
    We had finished our smokes now and Tony fished into his pocket and took out his packet of Player’s.
    He lit me one. “Smoking can cause cancer”, it said on the packet. It was a fine time to bring that up.
    The day had turned cold and fog was rolling down the hill and where it met the electricity pylons little halos of Saint Elmo’s fire were forming, vanishing and reforming again.
    I took a puff of the Player. It was pretty rough.
    “In other words, Chief Inspector, after the condemnation by the politicians and after the church service ends and the TV cameras leave, this case will go nowhere.”
    He was a little ticked at that. “I don’t know how things are done in your manor, mate, but we take every case seriously. It’s not my fucking fault that it’s nearly fucking impossible to break up an IRA cell, is it?”
    I nodded and threw the ciggie away. I walked over to the garage again.
    “Three rounds in the garage.”
    “So.”
    “When does an IRA hit team miss not once, not twice, but three times?”
    “I’d stake my pension that this is an ordinary assassination by an ordinary IRA cell.”
    “Stake something worth a damn. None of us are making old bones, are we? But let’s give it your best-case argument. Let’s say they’ve brought along a newcomer who’s on his first job. They have to blood the newcomers somehow, don’t they? Every killer has a first time.”
    “Aye.”
    “So after the new boy misses and sticks three in the garage door and Dougherty gets his gun out, then his partner can’t take any more of it and shoots him in the chest.”
    “Sounds reasonable,” Tony admitted.
    “Two things, Tony. Two things. First, Dougherty is old and fat and drunk and fucking slow ! For him to get that gun out of that leather holster, this team must really be shite.”
    Tony nodded. “What’s the second thing?”
    “The second thing is that in this scenario the slugs can’t all have come from the same gun. The ones in the garage will be from a different weapon from the ones in Dougherty … But they’re not, are they?”
    “Aaahh,” Tony said and shook his head. “Missed that. No, you’re right. Preliminary ballistics suggests that—”
    “Lets say the widow McAlpine comes up here. She’s never fired a hand gun before in her life, she squeezes one off, she misses, he turns, she misses again, he starts fumbling for his gun, she misses again, he’s nearly got the .38 out and she finally hits the fucker and hits him again and again.”
    “Why?”
    “Let’s say you wanted to kill a copper. For whatever reason. Maybe he fucked your wife or embezzled you or something. Say anything. Now, if you or someone close to you was in