Gun Street Girl by Adrian McKinty Read Free Book Online Page B

him what you think of him and then shoot him.”
    â€œSo?” I said.
    â€œSo the mother isn’t just going to be sitting in the chair watching TV during all this, is she? She’s going to be between the two of them, or, you know, at least out of her chair.”
    â€œHmmm. Inspector Duffy, perhaps you should share with our new officers the concerns you had this morning, too,” Crabbie said.
    I lit another ciggie and offered the pack around. Neither of the newbies wanted one. Non-smoking was the fashion. It wouldn’t last too long after their first gun battle or riot duty.
    â€œConcerns? Well, minor concerns. I’d say the chances are that the boy did it.”
    â€œDidn’t you have an issue with the wounds on the victims?” Crabbie insisted.
    I took a puff of my Marlboro Red and cleared my throat. “Well, in a similar vein to Constable Lawson, my observation of the scene was that it didn’t look much like a ‘rage killing’ to me. Nice clean shots to the temple and the heart. An angry man doesn’t shoot that accurately. Professional killers do, but college dropout layabout sons who crack up because of constant nagging from the old man don’t.”
    Lawson nodded vigorously. “Don’t rage killers tend to ‘overkill’ too? Multiple stab wounds, multiple gunshots. He’d probably fire the whole clip at the old man, wouldn’t he?” he said.
    â€œYes,” I agreed.
    â€œAnd maybe he’d spare the mother. I mean, it’s the father who’s giving him grief and it’s the mum who’s sticking up for him, right?” Fletcher said.
    Crabbie skimmed the statement from Mrs. McCawly and slid it over the desk toward me. “It was the dad who was hassling him,” he said.
    â€œOnce he’s shot the father, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound, isn’t it?” I said.
    â€œWhat’s your alternative theory, Constable Lawson?” McCrabban asked.
    â€œIf Mr. Kelly had a firearm for personal protection he must have had enemies?” Lawson suggested.
    â€œThat’s one of the things we are certainly going to find out,” Crabbie insisted.
    â€œAny forensic info from the shell casings?” I asked.
    â€œThere were no shell casings,” Crabbie said. “He took them with him.”
    â€œOh, I assumed when I got there that they’d already been tagged and bagged by the forensic officers. He took them with him?”
    Crabbie nodded.
    â€œSo either a professional doing his job or a panicky son trying to cover his tracks,” I said.
    Silence descended.
    I got to my feet.
    â€œWell, folks, I can see you have this well in hand. I should go.”
    â€œAny parting words of wisdom, Inspector Duffy?” Crabbie asked.
    â€œThis professional killing angle is certainly interesting, but if I were you, Sergeant McCrabban, I would stress to our new arrivals that in your bog-standard criminal case in the greater Belfast area they’ll find that Occam’s razor is especially sharp; the simplest and most obvious explanation is almost always the correct one.”
    â€œAye, but until we find the son and have a wee chat with him we’ll keep our options open,” McCrabban added.
    I walked to the incident room door and gave Crabbie a little nod to let him know again that this really was his responsibility and I was not going to grab it from him. At least not for the moment. My own caseload wasn’t half so exciting, but he had wanted this and if he solved it and somehow wangled a promotion out of it, good luck to him. Crabbie’s undertakerish nod back was an equivalent of a high five from him.
    I went to the personnel department and looked up the files on our two new detectives just to see if I’d missed anything. I hadn’t, except for one thing; Lawson was Jewish rather than Protestant, which was a bit of a surprise. There were only a couple of hundred Jews