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Club.
       
    Inspector McConnell was waiting for him at the reception desk of the police station. There were uniformed policemen with Lee-Enfields at the front door and at the entrance to the cell block and Ferguson noted that they had chosen positions which commanded a field of fire the length of the stuccoed hallway. The men regarded him without expression. They had stood this way through riot and pogrom. At their posts throughout the empire. Night’s constables holding the line. ‘They’ll not spring him with them boys keeping watch,’ McConnell said.
    ‘Will they try?’ Ferguson said.
    ‘They’d haul him out and shoulder him down the Shankill Road if they could get at him. They would carry him and proclaim the glory of the lord,’ McConnell said. ‘My men have orders to plug the first bastard comes through that door.’
    ‘Bail?’
    ‘The bloody magistrate near gave it to him. DPP opposed. Had to tell the beak there’d be civil war out there if he walked free.’
    Ferguson knew the thinking. Another one gone and all to the good. But you had to watch out for civil unrest. Men gathering in the margins of old battlegrounds, the Brickfields, Smithfield, hands in pockets, waiting for dark.
    McConnell took him down a distempered brick corridor to the cells. Ferguson had been here before. He had been duty solicitor when the Negro soldier Wiley Harris had been arrested for the murder of Harry Coogan. The soldier haggling over price with the pimp then stabbing him. The bored girl waiting in the bomb shelter, bargained over, the pimp’s reward a knife in the guts under a gibbet moon. Harris sitting quietly in the cell, wearing USAAF fatigues, his hands between his knees.
    ‘Did you do it?’ Ferguson had asked.
    ‘Does it matter if I did, sir? I’m in trouble anyway.’
    ‘You’re in the right place for trouble.’
    ‘Same as the place I came from. Exact same.’
       
    ‘Taylor’s in cell eight, sir,’ the sergeant in charge said.
    ‘What’s your impression, sergeant?’ Ferguson said.
    ‘If wrong had a human form, I’d say it’s sat behind that door, Mr Ferguson.’
    The gaoler opened the cell door and Ferguson stepped inside, stooping a little. Taylor stood in the middle of the cell so that the evening sun shone on him. Ferguson remembered what Esther had said about Bobby Breen. Taylor had wavy brown hair, parted on the right, the button nose, the cheery demeanour. A low-rent Fauntleroy , Ferguson thought. Babyface killer.
    ‘Are you with the police?’ Taylor said.
    ‘My name’s Harry Ferguson.’
    ‘Do I not get to pick my own solicitor?’
    ‘Not unless you got plenty of money.’
    ‘They say I’m going to need a hotshot.’
    ‘Who says that?’
    ‘The peelers. Them boys out there.’
    ‘Never mind what they say. I want you to tell me what happened.’
    ‘It’s all a mistake, Harry. I never went next nor near that woman.’
    ‘Did you know her?’
    ‘I done work for her when I worked for Barrett the painter. She was dry as a bone and mean to boot.’
    ‘Did you go to her house yesterday afternoon?’
    ‘Like fuck I did.’
    ‘I’ll take that as a no. Did you go to her house at any other time after you worked for Barrett?’
    ‘I’m supposed to be getting married, Harry. I was looking for a bit of work, there’s no crime in that.’
    ‘You asked Mrs McGowan for work?’
    ‘You might as well ask that wall for a chance in life as talk to her.’
    ‘And she turned you down.’
    ‘I’m as good as the next man when it comes to a brush.’
    ‘That’s all I want to know for the moment.’ Ferguson rose to go.
    ‘Hang on a second, Harry, you going to leave me here? What about bail?’
    ‘You’ll be back in the magistrates’ court on Monday. They’ll talk about bail then.’
    ‘I was supposed to be getting married on Monday.’
    ‘Is that right. Wedding all paid for?’
    ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’
    ‘I’ve questioned better men than you,