Gun Street Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

castle Belfast was a wet film of light and shade under the Black Mountain.
    I turned left, and, as there were no other cars on the road, I let the Beemer’s big M30 straight-six engine stretch itself.
    The speedometer was registering a ton and change as I zoomed past the abandoned factories in Kilroot, and before Robert Smith had even got to “Wish I’d stayed asleep today,” we were deep in the Irish countryside.
    I made it to Whitehead in less than four minutes, coming suddenly on that great cliff bend in the A2 known as the Bla Hole, where for a dazzling second you could see all of the North Channel and a good chunk of Western Scotland.
    The road curved to the left and on the passenger’s side there were fields filled with sheep, and on my side a hint of sun now in the eastern horizon . . .
    Pink sky.
    Blue sky.
    â€œClose To Me” ended, and because no one was listening at this hour anyway, the DJ put on the twelve-inch of “Blue Monday,” which would comfortably take me all the way to my destination.
    I turned right on Cable Road.
    Whitehead, County Antrim.
    Imagine Vernazza in the Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera. No, wait, don’t imagine that. It’s nothing like that; this is Northern Ireland we’re talking about here. OK, but maybe imagine it a little. A town under the cliff, a town with brightly painted houses on the seashore.
    I took out the map and found New Island Road.
    The crime scene was not difficult to locate.
    Sergeant McCrabban had brought down two Land Rovers from Carrick RUC. Larne RUC had shown up with a couple of Land Rovers of their own, and there were two Land Rovers from the forensic unit in Belfast. Add to that a couple of cars from local media, a dozen lookie-loos from surrounding streets, and the outside broadcast van from BBC Radio Ulster.
    The house itself was a kind of folly, a scaled-down copy of Dunluce Castle, which famously had fallen into the sea a few miles up the coast. There was a central “keep” in thick grey stone with turrets and flying buttresses, high arched windows, and a flat walled roof. There were several outbuildings and a guest cottage and all around the property a thick nine-foot-high stone wall.
    The hundred-foot cliff protected the property to the east, south, and north, so if an intruder was going to get in he’d have to come over the wall to the west or through massive iron front gates.
    I parked the BMW behind the BBC radio car and walked up to those huge wrought-iron gates where Crabbie was waiting for me.
    â€œMorning, Sergeant McCrabban,” I said cheerfully.
    â€œMorning, Sean.”
    â€œJesus, this is some pile,” I said. “These people must indeed be loaded.”
    â€œYou can see why Larne RUC want it, can’t you? It’s the sort of case that newspapers like, the sort of case that builds careers.”
    â€œOr sinks them,” I said with a significant drop in cadence.
    â€œAye, but most of us don’t have your luck, Sean,” Crabbie pointed out.
    â€œWhat did you say this guy did? He was a bookie?”
    â€œHe runs a chain of bookies.”
    â€œWho reported the killing?”
    â€œMrs. McCawly, the housekeeper.”
    â€œHow did she get in?”
    â€œShe has a code for the front gate.”
    â€œWhen did she get here?”
    â€œFive on the dot.”
    â€œBit early for a cleaner, no?”
    â€œShe worked from five until eight every day. Mrs. Kelly liked to have the place spick and span first thing in the morning.”
    â€œDoesn’t the Hoover wake them up?”
    â€œWell, not today it doesn’t.”
    â€œSo Mrs. McCawly gets here at five and finds Mr. and Mrs. Kelly shot dead?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWere these gates open when she got here?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow did the killer get in? You’d need a siege tower to get over that wall.”
    â€œOr a ladder.”
    â€œYeah, true, but what