empty bottle of whisky. Bushmills; a good local make.
He placed it on the desk for forensics to check and turned back to the wall. Twenty minutes later every bookshelf had been checked and he’d found a similar story; each shelf was filled with identical volumes by different authors. Volumes of Beckett, Shaw and other luminaries piled up alongside enough whisky to keep a brewery solvent for a year.
The Generation Y-er whistled to himself. Someone had a serious drink problem and they were so keen to hide it that they’d spent a fortune on camouflage books. It was Bwye’s study so it made sense that it was Bwye’s secret to hide, but who was he hiding it from? His wife, possible but unlikely; Diana Bwye must have known all about her husband’s proclivities. His daughter? By the sounds of it she was a wild child herself. Bernadette Ross or the other staff? Perhaps, or perhaps Bwye was simply hiding it from himself, deluding himself that he had control of the booze and not the other way round. Maybe that’s why the books on each shelf were identical; Bwye had hoped that searching for the one that held the whisky would take him so long that the urge would have passed.
Whatever the reason, if Oliver Bwye had got to the stage of hiding booze he was in trouble, and alcohol and a rifle definitely wasn’t a good mix. Davy made up his mind to tell Craig then he sat back down at the desk and began to work. After an hour of setting up bank, phone and criminal searches on the family and staff he yawned and reached into his bag for an energy bar, then he lifted his smartphone and made a call.
Maggie Clarke answered in three rings and he smiled. She always had her phone beside her; you never knew when someone might call with the Pulitzer Prize.
Her tone was crisp and professional. “Maggie Clarke, Belfast Chronicle.”
“Hi, pet. W…What’re you up to?”
Maggie smiled at the sound of her boyfriend’s voice. It still made her heart leap after two years. She twirled a strand of hair round her finger and softened her tone.
“I’m just editing. What about you?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say: “I’m in a mansion in Derry, helping with a case where three people might be dead” but it was more than his job was worth. Craig trusted him and Maggie to never cross the line. More importantly he didn’t fancy going to jail for breach of confidentiality, so instead of giving into the urge to look cool he said, “the boss says he’ll s…speak to the Chief Constable about my doctorate.”
“That’s awesome. What do you think he’ll ask for?”
Davy smiled at her excitement; she was always supportive, whatever he wanted to do. If he hadn’t been only twenty-seven he might have asked her to marry him. The thought stopped him in his tracks. Only twenty-seven; he’d thought it automatically, like he was still a child. He wasn’t, even though his mother and grandmother babied him and he still lived at home.
Twenty-seven was a grown man. He could have joined the army at eighteen and if society collapsed now he’d be expected to help maintain the peace, standing alongside Craig and Liam to build houses and defend the weak. When had society become so infantilised that a twenty-seven-year-old could possibly think that he was still a kid?
And what about the second part of his thought, that he loved Maggie enough to marry her. Did he? The answer came immediately, yes, he did, but he didn’t have the building blocks in place. He earned a good wage and he had savings, but if he left to do his doctorate all of that would disappear. The fees would swallow up his savings and his wages would evaporate. He knew that if he asked her to marry him she would say yes, or at least he hoped that she would. She would also say that she was earning enough to keep them both and that it didn’t matter if he worked.
Davy pictured himself studying and having fun at Uni while she trudged to work every day to keep a roof over their
He placed it on the desk for forensics to check and turned back to the wall. Twenty minutes later every bookshelf had been checked and he’d found a similar story; each shelf was filled with identical volumes by different authors. Volumes of Beckett, Shaw and other luminaries piled up alongside enough whisky to keep a brewery solvent for a year.
The Generation Y-er whistled to himself. Someone had a serious drink problem and they were so keen to hide it that they’d spent a fortune on camouflage books. It was Bwye’s study so it made sense that it was Bwye’s secret to hide, but who was he hiding it from? His wife, possible but unlikely; Diana Bwye must have known all about her husband’s proclivities. His daughter? By the sounds of it she was a wild child herself. Bernadette Ross or the other staff? Perhaps, or perhaps Bwye was simply hiding it from himself, deluding himself that he had control of the booze and not the other way round. Maybe that’s why the books on each shelf were identical; Bwye had hoped that searching for the one that held the whisky would take him so long that the urge would have passed.
Whatever the reason, if Oliver Bwye had got to the stage of hiding booze he was in trouble, and alcohol and a rifle definitely wasn’t a good mix. Davy made up his mind to tell Craig then he sat back down at the desk and began to work. After an hour of setting up bank, phone and criminal searches on the family and staff he yawned and reached into his bag for an energy bar, then he lifted his smartphone and made a call.
Maggie Clarke answered in three rings and he smiled. She always had her phone beside her; you never knew when someone might call with the Pulitzer Prize.
Her tone was crisp and professional. “Maggie Clarke, Belfast Chronicle.”
“Hi, pet. W…What’re you up to?”
Maggie smiled at the sound of her boyfriend’s voice. It still made her heart leap after two years. She twirled a strand of hair round her finger and softened her tone.
“I’m just editing. What about you?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say: “I’m in a mansion in Derry, helping with a case where three people might be dead” but it was more than his job was worth. Craig trusted him and Maggie to never cross the line. More importantly he didn’t fancy going to jail for breach of confidentiality, so instead of giving into the urge to look cool he said, “the boss says he’ll s…speak to the Chief Constable about my doctorate.”
“That’s awesome. What do you think he’ll ask for?”
Davy smiled at her excitement; she was always supportive, whatever he wanted to do. If he hadn’t been only twenty-seven he might have asked her to marry him. The thought stopped him in his tracks. Only twenty-seven; he’d thought it automatically, like he was still a child. He wasn’t, even though his mother and grandmother babied him and he still lived at home.
Twenty-seven was a grown man. He could have joined the army at eighteen and if society collapsed now he’d be expected to help maintain the peace, standing alongside Craig and Liam to build houses and defend the weak. When had society become so infantilised that a twenty-seven-year-old could possibly think that he was still a kid?
And what about the second part of his thought, that he loved Maggie enough to marry her. Did he? The answer came immediately, yes, he did, but he didn’t have the building blocks in place. He earned a good wage and he had savings, but if he left to do his doctorate all of that would disappear. The fees would swallow up his savings and his wages would evaporate. He knew that if he asked her to marry him she would say yes, or at least he hoped that she would. She would also say that she was earning enough to keep them both and that it didn’t matter if he worked.
Davy pictured himself studying and having fun at Uni while she trudged to work every day to keep a roof over their
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