Free The Broken Shore by Catriona King Page A

she was willing to let him. Whether it worked or not she knew she would survive now, with or without him. She loved her job and making Inspector wasn’t bad but she wasn’t stopping there. After all, if Melanie Trainor could be an ACC then there was nothing to stop her from reaching the top. She smiled across the room at her husband, grateful that he couldn’t read her thoughts. Inspector was high enough at the moment, but whatever she decided in the future, Pete wouldn’t be allowed to stand in her way.
    ***
    Craig parked his black Audi in front of a row of modern terraced houses near the Coleraine Road. They looked about five years old. Children’s toys and bikes were scattered in front of two of them, indicating that they were family homes. A battered car and a gleaming BMW motor bike were parked in front of another. Even if he hadn’t known which number Jonno Mulvenna lived at, the bike would have given it away. Once an adrenalin junkie, always one. Anyone who’d taken planted bombs to kill high value targets like the army and police wouldn’t have any problem with a bit of speed.
    Craig climbed out and joined Andy beside the boot, holding the file photo of their interviewee in his hand. They’d called in advance and instead of Mulvenna being reluctant to speak to them as they’d feared, he’d been positively welcoming. Craig had no idea why but they’d soon find out. He glanced at the black and white headshot and grudgingly admitted Mulvenna had been good looking in his youth. Or a ‘big honey’ as Nicky had described him.
    With his jet-black hair and bright blue eyes he had the ‘black Irish’ look of many born in the North-West. Some said it was a legacy of the Spanish Armada’s sailors washing up on the West coast, others of the American’s stationed in Derry during the war. Wherever it came from it was the stuff of matinee idols and the favoured portrayal of terrorists by Hollywood, romanticising their murderers to make the reality more palatable.
    But there was nothing palatable about Jonno Mulvenna’s record. Four successful car bombs planted in six years with the deaths of sixteen police and soldiers to his name, not to mention the prison officers he’d picked off through his sights. Only fifteen years prison for all those deaths. Mulvenna was a bad, bad man and Craig could understand why someone had thought framing him for Jarvis’ murder was justice. But it was a rough justice that had just come back to bite them on the ass.
    Andy slipped on his jacket and they walked to the door of number fourteen, then knocked and waited, their reflection warping back at them in the BMW’s shining chrome. The door was opened a minute later by a man whose only concession to the years was some greying at his temples that made Craig think of Richard Gere. He was shocked. If this man’s evil was written anywhere it wasn’t on his face. Dorian Gray must be missing a portrait. Mulvenna was in his fifties but he looked almost as young and fit as he had in ’83. He smiled at them and Craig stared back unyieldingly. He flashed his badge and Mulvenna shrugged, waving them into a neat front room with a series of oil paintings on the walls.
    The paintings subjects were varied. A bird, a man who resembled Mulvenna and a stunning woman caught Craig’s eye. He glanced at Mulvenna’s hand but there was no ring. That meant nothing nowadays. Men like him didn’t wear them, always free in their minds. He turned to look at the other wall where a painting of Portstewart Strand held pride of place. An aide-mémoire of Jarvis’ murder? No, he doubted it; there was nothing dark about the image. The painting was just like the others: beautiful. Whoever had painted them had real talent, and Craig said so. He was surprised by the faint blush that coloured Mulvenna’s face.
    “I did them. I’d always drawn, but prison art classes taught me to paint. I’m getting my Masters at the moment.”
    It figured. It suited the