Free Gun Street Girl by Adrian McKinty Page A

anyone?”
    â€œOn purpose, you mean? Who can keep track?”
    â€œHow do you know I’m not one of those IRA honey traps I’m always seeing ads for on late-night TV?” she asked with a charming little smile.
    I had seen those ads too. An off-duty policeman or soldier meets a girl and goes off with her only to be kidnapped, interrogated, tortured, and shot by a terrorist group. The honey-trap girl in the ads was always a glamorous blonde, not a mousy little thing with brown hair.
    â€œA honey-trap girl wouldn’t actually bring up those honey-trap ads, would she?”
    â€œIt could be a clever double bluff.”
    â€œI’ll have to keep my eye on you, then, won’t I?”
    â€œAlways a good policy in this day and age.”
    At the bottom of the Albert Road I turned left at the four-way junction. We drove out past the rain-slicked lights of the Marine Highway. Herring buses were chugging away from the little stone harbor, and behind us in the rear-view mirror the castle lurked grey and black in the gathering dark. And ahead of us? Who knew what lay ahead of us, waiting at the bottom of a cliff up the Antrim coast.

6: TIDE BURIAL
    We parked the Beemer in Whitehead car park, where a glum young constable standing next to a damp police dog headed us in the right direction. We walked along the seafront path to Blackhead cliff.
    â€œOver there . . . that used to be Sting’s house,” Sara said, pointing to one of the big houses on the seafront.
    â€œSting from the Police?” I asked skeptically.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI thought he was a Geordie.”
    â€œHe was married to a local girl when he was still a teacher. Divorced her now. Seriously, they lived over there. Everybody knows that.”
    â€œMy ignorance of local knowledge has been widely remarked on.”
    â€œAnd I’m a mine of useless information.”
    We reached the crime scene, which lay rather dramatically on the rocky path a hundred feet below Blackhead Lighthouse.
    Quite a few peelers, ambulance men, and lookie-loos there, already getting soaked by the drizzle and sea spray.
    I raised the POLICE CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape to let myself and Sara into the inner cordon (not exactly professionalism at its finest there, but the lass was growing on me).
    DC Lawson saw me and came over with his hands up to stop me approaching the crumpled mass that was presumably the corpse.
    â€œThe forensic officers are at their task, sir, they’ve asked us to keep clear,” he warned.
    Lawson was wearing a dark blue suit and a cream raincoat, which was fine, but he had gelled his hair into spiky blond tips like a member of a boy band or a football player newly in the money. He saw that I wasn’t pleased and assumed it was some sort of impatience with the FOs going about their slow, methodical business in their latex gloves and white boiler suits. “I’m sure they’ll be done soon, sir, I—”
    I cut him off. “What’s that on your hair, Lawson?”
    â€œMy hair? Gel, sir.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhy? Uhm, because it looks good, sir?”
    â€œDo you think it’s an appropriate look for a trainee detective constable in the RUC?”
    â€œIt’s what people are doing, sir.”
    â€œWell, I don’t like it. Peelers aren’t supposed to be trendy. Peelers are supposed to be old fashioned and conservative and behind the times. It’s reassuring for the general public to see coppers with bad haircuts and cheap suits.”
    Lawson nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said meekly, avoiding the obvious “so that’s why you dress the way you do, is it?”
    â€œNow, what’s the situation here?” I asked.
    â€œDetective Sergeant McCrabban is up there on the top of the cliff at the lighthouse car park with DC Fletcher. Apparently that’s where the boy jumped and, uh, landed in the rocks. He left a note, in his car,