Gun Street Girl by Adrian McKinty

chapter and let the Kellys’ kin move on with their lives,” I added.
    â€œI understand all that. I’m not an eejit. But Michael didn’t tell me nothing and he certainly didn’t call me after he topped his ma and da.”
    â€œAny jealous boyfriends in your past we should know about?”
    She shook her head. “Me? Nah, I only get the love-’em-and-leave-’em type, don’t I?” she said with a cynical little laugh. Hard as nails was Sylvie, but there was a vulnerability behind those heavily made-up eyes.
    â€œParents alive?” I asked her.
    â€œMe ma, yeah.”
    â€œAnd your dad?”
    She shook her head. “They done him in,” she said after a pause.
    â€œWho did?”
    â€œThe usual.” She sniffed.
    â€œWho’s the usual?”
    â€œThey said he was an informer . . . Maybe he was an informer. I don’t know. I was only a wee bairn.”
    She sniffed again, took a hanky from her bag, and dabbed her eyes.
    â€œI’m really sorry, Sylvie,” I said, and, reaching across the desk, gave her arm a little squeeze.
    â€œIt’s all right, it was a long time ago. A very long time ago,” she said, recovering herself.
    I tried a couple more questions, but the barriers that briefly had come down had firmly gone back up. After another fifteen minutes Crabbie gave me his I think this is getting us nowhere look.
    I nodded.
    â€œGive us a minute, will you, Sylvie?” I asked. Crabbie and I retreated to the CID incident room and I looked up the case file on Kevin McNichol. Shot in the head on the Antrim Road, North Belfast, 1974. Suspected police informer. No clues. No suspects. A case that would never be solved, like so many cases from that time. I showed the file to Crabbie.
    â€œEven if she knows something, unlikely that she would tell us with that family history,” I said.
    â€œBut I don’t think she knows anything,” Crabbie said.
    I sighed. “Might as well finish it, then.”
    Back into Interview Room 1.
    â€œOK, Sylvie, what’s your hormone joke?” I asked.
    â€œHormone joke? Oh yeah: how do you make a hormone?”
    I sighed. “I don’t know, Sylvie, how do you make a hormone?”
    â€œYou kick her in the cunt.”
    I heard Lawson laugh behind the two-way mirror, but I was getting fed up with all this now. “OK, Miss McNichol, let me ask you just one more question and I want you to think very carefully about the answer,” I said.
    â€œOK.”
    â€œDo you really think, in your heart of hearts, that Michael, the boy you knew, killed his parents, in cold blood, the way everyone is saying that he did?”
    It was tiny.
    A blink.
    That’s all.
    A momentary look away.
    A flutter in her eyelids.
    â€œHow am I supposed to know? You’re the police!”
    â€œHe was your boyfriend.”
    â€œWell, look, I wouldn’t be shocked. He said that his da was always winding him up and I suppose it’s like everyone says . . . he just snapped.”
    â€œHe was a levelheaded kid who just snapped?”
    â€œHe just snapped.”
    We tried several more lines of attack but she wasn’t giving us anything else. We went out.
    â€œShe is a Leo,” Lawson said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œMrs. Kelly. She wasn’t lying about that.”
    I nodded. “Good work,” I said, and rolled my eyes at McCrabban.
    We tag-teamed Fletcher and Lawson back in again while Crabbie and I went down to my office.
    I poured Crabbie a whiskey and told him about the eyelid flutter.
    He hadn’t seen it.
    He didn’t believe it.
    â€œI think she knows something,” I insisted. “And not just about Michael’s love of shortbread.”
    â€œAs you say, Sean, even if she does, she’ll never cooperate with the police.”
    â€œThat’s what makes this such a fun job.”
    Crabbie sighed, tipped out his pipe. He looked