I Hear the Sirens in the Street (27 page)

After a pause, she said: “You couldn't put it in the cupboard under the stairs, could you? I don't want to deal with it just at the moment.”

“I forgot that you told me that you threw all Martin's stuff out. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought this.”

“It's okay.”

I put the bag in the cupboard and stood there awkwardly. “Well, I suppose I'll head on then.”

“Yes.”

I cleared my throat.

“Are you doing all right?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Moneywise, you know?”

“Yes. I sold a dozen spring lambs and that cleared some of
the debts and I'm supposed to get the compensation money by the end of the month. Of course, that's what they've been saying since January …”

“Will you stay here when the money comes?”

“I can't afford to go anywhere else, can I?”

“Your parents in Spain?”

“That place? It's the living death down there. No thanks. What would I do with my time?”

“What do you do with your time here?”

“That is the question.”

Silence.

I watched a drip burrow its way through the thatching onto the living-room floor.

“All right, well, I suppose this is the …uh …”

“Yes, Inspector Duffy, I suppose it is,” she said.

I went outside.

The Land Rover back to Carrick.

Sea spray along the lough shore.

Driving rain.

Her manner hadn't been that encouraging. In fact there was a distinct coldness near the end, and yet I couldn't help but feel that there was something bubbling beneath the surface there.

Chinese takeaway for dinner. Pot from the shed out back.

I smoked the joint in the shed with the door open and the rain coming in.

I went inside, put on
Age of Plastic
by The Buggles which I snapped up for 2p at a jumble sale. I made myself a pint of vodka and lime juice. I drank and listened. It was a very bad album.

I watched the TV news: incidents all over Ulster: bomb scares and disruption to rail and bus services, an incendiary fire at the Door Store, a policeman shot in Enniskillen, a prisoner officer severely injured in a mercury tilt bomb in Strabane. I watched the Final Thought on UTV: a cheerful long-haired evangelist
insisted that God was merciful and just and cared about his flock.

Midnight. It was so cold I lit the paraffin heater.

The phone rang. I got out of bed, wrapped myself in the duvet, tripped on the blanket and nearly went down the stairs head first. My face banged into the side wall. Blood was pouring out of my nose. The phone kept ringing.
Never get the phone after midnight, Duffy, you dumbass.

I picked it up. “Yeah, what is it now?”

“You are not the detective I thought you were,” a voice said.

The voice from the note. The English chick. “Why's that?” I said.

There was silence.

“I was the one who left you the note.”

“Yeah, I know. You stand out. We don't get many English birds round here, do we?”

“I suppose not.”

“Who sprung you from Whitehead Police Station? A couple of your mates?”

She didn't reply.

“Listen, sweetie, you're not cute and you're not funny. I don't know if you're a spook, or a reporter, or a student, or a player looking to make trouble, or what you are exactly, but pick on someone else, okay? It's enough to make me want to take my name out of the phone book.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“Aye, but it'd be a shame to do that, I'm the only Duffy in Carrick in there,” I said.

More silence. I was weary of this. “What the fuck are you calling me up for? Why don't you just tell me what you've bloody got, if you've really got anything.”

“I need someone who's good. I thought you were good. I looked you up. I read those articles about you, but you're not good.”

“Not good? I almost nailed you, you dozy cunt.”

“Almost doesn't count for much.”

“You were shitting it, darling, admit it. You were lifted by a stop and search unit – and them boys couldn't find a fat man at a Santa Claus convention. You must have been well surprised.”

“And you must have been surprised to find me gone.”

“Big deal. You pull the wool over the eyes of some twenty-year-old part-time country copper. Big deal. You don't impress me.”

“And my note?”

“Your note? Fuck that! We're too busy with a civil war in our laps for shite like that. We don't have time for notes or fucking games. You want to try the San Francisco Police Department and spin them lines about the Zodiac killer, or get the Ripper unit at the South Yorkshire PD.”

“Maybe you're right. I shouldn't have tried to lead you. I set you a test and you failed it. I assumed that if I could find the evidence you'd be able to find it too.”

“What evidence?”

“It's not my job. I was trying to help
you
, Duffy. I wanted to prod you, not give it all to you on a plate.”

“Give it to me on a plate.”

“No, you were right. I should have said nothing. If you'd found it, it would have made things worse for you, more than likely. I'm sorry to have troubled you, Duffy.”

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

“I really don't.”

“Then you certainly are not the detective I thought you were.”

“I'm not the detective anyone thinks I am. I'm a plodding copper – no better, no worse than anyone else.”

“I see that now.”

“Look, love, it's late, I'm tired, do us both a favour and don't bloody call again.”

“I won't.”

“Good.”

She hung up. The dial tone continued and then it began going
beep beep beep
. I put the phone back on its crook. And I was too fed up with it all to even call Special Branch and get them to put a tap on my line.

Two a.m: A group of drunks coming down the street singing: “We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys! We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys. We're up to our necks in fenian blood and we're coming back for more. We are the Billy Billy Boys.”

I was never going to sleep this night.

I went downstairs and grabbed an encyclopaedia and read it over a bowl of cornflakes.

I had a cup of coffee, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a sweater, put on my raincoat and went for a walk around the Estate. I picked up my new Sony Radio Walkman and tuned it to the BBC World Service.

Black clouds. Rain. Sleet on the high plateau.

Bombings in West Belfast and Derry.

Rocket attacks on police stations along the border.

War news.

The other war.

In the South Atlantic.

I walked down to the lough and sat on the beach.

I watched the planes going both ways on the Trans-At.

I got cold.

At six I went into the station.

Brennan was there already, reading the newspapers in the incident room. He hadn't shaven. He looked unkempt. There
was no point asking him what the fuck was going on in his life, but I wanted to talk to someone.

I knocked on his door and opened it. “Morning, sir, can I get you a coffee or something?”

“No, you can't, Duffy! But you know what you can do for me?”

“What?”

“Give my head peace and leave me alone.”

“Okay, sir.”

I shut the door again.

Maybe talk to McCrabban when he came in.

I went to the coffee machine, got a coffee-choc, trudged to my office, put my feet up on the desk and looked out to sea.

The sun limped up over County Down. It was a clear crisp day and Scotland was distinctly visible as a long blue line on the horizon. The guy trying to sell the goat went past without his goat. An entrepreneurial success story.

The door opened.

Brennan came in shaving with an electric razor.

“What are you doing in at this time, anyway?” he asked.

“I couldn't sleep. I was out for a walk and ended up here.”

“What do you know about Epicurus?”

“Is it a crossword clue?”

“It's something I heard at a, uhhh, a meeting. I thought, I'll ask Duffy. He's a guy that knows things.”

“Athenian. He taught in what was called The Garden.”

“Sum him up for me in short words.”

“He said that either there are no gods, or they don't care about us. Ambition is a pointless quest. In a thousand years no one will remember any of us. All we've got is love and friendship, so take pleasure where you can find it.”

Chief Inspector Brennan closed his eyes and swayed a little. “You believe that?”

“I haven't thought too much about it.”

“What have you thought about?”

“Uhhh—”

“That O'Rourke murder, for example. Have you been thinking about that?”

“Not lately, it's in the yellow file which means that we are at something of an impasse.”

“What have you got?”

“We've established the name of the victim and how the victim died.”

“And?”

“That's about it, sir, to be honest. Few red herrings along the way.”

He put up his hand. “Progress, Duffy, what progress have you made since your last report?”

“No actual progress.”

“That's what I thought. Is that what you boys do in here? Sit around drinking tea and concealing the truth from me? All right, so you bin it and you move on so the resources of CID can be used elsewhere.”

“We solved that bank robbery.”

“We need more of that stuff. Results.”

He was spoiling for a fight out of sheer ennui. I was in no mood to engage. What did I care about the O'Rourke case or any other? “You're the boss. If you want, I'll move it from the yellow file to the cold case file.”

“I am the boss and don't you forget it. Now bugger off home and get some kip and come back at a Christian hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

Home. Sofa. Kip. Cup of tea and Mars bar sandwiches and the classic
Star Trek
ep.
Arena
. You know the one. Kirk makes gunpowder to kill the guy in the rubber suit.

The door bell went. It was Bobby Cameron with a bottle of Glenlivet. He offered it to me. “Fell off the back of a lorry,” he said. “No hard feelings, eh?”

“About what?”

“About your woman up the street. Sometimes the lads get a bit boisterous. Sitting around with nothing to do, the dartboard's broke, it's too wet to fly the pigeons and before you know it, it's the fall of Saigon on Coronation Road.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

He winked, nodded and walked down the path. At the gate he turned. “You'll look after yourself now, Duffy, won't you?”

It was hard to know if this was a threat or a warning, or nothing at all.

“I'll try to,” I said.

“I like you, Duffy. We'll kill you last.”

“Cheers.”

I decided to skip work entirely and rang a lithe reserve constable called Clare Purdy to see if she wanted to go to the pictures. She said yes and I took her to the ABC in Belfast to catch
Blade Runner.
We were the only people in the cinema. When we came out it was raining, dark, there'd been a bombing somewhere and the street was full of smoke and soldiers: it was as if the movie had come to life. It took us an hour to get through the checkpoints and the rain. I tried to get Clare to come back to Coronation Road with me but she was a Jesus freak and the flick had messed with her head and all she wanted to do was go home and lie down. I dropped her at a cottage in Knocknagullah and then it was a quiet night in with chicken lo mein, vodka and lime and a quick whizz to Helen Mirren on a repeat
Parky
talking about the nude scenes in
Caligula
.

The next day I asked Crabbie and Matty if there were any developments on any front. When they both said no I told them that the Chief wanted the O'Rourke case killed.

“
You're
willing to drop this?” McCrabban asked sceptically.

“Orders is orders,” I said. “As my dear old gran used to say ‘when someone shits on your chips, you have to eat the onion rings.'”

“What?” McCrabban asked.

“What do we work on then?” Matty wondered.

“Theft cases. Stolen cars. Anything,” I said.

If they'd both objected I would have taken the fight back to the Chief but neither of them kicked up a fuss, so that was that. The O'Rourke murder investigation was suspended indefinitely.

I wiped the whiteboard, gathered up the materials from the incident room, put them in a box binder and placed it in the filing cabinet in my office. McCrabban was watching me out of the corner of his eye.

“If the Chief asks you, tell him it's a cold case now,” I said.

“I will.”

We exchanged a look and that look said that he knew that I was far too much of a stubborn arsehole to leave it there.

The factory was on waste ground in Dunmurry, West Belfast. A big hasty concrete and metal box that had gone up in eighteen months with the blasted city in various states of decay all around. If Coronation Road was the fall of Saigon, this part of Belfast was Hitler's last days.

Security was a couple of guys at the gate, but to get up to DeLorean's office, I had to go through a metal detector, show my warrant card and wait until it was verified by a computer.

John DeLorean was a very busy man and had his day scheduled out in tight fifteen-minute blocks. Our interview was scheduled from eleven thirty to eleven forty-five on a Monday morning. I could have pushed it but I didn't want to make waves or have him ask questions of my superiors. I wanted this encounter to be as straightforward and low key as possible.

On the inside the Dunmurry DeLorean factory dazzled me. Perhaps it was just amazing seeing any kind of industrial activity going on in Ulster. The assembly line was clean and efficient. Raw metal sheets and engines went in one end, aluminium gull-winged DeLorean sports cars came out the other. The administrative offices overlooked the factory floor (DeLorean was big on worker/management cooperation) and I could have stood there all day watching the engines getting mounted and the transmissions going in. It really was incredible. DeLorean had brought a successful industry to Belfast in the heart of the
Troubles. He had done what everybody said couldn't be done and Dunmurry was the only place in Ulster where heavy industry worked, where people actually made things.