I Hear the Sirens in the Street (38 page)

“You should have forced her.”

“Tell me all of it, Harry. You killed your brother and called in an old IRA code word.”

“You know that.”

“You shot three times into Dougherty's garage door after you killed him. You were setting her up, weren't you, in case we didn't buy the IRA story?”

He laughs. “God, you peelers! You overthink everything. I missed. I bloody missed, that's all. I'd never fired a handgun before.”

“Oh.”

“Have you a cigarette, Duffy?”

I kneel down next to him.

“All this, Harry, all this for what?” I ask him.

He winks at me, grins.

“Millions mate, millions and millions,” he says.

I could save him, I know that. A tourniquet. The rubber seal from the Bentley's door. He'd have a fighting chance.

I get to my feet and walk towards the flashing lights.

I was debriefed at the hospital by Special Branch. I told my tale and they told me that John DeLorean was the subject of an international investigation between various government agencies and that I had to keep my mouth shut. I knew that and I would have kept my mouth shut anyway without Special Branch goons forcing me to sign the Official Secrets Act.

Sinister men with public-school accents and sharp suits met with me and we concocted a story that Sir Harry and his sister-in-law Emma had been killed in an explosion and fire from a faulty oil heater. I had valiantly tried to save them from the inferno but had not succeeded.

We knew no one in Islandmagee would talk to the press, so the official version would stand unchallenged.

The local papers accepted this narrative without complaint and I was even a bit of a hero for a couple of days. Fanciful details of my attempt to save Emma from the flames were printed and mention was made of my Queen's Police Medal. The news briefly dominated page one of the
Belfast Telegraph
and then got sandwiched between various victories and disasters in the Falkland Islands.

I still was okay when they began reporting that Sir Harry was involved in some dodgy deals and knew the famous John DeLorean and that he had been in some kind of dispute with his sister-in-law.

But then the Yanks stuck their oar in.

Apparently they must have felt that I had reneged on our deal. I had promised to stay away from DeLorean and the O'Rourke case, but as soon as I'd got off the shuttle to Belfast I had gone digging …

They released their report about my drunk-driving incident in Massachusetts. The local press began to suggest that I was a maverick, a rogue cop at the centre of some kind of scandal between a baronet and his sister-in-law. The theories got wilder: Sir Harry and Emma were lovers who had killed themselves in a spectacular murder/suicide; Sir Harry, Emma and I were the three points of a love triangle.

The preliminary coroner's report accepted accidental death as the most likely explanation for the events at Red Hall cottage, but some of the press still liked the love triangle twist that sucked in a “hero cop”.

As the story refused to die I began to think that maybe I could be in trouble. I had been ordered to keep away from Sir Harry McAlpine. I'd been told to yellow a case which I had subsequently investigated on my own time. I had concealed information from my superiors. And the fact that the only evidence – the piece of tattooed skin – linking Sir Harry with the death of Bill O'Rourke had been destroyed in the explosion did not help matters.

I had a harsh
in camera
internal review conducted by two chief superintendents.

Had I been given order X? Had I disobeyed said order … That kind of thing.

I knew my failures better than them: Sir Harry had escaped justice, Emma was dead. DeLorean – whatever the hell he was doing – was going to keep doing it as long the Northern Ireland Office let him and as long as he kept those precious precious jobs in Northern Ireland.

The press finally got bored of the story and the whole thing
died for a while after my
in camera
review; I resumed duties, assuming, foolishly, that it would all blow over.

All seemed normal down at Carrick RUC until one day, out of the blue, in June, I was summoned to a formal disciplinary hearing. This was the real deal: dress uniform, charges, and I was told that I would have to get myself legal representation.

The hearing convened in a civil service building in the centre of Belfast. The board was made up of old men. Their faces grey, their noses blue. They had joined the police during or perhaps just after the war, and the RUC back then was a different animal: a Protestant force for a Protestant people. The timing of the hearing made me more than a little nervous, for they had picked a moment when the story could be buried. The Argentinians were on the verge of surrendering in The Falklands. Scotland, England and Northern Ireland all had teams in the World Cup. Nobody would waste that much ink about a former hero now disgraced. They could fuck me up or let me off without anyone giving a damn.

The case against me was read out by a sleekit-looking chief inspector from the internal affairs unit. The meat of the O'Rourke case was barely mentioned at all. The only evidence the tribunal seemed interested in was what particular orders I had disobeyed and whether I had correctly followed RUC procedures. It was pure chicken shit.

And it dawned on me that this punishment was coming not from Belfast or London but from Washington, DC.

I had pissed off the Americans, and the Americans wanted to see me punished.

The old men on the board listened to the case against me, heard my defence, read their notes and retired to consider what should be done with me.

I waited.

The room was stuffy, but no one thought to open a window. The panel clearly were not going to be away for very long – and
sure enough, they came back in after a pro forma fifteen minutes.

Chief Superintendent Pullman called my name. My RUC counsel gave me a nudge, which meant that I should stand. I stood to attention. My thumbs pointing down along the seam of my trousers. My heels together. My gaze steady. My dress uniform spic and span.

Chief Superintendent Pullman shuffled his papers, cleared his throat and read the verdict: “Detective Inspector Duffy, after long and careful deliberation, this tribunal has found that you have committed four separate breaches of the RUC code of conduct…”

The stenographer began recording my various infractions. She knew it was chicken shit, too. I mean, until very recently they were still beating suspects with rubber hoses down the Castlereagh Holding Centre – they couldn't talk to me about breaches of their fucking code of conduct.

“You have disobeyed direct orders on several occasions. You have embarrassed the force on foreign soil …” Pullman continued.

Embarrassed the RUC? Our name is mud in America. Read the
Boston Herald
some time, mate.

Pullman continued talking. His lips moved, the other men nodded, I looked at them with contempt. Old men. Stupid men.

“… In conclusion, Inspector Duffy, it is with great regret that we must inform you of the unanimous judgement of this disciplinary panel.”

I swallowed and looked at a crack on the back wall.

“Effective immediately, you will be reduced to the rank of sergeant.”

Shit.

“Back-dated to January first, 1982, your accumulated leave, personal days and other benefits will be similarly reduced to the benefits accruing to a sergeant.”

Shit.

Okay so it was bad. I'd lost a rank. But if they let me stay in Carrickfergus I'd still get to lead a team of detectives. Maybe if I kept my nose clean for a year they'd quietly bump me up again to inspector. And if they posted me to a big station in Belfast, a DS could get himself involved in some of the more interesting cases …

Pullman took off his glasses and stared at me.

“Do you understand and accept the verdict of this tribunal?”

I was expected to respond in full for the benefit of the stenographer.

“Yes, sir, I am being demoted to the rank of detective sergeant with full loss of seniority and remission, sir!”

Pullman looked up at me with surprise.

“No, Duffy, you've misunderstood – you are being demoted to a sergeant in ordinary. You are being removed from the CID lists.”

My knees buckled.

An ordinary sergeant? I wasn't going to be a detective?

A regular copper? A regular copper was little people. A regular copper was nothing.

I sat down again.

My lawyer looked at me to see if I was all right. He passed me the glass of water when he saw that I was not.

“Do you understand the verdict,
Sergeant
Duffy?” Pullman said.

“Drink this,” my lawyer whispered.

I got back up and returned Pullman's gaze right into his ugly mug.

“No, I don't bloody understand it! This is bollocks! Have you any idea what it's like out there? Have you any idea what it's like to be out there on the line every day of your fucking life?”

Pullman shook his head at the stenographer who immediately stopped typing.

“Duffy, we appreciate your service and we take these measures with great regret. But you have embarrassed the name of the—”

“Fuck your regret and fuck all of you! And make sure you write that down, love,” I said.

I clicked my heels together, saluted and stormed out of the room.

They had a car for me but I went home by myself on the train.

It was full of school kids and I had to stand, enraged, the whole way. I got off at Downshire Halt and made for the off licence. I bought a bottle of Jack Daniel's and a six-pack of Bass.

I walked up Victoria Road.

“Oh, you look very nice, all dressed up,” Mrs Bridewell said, pushing a pram.

“Thanks,” I replied curtly.

I went into 113 Coronation Road, searched through my records and put on “Hellhound On My Trail” by Robert Johnson.

I ripped the uniform off my body and threw the police medal against the wall.

It bounced and nearly landed on the turntable.

I popped the first can of Bass.

“A sergeant in ordinary! I'll fucking resign first. That'll show you, you fucks,” I said.

The phone was ringing.

The first of many phone calls: McCrabban, Matty, Sergeant Quinn, Tony, Inspector McCallister, even Chief Inspector Brennan, who was slap in the middle of messy divorce proceedings.

They had all heard. They talked to me like there was a death in the family.

I called my parents.

My dad said I
should
resign. All the bright people were leaving Northern Ireland for England and America. I had so much potential. I was wasted in the sectarian, poisoned atmosphere
of the RUC …

I drank and listened to the blues and at nine put on the BBC.

Port Stanley had fallen to the British forces.

The Argentinians were formalising a surrender.

The BBC correspondent was ecstatic: “There is jubilation here in the streets of Port Stanley as the Falkland Islands flag once again rises above the Governor's—”

I turned off the box and sat in the silence with the Jack Daniel's.

Just before midnight the phone rang again and I picked it up.

“It could have been worse, Duffy,” a female voice said.

It was her. Little Miss Anonymous. She who had caused me so much trouble.

“Could it have been worse?” I said.

“Oh, very much worse. The Americans are terribly cross with you.”

“The Americans say jump and you ask how high.”

“Quite.”

“Why did you do it? Why did you pick on me?”

“I was trying to help you, Duffy.”

“You set me up. Why didn't
you
go to America, love? Why didn't you look in that safe deposit box?”

“That wasn't my scene. Not my scene, at all, Duffy.”

“No, but you sent me, didn't you? Turned me round and pointed me in the right direction. Did you know what was going to happen when I went to that bank?”

“Of course not. We wouldn't have done that to a friend.”

“Who do you work for? MI5? I already have friends in fucking MI5.”

“Look … Duffy, or can I call you Sean?”

“Don't call me anything! Don't call me again! I'm hanging up on you.”

“Wait! Wait a minute. As you well know, Sean, life is cheap in Northern Ireland, so why is it, do you think, that you have been
allowed to live after all the trouble that you've caused for us and our allies across the sea?”

“Why don't you fucking tell me?”

“I have no idea. I can only imagine that to the powers that be, you are, as yet, of some value. Some of us play the long game, Sean.”

“This isn't a game,” I said, and hung up the phone and pulled the jack out of the wall.

I went to the kitchen and wrote out a hasty letter of resignation.

I stuck it in an envelope and addressed it. I found a stamp and walked to the post-box at the end of Coronation Road. I stood there for a minute, thinking.

“Best to sleep on it,” I finally decided, put the envelope in my jacket pocket and returned home.

Images from the asymmetric wars of the future: curling pigtails of smoke from hijacked cars, Army helicopters hovering above a city like mosquitoes over a water hole, heavily armed soldiers and policemen walking in single file on both sides of a residential street …

Night is falling.

The sky is the colour of porter.

The soldiers are carrying semi-automatic SLR rifles and wearing full body armour. We, the embedded cops, are wearing flak jackets and carrying Sterling submachine guns.

We are watching windows and rooftops. We are spaced well apart so that a bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade cannot kill all of us.

Every hundred metres the pointman alternates. Every dozen paces or so the man at the rear does a one-eighty and walks backwards for a step or two.