I Hear the Sirens in the Street (12 page)

“You were up there on traffic duty?” he asked in a faint Scottish accent.

“Aye.”

“They've got a detective inspector on bloody traffic duty? What's the bloody world coming to?”

“I suppose they're a bit short-handed. Apparently the army units they were going to deploy in East Antrim are off to the Falklands,” I said.

He spat. “Fucking Falklands. Fucking sheep. That's all that's
there. I know, I've been. Military Police. You're not the Duffy that Tony McIlroy's always going on about, are you?” McClure asked.

“Tony talks about me?”

“He said we should recruit you for Special Branch, he says that you're good.”

“That's nice of him.”

“Can't stand the man myself. Very showy.”

“When we arrived last night somebody told us that this is some new IRA technique?” I asked, to change the subject.

“Oh, yes. Come and see.”

He lifted the “RUC: Do Not Cross” tape and I followed him across the site of the former police station. He showed me where the lorry had driven through the police station's barrier and then exploded. “It's a very impressive new technique,” he said. “We'll have to re-evaluate security at every barracks in Ulster. Apparently the man who drove the lorry was forced to do it. His family had been taken hostage by the IRA and he was told that if he didn't drive the vehicle right into the station they'd all be shot. As soon as he breached the barrier another IRA team blew up the lorry by remote control. As you can see it was a big bomb. A thousand pounds, maybe.”

“You've seen this sort of thing before?”

“Once before. Two makes it a pattern. It's a pretty devastating new ploy. Between us, Inspector, the higher ups are keeking their whips.”

“I'll bet they are. Every police station in Ulster will be vulnerable.”

“Aye.”

“What about the guy who drove the lorry? Was he a copper too?”

“No. Catholic bread-van driver. He delivered to the peelers so they're calling him a ‘collaborator'. He delivers bread for a living and he's a collaborator. That's the world we're living in,
Inspector.”

We walked among the smoking debris and the Chief Superintendent picked up the twisted remains of a steering wheel. “Look at this,” he said, showing me the plastic wheel which had been warped and melted into an amazing spaghetti sculpture. I noticed a bent ring of metal around the wheel. “They didn't trust him completely, did they?” I said, pointing at the metal ring.

“Why do you say that?”

“They handcuffed the poor bastard to the steering wheel.”

Davey looked at the wheel and nodded. The sun was burning through the low clouds now. I yawned. It had been a long night. “Listen, sir, I was wondering if my team could be released from traffic duty, I've got an interview at the US Consulate later this morning and—”

“Aye, aye, spare me the details. You and your lads can go. How many CID are up there with you?”

“Just two.”

“Good. Leave the others. I can't afford to lose a man down here.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I walked back up the hill and grinned at Matty and Crabbie.

I pointed at Matty. “You can go to bed.”

“Ta, mate.”

I pointed at Crabbie. “You can come with me.”

Some of the other peelers from Carrickfergus looked at me expectantly.

I shook my head. “Sorry lads, they need the rest of you here for the foreseeable. I'm really sorry.”

Before there was a police mutiny I got Matty and McCrabban into the nearest Land Rover and we drove off. Up on the hills debris from the explosion had set the gorse on fire. A line of flame was snaking its way over the mountain top. We called it in to the fire brigade and drove through: Ballyclare, Ballyeaston,
Ballynure, Ballylagan and finally Carrickfergus. We dropped Matty at his house up the Woodburn Road. His mother invited us in for a cup of a tea, but we had to say no.

McCrabban and I hit the station, shaved, splashed water on our faces, grabbed an instant coffee, put on shirts and ties.

The Chief saw us on the way out. “Oi, lads, what are you doing here? Get your arse in gear, you've got a meeting at the US Consulate in Belfast at nine. Chop fucking chop, Duffy. Don't embarrass us.”

“We were just on our way out, sir, they had us on emergency traffic duty at Ballycoley.”

“That's the service. All hands on deck. Tragedy up there. Two brother officers killed. You're not complaining, are you, Duffy?”

“No sir.”

“Good, now don't stand there with your bake open, off ya go!”

We hit top gear on the M5 even sticking the siren on so we'd make our appointment on time and not ‘embarrass the station'. As it was we were ten minutes late.

A lackey showed us into a formal meeting room with a chandelier, William Morris wallpaper and large photographs of President Reagan, Vice President Bush and the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig. There was a polished oak oval table and a dozen straight-backed uncomfortable-looking oak chairs on a plush red carpet.

A secretary came in to take minutes, a nice wee lass with pale skin and green eyes, followed by a skinny character who was obviously a diplomat. He was about thirty, cadaverous, reedy, brown-eyed, a slightly misshapen head. He was wearing a tweed shirt, a pink shirt and a black tie. He was carrying a briefcase which he placed on the desk in front of him.

I gave Crabbie a look which told him that I wanted him to run the meeting and he nodded. “Detective Inspector Duffy, Detective Constable McCrabban,” he said.

“James Fallows, US Department of State. Would either of you
gentlemen like tea or coffee?” Fallows asked in a pleasant baritone.

“Coffee would be lovely,” I said. “Milk, two sugars.”

“Mine's a tea, no milk, no sugar,” McCrabban said.

The secretary put down her yellow legal pad and without a word exited the room.

“I heard about the bombing this morning. I'm very sorry,” Fallows said.

“Thank you,” Crabbie replied for both of us.

“They're saying on the news that there were three deaths?” Fallows continued.

“Four. Four confirmed dead at the scene. Two policemen dead, two seriously injured. The driver of the lorry died in the explosion and a civilian was killed in a nearby home,” I said.

“Ah, yes, but the driver of the lorry was surely a terrorist,” Fallows said with a thin smile that I didn't really like.

“We don't know that at this stage,” McCrabban said.

The secretary came back with the hot drinks and a plate of American cookies.

I took a sip of my surprisingly good coffee and took a bite of cookie.

Aaron Copland began piping through the air from somewhere.

“So, down to business. Apparently one of our countrymen called William O'Rourke has been murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Are you quite sure it's a murder?”

“We're sure,” Crabbie said.

“Poisoned?”

“Poisoned, yes.”

He opened his briefcase and looked at the notes in front of him. “I've never heard of this ‘Abrin' – it's rare, is it?”

“Very rare. In fact, one of the things we wanted to ask you about was whether you can provide any information for us about Mr O'Rourke's horticultural connections. Did he have a greenhouse,
was he a grower of exotic plants, were any of his relatives engaged in that kind of activity?” Crabbie asked.

“I wasn't aware that you were here to solicit help with your investigation,” Fallows said.

“Why did you think we were here?” I asked.

“I had been led to believe that this was merely a formal briefing.”

“You're not refusing to help us with our inquiries, are you?” I asked incredulously.

Crabbie and I exchanged a look.

“Of course not,” Fallows ululated. “You will be given the full and complete cooperation of the United States Embassy to the Court of St James.”

“That's what we were hoping for,” I said. “For a start the local police force in Newburyport are having some trouble faxing Mr O'Rourke's driving licence to us. Apparently that requires another level of authorisation or something. I'm not sure what the hold up is but I was wondering if you could—”

Mr Fallows slid a cardboard file across the desk.

“You can keep this,” he said.

It contained a photostat of Bill O'Rourke's driver's licence and passport. He was a handsome man, was Bill. Lean, tanned, with dark black hair greying only slightly on the left hand side. He had an intelligent, unyielding face and there was that certain something about him that commanded respect. Maybe it was all that horror he'd experienced in World War Two.

“We've never had an American murdered in Northern Ireland in all my time here,” Fallows said. “Surprising, given the level of violence.”

“There's got to be a first time for everything,” Crabbie said.

“We'll also need his work records from his employer and any possible criminal records from the FBI,” I added.

“You ask for a lot.”

“And I'll need a local police officer to investigate his house
and report back to me about what he finds.”

“Oh, they won't like that,” Fallows sniffed. “That's vague. Report back about what?”

“I'll need a full report on his home – homes, I should say – his recent activity at the bank, that kind of thing. The cops will know what to do.”

“And whether he has a greenhouse. And we'll need to know if he has a plant in that greenhouse called rosary pea,” McCrabban added.

“Rosary pea?” Fallows said, and couldn't quite meet our gaze.

I shot another quick glance at McCrabban. Yup, he'd seen it too. This fucker was hiding something.

“
Rosary pea
rings a bell, does it?” I asked.

Fallows shook his head. “Never heard of it in my life.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Never heard of it before you mentioned it.”

“Your last diplomatic posting wasn't Trinidad, was it?” McCrabban asked.

“No. Six years in Canada and then here. Why?”

I smiled and shook my head. “No reason.”

We fired a few more questions at him but he gave us back nothing that we wanted. We made sure that he got the message about the cooperation of the Massachusetts police and the FBI and he said that he would see what he could do.

When we got outside we rubber-banded the file and headed for the Rover. Queen's Street was one of the places where you could get into the centre of Belfast through the steel security barriers erected across the road. Every single pedestrian going into Belfast had to be patted down and their bags searched in an effort to stamp out bomb attacks. Of course we peelers just flashed our warrant cards and jumped straight to the head of the line.

“Fucking cops,” someone muttered behind us in the queue.

“Aye,” someone else agreed. “They think they run the fucking world.”

When we were through the barrier I patted McCrabban on the back, something which the big phobic Proddy ganch always hated. “That was a good question, mate,
rosary pea
seemed to take that skinny wee shite aback a bit, didn't it?”

“Maybe the local American cops have already found something in O'Rourke's greenhouse?” Crabbie said, shrinking from the touch of a fellow human being.

“Maybe, Crabbie, maybe. But, as Bobby D. says, there's something funny going on, I can just feel it in the air.”

“A complication?”

“Brennan's not going to like it, but yeah, it's beginning to sound that way, isn't it?”

The case was flying now. We had made a shit load of progress and as I looked at myself in the mirror and shaved with an electric I saw a man who was at least professionally content, if not exactly happy in any other aspect of his life. I certainly wasn't worried about meeting the Chief this morning. He'd kept off my back for a few days and I was determined to show him that his faith in the long leash was justified.

I finished shaving, put the kettle on and went outside. The starlings had been at the milk: clever wee shites, they had figured out that gold-top bottles contained the full cream stuff and silver top the ordinary milk. Their intelligence was a rare commodity round these parts. I grabbed a gold-top, made coffee and toast and I was about to head out to the car when the phone rang. It was Carol, who told me that the Chief Inspector wanted to meet me at the police club in Kilroot, not at the station.

“Fine by me,” I lied.

I checked under the BMW for bombs, didn't find any and drove down Coronation Road.

I was stopped at an army checkpoint outside of Eden Village. Two Land Rovers and half a dozen jittery squaddies from the Parachute Regiment. Everyone knew that the Paras were being shipped out of Northern Ireland to be the tip of the spear in the Falklands invasion. It was good riddance. Most Catholics I knew still hated the Parachute Regiment for the Bloody Sunday
massacre in Derry. I still hated them for that too, as irrational and conflicted as that sounded.

The weekend after Bloody Sunday was one of the hinge points of my life, when I very nearly joined the PIRA, only to be turned down by an old school friend of mine, Dermot McCann, the IRA quartermaster in the city who told me that I should stay at university because “the movement needed thinkers”.

Of course, by joining the police I had betrayed Dermot and the movement.

I don't know how honour is to be properly measured, but when you saw the Parachute Regiment march the streets of Ulster and you knew that they were your brothers in arms, it certainly didn't sit well …

I showed the soldiers my warrant card and a big sergeant within an even bigger moustache waved me through the checkpoint.

Another checkpoint took me into the police club.