I Hear the Sirens in the Street (16 page)

“Aye, but the beak will always take the word of a peeler over a wee mucker any day of the week.”

I took up a position at the window.

I could spy out the whole graveyard from up here and could easily see if someone approached the shelter even through the heavy rain. It was possible that she'd already gone to check if I'd taken her envelope in that brief window between me leaving the cemetery and reaching here, but I doubted it. She was the careful type. She'd wait until she knew I was long gone.

If she was still there at all. The really smart play on her part would be to leave the envelope and never come back. But most people weren't like that. That took real dedication. Or years of training. If she didn't come back at all it might be reasonable to infer that she was a spook.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Mrs Bridewell asked.

“Love a cup.”

“I'll just go downstairs,” she said.

“Where are the kids?” I was going to ask, but of course they were at school.

It was just me and her.

Steady lad
, I told myself.

I opened the window and stared across Coronation Road towards the graveyard.

Mrs Bridewell came back in with a stool and a pair of binoculars.

“They're me Dad's ten-by-fifties, they're good,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“I'll get you that tea,” she added, with a Mona Lisa half-smile.

“Ta.”

Our eyes locked. I noticed that she had fixed her hair.

I am weak, I thought.

I am a weak man.

A stupid man.

She nodded, turned and went downstairs.

If my mystery caller didn't show up it would mean big trouble here in the Bridewell household.

I focused the binocs and gazed through them towards the shelter.

A pigeon, a friggin' seagull. Nothing else.

I scanned along the graves and the stone wall. Nada.

Mrs Bridewell came back with the tea and chocolate digestives. The tea was in a Manchester United mug, the biscuits were on a Manchester United plate.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You're welcome. So this is what they call a stakeout then, is it?”

I grinned. “I suppose, although its hardly
The French Connection
, is it? Catching a teen graffiti artist won't get me a promotion.”

“You've done more than enough, Mr Duffy. There's many round here that were dead proud of you last year but they wouldn't say it to your face, cos, you know …”

I'm Catholic? I'm a cop? Both?

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

She put her hand on my shoulder.

Oh, Jesus.

“Listen, uh, Mrs Bridewell, you wouldn't have a copy of the King James Bible handy, would you?”

“Pardon?”

“The King James Bible – I need to look something up.”

The hand fled from my shoulder and tapped the back of her hair.

“Of course!” she said, a touch indignantly. “Of course we have
a Bible, just hold on a minute there and I'll get it.”

I took a sip of tea and resumed scanning the graveyard.

I ate a chocolate biscuit.

And there she was!

She was wearing a black knit cap, a black leather jacket, blue jeans, white Adidas gutties. Her back was to me, but I could tell that she was of medium height, and limber.

I put down the binoculars and ran out of the bedroom.

I almost collided with Mrs Bridewell coming up the stairs.

“She's there, if I leg it I'll get her!” I called out.

“Oh! Go on!” Mrs Bridewell said, excited by the hunt.

I opened the front door and sprinted up Coronation Road, turned left on Victoria Road and was through the cemetery gates in under forty-five seconds.

My girl had arrived at the shelter.

I took out the Smith and Wesson and marched towards her.

Rain was bouncing off the polished marble headstones and thunder rumbled to the west. It was quite the scene. If Mrs Bridewell were watching through the binocs she'd be well impressed.

“Hey you! Police!” I called out. “Put your hands up!”

She didn't even turn to look at me. She ran out of the shelter and kept running towards the graveyard wall.

“Halt or I'll shoot!” I yelled, but she didn't believe me.

She kept on running.

My mind raced. There was no clear shot and if I did shoot her it would be an inquiry at the very least, and if she was just some harmless lunatic I'd be dismissed from the force or (if the Sinn Feiners made an issue of it) charged with involuntary manslaughter.

“Halt!” I screamed again.

Not for a second did she stop.

Fucker!

I let the hammer drop on the Smith and Wesson and ran after her.

Christ, she was fast. She ran between the headstones and down the row of sycamore trees that led to the back gate. She stumbled on a tree root that curved above the surface. She lost her balance, regained it, lost it again, spilled.

“Okay love, that's enough fun and games!” I shouted at her.

I pulled out the trusty .38 again.

I thought I heard a crack.

It may have been a gunshot, it may have been a car backfiring.

I dived to the ground and scrambled behind a headstone.

“The bitch is shooting!” I exclaimed, caught my breath and carefully stood up behind the grave.

In the ten seconds I had taken to do all that, she had gotten to her feet and sprinted towards the cemetery wall.

“Jesus!”

I ran after her but before I'd covered half the distance she hopped the wall and vanished into the Barley Field.

I heard a motorcycle kick and then saw a green Kawasaki 125 trail bike zoom across the field. It jumped a stream and cut down the lane to Victoria Road. It drove straight across the road heading into Downshire Estate. By the time I made it to the wall I couldn't even hear it any more.

I jogged home and called it in.

“Female motorcyclist in black leather jacket heading through Downshire Estate, Carrickfergus on green Kawasaki trail bike. Indeterminate age, possibly dangerous.”

It was unlikely that they'd catch her but you never knew.

The doorbell rang.

I opened it.

Mrs Bridewell looked concerned. She had evidently watched the whole thing through the binoculars.

“Are you all right, Mr Duffy?”

“I'm fine.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I took a spill is all.”

“Them vandals are getting more brazen every day. They have no respect for the law. I have half a mind to tell Bobby Cameron.”

Bobby Cameron was the local UDA commander. His method would be to kneecap the next kid who was found with a spray can.

“No, no, there's no need for that! I'm sure we'll find the culprit. I've called it in.”

“They're putting out an APB? Like on
Kojak?
”

“Exactly like
Kojak
.”

She quivered for a moment in the rain.

“Oh, Mr Duffy,” she said, and folded into my arms. “I was so worried.”

I held her for a moment.

She cleared her throat.

“Well,” she said. “I suppose I better go get the weans.”

“Yes. Of course.”

She walked back down the path.

As I watched her arse jiggle away in that yellow dress I saw a black woman walking down the street from the other direction. She was tall and elegant, wearing jeans and a green sweater.

I had never seen a black person before in Carrickfergus and contextually it was pretty surprising. Because of the Troubles Northern Ireland had had virtually no immigration. I mean, why would anyone emigrate to a war zone that had bad weather, bad people, bad food and sky-high unemployment? Carrickfergus was as ethnically complex and diverse as a joint Ku Klux Klan-Nazi Party rally.

I stared at the woman for a second.

It wasn't nice but I couldn't help myself.

She must have felt my gaze because she turned to look at me and smiled.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” she replied, in an African accent.

I went back inside #113 and closed the front door.

I checked with the emergency dispatcher at Carrick Station.

No motorcycle.

I asked them to patch it up to central command.

They said they would.

Every RUC and British Army patrol that came across a green motorcycle for the next twenty hours would stop the bike and question the rider.

In theory it sounded good. But presumably the bike would be burnt out at the first opportunity and never ridden again.

The whole thing was baffling. Was it just a crank? Some kid fucking with me? I went back to the graveyard to see if the envelope was still there but she'd lifted it. Didn't matter. I remembered the verse. I ran the bath, poured myself a vodka and lime and dug out the King James Bible. I looked up Paul's first letter to the Corinthians,
chapter 13
, verse 12.

Of course I recognised the passage: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

What's that all about? I asked myself repeatedly for the next two hours and got no answers at all.

I was in Ownies getting a pub dinner when the beeper went. I asked Arthur if I could borrow his phone and when I tracked it down it turned out to be a message from central dispatch in Ballymena. They had got my girl! An army patrol had nabbed her on her motorbike heading north out of Carrick and they'd handed her over to the police. She was now at Whitehead Police Station.

“Well, well, well,” I said, and grinned at Arthur.

“Good news?”

“Aye, could be, mate. Could be.”

I ran back to the barracks, jumped in the Beemer, hit a ton on the Bla Hole road and was at Whitehead Cop Shop in eight minutes. It was a small police station, unmanned at the weekends. Four police reservists and an inspector ran the show.

I found the duty officer, a freckly kid called Raglan with a David Soul haircut and a feeble ginger tache.

“I need to interview your prisoner,” I said.

“The prisoner?”

“Aye, presumably you've only the one.”

“She's left already,” Raglan said.

“What?”

“She left.”

“Who the fuck with?”

“A couple of superintendents from Special Branch.”

“You get their names?”

“McClue was one of them, I forget the other. Is there a problem?”

“I don't know. I suppose I'll follow up with bloody Special Branch and see.”

“You just missed them by about half an hour.”

“Tell me about her – what did she look like? Was she English?”

“She didn't talk a lot. She was good-looking. She looked Scottish. Sort of blondy-reddy hair. About thirty, maybe younger, maybe older. Sort of not very interesting. A bit old to be joyriding a stolen motorbike, I thought.”

“Did you take her photograph, her prints?”

“Special Branch called us and told us to hold off on that.”

“Special Branch phoned you up and told you not to fingerprint her?”

“Yes.”

“That's a bit strange, no?”

“Well, them boys in Special Branch are always a bit strange, aren't they?”

“You must have searched her.”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“I wrote it down here.”

He looked up a notepad and read: “On her person there were: a set of keys, a pair of gloves, a notepad and a paperback book called
Doctor Faustus.”

“And where is all that stuff now?”

“Special Branch took it with them.”

I nodded.

“When was she brought in?” I asked.

“The Army dropped her off around four.”

“You didn't process her then?”

“No. Not at that time. We took her right to the cells and give her a pillow and a blanket.”

“And she said nothing?”

“Not then.”

“Did you ask her name at least?”

“Aye. Of course!”

“And?”

“Alice Smith.”

“Alice Smith?”

“Alice Smith.”

“Hmmm. And how did Special Branch get involved?”

“About six I brought her a cup of tea and she thanked me and asked if she could make her phone call.”

“And you let her?”

“It's her right, isn't it?”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, she made her call and ate a biscuit and I escorted her back to her cell and about five minutes later I get a call saying Special Branch is on their way and not to process her.”

“You didn't think that was odd? The timing, I mean.”

“No.”

“And they show up when?”

“About half an hour ago, like I said.”

“Were they in uniform?”

“No.”

“They have ID?”

“I didn't think it was necessary to check. I mean, they said they were on their way and then they showed up.”

“Describe them.”

“Just a couple of blokes. Suits, ties … I wasn't really paying attention.”

“Did they sign for her? Anything like that?”

“Are they supposed to?”

“You let two strangers come in here and take a suspect out of the cells and you didn't check their IDs or ask them to sign for her?”

“She was only in for bike theft, wasn't she?”

I walked down to the cells to see if she'd left anything there.

She hadn't.

I spent the next hour calling Special Branch.

Of course there was no Superintendent McClue and no officers had been sent to Whitehead Police Station to pick up a suspect. This was as I had expected. I ran the name Alice Smith through the database but nothing of interest came up.

I walked to the nearest Eason's in Carrick and bought myself a copy of
Doctor Faustus
. Baroque wasn't the word. Made Henry James seem like Jackie Collins. Not the kind of book I'd bring on a stakeout, but none of this play was the way I would have done things. It was very much amateur hour which could mean anything from civilians on a jape to the goons on Gower Street who still prided themselves on their “amateur” status.