I Hear the Sirens in the Street t-2

by Adrian McKinty

  And although Burke wasn’t that popular a bloke, he was a familiar face and before he became a really heavy drinker had been a decent enough peeler.

  I went into the main incident room. The air, like the weather, was foul. Some of the female reservists were crying.

  There was nothing I could say or do. I went down to the evidence room to see if I could liberate some grass or ciggies but the duty officer was a God-botherer called Fredericks who wouldn’t countenance any untoward shit.

  Back up to my office by the windows. A cup of tea. A smoke.

  McCrabban knocked on the door. He was in his dress greens too.

  “Shame, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Aye, it’s a crying shame.”

  Crabbie looked embarrassed, was going to say something, couldn’t bring himself to, excused himself and left. Did he want me to put in a good word for him about the sergeantcy vacancy? Probably, but with these Presbyterians you could never tell anything.

  I stared out the window for ten minutes, watching boats chug up and down the filthy lough.

  Another door knock and Chief Inspector Brennan came in.

  Full duds and a shave.

  “Put your cock away, Duffy, the Chief Constable’s on his way. I don’t know what we did to deserve this, but there it is,” he said.

  “Well, sir, it’s not really about us, it’s—”

  “The next promotion cycle I was going to be made superintendent. You can’t have a chief inspector running a cop shop like Carrick. Superintendent they were going to make me. That’s all over now. Fucking Burke and his fucking games. Fucker. Poor dumb fucker … Have you got a drink, Duffy?”

  “I might have some vodka under the—”

  “Better not, Hermon’s a tough nut. Jesus! What a cock up!”

  He left the office so that he could wail to someone else.

  I watched the clock and around eleven the Chief Constable did indeed come down. He landed by helicopter on the Barn Field and drove to the police station in a convoy of three police Land Rovers.

  Not exactly low key.

  Still, Jack Hermon was a popular chief constable of the RUC. He had fought Thatcher tooth and nail for better pay and conditions, he had encouraged the recruitment of Catholic officers, he had sacked the worst of the Protestant sectarian arseholes and he had ended the use of psychological and physical torture at the Castlereagh Holding Centre (counterproductive and unreliable, the reports said). The RUC still had many many problems with bigoted, incompetent, and lazy officers but Hermon had done a decent job in only a short time and for his efforts he had recently been knighted by the Queen.

  His entrance was all drama.

  The bodyguard cops came into the station first, looking tough. Big guys with ’taches and submachine guns.

  Then Sir Jack with his familiar peasant features, red potato face and squat frame. His uniform looked too tight for him.

  Chief Inspector Brennan saluted.

  They shook hands and exchanged words.

  Brennan introduced his senior officers, in other words Inspector McCallister, myself and Sergeant Quinn.

  Sir Jack shook our hands and told Brennan to gather everyone (“even the fucking tea ladies”) in the downstairs conference room.

  His speech was boilerplate stuff that didn’t even attempt to deal with the “accidental discharge of a firearm” cover story. Instead it was: Morale … The importance of talking to people about your problems … Optimism … Things looked bad now, but in fact we were winning the fight against terrorism …

  Maybe some of the reservists were impressed, but no one else was.

  Afterwards we had tea and biscuits and a carrot cake that Carol baked herself.

  We were supposed to mingle with the Chief Constable and feel free to ask him anything. I hung back near the photocopier with Matty and McCrabban, trying not to catch his eye. It didn’t do any good. After a minute or two he made an obvious beeline for me. Crabbie and Matty scattered like wildebeest before a lioness.

  “Get back here,” I whispered.

  “You’re on your own, mate,” Matty hissed, before making a break for the bogs.

  Hermon offered his hand again. He was wearing leather gloves now, getting ready to leave.

  “You’re Duffy, isn’t that right?” Sir Jack asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Wanted to talk to you before I go.”

  “Me personally, sir?”

  “Aye.”

  “Uhm, we can go into my office if you want.”

  “Lead on.”

  I walked up to my office and closed the door.

  He didn’t sit or comment on the sea view.

  “I’ve had two calls about you in two weeks. Two calls about a lowly detective inspector. You must be something pretty special, eh?”

  “No, sir, I’m—”

  “Do you have any idea how busy I am, Duffy?”

  “I imagine that you’re ver—”

  “Damn right I am. And let me tell you something, sonny Jim. I am not afraid to stick my neck out for my men.”

  “I’ve never heard anything different.”

  “Ian Paisley? I’m not afraid of Paisley. I personally arrested that loudmouth. To a man the politicians of this sorry, benighted, God-abandoned land are rabble-rousing scum.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But when I get calls complaining about the actions of one of my officers, calls directly to me, I have to take an interest, don’t I?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The United States Consul General in Belfast called me up and said that one of my officers was hectoring one of his officials. Do you know who that officer was?”

  “Sir, I can assure you that—”

  “And then I get a call from the Right Honourable Ian Paisley MP, saying that one of his oldest friends, a certain Sir Harry McAlpine, was also getting a bollocking from a bolshy young detective. Can you guess who that detective was?”

  “Sir, if I can explain …”

  Hermon got real close and I got a zoom in on his lined face, that cheap and cheerful Mallorca suntan, the tired, angry, bloodshot eyes.

  “I looked at your personnel file, Duffy. You’ve got a medal from the Queen and you’re a Catholic to boot! I suppose you think that that makes you immune. I suppose you think you’re Clint Eastwood. I suppose you think you can do whatever you like?”

  “Not at all, sir, if I could just—”

  “Let me tell you how this place works, Duffy. It’s a tribal society. Clans. Warlords. You think we’re living in 1982? We’re living in 1582. You can’t go around ruffling the feathers of the big chieftains. Do you get me?”

  “Chieftains, feathers, no ruffling, sir.”

  “Are you making fun of me, son?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Good. Because you need me. And if I’m going to back you up against them, I need to know that our masters in London are going to back me up.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Sir Harry McAlpine is a wheeler and dealer. He’s got land here and there. And he’s in favour at Stormont at the moment. He has influential friends and he has the ear of the ministry.”

  Aye, and he’s also a big bluffing bastard mortgaged up the wazoo and to quote his sister-in-law, as poor as a church mouse, I did not say.

  Hermon looked at me and held my gaze and waited until I looked away first, but I wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction. He may have come here in a helicopter, he may have been on the blower to Mrs Thatcher last night, but his breath smelled of Cookstown sausages.

  He nodded and finally he looked away. He examined my office for the first time, impressed by the view out the window and perhaps by its un-Presbyterian messiness. “So,” he said, after a pause, “where do you keep the good whiskey?”

  20 THE UDR BASE

  The media bought the tale about the “accidental shooting” – whether the life insurance company dicks would was another story but that, thank Christ, was
not my concern. The funeral was on a Sunday at a small Scottish Calvinist Church up the Antrim coast. The ceremony was alien to me: singing of Psalms, prayers, nothing about the dead man. Rain and sea spray lashed the unadorned church windows and there was no heating of any kind.

  A tall, Raymond Massey-like church elder said: “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord that He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. Surely He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.”

  This was definitely my kind of god but unfortunately it hadn’t quite worked out that way for Sergeant Burke. At the graveside, a divisional chief super gave a eulogy mentioning Burke’s years of devoted service. Of course there were no shots over the coffin or anything like that. You save that kind of thing for the Provos.

  The fall-out from Burke’s death was immediate. Chief Inspector Brennan was not promoted, but to keep the shifts working effectively we now needed a new sergeant. Someone with a head for detail who could help keeping the place level. I knew that this was my opportunity to push for Crabbie. If they promoted him to acting sergeant now it wouldn’t matter how he did on his exam as long as he wasn’t a total disaster. I lobbied hard for him but I was a lone voice as everyone else wanted weasly Kenny Dalziel from clerical who could run the admin that everyone else hated.

  I told Crabbie after the meeting. “They’re promoting Dalziel.”

  He was gutted. “What have I done wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry, mate. They don’t know anything. I mean, of course they’re going to promote a clerk like Dalziel, not someone who actually, you know, goes out and solves crimes.”

  The day ended.

  The next began.

  The week went by like that.

  Rain and no leads.

  On the Thursday we learned that Bill O’Rourke’s body had been returned to America. His funeral was at Arlington where he got the full honour guard, folded flag treatment. We were told that his dead wife’s sister had surfaced out of the woodwork to claim his house in Massachusetts and his apartment in Florida. I asked the local police to interview her and they did and a Lieutenant Dawson sent me a terse fax stating that there was nothing suspicious about her.

  The days lengthened. The Royal Navy Task Force continued its southward journey. On Saturday morning a masked man armed with a shotgun robbed the Northern Bank in High Street Carrickfergus and got away with nine hundred pounds. The sum was insignificant, no one was hurt and I wasn’t going to make it a priority until Brennan summoned me to his office.

  “What’s your progress on the O’Rourke murder?”

  “It’s about the same as it was when we talked last w—”

  “Get on this robbery, then. Your full team. It’s about time you started pulling your weight around here, Duffy!”

  Brennan had aged. His hair was going from grey to white and he looked flabby. God knows where he was staying now. What was bothering him? The marriage? Being passed over? Something else? I’d never know. Crabbie had gone through troubles with his missus last year and had never said one word about it.

  I investigated the robbery and of course there were no witnesses, but an informant our agent handler knew called Jackdaw told us some good information.

  A guy called Gus Plant had bought everyone a round of drinks in the Borough Arms on Saturday night and boasted to everyone that he was going to get himself a new motor. Crabbie and I got a warrant and went to Gus’s house in Castlemara Estate. He’d had the stolen money under his bed.

  It was pathetic.

  We cuffed him and his wife screamed at him all the way outside. She’d told him that that was the first place the cops would look and he hadn’t listened because he never listened.

  “Prison’ll be good for you, mate. Anything to get away from that racket,” I told him in the back of the Rover.

  It wasn’t The Mystery of the Yellow Room but it was a case solved and it kept the Chief off our backs for a couple of days.

  I called Tony McIlroy and asked him about the Dougherty murder.

  For a moment he was baffled.

  “We yellowed that file. It’s going nowhere,” he said.

  “You interviewed the widow?”

  “Aye, I did. You didn’t tell me she was a good-looking lass.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And what are your impressions? Did she have something to do with Dougherty’s death?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  “That’s it? A simple no? She had no alibi.”

  “Or motive, or weapon, or cojones, or experience … Hey, I’ve another call, I’ll call you back.”

  He didn’t call me back.

  Days.

  Nights.

  Rain through the kitchen window. Thin daffodils. Fragile lilacs. Gulls flopping sideways into the wind. An achromatic vacancy to the sky.

  I canvassed for witnesses, tried to nail down Bill O’Rourke’s last movements, but nobody knew anything. Nobody had seen him after he left the Dunmurry Country Inn.

  One morning the Chief Inspector had us up to his office. “Lads, listen, I’m putting the name and number of the divisional psychiatrist up on the noticeboard. I suggest you tell the lads to avail themselves of his services. The bottle is not the answer,” he said, finishing a double whiskey chaser.

  April marched on.

  We put the O’Rourke case in a yellow binder, which meant that it was open but not actively being pursued.

  This represented yet another personal defeat. Half a dozen murder investigations under my belt and not one of them had resulted in a successful prosecution.

  This time we hadn’t even found out who’d done it.

  A man mourning his wife had come on holiday to Ireland and someone had poisoned him, chopped up the body, frozen him and dumped him like trash.

  “It’s sickening,” I told Matty and McCrabban over a hot whiskey at the Dobbins.

  “It’s part of the job, mate,” Crabbie said philosophically. “You’ll drive yourself mad if you’re after a hundred per cent clearance rate.”

  He was right about that, but wasn’t it also possible that I just wasn’t a very good copper? Perhaps I lacked focus or attention to detail or maybe I just didn’t have the right stuff to be a really good detective. Or even a half-decent detective.

  A wet, frigid, Monday morning we got a call about a break-in at the rugby club on the Woodburn Road. Trophies had been stolen. The thieves had come in through a skylight. None of us could face going up onto the rugby club roof in this weather so we drew straws. Matty and I got the short ones.

  We drove up the Woodburn Road, climbed a rickety ladder, got on the roof and gathered evidence while rain came down in buckets and a caretaker kept saying “It’s not safe up there, be careful, now.”

  We heroically dusted for prints and found nothing. A pigeon shat on Matty’s back. We climbed back down, wrote a description of the missing articles and said we’d put the word out. We had a courtesy pint in the club and we were about to drive home when I noticed that the rugby club was right next to Carrickfergus UDR base.

  The UDR barracks was even more heavily defended than the police station. A twenty-foot-high fence topped with coils of razor wire was in front of a thick blast-wall made of reinforced concrete.

  It was an ugly structure: utilitarian, grim, Soviet. I had never been inside. You’d think that there were would be a lot of cooperation between the police and the UDr The Ulster Defence Regiment was the locally recruited regiment of the British Army and there were often joint RUC/UDR patrols, but in fact we largely operated in different worlds. We seldom shared
intelligence and what they actually did apart from the odd patrol or operation on the border was a mystery. A lot of drinking, snooker and darts, I imagine. We regarded ourselves as a highly professional modern police force operating in extremis – the UDR was, at best, a panicky response to the Troubles. The Troubles was their entire raison d’être and if the war ever ended we would still be here but they, presumably, would have to be disbanded. Were there good UDR officers and men? Of course, but were there a lot of wasters, too? Yes. And bigots, more than likely. These days the police were getting up to twenty per cent Catholic representation, which compared favourably to the forty per cent of Northern Ireland’s population who identified ourselves as Roman Catholic on the census. The UDR didn’t publish its Catholic membership, but it was rumoured to be less than five per cent. Of course the IRA made it their number one priority to kill Catholic UDR men, but even so, the regiment had more than a whiff of sectarianism about it. And it wasn’t just the Nationalist papers in Belfast who criticised it – stories about collusion between the UDR and Protestant terror groups had appeared in the mainstream English press, too.

  We were all on the same side, but if we ever wanted to get cooperation from the Catholic community we coppers had to hold ourselves somewhat aloof.

  “Where are you going?” Matty asked.

  “We never checked out Captain McAlpine, did we?”

  “Oh Jesus, this again?” Matty said.

  “Can you think of anything better to do?”

  Matty thought for a second or two. “No, actually, I can’t.”

  We drove to the fortified guard post and showed our warrant cards. A soldier with full body armour, holding an SLR, gave us a suspicious look and then waved us through.