Текст книги "I Hear the Sirens in the Street"

Автор книги: Adrian McKinty

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

18: NOT EXACTLY SCOUT FINCH

There were a dozen of them wearing balaclavas, ski masks or scarves; they were carrying cricket bats, sticks and baseball bats – the last always an impressive get in a country that didn’t play the game.

They had banged the front door rather than smashing the windows, so that gave me the feeling that they weren’t here to kill me.

“This is your last chance. If you want to prevent violence, you’ll have to fucking come, Duffy,” Bobby Cameron said in his unmistakable burr.

“Why don’t you take that thing off your face and we’ll talk like civilised men,” I said, pointing at the bandana over his mouth.

“Come with us, Duffy, or it’ll be on your conscience,” Bobby replied.

I liked that – whatever they were about to do was somehow going to be my fault.

“All right. Hold on a minute,” I said.

I closed the door in their faces, ran upstairs, got the .38 from under my pillow, shoved it down the front of my jeans and pulled my Ramones T-shirt over the grip. I grabbed a leather jacket and went outside onto the porch.

“I love the kit, but I think you’re all a little late for ski season, gentlemen,” I said.

No one laughed.

“We have to draw a line in the fucking sand,” someone said. It sounded like Mr Cullen who once had been a shop steward at Harland and Wolff shipyard and now, like nearly everybody else, was unemployed.

“It’s bad enough with the fucking fenians out-breeding us. And now this? It’s a fucking disaster,” someone else said.

“It’s a question of jobs,” Bobby said.

“What’s going on, lads?” I asked.

“We want you, Duffy, because you can explain it to them, nice, like. This doesn’t have to end in tears,” Bobby said.

“What doesn’t have to end in tears?” I asked.

“This way,” Bobby said.

Cameron led the way and we followed him out onto Coronation Road. The street was deserted. Cleared. No drunks, no passers by, no witnesses. What the hell were they doing?

And I was sober now, too. And a little scared.

Two of the men were carrying vodka bottles with rags sticking out the end.

“Down here,” Bobby said.

He stopped at the last house on Coronation Road, just before Victoria Road began. He turned to me.

“Now, you go in and tell them that we’re reasonable men. We don’t want any nonsense. Nobody has to get hurt. We’ll give them half an hour to get their stuff and go. But if they don’t go I won’t be responsible for what happens to them,” Bobby said.

I was still clueless. I had no idea who lived in this house. In fact I had thought it was vacant. Was it a child molester? What?

It was a red-brick terraced council house, identical to mine, except that I had purchased mine from the Housing Executive under Mrs Thatcher’s home ownership scheme and done it up a bit.

I opened the gate and walked down the path.

The previous renters had cemented over the garden, but the new occupant or occupants had placed half a dozen rose bushes in little pots over the raw concrete.

I knocked on the front door.

“Who is it?” a voice asked from inside.

“It’s one of your neighbours,” I said. “Sean Duffy from down the street.”

“Just a minute.”

The door opened a few seconds later. It was the African woman. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and she was clutching a handbag. She looked at me and looked at the mob waiting in the street.

“What is happening?” she asked, trembling, terrified.

“These men have come to intimidate you out of your house,” I told her.

“What have I done?” she asked. Her accent was East African, educated.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t I ask them.”

I turned to face the men milling on Coronation Road.

“She wants to know what’s she done,” I said.

“She just has to go! Carrick’s no place for her. There’s no jobs for outsiders!” someone yelled.

“We don’t want any niggers in our town!” someone else shouted. Billy Took, by the sound of his high-pitched voice.

“Where do you think you are, Billy? Alabama?” I said to him.

“This is our country!” someone else said.

“They’re fucking swamping us!”

“It’s the thin end of a wedge.”

“They’re stealing our jobs!”

The rain began. I tilted my head back and let it spatter on my face for a moment or two.

I turned to face the woman.

“What’s your name, love?” I asked her.

“Ambreena,” she said.

“What do you do?”

“I am a student at the university.”

“Which university?”

“The University of Ulster. I am studying business administration.”

“Very good. Who else is in the house? Do you have any kids? A husband?”

“A boy. My husband is in Uganda.”

“Do you have any relatives nearby?”

“They are all in Uganda.”

She looked at the mob. “What must I do? Must I go?”

“No. Go back inside, close the door. I’ll get rid of these hoodlums, and if you have any more trouble you come see me. I’m a police officer. I live at number 113.”

She nodded.

Her eyes were hooded and dark and very beautiful. Old eyes that had seen much, but she herself was very young. Perhaps twenty-one.

She reached into the bag, fumbled for her purse, took three twenty-pound notes and offered them to me.

“That won’t be necessary. Now go inside, close the door, and if you’ve any trouble, come see me. Or call me. 62670. Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a phone?”

“Yes.”

“Go on, then. Get inside.”

She closed the door.

There was that smell in the wet street. That oh-so-familiar perfume of gasoline and tobacco and booze and fear.

Curtains twitched, lights went on, but whatever happened nobody, absolutely nobody, would hear or see anything, even if someone accidentally killed a copper. Check that. Especially if someone accidentally killed a copper.

Silence, save for a distant army helicopter somewhere over the black lough.

I looked at Bobby Cameron. Our eyes met above the bandana.

“Stand aside, peeler,” someone said.

Raindrops pattered in the oily potholes.

Fragile lines of phosphorous flitted between clouds as the moon appeared over the terrace on Victoria Road.

Bobby smiled under the mask. “They have to leave, Duffy,” he said. “We’ve discussed it.”

“It’s only one woman and her kid.”

“One or a thousand. It doesn’t matter. It’s the start of it.”

“They’re taking our jobs!” someone yelled. It was Davey Dummigan from up the road, his Ards accent unmistakable.

“She’s not taking your jobs, Davey. ICI moved its factory to South-east Asia cos there are no unions and the labour’s cheap. It’s got nothing to do with her.”

“You didn’t hear us, Duffy. We brought you in as a courtesy. One way or another they’re leaving tonight,” someone else said.

I stared at the men.

They stared at me.

In the distance I could hear sirens upon sirens.

This was absurd. I reached into the front of my jeans and pulled out the .38.

Is this what you want, Bobby? Do you really want us to all to leap together into the great glittering Omega? For her? For the thin end of a wedge?

“You’re not the law, my lads, I’m the fucking law,” I growled.

I didn’t point the gun at them but I let everyone see that I had it in my hand.

Half a dozen of the men backed away, afeared of the wild-haired, maverick cop who had already topped five people on this very street.

Bobby was completely unfazed.

“I can come back with a bigger gun than that,” he said, and some of the men laughed. Of that I had no doubt, there were probably AKs in his garden shed.

“I’m the law, my brave boys, and you’ll have to go through me. But why would you want to? She’s the only adult in the house. She’s a student. She’s studying business administration. She’s studying business. She’s come here to create jobs, not fucking steal them,” I said.

A ripple went through the men.

“What did you say she was studying?” Bobby asked.

“Business administration at the University of Ulster,” I said.

“Is she a fenian?” someone shouted.

“There’s no fenians out there, they’re all fucking heathens. They fucking put priests in the pot,” someone else said, and there was more laughter.

Bobby, no dummy, seized the moment. “Well, as long as she doesn’t try and cook anybody on this street, the stink’s bad enough when Rhonda Moore makes lasagne,” he said.

More laughter. “I’ve got a missionary joke, if you want to hear it,” Eddie Shaw said.

“Go ahead, Eddie,” I said, and I put the gun back in my trouser band.

“Very religious Free Presbyterian missionary goes to Africa, catches a disease and is flown to a hospital staffed with nuns. They put a mask over his mouth and move him to the isolation ward. ‘Nurse,’ he mumbles from behind the mask, ‘are my testicles black?’ Embarrassed, the young nurse replies, ‘I don’t know, I’m only here to wash your face and hands.’ The Head Sister is passing and sees the man getting distraught so she marches over to inquire what the problem is. ‘Nurse, please,’ he mumbles, ‘Are my testicles black?’ The Head Sister whips back the bedclothes, pulls down his pyjama trousers, moves his dick, has a right good look, shows the other two nurses, pulls up the pyjamas, replaces the bedclothes and announces, ‘Nothing wrong with your testicles, sir!’ At this the missionary pulls off his mask and says, ‘I said, are my test results back?!’ ”

Roars of laughter. Even Bobby Cameron. And just like that it was over. Most of the men took off their balaclavas as they walked home. Bobby grinned at me and I got the feeling that this was what he’d been hoping for the whole time. Shattered, I went back to the house, grabbed a can of Bass from the fridge and plonked myself down in front of the telly.

Bass after Bass while Alex “The Hurricane” Higgins tore up the snooker table. A lynch mob. What next?

The phone rang. I looked at the living room clock: 12.29. I had a strict rule. Never get the phone after midnight. It was never good news. Never. It rang thirteen times and then stopped and then began ringing again.

“Shit!”

I stomped down the hall. “What now, for heaven’s sake?”

“Duffy, meet me at Carrick Marina, ten minutes,” Chief Inspector Brennan said.

“Come on, sir, it’s after twelve!” I said.

“Stop your whining and get your arse down here, pronto!”

I went outside to the Beemer, checked underneath for bombs, and drove down Coronation Road to the harbour. I parked in the harbour car park. Everything was dark except for the lights on a Polish coal boat which was leaking diesel into the water. I walked along the south pier until I came to the Marina, which consisted of a couple of dozen yachts and small fishing smacks tied against a wooden pontoon.

“Over here, Duffy!” Inspector Brennan said.

I walked along the pontoon to a messy thirty-two-foot ketch, all wood, probably pre-war. Jesus, was he living here now? “Come here!” Brennan said.

I climbed aboard.

“Should I salute the quarter deck or something?” I said.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Yeah.”

He handed me a glass of whiskey.

“Come down below.”

We sat at the chart table. The place smelled bad. Clothes everywhere. A sleeping bag on one of the bunks.

“Standing offer, sir. If you’re looking for somewhere to stay for a while, I have two spare bedrooms and—”

His face went red. His fist clenched. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If you and Mrs Brennan are having any sort of—”

“I’ll thank you not to mention my wife’s name, if you don’t mind, Inspector Duffy!”

I nodded

“And for your information, I am fine. Everything’s normal. Sometimes I choose to sleep out here. I go fishing early. I don’t know what gossip you’ve been listening to down at the station but it’s all fucking lies.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A man’s allowed to go fishing, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I mean, I have your bloody permission, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir.”

He swallowed his glass of whiskey. Poured himself another.

“So, Duffy, this morning you paid a call on a man called Harry McAlpine, is that right?”

“I encountered him, yes.”

“Sir Harry McAlpine?”

“Yes.”

“And you went to his house without a warrant and conducted a search, is that right?”

“No. I went to see him. I was invited in by one of his servants. I waited for him. He didn’t show up and I left.”

“That’s not the story I was told,” Brennan said.

“Has there been some sort of complaint?”

“Aye. There has. To Ian Paisley MP MEP. Ian fucking Paisley.”

“Sir, look, all I did—”

“Spare me the details, Duffy. I’d never heard of this cunt McAlpine before but he’s obviously fucking connected. Stay away from him, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

His eyes drooped and he seemed to fall into a microsleep for a moment.

“Sir?”

“If a man pours you a fucking whiskey, you fucking drink it!” he said angrily.

I drank the rotgut whiskey.

“All right, Duffy, you can go.”

“Yes, sir.”

He sighed and rubbed his face. “It’s one thing after another isn’t it, Duffy?”

“That it is, sir. That it is.”

19: THE CHIEF CONSTABLE

It felt like I had just closed my eyes before I heard some eejit throwing stones against my bedroom window. I checked the clock radio: 6.06 a.m. Goddamn it. If this was Cameron again I’d go out there and shoot the fat fuck.

I opened the curtains and looked down into the front garden.

It was Matty and another constable in their full dress uniforms.

Oh dear.

I went downstairs and opened the front door.

“They’ve been phoning you for the last hour,” Matty said. Not only was he in his dress uniform but he had shaved and the ever-present cheeky grin was gone from his face.

“Am I in trouble?”

“What?”

“Who have I pissed off now? The Prime Minister? The Bishop of Rome?”

“It’s not about you, boss. It’s Sergeant Burke.”

“What about him?”

“Accidentally shot himself last night. Dead.”

“Jesus! Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Fuck. How?”

“Accidental discharge of his personal sidearm,” Matty said, as if he was reading it from a newspaper.

I looked at the other constable.

The other constable smelled of church and breath mints. He seemed about fourteen.

“He topped himself?” I asked Matty in an undertone.

“I wouldn’t know,” Matty replied.

Of course, it was well known that the RUC had the highest suicide rate of any police force in Europe, but you didn’t expect someone in your parish to go off and do himself in.

“I’ll get changed, you lads come in. Who wants coffee?”

I made toast and coffee and shaved and got my dress uniform out of the dry-cleaning wrapper.

We drove to the cop shop where the mood was blacker than the Dulux matt fucking black.

I found Inspector McCallister, who was always on top of things.

“What happened, Jim?” I asked him.

He was pale and his breath reeked of coffee and whiskey.

“Neighbour heard the shot and called it in. I was duty officer so I went out myself. Me and Constable Tory. He was in the living room. Gunshot wound to the side of the head.”

“Did he have any family?”

“He was divorced. Two grown-up kids.”

“Definitely suicide?”

“Keep your fucking voice down, Duffy! We won’t use that word in here. When the fucking internals come round asking questions, we’ll all say that Burke was a first-class officer with no fucking problems, all right?”

I understood. Suicide invalidated any potential life insurance policy, but an “accidental discharge of a firearm”, was exactly that …

“Just between ourselves, then?” I asked in a lower tone.

“His kids are both over the water. His parents are dead. His brother’s in South Africa. There was nothing for him here,” McCallister said.

“I suppose he’d been drinking?”

“He’d been drinking. I’m sure his blood alcohol level will be off the fucking chart. But that wasn’t the clincher …”

He beckoned me to follow him into his office. He closed the door, sat me down and poured me some evil hooch in a plastic cup.

“What was the clincher?” I asked

“There were three bullets lying on the living-room coffee table.”

“He’d taken them out?”

“Aye. He’d taken three out, spun the chamber, pointed the gun at his head and pulled the fucking trigger … He’d done that before more than once. That’s why the wife had moved out.”

“Christ Almighty.”

“Fucking stupid, isn’t it? Doing the IRA’s job for them.”

“Aye.”

“Poor bastard. Why didn’t he go to Michael Pollock?” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“The divisional shrink.”

McCallister gave me a queer look. Why did I know the name of the divisional shrink? And why would anyone go to a stranger to talk about their problems?

“Do you know why we’re in this get up?” I said, pointing at our full dress uniforms.

“The Chief Constable’s coming down to visit.”

“You’re messing with me.”

“Nope.”

“The Chief fucking Constable?

“He thinks there’s something rotten in Denmark.”

“There is something rotten in Denmark.”

“Aye well, we’re to put on a brave face and reassure him that Carrickfergus RUC is a happy ship.”

I smiled at that. No RUC station I had ever visited in Ulster had been a happy ship. In the ones along the border the pathology was a constant, palpable terror that any moment Libyan-made rockets were gonna come pouring in from a field in Eire; in the ones in Belfast you feared a riot or a mortar attack; in the quieter, less heavily defended country stations it could be anything from an ambush by an entire IRA active service unit to a car bomb parked down the street. And no peeler ever felt safe at home or in his car or at the flicks or at a restaurant or anywhere. There was never any down-time. Blowing your brains out seemed a reasonable enough way out.

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?”