Текст книги "I Hear the Sirens in the Street"

Автор книги: Adrian McKinty

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

21: FIFTEENS

Matty started bitching about another “bloody pointless trip to Islandmagee” so I ditched him at the police station and pulled in to Bentham’s shop to get some more smokes. I grabbed a packet of Marlboros from the shelf. Jeff wasn’t there, so running the joint was his daughter, Sonia, a sixth-former still in her school uniform. She was chewing bubblegum and reading something called Interzone Magazine.

“Where’s your da?” I asked her.

“I dunno,” she said, without looking up.

“Are you minding the shop?”

“Looks like it, don’t it?”

“What’s news?”

She put the magazine down and looked at me. “Philip K. Dick is dead.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

She sighed dramatically. “That’ll be two pound for the fags.”

“Your da gives me a policeman’s discount,” I said, with a smile.

“Me da’s a buck eejit, then, isn’t he? About the only person guaranteed not to kneecap you is a peeler. That’ll be two pound for the fags and if you don’t like it you can fuck off.”

I paid the two pounds and was about to drive down to Islandmagee when an incident report came in on the blower about two drunks fighting outside the hospital on Taylor’s Avenue. It wasn’t a detective’s job but it was my manor so I told the controller that I’d take care of it. I was there in two minutes. I knew both men. Jimmy McConkey was a fitter at Harland and Wolff until he’d been laid off, Charlie Blair was a hydraulic engineer at ICI until it closed. “For shame. What are you lads doing, blitzed out of your minds, at this time of the day?” I asked them.

Charlie attempted to shove me and while he was off balance Jimmy pushed him to the ground.

With difficulty I got them both in the back of the Land Rover and took them home to their long-suffering wives in Victoria Estate, where the women were using a cameo appearance by the sun to hang clothes from lines and chat over the fences. The men behaved themselves when they got out. We had gone from the adolescent male world of pushing and shoving to the feminine universe of washing and talk and order. There would be no more hijinks from them today.

There was no point writing the incident up. It was nothing. It was just another sad little playlet in the great opera of misery all around us.

I got back in the Land Rover and drove to Islandmagee in a foul mood.

There was a gate across the private road. It was chained up and I couldn’t break it without causing trouble for myself so I parked the Land Rover and walked to Mrs McAlpine’s cottage carrying Martin’s stuff in an Adidas bag.

Cora barked at me, giving Mrs McAlpine plenty of warning.

She opened the door gingerly.

There was blood on her hands.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.”

“Is that blood?”

“Aye.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“This whole question question question thing is very tiresome.”

“Bad cop habit.”

“I’m butchering a ewe, if you must know,” she said.

“Can I come in?”

“All right.”

Her hair was redder today. Curlier. I wondered if she’d dyed it or was that a reaction to sunlight and being outdoors. She looked healthier too, ruddier. You would never call her Rubenesque but she’d put on weight and it suited her. Perhaps she was finally getting over Martin’s death. Looking after herself a little better.

I went inside carrying the green army shoulder bag.

“Do you mind if I finish up?”

“Not at all.”

We walked to the “washhouse” at the back of the farm where a sheep carcass lay spreadeagled on a wooden table. She began sawing and butchering it into various cuts of meat.

“This’ll last you a while. Do you have a freezer?”

“Harry does.”

“I’d help you carry it over, but I’m supposed to stay away from your brother-in-law. I got a shot across my bows from the Chief Constable no less.”

She laughed at that. “My God. I suppose his Masonic contacts are the only thing left in his arsenal.”

She cut long strings of sinewy meat from the bone and trimmed the fat and threw it into a box marked “lard”.

Thwack went the cleaver into bone. Thug went the cleaver into meat and fat.

“So, uh, let me tell you why I’m here today. I was down at Carrickfergus UDR base and they asked me to take you some of Martin’s things. I brought them in the bag out there.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“It was no trouble. Interesting place, that UDR base. Bit grim.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never went there.”

“Like I say, pretty grim. Hard job, too, I expect,” I said.

She hacksawed off the sheep’s head and put it in a tupper-ware box. She looked at me.

“What are you getting at, Inspector?”

“Did Martin ever talk to you about his work?”

“Sometimes.”

“He was an intelligence officer. Did you know that?”

“Of course.”

“Did he ever talk to you about specific cases?”

“Hardly ever. He was very discreet.”

“He ever mention the name Woodbine, or talk about Dunmurry or the DeLorean factory?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Are you sure?”

“If he did, it didn’t make an impression.”

She finished butchering the aged ewe and I helped her bag the meat. We washed up and went inside the cottage.

“I was baking today. You want a fifteen while I put the kettle on?”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Wait till you taste them. My mother was the baker.”

“Your mother’s passed on?”

“Aye, passed on to the Costa del Sol,” she said with a laugh. She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. She caught me looking at her. She held my gaze a second longer than she should have.

“Its ages since I had a fifteen. How do you make them?”

She laughed. “Well, when I say baking, that’s a bit of a fib, isn’t it? The flour’s only for rolling them on the board.”

“What do you do?”

“They’re so easy. Fifteen digestive biscuits, crushed, fifteen walnuts, finely chopped, fifteen maraschino cherries, fifteen coloured marshmallows, a can of condensed milk. Flour and flaked coconut. Mix everything except the coconut. Roll into a ball. Divide the ball into two and make two log rolls.”

“And then what?”

“Scatter a chopping board with flour and the coconut.”

“Something about a fridge, isn’t there?”

She smiled. “Roll the sausages in floury coconut and then wrap each log tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two hours. Couldn’t be simpler. My secret ingredient is Smarties or, for Harry’s friend, M&Ms, which is the American equivalent.”

“The fifteens are for Harry too?”

“You have to keep the landlord happy don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“They’re for a friend of his. An American lady.”

“A rich American lady? A potential bride?”

“I didn’t ask.”

She handed me a plate of the treats. “I must warn you,” she said. “They’re sweet.”

I tried one and they were way too sweet for my blood. They made your head hurt. Emma came back a minute later with tea.

“Delicious,” I said.

She smiled. Sipped her tea. Didn’t eat.

She looked at the bag full of Martin’s gear.

After a pause, she said: “You couldn’t put it in the cupboard under the stairs, could you? I don’t want to deal with it just at the moment.”

“I forgot that you told me that you threw all Martin’s stuff out. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought this.”

“It’s okay.”

I put the bag in the cupboard and stood there awkwardly. “Well, I suppose I’ll head on then.”

“Yes.”

I cleared my throat.

“Are you doing all right?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Moneywise, you know?”

“Yes. I sold a dozen spring lambs and that cleared some of the debts and I’m supposed to get the compensation money by the end of the month. Of course, that’s what they’ve been saying since January …”

“Will you stay here when the money comes?”

“I can’t afford to go anywhere else, can I?”

“Your parents in Spain?”

“That place? It’s the living death down there. No thanks. What would I do with my time?”

“What do you do with your time here?”

“That is the question.”

Silence.

I watched a drip burrow its way through the thatching onto the living-room floor.

“All right, well, I suppose this is the …uh …”

“Yes, Inspector Duffy, I suppose it is,” she said.

I went outside.

The Land Rover back to Carrick.

Sea spray along the lough shore.

Driving rain.

Her manner hadn’t been that encouraging. In fact there was a distinct coldness near the end, and yet I couldn’t help but feel that there was something bubbling beneath the surface there.

Chinese takeaway for dinner. Pot from the shed out back.

I smoked the joint in the shed with the door open and the rain coming in.

I went inside, put on Age of Plastic by The Buggles which I snapped up for 2p at a jumble sale. I made myself a pint of vodka and lime juice. I drank and listened. It was a very bad album.

I watched the TV news: incidents all over Ulster: bomb scares and disruption to rail and bus services, an incendiary fire at the Door Store, a policeman shot in Enniskillen, a prisoner officer severely injured in a mercury tilt bomb in Strabane. I watched the Final Thought on UTV: a cheerful long-haired evangelist insisted that God was merciful and just and cared about his flock.

Midnight. It was so cold I lit the paraffin heater.

The phone rang. I got out of bed, wrapped myself in the duvet, tripped on the blanket and nearly went down the stairs head first. My face banged into the side wall. Blood was pouring out of my nose. The phone kept ringing. Never get the phone after midnight, Duffy, you dumbass.

I picked it up. “Yeah, what is it now?”

“You are not the detective I thought you were,” a voice said.

The voice from the note. The English chick. “Why’s that?” I said.

There was silence.

“I was the one who left you the note.”

“Yeah, I know. You stand out. We don’t get many English birds round here, do we?”

“I suppose not.”

“Who sprung you from Whitehead Police Station? A couple of your mates?”

She didn’t reply.

“Listen, sweetie, you’re not cute and you’re not funny. I don’t know if you’re a spook, or a reporter, or a student, or a player looking to make trouble, or what you are exactly, but pick on someone else, okay? It’s enough to make me want to take my name out of the phone book.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“Aye, but it’d be a shame to do that, I’m the only Duffy in Carrick in there,” I said.

More silence. I was weary of this. “What the fuck are you calling me up for? Why don’t you just tell me what you’ve bloody got, if you’ve really got anything.”

“I need someone who’s good. I thought you were good. I looked you up. I read those articles about you, but you’re not good.”

“Not good? I almost nailed you, you dozy cunt.”

“Almost doesn’t count for much.”

“You were shitting it, darling, admit it. You were lifted by a stop and search unit – and them boys couldn’t find a fat man at a Santa Claus convention. You must have been well surprised.”

“And you must have been surprised to find me gone.”

“Big deal. You pull the wool over the eyes of some twenty-year-old part-time country copper. Big deal. You don’t impress me.”

“And my note?”

“Your note? Fuck that! We’re too busy with a civil war in our laps for shite like that. We don’t have time for notes or fucking games. You want to try the San Francisco Police Department and spin them lines about the Zodiac killer, or get the Ripper unit at the South Yorkshire PD.”

“Maybe you’re right. I shouldn’t have tried to lead you. I set you a test and you failed it. I assumed that if I could find the evidence you’d be able to find it too.”

“What evidence?”

“It’s not my job. I was trying to help you, Duffy. I wanted to prod you, not give it all to you on a plate.”

“Give it to me on a plate.”

“No, you were right. I should have said nothing. If you’d found it, it would have made things worse for you, more than likely. I’m sorry to have troubled you, Duffy.”

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

“I really don’t.”

“Then you certainly are not the detective I thought you were.”

“I’m not the detective anyone thinks I am. I’m a plodding copper – no better, no worse than anyone else.”

“I see that now.”

“Look, love, it’s late, I’m tired, do us both a favour and don’t bloody call again.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

She hung up. The dial tone continued and then it began going beep beep beep. I put the phone back on its crook. And I was too fed up with it all to even call Special Branch and get them to put a tap on my line.

22: I’VE SEEN THINGS YOU PEOPLE WOULDN’T BELIEVE

Two a.m: A group of drunks coming down the street singing: “We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys! We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys. We’re up to our necks in fenian blood and we’re coming back for more. We are the Billy Billy Boys.”

I was never going to sleep this night.

I went downstairs and grabbed an encyclopaedia and read it over a bowl of cornflakes.

I had a cup of coffee, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a sweater, put on my raincoat and went for a walk around the Estate. I picked up my new Sony Radio Walkman and tuned it to the BBC World Service.

Black clouds. Rain. Sleet on the high plateau.

Bombings in West Belfast and Derry.

Rocket attacks on police stations along the border.

War news.

The other war.

In the South Atlantic.

I walked down to the lough and sat on the beach.

I watched the planes going both ways on the Trans-At.

I got cold.

At six I went into the station.

Brennan was there already, reading the newspapers in the incident room. He hadn’t shaven. He looked unkempt. There was no point asking him what the fuck was going on in his life, but I wanted to talk to someone.

I knocked on his door and opened it. “Morning, sir, can I get you a coffee or something?”

“No, you can’t, Duffy! But you know what you can do for me?”

“What?”

“Give my head peace and leave me alone.”

“Okay, sir.”

I shut the door again.

Maybe talk to McCrabban when he came in.

I went to the coffee machine, got a coffee-choc, trudged to my office, put my feet up on the desk and looked out to sea.

The sun limped up over County Down. It was a clear crisp day and Scotland was distinctly visible as a long blue line on the horizon. The guy trying to sell the goat went past without his goat. An entrepreneurial success story.

The door opened.

Brennan came in shaving with an electric razor.

“What are you doing in at this time, anyway?” he asked.

“I couldn’t sleep. I was out for a walk and ended up here.”

“What do you know about Epicurus?”

“Is it a crossword clue?”

“It’s something I heard at a, uhhh, a meeting. I thought, I’ll ask Duffy. He’s a guy that knows things.”

“Athenian. He taught in what was called The Garden.”

“Sum him up for me in short words.”

“He said that either there are no gods, or they don’t care about us. Ambition is a pointless quest. In a thousand years no one will remember any of us. All we’ve got is love and friendship, so take pleasure where you can find it.”

Chief Inspector Brennan closed his eyes and swayed a little. “You believe that?”

“I haven’t thought too much about it.”

“What have you thought about?”

“Uhhh—”

“That O’Rourke murder, for example. Have you been thinking about that?”

“Not lately, it’s in the yellow file which means that we are at something of an impasse.”

“What have you got?”

“We’ve established the name of the victim and how the victim died.”

“And?”

“That’s about it, sir, to be honest. Few red herrings along the way.”

He put up his hand. “Progress, Duffy, what progress have you made since your last report?”

“No actual progress.”

“That’s what I thought. Is that what you boys do in here? Sit around drinking tea and concealing the truth from me? All right, so you bin it and you move on so the resources of CID can be used elsewhere.”

“We solved that bank robbery.”

“We need more of that stuff. Results.”

He was spoiling for a fight out of sheer ennui. I was in no mood to engage. What did I care about the O’Rourke case or any other? “You’re the boss. If you want, I’ll move it from the yellow file to the cold case file.”

“I am the boss and don’t you forget it. Now bugger off home and get some kip and come back at a Christian hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

Home. Sofa. Kip. Cup of tea and Mars bar sandwiches and the classic Star Trek ep. Arena. You know the one. Kirk makes gunpowder to kill the guy in the rubber suit.

The door bell went. It was Bobby Cameron with a bottle of Glenlivet. He offered it to me. “Fell off the back of a lorry,” he said. “No hard feelings, eh?”

“About what?”

“About your woman up the street. Sometimes the lads get a bit boisterous. Sitting around with nothing to do, the dartboard’s broke, it’s too wet to fly the pigeons and before you know it, it’s the fall of Saigon on Coronation Road.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He winked, nodded and walked down the path. At the gate he turned. “You’ll look after yourself now, Duffy, won’t you?”

It was hard to know if this was a threat or a warning, or nothing at all.

“I’ll try to,” I said.

“I like you, Duffy. We’ll kill you last.”

“Cheers.”

I decided to skip work entirely and rang a lithe reserve constable called Clare Purdy to see if she wanted to go to the pictures. She said yes and I took her to the ABC in Belfast to catch Blade Runner. We were the only people in the cinema. When we came out it was raining, dark, there’d been a bombing somewhere and the street was full of smoke and soldiers: it was as if the movie had come to life. It took us an hour to get through the checkpoints and the rain. I tried to get Clare to come back to Coronation Road with me but she was a Jesus freak and the flick had messed with her head and all she wanted to do was go home and lie down. I dropped her at a cottage in Knocknagullah and then it was a quiet night in with chicken lo mein, vodka and lime and a quick whizz to Helen Mirren on a repeat Parky talking about the nude scenes in Caligula.

The next day I asked Crabbie and Matty if there were any developments on any front. When they both said no I told them that the Chief wanted the O’Rourke case killed.

“You’re willing to drop this?” McCrabban asked sceptically.

“Orders is orders,” I said. “As my dear old gran used to say ‘when someone shits on your chips, you have to eat the onion rings.’”

“What?” McCrabban asked.

“What do we work on then?” Matty wondered.

“Theft cases. Stolen cars. Anything,” I said.

If they’d both objected I would have taken the fight back to the Chief but neither of them kicked up a fuss, so that was that. The O’Rourke murder investigation was suspended indefinitely.

I wiped the whiteboard, gathered up the materials from the incident room, put them in a box binder and placed it in the filing cabinet in my office. McCrabban was watching me out of the corner of his eye.

“If the Chief asks you, tell him it’s a cold case now,” I said.

“I will.”

We exchanged a look and that look said that he knew that I was far too much of a stubborn arsehole to leave it there.

23: DELOREAN

The factory was on waste ground in Dunmurry, West Belfast. A big hasty concrete and metal box that had gone up in eighteen months with the blasted city in various states of decay all around. If Coronation Road was the fall of Saigon, this part of Belfast was Hitler’s last days.

Security was a couple of guys at the gate, but to get up to DeLorean’s office, I had to go through a metal detector, show my warrant card and wait until it was verified by a computer.

John DeLorean was a very busy man and had his day scheduled out in tight fifteen-minute blocks. Our interview was scheduled from eleven thirty to eleven forty-five on a Monday morning. I could have pushed it but I didn’t want to make waves or have him ask questions of my superiors. I wanted this encounter to be as straightforward and low key as possible.

On the inside the Dunmurry DeLorean factory dazzled me. Perhaps it was just amazing seeing any kind of industrial activity going on in Ulster. The assembly line was clean and efficient. Raw metal sheets and engines went in one end, aluminium gull-winged DeLorean sports cars came out the other. The administrative offices overlooked the factory floor (DeLorean was big on worker/management cooperation) and I could have stood there all day watching the engines getting mounted and the transmissions going in. It really was incredible. DeLorean had brought a successful industry to Belfast in the heart of the Troubles. He had done what everybody said couldn’t be done and Dunmurry was the only place in Ulster where heavy industry worked, where people actually made things.

Three thousand men were employed here and maybe twice that in subsidiary trades. That was nine thousand men in West Belfast who wouldn’t join the terrorists.

Everybody loved DeLorean: the local press, the British Government, the Northern Ireland office, the Irish government … Everybody, that is, except for a few privileged American auto journalists who had actually driven the DeLorean and said that it was clunky, unreliable and sloppily put together by an inexperienced workforce.

These criticisms had publicly been dismissed by John DeLorean, who trusted his own judgement, not the judgement of “know nothing journalists”. He, after all, was the “man who had single-handedly saved GM” and by implication had therefore saved America.

On TV his persona was half hard-headed businessman, half televangelist. In person he was trim, handsome, soft spoken, and for our interview he was wearing a conservative, unshowy blue suit.

His hair was more grey than black. He had an interesting face: a long aquiline nose that didn’t really go with his squat peasant eyebrows and cheeks. It was a tanned, handsome visage that both radiated intelligence and a kind of weary, punchy vitality.

As I entered the office he was sitting in a “Helsinki” Java wood mahogany armchair reading a report, tutting to himself as he marked it up with a yellow highlighter.

I liked his shoes – they were hand-made Oxfords in a soft brown leather.

His socks were red which I also liked.

He smelled of cologne and cigars.

There was an engraved sign on his desk that said “Genius At Work”.

“Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrickfergus RUC,” a tall attractive secretary called Gloria reminded him when I came in.

He got up and shook my hand.

“Inspector Duffy. Pleased to meet you. I take it this is about the fundraising ball?” he said, with a gleaming and rather charming smile.

“No, this is about a rather different matter,” I said, momentarily thrown.

“Oh?”

His big eyebrows knitted together and I knew that Gloria was going to catch it after I left.

“I’m investigating the murder of an Army captain called Martin McAlpine.”

DeLorean shrugged. “Never heard of him, should I have?”

“He was an intelligence officer. He was murdered late last year, apparently by the IRA.”

“What’s the connection to us?” DeLorean said.

“We went through Captain McAlpine’s notes and an associate of his was keeping an eye on someone who was spying on this factory. It could be unrelated to Captain McAlpine’s murder but I thought I’d follow up on the lead.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Would there be a reason why anyone would be interested in spying on your car plant?”

DeLorean laughed at that. “Of course! Haven’t you ever heard of industrial espionage?”

“Well, yes, I—”

“They’ve been doing it to me my whole career!” he said. He got to his feet and pointed through the plate-glass windows to the factory floor. “You see what we’re doing down there? We are radically re-engineering the model of American sports-car manufacture. In Detroit they are terrified. If I can be blunt, Inspector Duffy, I have them shitting in their pants. Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota. Spying? Of course they’re spying. I expect no less of them. They have no original ideas. They have to steal them from me!”

“Would they kill to get information about your plant?”

DeLorean smiled and nodded. “Nothing would surprise me in this country. Nothing. You have no idea the kind of deals I’ve had to do with all sorts of people to get this factory up and running. Pretty unsavoury characters, I can tell you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you get my drift, Inspector?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“No, nothing would surprise me, but as for actual secrets … Well, the blueprints of the DeLorean are well known and have been in the public domain for years. Our production design is also well known, even our factory layout is common knowledge. We don’t have that many secrets as such …”

“New models or anything like that?” I inquired.

“Oh, sure. I’m always sketching, planning, scheming, but I don’t keep that stuff here.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“In my house in Belfast, or my place in Michigan.”

“Have you had any burglaries? Anything like that?”

“No. Certainly not in my place here. The house in Michigan’s empty but I have a security firm looking after it. They would have told me.”

“What about poaching of company employees, that sort of thing, I’ve heard that—”

“No, no, no, you’re barking up the wrong tree, Inspector,” DeLorean said, becoming animated. “The reason people work for me is that they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. All my people have already been offered more money elsewhere, but they want to be part of a company they can be proud of. No, my staff is loyal. I wouldn’t put it past your local thugs to try and kidnap someone who works here, but they’re not leaving to join fucking Ford.”

“So you can’t think of any reason why someone might be nosing around the plant?”

“A million reasons! Desperation! Panic! They know I’m going to wipe the floor with them. But they can’t stop it! Ten years from now we’re going to be the biggest car company in the word. Not just sports cars. Light trucks. Mid-sized economy sedans. You name it. Electric cars. You should see my plans for electric vehicles.”

“And it’s all going to be headquartered right here in Belfast?”

“You bet!”

He looked at his watch. Our time was almost up.

I gave him my card. “If anything out of the ordinary happens, I would certainly appreciate a call.”

“It depends what you mean by out of the ordinary. In Belfast the ‘out of the ordinary’ happens every day!”

I nodded. “Well, if you think of anything, please, get in touch …”

“Sure thing,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’ll see you out.”

He walked me across the office, opened the door and shook my hand again. The secretary got up from her desk to whisk me away from her boss in case I proved intractable. There was already another man waiting on the sofa. He was wearing a leather jacket, had a thin black tie, messy brown hair and he was smoking a Camel. Everything about him said “reporter”.

DeLorean disengaged my hand

“Have a good day, Inspector.”

“I will.”

The secretary smiled at me. She was a blonde, classic high cheekbones, blue eyeshadow, big hair, very American.

She put up a finger to prevent me from speaking and addressed the man on the sofa.

“You can go in now, Mr Burns.”

“My photographer hasn’t showed up,” Burns said in an East End accent. “Can we wait a few minutes?”

“If you want to talk to Mr DeLorean you’ll have to go in now, Mr Burns, Mr DeLorean has another meeting at twelve fifteen.”

“All right,” Burns said.

The secretary pressed a button and formally announced him. “Mr Jack Burns from the Daily Mail.”

Burns went into DeLorean’s office.

It was unusual to hear an American woman’s voice in Northern Ireland, and I tried to think if I’d ever heard one here before. I doubted it. The American news networks didn’t send their female reporters to war zones.

“Is he a good boss?” I asked.

“He’s a great man,” she said.

“‘Genius at work’, it says on his desk.”

“Oh, that? That’s sort of a joke. That was a gift from Ronald Reagan when he was campaigning through Michigan.”

She began to roll a sheet of paper into her electric typewriter when suddenly another secretary came running down the hall and burst into Mr DeLorean’s office.

“What!” DeLorean yelled, and then a moment later: “Goddammit!”

DeLorean came out of the office, fuming.

“This, when I’m talking to a reporter!” he muttered to Gloria.

He turned to me. “I suppose you’ll want me to evacuate the place? Stop production?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve no idea—”

A young man came breathlessly up the stairs. “Mr DeLorean we’ve had a—”

“Yes, I know!” DeLorean exclaimed. The Daily Mail hack had come out of the office now and was writing furiously in his notebook.

DeLorean turned to the man. “You want to know what difficulties we have to deal with? This kind of goddamn difficulty! Every goddamn week!”

An alarm began sounding and the workers began putting down their tools.

“Who pulled the fire alarm?” DeLorean screamed.

“One of the shop stewards, probably,” the young man said.

“Jesus Christ! All right, all right, show it to me!” DeLorean said.

“I think we should evacuate the premises,” the young man said.

“Show it to me!”

The young man led DeLorean towards a fire exit. Gloria grabbed her handbag, notepad and followed and I followed her. We were met at the bottom of the fire escape by two uniformed security guards.

“Where is it?” DeLorean demanded.

“On the slip road to the south gate,” one of the security guards said.

I went with DeLorean and the motley band to the south gate. And there I saw what the problem was. Someone had hijacked a Ford Transit van and dumped it there.

“There is no bomb in there – I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, marching towards the van.

“Stop right there!” I ordered, and DeLorean froze in his tracks. “What’s going on here?” I asked the harassed young guy.

“Suspect device. Someone called in a bomb threat,” he said.

“There’s no bomb in that vehicle! We get this all the time, Inspector Duffy. It’s a hoax. I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, and continued striding towards the transit van.

“No, you won’t! You’ll go back inside and evacuate the factory and call the bomb squad,” I said, with a voice of absolute authority.

DeLorean glared at me with pure malice.

He pointed a finger at me, but said nothing. After a couple of seconds of this he nodded at the young man, who ran back towards the factory.

“I’ll check out the van, I’ll show you, Mr DeLorean,” a beefy Liverpudlian security guard said.

“Yes!” DeLorean said excitedly.

“You’ll do no such thing,” I insisted.

The security guard shook his head. “Every day, Inspector, it’s the same story. Someone calls Downtown Radio to request Fleetwood Mac and call in a bomb threat at the DeLorean factory.”

“Nevertheless, no one’s going to touch that van until the bomb squad shows up,” I reiterated.

“Okay, we’ll wait here and I’ll show you that I’m right,” DeLorean insisted.