Текст книги "I Hear the Sirens in the Street"

Автор книги: Adrian McKinty

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9: BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

Someone passed me a brandy to help “batten down the hatches on our breakfasts”. I’d only had a coffee but I took a swig of the flask anyway and passed it back.

I walked to the top of the hill and waved away the oncoming traffic. I wasn’t properly in uniform. No shirt, no tie, just black trousers and a black sweatshirt under my flak jacket which said “Police” on it in yellow letters. I was wearing my green uniform hat and fidgeting with a Sterling submachine gun loaded with a 25-round clip. The same gun I’d used to repel the attack on Coronation Road and win me my police medal and my invitation to Buckingham Palace.

I was fiddling with the gun rather than looking downhill at the carnage. Everyone was compensating in their own way. One guy was whistling, two other cops were talking about the football. That was their way of not being in the present. “We have better things to do with our time than direct traffic,” Matty was grumbling to Crabbie because he knew better than to grumble to me.

“You do what you’re told to do and that’s an end to it,” Crabbie told him and like a good Free Presbyterian refused the brandy and passed it back to me. I shook my head and walked along the lane to where a dead cow was lying in the sheugh. Killed by the concussion shock wave or a random piece of debris. I looked down into the valley. The helicopter’s spotlights were still scouring the scene in the predawn light, even though everyone was now accounted for: the dead, the dying, the miraculously survived. I lit a Marlboro and drew in the good, safe, dependable American tobacco. It comforted me. I sat on a tree stump and watched the helicopter’s powerful incandescent spotlight beams meditating on the pulverised brick and stone, on the smashed breeze block walls, on the cars ripped inside out. I watched as the rotors sucked embers, paper fragments and debris into the sky in huge anti-clockwise spirals.

That comforted me too, making me feel that something, anything, was being done. Half an hour passed this way, then dawn made its presence felt across the landscape and the chopper banked to the left and flew back to RAF Aldergrove.

I could see the full havoc wrought on Ballycoley RUC station, now.

It was a country police barracks and with only a thin brick wall around the perimeter, which was why it had been chosen for the terrorist attack. The main building itself had been flattened and a portacabin structure in the rear had been tossed halfway up the nearest hill. Many of the surrounding houses had been wrecked, part of a railway line had been ripped up and an electricity substation destroyed. It was lucky that the number of civilian casualties wasn’t higher.

With the Wessex gone the valley was relatively quiet.

Cops talked to one another, radios crackled, generators hummed and a massive yellow digger pawed at the rubble like a brachiosaurus over its dead young.

I went back to the other officers and we shared smokes and turned away a milk delivery lorry and explained what had happened to the bemused driver. “There’s been an incident, the road’s closed for the time being, mate, you’ll have to find an alternative route …”

“What happened?”

“A bomb blast in the wee hours down at the police station there.”

“Anybody dead?”

“Aye. Four.”

The driver nodded and turned his car around. Ballycoley RUC was only six miles from Carrickfergus but I didn’t know any of the deceased. Two of them were peelers, one was the driver of the bomb vehicle and one was a civilian woman, a widow who lived across the road and who apparently had been eviscerated by her own disintegrating bedroom windows.

Matty yawned. “How much longer are we going to have to stand here like eejits, Sean?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “I’ll go down there and find out.”

I walked down the slurry slope into the former police station compound.

The air smelled sweetly of cordite, sawdust, blood and diesel leaking from the portable generator. Now that the rescue portion of the job was over the scene was filled with white boiler-suited forensic officers gathering material and taking photographs.

I found the chief investigating officer and introduced myself.

“Detective Inspector Duffy, Carrick RUC,” I said.

“Detective Chief Superintendent McClure, Special Branch,” he said and offered his hand. I shook it. His handshake was even limper than mine. We were both exhausted. He was a grizzled man with a grey moustache and black eyebrows. About fifty. He favoured his left hand side and was smoking a little cigar.

“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?”

10: GOOD PROGRESS

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.

I parked the Beemer and went downstairs.

I found Brennan at the bar and he suggested a game of snooker, a fiver the winner, while I debriefed him.

Brennan broke and potted the pink with a completely flukey shot off two cushions and a red. Just then the strip lights flickered and the barman flinched as if he was expecting some kind of trouble. He was a civilian. None of the cops moved a muscle.

The cue ball rolled across the baize and came to stop perfectly aligned at another red.

“A-ha!” Brennan said triumphantly, reached into his pocket and put another fiver on the table.

“You want to increase your wager?” he asked, with a malevolent grin.

“You have a ways to go before you make it as a snooker hustler, sir. Displaying your prowess first isn’t usually a good idea.”

He laughed again. “You haven’t seen the half of my prowess, matey boy.”

His mirth seemed hollow in here where the mood was pretty grim. Not grim because of the recent attacks on police stations or because confirmation had come through that several battalions of British Army soldiers were being transferred from Ulster to the Falklands Islands Task Force, no, the mood in here was grim because it was always bloody grim. The Police Club was nothing more than a windowless bunker with thick, bombproof concrete walls, concrete floors, a utilitarian bar, a couple of snooker tables and a dartboard. TV reception was difficult through all that bomb-proofing so the only reason at all why you’d come here was to drink the heavily subsidised booze with brother officers.

As far as I could see I was the sole copper in here who wasn’t a middle-aged, chronically depressed alcoholic. But fast forward to five years from now … if I was still alive …

Cut to the boss: unkempt, unshaven, and he’d been wearing the same shambolic suit for a week. Definitely trouble chez Brennan and although I would certainly put him up if he wanted, if I suggested it again he’d have me guts. Presumably this place had become a sort of home from home and I wondered if this was where he was kipping too.

He potted another red and lined up the blue.

“So what have you found out, Duffy?” he asked.

“About the case?”

“No, about the bloody meaning of life.”

“Like I say, sir, we’ve been making excellent progress.”

“Do tell.”

“Well, sir, we’ve learned about Bill O’Rourke’s war service. Operation Torch in North Africa – easy sailing against the Vichy French but then a rough time of it with Rommel’s Panzers. Then Normandy, where he was wounded taking a pill box. Silver Star and a Purple Heart for that one. A second Purple Heart at Hurtgen Forest.”

“Good for him.”

“He rose from Private First Class to First Sergeant of his company in just two years. An impressive guy.”

“Sounds it,” Brennan said, potting the black and lining up another red. “Go on.”

“After the war he takes chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts and then switches to accountancy. Joins the IRS in ’49 where he works for the rest of his life, it seems.”

“Criminal record?”

“The FBI faxed us a very thin dossier on him. O’Rourke apparently had no criminal record of any kind and had never been investigated by any government agency. An FBI team visited his house in Newburyport and found nothing of a criminal nature.”

“You sent the FBI to look at this guy’s house?”

“No, I asked the Consul if the local police could do that, but somehow the FBI got involved. It actually got DC McCrabban and myself a little excited, but it was all moot because the Feds didn’t find anything.”

Brennan glowered at me. “You’re not trying to make things complicated, are you, Duffy?”

“No, sir, and in any case, like I say, it was a bust. The FBI found nothing suspicious among Mr O’Rourke’s personal effects and nothing in the background check. One speeding ticket from the ’60s.”

“A model citizen.”

“Indeed, although I suppose there could be misdemeanours that didn’t make it into the files.”

“What else?” Brennan said, potting the red and crashing into the yellow with a very lucky lie.

“The boys and myself have done some leg work and we’ve begun piecing together our victim’s last movements. It seems that he took two trips to Ireland. The first was uneventful. He arrived in Belfast on the train from Dublin on October twenty-sixth of last year, stayed for a week and left again. He stayed in the Europa Hotel in Belfast for all seven nights and then checked out. His family on his father’s side was from Omagh and presumably he went to Tyrone to investigate his roots, but if so, no one remembers him. I called librarians, local history organisations, that kind of thing. They do get a lot of Americans and they don’t keep records. Anyway, he didn’t make an impression.”

“What about this second trip?”

“That’s where the story gets interesting, sir. Okay, so he goes back to America. Tells some of his pals that Northern Ireland is a wonderful place and he’s going back for more. This is last year, sir, right after the hunger strikes …”

I looked at Brennan, who stopped lining up the cue ball and nodded. We both knew what Northern Ireland had been like last year. Worse than now and now was bad.

“So obviously O’Rourke’s either a deluded old fool or a bit of a liar,” Brennan said.

“Americans can get sentimental about the Old Country, sir.”

“Indeed. Carry on, Duffy.”

“Second time around he arrives in Belfast on November eighteenth, stays at the Europa again for five days. Apparently he ate in the hotel restaurants most nights and he tipped fifteen per cent. He made no fuss, seemed to be enjoying life as a tourist, asked the bell hops no questions about hoors or product. He paid his bill with an American Express Card. Apparently there was no problem with the transaction.”

“That’ll do nicely,” Brennan said, and potted the blue.

“Quite a few people in the Europa actually remember him because he was so courteous and pleasant. One of the maids said that he was, quote, a real charmer and a bit of a smoothie, unquote, but again, there was no hint of any impropriety.”

“That’s when he disappeared?”

“No. Not quite. He next surfaced in the Londonderry Arms hotel in Carnlough on November twenty-fourth. We drove up there too and interviewed the staff, and again Bill had been a model citizen, attracting no adverse attention and tipping well.”

“This is good stuff, Duffy, go on.”

“Well, this is where it gets tricky, sir. He disappeared for two days after that until he paid a very large credit card bill at a bed and breakfast in Dunmurry called the Dunmurry Country Inn.”

“How much is very large?”

“Seven hundred quid.”

“Jesus!”

“Yesterday Detective McCrabban went to see the proprietor of the Dunmurry Country Inn and was refused entry. The place is owned by a Richard Coulter, and either he or one of his employees demanded to see DC McCrabban’s search warrant, which is why I’ve come to see you, sir.”

Brennan potted a red and a black. He was leading by seventy points now and it was mathematically impossible for me to win the frame.

“So you want me to call up a friendly judge and get you a universal search warrant for the Dunmurry Country Inn?”

“I’ve already taken care of that, sir. There are some other difficulties. We’ll be stamping all over Dunmurry RUC’s patch and I don’t want to make any waves.”

Brennan stopped mid-shot and straightened his back.

He got the message.

“Coulter’s protected, is he?”

“In a way, sir.”

“How so?”

“He comes from a prominent family in Ballymena. He has money, sir. He runs several small hotels and bed and breakfasts. He’s also well known for his charity work. He set up a shelter for abused women and runaway kids.”

“Classic cover.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Is he untouchable?”

“I’m sure he pays off to the right people. He’s not small fry and I doubt very much that Coulter filed the clearly fraudulent American Express claim but someone who works for him did and Coulter doesn’t want us to push too deeply into it. Fraud’s a serious business, sir. Murder’s murder but defrauding a CC company might even get the attention of Scotland Yard.”

“This Coulter, what is he, a terrorist? A paramilitary?”

“No, sir, not in the least. But he’s a known associate of Cyril Lundy who I’m sure you’re aware is the commander of the Rathcoole Brigade of the UDA. Coulter’s more of a shady businessman than either a gangster or someone actively involved in sectarian conflict.”

“But not someone you want to fuck with. Not with your track record, eh, Duffy?”

“No, sir.”

Brennan sighed, lurched towards me and let a big paw rest on my shoulder.

“I’m glad we had this little chat. When’s your warrant for?”

“This morning.”

“This morning, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, I can square things with the cops in Dunmurry.”

“I was hoping that you’d say that.”

“But there’s a price for my assistance.”

“A price?”

“I want to come with you. I want to come, and I’ll do lead if that’s okay with you? Funny how bored a man can get even in the middle of a so-called civil war.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I think I can handle this one on my own.”

“I said I’ll come with you, Duffy, and I’ll do lead if that’s okay with you?” he reiterated in a growling undertone.

“It’s absolutely fine with me, sir.”