Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

And what’s more, I nearly have the bastards.

I look at my watch. It’s not even nine o’clock. Plenty of time left.

I head out of the alley, toward lights. I find a bar. Stagger to the bathroom. Take off my jacket, Zeppelin T-shirt. Examine myself carefully in the mirror. Bruises all over my rib cage, scrapes, cuts. No sign of internal bleeding, though. Nothing protruding through the skin. I touch individual ribs.

A couple might be cracked. Not that you can do anything about a cracked rib. I fill the sink with hot water and wash the blood off my face. Rinse my chest and clean the wounds with a paper towel. Couple of nasty cuts on my forehead. I stick my head in the sink and try to get the clotted blood out of my hair. I click the hand dryer and blow hot air on my face and arms. Read the graffiti while I’m drying. “Death to Prods.” “Death to Fenians.” “Fuck the Pope.” “Fuck the Queen.” And, a new one on me: “Asylum Seekers, Go Home.”

Fix the duct-tape bandage, adjust my prosthesis, T-shirt on, jacket on. Check the revolver. Reload. Exit.

“Arthur Street police station?” I ask the keep.

“Who wants to know?” he says.

No more time for this shit. I pull the revolver out of my trousers and point it at his face.

“Arthur Street police station?”

“Go out of here, straight on, till ye hit Powers Street, make a left at the Boots, then another left, ya can’t miss it.”

“Thank you,” I say, put the revolver away, and leave his bar, vanishing out into the creeping, cold Belfast night with all the other guntoting villains.

The police barracks was a fortress. Twenty-foot-high redbrick walls reinforced with concrete layers and steel piles. On top another fifteen feet of fencing angled outward so that grenades and handheld bombs would slide off. The gate was shipyard steel, running on rollers that could open quickly to let a vehicle in or out. A guard tower watching the entrance was surrounded by sandbags and in front of the barracks and all the way around the wall there were TV cameras and mirrors. The road leading to the station was shut on three sides and the fourth had speed bumps every fifteen feet. Even with all that, in the old days, the police station got attacked about once a week. Sometimes with mortars fired over from the nearby housing estate, sometimes by kids with coffee-jar bombs thrown in a night attack, and occasionally, a sophisticated terrorist would fire off a Libyan-assembled Russian rocket. There would always be collateral damage and for every cop there’d be one or two civilians hurt too.

But that was then. A lot had changed in Belfast since and the cops had gotten fat, lazy, and inattentive, no longer dressing in full riot gear or carrying submachine guns. But still, you’d think after today’s incident the peelers would be on high alert. For all they knew, the failed RPG attack on their colleagues could be the herald of a big break-down in the six-year-long IRA cease-fire. Dozens of attacks might be on the way this very night. A major IRA assault with bombs, guns, rockets-it could be the start of the Northern Irish civil war. So either they’d gotten information from O’Neill and the IRA brass that the RPG attack was nothing to do with them or they were even more bloody complacent than I thought. Probably the latter. The peelers inside the gatehouse didn’t even notice when I knocked at the bullet-proof window. They were drinking tea, laughing, and watching a football game on a portable television.

“Hey,” I said, and knocked even louder to attract their attention.

“What is it?” an irritated copper yelled through the glass.

“I’m with Bridget Callaghan,” I said. “She’s supposed to be here?”

“You’re late. They’re all here already,” the policeman said.

“Ok, where am I supposed to go?” I asked.

Man. United scored a goal on the telly. One peeler cheered while another one groaned, reached into his pocket, and gave him a fiver.

“Bridget Callaghan?” I tried again.

“Oh, aye. Across the yard, present yourself at registration,” a copper said. I hesitated at the gate and went in. They didn’t even want to search me. So here I was, walking into a police station in Belfast with a handgun in my pocket.

I skipped around the puddles in the courtyard, entered the main barracks. A sergeant with a walrus mustache was flipping through the Sun and talking to a young constable. Both purposely ignored me as I walked up to the desk.

“You see, that’s why so many Americans are dying in Iraq. If a Humvee gets hit by an RPG, it just sits there and blows up. A Land Rover or any other high-sided vehicle will roll over and the impact will be much, much less. The low center of gravity actually works against the bloody Humvee,” the sergeant was explaining.

“Is that so?” the constable said, concealing a yawn.

“Aye, it is, that’s why our boys survived today’s incident,” the sergeant said.

“They weren’t even in a Land Rover, they were on foot patrol,” the constable said, rolling his eyes, as if he’d heard this and similar crazy arguments too many times before.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“What do you want?” the sergeant asked, glancing over the topless woman on page three.

“I’m looking for Bridget Callaghan,” I said.

“Did you kidnap her wean and now you’re turning yourself in?” he asked deadpan.

“Aye,” I said. “That’s exactly it.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I work for her, I’ve got some information.”

“Interview room three, she’s with the chief super. Chief super, indeed. We’re pulling out all the stops for her even though we had four officers attacked today,” he said with obvious distaste.

“Thanks,” I said and walked down the corridor.

“Aye, you go to your fucking hoodlum bitch boss,” the sergeant muttered under his breath.

I stopped, turned, went back to the desk.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said your boss, Bridget Callaghan, is a fucking American hoodlum bitch, who we should be fucking deporting, not helping,” the sergeant said.

“Take it easy, Will,” the constable said.

“Take it easy? Take it easy? Four good coppers nearly topped today and some snatch from America has us running through hoops because she’s lost her fucking slut of a daughter. I mean, Jesus Christ, talk about priorities.”

I stared at the sergeant. Even if the other peelers around here weren’t upset about the RPG attack, he was old enough to remember when such things were a daily occurrence. It was really sticking in his craw. Still, that was no bloody excuse.

“Listen, mate, you might not like Bridget Callaghan, she’s not exactly my best friend either, but you better take back what you said about her kid.”

“Or you’ll what?”

“Or I’ll tell her what you said,” I said, grinning, to show I meant it. The sergeant thought about it for a moment. He didn’t want to lose face in front of the constable, but even so, Bridget had a reputation. He hesitated for a second or two and then looked down.

“No offense meant,” he said quietly.

“None taken,” I replied, and hurried down the long beige hall.

A door was open to one of the interview rooms. I knocked and peered inside. Two peelers watching a porn movie, writing things down on clipboards, a stack of fifty more tapes on the floor. On TV a heavyset German woman beating a naked German man. “Ach, ach, mein Schwanz,” the man protesting.

“Bridget Callaghan?” I asked.

“Next door on the other side of the corridor,” one of the peelers said.

I crossed the hall and knocked on the door.