Adrian McKinty - I Hear the Sirens in the Street

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.