Adrian McKinty - I Hear the Sirens in the Street

“Who’s Woodbine?” I asked, passing the file back.

“One moment,” Colonel Clavert said.

He went to the filing cabinet and opened another file. “Woodbine, let me see, Waverly, Winston, Woodbine. Ah, yes, a chap called Douggie Preston.”

“Address?” I asked.

“11 Drumhill Road, Carrickfergus.”

We thanked the Colonel, stubbed out our cigarettes and were about to leave when he asked us if we were going to interview the widow McAlpine in the course of our inquiries.

“We might,” I said. “Why?”

“Because she still hasn’t picked up Martin’s stuff and it’s been here four months now.”

“What stuff?”

“From his locker. His dress uniform. A pair of training shoes. There’s some money. A cricket bat, of all things. I’ve called her several times about it.”

I looked at Matty. “Aye, we can take them down to her.”

We drove out of the UDR base into a heavy downpour.

“I suppose we’re going to Islandmagee now?”

“Let’s try Mr Preston first.”

Drumhill Road was in the ironically named Sunnylands Housing Estate – one of the worst in Carrick. Red-brick and breezeblock terraces, mostly packed with unemployed refugees from Belfast. Lots of kids running around barefoot, burnt-out cars, shopping trolleys and rubbish everywhere. This was RHC territory – the Red Hand Commando – a particularly violent and bloody offshoot of the slightly more responsible UDA.

Preston lived in an end terrace. There was a smashed row boat in the front garden, a pile of old furniture, what looked a lot like an aircraft engine and a little girl about four in a filthy frock playing by herself with a headless Barbie doll.

“So this is how the other half lives,” Matty muttered.

I rang the door bell and when that didn’t work I knocked.

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

“The police,” I said.

“I’ve told you. We do not sell acid. Never have, never will!”

“We’re not here about that.”

“What do you want?”

“We’re looking for Douggie.”

She opened the door. She was mid-forties but looked seventy. Grey hair, teeth missing, running to fat. Her fingers were stained with nicotine smoke.

“Have you found him?” she asked.

“We’re looking for him,” Matty said.

She shook her head sadly. “Aye, aren’t we all.”

“How long has been missing?” I asked.

“Since November,” she said.

“No word at all?”

“No.”

“He lived at home?”

“Aye.”

“No girlfriend, anything like that?”

“Nobody steady like. He was a shy boy, was Douggie.”

Past tense. She knew he was dead.

“When was the last time that anybody saw him?”

“He was down the North Gate on November twenty-seventh, having a wee drink, said he was away home to watch the snooker. That was the last we heard tell of him.”

I wrote the information down in my book.

“They’ve topped him, haven’t they?” she said.

“I have no idea.”

“Aye, they’ve topped him. God knows why. He was a good boy, was Douggie, a very good boy.”

“Did he have a job?”

“No. He was at Shorts for a year. He was a trained fitter but he got laid off. He tried to get into the DeLorean factory in Dunmurry, but they had their pick of the crop. He went back several times looking to get in, but jobs is scarce, aren’t they?”

“They are indeed,” Matty said.

“Dunmurry, eh?”

“Aye, but there were ten applicants for every one job. Wee Douggie had no chance.”

“He didn’t know anyone up there?”

“No. More’s the pity.”

“Have there been any strangers hanging around? Anyone asking about him?”

“No.”

We stood there on the porch while the girl behind us in the garden started to make explosion noises. Matty tried a few more lines of approach but the lady had nothing.

“Well, if we hear anything, we’ll certainly be in touch,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said, and added, “he was a good boy.”

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.