Adrian McKinty - I Hear the Sirens in the Street

“I think they’re saying, ‘ooh, me aching back, from standing here all day’.”

She hit me on the shoulder. “You’re all the same, aren’t you?”

“Who? Cops? Men?”

There was a glint in her eye that I couldn’t decipher. “Hey, do you want see something really interesting, Inspector Duffy?”

“Sure.”

“This way.”

We followed the woodland trail up a hill, catching the odd glimpse here and there of the motionless sea and beyond that, startlingly close, the Scottish coast.

“Down here,” she said, and led me to a hazel grove where one solitary oak was standing by itself. It was clearly very old, and covered with moss and mistletoe. Prayers and petitions had been placed in plastic bags and hung from the lower branches. Little offerings and notes were leaning against the trunk. Coins, keys, lockets, photographs, at least a dozen plastic baby dolls, wooden boxes, tea cups, a silver spoon, an intricately carved woman with a belly swollen by pregnancy.

A breeze stirred the notes and photographs.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked.

“Sure I do, it’s a fairy tree.”

“You’re not totally ignorant.”

“I’m from the Glens, love, I speak the Irish. I know things.”

“You’re a Catholic?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No.”

She nodded to herself. “Yeah, I can see it now … come on, let’s get back.”

We walked back across the boggy pasture.

“Were Martin and Harry close?” I asked.

“I don’t know about close. There was an age difference, but they respected each other. Martin admired Harry for taking on the debts and the burdens of the estate. Harry admired Martin for joining the Army, putting his life on the line.”

“Literally, as it turned out.”

“Yes,” she said, with a melancholy smile. “Even when Martin got Born Again, Harry didn’t give him a hard time about it, and Harry’s as atheist as they come.”

“Martin was a Born Again Christian?” I asked.

“Yes. About a year and a half ago there was a visiting preacher from America who came to the church, and Martin felt called.”

“But not you.”

“No.”

“He must have tried to make you see the light?”

“That was what so lovely about him. He knew I was more into all this …” she said, pointing back at the trees, and I bit my tongue before I said “bullshit”.

“He never bullied me with his faith. Let me go my own way.”

“Sounds like a good guy.”

“He was. He really was.”

We had reached the edge of the pasture and I could see the valley again. The big house, the cottages, the salt mine, my car parked along the road.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” she asked. “I’m making the mussels. It’s a shame to do all that for one.”

“Sounds great.”

We walked over the boggy field to the farm.

Cora started barking and Emma untied her.

“Why didn’t you take her on your walk?”

“I used to, but she’s incorrigible. She worries the sheep and she goes after the game. She goes for everything.”

Except IRA gunmen, apparently .

A man waved to us from the road as he drove past in a Toyota pick-up. She waved back.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Connie Wilson. One of Harry’s tenants from down Ballylumford way. Connie’s in bad shape. He tried to coax barley out of his land this year. Got rid of his flock and tried to grow barley. He hasn’t been able to pay his ground rent, Harry says.”

“How many tenants does Harry have?”

“Quite a few. Twelve, thirteen. Only two or three can actually make a go of the land with the EEC subsidy; but with taxes Harry actually loses about five or six thousand pounds a year on the estate.”

“He loses money on the estate?”

“That’s what he says.”

We went into the house and this time I noted that the door was unlocked.

“Farmers are always complaining. That’s what they do best,” I said.

“Well, as long as he doesn’t put up my rent.”

“He wouldn’t do that to his sister-in-law.”

“You’d be surprised what men do when they’re desperate.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

She nodded and brushed the hair from her face.

A harsh face. Youthful – but when she was older, bitterness would make her pinched and thin-lipped and shrewish.

“Can I help make anything?” I asked.

She smiled, almost laughed again. “No, no. There’ll be no man in my kitchen. Settle yourself down in the living room. I’ll get you a Harp.”

I sat on the rattan sofa and sipped the can of Harp. There were a few novels on the book shelf: Alexander Kent, Alastair MacLean, Patrick O’Brian. She’d got rid of Martin’s clothes and his suitcase, but she’d kept some of his books.

“Mind if I use your phone?” I called into the kitchen.

“Go ahead. Although the reception down here is shocking. It sounds like you’re phoning from the moon.”

I called the station, asked for Crabbie.

“McCrabban speaking,” Crabbie said.

Emma had the radio on in the kitchen but I lowered my voice anyway.

“Mate, listen, it’s me. Do me a favour and see if there’s anything brewing with Finance and Embezzlement or the Fraud Squad on Sir Harry McAlpine or John DeLorean or both of them.”

“John DeLorean?”

“Aye, and Harry McAlpine.”

“Well, the DeLorean factory’s a great big money pit, but I’ve never heard of any actual fraud—”

“Check it out, will you? And don’t forget McAlpine. The DeLorean factory is on his land. Some kind of deal with the Revenue Service, he says.”

Crabbie hesitated. There was static on the phone line.

“Did you get that?” I asked.

“I got it. You want to me to call Special Branch and the Fraud Squad.”

“Yes. What’s the problem?”

“Sean, an inquiry like that will get passed up the chain. I thought you were specifically warned off involving yourself with Sir Harry McAlpine. Two or three days from now when this arrives on the Chief Constable’s desk you’ll be getting a bloody rocket!”

“Goes with the territory, Crabbie. We’re firing blanks here anyway.”

“It doesn’t matter if we’re firing blanks, Sean. The McAlpine case is not our case and the O’Rourke case has been yellowed,” he said, his voice rising a little.

“I know, mate, look, just do it, will ya?”

He sighed. “Of course.”

“Thanks, pal.”

“No problem.”

I hung up.

“Everything okay?” Emma shouted from the kitchen.

“Aye. Everything’s fine.”

I made another quick phone call to Interflora and had them deliver flowers to Gloria at the DeLorean plant. It was thirty-five quid, but it’s always smart to keep the sheilas sweet.

Emma came up behind me.

“Ordering flowers?”

“Me mother’s birthday.”

“You are such a dutiful son.”

“Aye, I am.”

“The stock’s on. It’ll take an hour. Do you ride? I borrow Stella from Canny McDonagh down by the sheddings. She’s got a young hunter called Mallarky that needs a run or two.”

“I haven’t been on a Dob for fifteen years.”

“You don’t forget.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

We put on coats and she lent me Martin’s riding boots.

Canny McDonagh wasn’t home, but Emma made free and easy with the farm and in the stable block she harnessed and saddled both horses. Mallarky was a big hunter but he had just gorged himself on oats and was no bother at all.

We rode over the fields till we reached a beach on the Irish Sea side of Islandmagee. She galloped Stella and I got Mallarky up to a canter. Cora barked happily along side.

When they’d had a good run we dismounted them and walked them in the surf.