Adrian McKinty - I Hear the Sirens in the Street

“Who?”

Sweat was running down my forearm onto the .38. It was hard standing in this position with me ribs aching and the painkillers wearing off. Harry, by contrast, looked pretty fucking relaxed with the Remington.

“You brought O’Rourke here?”

“Nah. Took him down the salt mine.”

“And then what happened?”

“Nobody was going to kill him. That was never the plan.”

“What was the plan?”

“We just wanted to know who he was working for, what he knew, that kind of thing. We chained him to the generator in the mine and put the fear of fucking God into him. Martin did. He was used to interrogating touts and informers.”

“Did you torture him?”

“No. It was all talk. Torture? Martin wouldn’t have it. He said we didn’t need to torture him anyway. He said O’Rourke would tell us everything he knew, given enough time.”

He moved his shotgun a little and I straightened my arm to aim the .38 at his face.

“And then what happened?”

“Nothing. We lifted the informer who told us about O’Rourke, and gave him some money to disappear. He went over to England. So that took care of that, but O’Rourke was our main problem. Who was he? What did he want? Did he know about me and DeLorean and the deal? We needed answers.”

“So what did you do?”

“Martin said he could handle it all. I trusted him. I mean, O’Rourke was down the fucking mine. Have you been down there with the lights off? It’s like a pit of hell. Martin knew that that would work him and he told O’Rourke that if he didn’t tell us everything he’d fucking suffer the torments of the damned …”

“And what did O’Rourke say to that?”

“He said he would never talk. He said that we could do what we liked but he would never tell us anything. Eventually Martin grew to believe him. He started telling me that probably we should let him go.”

“But you didn’t agree to that, did you?”

“Did I fuck? So we kept on him day in and day out. And then one morning we go down to talk to him and his legs are still chained up to the generator, but somehow he’s got a hand free and he’s dead. At first we thought he’d had a heart attack but then we saw that he must have done it himself. He must have thought we were never going to let him go and he fucking topped himself. He must have had a hidden pill somewhere. Dumb fuck.”

“Suicide?”

“Suicide.”

“That’s good, Harry. That’s good for you. What can I do you for? Kidnapping? Sure, that’s only five years. You’ll be out in three. That’s nothing.”

I started moving towards the door.

“Stay were you are!” he growled.

“No, I’m going, Harry. I’m going to walk out of here and back down the hill to my car and you’re going to let me go. There’s no point escalating this. All I have is a piece of forensic evidence that says O’Rourke was stored in this freezer at some point. I can’t prove you kidnapped him. I can’t prove anything. So there’s no sense killing me with that there shotgun, not when a half decent lawyer will get this case thrown out of court. Okay?”

I started inching closer to the door and I gave him a wide berth as I went past. He kept his gun on me, I kept mine on him.

“It’ll ruin me,” he said.

“No, not if you’re acquitted. You’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be acquitted. You’ll fit me up. And I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill him.”

I was at the door.

“I believe you, Harry. And I’m leaving now. You’ll not do anything stupid, will you?”

“You’re not going anywhere, peeler!”

He should have fired the Remington from his hip – sure, there would have been a nasty kick but I’d have been wasted.

He didn’t, though. He was too well trained in the use of firearms. His father must have imprinted that lesson in him at an early age and in the second it took him to raise the shotgun to his shoulder I dived out into the rain.

There was a blast behind me and fire spat out of the barn door into the darkness.

I ran to the wall and hid behind an old combine.

I was plotting my next move when I suddenly heard a klaxon blaring up at the house. It sounded like one of those air-raid sirens from the war. It was no fucking air raid, it was Harry calling in his tenants. I’d have to get bloody moving.

I ran from behind the combine straight into a spotlight. There was a shotgun blast from somewhere near the house.

White hot shot flew over my head.

I ran behind a hay rick.

Men were yelling now. A posse of Harry’s friends and tenants. Old fucking retainers who would do anything he wanted, no questions asked, even if it was killing a copper. Maybe especially if it was killing a copper.

“He’s down there!” someone said.

“I seen him!” someone else shouted, and fired.

I hit the dirt, slewing into the mud.

“I nailed him!” a voice yelled.

No, you didn’t, but you bloody will soon.

I climbed over the stone perimeter wall that surrounded the estate.

“There he is!”

“He’s going over the wall!”

“After him! Billy, get your dogs! And Jack, cut the landlines at the junction box! He’ll not get away and he’ll get no help.”

I tore up into hills, heading out into the bog where the dogs would hopefully lose my scent. I ran through a stream, tripped on something, took a nasty spill and lay there panting for a minute before I got up again.

I doubled back towards the lane and Emma’s cottage. My ribs were screaming and I was covered in filth. Cora barked at me as I shambled across the farmyard.

I ran into the house.

“My God! What’s happened?” she said, her hand to her mouth.

“Where’s the phone?”

“What?”

“Where’s the fucking phone?”

“In the bedroom.”

I limped into the bedroom and dialled 999.

“Which service do you require?” the operator asked.

“Police! Quickly, Islandmagee out at—”

The line went dead.

I tried again and again but there was no dial tone.

“What happened?” Emma asked.

“Harry tried to kill me. He killed O’Rourke and threw him in his freezer. I’ve got the proof.”

Her face fell and she shook her head.

“No, Sean. He didn’t kill Bill O’Rourke,” she said in a monotone.

“He told you? You believe that?”

“It’s true.”

I took her by the shoulders and squeezed. “Tell it and tell it fast!”

“O’Rourke was spying on DeLorean. Causing all sorts of problems. Harry is landing something for DeLorean at his private slipway on the lough. The one you saw. Drugs, I think. It’s a big deal. They had to know if it had been compromised. Harry had Martin and a couple of his lads grab O’Rourke off the street. They were wearing balaclavas. They were only going to interrogate him and then let him go. They took him to the salt mine to question him. They must have gotten rough with him or he panicked or something. They weren’t going to kill him. They left him alone down there and one morning when they came to wake him he was dead. Martin thought he’d had a heart attack. Nobody knew what to do.”

She looked me square in the face. She’d confirmed Harry’s story and there was no nonsense about tears or throwing herself on the mercy of the court.

“It was no heart attack, Emma. He was smart. He knew this could happen in Northern Ireland so he made his own fucking suicide pill. Planted the plants, refined it himself. He didn’t want to be tortured to give the game away.”

She nodded. “We didn’t know about that.”

We , she said we .

“Martin told you about O’Rourke’s death, didn’t he? And you told him to go to the police, and Harry—”