Adrian McKinty - I Hear the Sirens in the Street

The Land Rovers are coming to me across the valley.

The sirens so close now.

A melody.

Glissando-like runs from two pianos, the first playing that Chopinesque descending ten-on-one ostinato while the second playing the more conservative six-on-one.

And there’s Harry, spreadeagled in the yard. An arm missing. Severed by one of the Bentley’s side panels.

I bend down next to him.

“What were you thinking, McAlpine?” I say.

He gives a little laugh. “I wasn’t thinking. I forgot about the oil tank for the central heating.”

“Emma’s dead,” I said.

“Why didn’t you send her out, Duffy, you fuck?”

“She wouldn’t go.”

“You should have forced her.”

“Tell me all of it, Harry. You killed your brother and called in an old IRA code word.”

“You know that.”

“You shot three times into Dougherty’s garage door after you killed him. You were setting her up, weren’t you, in case we didn’t buy the IRA story?”

He laughs. “God, you peelers! You overthink everything. I missed. I bloody missed, that’s all. I’d never fired a handgun before.”

“Oh.”

“Have you a cigarette, Duffy?”

I kneel down next to him.

“All this, Harry, all this for what?” I ask him.

He winks at me, grins.

“Millions mate, millions and millions,” he says.

I could save him, I know that. A tourniquet. The rubber seal from the Bentley’s door. He’d have a fighting chance.

I get to my feet and walk towards the flashing lights.

33: CASHIERED

I was debriefed at the hospital by Special Branch. I told my tale and they told me that John DeLorean was the subject of an international investigation between various government agencies and that I had to keep my mouth shut. I knew that and I would have kept my mouth shut anyway without Special Branch goons forcing me to sign the Official Secrets Act.

Sinister men with public-school accents and sharp suits met with me and we concocted a story that Sir Harry and his sister-in-law Emma had been killed in an explosion and fire from a faulty oil heater. I had valiantly tried to save them from the inferno but had not succeeded.

We knew no one in Islandmagee would talk to the press, so the official version would stand unchallenged.

The local papers accepted this narrative without complaint and I was even a bit of a hero for a couple of days. Fanciful details of my attempt to save Emma from the flames were printed and mention was made of my Queen’s Police Medal. The news briefly dominated page one of the Belfast Telegraph and then got sandwiched between various victories and disasters in the Falkland Islands.

I still was okay when they began reporting that Sir Harry was involved in some dodgy deals and knew the famous John DeLorean and that he had been in some kind of dispute with his sister-in-law.

But then the Yanks stuck their oar in.

Apparently they must have felt that I had reneged on our deal. I had promised to stay away from DeLorean and the O’Rourke case, but as soon as I’d got off the shuttle to Belfast I had gone digging …

They released their report about my drunk-driving incident in Massachusetts. The local press began to suggest that I was a maverick, a rogue cop at the centre of some kind of scandal between a baronet and his sister-in-law. The theories got wilder: Sir Harry and Emma were lovers who had killed themselves in a spectacular murder/suicide; Sir Harry, Emma and I were the three points of a love triangle.

The preliminary coroner’s report accepted accidental death as the most likely explanation for the events at Red Hall cottage, but some of the press still liked the love triangle twist that sucked in a “hero cop”.

As the story refused to die I began to think that maybe I could be in trouble. I had been ordered to keep away from Sir Harry McAlpine. I’d been told to yellow a case which I had subsequently investigated on my own time. I had concealed information from my superiors. And the fact that the only evidence – the piece of tattooed skin – linking Sir Harry with the death of Bill O’Rourke had been destroyed in the explosion did not help matters.

I had a harsh in camera internal review conducted by two chief superintendents.

Had I been given order X? Had I disobeyed said order … That kind of thing.

I knew my failures better than them: Sir Harry had escaped justice, Emma was dead. DeLorean – whatever the hell he was doing – was going to keep doing it as long the Northern Ireland Office let him and as long as he kept those precious precious jobs in Northern Ireland.

The press finally got bored of the story and the whole thing died for a while after my in camera review; I resumed duties, assuming, foolishly, that it would all blow over.

All seemed normal down at Carrick RUC until one day, out of the blue, in June, I was summoned to a formal disciplinary hearing. This was the real deal: dress uniform, charges, and I was told that I would have to get myself legal representation.

The hearing convened in a civil service building in the centre of Belfast. The board was made up of old men. Their faces grey, their noses blue. They had joined the police during or perhaps just after the war, and the RUC back then was a different animal: a Protestant force for a Protestant people. The timing of the hearing made me more than a little nervous, for they had picked a moment when the story could be buried. The Argentinians were on the verge of surrendering in The Falklands. Scotland, England and Northern Ireland all had teams in the World Cup. Nobody would waste that much ink about a former hero now disgraced. They could fuck me up or let me off without anyone giving a damn.

The case against me was read out by a sleekit-looking chief inspector from the internal affairs unit. The meat of the O’Rourke case was barely mentioned at all. The only evidence the tribunal seemed interested in was what particular orders I had disobeyed and whether I had correctly followed RUC procedures. It was pure chicken shit.

And it dawned on me that this punishment was coming not from Belfast or London but from Washington, DC.

I had pissed off the Americans, and the Americans wanted to see me punished.

The old men on the board listened to the case against me, heard my defence, read their notes and retired to consider what should be done with me.

I waited.

The room was stuffy, but no one thought to open a window. The panel clearly were not going to be away for very long – and sure enough, they came back in after a pro forma fifteen minutes.

Chief Superintendent Pullman called my name. My RUC counsel gave me a nudge, which meant that I should stand. I stood to attention. My thumbs pointing down along the seam of my trousers. My heels together. My gaze steady. My dress uniform spic and span.

Chief Superintendent Pullman shuffled his papers, cleared his throat and read the verdict: “Detective Inspector Duffy, after long and careful deliberation, this tribunal has found that you have committed four separate breaches of the RUC code of conduct…”

The stenographer began recording my various infractions. She knew it was chicken shit, too. I mean, until very recently they were still beating suspects with rubber hoses down the Castlereagh Holding Centre – they couldn’t talk to me about breaches of their fucking code of conduct.

“You have disobeyed direct orders on several occasions. You have embarrassed the force on foreign soil …” Pullman continued.

Embarrassed the RUC? Our name is mud in America. Read the Boston Herald some time, mate.

Pullman continued talking. His lips moved, the other men nodded, I looked at them with contempt. Old men. Stupid men.