“1919, eh? Lucky baby to have survived the influenza.”
“Not so lucky now, of course.”
Brennan nodded. “Who are you following up with?”
“I’ve asked the Yank cops to fax me a copy of his driver’s licence and after a lot of pushing and shoving I even got the FBI to come on board and send me any files they have on him.”
“Why bother the FBI?”
“It’s an unusual case. I just want to be sure that he wasn’t mixed up in anything he shouldn’t have been mixed up in.”
Brennan grinned and slapped his hand into his fist. “You’re dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s. It’s an American after all. I’ll confirm the bad news with the Consulate. They’ll want to know one of their own has definitely met with a sticky end. And the press too, they’ll want a piece of this. The Irish press, the English press, the American press,” Brennan said, starting to see other angles in this case. PR angles. Promotion angles.
“Hold your horses, Chief. If we go to the media everybody’s going to be looking over our shoulder and we’re not completely sure that he’s our stiff,” I complained.
“The newspapers will want this, Duffy. A dead American’s worth a hundred dead Paddies any day of the week,” Brennan said.
Brennan opened his desk drawer and took out the Tallisker single malt. I sat down and was persuaded into a glass.
“Speak now or forever hold your peace,” he said.
“Maybe we should wait a day or two before turning on the spotlights,” I said, trying to erase his overconfident grin.
“O’Rourke’s our lad! I can smell it.”
“What does this magic nose of yours tell you about who killed him?”
“Don’t mock your elders! My intuition comes from years of experience. I had a premonition about Elvis’s death two weeks before he passed on, God rest his soul. I told Peggy and she said I should call Graceland. I didn’t of course. Shame … Lost my train of … What were we … Oh, yes – if it makes you happy, we’ll say that he’s a ‘possible victim’ in a ‘possible homicide’, will that satisfy you?” he asked.
“I suppose so, sir.”
I drank another round of Tallisker and Brennan opened a packet of Rothmans, fired one across to me and lit one for himself. I noticed a sleeping bag bundled up in the corner of the office. I decided not to comment on it.
“Any leads on the poison angle?” Brennan asked.
“None at all, sir, I am sorry to say. Abrin is an extremely rare substance. I don’t know who the hell would have taken the trouble to refine and process it or why they would have used it as a murder weapon on an island filled to the brim with guns.”
He nodded and blew smoke at the brown stain on the ceiling that uncannily resembled Margaret Thatcher’s hairdo. “I’m sure it’s going to take you into some interesting areas, but do me a favour, don’t let it get too complicated, will you, Sean?” Brennan muttered. He shifted his weight from his left to his right side. He grunted and rubbed his eyelids. “Do you hear me, son?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I’ll keep it simple, you know me.”
“I do know you, pal, that’s the bloody trouble.”
I nodded, drank the rest of the whiskey and got to my feet.
“And Duffy?”
“Yes, sir?”
“That Elvis story is just between us,” Brennan said.
“Of course, sir,” I replied and exited the office.
9: BLOOD ON THE TRACKS
Someone passed me a brandy to help “batten down the hatches on our breakfasts”. I’d only had a coffee but I took a swig of the flask anyway and passed it back.
I walked to the top of the hill and waved away the oncoming traffic. I wasn’t properly in uniform. No shirt, no tie, just black trousers and a black sweatshirt under my flak jacket which said “Police” on it in yellow letters. I was wearing my green uniform hat and fidgeting with a Sterling submachine gun loaded with a 25-round clip. The same gun I’d used to repel the attack on Coronation Road and win me my police medal and my invitation to Buckingham Palace.
I was fiddling with the gun rather than looking downhill at the carnage. Everyone was compensating in their own way. One guy was whistling, two other cops were talking about the football. That was their way of not being in the present. “We have better things to do with our time than direct traffic,” Matty was grumbling to Crabbie because he knew better than to grumble to me.
“You do what you’re told to do and that’s an end to it,” Crabbie told him and like a good Free Presbyterian refused the brandy and passed it back to me. I shook my head and walked along the lane to where a dead cow was lying in the sheugh. Killed by the concussion shock wave or a random piece of debris. I looked down into the valley. The helicopter’s spotlights were still scouring the scene in the predawn light, even though everyone was now accounted for: the dead, the dying, the miraculously survived. I lit a Marlboro and drew in the good, safe, dependable American tobacco. It comforted me. I sat on a tree stump and watched the helicopter’s powerful incandescent spotlight beams meditating on the pulverised brick and stone, on the smashed breeze block walls, on the cars ripped inside out. I watched as the rotors sucked embers, paper fragments and debris into the sky in huge anti-clockwise spirals.
That comforted me too, making me feel that something, anything, was being done. Half an hour passed this way, then dawn made its presence felt across the landscape and the chopper banked to the left and flew back to RAF Aldergrove.
I could see the full havoc wrought on Ballycoley RUC station, now.
It was a country police barracks and with only a thin brick wall around the perimeter, which was why it had been chosen for the terrorist attack. The main building itself had been flattened and a portacabin structure in the rear had been tossed halfway up the nearest hill. Many of the surrounding houses had been wrecked, part of a railway line had been ripped up and an electricity substation destroyed. It was lucky that the number of civilian casualties wasn’t higher.
With the Wessex gone the valley was relatively quiet.
Cops talked to one another, radios crackled, generators hummed and a massive yellow digger pawed at the rubble like a brachiosaurus over its dead young.
I went back to the other officers and we shared smokes and turned away a milk delivery lorry and explained what had happened to the bemused driver. “There’s been an incident, the road’s closed for the time being, mate, you’ll have to find an alternative route …”
“What happened?”
“A bomb blast in the wee hours down at the police station there.”
“Anybody dead?”
“Aye. Four.”
The driver nodded and turned his car around. Ballycoley RUC was only six miles from Carrickfergus but I didn’t know any of the deceased. Two of them were peelers, one was the driver of the bomb vehicle and one was a civilian woman, a widow who lived across the road and who apparently had been eviscerated by her own disintegrating bedroom windows.
Matty yawned. “How much longer are we going to have to stand here like eejits, Sean?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “I’ll go down there and find out.”
I walked down the slurry slope into the former police station compound.
The air smelled sweetly of cordite, sawdust, blood and diesel leaking from the portable generator. Now that the rescue portion of the job was over the scene was filled with white boiler-suited forensic officers gathering material and taking photographs.
I found the chief investigating officer and introduced myself.
“Detective Inspector Duffy, Carrick RUC,” I said.
“Detective Chief Superintendent McClure, Special Branch,” he said and offered his hand. I shook it. His handshake was even limper than mine. We were both exhausted. He was a grizzled man with a grey moustache and black eyebrows. About fifty. He favoured his left hand side and was smoking a little cigar.
“You were up there on traffic duty?” he asked
in a faint Scottish accent.
“Aye.”
“They’ve got a detective inspector on bloody traffic duty? What’s the bloody world coming to?”
“I suppose they’re a bit short-handed. Apparently the army units they were going to deploy in East Antrim are off to the Falklands,” I said.
He spat. “Fucking Falklands. Fucking sheep. That’s all that’s there. I know, I’ve been. Military Police. You’re not the Duffy that Tony McIlroy’s always going on about, are you?” McClure asked.
“Tony talks about me?”
“He said we should recruit you for Special Branch, he says that you’re good.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“Can’t stand the man myself. Very showy.”
“When we arrived last night somebody told us that this is some new IRA technique?” I asked, to change the subject.
“Oh, yes. Come and see.”
He lifted the “RUC: Do Not Cross” tape and I followed him across the site of the former police station. He showed me where the lorry had driven through the police station’s barrier and then exploded. “It’s a very impressive new technique,” he said. “We’ll have to re-evaluate security at every barracks in Ulster. Apparently the man who drove the lorry was forced to do it. His family had been taken hostage by the IRA and he was told that if he didn’t drive the vehicle right into the station they’d all be shot. As soon as he breached the barrier another IRA team blew up the lorry by remote control. As you can see it was a big bomb. A thousand pounds, maybe.”
“You’ve seen this sort of thing before?”
“Once before. Two makes it a pattern. It’s a pretty devastating new ploy. Between us, Inspector, the higher ups are keeking their whips.”
“I’ll bet they are. Every police station in Ulster will be vulnerable.”
“Aye.”
“What about the guy who drove the lorry? Was he a copper too?”
“No. Catholic bread-van driver. He delivered to the peelers so they’re calling him a ‘collaborator’. He delivers bread for a living and he’s a collaborator. That’s the world we’re living in, Inspector.”
We walked among the smoking debris and the Chief Superintendent picked up the twisted remains of a steering wheel. “Look at this,” he said, showing me the plastic wheel which had been warped and melted into an amazing spaghetti sculpture. I noticed a bent ring of metal around the wheel. “They didn’t trust him completely, did they?” I said, pointing at the metal ring.
“Why do you say that?”
“They handcuffed the poor bastard to the steering wheel.”
Davey looked at the wheel and nodded. The sun was burning through the low clouds now. I yawned. It had been a long night. “Listen, sir, I was wondering if my team could be released from traffic duty, I’ve got an interview at the US Consulate later this morning and—”
“Aye, aye, spare me the details. You and your lads can go. How many CID are up there with you?”
“Just two.”
“Good. Leave the others. I can’t afford to lose a man down here.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I walked back up the hill and grinned at Matty and Crabbie.
I pointed at Matty. “You can go to bed.”
“Ta, mate.”
I pointed at Crabbie. “You can come with me.”
Some of the other peelers from Carrickfergus looked at me expectantly.
I shook my head. “Sorry lads, they need the rest of you here for the foreseeable. I’m really sorry.”
Before there was a police mutiny I got Matty and McCrabban into the nearest Land Rover and we drove off. Up on the hills debris from the explosion had set the gorse on fire. A line of flame was snaking its way over the mountain top. We called it in to the fire brigade and drove through: Ballyclare, Ballyeaston, Ballynure, Ballylagan and finally Carrickfergus. We dropped Matty at his house up the Woodburn Road. His mother invited us in for a cup of a tea, but we had to say no.
McCrabban and I hit the station, shaved, splashed water on our faces, grabbed an instant coffee, put on shirts and ties.
The Chief saw us on the way out. “Oi, lads, what are you doing here? Get your arse in gear, you’ve got a meeting at the US Consulate in Belfast at nine. Chop fucking chop, Duffy. Don’t embarrass us.”
“We were just on our way out, sir, they had us on emergency traffic duty at Ballycoley.”
“That’s the service. All hands on deck. Tragedy up there. Two brother officers killed. You’re not complaining, are you, Duffy?”
“No sir.”
“Good, now don’t stand there with your bake open, off ya go!”
We hit top gear on the M5 even sticking the siren on so we’d make our appointment on time and not ‘embarrass the station’. As it was we were ten minutes late.
A lackey showed us into a formal meeting room with a chandelier, William Morris wallpaper and large photographs of President Reagan, Vice President Bush and the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig. There was a polished oak oval table and a dozen straight-backed uncomfortable-looking oak chairs on a plush red carpet.
A secretary came in to take minutes, a nice wee lass with pale skin and green eyes, followed by a skinny character who was obviously a diplomat. He was about thirty, cadaverous, reedy, brown-eyed, a slightly misshapen head. He was wearing a tweed shirt, a pink shirt and a black tie. He was carrying a briefcase which he placed on the desk in front of him.
I gave Crabbie a look which told him that I wanted him to run the meeting and he nodded. “Detective Inspector Duffy, Detective Constable McCrabban,” he said.
“James Fallows, US Department of State. Would either of you gentlemen like tea or coffee?” Fallows asked in a pleasant baritone.
“Coffee would be lovely,” I said. “Milk, two sugars.”
“Mine’s a tea, no milk, no sugar,” McCrabban said.
The secretary put down her yellow legal pad and without a word exited the room.
“I heard about the bombing this morning. I’m very sorry,” Fallows said.
“Thank you,” Crabbie replied for both of us.
“They’re saying on the news that there were three deaths?” Fallows continued.
“Four. Four confirmed dead at the scene. Two policemen dead, two seriously injured. The driver of the lorry died in the explosion and a civilian was killed in a nearby home,” I said.
“Ah, yes, but the driver of the lorry was surely a terrorist,” Fallows said with a thin smile that I didn’t really like.
“We don’t know that at this stage,” McCrabban said.
The secretary came back with the hot drinks and a plate of American cookies.
I took a sip of my surprisingly good coffee and took a bite of cookie.
Aaron Copland began piping through the air from somewhere.
“So, down to business. Apparently one of our countrymen called William O’Rourke has been murdered?”
“Yes.”
“Are you quite sure it’s a murder?”
“We’re sure,” Crabbie said.
“Poisoned?”
“Poisoned, yes.”
He opened his briefcase and looked at the notes in front of him. “I’ve never heard of this ‘Abrin’ – it’s rare, is it?”
“Very rare. In fact, one of the things we wanted to ask you about was whether you can provide any information for us about Mr O’Rourke’s horticultural connections. Did he have a greenhouse, was he a grower of exotic plants, were any of his relatives engaged in that kind of activity?” Crabbie asked.
“I wasn’t aware that you were here to solicit help with your investigation,” Fallows said.
“Why did you think we were here?” I asked.
“I had been led to believe that this was merely a formal briefing.”
“You’re not refusing to help us with our inquiries, are you?” I asked incredulously.
Crabbie and I exchanged a look.
“Of course not,” Fallows ululated. “You
will be given the full and complete cooperation of the United States Embassy to the Court of St James.”
“That’s what we were hoping for,” I said. “For a start the local police force in Newburyport are having some trouble faxing Mr O’Rourke’s driving licence to us. Apparently that requires another level of authorisation or something. I’m not sure what the hold up is but I was wondering if you could—”
Mr Fallows slid a cardboard file across the desk.
“You can keep this,” he said.
It contained a photostat of Bill O’Rourke’s driver’s licence and passport. He was a handsome man, was Bill. Lean, tanned, with dark black hair greying only slightly on the left hand side. He had an intelligent, unyielding face and there was that certain something about him that commanded respect. Maybe it was all that horror he’d experienced in World War Two.
“We’ve never had an American murdered in Northern Ireland in all my time here,” Fallows said. “Surprising, given the level of violence.”
“There’s got to be a first time for everything,” Crabbie said.
“We’ll also need his work records from his employer and any possible criminal records from the FBI,” I added.
“You ask for a lot.”
“And I’ll need a local police officer to investigate his house and report back to me about what he finds.”
“Oh, they won’t like that,” Fallows sniffed. “That’s vague. Report back about what?”
“I’ll need a full report on his home – homes, I should say – his recent activity at the bank, that kind of thing. The cops will know what to do.”
“And whether he has a greenhouse. And we’ll need to know if he has a plant in that greenhouse called rosary pea,” McCrabban added.
“Rosary pea?” Fallows said, and couldn’t quite meet our gaze.
I shot another quick glance at McCrabban. Yup, he’d seen it too. This fucker was hiding something.
“Rosary pea rings a bell, does it?” I asked.
Fallows shook his head. “Never heard of it in my life.”
“Are you sure?”
I Hear the Sirens in the Street Page 9