I Hear the Sirens in the Street

by Adrian McKinty

  Of course I wasn’t fine. You try carrying a box of steaks uphill in the rain at night over muddy ground with a dog barking at you.

  I reached the gates to Red Hall.

  My brain was fugged. Did she mean go down the driveway to the house and then go left, or go immediately left here?

  “I think she meant here,” I said.

  I walked towards a clump of trees and I saw an old timber curing shed, where they would hang the pheasants for five or six days.

  “That must be the place,” I thought.

  It was easily a hundred years old and in the shade of a couple of willow trees that would keep the shot pheasants at a nice 55 degrees year round.

  The door wasn’t locked.

  I opened it and went inside. I fumbled for a light switch and found one.

  There were a dozen hooks hanging from the ceiling. There were no birds but there was a massive meat freezer against the far wall.

  I hefted the box of steaks over to it and rested it on top.

  The meat freezer had a chain and padlock on it, but the padlock was unlocked.

  I lifted the lid. The freezer was completely empty.

  I tipped the box of steaks inside and closed the lid.

  I threw the empty cardboard box in a corner and walked back across the curing shed. I put my hand on the light switch.

  I hesitated with my finger on the switch.

  Hesitated.

  While synaptical connections formed a pattern.

  I walked back to the freezer and opened it.

  I shone the torch inside. There was something on the freezer bottom.

  It was a patch of human skin.

  I reached into my raincoat pocket and found a pair of latex gloves. I put the gloves on, leaned into the freezer and tugged at the skin. It came loose. I flipped it over and there on the back was a faded blue ink ‘t’. It had come from a tattoo which said “No Sacrifice Too Great.”

  This was the freezer O’Rourke had spent time in after he had been murdered.

  This was where Harry had kept O’Rourke’s body before he’d decided to get rid of it once and for all. He had probably done it himself – the getting rid of – I mean.

  He had driven down to Emma’s and asked if she had any old suitcases knocking around and she’d said of course. And he checked it to make sure that it didn’t contain anything that could be traced back to him or Emma and wiped it of prints and he’d chopped up the body and disposed of the head and arms in a bog and the big torso he’d dumped miles and miles away with no hope of it ever coming back to him.

  Except that he hadn’t quite checked the suitcase as well as he should have.

  And Emma when questioned by us had lied, and after we’d left had called him in a panic. And he knew we were on to him but he told her to play it cool. The cops? Don’t worry about the cops. The cops have nothing. And she did play it cool. And he played it cool. And the cops had nothing.

  The question was why?

  The question was what was going on?

  I’d have to think about it.

  I had to get away from here and process this evidence and think about that.

  I folded the latex glove around the piece of skin and put it in my pocket. I closed the freezer door and turned.

  “Anything interesting in there?” Harry asked. He was carrying a Remington pump action.

  “Nope. Just leaving off some steaks.”

  “So it was open then. Usually we keep it padlocked in case kids would go in there while playing hide-and-seek,” he said in a monotone.

  His face a mask. A sickly yellow mask. The Remington had one in the breach, it was pointed down at the ground, at my feet, but it would be nothing, nothing at all to raise it and pull the trigger.

  Hell, you’d have a great place to put the body. “Yeah, I’ve seen those public information ads on telly. That wee kid is playing hide-and-seek. He gets locked in the freezer. He yells but no one can hear. Sensible to keep it locked.”

  “But it was open.”

  “Yes.”

  “Careless on my part.”

  “No harm done at all, mate. I was just leaving off some steaks. Heading back to the house now. Emma’s got dinner on the burner.”

  He looked at me.

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t be sure if I’d found anything or not. Was there anything in there? Had they been thorough? If he let me go was he signing his own death warrant?

  “What’s that in your pocket?” he said looking at a finger of latex.

  “Nothing, piece of plastic, so I don’t get freezer burn handling the steaks.”

  “Can I see?”

  “You want to see a piece of plastic?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have to go, Harry. I’m late for dinner.”

  He raised the shotgun and I grabbed the .38 from my belt.

  Shotgun and .38.

  Cop and robber.

  Blue eyes/green eyes.

  All those dichotomies flitting by at once. Wonderfully.

  I smiled at him.

  “It’s a piece of skin, Harry. It’s the missing piece of Bill O’Rourke’s tattoo. A ‘t’ from the motto ‘No Sacrifice Too Great’. You didn’t even know it was there, did you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why did you kill him, Harry?”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Was he digging into your relationship with DeLorean? And for that matter, mate, what is your relationship with DeLorean?”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Who did?”

  “Give me that piece of skin. Give it to me.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll fucking blow your legs off before you get near the trigger of that pop gun,” he said.

  “No, it won’t play like that. Look at my .38. It’s fully cocked. The slightest motion or noise will set it off and it’s pointing right at your heart, me old mucker. You’re not surviving that. Aye, you’re right, that shotgun will take my fucking head off. But for you … It’ll be a bad death. Your heart will be ripped out of your chest. Blood will pour into your chest cavity from your arteries. Your lungs will fill. You’ll drown in your own blood. Like your brother Martin. Can you imagine? There’ll be no white light for you, me old China plate. No friendly waving from the far shore. You’ll be fighting it to the last, desperately trying to breathe.”

  Now he looked even more yellow.

  “What happened to O’Rourke, Harry? Tell me,” I said softly.

  He smiled.

  “All right,” he said.

  31: IN EXTREMIS

  Harry cleared his throat. “The whole thing started with one of Martin’s touts who spotted O’Rourke lurking around the DeLorean factory, taking photographs, asking questions. He stood out. He was an American.”

  “And your brother came to you?”

  “Yeah, Martin told me about it all. Martin knew that John DeLorean and me were pulling off a big score. He knew this guy was bad fucking news.”

  “What did you do with the information?”

  “I decided that we should bring O’Rourke in to answer a few questions.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “Got a few lads in balaclavas, stole a white Transit, grabbed him off the bloody street in front of some bed and breakfast in Dunmurry.”

  “So you don’t know Willy McFarlane?”

  “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—”

  She laughed bitterly. “Me? Me tell him to go to the police?”

  And then the tears did start welling in her eyes. “The police? Nobody in this part of Islandmagee would ever go to the peelers.”

  “So what did happen?”

  She shook her head. “They put the body in the freezer. They would have cut him up and got rid of him and it all would have been fine, but for Martin. Fucking Martin.”

  “What about Martin?”

  “Martin was a fool. He had found Jesus. Jesus didn’t mind him helping his big brother do a dodgy deal with John DeLorean but Jesus apparent
ly told him that now a man had died he had crossed a line and he had to tell his commanding officer about this entire fucking escapade.”

  “Martin wanted to turn you all in?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you shot him?” I asked, astounded.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t shoot him.”

  “Who did?”

  “I called Harry and told him about Martin’s plans. He said he would take care of it,” she said simply, and sat on the sofa. “Martin was going up to check on the yearlings but Harry came down over the fields. I heard them talking. Harry gave him every chance, but Martin wouldn’t take it. Jesus wanted him to tell the truth to his commanding officer and that’s what he was going to do.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I heard the shot. And Harry came in and told me it was done. We cooked up the story about the IRA and I called the police.”

  “What about O’Rourke’s body?”

  “That? We didn’t even think about that. Harry just left it there, padlocked in the freezer. Nobody would look there, nobody could get in there.”

  “But he couldn’t leave it there forever, could he?”

  “No. A couple of weeks ago he tells me that we have to get rid of it. The place was going to be hot what with DeLorean’s shipment coming in.”

  “So he came to you to ask for one of Martin’s old suitcases.”

  She nodded and fumbled for a cigarette.

  “And that’s everything?”

  “It is.”

  “All right. We don’t have much time. I went out over the fields – laid a good trail, so that’s where they’ll be looking for me, but if they’ve any brains at all they’ll be coming down here soon enough. This is what we’re going to do. We’ll kill the house lights and sneak out to the yard. You’ll come with me in the BMW. I’ll run it without lights until we’re well away from here. I’ll take you to Carrick police station. It’ll be okay. You’ll turn Queen’s evidence. All you’ve done is conceal information from the police. I’ll see to it that you won’t do a day in jail.”

  She shook her head. “I won’t be doing that,” she said simply.

  “It’ll be okay. I’m not bullshitting you. You won’t do a day in jail. If you’re nervous, we’ll get you a new identity in England or Australia, wherever you want.”

  She thought about it for a moment and shook her head. “No. I’m not going with you, Sean.”