I Hear the Sirens in the Street t-2

by Adrian McKinty

  In the kitchen I could smell the steaks burning.

  “What are you talking about, Emma? I explained it to you. You won’t have to go to jail.”

  “I’m not testifying against Harry.”

  I gripped Emma by the shoulders and shook her.

  “He killed your husband.”

  “Martin grew up around here. He knew the score. You don’t go to the police. You don’t talk.”

  “Are you mad? He shot your husband in cold blood.”

  She nodded. “I know … I know. You go, Sean!”

  The tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “You’re doing this for Harry? The man’s a sociopath.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “The Larne copper. Harry took him out the same way he took out Martin, didn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “But it wasn’t quite the same way. He shot him dead and then he shot into the garage wall three times. Why do you think he did that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know. It was insurance. He wanted to make it look like a woman had done it. Like she’d missed with the first three and she got him with the others. He was setting you up, Emma. No doubt if everything went to shit he would have leaked other evidence implicating you in your husband’s murder. I’ll bet you he’s got your prints on key pieces of evidence.”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he knows I wouldn’t talk. I’m from here. We take care of our own problems.”

  “Like Martin?”

  “Like Martin.”

  “He’ll kill you too, Emma. Come with me! Come on, now, while we have the chance!”

  She shook her head. “You go, Sean. You go!”

  I couldn’t argue with her all night.

  “Fuck it, then. Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be okay?” I asked.

  “They won’t harm me.”

  “I’ll be back with the law, you realise that?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  I turned off the living-room light, got the car keys, opened the front door and ran. I got five feet.

  Half a dozen separate shotgun blasts.

  A white-hot pellet caught me on the shoulder and knocked me down. I landed flat on my back.

  The car was impossible.

  It might as well have been a million miles away.

  More shotgun blasts and rifle cracks. I dived back into the house and closed the door.

  Emma ran over to me. “You’re hit,” she said.

  I took off my raincoat. It was only a glancing wound in my shoulder. But my cracked ribs were on fire.

  “Help me up,” I said.

  She put a hand under my shoulder and lugged me to my feet.

  There were maybe half a dozen men out there now. They had shotguns and rifles. I had a .38 revolver with six rounds.

  “What will you do now? Give yourself up?” she asked.

  “Give myself up? They’ll kill me. You know they’ll kill me, don’t you?”

  Her face was blank, distant, but then she nodded.

  “There’s got to be a way out the back,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  She was talking as if she was in a trance.

  Her features were frozen.

  A rifle bullet smashed the living-room window and thudded into the back wall. The lights were off except for a side lamp next to the TV. I crawled across the living-room floor and knocked it off its stand.

  I fumbled in my raincoat pocket for my pills. I swallowed two of them dry.

  “The back door?” I asked again.

  “Through the kitchen. If you open the door, you’ll see the chicken run and there’s a hedge. If you get over the hedge and keep going across the fields you’ll make it down to the lough shore.”

  “And from there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We’d cross that bridge when we came to it. Maybe I could get out into the water and float my carcass across Larne Lough to the Magheramorne side.

  “All right. I’m going,” I said.

  I couldn’t see her face now, but she whispered “Good luck.”

  I crawled through the living-room doorway but as soon as I opened the back door shotgun pellets thudded into the door and into the gap above my head.

  Fuck.

  The house was surrounded.

  I crawled back into the living room.

  “They’re there ahead of me. Is there any kind of cellar or cellar door or priest’s hole, or anything like that?” I asked her.

  “No. Nothing like that. A front door and a back door. That’s it.”

  “There’s no way out!” Harry shouted.

  I slithered to the broken window and looked out. Half a dozen shadowy forms arranged behind the stone wall. Maybe two more out back.

  “I called the cops, Harry! The fucking cavalry is on its way! You boys better run if you don’t want to go down with your boss!” I yelled.

  “We heard your conversation to 999 and we yanked the cable! Do you think we’re daft, Duffy?”

  “Fuck!” I whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Come out and it’ll be quick, Duffy. No nonsense. No torture. We’ve got marksmen. You won’t even know it.”

  I was beat already and the whole night was ahead of us. Night and into the morning and however long Harry wanted to keep at it on his private land.

  The cars were still shining their headlamps at the farmyard and it was hard to see what was going on, but I did notice one careless fucker stand up to take a shot at the house. I lifted the .38 two-handed, carefully sighted it and squeezed the trigger. A crack, a slight recall, the man went down.

  “That’ll gentle his condition some, eh, Harry!” I yelled. “And that goes for all of you fuckers! Who wants it next? Just remember that when Harry tells you to charge the house!”

  “Peeler scum!” somebody shouted by way of retort.

  “You’re doing this for Harry? You’re going to risk your life so he can make some cash in a drug deal? And what do you get out of it! Nothing! Think about that, too, before you charge!”

  “We’ll be all right, you can’t watch both doors at once, can you, Duffy?” Harry yelled.

  It was a good point.

  Emma’s arm was on mine.

  She was looking at me.

  “He can’t, Harry! But together we can. I’ll cover the back with Martin’s shotgun and he can cover the front! The first man I see in my backyard is a dead man!” Emma yelled.

  I couldn’t make out all of her face in the dark but I could see that smile and the fact that she was holding a double-barrel shotgun.

  “You don’t have to do this, I’ll send you out under a white flag,” I whispered.

  “I’m staying here!” she said and kissed me on the cheek.

  Why the flip? Guilt? Resignation? Death wish? They were all good.

  A volley of gun shots smashed the windows and sent sparks flying across the floor.

  We hit the deck.

  “You better cover the back door. Don’t expose yourself. Keep low,” I whispered.

  She nodded and crawled towards the kitchen.

  I waited for whatever was going to happen next.

  No movement that I could shoot at.

  The rain was getting heavy and the sky was moonless, starless, black.

  Nothing happened for a minute. Two. Then I saw two arcs of fire and a Molotov cocktail landed on the thatched roof and another tumbled through the broken living-room window into the house, exploding in a sheet of crimson flame across the hardwood floor.

  I pulled a curtain off the wall and threw it over the conflagration. The curtain caught fire and I had to smother it with my body. It singed my face, fizzled for a moment and then went out.

  I knew now that it was all over. Of course, they would simply burn us out.

  Why would they c
harge the house when they could stand behind the wall and lob Molotovs at us?

  “Are you okay, Emma?” I yelled into the kitchen.

  “I’m okay, are you?” she shouted back.

  “I’m fine.”

  I crawled into the kitchen. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  I peered into the backyard. I could see bobbing lights beyond the fence. They were getting ready to fire another round of Molotovs.

  “They’re going to torch the place,” I said.

  “Oh, God! I’d rather be shot,” she said desperately.

  “Do you want me to parley with them? You still have a chance.”

  She shook her head. “No. No, it’s too late now. I’ve made my choice. I should never have … I’ve made my choice.”

  I kissed her tear-stained cheek.

  The men launched their Molotovs and I broke the kitchen window and shot at one of them as he threw. I missed him and both petrol bombs landed on the thatched roof.

  Yeah, that was the way to do it.

  Smoke rapidly began filling the kitchen.

  “Follow me into the living room,” I said, and she slithered after me, but it was just as bad there too.

  Thick black straw smoke from the thatch.

  We began to cough.

  I dry-retched.

  “What are you thinking about now, Duffy?” Harry yelled.

  I was thinking of a Butch Cassidy style run into oblivion.

  “I was thinking how good it’s going to feel when I kill you, you cunt!” I yelled back.

  And then I heard it.

  Was it a hallucination?

  No.

  No, that was no trick of a desperate mind.

  That was a fucking siren. Sirens.

  “Sirens!” I said.

  I turned to Emma. “I hear sirens.”

  “Sirens!” I yelled out the broken window. “The peelers are coming for you, lads! If I were youse I’d bloody leg it!”

  I turned to Emma. “Are you hurt?”

  She nodded. “I’m all right.”

  The sirens were tearing up the Mill Bay Road. Two police Land Rovers at least. Of course they had traced the 999 call. They didn’t need to hear the address. They needed only to triangulate the call line backwards through all the tumblers and switchboards, and Harry had helped them with local geography by giving them a nice big fire to steer towards.

  I edged open the front door so we could breathe. We kept low to the ground and no one shot at us.

  “Come back, you dogs!” Harry was yelling at his men who were sensibly making a run for it back to their houses.

  “I really won’t have to go to jail, Sean? I couldn’t stand to go to prison,” Emma said in a low, ashamed voice.

  “No. I give you my word.”

  The sirens were now less than a mile away.

  “It’s over, Harry! You’ve been abandoned! It’s finished!” I yelled into the darkness.

  “Not quite, Duffy! Not quite!” he yelled back.

  I heard an engine rev and a hand brake slip. I looked up and out into the farmyard. Harry’s Bentley was speeding towards us. There was a burning rag sticking out of the petrol tank. He had put a weight on the accelerator pedal.

  He was walking behind it with the shotgun.

  “Jesus! Quickly! Get into the back kitchen! He’s—” I yelled at Emma.

  And

  then

  everything

  was

  light.

  32: IN THE WORLD OF LIGHT

  Silence. The silence of mice in graves. The silence of non-being. Nothingness singing to itself.

  …

  …

  …

  Time passing.

  Ash.

  Death’s hand. Warmer than I was expecting. Welcoming.

  …

  …

  …

  Rain on my face. Starlight. Pain naming me into consciousness.

  A sleepwalker getting to his feet.

  Me.

  Comparatively unscathed.

  Two arms. Two legs.

  A ringing in my ears.

  Lucky.

  Lucky Sean Duffy, that’s what you should call me.

  The house?

  There is no house.

  The house is levelled.

  “Emma! Emma!”

  I see her.

  It must have been from a heavy stone in the wall.

  It would have been instantaneous.

  I kiss her shattered face. Her blood on my lips.

  I walk away from the debris.

  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.