I Hear the Sirens in the Street

10: GOOD PROGRESS

The case was flying now. We had made a shit load of progress and as I looked at myself in the mirror and shaved with an electric I saw a man who was at least professionally content, if not exactly happy in any other aspect of his life. I certainly wasn’t worried about meeting the Chief this morning. He’d kept off my back for a few days and I was determined to show him that his faith in the long leash was justified.

I finished shaving, put the kettle on and went outside. The starlings had been at the milk: clever wee shites, they had figured out that gold-top bottles contained the full cream stuff and silver top the ordinary milk. Their intelligence was a rare commodity round these parts. I grabbed a gold-top, made coffee and toast and I was about to head out to the car when the phone rang. It was Carol, who told me that the Chief Inspector wanted to meet me at the police club in Kilroot, not at the station.

“Fine by me,” I lied.

I checked under the BMW for bombs, didn’t find any and drove down Coronation Road.

I was stopped at an army checkpoint outside of Eden Village. Two Land Rovers and half a dozen jittery squaddies from the Parachute Regiment. Everyone knew that the Paras were being shipped out of Northern Ireland to be the tip of the spear in the Falklands invasion. It was good riddance. Most Catholics I knew still hated the Parachute Regiment for the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. I still hated them for that too, as irrational and conflicted as that sounded.

The weekend after Bloody Sunday was one of the hinge points of my life, when I very nearly joined the PIRA, only to be turned down by an old school friend of mine, Dermot McCann, the IRA quartermaster in the city who told me that I should stay at university because “the movement needed thinkers”.

Of course, by joining the police I had betrayed Dermot and the movement.

I don’t know how honour is to be properly measured, but when you saw the Parachute Regiment march the streets of Ulster and you knew that they were your brothers in arms, it certainly didn’t sit well …

I showed the soldiers my warrant card and a big sergeant within an even bigger moustache waved me through the checkpoint.

Another checkpoint took me into the police club.

I parked the Beemer and went downstairs.

I found Brennan at the bar and he suggested a game of snooker, a fiver the winner, while I debriefed him.

Brennan broke and potted the pink with a completely flukey shot off two cushions and a red. Just then the strip lights flickered and the barman flinched as if he was expecting some kind of trouble. He was a civilian. None of the cops moved a muscle.

The cue ball rolled across the baize and came to stop perfectly aligned at another red.

“A-ha!” Brennan said triumphantly, reached into his pocket and put another fiver on the table.

“You want to increase your wager?” he asked, with a malevolent grin.

“You have a ways to go before you make it as a snooker hustler, sir. Displaying your prowess first isn’t usually a good idea.”

He laughed again. “You haven’t seen the half of my prowess, matey boy.”

His mirth seemed hollow in here where the mood was pretty grim. Not grim because of the recent attacks on police stations or because confirmation had come through that several battalions of British Army soldiers were being transferred from Ulster to the Falklands Islands Task Force, no, the mood in here was grim because it was always bloody grim. The Police Club was nothing more than a windowless bunker with thick, bombproof concrete walls, concrete floors, a utilitarian bar, a couple of snooker tables and a dartboard. TV reception was difficult through all that bomb-proofing so the only reason at all why you’d come here was to drink the heavily subsidised booze with brother officers.

As far as I could see I was the sole copper in here who wasn’t a middle-aged, chronically depressed alcoholic. But fast forward to five years from now … if I was still alive …

Cut to the boss: unkempt, unshaven, and he’d been wearing the same shambolic suit for a week. Definitely trouble chez Brennan and although I would certainly put him up if he wanted, if I suggested it again he’d have me guts. Presumably this place had become a sort of home from home and I wondered if this was where he was kipping too.

He potted another red and lined up the blue.

“So what have you found out, Duffy?” he asked.

“About the case?”

“No, about the bloody meaning of life.”

“Like I say, sir, we’ve been making excellent progress.”

“Do tell.”

“Well, sir, we’ve learned about Bill O’Rourke’s war service. Operation Torch in North Africa – easy sailing against the Vichy French but then a rough time of it with Rommel’s Panzers. Then Normandy, where he was wounded taking a pill box. Silver Star and a Purple Heart for that one. A second Purple Heart at Hurtgen Forest.”

“Good for him.”

“He rose from Private First Class to First Sergeant of his company in just two years. An impressive guy.”

“Sounds it,” Brennan said, potting the black and lining up another red. “Go on.”

“After the war he takes chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts and then switches to accountancy. Joins the IRS in ’49 where he works for the rest of his life, it seems.”

“Criminal record?”

“The FBI faxed us a very thin dossier on him. O’Rourke apparently had no criminal record of any kind and had never been investigated by any government agency. An FBI team visited his house in Newburyport and found nothing of a criminal nature.”

“You sent the FBI to look at this guy’s house?”

“No, I asked the Consul if the local police could do that, but somehow the FBI got involved. It actually got DC McCrabban and myself a little excited, but it was all moot because the Feds didn’t find anything.”

Brennan glowered at me. “You’re not trying to make things complicated, are you, Duffy?”

“No, sir, and in any case, like I say, it was a bust. The FBI found nothing suspicious among Mr O’Rourke’s personal effects and nothing in the background check. One speeding ticket from the ’60s.”

“A model citizen.”

“Indeed, although I suppose there could be misdemeanours that didn’t make it into the files.”

“What else?” Brennan said, potting the red and crashing into the yellow with a very lucky lie.

“The boys and myself have done some leg work and we’ve begun piecing together our victim’s last movements. It seems that he took two trips to Ireland. The first was uneventful. He arrived in Belfast on the train from Dublin on October twenty-sixth of last year, stayed for a week and left again. He stayed in the Europa Hotel in Belfast for all seven nights and then checked out. His family on his father’s side was from Omagh and presumably he went to Tyrone to investigate his roots, but if so, no one remembers him. I called librarians, local history organisations, that kind of thing. They do get a lot of Americans and they don’t keep records. Anyway, he didn’t make an impression.”

“What about this second trip?”

“That’s where the story gets interesting, sir. Okay, so he goes back to America. Tells some of his pals that Northern Ireland is a wonderful place and he’s going back for more. This is last year, sir, right after the hunger strikes …”

I looked at Brennan, who stopped lining up the cue ball and nodded. We both knew what Northern Ireland had been like last year. Worse than now and now was bad.

“So obviously O’Rourke’s either a deluded old fool or a bit of a liar,” Brennan said.

“Americans can get sentimental about the Old Country, sir.”

“Indeed. Carry on, Duffy.”

“Second time around he arrives in Belfast on November eighteenth, stays at the Europa again for five days. Apparently he ate in the hotel restaurants most nights and he tipped fifteen per cent. He made no fuss, seemed to be enjoying life as a tourist, asked the bell hops no questions about hoors or product. He paid his bill with an American Express Card. Apparently there was no problem with the transaction.”

“That’ll do nicely,” Brennan said, and potted the blue.

“Quite a few people in the Europa actually remember him because he was so courteous and pleasant. One of the maids said that he was, quote, a real charmer and a bit of a smoothie, unquote, but again, there was no hint of any impropriety.”

“That’s when he disappeared?”

“No. Not quite. He next surfaced in the Londonderry Arms hotel in Carnlough on November twenty-fourth. We drove up there too and interviewed the staff, and again Bill had been a model citizen, attracting no adverse attention and tipping well.”

“This is good stuff, Duffy, go on.”

“Well, this is where it gets tricky, sir. He disappeared for two days after that until he paid a very large credit card bill at a bed and breakfast in Dunmurry called the Dunmurry Country Inn.”

“How much is very large?”

“Seven hundred quid.”

“Jesus!”

“Yesterday Detective McCrabban went to see the proprietor of the Dunmurry Country Inn and was refused entry. The place is owned by a Richard Coulter, and either he or one of his employees demanded to see DC McCrabban’s search warrant, which is why I’ve come to see you, sir.”

Brennan potted a red and a black. He was leading by seventy points now and it was mathematically impossible for me to win the frame.

“So you want me to call up a friendly judge and get you a universal search warrant for the Dunmurry Country Inn?”

“I’ve already taken care of that, sir. There are some other difficulties. We’ll be stamping all over Dunmurry RUC’s patch and I don’t want to make any waves.”

Brennan stopped mid-shot and straightened his back.

He got the message.

“Coulter’s protected, is he?”

“In a way, sir.”

“How so?”

“He comes from a prominent family in Ballymena. He has money, sir. He runs several small hotels and bed and breakfasts. He’s also well known for his charity work. He set up a shelter for abused women and runaway kids.”

“Classic cover.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Is he untouchable?”

“I’m sure he pays off to the right people. He’s not small fry and I doubt very much that Coulter filed the clearly fraudulent American Express claim but someone who works for him did and Coulter doesn’t want us to push too deeply into it. Fraud’s a serious business, sir. Murder’s murder but defrauding a CC company might even get the attention of Scotland Yard.”

“This Coulter, what is he, a terrorist? A paramilitary?”

“No, sir, not in the least. But he’s a known associate of Cyril Lundy who I’m sure you’re aware is the commander of the Rathcoole Brigade of the UDA. Coulter’s more of a shady businessman than either a gangster or someone actively involved in sectarian conflict.”

“But not someone you want to fuck with. Not with your track record, eh, Duffy?”

“No, sir.”

Brennan sighed, lurched towards me and let a big paw rest on my shoulder.

“I’m glad we had this little chat. When’s your warrant for?”

“This morning.”

“This morning, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, I can square things with the cops in Dunmurry.”

“I was hoping that you’d say that.”

“But there’s a price for my assistance.”

“A price?”

“I want to come with you. I want to come, and I’ll do lead if that’s okay with you? Funny how bored a man can get even in the middle of a so-called civil war.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I think I can handle this one on my own.”

“I said I’ll come with you, Duffy, and I’ll do lead if that’s okay with you?” he reiterated in a growling undertone.

“It’s absolutely fine with me, sir.”