I Hear the Sirens in the Street

24: PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES

I was feeling good as I drove down the coast road to Islandmagee. I accelerated the Beemer up to seventy and then got it up to a nice 88 mph. I dug out a mix tape and put it in the player.

Plastic Bertrand took me all the way through Carrick, Eden, Islandmagee.

Sir Harry’s estate.

The gate along the private road was closed and there was a man there now, sitting on a stile, wearing a Barbour jacket and holding a shotgun. Old geezer, grizzled, game-keeper type.

“This is private land,” he said in a country accent.

“I’m the police,” I told him.

“You’ll have a warrant then,” he said.

“To drive down this road I’ll need a warrant?”

“This is not the King’s Highway. All these farms, right down to the water, is all Sir Harry McAlpine’s property,” the man insisted.

“Just let me through, mate, I’m the peelers. I’ve been here before.”

“So you say. But we have to careful. We had a murder here last year.”

I got out of the Beemer, opened the gate and showed him my warrant card.

“If you want to shoot me, shoot me, but I’m going to see McAlpine.”

The old geezer nodded.

It was more than his job was worth to get in the way of a determined copper.

I drove past Emma’s farm.

No sign of her.

I followed the dirt trail up the hill to the big house.

The gate down that drive was also closed but there was no chain across it so I got out and opened it. I drove over the cattle grid and down the palm-lined driveway.

The Roller was parked out front.

I rang the bell. Mrs Patton answered the door. I showed her my warrant card.

“Remember me, love?”

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk to le grand fromage.”

“He’s in the greenhouse. I’ll go get him.”

“The empty greenhouse? Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs Patton. I know the way.”

I walked through the house and the kitchen and out into the back garden.

There had been a few changes: the garden looked tidier, neater. There were bags of soil and peat and empty terracotta pots. Sir Harry’s finances must have stabilised some if he could afford a guard down there on the private road and a revamp to his back garden.

And there he was in a ratty brown shirt and brown corduroys.

I knocked on the greenhouse door.

He was pulling a jumper over his head. When the head popped through he turned round, saw me, frowned.

I opened the door and went inside.

It was warm. There was a little humidifier in the corner pumping out steam.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he asked, not even attempting to conceal his dislike, which was certainly un-Irish, but perhaps not un-Anglo-Irish.

And it wasn’t that clear why he disliked me. Sure, everybody hated the peelers. We were lazy and crap at best, corrupt and sectarian at worst … but at least I was trying to solve the murder of his brother, wasn’t I?

I walked over. He was fussing with an orchid of some kind and it made me think – ah, a real horticulturist, eh?

“The last time I was in this greenhouse the place was deserted,” I said.

“I’m restocking … and what business is of it yours, anyway?” His eyes were bulging in his face. His cheeks were red. That and the green Wellingtons and the accent. He was really an old-school character. I found myself warming to him.

“Do you ever grow rosary pea in here?”

“What pea?”

“Rosary pea.”

“Never heard of it. What are you doing here? You’ve come to ask me about my garden?”

“I’ve been up to see John DeLorean.”

“And?”

“The car guy. The guy who is going to save Northern Ireland from the abyss.”

“I know who he is.”

“Of course you do, Harry. His factory is on a piece of your land. Some old waste ground in Belfast that is now the hub of Ireland’s regeneration project.”

He put down the pot he was working on and took off his thick gardening gloves. He cleared his throat. “And what exactly has this got to do with anything?”

“Your brother was an intelligence officer for the UDr He ran a series of informers for them. One of them told him something about a guy asking questions and taking photographs at the DeLorean factory. I went to see Mr DeLorean and he told me that he’s subject to industrial espionage all the time, that it’s pretty much par for the course, so that’s okay. But you see this tip about Dunmurry was the last entry in your brother’s log book and the informer that gave your brother that tip has gone missing. And of course your brother himself was murdered. I thought perhaps that these incidents were connected somehow and I thought that maybe you might have some insight into them?”

“What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything. I merely thought that you might possibly have an angle on this that I, as an outsider, would not.”

“I am not terribly fond of your tone, detective,” Sir Harry said.

“I’m sorry about that. There was no tone, sir. No offence meant, I assure you.”

That seemed to mollify him a little.

He sniffed and sized me up.

“So you’re still looking into Martin’s death?”

“I am.”

He nodded and breathed out slowly. “I take it you think it wasn’t a random IRA hit then?”

“Oh, no, I haven’t got that far yet. I just want to parse this link a little. You, DeLorean, Martin’s informer … I wanted to see where all this went.”

“All right, maybe I can help. Come into the house and we’ll discuss it over tea. Have you got some time?”

“All the time in the world.”

“That other detective, the one who died … I hate to speak ill of the dead, but, well … I didn’t have much confidence in him.”

“No.”

We went into a library on the ground floor.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with old books. A formal leather sofa worn comfortable by generations of use and repair, use and repair. A few more modern chairs, an oak table, a reading lectern and a nice bay window with an easterly prospect of the coast and the Irish Sea only a few hundred yards over the fields.

Mrs Patton brought the tea.

It was a Darjeeling. Very strong and over-steeped. Harry didn’t seem to notice. He was much more relaxed now. “So you really think this could be something to do with John DeLorean?” he asked, eagerly.

“Perhaps. What exactly is the nature of the relationship between you and Mr DeLorean?”

He shrugged. “Relationship. Ha! The man’s a user. He doesn’t have relationships with people. He uses people.”

“How did you get to know him in the first place?”

“Two years ago I started hearing rumours that DeLorean was looking to invest in Northern Ireland. Build a big auto plant for this sports car he was designing. Lots of jobs. The whole thing would be underwritten by the Northern Ireland Office. They’d pump in fifty million. They were desperate to have any kind of investment, actual honest to God money flowing into Northern Ireland. So, as you may or may not know, I’ve been a having a few financial problems of my own. My father died in ’69 and I’m still paying the estates taxes – that’s not hyperbole, by the way, I really am still paying them off. If he’d died one year later it would have been under the Tories, but no, he had to die in 1969, when the rate was through the roof … Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins, asked me to quote, donate, unquote, some land that I had in Dunmurry for a factory site. And I did, and that’s how I know DeLorean. I’m his landlord.”

That confirmed what I knew, but I didn’t see how it tied into Martin’s death or into anything else.

“You want to know how much he pays me for all those acres?”

“How much?”

“You’d choke on your chocky biscuits. The man’s a cancer. I just hope to God the Yanks don’t find out before they buy a million of his cars.”

“Yes, I—”

“And I’ll tell you something else. Ever been in his office? He’s got a sign on his desk, ‘Genius At Work’. Genius at work, my foot! You know who’s behind the curtain, don’t you? You know who the real Wizard of Oz is?”

“No.”

“DeLorean didn’t even design the car. He made a sketch, a bullshit sketch. Colin Chapman, heard of him?”

“The name rings a bell.”

“Lotus! Lotus Sports Cars. Colin Chapman is the man who made Lotus. He’s the real designer of the DeLorean, not John D.L., as he likes to be called.”

I was familiar with the Lotus sports cars from the James Bond movies.

“Colin Chapman’s the designer, the money’s coming from the British government, the land came from me, the workers are ex Harland and Wolff guys from Belfast, so what exactly does DeLorean do? He’s just the front. That’s all. Just the front. He’s just the fucking hair and the fucking million-dollar smile.”

“And if the front falters?”

He made a plane crashing sound and smacked one hand into another.

“And God help Northern Ireland if it does,” he added.

“So you don’t really see him very much on a social basis.”

“Only when he needs something.”

“Hmmm.”

“So how does this tie into Martin’s murder?” he asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

We sipped our tea and we talked for a few more minutes about this and that, but nothing came of the conversation. He either knew nothing or he was a pretty decent chancer himself.

I finished my tea and stood and offered my hand.

“I’m sorry that we seemed to get off on the wrong footing,” I said.

“My fault, I’m sure. Tarred all you boys with the same brush … If you find anything about Martin, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Only …”

“Yes?”

His eyes moistened. “Only, he’s my wee brother, you’re supposed to look after your wee brother, aren’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

I walked down the palm-lined drive in a thoughtful mood.

I got in the Beemer.

He hadn’t reacted to the rosary pea crack and he seemed genuinely interested in finding out about his brother’s death.

His connection to everything might be tangential.

But that entry in his brother’s book … it was a coincidence.

And coincidence is the sworn enemy of all detectives everywhere.