I Hear the Sirens in the Street

29: DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE

I wasn’t here. I was at the Langham Hotel on Regent Street watching a man clutching his chest, falling, his right hand flapping like a dove in a magician’s act. I was eleven years old with my aunt Beryl. The man was yelling without sound and we sat there under the palms, taking in the wonder of it as if we were at the starblown circle of the Giant’s Ring. Everything frozen save for the man’s right hand which was scrabbling for a finger hold on the air which he thought would save him and pull him vertical once again.

It did not …

No.

My mistake.

Not his finger in the air.

Mine.

My finger connected to a pulse monitor. A drip in my arm. Nurses and morphine.

Two days of this and everyone, how shall I put it, a little bit aloof.

A doctor told me I had two minor first-degree burns and three cracked ribs. It could have been worse.

A British consular official came on the third day. He was called Nigel Higgs. He was a tall good-looking spud with a slight stammer. He seemed to be just out of his teens, although presumably he was much older, having gotten a plum like America.

“Nothing broken at least. You’re jolly lucky to be alive,” he said.

“What happened?” I asked.

I knew full well what had happened but I wanted to hear the official story.

“Well, I’m afraid you had a little too much to drink, old boy. You pranged your car. Total right-off … You could well have been killed. You certainly would have been burned alive had not a passing motorist pulled you out.”

“What motorist?”

“He was an EMT.”

“What’s that?”

“A fireman.”

He talked for a while and I listened.

“The Yanks are being awfully nice about the whole thing …The local police say that they’ll only charge you with a misdemeanour DUI.”

The upshot was that if I left the country immediately, everything could be swept under the rug. No one needed to spell it out for me. I got it, even if this fucking Nigel didn’t. However, if I kicked up a stink I’d be charged with dangerous driving, drunken driving and so on. They’d make sure they threw the book at me. They’d probably plant narcotics in the car. I’d be looking at jail …

Oh, yeah. That’s how it would play.

If I forgot the photographs and everything I’d seen and quietly left the country with my tail between my legs then all this would go away. I don’t know what the average bloke would do, but let me stress the fact that I am no fucking hero.

“Tell them I’ll take their offer but I want talk to a goon first. I want to talk to an FBI man. Off the record. That’s my condition.”

“FBI? What are you talking about? You were drunk driving. You’re being prosecuted by the Massachusetts State Police.”

“You heard me, Nigel. That’s my condition. I want to talk to the FBI, off the record. They’ll speak to me. They’ll know what this is about. They already know this whole thing is a crock of shite. Someone tried to get rid of me and someone royally fucked it up.”

He left in a state of confusion.

He didn’t come back. Special Agent Ian Howell did.

He was tall, tanned, pock-marked. Handsome. North of forty. Serious. He looked like he could happily listen to you yakity yak or he could coolly inject an overdose of morphine into your drip – whatever the situation demanded. He was wearing a brown wool suit with very wide lapels. He had a tape recorder running in one of his jacket pockets, that I wasn’t supposed to see.

He introduced himself.

I was sitting up now. I was a lot more comfortable. I was keeping down the solid food. I was ready for him.

“So, I hear you’re preparing to make a serious allegation against a local police department?” he said.

“I’m not making any allegation,” I said.

“You’re not filing a complaint?”

“No.”

“You’re not alleging theft or the violation of your person?”

“No.”

He took off his absurd aviator sunglasses. His eyes were light green. Squinty.

“What is it that you want, Duffy?”

“I only want one thing. But I’ll tell you what I don’t want first. I don’t want to know who was in the photographs with DeLorean. I don’t want to know what operation you or other agencies are planning with or without the cooperation of John DeLorean. I don’t want to know why you followed me to the Ten Cents Bank Safety Deposit or why you did what you did with me and the car. I just want to know one thing. Tell me that, and I’ll leave this green and not so fucking pleasant land and I won’t come back.”

“And what is that one thing, Mr Duffy?”

“I want to know who killed Bill O’Rourke.”

“What if we don’t know who killed Mr O’Rourke?”

“Then I want to know what you do know about him and his mission in Ireland.”

Howell grimaced.

He thought about it and stood.

“Wait here,” he said.

“Where am I going to go?”

He went out to make his phone call.

He came back two hours later with a document for me to sign on a roll of fax paper. It was a confession to the charge of DUI and dangerous driving.

“This stays sealed as long as you keep your mouth shut,” Howell said.

I didn’t like the look of it, but I signed.

“Good,” he said, with a smile that didn’t suit his face.

“Now your part of the bargain,” I said.

Howell sat on a chair and pulled it close to the bed.

“O’Rourke was a Treasury Agent recruited from the IRS. He kept his IRS cover but he was Treasury his whole career. He looked into currency fraud and fraudulent currency transactions. Occasionally he went into the field. He was good,” Howell said.

“What was he doing in Ireland?”

“Well, he was compulsorily retired from the IRS at sixty. Officially retired, so to speak.”

“But unofficially?”

“He still worked for the Treasury Department.”

“So what was he doing in Ireland? Was he investigating DeLorean?”

Howell grimaced. “Yes.”

“As part of something bigger?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“That, I am not permitted to tell you.”

“A Treasury thing?”

“It was only after Agent O’Rourke’s death that we realised that two agencies of the United States government were working on the same problem.”

“Jesus! The FBI and the fucking Treasury were both investigating DeLorean and you didn’t tell one another?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss that at this time.”

“Okay. Tell me this: when did O’Rourke file his last report? Where was he? What was the situation on the ground?”

“O’Rourke wasn’t required to file daily reports. He didn’t generally present his findings until he knew what he was talking about. Treasury didn’t expect a report until he had concluded his field work.”

“But he came back to America after his initial visit.”

“To attend a colleague’s retirement party.”

“And leave off those photographs?”

“Apparently.”

“You didn’t know about the photographs until you started tailing me?”

“No.”

“Why did you start tailing me?”

“Immigration alerted us to your arrival in the country. We thought you might try and do some digging over here.”

I leaned back into the sturdy hospital pillow. Through the double-glazed window of Mass General I could see rowers and little sailing boats gliding past on the Charles River.

“Who killed O’Rourke?”

Howell shook his head. “We don’t know,” he said.

“You really don’t know?”

“We don’t know. We were hoping that the RUC would find out for us.”

“Maybe we would have if you had cooperated with us from the start.”

“You must understand, Inspector Duffy, we have bigger fish to fry here. Special Agent O’Rourke would have understood that.”

“What do you know about his death?”

“No more than you do, Inspector Duffy. Your investigation has been the primary information vector for us.”

“You knew that he was investigating John DeLorean, which I didn’t discover until the last few days.”

“Inter-agency suspicion and communication problems have been a feature of this investigation from the beginning. You, for example, were not supposed to have been injured, never mind nearly killed. Our apologies for that.”

“So why was I nearly fucking killed?”

“Our surrogates got carried away.”

“I see.”

“They have been disciplined.”

“I would hope so. You have no idea at all about who killed Bill O’Rourke?”

“No.”

“Why should I believe you?” I asked.

“I can’t think of a reason after the way you’ve been treated, Inspector Duffy, but nevertheless it’s the truth.”

I nodded.

There was a period of silence.

“It has come to our attention that your investigation into Special Agent O’Rourke’s death has more or less been suspended?” Howell asked.

“Yes, it has. We can’t close the case because we never found his killer, but the investigation has reached a natural dead end,” I said.

Howell’s eyes narrowed. “It is in the interests of the United States Government that the investigation into Special Agent O’Rourke’s death remain suspended at least until our own investigation into John DeLorean has concluded.”

“I’m sure you don’t want to tell me how to do my job, Agent Howell, but I will say that in the absence of any new evidence I don’t really see how I can proceed with the O’Rourke case at the moment.”

Howell nodded, picked up the faxed confession and put it in a briefcase.

“Do you have any more questions?” he asked.

“A million.”

He looked at his watch. “Well, Inspector Duffy, I’m afraid that those are the only answers you are going to get, today.” He tapped the briefcase. “I trust that I can count on your discretion?”

“Of course.”

“You’ll keep your nose clean, I’m sure,” he said.

“Once I get the bloody scabs out of it, I’ll keep it clean.”

He walked to the door, opened it, but didn’t leave.

He looked at me and then, in a lower tone of voice, he said: “There is one thing, Duffy.”

“Yes?”

“Bill O’Rourke had a condo in Florida.”

“I know.”

“He grew plants on the balcony. We had them analysed. You know what those plants were?”

“Rosary pea?” I gasped.

He nodded and closed the door behind him.