I Hear the Sirens in the Street

11: NO PROGRESS

A wet April morning in a small provincial city on the fringe of Europe. A bunch of cops carrying out one of the most basic of all cop activities: executing a search warrant. And although everywhere the serving of search warrants is a protocol driven, largely crepuscular activity, nowhere in the “civilised” world does the task come with so much palaver as in Northern Ireland.

Three grey armoured Land Rovers driving up a dreary motorway towards Dunmurry, a drab, soulless sink estate in West Belfast, recently saved from perfect entropy by the DeLorean Motor Company which had been established here precisely for the purpose of resurrection.

Elsewhere on Eurasia in this spring of 1982 men are working in factories, making consumer goods and cars, harvesting winter wheat and barley, toiling in terraced rice paddies; from Shanghai to Swansea there is order, work and discipline and only here, at the edge of the continent, is there war. Funny that.

Getting the warrant has been easy and the Chief has wielded his magic with the local brass. He gathers Crabbie, Matty and myself in his pungent office to share the news. “We have our warrant and we have an okay from the RUC and Army chiefs. This is how the system works, lads. You just gotta be nice and humble to the higher ups,” he says, presenting the wisdom of the ages as some kind of hard-won insider scoop.

Chief Inspector Brennan, Sergeant Burke and Inspector McCallister are in one Land Rover. In a second there are half a dozen police reservists dressed up in riot gear. In a third Matty, Crabbie and myself.

As we drive through the seething estates the locals make us welcome by throwing milk bottles filled with urine from tower blocks and the flat roofs of houses. Of course, if it was night time or an occasion of particular tension, burning vodka bottles filled with petrol would be arcing in our direction.

The convoy pulls up outside a bed and breakfast which lies at the end of a terrace. Reserve constables fan out of the second Land Rover to guard the perimeter. We get out of ours. I am not wearing full riot gear but a simple blue suit and a black raincoat.

Matty is unimpressed by the Dunmurry Country Inn, which looks like a bit of a shitehole. “What was O’Rourke staying here for?” he asks.

An excellent question, that will, no doubt, be asked many times before this investigation is over.

“This way, lads,” Chief Inspector Brennan announces, and we follow him down the path. Sergeant Burke is with him for protection. Sergeant McCallister is waiting back in the Rover with his machine gun at the ready.

We knock on the door.

We are expected.

The door opens. A man called Willy McFarlane opens it and stands there large as life and twice as ugly. He’s five eight, lean, with a handlebar moustache, a black comb-over, aviator sunglasses. He’s wearing a loud blue polyester sports jacket over a yellow Six Million Dollar Man T-shirt. Knife scars. Jail house ink. I dig the T-shirt.

“Are you gentlemen looking for a place to stay?” he says, with a chuckle.

“We’re looking for Richard Coulter,” I tell him.

“Mr Coulter is at a charity lunch in London. Princess Diana is going to be there,” Willy McFarlane says.

“Is this his place of business?” I ask.

“One of many.”

“Who are you?”

He tells us who he is.

“We have a warrant to search these premises, Mr McFarlane,” Brennan announces.

“Be my guest,” McFarlane says with another wee laugh.

“Work your way through from top to bottom and back again. I’ll question Mr McFarlane here.”

The bed and breakfast is small. Two terraced houses knocked into one. Four guest rooms. O’Rourke had been staying in room #4 and I know McCrabban will pay special attention there but I ask him to check all the bedrooms to look for any possible evidence. I’m letting Crabbie lead the search while I run the wheel on McFarlane.

“Upstairs, downstairs. Meet me in the back kitchen,” I tell him.

The back kitchen.

The smell of lard and Ajax. Flypaper hanging against the wall. Clothes drying on an internal clothes line. A checkered linoleum floor: the kind that blood cleans up easily from. Mrs McFarlane, a small birdlike woman, is making tea, humming to herself contentedly.

She’s not a stranger to unusual guests or peelers with machine guns.

McFarlane’s smoking Bensons. Relaxed.

Let’s unrelax the fucker.

“You know why we’re here?”

“No,” McFarlane says, unconcerned.

“Mr Coulter’s account charged seven hundred pounds on one of your guest’s American Express Cards last November. A Mr Bill O’Rourke from Boston, Massachusetts,” I say.

“What about it?”

“Your room rates are twenty pounds a night and he checked out after two nights. It doesn’t compute, does it?”

William McFarlane is not fazed. He rubs a greasy fist under his chin. “I charged that bill. Mr Coulter has nothing to do with it and I’ll thank you not to mention his name again.”

“You charged the bill? So you admit it?”

“Aye. I remember yon boy. He wanted Irish Punts. He wanted six hundred quid’s worth of Irish Punts. I got them for him, legally I might add, from the Ulster Bank in Belfast. In fact I think I might have the receipt right here.”

He produces a piece of paper from his trouser pocket.

What a joke. What a frigging laugh riot. He knew we were coming and why we were coming. Someone tipped off his boss and his boss tipped him.

I take the receipt and read it.

It’s exactly what he says it is. A receipt for six hundred and fifty Irish pounds from the Ulster Bank on Donegall Square, Belfast. Transaction dated 25 November 1981.

I bag it and put it in my jacket pocket.

“What did he want the money for?” I ask.

“He didn’t say.”

“He just stayed here two days and left?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No.”

“He paid his bill in full?”

“Aye. No problems.”

“How many other guests did you have?”

“At that time?”

“Yes.”

“None.”

“You’re a bit out of the way here, aren’t you? A bit off the tourist trail.”

“Aye, I suppose so.”

“How many guests do you get a month, would you say?”

“Well, it depends.”

“On average?”

“I don’t know. A dozen. Maybe more, maybe less.”

Hmmmm.

Mrs McFarlane brings me a mug of tea, a Kit Kat and a publication called Teetotal Monthly whose headline for April is “Hibernia Despoiled By Demon Gin”. I thank her.

“Eat that up, love, you’re skin and bones and you look hungry enough to eat the beard of Moses,” she says.

I drink the tea and light a cigarette. McFarlane and I look at one another and say nothing. I read Mrs McFarlane’s pamphlet. There’s a nice exegesis of the wedding feast at Cana which explains that Jesus Christ turned the water not into wine but into a form of non-alcoholic grape juice.

McCrabban comes back downstairs.

He shakes his head.

Brennan and Sergeant Burke appear from wherever they’ve been. Mrs McFarlane offers to make them tea. Brennan accepts. Sergeant Burke goes outside to have a smoke.

I let McCrabban ask McFarlane all the questions I have already attempted in order to ascertain if there are any inconsistencies.

There are none.

We drink our teas and assume that Edwardian Belfast fake politeness that coats this city like poison gas. Matty finally comes down with his fingerprint books and forensic samples.

“Are you all done, mate?”

“Aye,” he says. He’s got something in his hand. He shows it to me. It’s from the pantry. A Chicken Tikka Pot Noodle.

“Well done,” I tell him.

Perhaps a flash of concern flits across McFarlane’s eyes.

I go up to bedroom #4 and ask Crabbie to follow.

Chintz wallpaper on the staircase, thin orange carpet, pictures of Belfast that look as if they are framed postcards. There’s a smell too: vinegary and sour.

I pause on the top step.

“What was O’Rourke staying in a place like this for?”

Crabbie shrugs. “He was only here for two nights.”

“Why here? Why Dunmurry? No one visits Dunmurry.”

“Some people must do so otherwise there wouldn’t be a bed and breakfast,” Crabbie says.

“Wise up, mate, this place is clearly a money-laundering scheme.”

We go along the landing to room #4.

Typical Belfast terraced bedroom: small, damp, depressing, with an old fashioned bed covered in many layers of itchy woollen blankets. Also: a grainy window that does not open; a huge Duchess chest of drawers with a large fixed mirror; an elm desk and a plastic chair next to the window; fleur de lys wallpaper from a bygone age; sepia prints on the wall of 1920s Ireland. And that smell: mildew, vinegar, cheap cleaning products. I look under the bed and examine the Duchess chest of drawers which is a monstrosity of a thing, the wood dyed to look like mahogany, but really pine. The drawers are empty and the mirror could do with a good wipe down.

I examine the desk but there’s nothing there and again we look at the chest of drawers. There are strange wear marks on the carpet, an ugly case of rising damp on two of the walls.

“We found nothing, either,” Crabbie says.

“McFarlane says he wanted Irish currency. That’s why there was such a big bill,” I tell Crabbie.

“So he went down to the Republic?”

“Could be.”

“Maybe he was murdered down there?”

“How did the body end up here?”

“A million ways. They dump the suitcase in a truck or a bin lorry going north?”

I shake my head. “We’re not getting off that easy. The suitcase came from here and the body was found here. This is our problem.”

We take a last look around.

“What do you think those marks are on the carpet?” I ask Crabbie.

He shrugs. “Is that where people kick the chair over when they hang themselves from the light fitting?”

We go back downstairs.

Brennan looks at me. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“When do we depart this royal throne of shit, this cursèd plot?”

“We’ll go when I think we’re done,” I say.

“Some of these men are on overtime, Duffy.”

“I didn’t ask you to bring them, sir.”

“It’s a tough manor.”

“Everywhere’s a tough manor.”

Brennan pulls a pipe out of his raincoat pocket and begins to fill it.

“How long, Duffy?” he insists.

“Give me five more minutes. Let’s see if the bugger’s got a greenhouse at least … Matty, come with me!”

We push through the kitchen into the wash-house where more clothes are hanging out to dry and coal is piled high in coal buckets and an old bath.

Sergeant Burke is leaning against a wall, vomiting.

“Are you okay, mate?” I ask him.

“Have you got any hair of the dog, Duffy?” he asks.

I look at Matty, who shakes his head.

“Go get the hip flask from Inspector McCallister,” I tell Matty. “Tell him it’s for me.”

He nods and goes back inside.

“Are you okay?” I ask Burke.

“I’m all right. I’m all right. Collar’s too tight or something.”

“Shall I get a medic?”

“I’m fine!” he says.

Matty comes back with McCallister’s brandy. Burke grabs it and swallows half of it. He wipes his mouth and nods.

“Knew that would sort me,” he says, with a unpleasant smile.

He goes back inside on unsteady legs.

When he’s gone I whisper to Matty: “You and me a few years from now, if we don’t watch out.”

“I’ve got fishing, what have you got, mate?” Matty asks.

“Uh …”

“You should get a pet. A tortoise is good. They’re lots of fun. You can paint stuff on their shells. My sister’s looking to get rid of hers. Twenty quid. It’s got a great personality.”

“A tortoise isn’t my idea of—”

“Hey, boy! Does your warrant cover the back garden?” McFarlane yells at Matty from the kitchen window.

“Show him the warrant, will you, DC McBride? And tell him that if he calls you boy again you’ll lift him and bring the fucker in for a comprehensive cavity search.”

Matty shows McFarlane the legalese and yells back to me: “Inspector Duffy, it sounds like somebody’s not keen for us to investigate his back yard.”

“Aye, I wonder what we’ll find,” I say.

What we find is a back garden which is a dumping ground for assorted garbage: old beds, old tyres, mattresses. In many places thin reed trees and ferns are growing through a thicket of grass. Along the wall there seems to be an ancient motorbike; but more importantly, there in the north-west corner, there’s a greenhouse.

We open the door and go inside. It’s clean, humid, well-maintained and all the windows are intact. There are a dozen boxes of healthy tomato plants growing in pots along the south-facing glass.

“Tomatoes,” Matty says.

Matty puts on his latex gloves and begins digging through them to see if there’s anything else growing in there, but in pot after pot he comes up only with soil.

“Nowt,” Matty says.

“Look through those bags of fertilizer.”

Nothing in there either. We stand there looking at the rain running down the thirty-degree angled roof in complicated rivulets.

He looks at me.

“You’re feeling it, too?” I ask him.

“What?”

“A feeling that we’re missing something?”

“No.”

“What were you looking at me like that for?”

“I just noticed all those grey hairs above your ears.”

“You’re an eejit.” I examine the plants, but Matty’s right: these really are genuine tomato plants and there is nothing secreted in the pots.

McFarlane gurns at us through the glass before going back towards the house.

“He’s lying about something, Matty, but what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s Lord Lucan. Maybe he shot someone once from a grassy knoll. Do we head now? The Chief’s getting shirty,” Matty asks.

I walk outside the greenhouse and do a thorough three-sixty perimeter scan – and low and behold, between the greenhouse and the wall I spot a plant pot sitting on a compost heap: red plastic, hastily thrown away. There’s no plant in it now but clearly there once was and perhaps residue remains.

“What do we have here?”

“What is it?”

“Gimme a bag, quick,” I tell him.

We put the plant pot in a large Ziploc to protect it from the rain.

We march back into the house.

“What have you got?” the Chief asks.

“Evidence, boss!” Matty says with an unconcealed note of triumph.

I look at McFarlane.

His face is blank.

The complaining, however, has dried up, which can only be a good sign.

I thank Mrs McFarlane for the tea and her hospitality.

We file outside.

A crowd.

A rent-a-mob. Three dozen youths in denim jackets.

The reserve constables looking nervous.

“SS RUC!” a kid yells and the chant is half-heartedly taken up by the others. Someone from the back throws a stone.

“Time to head, gentlemen, these fenian scum will make it hairy in a minute or two,” Brennan says.

These fenian scum.

The word throws me. Gives me a strange out-of-body dissonance for the second time today. How did it happen that I’m on the side of the Castle, on the side of the Brits? One of the oppressors, not the oppressed …

“Come on lads, let’s go!” Chief Inspector Brennan says.

We get back into the vehicles as a hail of bricks, bottles and stones came raining down on the Land Rover’s steel roof.

We make straight for the M2 motorway, the shore road, Carrickfergus Police Station.

“What now, boss?” Matty asks.

“Take a Land Rover and a driver and get this plant pot up to the lab. I want it examined by the best forensic boys on the force and I want you to stay with those fuckers until the job is done. If they find any rosary pea material in here at all it’ll be enough to hang McFarlane.”

Matty takes the plant pot and streaks off like Billy Whizz.

The rest of us head home.

#113 Coronation Road.

I put on “For Your Pleasure” by Roxy Music.

I fry some bacon and onions.

I eat my dinner and listen to both sides of the LP which I haven’t played in seven or eight years.

When it’s over I put on my raincoat walk back down to the station to wait for Matty. He shows up at nine.

“Good news?”

He shakes his head. “The only organic material in that pot was a withered tomato plant.”

“Are you sure?”

“The lads were 100 per cent sure. A dead tomato plant. Nothing else.”

“No rosary pea or indeed anything weird?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

“Sorry, boss.”

“Thanks, Matty.”

No rosary pea. No Abrin.

“Do you want to go next door to the pub?” I ask him.

“Is that an order?”

“No.”

“Well, in that case I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

“All right, I’ll catch you another time. I’ll go myself.”

I juke next door and order a pint of Guinness and a double Scotch. A redhead called Kerry asks me if I will buy her a drink. She drinks a blackcurrant snakebite, which apparently is equal parts lager and cider with a dash of blackcurrant in a pint glass. After two she’s toast. I tell her the joke about the monkey and the pianist in the bar. She thinks it’s hilarious. She asks what I do for a living and I let slip that I’m a copper … And that, my friend, is it. She’s either Catholic or has your bog standard hatred of the police. When I come back from the toilet she’s gone. She’s been through my wallet, but she’s only taken a twenty-pound note to get a taxi, which, when you think about it, isn’t so bad.

I order a double Bush for the road, hit it and walk back through the rain.

My head’s splitting. I stop to urinate outside the Presbyterian Church and an old lady walking her mutt tells me that I’m a sorry excuse for a human being. “I agree with you, love,” I say but when I turn round to make the argument there’s no one there at all.