I Hear the Sirens in the Street

13: THE GIRL ON THE BIKE

I was in Ownies getting a pub dinner when the beeper went. I asked Arthur if I could borrow his phone and when I tracked it down it turned out to be a message from central dispatch in Ballymena. They had got my girl! An army patrol had nabbed her on her motorbike heading north out of Carrick and they’d handed her over to the police. She was now at Whitehead Police Station.

“Well, well, well,” I said, and grinned at Arthur.

“Good news?”

“Aye, could be, mate. Could be.”

I ran back to the barracks, jumped in the Beemer, hit a ton on the Bla Hole road and was at Whitehead Cop Shop in eight minutes. It was a small police station, unmanned at the weekends. Four police reservists and an inspector ran the show.

I found the duty officer, a freckly kid called Raglan with a David Soul haircut and a feeble ginger tache.

“I need to interview your prisoner,” I said.

“The prisoner?”

“Aye, presumably you’ve only the one.”

“She’s left already,” Raglan said.

“What?”

“She left.”

“Who the fuck with?”

“A couple of superintendents from Special Branch.”

“You get their names?”

“McClue was one of them, I forget the other. Is there a problem?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll follow up with bloody Special Branch and see.”

“You just missed them by about half an hour.”

“Tell me about her – what did she look like? Was she English?”

“She didn’t talk a lot. She was good-looking. She looked Scottish. Sort of blondy-reddy hair. About thirty, maybe younger, maybe older. Sort of not very interesting. A bit old to be joyriding a stolen motorbike, I thought.”

“Did you take her photograph, her prints?”

“Special Branch called us and told us to hold off on that.”

“Special Branch phoned you up and told you not to fingerprint her?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a bit strange, no?”

“Well, them boys in Special Branch are always a bit strange, aren’t they?”

“You must have searched her.”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“I wrote it down here.”

He looked up a notepad and read: “On her person there were: a set of keys, a pair of gloves, a notepad and a paperback book called Doctor Faustus.”

“And where is all that stuff now?”

“Special Branch took it with them.”

I nodded.

“When was she brought in?” I asked.

“The Army dropped her off around four.”

“You didn’t process her then?”

“No. Not at that time. We took her right to the cells and give her a pillow and a blanket.”

“And she said nothing?”

“Not then.”

“Did you ask her name at least?”

“Aye. Of course!”

“And?”

“Alice Smith.”

“Alice Smith?”

“Alice Smith.”

“Hmmm. And how did Special Branch get involved?”

“About six I brought her a cup of tea and she thanked me and asked if she could make her phone call.”

“And you let her?”

“It’s her right, isn’t it?”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, she made her call and ate a biscuit and I escorted her back to her cell and about five minutes later I get a call saying Special Branch is on their way and not to process her.”

“You didn’t think that was odd? The timing, I mean.”

“No.”

“And they show up when?”

“About half an hour ago, like I said.”

“Were they in uniform?”

“No.”

“They have ID?”

“I didn’t think it was necessary to check. I mean, they said they were on their way and then they showed up.”

“Describe them.”

“Just a couple of blokes. Suits, ties … I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Did they sign for her? Anything like that?”

“Are they supposed to?”

“You let two strangers come in here and take a suspect out of the cells and you didn’t check their IDs or ask them to sign for her?”

“She was only in for bike theft, wasn’t she?”

I walked down to the cells to see if she’d left anything there.

She hadn’t.

I spent the next hour calling Special Branch.

Of course there was no Superintendent McClue and no officers had been sent to Whitehead Police Station to pick up a suspect. This was as I had expected. I ran the name Alice Smith through the database but nothing of interest came up.

I walked to the nearest Eason’s in Carrick and bought myself a copy of Doctor Faustus. Baroque wasn’t the word. Made Henry James seem like Jackie Collins. Not the kind of book I’d bring on a stakeout, but none of this play was the way I would have done things. It was very much amateur hour which could mean anything from civilians on a jape to the goons on Gower Street who still prided themselves on their “amateur” status.

Bath. Vodka gimlet. King James Bible. No luck on seeing through the glass darkly. Ask Presbyterian church elder McCrabban in the morning and get his take. Probably bollocks. Cryptic messages were for spy films and crazy people. In my experience when people wanted to tell you something they bloody told you. That was the Ulster way. Best to say nothing but when you do speak make sure that you are understood.

I went to bed with Doctor Faustus and its powerful soporific qualities became readily apparent.