I Hear the Sirens in the Street

17: THE TREASURY MAN

I dropped Reserve Constable Sandra Pollock back at Larne RUC and drove on to Carrickfergus in the Beemer. Somewhere in County Antrim an Army Puma helicopter had been shot at with either an RPG or a surface to air missile and as a result the highways and byways were flooded with angry soldiers in green fatigues idiotically stopping every third car. Of course, I was one of the lucky stopees. I showed the squaddies my warrant card but they ignored it. Two of them pointed FN FAL rifles at me while their mates went through my boot.

“What’s this?” an acerbic Welshman asked me, holding up a flare gun.

“A flare gun.”

“What’s it for?”

“For firing flares.”

This could have gone for a while or until one of Taffy’s mates shot me, but they decided to let me go instead.

Back in Carrick the peelers were yukking it up over a fake version of the Belfast Telegraph that a Republican group must have printed up samizdat fashion. One of the headlines was “Polar Bears Capture Falklands Task Force”, which wasn’t even geographically astute.

“Take a look at this, Duffy,” Sergeant Quinn said.

“Uh, no thanks, some of us have work to do,” I said pointedly.

In the CID incident room McCrabban had news. After a bit of prodding the Consul General in Belfast had sent us a second, slightly lengthier FBI file on Bill O’Rourke. We knew most of it already. O’Rourke had worked for the IRS his entire life. He was not involved in any fraudulent or other criminal activities and as far as the FBI could see his only offence was that speeding ticket the local cops had told us about. The report was really rather curt. Three paragraphs. A couple of spelling mistakes. It was signed by a Special Agent Anthony Grimm. Something about it still didn’t feel quite right.

“Maybe we should talk to him,” I said.

“Who?”

“Grimm. Sounds like another fake name to me.”

“You and your fake names. You’re still not happy?” Crabbie asked.

“Clearly they did the bare minimum here. I want you to lean on the Consul again and see if anything else squeaks out,” I said.

“The consulate is fed up with us already,” McCrabban complained.

“You’ll do your best, I’m sure,” I insisted.

I filled him and Matty in about my day’s adventures in Larne and Islandmagee. While they were digesting that I told them about the anonymous note and the verse from the Bible, the mysterious woman and her arrest.

“Yeah. So what do you think, lads? Is it something or is it nothing?”

Matty was unimpressed. In his experience women were capable of any kind of madness just to get in your head, but McCrabban lapped it up, liking anything which involved Biblical exegesis.

“Have a wee think, boys, will ya?” I said, and went to the kitchen, made three mugs of tea, got some chocolate biscuits and brought them back to the lads.

“Well? Any brainwaves?” I asked.

“The McAlpine angle seems more and more like a distraction. The note is slightly more interesting, but not much. The woman? Someone you met in a pub stalking you? It’s probably not relevant for us, in this particular case, is it?” Matty said.

“Your take, Crabbie?”

“I agree with young Matty. The McAlpine angle might be something but it’s Larne RUC’s something. Or Special Branch’s something. The note? Well, I’ll have to have a think about that. There’s some really good stuff in Corinthians.”

“Should we drop the McAlpine angle?”

“I don’t think that’s the best use of our resources, Sean. The fact that O’Rourke’s killer used Martin McAlpine’s old suitcase that he picked up in the Salvation Army is neither here nor there. If he’d used Princess Diana’s old suitcase we wouldn’t spend all this time investigating her.” Crabbie said soberly.

“Knowing Sean, I’d say that he definitely would, the old horn dog,” Matty chipped in.

They were both content to close the book on Emma McAlpine, at least for now. I took a chocolate digestive and we had a collective think about the note, but it was impossible to say if someone was messing with us or not. I wrote it all up in the case file anyway, in case it became significant.

No one could think of anything else. I went to my office and pretended to work, but really spent time drawing glasses and moustaches on every wanker in the Daily Mail, and that is a lot of wankers.

A knock at the door. It was McCrabban, jacket off, revealing a yellow shirt and green paisley tie underneath.

“Come in.”

“Fallows from the Consul’s office called.” McCrabban said. “They want the body released from the morgue. They’d like to bury O’Rourke in the Arlington National Cemetery. It’s a big deal apparently. A real honour.”

“I don’t trust that Fallows guy. I wasn’t entirely happy with some of his answers,” I said.

“Aye, he looked shifty,” McCrabban agreed.

“You think everybody not raised in the Free Presbyterian Church religion is shifty. Still, maybe the Consulate are trying to sweep this under the rug? What say you?”

Normally Crabbie would leap at any hint of conspiracy, but I could see the scepticism in his eyes. He knew and I knew that the avenues were beginning to close one by one. The whole McAlpine diversion had been an attempt to hide the fact that this entire case was slowly grinding to a halt.

“I don’t know, mate,” he muttered.

“Tell them they can have the body,” I said.

“Okay.”

I ate a biscuit, looked at the sea, continued my work on the Mail.

Time passed.

Maybe somebody somewhere would come up with something.

Another knock at the door and Crabbie came in.

“Well?”

“I talked to your man, Fallows. I don’t think he knows anything. He’s just a functionary. I told him he could ship the body home. He seemed happy with that,” Crabbie said.

I yawned. “All right, I’ll write this all up tomorrow. Tell Matty we can head on home,” I said.

“I’ll stay and write it up. I want to study for my sergeant’s exam anyway,” McCrabban muttered.

“Suit yourself, mate,” I said, but later I thought that I should have said “Thank you very much, Crabbie.”

I went outside, turned the collar up on my raincoat.

I got inside the BMW and had a reasonably straight run home. Only one patrol stopped me this time. A bunch of Gurkha rifles who were a long way from Nepal. None of them could speak English, which made explaining my cop I.D. a barrel of laughs.

When I finally got back to Coronation Road the street was full of kids playing football. I didn’t have the heart to break up their game so I parked on Victoria Road and walked the rest of the way.

I was turning into the house when Bobby Cameron saw me at the door.

“Oi, Duffy, need your help,” he said.

Bobby was not only the local paramilitary commander but also a man that I owed my life to when he had shot a man shooting at me a year ago. He knew that I was obliged to him and he loved that.

“Yes?” I said.

“Follow me,” he muttered.

“Where?”

“Just follow me. We have a wee problem.”

“Tell me what this is about.”

“Just come!”

“Not until you tell me.”

He glared at me. The rain was light but we were both getting soaked. “Fine! When the trouble comes just remember that I fucking tried to prevent it and you couldn’t fucking be arsed,” he said.

“What trouble?”

“Too late! You had your fucking chance, peeler. You had your fucking chance!” he said huffily.

I went inside and closed the door. I took off my raincoat and let it fall on the floor. It had been a psychically draining day and I was shattered. I made myself a vodka gimlet and plonked myself down in front of the TV. I watched The Rockford Files. You had to like the fact that Rockford got shat on all the time and was living in penury with his old man in a caravan. Seemed about right for a detective.

The phone rang. “Tell me about the bint and her alibi,” Tony asked.

“No alibi. She said she was reading George Eliot.”

“Animal Farm and all that?”

“You’re thinking of George Orwell.”

“Did Dougherty come to see her?”

“He did. She said that he was drunk and raving, not making a lot of sense.”

“Does that sound like him?”

“Yeah, it does. I asked her if she’d ever shot a pistol,” I said.

“And what did she say?”

“She said she hadn’t, but she’d fired a shotgun many times.”

“Who hasn’t? So what do you think? Did she kill him?”

“Which ‘him’?”

“Dougherty.”

“I don’t know.”

“You gave her the third degree?”

“Yes. Well, maybe the second degree.”

“And?”

“I have no idea.”

“Jesus. You’re no help, are you?”

“No.”

“I suppose I’ll have to see her too, then.”

“I suppose you will.”

Tony decided to let it go at that. He detected some note in my voice that he didn’t quite like. “Are you all right, mate? I mean, are you doing all right?” he asked in a big brother tone.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

A long pause.

“When I’m over the water I can look for a place for you, too, you know,” he said.

“Thanks…but you know how I feel.”

“Have a wee think. I mean, really, this place is finished, there’s no future here. Especially not for bright boys like you and me.”

“Sure, Tony. I’ll think about it.”

“I know you won’t, but you should. That doctor friend of yours. She’s doing the right thing.”

“I know.”

“Any more mysterious women leaving you Valentines?”

“Not today.”

“If it was anything serious she would have just told you, she wouldn’t have left you a cryptic note. That stuff’s strictly for the flicks.”

“I was thinking the same thing myself.”

Dead air for a second or two. “Don’t let the job get to you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Take care now.”

“I will.”

He hung up. I made another vodka gimlet, dimmed the lights and put on Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. I moved the stylus to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” – the song about Syd Barrett’s mental breakdown – and put the record player on repeat. I called up Carrick RUC and asked for DC McCrabban.

“McCrabban,” he said.

“Christ, are you still there?”

“You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name. And yeah, I am still here.”

“What are you doing, Crabbie, studying?”

“Aye. Got the old law books out. It’s quiet here, although intelligence has been coming through about prep for trouble in Belfast.”

“You better get out of there before you get dragooned into riot duty.”

“I wouldn’t mind riot duty. Double time and danger money. We could do with the cash.”

“Just don’t put in for triple-time, that wee shite Dalziel will be all over you.”

“I’ve been working on the case, too,” he said, without much enthusiasm.

“What are your thoughts?”

“Not just thoughts. I just spoke to your man. The FBI guy. Special Agent Anthony Grimm.”

“How?” I said stupidly.

“The time zones. They’re five hours behind.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Nothing new about O’Rourke. War hero. Adjusted well to civilian life. Good civil servant. There were a couple of other speeding tickets that weren’t in the file. Thirty years in the IRS.”

“Anything controversial? Did he ever audit the wrong guy?”

“Nothing controversial. He was a mid-level IRS inspector. He wouldn’t have been a prosecutor or have made any enemies.”

“What was this Grimm like? Weird tone of voice, evasive, anything like that?”

“Nothing that I noticed. Happy to speak to me, it seemed like. Broke the routine. Sounded a bit bored by his lot.”

Not what I was hoping for.

“There was one thing …” McCrabban said.

“Yes?”

“Well, when I called up the FBI’s number in Virginia and asked to speak to Special Agent Anthony Grimm, I was put on hold and then the operator said that she was transferring me to the Secret Service.”

“The Secret Service? Shite! What’s that all about? Aren’t they the ones that protect the President?”

“I asked Grimm and he laughed and he said that it wasn’t as dramatic as it sounded. He’d just been seconded to the currency protection department of the US Treasury. The most boring possible assignment in the entire FBI, he said. Even more boring than preparing data sheets on dead IRS inspectors. I don’t think that really means anything, but I thought you’d like to know.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll write that down. As long as he sounded legit?”

“He did.”

“Okay. Good. So where are we, Crabbie?”

“I think we can rule out anything from O’Rourke’s past. He was a model citizen. He paid his taxes, he didn’t have a record, looked after his wife.”

“I had no idea he was a serial killer, he was a very quiet man, he kept to himself,” I said in a Yorkshire accent.

“Stop it, Sean. He’s no ripper. I really feel for the bloke. His missus dies and he takes a bloody holiday to Ireland to get over his grief and while he’s here some bastard tops him. It all seems very random to me.”

“Random except for the fact that A) he was poisoned and B) the murderer chopped up the body, froze it for an unknown amount of time and then dumped it in a suitcase. That is not your standard mugging gone wrong, is it, Crabbie?”

“No.”

“And then there’s all the distractions, as you call them. The women and the note, the deal with the widow McAlpine …” I said, and took a big drink of the vodka gimlet.

“Ach, mate, the note’s a prank, and I never thought the McAlpine angle would get us anywhere.”

“You should have told me that before I went down to Islandmagee twice,” I said.

“You’re the inspector and I’m the detective constable.”

“All right, Crabbie, thanks. Go home now, okay?”

“Aye. Okay, bye, Sean.”

“Stay frosty and drive safe.”

“I will.”

I hung up and rummaged in the bookshelf for my King James Bible. I made myself another pint of lime and vodka and put on Radio Albania. A five-minute rant about Ronald Reagan and the evils of American capitalism. A rant about the Soviet Union and the decadence of the Brezhnev regime. Praise only for Pol Pot, a true friend of the workers in Cambodia.

It was midnight and I was only two sips into the new vodka gimlet when somebody started banging the front door.

“Will this madness ever end?” I said, storming down the hall.

I opened the door to Bobby Cameron, who had come by with a lynch mob.