I Hear the Sirens in the Street

19: THE CHIEF CONSTABLE

It felt like I had just closed my eyes before I heard some eejit throwing stones against my bedroom window. I checked the clock radio: 6.06 a.m. Goddamn it. If this was Cameron again I’d go out there and shoot the fat fuck.

I opened the curtains and looked down into the front garden.

It was Matty and another constable in their full dress uniforms.

Oh dear.

I went downstairs and opened the front door.

“They’ve been phoning you for the last hour,” Matty said. Not only was he in his dress uniform but he had shaved and the ever-present cheeky grin was gone from his face.

“Am I in trouble?”

“What?”

“Who have I pissed off now? The Prime Minister? The Bishop of Rome?”

“It’s not about you, boss. It’s Sergeant Burke.”

“What about him?”

“Accidentally shot himself last night. Dead.”

“Jesus! Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Fuck. How?”

“Accidental discharge of his personal sidearm,” Matty said, as if he was reading it from a newspaper.

I looked at the other constable.

The other constable smelled of church and breath mints. He seemed about fourteen.

“He topped himself?” I asked Matty in an undertone.

“I wouldn’t know,” Matty replied.

Of course, it was well known that the RUC had the highest suicide rate of any police force in Europe, but you didn’t expect someone in your parish to go off and do himself in.

“I’ll get changed, you lads come in. Who wants coffee?”

I made toast and coffee and shaved and got my dress uniform out of the dry-cleaning wrapper.

We drove to the cop shop where the mood was blacker than the Dulux matt fucking black.

I found Inspector McCallister, who was always on top of things.

“What happened, Jim?” I asked him.

He was pale and his breath reeked of coffee and whiskey.

“Neighbour heard the shot and called it in. I was duty officer so I went out myself. Me and Constable Tory. He was in the living room. Gunshot wound to the side of the head.”

“Did he have any family?”

“He was divorced. Two grown-up kids.”

“Definitely suicide?”

“Keep your fucking voice down, Duffy! We won’t use that word in here. When the fucking internals come round asking questions, we’ll all say that Burke was a first-class officer with no fucking problems, all right?”

I understood. Suicide invalidated any potential life insurance policy, but an “accidental discharge of a firearm”, was exactly that …

“Just between ourselves, then?” I asked in a lower tone.

“His kids are both over the water. His parents are dead. His brother’s in South Africa. There was nothing for him here,” McCallister said.

“I suppose he’d been drinking?”

“He’d been drinking. I’m sure his blood alcohol level will be off the fucking chart. But that wasn’t the clincher …”

He beckoned me to follow him into his office. He closed the door, sat me down and poured me some evil hooch in a plastic cup.

“What was the clincher?” I asked

“There were three bullets lying on the living-room coffee table.”

“He’d taken them out?”

“Aye. He’d taken three out, spun the chamber, pointed the gun at his head and pulled the fucking trigger … He’d done that before more than once. That’s why the wife had moved out.”

“Christ Almighty.”

“Fucking stupid, isn’t it? Doing the IRA’s job for them.”

“Aye.”

“Poor bastard. Why didn’t he go to Michael Pollock?” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“The divisional shrink.”

McCallister gave me a queer look. Why did I know the name of the divisional shrink? And why would anyone go to a stranger to talk about their problems?

“Do you know why we’re in this get up?” I said, pointing at our full dress uniforms.

“The Chief Constable’s coming down to visit.”

“You’re messing with me.”

“Nope.”

“The Chief fucking Constable?

“He thinks there’s something rotten in Denmark.”

“There is something rotten in Denmark.”

“Aye well, we’re to put on a brave face and reassure him that Carrickfergus RUC is a happy ship.”

I smiled at that. No RUC station I had ever visited in Ulster had been a happy ship. In the ones along the border the pathology was a constant, palpable terror that any moment Libyan-made rockets were gonna come pouring in from a field in Eire; in the ones in Belfast you feared a riot or a mortar attack; in the quieter, less heavily defended country stations it could be anything from an ambush by an entire IRA active service unit to a car bomb parked down the street. And no peeler ever felt safe at home or in his car or at the flicks or at a restaurant or anywhere. There was never any down-time. Blowing your brains out seemed a reasonable enough way out.

And although Burke wasn’t that popular a bloke, he was a familiar face and before he became a really heavy drinker had been a decent enough peeler.

I went into the main incident room. The air, like the weather, was foul. Some of the female reservists were crying.

There was nothing I could say or do. I went down to the evidence room to see if I could liberate some grass or ciggies but the duty officer was a God-botherer called Fredericks who wouldn’t countenance any untoward shit.

Back up to my office by the windows. A cup of tea. A smoke.

McCrabban knocked on the door. He was in his dress greens too.

“Shame, isn’t it?” he said.

“Aye, it’s a crying shame.”

Crabbie looked embarrassed, was going to say something, couldn’t bring himself to, excused himself and left. Did he want me to put in a good word for him about the sergeantcy vacancy? Probably, but with these Presbyterians you could never tell anything.

I stared out the window for ten minutes, watching boats chug up and down the filthy lough.

Another door knock and Chief Inspector Brennan came in.

Full duds and a shave.

“Put your cock away, Duffy, the Chief Constable’s on his way. I don’t know what we did to deserve this, but there it is,” he said.

“Well, sir, it’s not really about us, it’s—”

“The next promotion cycle I was going to be made superintendent. You can’t have a chief inspector running a cop shop like Carrick. Superintendent they were going to make me. That’s all over now. Fucking Burke and his fucking games. Fucker. Poor dumb fucker … Have you got a drink, Duffy?”

“I might have some vodka under the—”

“Better not, Hermon’s a tough nut. Jesus! What a cock up!”

He left the office so that he could wail to someone else.

I watched the clock and around eleven the Chief Constable did indeed come down. He landed by helicopter on the Barn Field and drove to the police station in a convoy of three police Land Rovers.

Not exactly low key.

Still, Jack Hermon was a popular chief constable of the RUC. He had fought Thatcher tooth and nail for better pay and conditions, he had encouraged the recruitment of Catholic officers, he had sacked the worst of the Protestant sectarian arseholes and he had ended the use of psychological and physical torture at the Castlereagh Holding Centre (counterproductive and unreliable, the reports said). The RUC still had many many problems with bigoted, incompetent, and lazy officers but Hermon had done a decent job in only a short time and for his efforts he had recently been knighted by the Queen.

His entrance was all drama.

The bodyguard cops came into the station first, looking tough. Big guys with ’taches and submachine guns.

Then Sir Jack with his familiar peasant features, red potato face and squat frame. His uniform looked too tight for him.

Chief Inspector Brennan saluted.

They shook hands and exchanged words.

Brennan introduced his senior officers, in other words Inspector McCallister, myself and Sergeant Quinn.

Sir Jack shook our hands and told Brennan to gather everyone (“even the fucking tea ladies”) in the downstairs conference room.

His speech was boilerplate stuff that didn’t even attempt to deal with the “accidental discharge of a firearm” cover story. Instead it was: Morale … The importance of talking to people about your problems … Optimism … Things looked bad now, but in fact we were winning the fight against terrorism …

Maybe some of the reservists were impressed, but no one else was.

Afterwards we had tea and biscuits and a carrot cake that Carol baked herself.

We were supposed to mingle with the Chief Constable and feel free to ask him anything. I hung back near the photocopier with Matty and McCrabban, trying not to catch his eye. It didn’t do any good. After a minute or two he made an obvious beeline for me. Crabbie and Matty scattered like wildebeest before a lioness.

“Get back here,” I whispered.

“You’re on your own, mate,” Matty hissed, before making a break for the bogs.

Hermon offered his hand again. He was wearing leather gloves now, getting ready to leave.

“You’re Duffy, isn’t that right?” Sir Jack asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Wanted to talk to you before I go.”

“Me personally, sir?”

“Aye.”

“Uhm, we can go into my office if you want.”

“Lead on.”

I walked up to my office and closed the door.

He didn’t sit or comment on the sea view.

“I’ve had two calls about you in two weeks. Two calls about a lowly detective inspector. You must be something pretty special, eh?”

“No, sir, I’m—”

“Do you have any idea how busy I am, Duffy?”

“I imagine that you’re ver—”

“Damn right I am. And let me tell you something, sonny Jim. I am not afraid to stick my neck out for my men.”

“I’ve never heard anything different.”

“Ian Paisley? I’m not afraid of Paisley. I personally arrested that loudmouth. To a man the politicians of this sorry, benighted, God-abandoned land are rabble-rousing scum.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But when I get calls complaining about the actions of one of my officers, calls directly to me, I have to take an interest, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The United States Consul General in Belfast called me up and said that one of my officers was hectoring one of his officials. Do you know who that officer was?”

“Sir, I can assure you that—”

“And then I get a call from the Right Honourable Ian Paisley MP, saying that one of his oldest friends, a certain Sir Harry McAlpine, was also getting a bollocking from a bolshy young detective. Can you guess who that detective was?”

“Sir, if I can explain …”

Hermon got real close and I got a zoom in on his lined face, that cheap and cheerful Mallorca suntan, the tired, angry, bloodshot eyes.

“I looked at your personnel file, Duffy. You’ve got a medal from the Queen and you’re a Catholic to boot! I suppose you think that that makes you immune. I suppose you think you’re Clint Eastwood. I suppose you think you can do whatever you like?”

“Not at all, sir, if I could just—”

“Let me tell you how this place works, Duffy. It’s a tribal society. Clans. Warlords. You think we’re living in 1982? We’re living in 1582. You can’t go around ruffling the feathers of the big chieftains. Do you get me?”

“Chieftains, feathers, no ruffling, sir.”

“Are you making fun of me, son?”

“No, sir!”

“Good. Because you need me. And if I’m going to back you up against them, I need to know that our masters in London are going to back me up.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Sir Harry McAlpine is a wheeler and dealer. He’s got land here and there. And he’s in favour at Stormont at the moment. He has influential friends and he has the ear of the ministry.”

Aye, and he’s also a big bluffing bastard mortgaged up the wazoo and to quote his sister-in-law, as poor as a church mouse, I did not say.

Hermon looked at me and held my gaze and waited until I looked away first, but I wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction. He may have come here in a helicopter, he may have been on the blower to Mrs Thatcher last night, but his breath smelled of Cookstown sausages.

He nodded and finally he looked away. He examined my office for the first time, impressed by the view out the window and perhaps by its un-Presbyterian messiness. “So,” he said, after a pause, “where do you keep the good whiskey?”