I Hear the Sirens in the Street

21: FIFTEENS

Matty started bitching about another “bloody pointless trip to Islandmagee” so I ditched him at the police station and pulled in to Bentham’s shop to get some more smokes. I grabbed a packet of Marlboros from the shelf. Jeff wasn’t there, so running the joint was his daughter, Sonia, a sixth-former still in her school uniform. She was chewing bubblegum and reading something called Interzone Magazine.

“Where’s your da?” I asked her.

“I dunno,” she said, without looking up.

“Are you minding the shop?”

“Looks like it, don’t it?”

“What’s news?”

She put the magazine down and looked at me. “Philip K. Dick is dead.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

She sighed dramatically. “That’ll be two pound for the fags.”

“Your da gives me a policeman’s discount,” I said, with a smile.

“Me da’s a buck eejit, then, isn’t he? About the only person guaranteed not to kneecap you is a peeler. That’ll be two pound for the fags and if you don’t like it you can fuck off.”

I paid the two pounds and was about to drive down to Islandmagee when an incident report came in on the blower about two drunks fighting outside the hospital on Taylor’s Avenue. It wasn’t a detective’s job but it was my manor so I told the controller that I’d take care of it. I was there in two minutes. I knew both men. Jimmy McConkey was a fitter at Harland and Wolff until he’d been laid off, Charlie Blair was a hydraulic engineer at ICI until it closed. “For shame. What are you lads doing, blitzed out of your minds, at this time of the day?” I asked them.

Charlie attempted to shove me and while he was off balance Jimmy pushed him to the ground.

With difficulty I got them both in the back of the Land Rover and took them home to their long-suffering wives in Victoria Estate, where the women were using a cameo appearance by the sun to hang clothes from lines and chat over the fences. The men behaved themselves when they got out. We had gone from the adolescent male world of pushing and shoving to the feminine universe of washing and talk and order. There would be no more hijinks from them today.

There was no point writing the incident up. It was nothing. It was just another sad little playlet in the great opera of misery all around us.

I got back in the Land Rover and drove to Islandmagee in a foul mood.

There was a gate across the private road. It was chained up and I couldn’t break it without causing trouble for myself so I parked the Land Rover and walked to Mrs McAlpine’s cottage carrying Martin’s stuff in an Adidas bag.

Cora barked at me, giving Mrs McAlpine plenty of warning.

She opened the door gingerly.

There was blood on her hands.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.”

“Is that blood?”

“Aye.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“This whole question question question thing is very tiresome.”

“Bad cop habit.”

“I’m butchering a ewe, if you must know,” she said.

“Can I come in?”

“All right.”

Her hair was redder today. Curlier. I wondered if she’d dyed it or was that a reaction to sunlight and being outdoors. She looked healthier too, ruddier. You would never call her Rubenesque but she’d put on weight and it suited her. Perhaps she was finally getting over Martin’s death. Looking after herself a little better.

I went inside carrying the green army shoulder bag.

“Do you mind if I finish up?”

“Not at all.”

We walked to the “washhouse” at the back of the farm where a sheep carcass lay spreadeagled on a wooden table. She began sawing and butchering it into various cuts of meat.

“This’ll last you a while. Do you have a freezer?”

“Harry does.”

“I’d help you carry it over, but I’m supposed to stay away from your brother-in-law. I got a shot across my bows from the Chief Constable no less.”

She laughed at that. “My God. I suppose his Masonic contacts are the only thing left in his arsenal.”

She cut long strings of sinewy meat from the bone and trimmed the fat and threw it into a box marked “lard”.

Thwack went the cleaver into bone. Thug went the cleaver into meat and fat.

“So, uh, let me tell you why I’m here today. I was down at Carrickfergus UDR base and they asked me to take you some of Martin’s things. I brought them in the bag out there.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“It was no trouble. Interesting place, that UDR base. Bit grim.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never went there.”

“Like I say, pretty grim. Hard job, too, I expect,” I said.

She hacksawed off the sheep’s head and put it in a tupper-ware box. She looked at me.

“What are you getting at, Inspector?”

“Did Martin ever talk to you about his work?”

“Sometimes.”

“He was an intelligence officer. Did you know that?”

“Of course.”

“Did he ever talk to you about specific cases?”

“Hardly ever. He was very discreet.”

“He ever mention the name Woodbine, or talk about Dunmurry or the DeLorean factory?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Are you sure?”

“If he did, it didn’t make an impression.”

She finished butchering the aged ewe and I helped her bag the meat. We washed up and went inside the cottage.

“I was baking today. You want a fifteen while I put the kettle on?”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Wait till you taste them. My mother was the baker.”

“Your mother’s passed on?”

“Aye, passed on to the Costa del Sol,” she said with a laugh. She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. She caught me looking at her. She held my gaze a second longer than she should have.

“Its ages since I had a fifteen. How do you make them?”

She laughed. “Well, when I say baking, that’s a bit of a fib, isn’t it? The flour’s only for rolling them on the board.”

“What do you do?”

“They’re so easy. Fifteen digestive biscuits, crushed, fifteen walnuts, finely chopped, fifteen maraschino cherries, fifteen coloured marshmallows, a can of condensed milk. Flour and flaked coconut. Mix everything except the coconut. Roll into a ball. Divide the ball into two and make two log rolls.”

“And then what?”

“Scatter a chopping board with flour and the coconut.”

“Something about a fridge, isn’t there?”

She smiled. “Roll the sausages in floury coconut and then wrap each log tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two hours. Couldn’t be simpler. My secret ingredient is Smarties or, for Harry’s friend, M&Ms, which is the American equivalent.”

“The fifteens are for Harry too?”

“You have to keep the landlord happy don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“They’re for a friend of his. An American lady.”

“A rich American lady? A potential bride?”

“I didn’t ask.”

She handed me a plate of the treats. “I must warn you,” she said. “They’re sweet.”

I tried one and they were way too sweet for my blood. They made your head hurt. Emma came back a minute later with tea.

“Delicious,” I said.

She smiled. Sipped her tea. Didn’t eat.

She looked at the bag full of Martin’s gear.

After a pause, she said: “You couldn’t put it in the cupboard under the stairs, could you? I don’t want to deal with it just at the moment.”

“I forgot that you told me that you threw all Martin’s stuff out. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought this.”

“It’s okay.”

I put the bag in the cupboard and stood there awkwardly. “Well, I suppose I’ll head on then.”

“Yes.”

I cleared my throat.

“Are you doing all right?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Moneywise, you know?”

“Yes. I sold a dozen spring lambs and that cleared some of the debts and I’m supposed to get the compensation money by the end of the month. Of course, that’s what they’ve been saying since January …”

“Will you stay here when the money comes?”

“I can’t afford to go anywhere else, can I?”

“Your parents in Spain?”

“That place? It’s the living death down there. No thanks. What would I do with my time?”

“What do you do with your time here?”

“That is the question.”

Silence.

I watched a drip burrow its way through the thatching onto the living-room floor.

“All right, well, I suppose this is the …uh …”

“Yes, Inspector Duffy, I suppose it is,” she said.

I went outside.

The Land Rover back to Carrick.

Sea spray along the lough shore.

Driving rain.

Her manner hadn’t been that encouraging. In fact there was a distinct coldness near the end, and yet I couldn’t help but feel that there was something bubbling beneath the surface there.

Chinese takeaway for dinner. Pot from the shed out back.

I smoked the joint in the shed with the door open and the rain coming in.

I went inside, put on Age of Plastic by The Buggles which I snapped up for 2p at a jumble sale. I made myself a pint of vodka and lime juice. I drank and listened. It was a very bad album.

I watched the TV news: incidents all over Ulster: bomb scares and disruption to rail and bus services, an incendiary fire at the Door Store, a policeman shot in Enniskillen, a prisoner officer severely injured in a mercury tilt bomb in Strabane. I watched the Final Thought on UTV: a cheerful long-haired evangelist insisted that God was merciful and just and cared about his flock.

Midnight. It was so cold I lit the paraffin heater.

The phone rang. I got out of bed, wrapped myself in the duvet, tripped on the blanket and nearly went down the stairs head first. My face banged into the side wall. Blood was pouring out of my nose. The phone kept ringing. Never get the phone after midnight, Duffy, you dumbass.

I picked it up. “Yeah, what is it now?”

“You are not the detective I thought you were,” a voice said.

The voice from the note. The English chick. “Why’s that?” I said.

There was silence.

“I was the one who left you the note.”

“Yeah, I know. You stand out. We don’t get many English birds round here, do we?”

“I suppose not.”

“Who sprung you from Whitehead Police Station? A couple of your mates?”

She didn’t reply.

“Listen, sweetie, you’re not cute and you’re not funny. I don’t know if you’re a spook, or a reporter, or a student, or a player looking to make trouble, or what you are exactly, but pick on someone else, okay? It’s enough to make me want to take my name out of the phone book.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“Aye, but it’d be a shame to do that, I’m the only Duffy in Carrick in there,” I said.

More silence. I was weary of this. “What the fuck are you calling me up for? Why don’t you just tell me what you’ve bloody got, if you’ve really got anything.”

“I need someone who’s good. I thought you were good. I looked you up. I read those articles about you, but you’re not good.”

“Not good? I almost nailed you, you dozy cunt.”

“Almost doesn’t count for much.”

“You were shitting it, darling, admit it. You were lifted by a stop and search unit – and them boys couldn’t find a fat man at a Santa Claus convention. You must have been well surprised.”

“And you must have been surprised to find me gone.”

“Big deal. You pull the wool over the eyes of some twenty-year-old part-time country copper. Big deal. You don’t impress me.”

“And my note?”

“Your note? Fuck that! We’re too busy with a civil war in our laps for shite like that. We don’t have time for notes or fucking games. You want to try the San Francisco Police Department and spin them lines about the Zodiac killer, or get the Ripper unit at the South Yorkshire PD.”

“Maybe you’re right. I shouldn’t have tried to lead you. I set you a test and you failed it. I assumed that if I could find the evidence you’d be able to find it too.”

“What evidence?”

“It’s not my job. I was trying to help you, Duffy. I wanted to prod you, not give it all to you on a plate.”

“Give it to me on a plate.”

“No, you were right. I should have said nothing. If you’d found it, it would have made things worse for you, more than likely. I’m sorry to have troubled you, Duffy.”

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

“I really don’t.”

“Then you certainly are not the detective I thought you were.”

“I’m not the detective anyone thinks I am. I’m a plodding copper – no better, no worse than anyone else.”

“I see that now.”

“Look, love, it’s late, I’m tired, do us both a favour and don’t bloody call again.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

She hung up. The dial tone continued and then it began going beep beep beep. I put the phone back on its crook. And I was too fed up with it all to even call Special Branch and get them to put a tap on my line.