I Hear the Sirens in the Street

22: I’VE SEEN THINGS YOU PEOPLE WOULDN’T BELIEVE

Two a.m: A group of drunks coming down the street singing: “We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys! We are, we are, we are the Billy Boys. We’re up to our necks in fenian blood and we’re coming back for more. We are the Billy Billy Boys.”

I was never going to sleep this night.

I went downstairs and grabbed an encyclopaedia and read it over a bowl of cornflakes.

I had a cup of coffee, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a sweater, put on my raincoat and went for a walk around the Estate. I picked up my new Sony Radio Walkman and tuned it to the BBC World Service.

Black clouds. Rain. Sleet on the high plateau.

Bombings in West Belfast and Derry.

Rocket attacks on police stations along the border.

War news.

The other war.

In the South Atlantic.

I walked down to the lough and sat on the beach.

I watched the planes going both ways on the Trans-At.

I got cold.

At six I went into the station.

Brennan was there already, reading the newspapers in the incident room. He hadn’t shaven. He looked unkempt. There was no point asking him what the fuck was going on in his life, but I wanted to talk to someone.

I knocked on his door and opened it. “Morning, sir, can I get you a coffee or something?”

“No, you can’t, Duffy! But you know what you can do for me?”

“What?”

“Give my head peace and leave me alone.”

“Okay, sir.”

I shut the door again.

Maybe talk to McCrabban when he came in.

I went to the coffee machine, got a coffee-choc, trudged to my office, put my feet up on the desk and looked out to sea.

The sun limped up over County Down. It was a clear crisp day and Scotland was distinctly visible as a long blue line on the horizon. The guy trying to sell the goat went past without his goat. An entrepreneurial success story.

The door opened.

Brennan came in shaving with an electric razor.

“What are you doing in at this time, anyway?” he asked.

“I couldn’t sleep. I was out for a walk and ended up here.”

“What do you know about Epicurus?”

“Is it a crossword clue?”

“It’s something I heard at a, uhhh, a meeting. I thought, I’ll ask Duffy. He’s a guy that knows things.”

“Athenian. He taught in what was called The Garden.”

“Sum him up for me in short words.”

“He said that either there are no gods, or they don’t care about us. Ambition is a pointless quest. In a thousand years no one will remember any of us. All we’ve got is love and friendship, so take pleasure where you can find it.”

Chief Inspector Brennan closed his eyes and swayed a little. “You believe that?”

“I haven’t thought too much about it.”

“What have you thought about?”

“Uhhh—”

“That O’Rourke murder, for example. Have you been thinking about that?”

“Not lately, it’s in the yellow file which means that we are at something of an impasse.”

“What have you got?”

“We’ve established the name of the victim and how the victim died.”

“And?”

“That’s about it, sir, to be honest. Few red herrings along the way.”

He put up his hand. “Progress, Duffy, what progress have you made since your last report?”

“No actual progress.”

“That’s what I thought. Is that what you boys do in here? Sit around drinking tea and concealing the truth from me? All right, so you bin it and you move on so the resources of CID can be used elsewhere.”

“We solved that bank robbery.”

“We need more of that stuff. Results.”

He was spoiling for a fight out of sheer ennui. I was in no mood to engage. What did I care about the O’Rourke case or any other? “You’re the boss. If you want, I’ll move it from the yellow file to the cold case file.”

“I am the boss and don’t you forget it. Now bugger off home and get some kip and come back at a Christian hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

Home. Sofa. Kip. Cup of tea and Mars bar sandwiches and the classic Star Trek ep. Arena. You know the one. Kirk makes gunpowder to kill the guy in the rubber suit.

The door bell went. It was Bobby Cameron with a bottle of Glenlivet. He offered it to me. “Fell off the back of a lorry,” he said. “No hard feelings, eh?”

“About what?”

“About your woman up the street. Sometimes the lads get a bit boisterous. Sitting around with nothing to do, the dartboard’s broke, it’s too wet to fly the pigeons and before you know it, it’s the fall of Saigon on Coronation Road.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He winked, nodded and walked down the path. At the gate he turned. “You’ll look after yourself now, Duffy, won’t you?”

It was hard to know if this was a threat or a warning, or nothing at all.

“I’ll try to,” I said.

“I like you, Duffy. We’ll kill you last.”

“Cheers.”

I decided to skip work entirely and rang a lithe reserve constable called Clare Purdy to see if she wanted to go to the pictures. She said yes and I took her to the ABC in Belfast to catch Blade Runner. We were the only people in the cinema. When we came out it was raining, dark, there’d been a bombing somewhere and the street was full of smoke and soldiers: it was as if the movie had come to life. It took us an hour to get through the checkpoints and the rain. I tried to get Clare to come back to Coronation Road with me but she was a Jesus freak and the flick had messed with her head and all she wanted to do was go home and lie down. I dropped her at a cottage in Knocknagullah and then it was a quiet night in with chicken lo mein, vodka and lime and a quick whizz to Helen Mirren on a repeat Parky talking about the nude scenes in Caligula.

The next day I asked Crabbie and Matty if there were any developments on any front. When they both said no I told them that the Chief wanted the O’Rourke case killed.

“You’re willing to drop this?” McCrabban asked sceptically.

“Orders is orders,” I said. “As my dear old gran used to say ‘when someone shits on your chips, you have to eat the onion rings.’”

“What?” McCrabban asked.

“What do we work on then?” Matty wondered.

“Theft cases. Stolen cars. Anything,” I said.

If they’d both objected I would have taken the fight back to the Chief but neither of them kicked up a fuss, so that was that. The O’Rourke murder investigation was suspended indefinitely.

I wiped the whiteboard, gathered up the materials from the incident room, put them in a box binder and placed it in the filing cabinet in my office. McCrabban was watching me out of the corner of his eye.

“If the Chief asks you, tell him it’s a cold case now,” I said.

“I will.”

We exchanged a look and that look said that he knew that I was far too much of a stubborn arsehole to leave it there.