I Hear the Sirens in the Street

23: DELOREAN

The factory was on waste ground in Dunmurry, West Belfast. A big hasty concrete and metal box that had gone up in eighteen months with the blasted city in various states of decay all around. If Coronation Road was the fall of Saigon, this part of Belfast was Hitler’s last days.

Security was a couple of guys at the gate, but to get up to DeLorean’s office, I had to go through a metal detector, show my warrant card and wait until it was verified by a computer.

John DeLorean was a very busy man and had his day scheduled out in tight fifteen-minute blocks. Our interview was scheduled from eleven thirty to eleven forty-five on a Monday morning. I could have pushed it but I didn’t want to make waves or have him ask questions of my superiors. I wanted this encounter to be as straightforward and low key as possible.

On the inside the Dunmurry DeLorean factory dazzled me. Perhaps it was just amazing seeing any kind of industrial activity going on in Ulster. The assembly line was clean and efficient. Raw metal sheets and engines went in one end, aluminium gull-winged DeLorean sports cars came out the other. The administrative offices overlooked the factory floor (DeLorean was big on worker/management cooperation) and I could have stood there all day watching the engines getting mounted and the transmissions going in. It really was incredible. DeLorean had brought a successful industry to Belfast in the heart of the Troubles. He had done what everybody said couldn’t be done and Dunmurry was the only place in Ulster where heavy industry worked, where people actually made things.

Three thousand men were employed here and maybe twice that in subsidiary trades. That was nine thousand men in West Belfast who wouldn’t join the terrorists.

Everybody loved DeLorean: the local press, the British Government, the Northern Ireland office, the Irish government … Everybody, that is, except for a few privileged American auto journalists who had actually driven the DeLorean and said that it was clunky, unreliable and sloppily put together by an inexperienced workforce.

These criticisms had publicly been dismissed by John DeLorean, who trusted his own judgement, not the judgement of “know nothing journalists”. He, after all, was the “man who had single-handedly saved GM” and by implication had therefore saved America.

On TV his persona was half hard-headed businessman, half televangelist. In person he was trim, handsome, soft spoken, and for our interview he was wearing a conservative, unshowy blue suit.

His hair was more grey than black. He had an interesting face: a long aquiline nose that didn’t really go with his squat peasant eyebrows and cheeks. It was a tanned, handsome visage that both radiated intelligence and a kind of weary, punchy vitality.

As I entered the office he was sitting in a “Helsinki” Java wood mahogany armchair reading a report, tutting to himself as he marked it up with a yellow highlighter.

I liked his shoes – they were hand-made Oxfords in a soft brown leather.

His socks were red which I also liked.

He smelled of cologne and cigars.

There was an engraved sign on his desk that said “Genius At Work”.

“Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrickfergus RUC,” a tall attractive secretary called Gloria reminded him when I came in.

He got up and shook my hand.

“Inspector Duffy. Pleased to meet you. I take it this is about the fundraising ball?” he said, with a gleaming and rather charming smile.

“No, this is about a rather different matter,” I said, momentarily thrown.

“Oh?”

His big eyebrows knitted together and I knew that Gloria was going to catch it after I left.

“I’m investigating the murder of an Army captain called Martin McAlpine.”

DeLorean shrugged. “Never heard of him, should I have?”

“He was an intelligence officer. He was murdered late last year, apparently by the IRA.”

“What’s the connection to us?” DeLorean said.

“We went through Captain McAlpine’s notes and an associate of his was keeping an eye on someone who was spying on this factory. It could be unrelated to Captain McAlpine’s murder but I thought I’d follow up on the lead.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Would there be a reason why anyone would be interested in spying on your car plant?”

DeLorean laughed at that. “Of course! Haven’t you ever heard of industrial espionage?”

“Well, yes, I—”

“They’ve been doing it to me my whole career!” he said. He got to his feet and pointed through the plate-glass windows to the factory floor. “You see what we’re doing down there? We are radically re-engineering the model of American sports-car manufacture. In Detroit they are terrified. If I can be blunt, Inspector Duffy, I have them shitting in their pants. Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota. Spying? Of course they’re spying. I expect no less of them. They have no original ideas. They have to steal them from me!”

“Would they kill to get information about your plant?”

DeLorean smiled and nodded. “Nothing would surprise me in this country. Nothing. You have no idea the kind of deals I’ve had to do with all sorts of people to get this factory up and running. Pretty unsavoury characters, I can tell you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you get my drift, Inspector?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“No, nothing would surprise me, but as for actual secrets … Well, the blueprints of the DeLorean are well known and have been in the public domain for years. Our production design is also well known, even our factory layout is common knowledge. We don’t have that many secrets as such …”

“New models or anything like that?” I inquired.

“Oh, sure. I’m always sketching, planning, scheming, but I don’t keep that stuff here.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“In my house in Belfast, or my place in Michigan.”

“Have you had any burglaries? Anything like that?”

“No. Certainly not in my place here. The house in Michigan’s empty but I have a security firm looking after it. They would have told me.”

“What about poaching of company employees, that sort of thing, I’ve heard that—”

“No, no, no, you’re barking up the wrong tree, Inspector,” DeLorean said, becoming animated. “The reason people work for me is that they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. All my people have already been offered more money elsewhere, but they want to be part of a company they can be proud of. No, my staff is loyal. I wouldn’t put it past your local thugs to try and kidnap someone who works here, but they’re not leaving to join fucking Ford.”

“So you can’t think of any reason why someone might be nosing around the plant?”

“A million reasons! Desperation! Panic! They know I’m going to wipe the floor with them. But they can’t stop it! Ten years from now we’re going to be the biggest car company in the word. Not just sports cars. Light trucks. Mid-sized economy sedans. You name it. Electric cars. You should see my plans for electric vehicles.”

“And it’s all going to be headquartered right here in Belfast?”

“You bet!”

He looked at his watch. Our time was almost up.

I gave him my card. “If anything out of the ordinary happens, I would certainly appreciate a call.”

“It depends what you mean by out of the ordinary. In Belfast the ‘out of the ordinary’ happens every day!”

I nodded. “Well, if you think of anything, please, get in touch …”

“Sure thing,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’ll see you out.”

He walked me across the office, opened the door and shook my hand again. The secretary got up from her desk to whisk me away from her boss in case I proved intractable. There was already another man waiting on the sofa. He was wearing a leather jacket, had a thin black tie, messy brown hair and he was smoking a Camel. Everything about him said “reporter”.

DeLorean disengaged my hand

“Have a good day, Inspector.”

“I will.”

The secretary smiled at me. She was a blonde, classic high cheekbones, blue eyeshadow, big hair, very American.

She put up a finger to prevent me from speaking and addressed the man on the sofa.

“You can go in now, Mr Burns.”

“My photographer hasn’t showed up,” Burns said in an East End accent. “Can we wait a few minutes?”

“If you want to talk to Mr DeLorean you’ll have to go in now, Mr Burns, Mr DeLorean has another meeting at twelve fifteen.”

“All right,” Burns said.

The secretary pressed a button and formally announced him. “Mr Jack Burns from the Daily Mail.”

Burns went into DeLorean’s office.

It was unusual to hear an American woman’s voice in Northern Ireland, and I tried to think if I’d ever heard one here before. I doubted it. The American news networks didn’t send their female reporters to war zones.

“Is he a good boss?” I asked.

“He’s a great man,” she said.

“‘Genius at work’, it says on his desk.”

“Oh, that? That’s sort of a joke. That was a gift from Ronald Reagan when he was campaigning through Michigan.”

She began to roll a sheet of paper into her electric typewriter when suddenly another secretary came running down the hall and burst into Mr DeLorean’s office.

“What!” DeLorean yelled, and then a moment later: “Goddammit!”

DeLorean came out of the office, fuming.

“This, when I’m talking to a reporter!” he muttered to Gloria.

He turned to me. “I suppose you’ll want me to evacuate the place? Stop production?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve no idea—”

A young man came breathlessly up the stairs. “Mr DeLorean we’ve had a—”

“Yes, I know!” DeLorean exclaimed. The Daily Mail hack had come out of the office now and was writing furiously in his notebook.

DeLorean turned to the man. “You want to know what difficulties we have to deal with? This kind of goddamn difficulty! Every goddamn week!”

An alarm began sounding and the workers began putting down their tools.

“Who pulled the fire alarm?” DeLorean screamed.

“One of the shop stewards, probably,” the young man said.

“Jesus Christ! All right, all right, show it to me!” DeLorean said.

“I think we should evacuate the premises,” the young man said.

“Show it to me!”

The young man led DeLorean towards a fire exit. Gloria grabbed her handbag, notepad and followed and I followed her. We were met at the bottom of the fire escape by two uniformed security guards.

“Where is it?” DeLorean demanded.

“On the slip road to the south gate,” one of the security guards said.

I went with DeLorean and the motley band to the south gate. And there I saw what the problem was. Someone had hijacked a Ford Transit van and dumped it there.

“There is no bomb in there – I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, marching towards the van.

“Stop right there!” I ordered, and DeLorean froze in his tracks. “What’s going on here?” I asked the harassed young guy.

“Suspect device. Someone called in a bomb threat,” he said.

“There’s no bomb in that vehicle! We get this all the time, Inspector Duffy. It’s a hoax. I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, and continued striding towards the transit van.

“No, you won’t! You’ll go back inside and evacuate the factory and call the bomb squad,” I said, with a voice of absolute authority.

DeLorean glared at me with pure malice.

He pointed a finger at me, but said nothing. After a couple of seconds of this he nodded at the young man, who ran back towards the factory.

“I’ll check out the van, I’ll show you, Mr DeLorean,” a beefy Liverpudlian security guard said.

“Yes!” DeLorean said excitedly.

“You’ll do no such thing,” I insisted.

The security guard shook his head. “Every day, Inspector, it’s the same story. Someone calls Downtown Radio to request Fleetwood Mac and call in a bomb threat at the DeLorean factory.”

“Nevertheless, no one’s going to touch that van until the bomb squad shows up,” I reiterated.

“Okay, we’ll wait here and I’ll show you that I’m right,” DeLorean insisted.

I knew he was right. Nine times out of ten it’s a hoax. But that one time … that’s the time that gets you.

The Army bomb disposal unit showed up and the robot blew open the back doors of the Transit. The robot looked inside and fired a shotgun into a wooden box, but it only contained tools. Behind us the blue-collar staff was filing out of the factory, most deciding to go home for the day. An enterprising mobile chip van showed up and DeLorean bought our little group fish suppers out of his own pocket.

The Army EOD unit still wasn’t completely satisfied with the situation, so they carried out a further controlled explosion which destroyed the van completely, sending metal fragments and a fireball into the air. There had been no secondary blast which proved that the Ford had contained no bomb or combustible materials.

DeLorean was not triumphant. He was resigned now. Fed up. He shook my hand.

“I yelled out of turn,” he said. “You did the right thing. Better safe than sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I replied.

The Army gave us the all clear but some fool had left a backpack in the executive car park in his haste to evacuate and the disposal unit roped off the car park to carry out a controlled explosion on that too. It was five o’clock now. Many of the white-collar staff were effectively trapped until the Army said that this was a negative result too.

“My car’s in the visitor’s car park. Anyone need a lift going Carrick way?” I asked.

Gloria put up her hand. “I do,” she said.

“No problem.”

We drove through the centre of Belfast where rush hour and a string of incendiary devices on buses had created chaos.

“Where do you live?” I asked her.

“A town called Whitehead. An apartment overlooking the water. Wonderful view, full of charm.”

“Sounds like a nice place.”

“Oh, yes. Mr DeLorean picked our accommodations out personally.”

We were stuck in traffic for twenty-five minutes.

I was getting annoyed.

Worse. Losing face.

“This is ridiculous. Time for my Starsky and Hutch moves,” I said.

I took the portable siren out of the glove compartment and put it on the roof of the Beemer. I turned it on and drove the wrong way down the one-way system at the City Hall.

“Are you allowed to do this?” Gloria asked, in what I discovered later was a South Carolina burr.

“I’m allowed to do anything, love, I’m the Johnny Law.”

“You’re the what?”

“Put the windows down, sweetheart!”

She wound down the window and I cracked Zep in the stereo. Good Zep. LZIII. We ran the one-way systems and frightened the civvies and hit the ten lanes where the M2 leaves the city. Six camouflaged sacks of shit were stopping suspicious characters where the M2 merges with the M5, but the siren got me past them and on the M5 I got the Beemer up to a ton. At Hazelbank I killed the woo woo and took us down to seventy-five.

We drove past Whiteabbey RUC.

“A rocket went through that police station,” I said.

“A rocket?”

“Yeah, not an RPG. A rocket.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Oh, there’s a difference, baby. Believe me. I was in there half an hour later.”

I scoped her, and my God, she was a stunner. She looked like Miss World 1979, one of the ones Georgie Best couldn’t get.

“You want to get a bite to eat? I know this fabulous Italian that just opened up in Carrick. The food’s so good the place won’t survive past Christmas.”

“Italian food?”

“Italian food.”

“I’ll try anything once.”

“Oooh, I like the sound of that.”

She laughed and I knew I was in like Flynn.

The Tutto Bene was deserted apart from a bald gourmand who was loving everything he was given and kept sighing dramatically at each new dish. We were given the window seat overlooking the harbour. I ordered the second most expensive red. She plumped for the spag carbonara and I got the risotto.

She didn’t like the grub but the desserts killed her.

I asked her if she wanted to come back chez Duffy and hear my records. She said that that sounded interesting.

Coronation Road. Nine in the p.m. Curtains drawn. I was spinning Nick Drake, while Gloria checked out the Nickster’s sad eyes on the sleeve. Soften them with up Nicky D. and Marvin Gaye and then unleash the inner perv with the Velvets …

I made her a vodka martini and questioned her about her life and times. She was from a town called Spartanburg, South Carolina. She’d gone to Michigan State to major in business and from there it was a short hop to GM and JDL’s own company.

We were getting on famously when there was a knock at the front door. I turned the TV off and looked through the living-room window. It was Ambreena.

“Shit,” I said to Gloria and went into the hall.

“Anything wrong?”

“Not a bit of it, get that martini down your neck.”

I opened the front door. “Hello,” I said.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” she said.

She was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. Her hair was braided. The T-shirt was tight. She looked fabulous. She was holding something covered in tin foil.

“I made you this, to thank you,” she said.

“Oh, thanks.”

“It is merely brandy snaps. The only thing I can make,” she said.

I took the tin foil off and bit into one. It was like biting into stale bread soaked in rubbing alcohol.

“Amazing,” I said, fighting the gag reflex. “Look, I’d invite you in, but I’m busy.”

She smiled. It was the smile to light up the porch, to light up this whole fucking gloomy street.

“Well, thanks. Maybe another time, we could have a drink or something.”

“I cannot stay long. I have to pack.”

“Pack?”

“I am moving to England.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I have been offered a place at Cambridge University. My father pulled a few strings, as fathers do.”

“Cambridge?”

She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome.”

She turned and walked down the path. I closed the door and went back to the living room.

Gloria was burrowing deep into my extensive, prized record collection.

“Who was that?”

“Just some chick whose life I saved.”

“No, really, who was it?”

I grabbed her round the waist and carried her to the sofa. I kissed those big pouty red American lips. Damn, she tasted good.

“Just some chick whose life I saved,” I insisted.

I made more martinis and played her What’s Going On and Pink Moon. Everything was proceeding according to plan.

“Does he ever play in Ireland?”

“Who?”

“Nick Drake.”

“He’s dead, baby,” I informed her. “He killed himself.”

“Why?”

“I think he was depressed.”

Another round of martinis and I span the Velvets.

She leaned over and kissed me. She tasted wonderful.

She seemed the kind of girl who liked to party. I got the quality hemp from the garden shed. The stars were out. It was dark. Quiet. There was a cold wind from the North Channel. I got some logs I bought from the tinkers: oak and hazel and copper birch. I went back inside, rolled a spliff and put the logs on the fire. The smell from them was fennel and deer spoor and wet earth.

We lay there on the sofa.

She told me stories about America.

I took off her secretary blouse and bra and skirt and marvelled at her perfect, huge, beautiful breasts and luscious hips.

I kissed her neck and between her breasts and she pulled down my jeans.

Nico sang in her tone-deaf monotone and we baked the Moroccan and smoked it neat and fucked on the leather sofa like two people who have witnessed a van getting blown apart and sped through a hostile city under police sirens.

I fucked her and it was me fucking all of America. And we kissed again and finished the Moroccan and slept.

We lay all night there on the living-room sofa until the sun came up over the Scottish coast, rising prismatically over the pink lough, over Leinster and Munster and all of red-handed Ulster, over the DeLorean factory and the McAlpine farm in Islandmagee, over the rubble of Ballycorey RUC station, over Belfast. A pale orange sun rising out of a cobalt dawn that warmed the hearts of innocent men and guilty men and men whose task it was to heal and those whose burden it was to hurt.

The sunlight came in through the back kitchen and woke me on the sofa.

The place smelled good: cannabis and martini and peat logs and woman and coffee.

“Is that you up?” Gloria said.

“What time is it?”

“Lie there. Don’t move. I’m making coffee and toast.”

She made coffee in the cafetiere that was suitably hardcore. We had toasted soda bread and we went upstairs and showered together like people in a French film. Post-shower she was radiant. Belfast people sucked the light from their surroundings black-hole fashion – this woman was giving off about two-thousand candlepower from her smile alone.

I drove her back to the DeLorean plant in Dunmurry and walked her to her desk.

There was a box waiting on her seat with a ribbon around it.

“I love these!” she exclaimed.

She opened the lid.

A box of Irish “fifteens”. With M&Ms in them instead of Smarties.

“Those look good,” I said.

“They’re delicious,” she replied.

“Where do you get them?” I asked.

“Sir Harry brings them in. His sister-in-law makes them.”

“Sir Harry McAlpine?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know Sir Harry?” I asked conversationally.

“I don’t! Not really. Mr DeLorean knows him.”

“How does Mr DeLorean know Sir Harry?

“The factory is on his land. Sir Harry leased it to the DeLorean Motor Corporation at a very generous rate.”

“As an incentive to get DeLorean to set up his factory in Belfast as opposed to Scotland or wherever?”

“Precisely. But over the last year Sir Harry and Mr DeLorean have become fast friends.”

“Have they indeed?” I said.