I Hear the Sirens in the Street Read Free Page A

white. This was Belfast in the fourteenth year of the low-level civil war euphemistically known as The Troubles.
    The day wore on. The grey snow clouds turned perse and black. The yellow clay-like sea waited torpidly, dreaming of wreck and carnage. “Can I go?” Crabbie asked. “If I miss the start of Dallas I’ll never get caught up. The missus gets the Ewings and Barneses confused.”
    “Go, then.”
    I watched the forensic boys work and stood around smoking until an ambulance came to take the John Doe to the morgue at Carrickfergus Hospital.
    I drove back to Carrick police station and reported my findings to my boss, Chief Inspector Brennan: a large, shambolic man with a Willy Lomanesque tendency to shout his lines.
    “What are your initial thoughts, Duffy?” he asked.
    “It was freezing out there, sir. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, we had to eat the horses, we’re lucky to be alive.”
    “Your thoughts about the victim?”
    “I have a feeling it’s a foreigner. Possibly a tourist.”
    “That’s bad news.”
    “Yeah, I don’t think he’ll be giving the old place an ‘A’ rating in those customer satisfaction surveys they pass out at the airport.”
    “Cause of death?”
    “We can probably rule out suicide,” I said.
    “How did he die?”
    “I don’t know yet – I suppose having your head chopped off doesn’t help much though, does it? Rest assured that our crack team is on it, sir.”
    “Where is DC McCrabban?” Brennan asked.
    “ Dallas , sir.”
    “And he told me he was afraid to fly, the lying bastard.”
    Chief Inspector Brennan sighed and tapped the desk with his forefinger, unconsciously (or perhaps consciously) spelling out “ass” in Morse.
    “If it is a foreigner, you appreciate that this is going to be a whole thing, don’t you?” he muttered.
    “Aye.”
    “I foresee paperwork and more paperwork and a powwow from the Big Chiefs and you possibly getting superseded by some goon from Belfast.”
    “Not for some dead tourist, surely, sir?”
    “We’ll see. You’ll not throw a fit if you do get passed over will you? You’ve grown up now, haven’t you, Sean?”
    Neither of us could quickly forget the fool I’d made of myself the last time a murder case had been taken away from me …
    “I’m a changed man, sir. Team player. Kenny Dalglish not Kevin Keegan. If the case gets pushed upstairs I will give them every assistance and obey every order. I’ll stick with you right to the bunker, sir.”
    “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
    “Amen, sir.”
    He leaned back in the chair and picked up his newspaper.“All right, Inspector, you’re dismissed.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And remember it’s Carol’s birthday on Friday and it’s your turn on the rota. Cake, hats, you know the drill. You know I like buttercream icing.”
    “I put the order in at McCaffrey’s yesterday. I’ll check with Henrietta on the way home.”
    “Very well. Get thee to a bunnery.”
    “You’ve been saving that one up, haven’t you, sir?”
    “I have,” he said with a smile.
    I turned on my heel. “Wait!” Brennan demanded.
    “Sir?”
    “‘Naples in Naples’, three down, six letters.”
    “Napoli, sir.”
    “Huh?”
    “In Naples, Naples is Napoli.”
    “Oh, I get it, all right, bugger off.”
    On the way back to Coronation Road I stopped in at McCaffrey’s, examined the cake, which was a typical Irish birthday cake layered with sponge, cream, rum, jam and sugar. I explained the Chief Inspector’s preferences and Annie said that that wouldn’t be a problem: she’d make the icing half an inch thick if we wanted. I told her that that would be great and made a mental note to have the defib kit on hand.
    I drove on through Carrickfergus’s blighted shopping precincts, past boarded-up shops and cafes, vandalised parks and playgrounds. Bored ragamuffin children of the type you often saw in Pulitzer-Prize-winning books of photography were sitting glumly on the wall over the