I Hear the Sirens in the Street

cooperation of John DeLorean. I don’t want to know why you followed me to the Ten Cents Bank Safety Deposit or why you did what you did with me and the car. I just want to know one thing. Tell me that, and I’ll leave this green and not so fucking pleasant land and I won’t come back.”
    “And what is that one thing, Mr Duffy?”
    “I want to know who killed Bill O’Rourke.”
    “What if we don’t know who killed Mr O’Rourke?”
    “Then I want to know what you do know about him and his mission in Ireland.”
    Howell grimaced.
    He thought about it and stood.
    “Wait here,” he said.
    “Where am I going to go?”
    He went out to make his phone call.
    He came back two hours later with a document for me to sign on a roll of fax paper. It was a confession to the charge of DUI and dangerous driving.
    “This stays sealed as long as you keep your mouth shut,” Howell said.
    I didn’t like the look of it, but I signed.
    “Good,” he said, with a smile that didn’t suit his face.
    “Now your part of the bargain,” I said.
    Howell sat on a chair and pulled it close to the bed.
    “O’Rourke was a Treasury Agent recruited from the IRS. He kept his IRS cover but he was Treasury his whole career. He looked into currency fraud and fraudulent currency transactions. Occasionally he went into the field. He was good,” Howell said.
    “What was he doing in Ireland?”
    “Well, he was compulsorily retired from the IRS at sixty. Officially retired, so to speak.”
    “But unofficially?”
    “He still worked for the Treasury Department.”
    “So what was he doing in Ireland? Was he investigating DeLorean?”
    Howell grimaced. “Yes.”
    “As part of something bigger?”
    “Yes.”
    “What?”
    “That, I am not permitted to tell you.”
    “A Treasury thing?”
    “It was only after Agent O’Rourke’s death that we realised that two agencies of the United States government were working on the same problem.”
    “Jesus! The FBI and the fucking Treasury were both investigating DeLorean and you didn’t tell one another?”
    “I am not at liberty to discuss that at this time.”
    “Okay. Tell me this: when did O’Rourke file his last report? Where was he? What was the situation on the ground?”
    “O’Rourke wasn’t required to file daily reports. He didn’t generally present his findings until he knew what he was talking about. Treasury didn’t expect a report until he had concluded his field work.”
    “But he came back to America after his initial visit.”
    “To attend a colleague’s retirement party.”
    “And leave off those photographs?”
    “Apparently.”
    “You didn’t know about the photographs until you started tailing me?”
    “No.”
    “Why did you start tailing me?”
    “Immigration alerted us to your arrival in the country. We thought you might try and do some digging over here.”
    I leaned back into the sturdy hospital pillow. Through the double-glazed window of Mass General I could see rowers and little sailing boats gliding past on the Charles River.
    “Who killed O’Rourke?”
    Howell shook his head. “We don’t know,” he said.
    “You really don’t know?”
    “We don’t know. We were hoping that the RUC would find out for us.”
    “Maybe we would have if you had cooperated with us fromthe start.”
    “You must understand, Inspector Duffy, we have bigger fish to fry here. Special Agent O’Rourke would have understood that.”
    “What do you know about his death?”
    “No more than you do, Inspector Duffy. Your investigation has been the primary information vector for us.”
    “You knew that he was investigating John DeLorean, which I didn’t discover until the last few days.”
    “Inter-agency suspicion and communication problems have been a feature of this investigation from the beginning. You, for example, were not supposed to have been injured, never mind nearly killed. Our apologies for that.”
    “So why was I nearly fucking killed?”
    “Our surrogates got carried away.”
    “I see.”
    “They have been disciplined.”
    “I would hope so. You have no idea at all about who killed Bill O’Rourke?”
    “No.”
    “Why should I believe you?” I asked.
    “I can’t think of a reason after the way you’ve been treated, Inspector Duffy, but nevertheless it’s the truth.”
    I nodded.
    There was a period of silence.
    “It has come to our attention that your investigation into Special Agent O’Rourke’s death has more or less been