I Hear the Sirens in the Street

petrol bombs landed on the thatched roof.
    Yeah, that was the way to do it.
    Smoke rapidly began filling the kitchen.
    “Follow me into the living room,” I said, and she slithered after me, but it was just as bad there too.
    Thick black straw smoke from the thatch.
    We began to cough.
    I dry-retched.
    “What are you thinking about now, Duffy?” Harry yelled.
    I was thinking of a Butch Cassidy style run into oblivion.
    “I was thinking how good it’s going to feel when I kill you, you cunt!” I yelled back.
    And then I heard it.
    Was it a hallucination?
    No.
    No, that was no trick of a desperate mind.
    That was a fucking siren. Sirens.
    “Sirens!” I said.
    I turned to Emma. “I hear sirens.”
    “Sirens!” I yelled out the broken window. “The peelers are coming for you, lads! If I were youse I’d bloody leg it!”
    I turned to Emma. “Are you hurt?”
    She nodded. “I’m all right.”
    The sirens were tearing up the Mill Bay Road. Two police Land Rovers at least. Of course they had traced the 999 call. They didn’t need to hear the address. They needed only to triangulate the call line backwards through all the tumblers and switchboards, and Harry had helped them with local geography by giving them a nice big fire to steer towards.
    I edged open the front door so we could breathe. We kept low to the ground and no one shot at us.
    “Come back, you dogs!” Harry was yelling at his men who were sensibly making a run for it back to their houses.
    “I really won’t have to go to jail, Sean? I couldn’t stand to go to prison,” Emma said in a low, ashamed voice.
    “No. I give you my word.”
    The sirens were now less than a mile away.
    “It’s over, Harry! You’ve been abandoned! It’s finished!” I yelled into the darkness.
    “Not quite, Duffy! Not quite!” he yelled back.
    I heard an engine rev and a hand brake slip. I looked up and out into the farmyard. Harry’s Bentley was speeding towards us. There was a burning rag sticking out of the petrol tank. He had put a weight on the accelerator pedal.
    He was walking behind it with the shotgun.
    “Jesus! Quickly! Get into the back kitchen! He’s—” I yelled at Emma.
    And
    then
    everything
    was
    light.

32: IN THE WORLD OF LIGHT
    Silence. The silence of mice in graves. The silence of non-being. Nothingness singing to itself.
    …
    …
    …
    Time passing.
    Ash.
    Death’s hand. Warmer than I was expecting. Welcoming.
    …
    …
    …
    Rain on my face. Starlight. Pain naming me into consciousness.
    A sleepwalker getting to his feet.
    Me.
    Comparatively unscathed.
    Two arms. Two legs.
    A ringing in my ears.
    Lucky.
    Lucky Sean Duffy, that’s what you should call me.
    The house?
    There is no house.
    The house is levelled.
    “Emma! Emma!”
    I see her.
    It must have been from a heavy stone in the wall.
    It would have been instantaneous.
    I kiss her shattered face. Her blood on my lips.
    I walk away from the debris.
    The Land Rovers are coming to me across the valley.
    The sirens so close now.
    A melody.
    Glissando-like runs from two pianos, the first playing that Chopinesque descending ten-on-one ostinato while the second playing the more conservative six-on-one.
    And there’s Harry, spreadeagled in the yard. An arm missing. Severed by one of the Bentley’s side panels.
    I bend down next to him.
    “What were you thinking, McAlpine?” I say.
    He gives a little laugh. “I wasn’t thinking. I forgot about the oil tank for the central heating.”
    “Emma’s dead,” I said.
    “Why didn’t you send her out, Duffy, you fuck?”
    “She wouldn’t go.”
    “You should have forced her.”
    “Tell me all of it, Harry. You killed your brother and called in an old IRA code word.”
    “You know that.”
    “You shot three times into Dougherty’s garage door after you killed him. You were setting her up, weren’t you, in case we didn’t buy the IRA story?”
    He laughs. “God, you peelers! You overthink everything. I missed. I bloody missed, that’s all. I’d never fired a handgun before.”
    “Oh.”
    “Have you a cigarette, Duffy?”
    I kneel down next to him.
    “All this, Harry, all this for what?” I ask him.
    He winks at me, grins.
    “Millions mate, millions and millions,” he says.
    I could save him, I know that. A tourniquet. The rubber seal from the Bentley’s door. He’d have a fighting chance.
    I get to my feet and walk towards the flashing lights.

33: CASHIERED
    I was debriefed at the hospital by Special Branch. I