I Hear the Sirens in the Street

finally, more out of boredom than curiosity, I paused the game and answered it. It was Sergeant Pollock, the duty man at Bellaughray Station.
    “Duffy, you didn’t answer your beeper, ya eejit!” he said.
    “The Soviet Armies must have blocked the signal.”
    “What?”
    “What’s going on, Pollock?” I asked him.
    “You’re in Carrick, right?”
    “Aye.”
    “Report to your local police station. This is a Class 1 emergency.”
    “What’s the story?”
    “It’s big. There’s been a mass breakout of IRA prisoners from the Maze prison.”
    “Jesus. What a cock up.”
    “It’s panic stations, mate. We need every man.”
    “All right. But remember this is my off day, so I’ll be on double time.”
    “How can you think of money at a time like this, Duffy?”
    “Surprisingly easily, Pollock. Remember double time. Put it in the log.”
    “Just get down to Carrick!”
    “Another fine job from Her Majesty’s Prison Service, eh?”
    “You can say that again. Let’s just hope we can clean up their mess.”
    I hung up, pulled the Atari out of the back of the TV and flipped on the news.
    HM Prison Maze (previously known as Long Kesh) was a maximum security prison considered to be one of the most escape-proof penitentiaries in Europe. Of course whenever you heard words like escape proof you immediately thought of that other great Belfast innovation, the unsinkable ship, Titanic .
    The facts came drifting out as I put on my uniform and body armour. Thirty-eight Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners had escaped from HBlock 7 of the facility. They had used smuggled-in guns to take hostages, then they’d grabbed a laundry van and stormed the gates. One prison officer was dead and twenty others had been injured.
    “Among the escapees are convicted murderers and some of the IRA’s leading bomb makers,” said a breathless young newsreader in the BBC studio.
    “Well, that’s fantastic,” I muttered and wondered if it was anybody I’d personally put away.
    I made a cup of instant coffee and had a bowl of Frosties to get the Turkish black out of my system and then I went outside to my waiting BMW.
    “Oh, Mr Duffy, you won’t have heard the news!” Mrs Smith said to me from over the fence.
    I was wearing a flak jacket, a riot helmet and carrying a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun so it wasn’t a particularly brilliant deduction from Mrs S, but still I gave her a grim little smile and said, “About the escape, you mean?”
    “Yes, it’s shocking, they’ll murder us all in our beds! What will I do with Stephen away on the oil rigs!”
    She was an attractive woman, Mrs Smith, even in her 1950snightdress and with rollers in her hair.
    “Don’t worry, Mrs Smith, I’ll be back soon,” I said, trying to sound like Christopher Reeve in Superman II when he reassures Lois that General Zod will be no match for him.
    I’m not sure she quite got the element of self-parody in my Reeve impersonation but she did lean over the fence, give me a kiss on the cheek and whisper “Thank you”.
    I responded with a little nod of the head, walked down the path and got inside my BMW. Before I put the key in the ignition I got out again and looked underneath the vehicle for mercury tilt bombs. There were none and I re-entered and stuck in a cassette of Robert Plant’s Principle of Moments . This was my fourth listen to Plant’s solo album and I still couldn’t bring myself to like it. It was all synthesizers and drum machines and high-pitched vocals. It was a sign of the times, and with the year nearly over, it was safe to say that 1983 was turning out to be the worst year in popular music for about two decades.
    I drove along the Scotch Quarter and turned right into Carrickfergus RUC station for the first time in a long time. It was a very strange experience and the young guard at the gate didn’t know me. He checked my warrant card, nodded, looked at me, frowned, raised the barrier and let me through.
    I parked in the crappy visitors’ car park far from the station and walked to the duty sergeant’s desk.
    There’d been a few changes. They’d painted the walls blue and there were potted plants everywhere. I knew that Chief Inspector Brennan had retired and in his place they had brought in an officer from Derry called Superintendent Carter. I didn’t know much about him except that he was young and full of ideas – which, admittedly, sounded just ghastly. But this wasn’t my manor anymore so what