I Hear the Sirens in the Street

assassination of a fairly moderate Unionist MP, the Reverend Robert Bradford, which had absorbed most of the headlines; for one reason and another the IRA tended not to target local politicians but when they did it got the ink pots flowing.
    The widow McAlpine came back in with a tray of biscuits.
    She was still wearing the dressing gown but she’d taken the towel off her head. Her hair was chestnut red, curly, long. Somehow it made her look much older. Late twenties, maybe thirty. And she would age fast out here in the boglands on a scrabble sheep farm with no husband and no help.
    “This is lovely, thanks,” Matty said, helping himself to a chocolate digestive.
    “So what’s this all about?” she asked.
    I told her about the body in the suitcase and the name tag that we’d found inside the case.
    “I gave that suitcase away just before Christmas with all of Martin’s stuff. I couldn’t bear to have any of his gear around me any more and I thought that somebody might have the use of it.”
    “Can you tell us where you left it?” I asked.
    “Yes. The Carrickfergus Salvation Army.”
    “And this was just before Christmas?”
    “About a week before.”
    “Okay, we’ll check it out.”
    We finished our tea and stared at the peat logs crackling in the fireplace. Matty, the cheeky skitter, finished the entire plate of chocolate digestives.
    “Well, we should be heading on,” I said, stood and pulled Matty up before he scoffed the poor woman out of house and home.
    “We’re really sorry to have bothered you, Mrs McAlpine.”
    “Not at all. It chills the blood thinking that someone used Martin’s old suitcase to get rid of a body.”
    “Aye, it does indeed.”
    She walked us to the front door.
    “Well, thanks again,” I said, and offered her my hand.
    She shook it and didn’t let go when I tried to disengage.
    “It was just out there where your Land Rover was parked. They must have been hiding behind the stone wall. Two of them, they said. Gave him both barrels of a shotgun and sped off on a motorbike. Point blank range. Dr McCreery said that he wouldn’t have known a thing about it.”
    “I’m sure that’s the case,” I said and tried to let go, but still she held on.
    “He only joined for the money. This place doesn’t pay anything. We’ve forty sheep on twelve acres of bog.”
    “Yes, the—”
    She pulled me closer.
    “Aye, they say he didn’t know anything but he was still breathing when I got to him, trying to breathe anyway. His mouth was full of blood, he was drowning in it. Drowning on dry land in his own blood.”
    Matty was staring at the woman, his eyes wide with horror and I was pretty spooked too. The widow McAlpine had us both, but me literally, in her grip.
    “I’ll go start the Land Rover,” Matty said.
    I made a grab at his sleeve as he walked away.
    “He was a captain. He wasn’t just a grunt. He was a God-fearing man. An intelligent man. He was going places. And he was snuffed out just like that.”
    She looked me square in the face and her expression was accusatory – as if I was somehow responsible for all of this.
    Her rage had turned her cheeks as red as her bap.
    “He was going to work?” I muttered, for something to say.
    “Aye, he was just heading up to the fields to bring the yearlings in, him and Cora. I doubt we would have had a dozen of them.”
    “I’m really very sorry,” I said.
    She blinked twice and suddenly seemed to notice that I was standing there in front of her.
    “Oh,” she said.
    She let go of my hand. “Excuse me,” she mumbled.
    “It’s okay,” I said, and took a step backwards. “Have a good morning.”
    I walked back across the yard towards the Land Rover.
    The rain was heavier now.
    The Alsatian started snarling and barking at me again.
    “That’s enough, Cora!” Mrs McAlpine yelled.
    The dog stopped barking but didn’t cease straining at its rope leash.
    “That is one mean crattur,” Matty said as I got into the frontseat of the Land Rover.
    “The dog or the woman?”
    “The dog. Hardly the temperament for a sheep dog.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Sheep dogs are supposed to like people.”
    I looked back at the farmhouse and Mrs McAlpine was still standing there.
    “Jesus, she’s still bloody staring at us – get this thing going, Matty.”
    He turned on the Land Rover and manoeuvred it in a full circle in the farmyard. The sodden chickens flew and hopped away from us.
    We drove out of the gate and began