I Hear the Sirens in the Street

to stop the DTs from becoming obvious.
    Matty looked at me and raised his eyebrows a fraction but I didn’t mind Dougherty. He was close to retirement and when he’d joined up the RUC must have seemed like an easy life. He couldn’t have predicted that come the ’70s and ’80s it would be the most stressful police job in Europe. Nah, I didn’t mind him, but boy he was an indolent fuck, like all them old characters.
    “What was the murder weapon? Did your forensic boys get a bead?”
    “A shotgun.”
    “What type?”
    Dougherty shrugged.
    “Twelve-bore, over/under, single-trigger, double-barrel, what?” I asked.
    He shrugged again.
    “Pigeon shot, buck shot, deer shot?”
    He shrugged a third time.
    And this time it made me angry.
    They hadn’t even spent time doing a basic ballistic inquest?
    He could see it in my eyes. He went defensive. “The IRA killed him with a stolen or an unregistered shotgun, what difference does it make what type it was?”
    I said nothing.
    Silence did my talking for me.
    It worked him some more.
    “… Look, if you’re really interested I’m sure we kept some of the fucking pellets in the evidence room just in case we ever recovered the gun. If you go down there Sergeant Dalway will let you see.”
    I nodded and wrote “Dalway” in my notebook.
    “Were there any other witnesses apart from the wife?” I asked.
    “No, and she wasn’t really a witness. She heard the shooting but when she ran out McAlpine was dead and the gunmen were already making a break for it on the motorbike.”
    “And you say you never recovered the gun?”
    “No.”
    “Did you not find that strange at all?”
    “Why?”
    “Two guys on a motorbike carry a murder weapon with them all the way back to Belfast?”
    “Don’t be fucking silly! They probably threw it in a sheugh or the Lough. We did look for it but we didn’t find it,” Dougherty said.
    “Why do you think he didn’t pull his sidearm on them? He was walking out to the fields and if they were at the wall they were a good twenty yards from him,” I asked.
    “They had the element of surprise. They jumped up and shot him. Poor devil didn’t have a chance.”
    “And why do you think Cora didn’t go for them?” I asked.
    “Who’s Cora?”
    “The dog, a really nasty Alsatian,” Matty said. “The dog that didn’t bark in the daytime. It’s a classic.”
    “Oh aye, the dog, I don’t know. The gunshots probably scared the shite out of it,” he muttered.
    “Did you find any motorcycle tracks? Were you able to identify the tyre or make of the bike?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “No you didn’t ID the bike or no you didn’t find any tracks?”
    “I don’t like your tone, Inspector Duffy,” he said.
    There hadn’t been any tone. I’d been careful about that. He was just getting ticked off at the holes I was poking in the case.
    “Please, I didn’t mean to imply—” I said.
    “We didn’t find any motorcycle tracks, Inspector, because they drove off on the road. It’s tarmac – it’s not going to leave any fucking tracks, is it?”
    “If they’re behind the wall surely they’re going to start the bike there, not push it to the road and kick start it there?” Matty said. “There should be tracks.”
    “Well, we didn’t find any.”
    I frowned. “Look, Inspector, I’m going to ask a question and please don’t take it the wrong way …”
    “Go on,” he said, steam practically coming out of his ears.
    “Did you look for the tracks or were they just not there?”
    His fist clenched and unclenched, but then he closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he smiled at us.
    “I’m not going to bullshit you, Duffy, I honestly don’t remember. Hold on a minute and I’ll get my notes.”
    “Thank you, I appreciate that,” I said.
    He opened a drawer and flicked through a green jotter. He slid it across to me, but I couldn’t decipher the handwriting. I did notice that under “McAlpine” there was less than half a page of text. All in pencil. With a few doodles on the side. When I conducted a murder investigation, sometimes I filled two or even three ring-bound reporters’ notebooks.
    I passed the notebook to Matty, who had been sufficiently pedagogically indoctrinated by me to frown and shake his head. He skimmed the notebook back across the table. Dougherty took it and smiled a little smile of satisfaction as if he was saying – see, I’m not a fuck up, I even kept my notes .
    “No tracks.