I Hear the Sirens in the Street

staringat the other policemen and women in here who seemed to have jobs to do but God alone knew what the hell they were. Crabbie, Matty and myself were detectives, we investigated actual crimes, what these jokers did (especially the reservists and the part-time reservists) was a fucking mystery.
    “No luck on the Abrin either. I called the Northern Ireland horticultural society, the Irish Horticultural Society, the British Horticultural Society and no one had any records of anyone growing rosary pea or one of its varieties. It is certainly not a competition or show plant. I phoned UK Customs HQ in London and asked if they had ever impounded any seeds and of course they had no idea what I was talking about. And, you’ll like this, I called up Interpol to see—”
    “Interpol?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I do like it. Go on.”
    “I called up Interpol to ask them to fax me any cases of Abrin poisoning that they had on file in any of their databases.”
    “And?”
    “Three homicide cases: all from America: 1974, 1968, 1945. Half a dozen suicides and another two dozen accidentals.”
    “That’s very good work, mate,” I said, and told him about our interesting day.
    I treated the lads to a pub lunch. Steak and kidney pie and a pint of the black stuff and after lunch I retreated to my office, stuck on the late Benny Britten’s “Curlew River” and read the Interpol files on the Abrin murders:
1974: Husband in Bangor, Maine, who was a chemist, poisoned his wife.
1968: Husband who was a banker in San Francisco who grew tropical plants, poisoned his wife.
1945: Young woman, originally from Jamaica, poisoned her parents in New York.
    I read the suicides and the accidentals but there was nothing significant or interesting about them. There were no Irish connections or intriguing links to the First Infantry Division.
    I called up Belfast Customs and Immigration and politely harangued them about their abilities and their propensity for sticking their heads up their own arses.
    They said that they were working on it but the new computer system was a nightmare and did I know that it was a Saturday and there were only two people in the office, one of whom was Mrs McCameron?
    I said that I knew the former but not the latter and asked them to do their best. I avoided the obvious Mrs McCameron lure, which sounded like a standard civil service crimson clupea. There probably was no Mrs McCameron.
    At around three o’clock someone put on the football but I grew bored and found myself at another table listening to a reserve constable called Wilkes who was also in the Royal Navy Reserve and who’d just gotten a phone call telling him that he was on his way to the South Atlantic as a fire control officer on HMS Illustrious.
    “That’s going to be the fucking Admiral’s ship!” he said, with obvious excitement.
    “Aye and the best target in the fleet for the Argie submarines. Classic frying pan/fire situation for you, my lad. This time next month you’ll be some penguin’s breakfast,” Sergeant Burke muttered. I gave him a cynical grin and went to get a coffee.
    The lads plied Wilkes with questions and when the clock finally got its bum round to five we hit the bricks.
    Since it was indeed a Saturday I got a Chinese takeaway and ate it with a bottle of Guinness back in Coronation Road. It was the dinner of sad single men across Ireland. To really trip on the mood I scrounged up some fuzzy Moroccan black and dug out the copy of the ancient TLS I’d lifted from the doc’s. I flipped through the pages until I found what I was after, whichwas a poem by Philip Larkin called “Aubade”. I read it twice and decided that it was the greatest poem of the decade. I wanted to share this information with someone, but here at 113 Coronation Road, Carrickfergus there was no one to share it with. My parents wouldn’t be interested and Laura had no time for poetry. And my friends, such as they were, would think I was taking the piss.
    I finished my spliff and called my parents anyway, but they weren’t home.
    I looked at the phone and the rain leaking in the hall window.
    I made myself a vodka gimlet in a pint glass and called Laura.
    Her mother answered.
    “Oh, hello, Sean,” she said cheerfully.
    “Hi, Irene, is Laura there at all?” I asked.
    “No. No, I’m afraid not. Her father drove her to the airport.”
    This took several seconds to sink in.
    “She’s leaving tonight ?”
    “Yes. Didn’t she tell you?”
    “She said