I Hear the Sirens in the Street

show us the blood, please,” I said.
    “Over here, if it is blood. If it is human blood,” Mr Barry said, with such an ominous twinge in his voice that it almost cracked me up.
    He showed us a dried, thin reddish brown trail that led from the fence to the bins.
    “What do you make of that?” I asked Crabbie.
    “I’ll tell you what I make of it! The kids were rummaging in the skip, one of them wee beggars cuts hisself, heaven be praised, and then they run to the fence, jump over and go home crying to their mamas,” Mr Barry said.
    Crabbie and I shook our heads. Neither of us could agree with that interpretation.
    “I’ll explain what happened to Mr Barry while you start looking in the skip,” I said.
    “I’ll explain it while you start looking in the skip,” Crabbie countered.
    “Explain what?” Mr Barry asked.
    “The blood trail gets thinner and narrower the further away from the fence you get.”
    “Which means?” Mr Barry asked.
    “Which means that unless we have a Jackson Pollock fan among our local vandal population then something or someone has been dragged to one of those dumpsters and tossed in.”
    I looked at McCrabban. “Go on then, get in there, mate,” I said.
    He shook his head.
    I pointed at the imaginary pips on my shoulder which would have signified the rank of inspector if I hadn’t been in plain clothes.
    It cut no ice with him. “I’m not going in there. No way. These trousers are nearly new. The missus would skin me alive.”
    “I’ll flip you for it. Heads or tails?”
    “You pick. It’s a little too much like gambling for my taste.”
    “Heads then.”
    I flipped.
    Of course we all knew what the outcome would be.
    I climbed into the skip nearest to where the blood trail appeared to end but naturally that would have been too easy for our criminal masterminds and I found nothing.
    I waded through assorted factory debris: wet cardboard, wet cork, slate, broken glass and lead pipes while Mr Barry and Crabbie waxed philosophic: “Jobs for the boys, isn’t it? It’s all thieves and coppers these days, isn’t it?”
    “Somebody has to give out the unemployment cheques too,mate,” Crabbie replied, which was very true. Thief, copper, prison officer, dole officer: such were the jobs on offer in Northern Ireland – the worst kakistocracy in Europe.
    I climbed back out of the skip.
    “Well?” Crabbie asked.
    “Nothing organic, save for some new lifeforms unknown to science that will probably mutate into a species-annihilating virus,” I said.
    “I think I saw that film,” Crabbie replied.
    I took out the fifty-pence piece. “All right, couple more bins to go, do you want to flip again?” I asked.
    “Not necessary, Sean, that first coin toss was the toss for all the skips,” Crabbie replied.
    “You’re telling me that I have to sort through all of them?” I said.
    “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, boss,” he said, making his beady, expressionless eyes even more beady and expressionless.
    “I lost fair and square but I’ll remember this when you’re looking for help on your bloody sergeant’s exam,” I said.
    This had its desired effect. He shook his head and sniffed. “All right. We split them up. I’ll take these two. You the other two. And we should probably get a move on before we all freeze to death,” he muttered.
    McCrabban found the suitcase in the third bin along from the fence.
    Blood was oozing through the red plastic.
    “Over here!” he yelled.
    We put on latex gloves and I helped him carry it out.
    It was heavy.
    “You best stand back,” I said to Mr Barry.
    It had a simple brass zip. We unzipped it and flipped it open.
    Inside was a man’s headless naked torso cut off at the knees and shoulders. Crabbie and I had some initial observationswhile behind us Mr Barry began with the dry heaves.
    “His genitals are still there,” Crabbie said.
    “And no sign of bruising,” I added. “Which probably rules out a paramilitary hit.”
    If he was an informer or a double agent or a kidnapped member of the other side they’d certainly have tortured him first.
    “No obvious tattoos.”
    “So he hasn’t done prison time.”
    I pinched his skin. It was ice cold. Rigid. He was dead at least a day.
    He was tanned and he’d kept himself in shape. It was hard to tell his age, but he looked about fifty or maybe even sixty. He had grey and white chest hairs and perhaps, just perhaps, some blonde ones that had been bleached white by the