I Hear the Sirens in the Street

second.
    It wasn’t nice but I couldn’t help myself.
    She must have felt my gaze because she turned to look at me and smiled.
    “Hello,” I said.
    “Hello,” she replied, in an African accent.
    I went back inside #113 and closed the front door.
    I checked with the emergency dispatcher at Carrick Station.
    No motorcycle.
    I asked them to patch it up to central command.
    They said they would.
    Every RUC and British Army patrol that came across a green motorcycle for the next twenty hours would stop the bike and question the rider.
    In theory it sounded good. But presumably the bike would be burnt out at the first opportunity and never ridden again.
    The whole thing was baffling. Was it just a crank? Some kid fucking with me? I went back to the graveyard to see if the envelope was still there but she’d lifted it. Didn’t matter. I remembered the verse. I ran the bath, poured myself a vodka and lime and dug out the King James Bible. I looked up Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13 , verse 12.
    Of course I recognised the passage: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
    What’s that all about? I asked myself repeatedly for the next two hours and got no answers at all.

13: THE GIRL ON THE BIKE
    I was in Ownies getting a pub dinner when the beeper went. I asked Arthur if I could borrow his phone and when I tracked it down it turned out to be a message from central dispatch in Ballymena. They had got my girl! An army patrol had nabbed her on her motorbike heading north out of Carrick and they’d handed her over to the police. She was now at Whitehead Police Station.
    “Well, well, well,” I said, and grinned at Arthur.
    “Good news?”
    “Aye, could be, mate. Could be.”
    I ran back to the barracks, jumped in the Beemer, hit a ton on the Bla Hole road and was at Whitehead Cop Shop in eight minutes. It was a small police station, unmanned at the weekends. Four police reservists and an inspector ran the show.
    I found the duty officer, a freckly kid called Raglan with a David Soul haircut and a feeble ginger tache.
    “I need to interview your prisoner,” I said.
    “The prisoner?”
    “Aye, presumably you’ve only the one.”
    “She’s left already,” Raglan said.
    “What?”
    “She left.”
    “Who the fuck with?”
    “A couple of superintendents from Special Branch.”
    “You get their names?”
    “McClue was one of them, I forget the other. Is there a problem?”
    “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll follow up with bloody Special Branch and see.”
    “You just missed them by about half an hour.”
    “Tell me about her – what did she look like? Was she English?”
    “She didn’t talk a lot. She was good-looking. She looked Scottish. Sort of blondy-reddy hair. About thirty, maybe younger, maybe older. Sort of not very interesting. A bit old to be joyriding a stolen motorbike, I thought.”
    “Did you take her photograph, her prints?”
    “Special Branch called us and told us to hold off on that.”
    “Special Branch phoned you up and told you not to fingerprint her?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s a bit strange, no?”
    “Well, them boys in Special Branch are always a bit strange, aren’t they?”
    “You must have searched her.”
    “Of course.”
    “And?”
    “I wrote it down here.”
    He looked up a notepad and read: “On her person there were: a set of keys, a pair of gloves, a notepad and a paperback book called Doctor Faustus.”
    “And where is all that stuff now?”
    “Special Branch took it with them.”
    I nodded.
    “When was she brought in?” I asked.
    “The Army dropped her off around four.”
    “You didn’t process her then?”
    “No. Not at that time. We took her right to the cells and give her a pillow and a blanket.”
    “And she said nothing?”
    “Not then.”
    “Did you ask her name at least?”
    “Aye. Of course!”
    “And?”
    “Alice Smith.”
    “Alice Smith?”
    “Alice Smith.”
    “Hmmm. And how did Special Branch get involved?”
    “About six I brought her a cup of tea and she thanked me and asked if she could make her phone call.”
    “And you let her?”
    “It’s her right, isn’t it?”
    “And then what happened?”
    “Well, she made her call and ate a biscuit and I escorted her back to her cell and about five minutes later I get a call saying Special Branch is on their way and not to process her.”
    “You didn’t think