I Hear the Sirens in the Street

way up here, no?”
    “Nah, they’re always looking to expanding their op zones and if you hoofed it you could be back in Belfast in half an hour.”
    “Definitely IRA then?”
    “Well, not definitely, but almost certainly.”
    Almost every peeler who was murdered in Northern Ireland was murdered by the IRA, usually in one of three methods: a mercury tilt bomb under their car, an ambush by an IRA assassination cell, or in a mass bomb attack on a police station.
    “If you’ve got the time, you couldn’t lead me through the physical evidence?”
    Tony looked at me askance. “Was this a really good mate of yours or something?”
    “Not really, I only knew him through a case of my own.”
    Tony opened his mouth, closed it again, perhaps thinking that when the time was right, I’d tell him.
    “Okay,” he said, “Over here.”
    We walked to the top of the driveway where Dougherty’s Ford Granada was still parked. There was dried blood on the gravel but the body of course was long since gone to the morgue in Larne.
    “They shot him at point blank range. Poor bastard managed to get his sidearm out but it was too late. He was done for. Didn’t even get a round off.”
    The Ford Granada’s door was closed, which meant they’d waited until he was fully out of the car and was walking towards the house.
    “He got his sidearm out?” I asked, surprised.
    “Aye.”
    “He was shot in the front or the back?”
    “The front, why?” he asked, his eyes, narrow, sensing an angle like a stoat on a rat.
    “Why didn’t they just shoot him in the back? Bang, bang, bang, you’re dead, John Lennon style.”
    “Nah, nah, there’s nothing untoward, mate. They did try and shoot him from behind but the fuckers missed. Our pal Dougherty turns to confront them, half draws his piece and they plug the poor unfortunate sod in the ticker.”
    “How do you know they missed?”
    “Three bullets in the garage door, look.”
    Sure enough three bullets in the garage door.
    But didn’t that make things even stranger?
    “Okay, so they missed him and he turns to face them and he almost draws his piece and then they plug him. Right?”
    “Right.”
    “But that raises an additional question.”
    “Which is?”
    “The question of why they missed?”
    “What? Why they missed?”
    “Aye. This is a professional hit team, isn’t it?”
    “It’s a bloody gun battle, Sean, a couple of bullets are bound to go a bit wild, aren’t they? Even Lee Harvey Oswald missed with his first shot, didn’t he?”
    “Did they find the murder weapon?”
    “No. And we won’t. It’ll be at the bottom of the Irish Sea by now.”
    “The IRA called it in?”
    “They did. Admitted responsibility with a recognised code word.”
    “What were their exact words?”
    Tony took a notebook out of his sports jacket pocket and flipped it open. He read the IRA statement. “They said, they regretted that this killing was necessary but that the cause of it was the British occupation of Ireland.”
    “What was the IRA code word?”
    “Wolfhound.”
    “Which has been current since?”
    “January.”
    “January of this year?”
    “Yes.”
    “So it’s authentic?”
    “Oh, aye.”
    I nodded.
    Tony squeezed my arm. “What’s this all about?” he asked. “Tell me.” Tony was slightly taller than me and he was certainly bigger framed. When he squeezed you it hurt.
    I sighed and shook my head. “It’s probably nothing.”
    “Go on. Spill,” he said.
    “I was talking to Dougherty about one of his old cases. It was a loose end. Nothing really to do with me at all. I’m working on something else.”
    “What?”
    I filled him in on the body in the suitcase and Mr O’Rourke from Massachusetts.
    “And how does it tie to Dougherty?”
    “It doesn’t. Not really.”
    He squeezed me again. “No secrets, Sean.”
    “It’s not a secret. It’s just a bit of a wild goose chase that I’m slightly embarrassed to bring up in front of such an august detective as yourself.”
    He laughed at that but he kept staring at me in a way which made me see that I wasn’t going to get away with anything less than the whole story.
    “The suitcase O’Rourke was buried in had an old address card squeezed into that plastic pocket near the handle. The killer or the person dumping the body hadn’t noticed it. We were able to decipher it as belonging to a Martin McAlpine who was a captain in the UDR until he was murdered last December. December first, I think. So