I Hear the Sirens in the Street

had things to do. It didn’t matter about my time but his was valuable.
    “I suppose we’ll wait for her,” I said.
    “Aye,” Tony answered dubiously.
    “Speaking of notes … Uhm, in your long and storied career has anyone ever sent you an anonymous note about a case?”
    “All the time, mate. Happens all the time. In fact, I’d say that I get more anonymous tips than ones from people who actually come forward to be identified. Why, what did you get? You look worried.”
    “Some character left me a note that was a verse from the Bible.”
    Tony laughed. “Ach, shite, is that all? You should see the bollocks we get in Special Branch. Bible verses, tips about who may or not be a Soviet agent or the Antichrist … you name it, Sean. Last week we had a boy who got passed up to us from Cliftonville RUC, who had convinced them that he was ‘the real Yorkshire Ripper’. The cops in Cliftonville actually thought we might want to interview him.”
    “‘Now I see through a glass darkly’ was the verse.”
    “I remember that one. That’s popular with the nuts. Is that from the Book of Revelation?”
    “Corinthians. It was a woman who left me the note. English accent maybe. She left me a note at Victoria Cemetery and then she went off on a motorbike.”
    Tony pulled out his smokes and offered me one. We went over to the stone wall and sat down on it. Two fields over a horse was tied up against a tumbledown shed. Three fields the otherway there was chimney smoke coming from the big house at the top of a hill – almost certainly the home of the lord of the manor. The rain, thank God, had taken a momentary breather in its relentless guerrilla war against Ireland.
    “Go on,” Tony said.
    “I called it in and they found the girl and arrested her and took her to Whitehead RUC. She spent a few hours in the cells and then she was supposedly taken away by a couple of goons from Special Branch. One of them was a guy called McClue – a fake name if ever I heard it – and of course when I called up Special Branch there was no McClue and no one had been sent to get her in Whitehead.”
    Tony frowned. “Several things occur to me. First, if you had found her, what would you have charged her with? Leaving you a strange message and riding away on her motorbike? What crime is that? You’d be looking at a bloody lawsuit, mate. Secondly, who is she? Certainly not a lone nut if she had a couple of friends who were willing to pose as Special Branch agents to come get her.”
    “So, not a nutter.”
    “Or maybe she could be a very persuasive nutter. It’s the sort of thing a student would do, or a bored paramilitary or …”
    “Or what?”
    “You know what. A ghost. A fucking spook. Northern Ireland is thick with them.”
    “MI5?”
    “MI5, Army Intel, MI6. Or, like I say, a nutter, a student, one of your no doubt many dissatisfied lovers, a bored paramilitary playing you for a sap or a very bored spook also playing you for a sap.”
    Tony’s pager went. He picked it up and examined the red flashing light.
    “They’re looking for me. You think I could break into the widow McAlpine’s house and use her phone?”
    “What would Sir Harry think? He’s probably watching us through a set of field glasses.”
    “I doubt that. I’ll bet he’s furiously writing a letter to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who, no doubt, is a second cousin twice removed.”
    I nodded and blew a double smoke ring. Tony’s pager went again.
    “Fucksake!” Tony said. “I should never have left the bloody crime scene. The fuck was I thinking?”
    “Tony mate, go back in the BMW, tell them you were following a lead and send some reservist back here with the car. I’ll wait until the widow McAlpine shows up.”
    “I can take your wheels?” Tony asked.
    “Sure.”
    “I wouldn’t normally, but I am lead and maybe we shouldn’t be buggering off round the countryside like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.”
    “Hope and Crosby? Christ, Tony, you need new material, mate. Have you heard about this rock and roll phenomenon that’s sweeping the land?”
    “You’re sure I can take the car?”
    “Aye!”
    “You’re a star. And you’ll be okay?”
    “I’ll be fine.”
    The deal was done. Tony pumped my hand and got in the Beemer.
    He wound the window down. “Stay away from trouble,” he said.
    “You should warn trouble to stay away from me.”
    “Young widows in lonely farmhouses …” he said with a sigh, revved the