I Hear the Sirens in the Street

was so taken with your daffodils that I completely forgot. You’ll have to excuse me, ma’am. Thank you for your hospitality.”
    “Oh … oh, what shall I tell Sir Harry?”
    “No message, thank you,” I said.
    I walked briskly out of the hall and onto the crunchy gravel drive. I gave the Bentley and the Roller a sympathetic look and I juked under the palm trees.
    Thunder rumbled in a grey skin and it began to rain with big heavy, sporadic drops. At the hill’s summit I surveyed the broad wet valley filled with cows and sheep and fields too boggy to accommodate man or beast.
    The prospect to the north was of Larne Lough and Magheramorne on the far shore.
    The widow McAlpine’s farm was a good mile off on the far side of a hill. You wouldn’t be able to see it even from thethird floor of this house. No one inside could possibly have witnessed Martin’s murder. There would be no teenage maids too frightened to testify but who could be broken by the age-old tactics of question after question after question.
    I dandered down the hill and in twenty minutes I was back at the farm.
    I went round the back of the house and tried the rear door.
    It too was locked. Cora was barking herself hoarse now. A side window was open, but it was too small for me to squeeze through. I lit my last ciggy, climbed a style over the stone wall and strode out across the fields in the direction of the tied-up horse.
    The pasture was little better than a bog with some tuft grass and sodden heather, and in a few moments my DMs were soaked through. Sheep pellets were everywhere and in a slurry pond there was the carcass of an old ewe, suspended just beneath the surface.
    The horse was an old white mare who barely registered my presence as I approached. I stroked her head, but I had no sugar to offer her. I grabbed some moist dandelion leaves and held them under her nose but she turned her head away disdainfully. “Spoiled rotten, so you are,” I said, and gave her a pat on the neck.
    I was curious about the shed so I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I opened it and saw a lantern hanging from the ceiling and a ladder leading underground.
    “What’s all this?” I muttered, but the mare kept her thoughts to herself.
    I looked down into the hole. It was a vertical tunnel lit by a series of incandescent bulbs. The walls were white, chalky and crumbly and I wasn’t encouraged that the rickety metal ladder was bolted to them. There was a slightly unpleasant, sulphurous smell which also boded ill.
    I hesitated at the top of the ladder for a moment andthen decided to climb down. Twenty rungs to the bottom. A narrow passage lead to a door which said: No Entry Except By Authorised Personnel.
    I pushed on the door and entered the chamber. It was like a cave really and everything a cave should be: big, cathedral-like, sonorous, intimidating and impressive.
    Two bright arc lamps lit the white, chalky and oddly beautiful walls and cast shadows deep into the back recess of the cavern. To one side there were several metal cupboards and in the middle of the room Emma McAlpine was sitting on a sofa next to a generator which didn’t appear to be running. (How the lights were working was the first of the several mysteries.)
    She must have heard me coming down the ladder but she did not look up.
    “What are you reading?” I asked. “It’s not the Bible, is it?”
    “Inspector Duffy,” she said, and set the book on her lap. It had yellow binding; not many Bibles had yellow covers, not even The Good News.
    She was dressed in jeans, an Aran sweater and a wax jacket. Riding boots, of course, but she had kicked those off. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail. Under the fluorescent lights she looked wan, sickly, not a million miles removed from Elizabeth Siddal in Ophelia .
    I walked towards her. “I get the feeling that you were expecting me,” I said.
    “Why would I be?”
    “Because you heard the news.”
    She nodded. “Inspector Dougherty. I’m sorry,” she said.
    “Sorry for what?”
    “Dougherty was a brother officer, wasn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    “Would you like some tea? I brought a flask. It’s already made up with milk and sugar. Scandalous, I know.”
    “Sure.”
    “Have a seat.”
    I sat next to her on the leather sofa. She smelled of horse and sweat and leather. The sofa was covered in a layer of powdery white shit from the crumbling ceiling; I brushed myself a space with the back of my hand and sat down. She