I Hear the Sirens in the Street

she had done a degree in history.
    We talked a little about the university. We’d had no mutual friends and our paths hadn’t crossed in the Students’ Union. It wasn’t surprising. She was seven or eight years younger than me.
    “Is Queen’s where you met Martin?”
    “Well, I’m a local Islandmagee girl so I already knew Martin, but that’s where we started going out. He was doing law but he dropped out when he joined the UDr I stayed on for a bit, and then, well … we got married.”
    She was blushing. There was a story there, too. A pregnancy? A miscarriage? We reached the farmhouse. My car was there and next to it a shining female constable in a dark green uniform and a dark green Kepi.
    “Your chauffeur?” Emma asked.
    “Indeed.”
    She offered me her hand. “I assume this is where we take ourleave?” she said.
    “I expect so,” I said, shaking her hand.
    She looked into my eyes. “You’re disappointed, aren’t you? You think I’ve gotten away with something.”
    I said nothing.
    “I promise you, Inspector Duffy, I did not kill my husband, and I had nothing to do with the killing of Inspector Dougherty.”
    “Okay,” I said, “how about we just leave it there.”

17: THE TREASURY MAN
    I dropped Reserve Constable Sandra Pollock back at Larne RUC and drove on to Carrickfergus in the Beemer. Somewhere in County Antrim an Army Puma helicopter had been shot at with either an RPG or a surface to air missile and as a result the highways and byways were flooded with angry soldiers in green fatigues idiotically stopping every third car. Of course, I was one of the lucky stopees. I showed the squaddies my warrant card but they ignored it. Two of them pointed FN FAL rifles at me while their mates went through my boot.
    “What’s this?” an acerbic Welshman asked me, holding up a flare gun.
    “A flare gun.”
    “What’s it for?”
    “For firing flares.”
    This could have gone for a while or until one of Taffy’s mates shot me, but they decided to let me go instead.
    Back in Carrick the peelers were yukking it up over a fake version of the Belfast Telegraph that a Republican group must have printed up samizdat fashion. One of the headlines was “Polar Bears Capture Falklands Task Force”, which wasn’t even geographically astute.
    “Take a look at this, Duffy,” Sergeant Quinn said.
    “Uh, no thanks, some of us have work to do,” I said pointedly.
    In the CID incident room McCrabban had news. After a bitof prodding the Consul General in Belfast had sent us a second, slightly lengthier FBI file on Bill O’Rourke. We knew most of it already. O’Rourke had worked for the IRS his entire life. He was not involved in any fraudulent or other criminal activities and as far as the FBI could see his only offence was that speeding ticket the local cops had told us about. The report was really rather curt. Three paragraphs. A couple of spelling mistakes. It was signed by a Special Agent Anthony Grimm. Something about it still didn’t feel quite right.
    “Maybe we should talk to him,” I said.
    “Who?”
    “Grimm. Sounds like another fake name to me.”
    “You and your fake names. You’re still not happy?” Crabbie asked.
    “Clearly they did the bare minimum here. I want you to lean on the Consul again and see if anything else squeaks out,” I said.
    “The consulate is fed up with us already,” McCrabban complained.
    “You’ll do your best, I’m sure,” I insisted.
    I filled him and Matty in about my day’s adventures in Larne and Islandmagee. While they were digesting that I told them about the anonymous note and the verse from the Bible, the mysterious woman and her arrest.
    “Yeah. So what do you think, lads? Is it something or is it nothing?”
    Matty was unimpressed. In his experience women were capable of any kind of madness just to get in your head, but McCrabban lapped it up, liking anything which involved Biblical exegesis.
    “Have a wee think, boys, will ya?” I said, and went to the kitchen, made three mugs of tea, got some chocolate biscuits and brought them back to the lads.
    “Well? Any brainwaves?” I asked.
    “The McAlpine angle seems more and more like a distraction.The note is slightly more interesting, but not much. The woman? Someone you met in a pub stalking you? It’s probably not relevant for us, in this particular case, is it?” Matty said.
    “Your take, Crabbie?”
    “I agree with young Matty. The McAlpine angle might be something but it’s