I Hear the Sirens in the Street

them that we’re reasonable men. We don’t want any nonsense. Nobody has to get hurt. We’ll give them half an hour to get their stuff and go. But if they don’t go I won’t be responsible for what happens to them,” Bobby said.
    I was still clueless. I had no idea who lived in this house. In fact I had thought it was vacant. Was it a child molester? What?
    It was a red-brick terraced council house, identical to mine, except that I had purchased mine from the Housing Executive under Mrs Thatcher’s home ownership scheme and done it up a bit.
    I opened the gate and walked down the path.
    The previous renters had cemented over the garden, but the new occupant or occupants had placed half a dozen rose bushes in little pots over the raw concrete.
    I knocked on the front door.
    “Who is it?” a voice asked from inside.
    “It’s one of your neighbours,” I said. “Sean Duffy from down the street.”
    “Just a minute.”
    The door opened a few seconds later. It was the African woman. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and she was clutching a handbag. She looked at me and looked at the mob waiting in the street.
    “What is happening?” she asked, trembling, terrified.
    “These men have come to intimidate you out of your house,” I told her.
    “What have I done?” she asked. Her accent was East African, educated.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t I ask them.”
    I turned to face the men milling on Coronation Road.
    “She wants to know what’s she done,” I said.
    “She just has to go! Carrick’s no place for her. There’s no jobs for outsiders!” someone yelled.
    “We don’t want any niggers in our town!” someone else shouted. Billy Took, by the sound of his high-pitched voice.
    “Where do you think you are, Billy? Alabama?” I said to him.
    “This is our country!” someone else said.
    “They’re fucking swamping us!”
    “It’s the thin end of a wedge.”
    “They’re stealing our jobs!”
    The rain began. I tilted my head back and let it spatter on my face for a moment or two.
    I turned to face the woman.
    “What’s your name, love?” I asked her.
    “Ambreena,” she said.
    “What do you do?”
    “I am a student at the university.”
    “Which university?”
    “The University of Ulster. I am studying business administration.”
    “Very good. Who else is in the house? Do you have any kids? A husband?”
    “A boy. My husband is in Uganda.”
    “Do you have any relatives nearby?”
    “They are all in Uganda.”
    She looked at the mob. “What must I do? Must I go?”
    “No. Go back inside, close the door. I’ll get rid of these hoodlums, and if you have any more trouble you come see me. I’m a police officer. I live at number 113.”
    She nodded.
    Her eyes were hooded and dark and very beautiful. Old eyes that had seen much, but she herself was very young. Perhaps twenty-one.
    She reached into the bag, fumbled for her purse, took three twenty-pound notes and offered them to me.
    “That won’t be necessary. Now go inside, close the door, and if you’ve any trouble, come see me. Or call me. 62670. Okay?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have a phone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Go on, then. Get inside.”
    She closed the door.
    There was that smell in the wet street. That oh-so-familiar perfume of gasoline and tobacco and booze and fear.
    Curtains twitched, lights went on, but whatever happened nobody, absolutely nobody, would hear or see anything, even if someone accidentally killed a copper. Check that. Especially if someone accidentally killed a copper.
    Silence, save for a distant army helicopter somewhere over the black lough.
    I looked at Bobby Cameron. Our eyes met above the bandana.
    “Stand aside, peeler,” someone said.
    Raindrops pattered in the oily potholes.
    Fragile lines of phosphorous flitted between clouds as the moon appeared over the terrace on Victoria Road.
    Bobby smiled under the mask. “They have to leave, Duffy,” he said. “We’ve discussed it.”
    “It’s only one woman and her kid.”
    “One or a thousand. It doesn’t matter. It’s the start of it.”
    “They’re taking our jobs!” someone yelled. It was Davey Dummigan from up the road, his Ards accent unmistakable.
    “She’s not taking your jobs, Davey. ICI moved its factory to South-east Asia cos there are no unions and the labour’s cheap. It’s got nothing to do with her.”
    “You didn’t hear us, Duffy. We brought you in as a courtesy. One way or another they’re