I Hear the Sirens in the Street

dealer. He’s got land here and there. And he’s in favour at Stormont at the moment. He has influential friends and he has the ear of the ministry.”
    Aye, and he’s also a big bluffing bastard mortgaged up the wazoo and to quote his sister-in-law, as poor as a church mouse, I did not say.
    Hermon looked at me and held my gaze and waited until I looked away first, but I wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction. He may have come here in a helicopter, he may have been on the blower to Mrs Thatcher last night, but his breath smelled of Cookstown sausages.
    He nodded and finally he looked away. He examined my office for the first time, impressed by the view out the window and perhaps by its un-Presbyterian messiness. “So,” he said, after a pause, “where do you keep the good whiskey?”

20 THE UDR BASE
    The media bought the tale about the “accidental shooting” – whether the life insurance company dicks would was another story but that, thank Christ, was not my concern. The funeral was on a Sunday at a small Scottish Calvinist Church up the Antrim coast. The ceremony was alien to me: singing of Psalms, prayers, nothing about the dead man. Rain and sea spray lashed the unadorned church windows and there was no heating of any kind.
    A tall, Raymond Massey-like church elder said: “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord that He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. Surely He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.”
    This was definitely my kind of god but unfortunately it hadn’t quite worked out that way for Sergeant Burke. At the graveside, a divisional chief super gave a eulogy mentioning Burke’s years of devoted service. Of course there were no shots over the coffin or anything like that. You save that kind of thing for the Provos.
    The fall-out from Burke’s death was immediate. Chief Inspector Brennan was not promoted, but to keep the shifts working effectively we now needed a new sergeant. Someone with a head for detail who could help keeping the place level. I knew that this was my opportunity to push for Crabbie. If they promoted him to acting sergeant now it wouldn’t matter how he did on his exam as long as he wasn’t a total disaster. I lobbied hard for him but I was a lone voice as everyone else wanted weasly Kenny Dalziel from clerical who could run the admin that everyone else hated.
    I told Crabbie after the meeting. “They’re promoting Dalziel.”
    He was gutted. “What have I done wrong?”
    “Nothing. I’m sorry, mate. They don’t know anything. I mean, of course they’re going to promote a clerk like Dalziel, not someone who actually, you know, goes out and solves crimes.”
    The day ended.
    The next began.
    The week went by like that.
    Rain and no leads.
    On the Thursday we learned that Bill O’Rourke’s body had been returned to America. His funeral was at Arlington where he got the full honour guard, folded flag treatment. We were told that his dead wife’s sister had surfaced out of the woodwork to claim his house in Massachusetts and his apartment in Florida. I asked the local police to interview her and they did and a Lieutenant Dawson sent me a terse fax stating that there was nothing suspicious about her.
    The days lengthened. The Royal Navy Task Force continued its southward journey. On Saturday morning a masked man armed with a shotgun robbed the Northern Bank in High Street Carrickfergus and got away with nine hundred pounds. The sum was insignificant, no one was hurt and I wasn’t going to make it a priority until Brennan summoned me to his office.
    “What’s your progress on the O’Rourke murder?”
    “It’s about the same as it was when we talked last w—”
    “Get on this robbery, then. Your full team. It’s about time you started pulling your weight around here, Duffy!”
    Brennan had aged. His hair was going from grey to white and he looked flabby. God knows where he was staying now. What was bothering him? The marriage? Being passed over? Something else? I’d never know. Crabbie had