I Hear the Sirens in the Street

certainly appreciate a call.”
    “It depends what you mean by out of the ordinary. In Belfast the ‘out of the ordinary’ happens every day!”
    I nodded. “Well, if you think of anything, please, get in touch …”
    “Sure thing,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’ll see you out.”
    He walked me across the office, opened the door and shook my hand again. The secretary got up from her desk to whisk me away from her boss in case I proved intractable. There was already another man waiting on the sofa. He was wearing a leather jacket, had a thin black tie, messy brown hair and he was smoking a Camel. Everything about him said “reporter”.
    DeLorean disengaged my hand
    “Have a good day, Inspector.”
    “I will.”
    The secretary smiled at me. She was a blonde, classic high cheekbones, blue eyeshadow, big hair, very American.
    She put up a finger to prevent me from speaking and addressed the man on the sofa.
    “You can go in now, Mr Burns.”
    “My photographer hasn’t showed up,” Burns said in an East End accent. “Can we wait a few minutes?”
    “If you want to talk to Mr DeLorean you’ll have to go in now,Mr Burns, Mr DeLorean has another meeting at twelve fifteen.”
    “All right,” Burns said.
    The secretary pressed a button and formally announced him. “Mr Jack Burns from the Daily Mail .”
    Burns went into DeLorean’s office.
    It was unusual to hear an American woman’s voice in Northern Ireland, and I tried to think if I’d ever heard one here before. I doubted it. The American news networks didn’t send their female reporters to war zones.
    “Is he a good boss?” I asked.
    “He’s a great man,” she said.
    “‘Genius at work’, it says on his desk.”
    “Oh, that? That’s sort of a joke. That was a gift from Ronald Reagan when he was campaigning through Michigan.”
    She began to roll a sheet of paper into her electric typewriter when suddenly another secretary came running down the hall and burst into Mr DeLorean’s office.
    “What!” DeLorean yelled, and then a moment later: “Goddammit!”
    DeLorean came out of the office, fuming.
    “This, when I’m talking to a reporter!” he muttered to Gloria.
    He turned to me. “I suppose you’ll want me to evacuate the place? Stop production?”
    “I’m sorry, I’ve no idea—”
    A young man came breathlessly up the stairs. “Mr DeLorean we’ve had a—”
    “Yes, I know!” DeLorean exclaimed. The Daily Mail hack had come out of the office now and was writing furiously in his notebook.
    DeLorean turned to the man. “You want to know what difficulties we have to deal with? This kind of goddamn difficulty! Every goddamn week!”
    An alarm began sounding and the workers began putting down their tools.
    “Who pulled the fire alarm?” DeLorean screamed.
    “One of the shop stewards, probably,” the young man said.
    “Jesus Christ! All right, all right, show it to me!” DeLorean said.
    “I think we should evacuate the premises,” the young man said.
    “Show it to me!”
    The young man led DeLorean towards a fire exit. Gloria grabbed her handbag, notepad and followed and I followed her. We were met at the bottom of the fire escape by two uniformed security guards.
    “Where is it?” DeLorean demanded.
    “On the slip road to the south gate,” one of the security guards said.
    I went with DeLorean and the motley band to the south gate. And there I saw what the problem was. Someone had hijacked a Ford Transit van and dumped it there.
    “There is no bomb in there – I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, marching towards the van.
    “Stop right there!” I ordered, and DeLorean froze in his tracks. “What’s going on here?” I asked the harassed young guy.
    “Suspect device. Someone called in a bomb threat,” he said.
    “There’s no bomb in that vehicle! We get this all the time, Inspector Duffy. It’s a hoax. I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, and continued striding towards the transit van.
    “No, you won’t! You’ll go back inside and evacuate the factory and call the bomb squad,” I said, with a voice of absolute authority.
    DeLorean glared at me with pure malice.
    He pointed a finger at me, but said nothing. After a couple of seconds of this he nodded at the young man, who ran back towards the factory.
    “I’ll check out the van, I’ll show you, Mr DeLorean,” a beefy Liverpudlian security guard said.
    “Yes!” DeLorean said excitedly.
    “You’ll do no such thing,” I insisted.
    The