I Hear the Sirens in the Street

suitably hardcore. We had toasted soda bread and we went upstairs and showered together like people in a French film. Post-shower she was radiant. Belfast people sucked the light from their surroundings black-hole fashion – this woman was giving off about two-thousand candlepower from her smile alone.
    I drove her back to the DeLorean plant in Dunmurry and walked her to her desk.
    There was a box waiting on her seat with a ribbon around it.
    “I love these!” she exclaimed.
    She opened the lid.
    A box of Irish “fifteens”. With M&Ms in them instead of Smarties.
    “Those look good,” I said.
    “They’re delicious,” she replied.
    “Where do you get them?” I asked.
    “Sir Harry brings them in. His sister-in-law makes them.”
    “Sir Harry McAlpine?”
    “Yes.”
    “How do you know Sir Harry?” I asked conversationally.
    “I don’t! Not really. Mr DeLorean knows him.”
    “How does Mr DeLorean know Sir Harry?
    “The factory is on his land. Sir Harry leased it to the DeLorean Motor Corporation at a very generous rate.”
    “As an incentive to get DeLorean to set up his factory in Belfast as opposed to Scotland or wherever?”
    “Precisely. But over the last year Sir Harry and Mr DeLorean have become fast friends.”
    “Have they indeed?” I said.

24: PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES
    I was feeling good as I drove down the coast road to Islandmagee. I accelerated the Beemer up to seventy and then got it up to a nice 88 mph. I dug out a mix tape and put it in the player.
    Plastic Bertrand took me all the way through Carrick, Eden, Islandmagee.
    Sir Harry’s estate.
    The gate along the private road was closed and there was a man there now, sitting on a stile, wearing a Barbour jacket and holding a shotgun. Old geezer, grizzled, game-keeper type.
    “This is private land,” he said in a country accent.
    “I’m the police,” I told him.
    “You’ll have a warrant then,” he said.
    “To drive down this road I’ll need a warrant?”
    “This is not the King’s Highway. All these farms, right down to the water, is all Sir Harry McAlpine’s property,” the man insisted.
    “Just let me through, mate, I’m the peelers. I’ve been here before.”
    “So you say. But we have to careful. We had a murder here last year.”
    I got out of the Beemer, opened the gate and showed him my warrant card.
    “If you want to shoot me, shoot me, but I’m going to see McAlpine.”
    The old geezer nodded.
    It was more than his job was worth to get in the way of a determined copper.
    I drove past Emma’s farm.
    No sign of her.
    I followed the dirt trail up the hill to the big house.
    The gate down that drive was also closed but there was no chain across it so I got out and opened it. I drove over the cattle grid and down the palm-lined driveway.
    The Roller was parked out front.
    I rang the bell. Mrs Patton answered the door. I showed her my warrant card.
    “Remember me, love?”
    “What do you want?”
    “I want to talk to le grand fromage .”
    “He’s in the greenhouse. I’ll go get him.”
    “The empty greenhouse? Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs Patton. I know the way.”
    I walked through the house and the kitchen and out into the back garden.
    There had been a few changes: the garden looked tidier, neater. There were bags of soil and peat and empty terracotta pots. Sir Harry’s finances must have stabilised some if he could afford a guard down there on the private road and a revamp to his back garden.
    And there he was in a ratty brown shirt and brown corduroys.
    I knocked on the greenhouse door.
    He was pulling a jumper over his head. When the head popped through he turned round, saw me, frowned.
    I opened the door and went inside.
    It was warm. There was a little humidifier in the corner pumping out steam.
    “What the devil are you doing here?” he asked, not even attempting to conceal his dislike, which was certainly un-Irish,but perhaps not un-Anglo-Irish.
    And it wasn’t that clear why he disliked me. Sure, everybody hated the peelers. We were lazy and crap at best, corrupt and sectarian at worst … but at least I was trying to solve the murder of his brother, wasn’t I?
    I walked over. He was fussing with an orchid of some kind and it made me think – ah, a real horticulturist, eh?
    “The last time I was in this greenhouse the place was deserted,” I said.
    “I’m restocking … and what business is of it yours, anyway?” His eyes were bulging in his face. His cheeks were red. That and