I Hear the Sirens in the Street

dialectic so I told him that he had a point and apologised and asked about the windscreen.
    Paddy told me he couldn’t possibly get a replacement in less than a week and offered me a loaner of a black BMW 320i for only fifty quid. It was a canny move on his part for he knew that I’d be hooked after a couple of days behind the wheel of that four-cylinder, fuel-injected, 125 BHP beast.
    She purred right up and I notched her at 115 mph on the straight run from the old ICI factory to Eden Village.
    I turned right up Victoria Road, left on Coronation Road andparked the car.
    I found Bobby Cameron’s wean and give him a pound note and told him he’d get another one if he kept all the wee shites away from the Beemer.
    I was exhausted.
    I turned on the hall light to look at myself in the mirror. A pitiful bedraggled wreck of a man.
    The hall mirror.
    The hall looking glass.
    Alice Through the Looking Glass. Alice Smith because Alice Liddell was too obvious. I see through a glass darkly.
    I saw the phone sitting on the table. I recalled the conversation with our special guest mystery caller.
    I walked outside to the Beemer and drove to William McFarlane’s bed and breakfast in Dunmurry.
    Mrs McFarlane didn’t recognise me without the riot squad to back me up
    I asked if I could have a look at room #4.
    She said all the rooms were the same.
    I said four was my lucky number.
    She said fine, go ahead.
    I went upstairs to room #4.
    I looked at the huge mirror above the dresser.
    I looked at those strange wear marks on the carpet. Exactly where they should be if someone had moved this heavy thing out from the wall.
    I moved the dresser out from the wall.
    Behind the mirror someone had duct-taped an envelope.
    I put on latex gloves and opened the envelope.
    Inside:
    Bill O’Rourke’s Massachusetts driver’s licence, five hundred dollars in fifty-dollar bills, and a key with the number 27 stamped into the metal. Taped to the key with Scotch tape, a piece of paper that said “Ten Cent Bank Safety Deposit, Jefferson Street,Newburyport, Massachusetts”.
    I moved the dresser back and told Mrs McFarlane I’d have to think about the room.
    I went back to the borrowed Beemer and sat there.
    The mystery caller had known about this all along.
    I see through a glass darkly. She had seen through it. She’d seen through it to the other side, but was leaving it to me to do something about it.
    There was only one thing to be done.
    I knew the drama that would erupt if I asked for official permission to go.
    The Chief. The Consulate. DeLorean. The Americans. Especially the Americans.
    The case would be taken away from me.
    The case would vanish into the ether.
    We’d never find out who killed Bill O’Rourke. Perhaps someone would, but not us.
    “No, not us,” I said aloud.
    I drove to Carrick RUC and found Kenny Dalziel among the pay stubs in the sub basement. I told him that before the marching season got going in a month or so now was as good a time as any for me to take my personal days all at once.
    He said that he’d sound it out with the Chief.
    Half an hour later the Chief called me up to his office and declared that I looked as if I needed a break. He recommended Blackpool, which was bracing and inexpensive at this time of year.
    I told him that that sounded like a great idea.
    I told Kenny I was taking five working days and a weekend exemption from riot duty. I told them that Crabbie was in charge of CID and he should be paid for the week as an acting sergeant. Kenny baulked at that until I said that I’d pay the extra four quid out of my own pocket.
    I went back upstairs and told Crabbie about the acting sergeantthing and he was as pleased as I’d hoped. I didn’t tell him about the mirror. Not yet. No point dragging him in until we saw where it all led.
    I called Emma McAlpine and said that I had to go out of town for a few days but I’d really like to see her when I got back.
    “That would be nice,” she told me.
    I ordered Emma flowers from the same place I’d got them for Gloria.
    I drove to Grant’s Travel Agency in Carrickfergus and had them book me a flight to Boston. Tomorrow at noon from Heathrow.
    I’m not a superstitious arsehole but just to be on the safe side I found out when the next Mass was going to be …

27: HIGH MASS
    Coronation Road was the last street in Greater Belfast before the country began and the field behind it felt like another world. A littoral. An Interzone. A DMZ. I put a