The Cold, Cold Ground

fucking traitor, that’s what you are. Taking the fucking King’s shilling. How do you sleep at night?”
    I leaned in close so that my nose was an inch from his pointy neb.
    “Usually on my left-hand side, with a big, fluffy pillow and my favourite Six Million Dollar Man pyjamas,” I said in a gravelly Clint Eastwood voice.
    Flunky #2 and Crabbie both laughed.
    We walked back to the Land Rover and everyone got inside.
    “Any information?” Brennan asked.
    “A total bust,” Crabbie said. “They’ve stripped the house and are moving somebody else in already.”
    Brennan raised his eyebrows at me. “What did I tell you?” he said.
    “You were right, sir,” I replied.
    “All right, Alan, take us back to Carrick, warp factor 7,” Brennan said.
    We drove back onto the Falls Road proper. Brennan made us stop at a paper shop to buy the early edition of the Belfast Telegraph . Disappointingly our press conference hadn’t made the front page, which was dominated by the headline: “Four More Join Hunger Strike”.
    We did make page 3 though and there was a nice picture of Sergeant McCallister under the headline “RUC Investigate Homosexual Double Murder”.
    “They could have given us more coverage,” Brennan complained. “I mean it’s nice to have a real crime for once. A normal everyday non-sectarian murder. That’s man bites dog around these parts. That’s news. I have half a mind to call their editor”.
    We were nearly at the junction of the Falls Road and the new dual carriageway when McCallister slammed on the brakes.
    I looked through the windscreen and saw a hijacked Ulsterbus on fire, parked laterally across the lanes and blocking the road. It must have been set alight in the last five minutes because we were the first cops on the scene and it hadn’t even been reported yet on the police radio.
    Suddenly there were four massive bangs on the steel plate of the Land Rover’s right-hand side.
    The two reserve constables yelped.
    I looked through the peephole. Someone was shooting at us from the two-hundred-foot high Divis Tower, which in a city built on mud flats, was the fifth tallest structure in Belfast.
    Two more heavy bangs on the side of the Land Rover and stray bullets dinging into the pavement. Originally Divis Towerand the whole Divis Flats complex around it had been a model slum-clearance project but it quickly degenerated into a high-rise ghetto completely controlled by the IRA.
    “What the fuck is that?” Brennan yelled.
    “Fifty calibre machine gun, sir,” Sergeant McCallister replied placidly. “Seen ‘em in the army, unmistakable.”
    “Jesus! Can it punch a hole in the armour plate?” Brennan asked.
    “Maybe. I don’t really know,” McCallister replied.
    Brennan turned round to look at the four of us in the back. His eyes were wild with excitement. I didn’t like it.
    “All right, lads and lasses, we’ll deploy out the back, train your fire on the muzzle bursts, that’ll give the bastards something to think about!” Brennan said as more of the fifty-cal tore up the road all around us (difficult to aim those things, I would imagine).
    Sergeant McCallister looked at me and shook his head.
    He didn’t want to say anything but he hoped I would.
    “Uh, sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea. They’re probably waiting with an RPG. As soon as we open these back doors they’ll fire it and we’re all cooked,” I said, thinking that one of us had to say something.
    “We can’t just let him shoot at us!” Heather said, her cheeks redder than ever with her blood up.
    “No, by God, we can’t! We’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!” Brennan answered her.
    “Sir, we can’t fire into Divis Tower. It’s full of people,” I said.
    “Sir, it’s actually a standing order for West Belfast, the rules of engagement do not permit return fire into the Divis Flats complex without permission of a Divisional Commander,” Sergeant McCallister added firmly.
    There was another burst of fifty cal fire that shook us and sent fragments of steel plate sheering from the Land Rover’s side. It was like being inside a pin-ball machine.
    Inside a pin-ball machine with the added frisson of imminent death.
    The reserve constable whose name I didn’t get began throwing up between his legs.
    “So what do you suggest, ya lily-livered scoundrels?” Brennan yelled.
    “Sir, if they hit a tyre we’ll be stuck here so I suggest we drive around the bus and then maybe