“Halt!” I screamed again.
Not for a second did she stop.
Fucker!
I let the hammer drop on the Smith and Wesson and ran after her.
Christ, she was fast. She ran between the headstones and down the row of sycamore trees that led to the back gate. She stumbled on a tree root that curved above the surface. She lost her balance, regained it, lost it again, spilled.
“Okay love, that’s enough fun and games!” I shouted at her.
I pulled out the trusty .38 again.
I thought I heard a crack.
It may have been a gunshot, it may have been a car backfiring.
I dived to the ground and scrambled behind a headstone.
“The bitch is shooting!” I exclaimed, caught my breath and carefully stood up behind the grave.
In the ten seconds I had taken to do all that, she had gotten to her feet and sprinted towards the cemetery wall.
“Jesus!”
I ran after her but before I’d covered half the distance she hopped the wall and vanished into the Barley Field.
I heard a motorcycle kick and then saw a green Kawasaki 125 trail bike zoom across the field. It jumped a stream and cut down the lane to Victoria Road. It drove straight across the road heading into Downshire Estate. By the time I made it to the wall I couldn’t even hear it any more.
I jogged home and called it in.
“Female motorcyclist in black leather jacket heading through Downshire Estate, Carrickfergus on green Kawasaki trail bike. Indeterminate age, possibly dangerous.”
It was unlikely that they’d catch her but you never knew.
The doorbell rang.
I opened it.
Mrs Bridewell looked concerned. She had evidently watched the whole thing through the binoculars.
“Are you all right, Mr Duffy?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I took a spill is all.”
“Them vandals are getting more brazen every day. They have no respect for the law. I have half a mind to tell Bobby Cameron.”
Bobby Cameron was the local UDA commander. His method would be to kneecap the next kid who was found with a spray can.
“No, no, there’s no need for that! I’m sure we’ll find the culprit. I’ve called it in.”
“They’re putting out an APB? Like on
“Exactly like
She quivered for a moment in the rain.
“Oh, Mr Duffy,” she said, and folded into my arms. “I was so worried.”
I held her for a moment.
She cleared her throat.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose I better go get the weans.”
“Yes. Of course.”
She walked back down the path.
As I watched her arse jiggle away in that yellow dress I saw a black woman walking down the street from the other direction. She was tall and elegant, wearing jeans and a green sweater.
I had never seen a black person before in Carrickfergus and contextually it was pretty surprising. Because of the Troubles Northern Ireland had had virtually no immigration. I mean, why would anyone emigrate to a war zone that had bad weather, bad people, bad food and sky-high unemployment? Carrickfergus was as ethnically complex and diverse as a joint Ku Klux Klan-Nazi Party rally.
I stared at the woman for a second.
It wasn’t nice but I couldn’t help myself.
She must have felt my gaze because she turned to look at me and smiled.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” she replied, in an African accent.
I went back inside #113 and closed the front door.
I checked with the emergency dispatcher at Carrick Station.
No motorcycle.
I asked them to patch it up to central command.
They said they would.
Every RUC and British Army patrol that came across a green motorcycle for the next twenty hours would stop the bike and question the rider.
In theory it sounded good. But presumably the bike would be burnt out at the first opportunity and never ridden again.
The whole thing was baffling. Was it just a crank? Some kid fucking with me? I went back to the graveyard to see if the envelope was still there but she’d lifted it. Didn’t matter. I remembered the verse. I ran the bath, poured myself a vodka and lime and dug out the King James Bible. I looked up Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12.
Of course I recognised the passage: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
What’s that all about? I asked myself repeatedly for the next two hours and got no answers at all.
13: THE GIRL ON THE BIKE
I was in Ownies getting a pub dinner when the beeper went. I asked Arthur if I could borrow his phone and when I tracked it down it turned out to be a message from central dispatch in Ballymena. They had got my girl! An army patrol had nabbed her on her motorbike heading north out of Carrick and they’d handed her over to the police. She was now at Whitehead Police Station.
“Well, well, well,” I said, and grinned at Arthur.
“Good news?”
“Aye, could be, mate. Could be.”
I ran back to the barracks, jumped in the Beemer, hit a ton on the Bla Hole road and was at Whitehead Cop Shop in eight minutes. It was a small police station, unmanned at the weekends. Four police reservists and an inspector ran the show.
I found the duty officer, a freckly kid called Raglan with a David Soul haircut and a feeble ginger tache.
“I need to interview your prisoner,” I said.
“The prisoner?”
“Aye, presumably you’ve only the one.”
“She’s left already,” Raglan said.
“What?”
“She left.”
“Who the fuck with?”
“A couple of superintendents from Special Branch.”
“You get their names?”
“McClue was one of them, I forget the other. Is there a problem?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll follow up with bloody Special Branch and see.”
“You just missed them by about half an hour.”
