I Hear the Sirens in the Street

fucking games. Fucker. Poor dumb fucker … Have you got a drink, Duffy?”

“I might have some vodka under the—”

“Better not, Hermon’s a tough nut. Jesus! What a cock up!”

He left the office so that he could wail to someone else.

I watched the clock and around eleven the Chief Constable did indeed come down. He landed by helicopter on the Barn Field and drove to the police station in a convoy of three police Land Rovers.

Not exactly low key.

Still, Jack Hermon was a popular chief constable of the RUC. He had fought Thatcher tooth and nail for better pay and conditions, he had encouraged the recruitment of Catholic officers, he had sacked the worst of the Protestant sectarian arseholes and he had ended the use of psychological and physical torture at the Castlereagh Holding Centre (counterproductive and unreliable, the reports said). The RUC still had many many problems with bigoted, incompetent, and lazy officers but Hermon had done a decent job in only a short time and for his efforts he had recently been knighted by the Queen.

His entrance was all drama.

The bodyguard cops came into the station first, looking tough. Big guys with ’taches and submachine guns.

Then Sir Jack with his familiar peasant features, red potato face and squat frame. His uniform looked too tight for him.

Chief Inspector Brennan saluted.

They shook hands and exchanged words.

Brennan introduced his senior officers, in other words Inspector McCallister, myself and Sergeant Quinn.

Sir Jack shook our hands and told Brennan to gather everyone (“even the fucking tea ladies”) in the downstairs conference room.

His speech was boilerplate stuff that didn’t even attempt to deal with the “accidental discharge of a firearm” cover story. Instead it was: Morale … The importance of talking to people about your problems … Optimism … Things looked bad now, but in fact we were winning the fight against terrorism …

Maybe some of the reservists were impressed, but no one else was.

Afterwards we had tea and biscuits and a carrot cake that Carol baked herself.

We were supposed to mingle with the Chief Constable and feel free to ask him anything. I hung back near the photocopier with Matty and McCrabban, trying not to catch his eye. It didn’t do any good. After a minute or two he made an obvious beeline for me. Crabbie and Matty scattered like wildebeest before a lioness.

“Get back here,” I whispered.

“You’re on your own, mate,” Matty hissed, before making a break for the bogs.

Hermon offered his hand again. He was wearing leather gloves now, getting ready to leave.

“You’re Duffy, isn’t that right?” Sir Jack asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Wanted to talk to you before I go.”

“Me personally, sir?”

“Aye.”

“Uhm, we can go into my office if you want.”

“Lead on.”

I walked up to my office and closed the door.

He didn’t sit or comment on the sea view.

“I’ve had two calls about you in two weeks. Two calls about a lowly detective inspector. You must be something pretty special, eh?”

“No, sir, I’m—”

“Do you have any idea how busy I am, Duffy?”

“I imagine that you’re ver—”

“Damn right I am. And let me tell you something, sonny Jim. I am not afraid to stick my neck out for my men.”

“I’ve never heard anything different.”

“Ian Paisley? I’m not afraid of Paisley. I personally arrested that loudmouth. To a man the politicians of this sorry, benighted, God-abandoned land are rabble-rousing scum.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But when I get calls complaining about the actions of one of my officers, calls directly to me, I have to take an interest, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The United States Consul General in Belfast called me up and said that one of my officers was hectoring one of his officials. Do you know who that officer was?”

“Sir, I can assure you that—”

“And then I get a call from the Right Honourable Ian Paisley MP, saying that one of his oldest friends, a certain Sir Harry McAlpine, was also getting a bollocking from a bolshy young detective. Can you guess who that detective was?”

“Sir, if I can explain …”

Hermon got real close and I got a zoom in on his lined face, that cheap and cheerful Mallorca suntan, the tired, angry, bloodshot eyes.

“I looked at your personnel file, Duffy. You’ve got a medal from the Queen and you’re a Catholic to boot! I suppose you think that that makes you immune. I suppose you think you’re Clint Eastwood. I suppose you think you can do whatever you like?”

“Not at all, sir, if I could just—”

“Let me tell you how this place works, Duffy. It’s a tribal society. Clans. Warlords. You think we’re living in 1982? We’re living in 1582. You can’t go around ruffling the feathers of the big chieftains. Do you get me?”

“Chieftains, feathers, no ruffling, sir.”

“Are you making fun of me, son?”

“No, sir!”

“Good. Because you need me. And if I’m going to back you up against them, I need to know that our masters in London are going to back me up.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Sir Harry McAlpine is a wheeler and dealer. He’s got land here and there. And he’s in favour at Stormont at the moment. He has influential friends and he has the ear of the ministry.”

Aye, and he’s also a big bluffing bastard mortgaged up the wazoo and to quote his sister-in-law, as poor as a church mouse, I did not say.

Hermon looked at me and held my gaze and waited until I looked away first, but I wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction. He may have come here in a helicopter, he may have been on the blower to Mrs Thatcher last night, but his breath smelled of Cookstown sausages.

He nodded and finally he looked away. He examined my office for the first time, impressed by the view out the window and perhaps by its un-Presbyterian messiness. “So,” he said, after a pause, “where do you keep the good whiskey?”

20 THE UDR BASE

The media bought the tale about the “accidental shooting” – whether the life insurance company dicks would was another story but that, thank Christ, was not my concern. The funeral was on a Sunday at a small Scottish Calvinist Church up the Antrim coast. The ceremony was alien to me: singing of Psalms, prayers, nothing about the dead man. Rain and sea spray lashed the unadorned church windows and there was no heating of any kind.

A tall, Raymond Massey-like church elder said: “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord that He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. Surely He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at