I Hear the Sirens in the Street

day!”

I nodded. “Well, if you think of anything, please, get in touch …”

“Sure thing,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’ll see you out.”

He walked me across the office, opened the door and shook my hand again. The secretary got up from her desk to whisk me away from her boss in case I proved intractable. There was already another man waiting on the sofa. He was wearing a leather jacket, had a thin black tie, messy brown hair and he was smoking a Camel. Everything about him said “reporter”.

DeLorean disengaged my hand

“Have a good day, Inspector.”

“I will.”

The secretary smiled at me. She was a blonde, classic high cheekbones, blue eyeshadow, big hair, very American.

She put up a finger to prevent me from speaking and addressed the man on the sofa.

“You can go in now, Mr Burns.”

“My photographer hasn’t showed up,” Burns said in an East End accent. “Can we wait a few minutes?”

“If you want to talk to Mr DeLorean you’ll have to go in now, Mr Burns, Mr DeLorean has another meeting at twelve fifteen.”

“All right,” Burns said.

The secretary pressed a button and formally announced him. “Mr Jack Burns from the Daily Mail.”

Burns went into DeLorean’s office.

It was unusual to hear an American woman’s voice in Northern Ireland, and I tried to think if I’d ever heard one here before. I doubted it. The American news networks didn’t send their female reporters to war zones.

“Is he a good boss?” I asked.

“He’s a great man,” she said.

“‘Genius at work’, it says on his desk.”

“Oh, that? That’s sort of a joke. That was a gift from Ronald Reagan when he was campaigning through Michigan.”

She began to roll a sheet of paper into her electric typewriter when suddenly another secretary came running down the hall and burst into Mr DeLorean’s office.

“What!” DeLorean yelled, and then a moment later: “Goddammit!”

DeLorean came out of the office, fuming.

“This, when I’m talking to a reporter!” he muttered to Gloria.

He turned to me. “I suppose you’ll want me to evacuate the place? Stop production?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve no idea—”

A young man came breathlessly up the stairs. “Mr DeLorean we’ve had a—”

“Yes, I know!” DeLorean exclaimed. The Daily Mail hack had come out of the office now and was writing furiously in his notebook.

DeLorean turned to the man. “You want to know what difficulties we have to deal with? This kind of goddamn difficulty! Every goddamn week!”

An alarm began sounding and the workers began putting down their tools.

“Who pulled the fire alarm?” DeLorean screamed.

“One of the shop stewards, probably,” the young man said.

“Jesus Christ! All right, all right, show it to me!” DeLorean said.

“I think we should evacuate the premises,” the young man said.

“Show it to me!”

The young man led DeLorean towards a fire exit. Gloria grabbed her handbag, notepad and followed and I followed her. We were met at the bottom of the fire escape by two uniformed security guards.

“Where is it?” DeLorean demanded.

“On the slip road to the south gate,” one of the security guards said.

I went with DeLorean and the motley band to the south gate. And there I saw what the problem was. Someone had hijacked a Ford Transit van and dumped it there.

“There is no bomb in there – I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, marching towards the van.

“Stop right there!” I ordered, and DeLorean froze in his tracks. “What’s going on here?” I asked the harassed young guy.

“Suspect device. Someone called in a bomb threat,” he said.

“There’s no bomb in that vehicle! We get this all the time, Inspector Duffy. It’s a hoax. I’ll show you!” DeLorean said, and continued striding towards the transit van.

“No, you won’t! You’ll go back inside and evacuate the factory and call the bomb squad,” I said, with a voice of absolute authority.

DeLorean glared at me with pure malice.

He pointed a finger at me, but said nothing. After a couple of seconds of this he nodded at the young man, who ran back towards the factory.

“I’ll check out the van, I’ll show you, Mr DeLorean,” a beefy Liverpudlian security guard said.

“Yes!” DeLorean said excitedly.

“You’ll do no such thing,” I insisted.

The security guard shook his head. “Every day, Inspector, it’s the same story. Someone calls Downtown Radio to request Fleetwood Mac and call in a bomb threat at the DeLorean factory.”

“Nevertheless, no one’s going to touch that van until the bomb squad shows up,” I reiterated.

“Okay, we’ll wait here and I’ll show you that I’m right,” DeLorean insisted.

I knew he was right. Nine times out of ten it’s a hoax. But that one time … that’s the time that gets you.

The Army bomb disposal unit showed up and the robot blew open the back doors of the Transit. The robot looked inside and fired a shotgun into a wooden box, but it only contained tools. Behind us the blue-collar staff was filing out of the factory, most deciding to go home for the day. An enterprising mobile chip van showed up and DeLorean bought our little group fish suppers out of his own pocket.

The Army EOD unit still wasn’t completely satisfied with the situation, so they carried out a further controlled explosion which destroyed the van completely, sending metal fragments and a fireball into the air. There had been no secondary blast which proved that the Ford had contained no bomb or combustible materials.

DeLorean was not triumphant. He was resigned now. Fed up. He shook my hand.

“I yelled out of turn,” he said. “You did the right thing. Better safe than sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I replied.

The Army gave us the all clear but some fool had left a backpack in the executive car park in his haste to evacuate and the disposal unit roped off the car park to carry out a controlled explosion on that too. It was five o’clock now. Many of the white-collar staff were effectively trapped until the Army said that this was a negative result too.

“My car’s in the visitor’s car park. Anyone need a lift going Carrick way?” I asked.

Gloria put up her hand. “I do,” she said.

“No problem.”

We drove through the centre of Belfast where rush hour and a string of incendiary devices on buses had created chaos.

“Where do you live?” I asked her.

“A town called Whitehead. An apartment overlooking the water. Wonderful view, full of charm.”

“Sounds like a nice place.”

“Oh, yes. Mr DeLorean picked our accommodations out personally.”

We were stuck in traffic for twenty-five minutes.

I was getting annoyed.

Worse. Losing face.

“This is ridiculous. Time for my Starsky and Hutch moves,” I said.