voice.
“No. I give you my word.”
The sirens were now less than a mile away.
“It’s over, Harry! You’ve been abandoned! It’s finished!” I yelled into the darkness.
“Not quite, Duffy! Not quite!” he yelled back.
I heard an engine rev and a hand brake slip. I looked up and out into the farmyard. Harry’s Bentley was speeding towards us. There was a burning rag sticking out of the petrol tank. He had put a weight on the accelerator pedal.
He was walking behind it with the shotgun.
“Jesus! Quickly! Get into the back kitchen! He’s—” I yelled at Emma.
And
then
everything
was
light.
32: IN THE WORLD OF LIGHT
Silence. The silence of mice in graves. The silence of non-being. Nothingness singing to itself.
…
…
…
Time passing.
Ash.
Death’s hand. Warmer than I was expecting. Welcoming.
…
…
…
Rain on my face. Starlight. Pain naming me into consciousness.
A sleepwalker getting to his feet.
Me.
Comparatively unscathed.
Two arms. Two legs.
A ringing in my ears.
Lucky.
Lucky Sean Duffy, that’s what you should call me.
The house?
There is no house.
The house is levelled.
“Emma! Emma!”
I see her.
It must have been from a heavy stone in the wall.
It would have been instantaneous.
I kiss her shattered face. Her blood on my lips.
I walk away from the debris.
The Land Rovers are coming to me across the valley.
The sirens so close now.
A melody.
Glissando-like runs from two pianos, the first playing that Chopinesque descending ten-on-one ostinato while the second playing the more conservative six-on-one.
And there’s Harry, spreadeagled in the yard. An arm missing. Severed by one of the Bentley’s side panels.
I bend down next to him.
“What were you thinking, McAlpine?” I say.
He gives a little laugh. “I wasn’t thinking. I forgot about the oil tank for the central heating.”
“Emma’s dead,” I said.
“Why didn’t you send her out, Duffy, you fuck?”
“She wouldn’t go.”
“You should have forced her.”
“Tell me all of it, Harry. You killed your brother and called in an old IRA code word.”
“You know that.”
“You shot three times into Dougherty’s garage door after you killed him. You were setting her up, weren’t you, in case we didn’t buy the IRA story?”
He laughs. “God, you peelers! You overthink everything. I missed. I bloody missed, that’s all. I’d never fired a handgun before.”
“Oh.”
“Have you a cigarette, Duffy?”
I kneel down next to him.
“All this, Harry, all this for what?” I ask him.
He winks at me, grins.
“Millions mate, millions and millions,” he says.
I could save him, I know that. A tourniquet. The rubber seal from the Bentley’s door. He’d have a fighting chance.
I get to my feet and walk towards the flashing lights.
33: CASHIERED
I was debriefed at the hospital by Special Branch. I told my tale and they told me that John DeLorean was the subject of an international investigation between various government agencies and that I had to keep my mouth shut. I knew that and I would have kept my mouth shut anyway without Special Branch goons forcing me to sign the Official Secrets Act.
Sinister men with public-school accents and sharp suits met with me and we concocted a story that Sir Harry and his sister-in-law Emma had been killed in an explosion and fire from a faulty oil heater. I had valiantly tried to save them from the inferno but had not succeeded.
We knew no one in Islandmagee would talk to the press, so the official version would stand unchallenged.
The local papers accepted this narrative without complaint and I was even a bit of a hero for a couple of days. Fanciful details of my attempt to save Emma from the flames were printed and mention was made of my Queen’s Police Medal. The news briefly dominated page one of the
I still was okay when they began reporting that Sir Harry was involved in some dodgy deals and knew the famous John DeLorean and that he had been in some kind of dispute with his sister-in-law.
But then the Yanks stuck their oar in.
Apparently they must have felt that I had reneged on our deal. I had promised to stay away from DeLorean and the O’Rourke case, but as soon as I’d got off the shuttle to Belfast I had gone digging …
They released their report about my drunk-driving incident in Massachusetts. The local press began to suggest that I was a maverick, a rogue cop at the centre of some kind of scandal between a baronet and his sister- in-law. The theories got wilder: Sir Harry and Emma were lovers who had killed themselves in a spectacular murder/suicide; Sir Harry, Emma and I were the three points of a love triangle.
