Gun Street Girl (12 page)

Bobby sighed. “I know what you mean,” he grunted.

“We understand each other, then?”

“Aye.”

“And tell them kids if there's a repeat of this incident I'll be keeping Mickey Burke's lioness in my back garden from now on.”

I went home and put my dinner on. Not too long after that a group of three boys appeared at the front door with paint remover and set to work getting rid of the graffiti.

There would, I knew, be no recurrence of that particular piece of shite, but the Anglo-Irish Agreement shitstorm was only just beginning.

The very next day the Reverend Ian Paisley went on the radio and called for all the young men of Ulster to rise up against “Barry's Lackeys.” Peter Barry was the Irish foreign minister and we were thus cast as his demonic agents. The nickname stuck and it appeared on graffiti all over Belfast.

The Protestant people were being told by their leaders to rise up against us, the Catholic community didn't trust us, and the IRA still wanted to kill every last one of us. Perfect.

I pulled the Beemer into the police station car park.

The Chief Inspector was waiting for me at the front desk.

“Sorry, Duffy, need your CID boys and girls again. Riot duty. Rathcoole. You don't mind?”

“Would it make a difference if I did mind?”

“No.”

“Well then, I don't mind at all, sir.”

I went into the CID incident room. Fletcher was passing out tea and Jaffa Cakes.

“The bad news is you're going to have to put down the tea and biscuits. The good news is we're going to get riot pay!”

“Where?” Crabbie asked.

“Rathcoole.”

“Could be worse,” McCrabban said.

Lawson and Fletcher, however, looked banjaxed. This was only the first week of the crisis and they were exhausted.

“Come on, lads, let's go show these regular coppers that the CID can hold a riot shield and get pelted like the best of them.”

Fletcher sniffled but got up. Lawson, however, just kept sitting there, dazed. I patted him on the shoulder. “You too, Young Lochinvar, come on, suit up!”

“It'll be OK. These things are never as bad as they sound,” Crabbie said with a big friendly grin that would have horrified them if they'd known him as well as I did.

The four of us piled in the back of a Land Rover with two regular peelers up front.

“Who saw the football on the telly last night?” I asked to take our minds off the riot.

“A good performance from Liverpool,” Lawson said mechanically.

“They're an ageing side,” Crabbie said. “The future belongs to Man U.”

“What do you think, Fletcher?” I asked.

“I don't care.”

“You don't care?”

“Why
do
men care about football?”

“Cos football's important. Football is war without the blood,” Lawson said.

“And sometimes with the blood,” I said, but I changed the conversation to the movies, a subject that would engage both of them.

We reached Rathcoole Estate in North Belfast. I had done riot duty here before many times. It wasn't just familiarity that bred contempt. There was actual contempt contempt. This was a pretty scary estate with some clever, old-school hoods running things.

We piled out of the Land Rover, and a Divisional Mobile Support Unit chief inspector gave us helmets and the new rectangular riot shields which worked better than the old round ones.

We stood in the Thin Green Line for an hour while the local kids pelted us with stones and milk bottles. I kept our little band on the flank of the line, and when it was our turn to rotate off I checked that none of my lads had been hurt.

Lawson had copped a Molotov on his shield but no one else had got a scratch.

Eventually the order was given to fire plastic bullets and a couple of eager, experienced peelers picked out the ringleaders, aimed, and shot the fuckers with baton rounds. The rain came down after that and the rioters dispersed.

It was a successful little operation and my unit acquitted itself well.

“Well done, everyone,” I said, patting Fletcher and Lawson on the back. “You did very well. We're going home now and you'll get good reports from me.”

We piled back into the Rover drenched with sweat and stinking of fear and petrol.

“So where are you from, Fletcher?”

“I was born in Armagh, but I grew up in Enniskillen. My dad moved there for work.”

“I've heard it's nice in Enniskillen.”

“Yes, our house is on the lake.”

“Uh, boss, radio call, we've been diverted to another riot in the Ardoyne,” one of the guys from up front said.

“Who's diverting us?”

“Chief Inspector McArthur.”

“Dammit.”

Up into the twisty streets of the Ardoyne in West Belfast. A much bigger riot involving dozens of Land Rovers and hundreds of people.

Another two hours on the Thin Green Line getting pelted with rocks and bottles and fireworks. Lawson breaking formation and chasing after a kid who'd chucked a brick at his head. Crabbie and I pulling the eejit back into formation.

“Take it easy there, Batman! You've done enough for today,” I said.

“Sorry, sir, got carried away there,” he said.

“Be more like Fletcher, son, keep your head down, don't get baited, don't get too worked up,” McCrabban instructed him.

Darkness fell. Rotated off the line. Back in the Land Rover.

Too tired for conversation. The four of us in the rear just staring into space.

The Land Rover stopped suddenly.

“What's happening?” Crabbie asked the men up front.

“I think I'm lost,” our driver said. “I followed the diversion signs but this road is a dead end.”

“Diversion signs?” Crabbie wondered, an ominous note in his voice.

“What diversion signs?” I asked.

“Oh shit! Muzzle flash!”

“Incoming!” I yelled.

“Brace! Brace! Brace!”

“Fuck that, take evasive—”

. . .

. . .

White light.

An almighty bang.

A momentary suspension of the laws of gravity.

A crash against the metal roof that might have done for me if I hadn't been wearing my riot helmet.

A metallic taste in my mouth.

Blood.

Crabbie taking charge. The back doors opening. Belfast's crocodile skyline rotating into view.

“Are you OK, Sean?”

Ping
,
ping
,
ping
off the armor plate of the Land Rover.

“I'm OK. Are we under fire?”

“Stay where you are, Sean; backup is on the way.”

Crabbie with his sidearm out, shooting at gunfire from a ruined block of flats. I crawled toward him, pulled out my Glock.

“Where?” I asked.

“The abandoned building on the corner. Second floor.”

Two more quick muzzle flashes.

I pulled the trigger on the semiautomatic and Crabbie and I shot at the target together.

I emptied my clip, the smell of cordite and blood choking my nostrils.

I blinked slowly and lost consciousness.

Cops.

Soldiers.

“He's awake.”

“Where am I?”

Where I was was an ambulance being transferred to Belfast City Hospital. They'd hooked me to a drip, but after a minute checking myself I knew that I was fine. No bones broken. No puncture wounds. Just a concussion.

In the hospital car park I told the medics I'd see myself into Casualty.

Instead I scored some painkillers and Valium from a sympathetic nurse and called a bloke I knew at Queen Street RUC who sent a Land Rover to take me back to Carrick.

Crabbie was surprised to see me.

“What are you doing here? You should be in the hospital. Did you—”

“How is everyone?”

“Everyone's OK except for you and Fletcher.”

“What happened to her?”

“Same as you. Banged her head. They took her to the RVH.”

“She OK?”

“The last I heard she was fine. She wasn't completely out like you. A little concussed, though. And very badly shaken.”

“Everyone else?”

“Few scrapes, cuts. A story to bore the grandkids with.”

“So I was the worst?”

“You took the prize.”

“What hit us?”

“Rocket-propelled grenade. Got the Land Rover above the wheelbase, knocked us over on one side.”

“Who did it?”

“Who knows?”

“Any chance of catching them?”

“I doubt it.”

“You or I hit anyone?”

“Nope.”

“Did they at least leave the grenade launcher? Get prints off it?”

“They took it with them. Go home, Sean.”

“I think I will.”

Home to Coronation Road with a splitting headache.

Aspirin and gin. Valium and codeine.

I called Sara but she was busy and couldn't come over.

I made a vodka gimlet and put on the news. There had been half a dozen riots in Belfast that day. Twelve hijackings. Nineteen separate attacks on police officers. The attack on our Land Rover didn't even merit a passing mention.

The next day Lawson, McArthur, Crabbie, and myself went to see Fletcher in the Royal Victoria Hospital. She was sitting up in bed. Her fiancé, Ted, was with her. He was a building contractor from Omagh. Big guy, moustache, ruddy cheeks, red hair. He was wearing Wellington boots with corduroys and a checked sports coat, which was the look of an older man although Teddy was only about twenty-five.

We introduced ourselves, asked how the patient was doing.

The patient was on the mend. A sprained wrist, a mild concussion, two stitches on her upper lip.

We gave her flowers. Chocolates. A card that showed Snoopy covered with bandages.

We told her that everyone in the station was asking about her.

She smiled at the card.

The kicker came at the end of the obligatory five minutes of small talk.

Big Ted took Fletcher's hand and, turning to McArthur, said: “She's got something she wants to say, don't you, love?”

“I do,” Fletcher muttered a little reluctantly.

“Go on, then,” Ted urged her.

“Well, it's like this. I really appreciate everything everyone's done for me, and to get into the CID was a dream come true, and Sergeant McCrabban has been nothing but kind and patient . . . I mean, I know I've had an amazing opportunity here and I don't want to let the side down or anything, but . . . it's just that . . . and I don't want you to think to yourself, oh God, this is what happens when the higher-ups make us take a woman . . . it's not like that at all. It's just me, you know?”

I looked at Crabbie but he was none the wiser either. Was she angling for a transfer already? She'd only been with us a fortnight.

“I'm sorry, what are you—”

“She's resigning. We want to have kids. And how are we going to have kids if she's getting thrown about in a Land Rover? Look at her face. It's fucking ridiculous, isn't it?” Ted said.

“You're resigning?” I asked.

“Yes. But don't think I'm not really grateful that you would take me on and I might not be resigning completely, you know? Maybe I'll put in for the part-time reserve. A couple of days a month . . .”

“You can't be a detective in the part-time reserve,” I said, annoyed by what she was saying. Sure she'd just had the bejesus scared out of her, but even so, you don't resign because of a little thing like that.

“Maybe you should take a couple of days to think things over,” Lawson attempted.

“I know I should, but—”

“She's resigning and that's the end of it! We're getting married. We're settling down and we're having kids. We don't need the money and as far as I can see Helen's done her part now. Done and done,” Teddy insisted.

On the ride back to the station McArthur wondered whether there was any way we could spin Fletcher's resignation so it didn't reflect badly on Carrick RUC. “The higher-ups will criticize us for losing a new recruit who has gone through a lot of expensive training programs. They'll probably take the huff too and not send us a replacement. Carrick CID will be stuck with an embarrassingly top-heavy department: a detective inspector, a detective sergeant and you, Lawson, the sole detective constable.”

“Aye, it is a bit silly,” I agreed.

“And you, Duffy,” he said with an accusatory tone. “You'll probably be getting out too, won't ya?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You'll see, my lad, you'll see.”

10: THE OFFER

McArthur's cryptic remark and his mysterious hints over the previous few weeks were clarified the very next day. It was an off day, and it was a good day to have off as there was a big “Ulster Says No” rally planned in Belfast, and the chances were that, if the rain held off, the rally would descend into yet another riot.

Cornflakes, hot milk, sugar. Coffee.
The Open University
on BBC 2.

Out of the Blues: The Best of David Bromberg
on the stereo.

I called Sara at the
Belfast Telegraph
.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Working. You?”

“My off day. Wanna do something?”

“I can't. Working. Working all the time now.”

“It's an ill wind . . .”

“Exactly. Any developments on our case?”

“Our case?”

“Michael Kelly.”

“Oh, no. I think it's done and done that one.”

Awkward silence.

“I got a dog,” she said. “Temporarily. My sister's actually. Her husband's allergic.”

“Is that so?”

“A poodle.”

“Do you want to do something tonight?”

“I really can't.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I'll call you, Sean.”

“OK.”