I Hear the Sirens in the Street (30 page)

“Two years ago I started hearing rumours that DeLorean was looking to invest in Northern Ireland. Build a big auto plant for this sports car he was designing. Lots of jobs. The whole thing would be underwritten by the Northern Ireland Office. They'd pump in fifty million. They were desperate to have any kind of investment, actual honest to God money flowing into Northern Ireland. So, as you may or may not know, I've been a having a few financial problems of my own. My father died in '69 and I'm still paying the estates taxes – that's not hyperbole, by the way, I really am still paying them off. If he'd died one year later it would have been under the Tories, but no, he had to die in 1969, when the rate was through the roof … Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins, asked me to quote, donate, unquote, some land that I had in Dunmurry for a factory site. And I did, and that's how I know DeLorean. I'm his landlord.”

That confirmed what I knew, but I didn't see how it tied into Martin's death or into anything else.

“You want to know how much he pays me for all those acres?”

“How much?”

“You'd choke on your chocky biscuits. The man's a cancer. I just hope to God the Yanks don't find out before they buy a million of his cars.”

“Yes, I—”

“And I'll tell you something else. Ever been in his office? He's got a sign on his desk, ‘Genius At Work'. Genius at work, my foot! You know who's behind the curtain, don't you? You know who the real Wizard of Oz is?”

“No.”

“DeLorean didn't even design the car. He made a sketch, a bullshit sketch. Colin Chapman, heard of him?”

“The name rings a bell.”

“Lotus! Lotus Sports Cars. Colin Chapman is the man who made Lotus. He's the real designer of the DeLorean, not John D.L., as he likes to be called.”

I was familiar with the Lotus sports cars from the James Bond movies.

“Colin Chapman's the designer, the money's coming from the British government, the land came from me, the workers are ex Harland and Wolff guys from Belfast, so what exactly does DeLorean do? He's just the front. That's all. Just the front. He's just the fucking hair and the fucking million-dollar smile.”

“And if the front falters?”

He made a plane crashing sound and smacked one hand into another.

“And God help Northern Ireland if it does,” he added.

“So you don't really see him very much on a social basis.”

“Only when he needs something.”

“Hmmm.”

“So how does this tie into Martin's murder?” he asked.

“That's what I'd like to know.”

We sipped our tea and we talked for a few more minutes about this and that, but nothing came of the conversation. He either knew nothing or he was a pretty decent chancer himself.

I finished my tea and stood and offered my hand.

“I'm sorry that we seemed to get off on the wrong footing,” I said.

“My fault, I'm sure. Tarred all you boys with the same brush … If you find anything about Martin, you'll let me know, won't you?”

“Yes.”

“Only …”

“Yes?”

His eyes moistened. “Only, he's my wee brother, you're supposed to look after your wee brother, aren't you?”

“I suppose so.”

I walked down the palm-lined drive in a thoughtful mood.

I got in the Beemer.

He hadn't reacted to the rosary pea crack and he seemed genuinely interested in finding out about his brother's death.

His connection to everything might be tangential.

But that entry in his brother's book … it was a coincidence.

And coincidence is the sworn enemy of all detectives everywhere.

I'd driven about a hundred yards from Sir Harry's house when I saw Emma wearing army boots, a blue dress and a raincoat, walking along the sheugh and carrying a basket. Her back was to me on the road and she had an umbrella up, but she was unmistakable with that wild curly red hair.

I pulled the car beside her and wound the window down.

“Hello,” I said.

She seemed a little startled.

“Oh, hi … What are you doing down here?”

“I was seeing your brother-in-law.”

“About Martin?”

“Yes.”

“Anything new?”

“I'm afraid not. Just tidying up some loose ends.”

She nodded, frowned and then smiled.

“What on earth is that music?” she asked.

“It's Plastic Bertrand.”

“Who's that?”

“Belgian New Wave guy.”

“What's New Wave?”

“Jesus, I mean they have the wheel down here, don't they? And fire?”

She laughed.

“You're not still living in caves, hunting for woolly mammoths?”

She lifted her basket. “Mussels more like.”

“You need a lift?” I asked.

“A car can't go where I'm going.”

“Where's that?”

“Down to the shore.”

She smiled again and something down below decks remembered last night with Gloria.

“Can I come with you?” I asked.

She hesitated for a moment. “What have you on your feet?”

“Gutties,” I said, showing her my Adidas sneakers.

“They'll get soaked.”

“That's okay.”

I pulled the BMW over and locked it. I got my leather jacket out of the boot and zipped it up over my sweater and jeans.

“We go down the lane there and then we're back through the wood,” she said.

Her hair was blowing every which way round her face. She looked elemental and slightly scary and very beautiful.

“This way,” she said, and led me along a lane past a ruined farm with broken windows and a roof with half the tiles missing. The farm was pitched on a rocky red outcrop that bled down the cliff to the water. It was only about thirty feet above the surf and probably on rough days the spray would come right up. We walked through what once had been the living room and the kitchen. There were sodden newspapers and ciggies in the hearth. “One of Harry's cousins used to live here. But he upped and left for Canada,” she said. “It's one of my secret places, like the old salt mine.”

This one wasn't so secret. My cop's eyes took in discarded syringes, furniture broken up for firewood and an old piano which someone had taken a hammer to. The back garden led to the cliff path right down to the shore. The stone slabs were slippery and I almost went arse over tit in my gutties.

“So, you're from around here, aren't you?” I asked.

“Yeah, I'm from Mill Bay, just a few miles up the road.”

“Any family still there?”

“No. Folks are in Spain, older sister's in San Francisco. She wants me to come over to America. I suppose I should. There's nothing for me now in Ireland. Nothing for any of us here, really.”

“That's what everybody says.”

We reached the bottom of the track. There were more abandoned cottages down here, much older dwellings. “These are from the famine?” I asked, pointing towards them.

She nodded. “Harry says that this valley used to be bunged with people. Now it's all sheep and a few of his loyal retainers.”

We stepped onto the stony beach and she gathered mussels and whelks.

“Are you making a soup?” I asked, helping her.

“No, no, you just boil them up in a little chicken stock with some garlic. Delicious.”

“Really?”

“Don't sound so sceptical.”

In ten minutes her basket was half full. “I think that's enough,” she said. “We'll take a shortcut back through the forest.”

We walked along the beach past a long rusting jetty sticking out into the water.

“Harry's?” I asked pointing at it.

“Yeah, he keeps talking about renovating it, turning it into a marina, but he never will. All talk. Big plans.”

We trudged back up the hill along another trail.

“Initially I got the impression that your brother-in-law wasn't too impressed with me,” I said.

“Has he come around?”

“A little bit, I think.”

“Its not anything personal. This part of Islandmagee has never been fond of the law. Around here it's always been about
poaching and cattle raiding and rustling stolen cattle over to Scotland.”

We reached the edge of the wood. The trees were enormous and warped by age into strange patterns. Big elms and ashes, beeches and huge old oaks, living statues meditating in the rain. I smiled and I found to my surprise that she was holding my hand.

“They're talking to us,” she said.

“The trees?”

“You know what they're saying?”

“What?”

“Every leaf is a miracle. Every leaf on Earth is a miracle machine that keeps us all alive.”

“I think they're saying, ‘ooh, me aching back, from standing here all day'.”

She hit me on the shoulder. “You're all the same, aren't you?”

“Who? Cops? Men?”

There was a glint in her eye that I couldn't decipher. “Hey, do you want see something really interesting, Inspector Duffy?”

“Sure.”

“This way.”

We followed the woodland trail up a hill, catching the odd glimpse here and there of the motionless sea and beyond that, startlingly close, the Scottish coast.

“Down here,” she said, and led me to a hazel grove where one solitary oak was standing by itself. It was clearly very old, and covered with moss and mistletoe. Prayers and petitions had been placed in plastic bags and hung from the lower branches. Little offerings and notes were leaning against the trunk. Coins, keys, lockets, photographs, at least a dozen plastic baby dolls, wooden boxes, tea cups, a silver spoon, an intricately carved woman with a belly swollen by pregnancy.

A breeze stirred the notes and photographs.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked.

“Sure I do, it's a fairy tree.”

“You're not totally ignorant.”

“I'm from the Glens, love, I speak the Irish. I know things.”

“You're a Catholic?”

“You didn't know?”

“No.”

She nodded to herself. “Yeah, I can see it now … come on, let's get back.”

We walked back across the boggy pasture.

“Were Martin and Harry close?” I asked.

“I don't know about close. There was an age difference, but they respected each other. Martin admired Harry for taking on the debts and the burdens of the estate. Harry admired Martin for joining the Army, putting his life on the line.”

“Literally, as it turned out.”

“Yes,” she said, with a melancholy smile. “Even when Martin got Born Again, Harry didn't give him a hard time about it, and Harry's as atheist as they come.”

“Martin was a Born Again Christian?” I asked.

“Yes. About a year and a half ago there was a visiting preacher from America who came to the church, and Martin felt called.”

“But not you.”

“No.”

“He must have tried to make you see the light?”

“That was what so lovely about him. He knew I was more into all this …” she said, pointing back at the trees, and I bit my tongue before I said “bullshit”.

“He never bullied me with his faith. Let me go my own way.”

“Sounds like a good guy.”

“He was. He really was.”

We had reached the edge of the pasture and I could see the valley again. The big house, the cottages, the salt mine, my car parked along the road.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” she asked. “I'm making the
mussels. It's a shame to do all that for one.”

“Sounds great.”

We walked over the boggy field to the farm.

Cora started barking and Emma untied her.

“Why didn't you take her on your walk?”

“I used to, but she's incorrigible. She worries the sheep and she goes after the game. She goes for everything.”

Except IRA gunmen, apparently
.

A man waved to us from the road as he drove past in a Toyota pick-up. She waved back.

“Who's that?” I asked.

“Connie Wilson. One of Harry's tenants from down Ballylumford way. Connie's in bad shape. He tried to coax barley out of his land this year. Got rid of his flock and tried to grow barley. He hasn't been able to pay his ground rent, Harry says.”

“How many tenants does Harry have?”

“Quite a few. Twelve, thirteen. Only two or three can actually make a go of the land with the EEC subsidy; but with taxes Harry actually loses about five or six thousand pounds a year on the estate.”

“He loses money on the estate?”

“That's what he says.”

We went into the house and this time I noted that the door was unlocked.

“Farmers are always complaining. That's what they do best,” I said.

“Well, as long as he doesn't put up my rent.”

“He wouldn't do that to his sister-in-law.”

“You'd be surprised what men do when they're desperate.”

“No, I wouldn't.”

She nodded and brushed the hair from her face.

A harsh face. Youthful – but when she was older, bitterness would make her pinched and thin-lipped and shrewish.

“Can I help make anything?” I asked.

She smiled, almost laughed again. “No, no. There'll be no man in my kitchen. Settle yourself down in the living room. I'll get you a Harp.”

I sat on the rattan sofa and sipped the can of Harp. There were a few novels on the book shelf: Alexander Kent, Alastair MacLean, Patrick O'Brian. She'd got rid of Martin's clothes and his suitcase, but she'd kept some of his books.

“Mind if I use your phone?” I called into the kitchen.

“Go ahead. Although the reception down here is shocking. It sounds like you're phoning from the moon.”

I called the station, asked for Crabbie.