I Hear the Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty

Author:Adrian McKinty [McKinty, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2013-01-28T13:00:00+00:00

17: THE TREASURY MAN

I dropped Reserve Constable Sandra Pollock back at Larne RUC and drove on to Carrickfergus in the Beemer. Somewhere in County Antrim an Army Puma helicopter had been shot at with either an RPG or a surface to air missile and as a result the highways and byways were flooded with angry soldiers in green fatigues idiotically stopping every third car. Of course, I was one of the lucky stopees. I showed the squaddies my warrant card but they ignored it. Two of them pointed FN FAL rifles at me while their mates went through my boot.

“What’s this?” an acerbic Welshman asked me, holding up a flare gun.

“A flare gun.”

“What’s it for?”

“For firing flares.”

This could have gone for a while or until one of Taffy’s mates shot me, but they decided to let me go instead.

Back in Carrick the peelers were yukking it up over a fake version of the Belfast Telegraph that a Republican group must have printed up samizdat fashion. One of the headlines was “Polar Bears Capture Falklands Task Force”, which wasn’t even geographically astute.

“Take a look at this, Duffy,” Sergeant Quinn said.

“Uh, no thanks, some of us have work to do,” I said pointedly.

In the CID incident room McCrabban had news. After a bit of prodding the Consul General in Belfast had sent us a second, slightly lengthier FBI file on Bill O’Rourke. We knew most of it already. O’Rourke had worked for the IRS his entire life. He was not involved in any fraudulent or other criminal activities and as far as the FBI could see his only offence was that speeding ticket the local cops had told us about. The report was really rather curt. Three paragraphs. A couple of spelling mistakes. It was signed by a Special Agent Anthony Grimm. Something about it still didn’t feel quite right.

“Maybe we should talk to him,” I said.

“Who?”

“Grimm. Sounds like another fake name to me.”

“You and your fake names. You’re still not happy?” Crabbie asked.

“Clearly they did the bare minimum here. I want you to lean on the Consul again and see if anything else squeaks out,” I said.

“The consulate is fed up with us already,” McCrabban complained.

“You’ll do your best, I’m sure,” I insisted.

I filled him and Matty in about my day’s adventures in Larne and Islandmagee. While they were digesting that I told them about the anonymous note and the verse from the Bible, the mysterious woman and her arrest.

“Yeah. So what do you think, lads? Is it something or is it nothing?”

Matty was unimpressed. In his experience women were capable of any kind of madness just to get in your head, but McCrabban lapped it up, liking anything which involved Biblical exegesis.

“Have a wee think, boys, will ya?” I said, and went to the kitchen, made three mugs of tea, got some chocolate biscuits and brought them back to the lads.

“Well? Any brainwaves?” I asked.

“The McAlpine angle seems more and more like a distraction. The note is slightly more interesting, but not much.

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