I Hear the Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty Read Free Book Online Page A

dowsed the flame.
    I climbed inside the Rover to wait for back up. We sat there for twenty-five minutes but Anderson’s lads never came so I told Matty that we’d write up the incident ourselves later since we had actual work to do this morning.
    “Unless – that is – this offends your forensic officer sensibilities and you feel compelled to go back to the scene of the shooting and gather shell cases, pieces of jerry can and other assorted evidence?”
    “Bollocks to that!” Matty said and we took the A2 north again. Unfortunately the petrol bomb had burned the rubber off one of the tyres and we limped back to Carrickfergus RUC to get a replacement Rover.
    This day was destined never to get going. Brennan was in his office now with a nasty look on his once handsome face. I tried to avoid him by sneaking to the incident room while Matty was signing out a new Rover, but the bugger saw and summoned me.
    “Hello sir, what are you doing in on a Saturday morning?” I said.
    “My duty, Duffy, my duty. What progress have you made on your murder victim?” he muttered, putting his feet up on his desk. He was wearing slippers and some kind of dressing gown and he hadn’t shaved. Had he been secretly here all night? Was there trouble on the home front? Should I offer him my big empty house on Coronation Road? Before even the possibilityof an Oscar & Felix scenario formed in my brain, I reconsidered: he was a Presbyterian and no doubt he’d take my offer as some kind of insult to his pride.
    “A couple of promising leads, sir. We have Customs and Immigration getting us a list of names of Americans who entered Northern Ireland in the last year and we’ll cross reference that with any who are the right demographic and have served with the First Infantry Division. I’m optimistic that we should be able to ID our victim pretty soon.”
    “Good,” he said with a yawn. “What else?”
    “We found a name in that suitcase our victim was locked up in. Matty found the name, I should say – good police work from him. It was an old address label and we’re going to follow up on that this morning.”
    “Excellent.”
    “If you don’t mind me saying, sir, if you’re looking for a place to stay I’ve got a big empty house on Coronation Road,” I blurted out despite myself.
    Brennan looked at his slippers, took his feet off the memo pad and hid them under his desk. He was pissed off that I’d accurately deduced his home situation. He had presence, did Brennan, like a fallen actor once famous for his Old Vic Claudius now doing Harp lager commercials on UTV.
    “You know what you could do for me, Duffy?”
    “What, sir?”
    “You could build a fucking time machine, go back forty-five seconds and shut the fuck up after I say the word ‘excellent’, okay?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you look bloody terrible. What’s the matter with you? The flu?”
    “No, sir, Matty and I were out in a Rover and someone threw a petrol bomb. I had to go out and extinguish it.”
    “Someone threw a petrol bomb at ya? Did you write it up?”
    “No, sir, not yet.”
    “See that you do.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Have you read the papers this morning, Sean?” he said in a less abrasive voice.
    “No.”
    “Listened to the news?”
    “No, sir.”
    “You have to stay abreast of current events, Inspector!”
    “Yes, sir. Anything interesting happening?”
    “General Galtieri has decided that his personal manifesto, like all the very best manifestos, needs to be unleashed on the world in a rainy windswept bog, filled with sheep shit.”
    “General who? What?”
    “Argentina has invaded the Falkland Islands.”
    “The Falkland Islands?”
    “The Falkland Islands.”
    “I’m not really any the wiser, sir.”
    “They’re in the South Atlantic. According to the Mail they’ve got ten thousand troops on there by now.”
    “Shite.”
    “You know what that means for us, don’t you? Thatcher’s going to have to take them back. It’s