Read I Hear the Sirens in the Street for Free Online

so what do you want me to work on now?”
    “Is that suitcase still around?”
    “Of course. It’s in the evidence room.”
    “See if you can find out where it came from, how many were sold in Northern Ireland, that kind of thing.”
    “What good will that do?” he said with an attitude.
    “Matty, in the words of William Shakespeare: just fucking do it, ya wee shite.”
    “Will do, boss,” he replied and went to the evidence room to unwrap the suitcase from its plastic covering.
    We called garden centres all over Ireland for the rest of the afternoon. We got nothing. Few had heard of rosary pea and no one had a record of anyone growing it or requesting seeds.
    I phoned the General Post Office in Belfast and asked if they had any records of seeds being seized or coming through the mail. They said that they had no idea and would call me back.
    McCrabban called UK customs to ask them the same question and after going through a couple of flunkies a “police liaison officer” told him that importing such seeds was not illegal or subject to duty so customs would have no interest in them.
    The post office phoned back with the same story.
    I called Dick Savage in Special Branch. Dick had taken chemistry at Queen’s University about the same time as me. He wasn’t a high flyer but he’d written several surprisingly acute internal memos on methods of suicide and how to distinguish a true suicide from a murder disguised to look like one.
    Dick had heard of Abrin but had never heard of it being used in a poisoning anywhere in the British Isles. He told me he’d look into it.
    I went into see Chief Inspector Brennan and broke the bad news that our John Doe was definitely American but that we had a good chance of finding out who he was through the immigration records.
    “When we’ve got his name we should inform the US Consulate. And we’ll probably need the Consulate’s help cross referencing our list of names against veterans of the First Infantry Division.”
    Brennan nodded. “I suppose you want me to call them.”
    “Better coming from you, sir. You’re the head of station. More official, all that jazz.”
    “You just don’t want to do it.”
    “Could be a difficult phone call.”
    “And?”
    “I’m feeling a bit fragile today, sir. I may just have been dumped by my girlfriend.”
    “That doctor bint you were seeing?”
    “Aye.”
    “I could see that coming. She was out of your league, son.”
    “Will you make the call, sir?”
    “It’ll be the start of a shitstorm … a dead American – as if we don’t have enough problems.”
    I stood there and let weary resignation over come his weathered face like melted lard over a cast-iron skillet. He sighed dramatically. “All right. I suppose I’ll do it for you, like I do everything around here. You’re sure he’s a Yank?”
    I told him about the tattoo.
    “All right, good. Scram. And get Carol’s cake, ready. She’s in in half an hour.”
    When Carol came in at three we had her party.
    Tea, cake, party hats, both types of lemonade.
    Carol had been on planet Earth for sixty years. She ate the cake, drank the tea, smiled and said how wonderful it all was. Brennan gave her a toast and it was Brennan, not Carol, who told us the story of her first week on the job in 1941 when a Luftwaffe Heinkel 111 dropped a stick of 250 kilograms bombs on the station. We’d all heard the tale before but it was a reteller. The only person who’d been hurt that day was a prisoner in the cells who broke an arm. Course, up in Belfast, where the rest of the Heinkel squadron had gone, people were less fortunate.
    The sun came out and the day brightened to such an extent that a few us spilled out onto the fire escape and started slipping rum into the Coke. A pretty female reservist with a tiny waist and a weird Geordieland accent asked me if it was true that “I had killed three men with my bare hands”.
    She was creeping me out so I made myself scarce, gave Carol a kiss,