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Authors: Adrian McKinty

Gun Street Girl

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ALSO BY ADRIAN McKINTY

The Cold Cold Ground
I Hear the Sirens in the Street
In the Morning I'll Be Gone
The Sun Is God

Published 2015 by Seventh Street Books
®
, an imprint of Prometheus Books

Gun Street Girl
. Copyright © 2015 by Adrian McKinty. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopy­ing, re­cord­ing, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, ex­cept in the case of brief quotations em­bodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

First published in 2015 by Serpent's Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd.,
3A Exmouth House, Pine Street, London EC1R 0JH; www.serpentstail.com

Excerpt from Philip Larkin's
Jazz Writings
:
© Philip Larkin,
Jazz Writings
, Bloomsbury Continuum Publishing Plc.

Cover photo © Matt Frankel
Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke

Inquiries should be addressed to
Seventh Street Books
59 John Glenn Drive
Amherst, New York 14228
VOICE: 716–691–0133
FAX: 716–691–0137
WWW.SEVENTHSTREETBOOKS.COM

19 18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

McKinty, Adrian.

Gun street girl : a Detective Sean Duffy novel / Adrian McKinty.
     pages ; cm

“First published: London: Serpent's Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd., 2015.”

ISBN 978-1-63388-000-9 (softcover) — ISBN 978-1-63388-001-6 (ebook)

I. Title.

PS3563.C38322G86 2015
813'.54—dc23

2014039084

Printed in the United States of America

I do not yet know what your gift is to me, but mine to you
is an awesome one: you may keep your days and nights.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Blue Tigers,” 1983

CONTENTS

1: A Scanner Darkly

2: A Problem with Mr. Dwyer

3: Murder Was the Case That They Gave Me

4: The New Blood

5: A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again

6: Tide Burial

7: The Girl in Interview Room 1

8: Police Station Blues

9: Contact High

10: The Offer

11: The Suicides Are Piling Up

12: Over the Water

13: Gun Street Girl

14: Even the Wasps Cannot Find My Eyes

15: Gottfried Habsburg

16: The Third Man

17: Interrogating Deirdre Ferris

18: Nigel Vardon

19: Special Branch Make a Scene

20: Is That All There Is to a Fire?

21: The Quiet American

22: Davenport Blues

23: Stasis

24: The Mysterious Mr. Connolly

25: Convincing Nigel Vardon

26: The Confidential Telephone

27: Our Business Now Is North

28: Blue Tigers

29: Flow My Tears the Policeman Said

Epilogue: A Year and a Half Later

Afterword

About . . . Adrian McKinty

1: A SCANNER DARKLY

S
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
 . . .

Silence.

Sssssssssssssssssssss
 . . .

Silence.

“I can't get it, sir.”

“Keep trying.”

“Yes, sir.”

Midnight.

Midnight and all the agents are asleep, and on the beach there are only disaffected, cold policemen silently sharing smokes and gazing through binoculars at the black Atlantic, hoping to catch the first glimpse of the running lights on what has become known to the ironists in Special Branch as the
Ship of Death
.

Ssssssssssssssssssss
 . . .

Drizzle.

Static.

Oscillating waves of sound. A fragment of Dutch. A DJ from RFI informing the world with breathless excitement that “
EuroDisney sera construit à Paris
.”

We're on a beach near Derry on the wild north coast of Ireland. It's November 1985. Reagan's the President, Thatcher's the PM, Gorbachev has recently taken the reins of the USSR. The number-one album in the country is Sade's
Promise
, and Jennifer Rush's torch song “The Power of Love” is still at the top of the charts where it has remained for a dispiritingly long time . . .

Sssssssss
and then finally the young constable in charge of the shortwave scanner finds the radio frequency of the
Our Lady of Knock
.

“I've got them! They're coming in, sir!” he says.

Yes, this is what we were waiting for. The weather is perfect, the moon is up, and the tide is on the ebb. “Aye, we have the bastards now!” one of the Special Branch men matters.

I say nothing. I have been brought in purely as a courtesy because one of my sources contributed a tip to this complicated international operation. It is not my place to speak or offer advice. Instead I pat my revolver and flip back through my notebook to the place where I have taped a postcard of Guido Reni's
Michael Tramples Satan
. I discreetly make the sign of the cross and, in a whisper, ask for the continuing protection of St Michael, the Archangel, the patron saint of policemen. I am not sure I believe in the existence of St Michael the Archangel, the patron saint of peelers, but I am a member of the RUC, which is the police force with the highest mortality rate in the Western world, so every little bit of talismanic assistance helps. I close the notebook and light a cigarette for some evil-eyed goon who says he's from Interpol but who looks like a spook from 140 Gower Street, come to keep an eye on the Paddies and make sure they don't make a hash of the whole thing.

He mutters a thank-you and passes over a flask which turns out to contain high-quality gin.

“Cheers,” I say, take a swig, and pass it back.

“Chin, chin,” he says. Yeah . . . MI5.

A breeze moves the clouds from the face of the moon. Somewhere in the car park a dog barks.

The policemen wait. The spooks wait. The men on the boat wait. All of us tumbling into the future together.

We watch the waves and the chilly, black infinity where sky and sea merge somewhere off Malin Head. Finally at 12:30 someone shouts, “There! I see her!” and we are ordered off the beach. Most of us retreat behind the dunes and a few of the wiser officers slink all the way back to the Land Rovers to warm up over spirit stoves and hot whiskies. I find myself behind a sandbar with two women in raincoats who appear to be Special Branch Intel.

“This is so exciting, isn't it?” the brunette says.

“It is.”

“Who are you?” her friend asks me in a funny Cork accent that sounds like a donkey falling down a well.

I tell her, but as soon as the word “Inspector” has passed my lips I can see that she has lost interest. There are assistant chief constables and chief superintendents floating about tonight and I'm way down the food chain.

“About time!” someone says and we watch the
Our Lady of Knock
navigate its way into the channel and toward the surf. It's an odd-looking vessel. A small converted cargo boat, perhaps, or a trawler with the pulleys and chains removed. It doesn't really look seaworthy, but somehow it's made it all the way across three thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean.

About two hundred meters from the shore it drops anchor, and, after some unprofessional dithering, a Zodiac is lowered into the water. Five men climb aboard the speedboat and it zooms eagerly toward the beach. As soon as they touch dry land the case will come under the jurisdiction of the RUC, even though all five gunrunners are American citizens and the ship has come from Boston.

Skip, skip, skip goes the little Zodiac, oblivious of rocks or hidden reefs of which there are many along this stretch of coast. It miraculously avoids them all and zips up the surf onto the beach. The men get out and start looking around them for errant dog walkers or lovers or other witnesses. Spotting no one, they shout, “Yes!” and “Booyah!” One man gets on his knees and, emulating the Holy Father, kisses the sand. He has dedication, this lad—the tarmac at Dublin Airport is one thing, but this gravelly, greasy beach downwind from one of Derry's main sewage plants is quite another matter.

They open a bottle and begin passing it around. One of them is wearing a John Lennon sweatshirt. These young American men who have come across the sea to bring us death in the form of mortars and machine guns.

“Yanks, eh? They think they can do what they like, don't they?” one of the Special Branch officers says.

I resist the temptation to pile on. Although these Irish American gunrunners are undoubtedly naive and ignorant, I understand where they're coming from. Patriotism is a hard disease to eradicate, and ennui stamps us all . . .

The men on the beach begin to look at their watches and wonder what to do next. They are expecting a lorry driver called Nick McCready and his son Joe, both of whom are already in custody.

One of them lights a flare and begins waving it above his head.

“What are they going to do next? Set off fireworks?” someone grumbles behind me.

“What are
we
going to do next?” I say back, loud enough for the Assistant Chief Constable to hear. I mean, how much longer are we going to have to wait here? If there are guns on the boat we have them, and if there are no guns on the boat we don't have them, but either way the time to arrest them is now.

“Quiet in the ranks!” someone says.

If I was in charge I'd announce our presence with a loudspeaker and spotlights and patiently explain the situation:
You are surrounded, your vessel cannot escape the lough, please put your hands up and come quietly 
. . .

But I'm not in charge and that is not what happens. This being an RUC-Gardai-FBI-MI5-Interpol operation we are headed for debacle . . . A high-ranking, uniformed policeman begins marching toward the men on the beach like Alec Guinness at the beginning of
Bridge on the River Kwai
.

“What the hell is he doing?” I say to myself.

The gunrunners don't see him yet and the one with a flare is making it do figures of eight in the air to the delight of the others.

The uniformed officer reaches the top of a dune. “All right, chaps, the game's up!” he announces in a loud
Dixon of Dock Green
voice.

All right, chaps, the game's up
?

The Americans immediately draw their weapons and run for the Zodiac. One of them takes a potshot at the uniformed peeler, making him hit the deck.
I say, chaps, that's a little unsporting
, he's probably thinking.

“Put your hands up!” another copper belatedly yells through a megaphone.

The Americans fire blindly into the darkness with an impressive arsenal that includes shotguns and assault rifles. Some of the policemen begin to shoot back. The night is lit up by white flares and red muzzle bursts and arcs of orange tracer.

Yes, now we have well and truly crossed the border into the realm of international screw-up.

“Lay down your arms!” the copper with the megaphone shouts with an air of desperation.

A police marksman brings down one of the Yanks with a bullet in the shoulder, but the gunrunners still don't give up. They're confused, seasick, exhausted. They have no idea who is shooting at them or why. Two of them begin pushing the Zodiac back toward the surf. They don't realize that they're outnumbered ten to one, and that if by some miracle they do make it back to the
Our Lady of Knock
, they're just going to get boarded by the Special Boat Service.

BOOK: Gun Street Girl
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