“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 either that or resign. She’ll be sending out an invasion fleet. They’ll be getting troops from everywhere. I imagine we’ll lose half a dozen regiments from here.”

“That’s going to stretch us thin.”

About half of the anti-terrorist and border patrols in Northern Ireland were conducted by the British Army; we, the police, could not easily pick up the slack.

Brennan rubbed his face. “It’s bad timing. The IRA’s gearing up for a campaign and we’re going to be losing soldiers just when they’re surging. We could be in for an even trickier few months than we thought.”

I nodded.

“And spare a thought for what will happen if it’s a debacle. If Thatcher doesn’t get the islands back.”

“She resigns?”

“She resigns, the government collapses and there’s a general election. If Labour wins, and they will, that’s it, mate – the ball game is fucking over.”

The Labour Party under Michael Foot had a policy of unilateral withdrawal from Ireland, which meant that they would withdraw all British soldiers and civil servants. Ireland would be united at last under Dublin rule which was all fine and dandy except that the Irish Army had only a few battalions and it was a laughable idea that they would be able to keep the peace. What it would mean would be full-scale civil war with a million well-armed, geographically tightly knit Protestants against the rest of the island’s four million Catholics. There would be a nice little bloodbath until the US Marines arrived.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.

“Best not to.”

He picked up his copy of the Daily Mail.

The headline was one word and screamed “Invasion!”

I noticed that the date on the paper was April 3rd.

“Are you sure this isn’t all some kind of belated April Fool’s joke?”

“It’s no joke, Duffy, the BBC are carrying it, all the papers, everybody.”

“Okay.”

“We won’t get our knickers in a twist. We’ll take all this one day at a time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Back to work. Get out there and wrap up this murder investigation of yours.”

“Yes, sir.”

I pushed back the chair and stood.

“One more thing, Duffy. ‘A chaperone for a conquistador perhaps’?” he said, tapping his crossword puzzle with his pencil and then thoughtfully chewing the end of it.

It was easy enough. “I think it’s an anagram, sir,” I said.

“An anagram of what, Duffy?”

“Cortes,” I said trying to lead him to the solution but he still didn’t get it and he knew that I knew the answer.

“Just tell me, Duffy!” he said.

“Escort, sir.”

“What? Oh, yes, of course … now piss off.”

As I was leaving the office I saw Matty struggling to get a long knitted scarf out of his locker.

“No scarves. Accept it. The Tom Baker era is over, mate,” I told him.

Hard rain along the A2.

Matty driving the Land Rover.

Me riding shotgun, literally: a Winchester M12 pump-action across my lap in case we got ambushed on one of the back roads.

I put a New Order cassette in the player. They’d gone all disco but it wasn’t as bad as you would have thought.

“Did you hear the news, Matty?”

“What news?”

“You have to stay up with current events, Constable. The Falklands have been invaded.”

“The what?”

“Argentina has invaded the Falkland Islands.”

“Jesus, when was this?”

“Yesterday.”

“First the Germans and now the bloody Argentinians.”

“You’re thinking of the Channel Islands, mate.”

“Where’s the Falklands then?”

“Uhm, somewhere sort of south, I think.”

“I suppose that’s Spurs fucked now, isn’t it?”

“How so?”

“Half their team’s from bloody Argentina. They’ll be well off their game.”

“The Chief Inspector wants us to think about the geo-political consequences.”

“Aye, geo-politics is one thing, but football’s football, isn’t it?” Matty said, putting things into a proper perspective.

5: THE WIDOW M C ALPINE

We drove through the town of Whitehead and hugged the shore of Larne Lough until we were on Islandmagee. Islandmagee was an odd place. A peninsula about six miles north-east of Carrickfergus with Larne Lough on one side and the Irish Sea on the other. It was near the major metropolitan centre and ferry port of Larne, yet it was a world away. When you drove onto Islandmagee it was like going back to an Ireland of a hundred or even two hundred years before. The people were country people, suspicious of strangers, and for me their accent and dialect were at times difficult to understand. I got it when they used the occasional word in Irish but often I found them speaking a form of lowland Scots straight out of Robert Burns. They almost sounded like Americans from the high country of Kentucky or Tennessee.

I’d been there several times. Always in my civvies, as I’d heard that they didn’t like peelers snooping around. As Matty drove I unfolded the ordnance survey map and found Ballyharry. It was halfway up the lough shore, opposite the old cement works in Magheramorne. On the map it was a small settlement, a dozen houses at the most.

We turned off the Shore Road onto the Ballyharry Road. A bump chewed the New Order tape so I flipped through the radio stations. All the English ones were talking about the Falklands but Irish radio wasn’t interested in Britain’s colonial wars and instead were interviewing a woman who had seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary who had told her that the sale of contraceptive devices in Dublin would bring a terrible vengeance from God and his host of Angels.

The Ballyharry Road led to the Mill Bay Road: small farms, whitewashed cottages, stone walls, sheep, rain. I looked for Red Hall but didn’t see it.

Finally there was a small private single-laned track that led into the hills that had a gate and a sign nailed to an old beech tree which said “Red Hall Manor, Private, No Trespassing”, and underneath that another sign which said “No Coursing or Shooting Without Express Permission”.

“You think this is the place?” I asked, looking up the road.

Matty examined the map and shrugged. “We might as well give it a go.”

We drove past a small wood and into a broad valley.

There were farms dotted about the landscape, some little more than ruins.

A sign by one of them said Red Hall Cottage and Matty slammed on the brakes. It was a small farm surrounded by flooded, boggy fields and a couple of dozen miserable sheep. The building itself was a whitewashed single-storey house with a few cement and breeze block buildings in the rear. It looked a right mess. Most of the outbuildings had holes in the exterior walls and the farmhouse could have done with a coat of paint. The roof was thatched and covered with rusting wire. The car out front was a Land Rover Defender circa 1957.

“Well, I don’t think we’re dealing with an international hitman, that’s for sure,” I said.

“Unless he’s got all his money overseas in a Swiss Bank.”

“Aye.”

“Maybe you should go in first, boss, and I’ll stay here by the radio in case there’s any shooting.”

“Get out.”

“All right,” he said, with resignation.

We parked the Rover and walked through the muddy farmyard to the house.

“My shoes are getting ruined,” Matty said, treading gingerly around the muck and potholes. He was wearing expensive Nike gutties and unflared white jeans. Is that what the kids were sporting these days?

An Alsatian snarled at us, struggling desperately at the edge of a long piece of rope.

“Yon bugger wants to rip our throats out,” Matty said.

The chickens pecking all around us seemed unconcerned by the dog but he did look like a nasty brute.