On the inside the Dunmurry DeLorean factory dazzled me. Perhaps it was just amazing seeing any kind of industrial activity going on in Ulster. The assembly line was clean and efficient. Raw metal sheets and engines went in one end, aluminium gull-winged DeLorean sports cars came out the other. The administrative offices overlooked the factory floor (DeLorean was big on worker/management cooperation) and I could have stood there all day watching the engines getting mounted and the transmissions going in. It really was incredible. DeLorean had brought a successful industry to Belfast in the heart of the Troubles. He had done what everybody said couldn’t be done and Dunmurry was the only place in Ulster where heavy industry worked, where people actually made things.

Three thousand men were employed here and maybe twice that in subsidiary trades. That was nine thousand men in West Belfast who wouldn’t join the terrorists.

Everybody loved DeLorean: the local press, the British Government, the Northern Ireland office, the Irish government … Everybody, that is, except for a few privileged American auto journalists who had actually driven the DeLorean and said that it was clunky, unreliable and sloppily put together by an inexperienced workforce.

These criticisms had publicly been dismissed by John DeLorean, who trusted his own judgement, not the judgement of “know nothing journalists”. He, after all, was the “man who had single-handedly saved GM” and by implication had therefore saved America.

On TV his persona was half hard-headed businessman, half televangelist. In person he was trim, handsome, soft spoken, and for our interview he was wearing a conservative, unshowy blue suit.

His hair was more grey than black. He had an interesting face: a long aquiline nose that didn’t really go with his squat peasant eyebrows and cheeks. It was a tanned, handsome visage that both radiated intelligence and a kind of weary, punchy vitality.

As I entered the office he was sitting in a “Helsinki” Java wood mahogany armchair reading a report, tutting to himself as he marked it up with a yellow highlighter.

I liked his shoes – they were hand-made Oxfords in a soft brown leather.

His socks were red which I also liked.

He smelled of cologne and cigars.

There was an engraved sign on his desk that said “Genius At Work”.

“Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrickfergus RUC,” a tall attractive secretary called Gloria reminded him when I came in.

He got up and shook my hand.

“Inspector Duffy. Pleased to meet you. I take it this is about the fundraising ball?” he said, with a gleaming and rather charming smile.

“No, this is about a rather different matter,” I said, momentarily thrown.

“Oh?”

His big eyebrows knitted together and I knew that Gloria was going to catch it after I left.

“I’m investigating the murder of an Army captain called Martin McAlpine.”

DeLorean shrugged. “Never heard of him, should I have?”

“He was an intelligence officer. He was murdered late last year, apparently by the IRA.”

“What’s the connection to us?” DeLorean said.

“We went through Captain McAlpine’s notes and an associate of his was keeping an eye on someone who was spying on this factory. It could be unrelated to Captain McAlpine’s murder but I thought I’d follow up on the lead.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Would there be a reason why anyone would be interested in spying on your car plant?”

DeLorean laughed at that. “Of course! Haven’t you ever heard of industrial espionage?”

“Well, yes, I—”

“They’ve been doing it to me my whole career!” he said. He got to his feet and pointed through the plate-glass windows to the factory floor. “You see what we’re doing down there? We are radically re-engineering the model of American sports-car manufacture. In Detroit they are terrified. If I can be blunt, Inspector Duffy, I have them shitting in their pants. Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota. Spying? Of course they’re spying. I expect no less of them. They have no original ideas. They have to steal them from me!”

“Would they kill to get information about your plant?”

DeLorean smiled and nodded. “Nothing would surprise me in this country. Nothing. You have no idea the kind of deals I’ve had to do with all sorts of people to get this factory up and running. Pretty unsavoury characters, I can tell you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you get my drift, Inspector?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“No, nothing would surprise me, but as for actual secrets … Well, the blueprints of the DeLorean are well known and have been in the public domain for years. Our production design is also well known, even our factory layout is common knowledge. We don’t have that many secrets as such …”

“New models or anything like that?” I inquired.

“Oh, sure. I’m always sketching, planning, scheming, but I don’t keep that stuff here.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“In my house in Belfast, or my place in Michigan.”

“Have you had any burglaries? Anything like that?”

“No. Certainly not in my place here. The house in Michigan’s empty but I have a security firm looking after it. They would have told me.”

“What about poaching of company employees, that sort of thing, I’ve heard that—”

“No, no, no, you’re barking up the wrong tree, Inspector,” DeLorean said, becoming animated. “The reason people work for me is that they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. All my people have already been offered more money elsewhere, but they want to be part of a company they can be proud of. No, my staff is loyal. I wouldn’t put it past your local thugs to try and kidnap someone who works here, but they’re not leaving to join fucking Ford.”

“So you can’t think of any reason why someone might be nosing around the plant?”

“A million reasons! Desperation! Panic! They know I’m going to wipe the floor with them. But they can’t stop it! Ten years from now we’re going to be the biggest car company in the word. Not just sports cars. Light trucks. Mid-sized economy sedans. You name it. Electric cars. You should see my plans for electric vehicles.”

“And it’s all going to be headquartered right here in Belfast?”

“You bet!”

He looked at his watch. Our time was almost up.

I gave him my card. “If anything out of the ordinary happens, I would certainly appreciate a call.”

“It depends what you mean by out of the ordinary. In Belfast the ‘out of the ordinary’ happens every day!”

I nodded. “Well, if you think of anything, please, get in touch …”

“Sure thing,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’ll see you out.”

He walked me across the office, opened the door and shook my hand again. The secretary got up from her desk to whisk me away from her boss in case I proved intractable. There was already another man waiting on the sofa. He was wearing a leather jacket, had a thin black tie, messy brown hair and he was smoking a Camel. Everything about him said “reporter”.

DeLorean disengaged my hand

“Have a good day, Inspector.”

“I will.”

The secretary smiled at me. She was a blonde, classic high cheekbones, blue eyeshadow, big hair, very American.

She put up a finger to prevent me from speaking and addressed the man on the sofa.

“You can go in now, Mr Burns.”

“My photographer hasn’t showed up,” Burns said in an East End accent. “Can we wait a few minutes?”

“If you want to talk to Mr DeLorean you’ll have to go in now, Mr Burns, Mr DeLorean has another meeting at twelve fifteen.”

“All right,” Burns said.

The secretary pressed a button and formally announced him. “Mr Jack Burns from the Daily Mail.”

Burns went into DeLorean’s office.

It was unusual to hear an American woman’s voice in Northern Ireland, and I tried to think if I’d ever heard one here before. I doubted it. The American news networks didn’t send their female reporters to war zones.