The Cold Cold Ground sdt-1

by Adrian McKinty

  I went by a DeLorean broken down on the Scotch Quarter, gull wings askew, steam coming from its rear engine, which did not bode well.

  The Dobbins was deserted and I got a seat next to the massive sixteenth-century fireplace. I ordered a Guinness, took out my notebook and looked over my bullet points from the day. Twelve pages of notes. Lots of questions marks and exclamation points. This was a case already spiralling out of control.

  I nursed my pint until 9.30.

  She didn’t show.

  “The hell with it!” I said, got up and began walking home along West Street.

  “Sergeant Duffy!” she called out.

  I turned. She was wearing old jeans and a red blouse, ratty sneakers. She hadn’t dressed up and her hair was wet. Spur of the moment decision?

  We went back in. I got her a gin and tonic. Another pint for me.

  “Look, it’s a wee bit late in the game to ask this but …” I began.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s your name?”

  She laughed. “I must have told you.”

  “Nope.”

  “Laura.”

  “Mine’s Sean.”

  “I know. Although I bet they all call you the fenian or the left footer or something, don’t they?”

  “Who? The other cops?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not like that. At least not to my face. The constables call me ‘Duffy’ or ‘Sergeant Duffy’. I’m Sean to everybody else except Carol who calls me Mr Sean cos she’s from Fermanagh. I’m only mildly exotic. Catholic hiring has gone up since Mrs Thatcher seized the reins. Even the dyed-in-the-wool bigots are going to have to get used to us soon enough.”

  She seemed unconvinced.

  “I’m CID,” I further explained. “Believe me, that’s more of an issue. Some divisions are more important than others and detective versus beat cop is the historic peeler schism.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Did you have any trouble being an RC in medical school?”

  “You knew I was a Catholic? My name’s Laura, I’m a doctor, how could you-”

  I pointed to her crucifix. “Proddies don’t wear those unless they’ve got a morbid fear of vampires.”

  “You don’t see many Catholic policemen. Your father was a peeler?”

  “God, no. A clerk, then a country solicitor. Yours?”

  “Country doctor.”

  She had taken precisely one sip of her gin and tonic when her pager went.

  She found a telephone.

  She came back ashen.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The Peacock Room Restaurant, South Belfast,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “A bomb?”

  “Incendiary.”

  “How many?”

  “Six burned alive. A dozen more in the Royal Victoria Hospital. The coroner asked me if I would help ID the victims in the morning.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What can you say?”

  She downed her gin and tonic. I took her hand to stop it shaking. It was cold.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  Back on West Street it was drizzling and we could hear the sound of rioting in Belfast again, distant and ominous.

  “Walk me home,” she said.

  I walked her to one of the new flats on Governor’s Place opposite the castle. We put on the TV news. All three channels were carrying it. It was a blast bomb that had been placed next to an oil drum filled with petrol and sugar — IRA napalm. The victims hadn’t had a chance.

  After five minutes she turned off the tube.

  “I’ve been to that restaurant,” she said.

  She began to cry.

  I held her.

  “Will you stay?” she asked.

  I stayed.

  Later. Her bedroom overlooking the harbour. Laura, asleep in the moonlight. The harbour lights dead on the black water. A Soviet coal boat tied up along the wharf. Six people. Six people trying to seize a piece of normality in an abnormal world. Burned alive by incendiaries.

  Tiocfadh ar la. Up the revolution. Our day will come.

  I wondered why that particular target. Maybe they hadn’t been paying their protection money? Maybe they had but it had been full of Belfast’s high society and it was just too tempting to pass up. And then there was the whole business of the oil drum, manoeuvring that into place implied careful planning and possibly someone on the inside …

  I sighed — all these were questions for a different team of detectives. I had my own problems. The sheet had fallen off

  Laura’s back. I looked at her long legs tucked up beneath her breasts. I fixed the sheet, slipped out of the bed, pulled on my jeans and sweater. I dressed, grabbed her keys from the dresser and went outside to have a cigarette.

  Water. Reflections. Pencil lines of light.

  The silence of 3 a.m. Sporadic gunfire. Choppers.

  I could see it even if no one else wanted to. This was the Gotterdammerung. This was a time of opportunity for people who wished to walk on the grass, to embrace the irrational, to hug the dark.

  I walked down to the harbour’s edge.

  Somewhere deep down I heard music. Not Puccini. Schubert’s piano trio in e-flat. His opus 100. The fourth movement where the piano takes the melody …

  I looked at Laura’s apartment from the outside. I looked at the sleeping town.

  The phosphorescence of bulb and beam.

  You’re out here too, aren’t you, friend? You’re awake and wondering about me. Have the peelers got your message? Do they know what’s in store?

  We know.

  I know.

  I walked back to the apartment. I put the key in the lock.

  Quiet.

  The hall.

  Quiet.

  The bedroom.

  Quiet.

  “Where have you be-”

  “Sssshhh. Sleep.”

  “Sleep?”

  “Yes. Sleep.”

  And I got in beside her and we moved from one dream to another …

  4: BONEYBEFORE

  I could smell coffee. She cleared her throat. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was wearing my shirt, no kacks and she was holding a mug of Nescafe.

  She smiled but she didn’t look happy.

  I didn’t envy her her task today up at that awful morgue in Belfast.

  “Thanks,” I said and took the cup.

  “I didn’t know how you liked it so I just made it with milk and two sugars.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “You want some breakfast?”

  “If you’re having something.”

  “It’s already made, come and join me in the living room.”

  “Ok,” I said.

  She took off my shirt and laid it on the bed.

  “And get a move on,” she said.

  I admired her small breasts, trim, sexy body and pert arse as she walked away. She was like one of the girls you’d meet out in the country somewhere, you on a bike covered in mud spattle and she trotting past on some massive chestnut hunter. I liked that image. And I liked her. But it was evident that I was being given the bum’s rush.

  She wanted me to dress, eat and go.

  I pulled on me kit and shoes and followed her into the lounge.

  The place looked good in daylight. Very chic: blurry black and white photographs, pastel shades, German furniture and a kitsch kitty cat lamp (at least I hoped it was kitsch). The view through the big windows was of the harbour and the twelfth-century castle.

  She’d made porridge and an Ulster fry.

  My porridge came in a packet, hers had been slow cooked for twenty minutes with full cream milk, salt and brown sugar and was so thick that you could stand a spoon vertical in it.

  It was damn good.

  The fry was fine too, sizzling: sausage, egg, bacon, soda bread and potato bread. After this I’d last until dinner or my coronary — whichever came first.

&nb
sp; A doctor, a looker and a cook.

  She was a catch.

  “So what’s your home number?” I asked as I started on the last egg.

  “Uh, you won’t need it. We won’t be doing this again.”

  I looked for the kid, but there was no kid. She was serious.

  “What? Why?”

  “It was a momentary … weakness. I am not the kind of girl who bangs on the first date.”

  She was looking at me, her eyes wide and her face frowning. It was, no doubt, an expression she had practised in the mirror for telling patients bad news.

  “Neither am I,” I said.

  She gave me a thin smile. “I’m no slag. And it’s not just that.”

  “Something about me?” I wondered aloud.

  “No. Not you. Timing. I just got out of a long-term relationship. It wouldn’t be fair on you.”

  “I’d be the rebound guy?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  She shook her head. “No. No. It’s all too soon. You understand, right? And we’ll be friends. I’m sure I’ll see you around, on a, uh, professional basis.”

  She put out her hand again for that odd formal handshake.

  I was having none of it.

  I pulled her close and she was having none of that.

  “No,” she said and shoved.

  She got up from the table, went to the radio and turned it on. Juice Newton was singing “Queen of Hearts”. It was a song I had grown to hate over the previous week.

  I regarded her with amazement and she returned my gaze with a fixed, impatient look of her own.

  “I suppose you think you’re better than me,” I very nearly said but didn’t.

  I finished my tea in a gulp.

  “All right. I imagine I’ll see you around then, Dr Cathcart,” I said, pushing the chair back.

  “Yes,” she said, not looking at me now.

  I got my coat, opened the front door and was down the steps and half way to the cop shop before I regretted the abruptness of my departure.

  It was petulant. It lacked finesse. Cary Grant would have made a joke or something.

  Annoyance changed into self-pity. The first woman I’d liked since Adele and somehow I had ballsed it all up. “Eejit,” I muttered to myself.

  I walked along the Scotch Quarter past a bunch of confused looking school kids with no school to go to and nothing else to do but make trouble or sniff glue.

  I went into Sandy McGowan’s newsagent next to the Royal Oak. I looked at the headlines but didn’t buy a paper: the local news was terrible, the British news irritating.

  “How’s the Pope doing?” I asked Sandy.

  Sandy was yet another fenian fifth columnist in Proddy Carrickfergus. Decent bloke. A bald wee fella from County Donegal. Rap sheet for smuggling cigarettes across the border but who hasn’t got one of those?

  “Bless him, he’s on the mend, he’ll live to see a hundred,” Sandy said.

  “I’ll put a tenner on that. Cheers, Sandy,” I said and headed for the door.

  “Are you not buying a paper?”

  “Improve the news, mate, and then I’ll get one.”

  I walked past the Oak and stopped to look at a big convoy of army trucks and APCs going south along the Marine Highway. They were fresh painted and obviously coming straight from the ferry in Larne.

  The soldiers were nervous and seemed about seventeen.

  I gave them the black power salute just to get in their heads. Several of them looked suitably terrified and I had a bit of a laugh to myself.

  The RUC barracks.

  First one in again. Keep this up and I’d get a reputation.

  I went to the coffee machine and got a coffee choc and then I checked the faxes but there was no news from Belfast. I followed up with a phone call.

  Yes, they had both sets of fingerprints.

  No, they had no results as yet. Yes, they knew it was a murder investigation. Did I appreciate that they were very very busy?

  At nine o’clock Brennan came in with sergeants Burke and McCallister and asked if me and my CID lads wanted to earn some riot pay. It was Frankie Hughes’s funeral this morning, all RUC leave had been cancelled and trouble was expected.

  “No thanks, chief, some of us have an actual job to do around here,” I said.

  Brennan didn’t like that but he didn’t bust my chops.

  “You’ll mind the store?” he asked.

  “Aye,” I said.

  The station emptied. Just Carol, a couple of part-time reservists, Matty, Crabbie and me.

  I told the boys about the Puccini and both of them saw the same angle that I did.

  “He’s taking the piss,” Matty said.

  “He’s drawing attention to himself. That’s his method. Like Bathsheba combing her hair. There’s a reason for it,” Crabbie said.

  I liked Crabbie. The sixth of nine boys. The rest of his brothers were farmers and farm labourers except for one who was a Free Presbyterian missionary in Malawi. He was the family brainbox. He had bucked the trend by not leaving school at sixteen and immediately getting married. Instead he had done his A levels, got an HND certificate at Newtownabbey Tech and joined the peelers.

  He was married now, though, to a twenty-two-year-old from the same Free Presbyterian sect and she was already pregnant with twins. Doubtless they were planning to sire an entire clan.

  “He? You’re thinking solo? One guy?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “If they’re topping an informer it’s going to be a team of hit men from the UVF or UDA, but if it’s some pervert I reckon he’s a loner.”

  He was dead right about that.

  Double acts were rare in this kind of case.

  The three of us talked evidence, ran theories and got nowhere.

  We waited for the fingerprint data or ballistics or any good ideas.

  Nothing.

  “Do either of you know anything about women?” I asked them as I made a fresh pot of tea.

  “I’m the expert,” Matty claimed.

  Without mentioning Laura’s name I told him how I’d been turfed out this morning.

  “You underperformed, mate. Simple as that. They say it’s all about having a good sense of humour and a nice smile and all that bollocks but when push comes to shove it’s all about what you do upstairs. Some of us have it, Sean, some of us don’t. You clearly don’t,” Matty said.

  Crabbie rolled his eyes. “Don’t listen to him, Sean, he hasn’t had a girlfriend since he took Veronica Bingly to The Muppet Movie.”

  The rioting at Frankie Hughes’s funeral began exactly at twelve and we could see black smoke from hijacked buses five miles across the lough in the centre of Belfast.

  “My treat for lunch,” I said and took the lads to the Golden Fortune on High Street. We ate your typical low spice Irish-Chinese chips, noodles and spare ribs. We were the only customers.

  I got us a trio of brandies and we milked the lunch hour well past two o’clock.

  On the way back to the barracks I sent the boys on and I stopped off at Carrick Library.

  There was a preacher outside who tried to give me something as I went in. It was a pamphlet about the imminent “Second Coming”. He was young and had the insolent air of the recently converted. I refused the pamphlet and went straight to see Mrs McCawley. She was wearing a yellow polka-dot dress that I hadn’t seen before. You don’t expect old folks to go swanning around in polka-dot dresses, yellow or otherwise, but somehow Mrs McCawley pulled it off. She’d been a beauty in her day and had run away to America after the war with some GI, only returning after his heart attack in the ‘70s.

  I told her she looked nice and then my problem.

  “Dewey 780–782,” she said right off the top of her head.

  I got the score of La Boheme from 782 but The Grove Dictionary of Music was missing from the reference shelf. I was about to go back to Mrs McCawley and complain but who should I spot reading it in the
Quiet Area? None other than Dr Laura Cathcart.

  I sat next to her. “Good afternoon,” I said.

  She gasped, surprised, and then she smiled. She slid the dictionary entry across to me.

  She was looking at the entry on La Boheme. “How did you figure that out?” I asked.

  “How did you?”

  “I had to ask someone,” I said.

  “I had a pretty good idea. At St Brigid’s we did a musical and an opera every year.”

  “You were in La Boheme?”

  “No, I auditioned for Mimi and didn’t get it. Still, I recognized it.”

  “You should have said something yesterday.”

  “I didn’t want to until I was completely sure.”

  She bit her lip. She seemed pale and she looked like she’d been crying. I remembered her appointment at the coroner’s office. “Did you go up to Belfast?”

  “Nah. They called it off until tomorrow. Nobody could get into town because of the funeral.”

  “Makes sense.”

  She put her hand on mine. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “You know. Us.” She made a dramatic face and put her hand on her forehead like a silent-movie actress: “What might have been!”

  “What still could be.”

  She shook her head firmly. “No, definitely not. I just can’t. I went out with Paul for two and a half years. It’s a long time.”

  “Of course.”

  “He went to London. He wanted me to go with him. I said no.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” I said.

  She cleared her throat and slipped her hand from mine.

  “You can get on with your wee thing if you want,” she said.

  “Wee thing! It’s police work, darling, serious police work.”

  I read the libretto for La Boheme but there were no more obvious clues. I passed it over to her.

  I watched her face while she read.

  Her lips were moving. She read the Italian and the English silently to herself. She enjoyed the sound the Italian words made in her mind. I was digging on that when my pager started beeping.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  I asked Mrs McCawley if I could use her phone.

  I dialled the station.

  It was McCrabban.

  “Another one,” he said.

  “Jesus! Another body?”