The Cold Cold Ground sdt-1

by Adrian McKinty

  We did make page 3 though and there was a nice picture of Sergeant McCallister under the headline “RUC Investigate Homosexual Double Murder”.

  “They could have given us more coverage,” Brennan complained. “I mean it’s nice to have a real crime for once. A normal everyday non-sectarian murder. That’s man bites dog around these parts. That’s news. I have half a mind to call their editor”.

  We were nearly at the junction of the Falls Road and the new dual carriageway when McCallister slammed on the brakes.

  I looked through the windscreen and saw a hijacked Ulsterbus on fire, parked laterally across the lanes and blocking the road. It must have been set alight in the last five minutes because we were the first cops on the scene and it hadn’t even been reported yet on the police radio.

  Suddenly there were four massive bangs on the steel plate of the Land Rover’s right-hand side.

  The two reserve constables yelped.

  I looked through the peephole. Someone was shooting at us from the two-hundred-foot high Divis Tower, which in a city built on mud flats, was the fifth tallest structure in Belfast.

  Two more heavy bangs on the side of the Land Rover and stray bullets dinging into the pavement. Originally Divis Tower and the whole Divis Flats complex around it had been a model slum-clearance project but it quickly degenerated into a high-rise ghetto completely controlled by the IRA.

  “What the fuck is that?” Brennan yelled.

  “Fifty calibre machine gun, sir,” Sergeant McCallister replied placidly. “Seen ‘em in the army, unmistakable.”

  “Jesus! Can it punch a hole in the armour plate?” Brennan asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t really know,” McCallister replied.

  Brennan turned round to look at the four of us in the back. His eyes were wild with excitement. I didn’t like it.

  “All right, lads and lasses, we’ll deploy out the back, train your fire on the muzzle bursts, that’ll give the bastards something to think about!” Brennan said as more of the fifty-cal tore up the road all around us (difficult to aim those things, I would imagine).

  Sergeant McCallister looked at me and shook his head.

  He didn’t want to say anything but he hoped I would.

  “Uh, sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea. They’re probably waiting with an RPG. As soon as we open these back doors they’ll fire it and we’re all cooked,” I said, thinking that one of us had to say something.

  “We can’t just let him shoot at us!” Heather said, her cheeks redder than ever with her blood up.

  “No, by God, we can’t! We’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!” Brennan answered her.

  “Sir, we can’t fire into Divis Tower. It’s full of people,” I said.

  “Sir, it’s actually a standing order for West Belfast, the rules of engagement do not permit return fire into the Divis Flats complex without permission of a Divisional Commander,” Sergeant McCallister added firmly.

  There was another burst of fifty cal fire that shook us and sent fragments of steel plate sheering from the Land Rover’s side. It was like being inside a pin-ball machine.

  Inside a pin-ball machine with the added frisson of imminent death.

  The reserve constable whose name I didn’t get began throwing up between his legs.

  “So what do you suggest, ya lily-livered scoundrels?” Brennan yelled.

  “Sir, if they hit a tyre we’ll be stuck here so I suggest we drive around the bus and then maybe call the army, this is more their scene,” I said.

  “Just fucking leave! What about the big picture? We’re here to enforce law and order. We can’t run away from every bloody fight.”

  Yet, much to Brennan’s chagrin, run away we did.

  We drove round the burning bus, reported the shooting to the army and sat in humiliated silence all the way back to Carrickfergus Police Station.

  We parked the Rover and were all very impressed by the big chunks the fifty-cal had carved in the armour plate.

  My good kit had a stink of vomit in it now, so I stripped it off, changed into my jeans and desk-drawer emergency Deep Purple concert T-shirt. I got one of the bored looking reserve constables to leave my suit at the dry cleaners and cornered Sergeant McCallister at the coffee machine. “Did you make that thing up about the rules of engagement?”

  He nodded. “Of course I did. How would I bloody know the rules of engagement for West Belfast?”

  I made a mug of sweet Irish breakfast tea for Constable Fitzgerald and gave it to her when she came out of the ladies toilets, looking pale and trembly.

  “That was some fun today, wasn’t it?” I said.

  She took the tea gratefully. “I’ve never been in a gun battle before,” she said.

  “Not really a battle if only one side was shooting,” I said.

  She was walking to the gloomy area for the reservists but I led her over to my desk by the window. “Sit over here where there’s light,” I said.

  I let her rest her cute bum on my leather swivel chair.

  “You have a nice view,” she said.

  The tide was out and the beach was littered with shopping trolleys, beer cans, plastic bags, decaying seaweed, the remains of a Ford Escort which had been driven off the Fisherman’s Quay in 1978, dead fish, dead jellyfish, raw sewage and oil.

  “Aye, it’s a lovely view,” I replied.

  She sipped the tea appreciatively.

  “This is good, what is it?” I explained the arcane secrets of the Tetley tea bag.

  “So where are you from?” I asked.

  “Greenisland now, Islandmagee originally,” she said.

  “Is Islandmagee nice?”

  “It’s very nice. When you go there it’s almost as if there are no Troubles.”

  “I’d love to visit some time.”

  She put down the tea and picked up one of my arrow and question mark-filled pieces of A4 paper. I had written in block capitals: “HOW DID HE SELECT HIS VICTIMS?”

  “How did he select his victims?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but if we can find out then we might-”

  There was a tap on my shoulder. It was McCrabban. He was smiling sleekitly at me. “Sorry to interrupt your work, Sean, but there’s a call for you on line #4.”

  “Excuse me,” I said to Heather and pushed the button on line #4.

  “Is that Sergeant Duffy?” a voice asked.

  “Who’s this?”

  “You don’t need to know my name, but we met earlier today,” he said.

  Flunky #2.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Tommy Little had a boyfriend. His name is Walter Hays. I don’t where he’s living now. We kicked him out.”

  I wrote it down in my notepad. “Walter Hays. Got it. I’ll find him. Thank you,” I said.

  Flunky #2 didn’t hang up.

  “Is there anything else?” I asked hopefully.

  “I read the Belfast Telegraph today.”

  “Yes …”

  “Tommy Little was not a man to hide anything. Everybody knew Tommy Little was queer.”

  I didn’t see where he was going with this. “Ok, so what does that mean?”

  “So you have to ask yourself, Sergeant Duffy, why were Tommy Little’s proclivities tolerated?”

  “Why were his proclivities tolerated? What are you trying to say-”

  But then it came to me. If Tommy Little was only an occasional driver for Sinn Fein officials he would have been kneecapped and drummed out of the movement long ago.

  But he wasn’t an occasional driver, was he?

  “They were tolerated because Tommy Little was important. Tommy was a player, that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Have a good evening, Sergeant Duffy.”

  The line went dead.

  I grabbed Crabbie and Matty and took them into one of the interview rooms and told them what had happened.

  “What does this mean?” Matty asked.

  “It means, Matty, tha
t the RUC files are wrong about Tommy Little. That’s what it means. He was big,” Crabbie said.

  “I want you to find out how important. I want you to bug Special Branch and MI5 and army intelligence if you have to. Somebody knows who this guy was and I want to know too,” I said.

  Matty nodded.

  I turned to McCrabban. “And you and I are going to find out where Walter Hays is living now and we are going to pay Mr Hays a wee visit.”

  I walked out of the interview room and smiled at Heather.

  “What time does your shift end, love?” I asked her.

  “Seven,” she said.

  “Have you ever eaten Indian food?”

  “No.”

  “Do you fancy a quick bite after work? Unwind a bit after the day’s events, you know?”

  She looked sceptical. “Its not spicy, is it? I don’t do well with spicy.”

  I shook my head. “Nah, where did you hear that? It’s fine. Listen, if I’m not back by seven would you do me a favour and wait for me? Get changed out of your kit and wait for me, ok?”

  “Ok,” she said and gave me a beautiful smile.

  Crabbie came out of the interview room with a piece of paper. “Stone walls on Tommy Little from the Brits of course but Special Branch say they’ll look into it. Meanwhile here’s Walter Hays’s address: 99 New Line Lane, Ballycarry.”

  “Let’s take the Beemer,” I said. “I’ve had my fill of Land Rovers today.”

  We went downstairs past the noticeboard. Someone had cut out the picture of Sergeant McCallister from the Belfast Telegraph. Unfortunately for Alan his mug was right under the word “homosexual”. The station wits had deleted the rest of the headline.

  “Is this what passes for comedy around here?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask me. I’m more of a Laurel and Hardy fan,” Crabbie said.

  “And of course they slept in the same bed, didn’t they?”

  Crabbie sighed, “That’s what’s wrong with the modern world, Sean. Cynical people like you. It was a more innocent time back then. But those days have gone forever.”

  “They have indeed, mate, they have indeed.”

  11: THE FRIENDS OF TOMMY LITTLE

  The sky was blue and Concorde was doing a big burn above our heads on the outward leg of the TransAt. We watched it for a moment before getting in the BMW and driving through the gate. Outside the police station a bunch of elderly Jesus freaks were singing about homosexuals, the Second Coming, and proclaiming that we coppers were agents of the anti-Christ.

  It was a sizeable crowd and a mobile chip van had parked up the road selling chips, fried dough and hot jam doughnuts.

  “Doughnut?” I asked Crabbie.

  “Wouldn’t say no.”

  We got half a dozen and drove up into the country.

  New Line Lane was just off New Line Road about a mile from the village of Ballycarry.

  There were a lot of potholes and the bramble bushes closed in tightly on both sides of the track to such an extent that it made me worried about the paintwork.

  When we finally came to the cottage it wasn’t large: merely one floor, whitewashed stone, cubby windows and a thatched roof. No doubt tourists would have gone apeshit for it and no doubt the occupant complained about the leaks and the damp. Blue turf smoke was curling from the chimney.

  I parked the Beemer, got out, and glanced behind me, down the lane, to the grey tongue of Belfast Lough and beyond it to the yellow cranes of the shipyards in Harland and Wolff. The city looked peaceful as it always did from up here. There was no fire but you could tell something serious was going on because of the number of choppers hovering over the Ardoyne: two Gazelles, a Sea King and a Wessex.

  The sun had made an appearance so I left my raincoat in the cab. It wasn’t that professional to do your police work in a Deep Purple T-shirt, but what could you do?

  We knocked on the little wooden door, which had been painted a fetching shade of green.

  “Mr Hays?” Crabbie asked.

  The door opened. Hays was tall and thin, about twenty-five. He was wearing blue-tinted John Lennon glasses and his blond hair was gelled. He was wearing white jeans and a white shirt. He had a bruise on his cheek and a split lip, barely healed from when — without a doubt — the IRA had interrogated him about Tommy’s death. He was pointing a double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun at us.

  “Can I help you?” he asked in a well-to-do South Belfast accent.

  “We’re the police. We’re looking into the death of Tommy Little,” I said, showing him my warrant card.

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” Hays replied, before reading the card carefully.

  “Until recently were you living with Tommy Little on 44 Falls Crescent?”

  “Until yesterday,” he muttered.

  “Until the IRA kicked you out?”

  “No comment.”

  “Maybe you could aim that shotgun away from my bollocks, I’m about to become a father,” Crabbie said.

  Hays lowered the shotgun.

  “Who were you expecting?” I asked pointing at the weapon.

  “You never know, do you?” Hays said.

  “Is this your house?” I asked.

  “It was my da’s. We used to come here now and again to get away from Belfast.”

  “You and Tommy Little?”

  “No comment.”

  “What do you do for a living, Mr Hays?” I asked.

  “I work for the forestry commission.”

  “Ah, interesting work, I’m sure. I’ve heard that as late as 1800 a squirrel could go from one side of Ireland to the other jumping from tree branch to tree branch.”

  “That’s about right,” he mumbled and narrowed his eyes.

  I’ve seen many a hold-out and this guy was as dour as they came. In normal circumstances he would be a tough interview, but fortunately for us he was frazzled, humiliated and best of all — angry.

  “Who told you not to speak to us, Mr Hays?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “The IRA?”

  “Them and my innate common sense.”

  “Can we come in, Mr Hays?”

  He shook his head.

  “Look, Mr Hays, I’m a detective sergeant at Carrickfergus RUC. I’m looking into Tommy’s death. Unlike your friends in the IRA who want this whole thing just to go away, I want to find the killer. I want to find out who did it.”

  “Tommy went out that night, that’s all I know,” Hays said and tried to shut the door.

  I got my foot in the jam and held it open.

  “Where did he go?”

  “I’m not saying anything more.”

  “Where did he go?” Crabbie asked.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Come on, we’re trying to find out who killed him,” I insisted. His eyes were filling with tears now but he still shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything. That much was made clear to me. I was tied to a fucking chair. They placed a gun against my forehead. I was told that I was lucky that I was being let live!”

  I took a deep breath and put my hand on his shoulder. “Just tell us where he was going,” I whispered.

  Hays glared at me but he kept his mouth shut.

  I looked at Crabbie. Of course we could take him in, but with a Sinn Fein lawyer in the room with him it would be the stone wall … Besides we both could see that he was caving.

  He was starting to tremble, not one big tremble but little shunts building towards climax, like people on the bus to the shrine of Our Lady of Knock.

  This was the big holy shit. This was grief.

  “We need to know where Tommy was going,” Crabbie said gently.

  “Who was he going to see, Walter?” I asked.

  Hays shook his head. “I read the paper. It’s nothing to do with Tommy’s job, is it? It was some nut randomly going round killing people. Killing queers!”

  He said the word “queers” with a sneer — the way he thought we said it.

 
; But it was too late now. He’d given us something important.

  Tommy’s job.

  “What did Tommy do for the IRA, Walter?”

  “You don’t even know that?” Hays said with contempt. “You boys are fucking clueless.”

  Crabbie and I shared an excited look.

  “What did he do, Walter?”

  “I’m telling you nothing!” Hays barked.

  Different tack now. Build it like a staircase.

  “Did Tommy’s car ever show up?” I asked.

  Walter shook his head.

  “What car did he drive?” Crabbie asked.

  “1978 blue Ford Granada, BXI 1263.”

  I wrote the licence plate down in my notebook.

  “How long were you and Tommy together?” I asked.

  “Four years.”

  “Four years. He must have meant the world to you. Come on, Walter. Don’t you want us to find Tommy’s killer?”

  “You’ll get nothing out of me. Nothing,” he said with a sob. “Now you’ll really have to leave!”

  I reached in my pocket to give him one of my cards but he wouldn’t take it.

  “If they find it in the house, they’ll top me for sure,” he said.

  There were real tears now.

  “It’s ok, mate,” I said. I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “It’s ok,” I said. “It’s ok.”

  The tears flowed.

  A minute went by.

  He sniffed and pulled himself together. I looked him in the eyes.

  “Who was he going to see, Walter? Give us a name.”

  He sniffed again. A hint of flintiness in his expression. A resolution.

  “It’s two names,” he whispered.

  “Tell me.”

  “It won’t help you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Neither one of them is the killer. The IRA already did an internal investigation and both of them are still alive.”

  “Tell me anyway. Tell me the whole thing.”

  He wiped his nose. “All right. If it’ll get rid of you.”

  “We’ll leave, I promise.”

  He sighed and took a deep breath. “Ok. Ok, so it’s half seven at night and the snooker’s on BBC2 and it’s Alex Higgins and Tommy loves seeing Alex play, but he puts on his jacket and so I ask him where he’s going and he says something about having to see Billy White about the rackets. I don’t think anything of it as he goes to see Billy once a fortnight, more or less. And I’m not really listening to him. And he’s literally going out the door and the phone rings and he picks it up and he’s talking for about a minute and I’m not paying a lot of attention cos I’m watching the snooker too and then he hangs up and I say who was that? And he doesn’t answer. And so I turn to look at him and I ask him what’s up. And he mutters something about business to take care of and after that he’s going to have to go down to Freddie Scavanni’s house. And then he goes out. And that … that’s the last I ever saw of him.”