The Cold Cold Ground sdt-1

by Adrian McKinty

  “Because she knew she was going to have to give the baby away. She wasn’t going to have the abortion, but for some reason she couldn’t keep the baby.”

  “What reason?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We finished our cigarettes.

  Below us, on the Irish Sea, a tanker was chugging out of Larne Harbour heading for Glasgow, leaving a scarlet line of filth in its wake.

  “She ever talk to you about labyrinths?”

  “Labyrinths? No.”

  “Opera? Rossini, Offenbach?”

  “No.”

  She looked at me and gave a half sort of smile. “You don’t believe she killed herself, do you?”

  I thought about my answer for a long time.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  12 noon. The City of Belfast Crematorium, Rosewood Cemetery, East Belfast

  Rows of neat, well-tended graves, gravel paths, trees. Signs of trouble already over the Lagan in the west and north of the city. Smoke curling from a dozen hijacked cars. Army helicopters hovering over potential foci and already that atmosphere that you only ever find in cities on the brink …

  I had never been to the crematorium before. Didn’t even know it existed. A worker told me that in England the majority of people now got cremated whereas here they barely got one “customer” per day.

  Despite his years of long service Tommy Little had exactly three people at his funeral: me, Walter and a venerable priest that Walter had dug up from somewhere. Not a single gentleman or lady of the press, which was surprising given the sensational nature of Tommy’s death.

  The service was brief. The priest mumbled the words.

  I watched as the simple pine coffin made its way through a hole in the wall into the fire.

  The priest shook Walter’s hand.

  And that was that.

  The priest nodded as he walked past me and then shuffled out quickly, rushing to get home before the riot started.

  Walter stared after the coffin for a moment or two and then turned. He smiled when he saw me. I stood up and offered him my hand.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said, shaking my hand.

  We walked outside.

  “You couldn’t give me a lift to a train station, could you?” he asked.

  “I can take you to Carrick station if you want.”

  “Ta.”

  I drove the long way back, avoiding the city centre completely, taking Balmoral Avenue and Stockman’s Lane which were in the leafy, comparatively well-off southern suburbs. At Uni I had not only learned that Belfast rioters hated rain but also any neighbourhood that was close to a golf course.

  Still we had to drive around hijacked cars and a jack-knifed bus.

  I stuck on the radio. The BBC were confirming the bad news. Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara were either both dead or dying. I didn’t know McCreesh but O’Hara was the INLA commander in The Maze so those boys would definitely put on a big show of force in Belfast and even more so in Derry where O’Hara was from.

  I turned off the set. Aye. It was going to be bad.

  “Why did you come today?” Walter asked. “Hardly to pay your respects.”

  “Hardly. How many men do you think Tommy killed? I mean, personally.”

  Walter nodded and we drove in silence while I rummaged in the cassette box.

  “What’s your feeling about The Kinks?”

  “The usual love-hate.”

  “Look for something else then. I need to keep my eyes on the road.”

  Eventually he stuck in Bessie Smith which was a nice soundtrack to the unfolding Belfast tragedy.

  We avoided the worst of the trouble and I pulled in at Carrick railway station.

  “Thank you,” Walter said.

  He opened the car door but didn’t get out.

  “So,” he said.

  “Do you have any leads?”

  I shook my head. “Not really, but I did learn something today.

  If somebody wanted to kill Tommy, mixing him up with a homosexual serial killer was a smart move. Tommy’s the head of the IRA’s internal security wing and not a single comrade shows up? He’s being wiped from history commie style.”

  Walter nodded.

  We stared at one another. I was waiting for it.

  Waiting …

  “Do you know Cicero?” I asked.

  “They beat him into us in school,” he said.

  “Us too. Father Faul made us read his murder trials. His defences of accused killers. Cicero would always start his orations by asking cui bono? Who benefits? So I’ve been wondering who benefits from Tommy’s death?”

  “You tell me,” he said.

  “Let me run a few ideas past you. Tommy’s the head of the Force Research Unit and if he dies there are many current FRU investigations that would get suspended. That might buy someone some time.”

  Walter shrugged. “What else are you thinking?”

  “A rival? Tommy had to have made many enemies and rivals at the top.”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “The people he interrogated, over the years. Important people. They could hold a grudge.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Now the time for my ace … “And then there’s Freddie Scavanni, isn’t there? Tommy dies and Freddie Scavanni moves into Tommy’s place.”

  He nodded and crucially did not deny that Freddie was next in line.

  “But if Tommy Little died when he was on his way over to see Freddie, wouldn’t that set off all the alarm bells in the world? Wouldn’t Freddie get the full Spanish Inquisition from the FRU and the IRA?” I said, airing my doubts as much as asking him. He sighed. “That’s why it can’t have been Freddie.”

  “Do me a favour, Walter, tell me again about that phone call Tommy got the night he was killed.”

  “He got the phone call. He talked. He hung up. He was on his way out anyway, but … I don’t know … maybe the phone call gave him an added urgency.”

  “What precisely did he say to you?”

  “He said that he had to, let me think … he had to ‘see Billy White and then he had to take care of some business with Freddie’. Yeah, that’s it.”

  I flipped open my notebook and skipped back through the pages. “Previously you said Tommy told you he was going to ‘take care of some business with Billy and then go see Freddie’. Which was it? It’s important, Walter.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “I don’t remember. It wasn’t important at the time. I didn’t know then that it was the last thing I would ever hear him say.”

  “You’ll let me know if anything else occurs to you?”

  He nodded, got out of the car and went to catch the train.

  2 p.m. Carrickfergus

  I was reading the killer’s postcard to me and making no headway with it when the CID phone rang. Daedalus — inventor — Athenian — labyrinth — mirrors — bull worship — Crete — Poseidon. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.

  “Will somebody please get that?”

  Matty was in the bog again, Crabbie was still out at lunch.

  I picked up the phone. “Hello, I’d like to speak to Sergeant Duffy, please,” a Dublin-accented voice said.

  “This is Sergeant Duffy.”

  “Sergeant Duffy, this is Tony O’Rourke from the Sunday World. We’ve just received a letter on a sheet of A4 here in our Dundalk offices. It’s a hit list. It says above it, ‘Queers who will die soon’. There’s half a dozen names. The first two, Tommy Little and Andrew Young, have been crossed out. The others are all prominent people in Northern Ireland. We’ve photocopied the note and sent the original to the Dundalk peelers.”

  “Ok,” I said.

  “Listen, we’re going to run the list and the story about the killer in this Sunday’s paper and we were wondering if you had any comment.”

  “Wait a minute! You can’t run that. You’ll be putting those peop
le’s lives in danger.”

  “You’ve seen it then?”

  “Yes. He sent it to us too,” I admitted.

  “We’re publishing the list, Sergeant, it’s newsworthy. We just wanted to know if you had any comment.”

  “You will be putting those people’s lives in jeopardy! Let me speak to your editor.”

  “I am the editor, Sergeant. Look, we already know from our sources that the people on the list are getting Special Branch protection. We’re endangering no one.”

  “You can’t publish it! It’s dangerous and it’s libellous.”

  “It’s not libellous to publish a list of alleged homosexuals.”

  “You can’t do this, Mr O’Rourke, it’s completely irresponsible. I don’t want to have to threaten you-”

  “I’d love to hear you threaten me, Sergeant.”

  “Come on, Tony, please. Surely you can see that this is completely the wrong thing to do.”

  “Ask me that on Monday when our circulation has doubled.”

  “Don’t you see that he’s using you?”

  “So you’ve no official comment then?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “All right then,” he said and hung up.

  I ran into Brennan’s office and told him. He hit the roof.

  “How could you let this happen?” he yelled.

  “The killer must have sent them his list. We’ve got to stop them publishing it. We’ve got to take out an injunction.”

  “They’re based in the Republic, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How in the hell could we can get an Irish court to issue an injunction restricting prior publication?”

  “I don’t know but we have to. You have to make some phone calls, sir!”

  Brennan nodded and dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

  He summoned me back into his office an hour later.

  “There’s nothing we can do, Duffy. They’re publishing,” he said.

  “How can they-”

  He held up a hand. “Don’t speak. Don’t say a fucking word. There’s nothing we can do. Sit down, Duffy.”

  I sat. “Sir?”

  “What progress are you making finding this guy?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, like I say in my report, I’ve interviewed Freddie Scavanni and Billy White and I’ve talked to Walter Hays and uhm …”

  “Were you in Ballycarry this morning?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was at Lucy Moore’s funeral.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe I would talk to her parents or her sister or-”

  “Why are you going to the funeral of a suicide in the middle of a double homicide investigation?”

  “Sir, I-”

  “You complain about a lack of resources and having to do riot duty and how precious your time is and you’re off at a wake for some dead wee lassie who got herself knocked up and whose husband is an IRA hunger striker?”

  I had no answer to that.

  “You’re in over your head, aren’t you, Duffy?”

  “No sir, I don’t think so, sir.”

  “You know the Chief Constable’s office is involved now, don’t you? The Chief Constable’s breathing down my neck!”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I’ve been doing my best.”

  “Your best clearly isn’t bloody good enough, is it? The Chief Constable!”

  His eyes were blazing and his face heart-attack pink.

  “Sir, I-”

  “Get out of my office!”

  I slunk out with my arse kicked, almost literally.

  At four the entire station was called out to go up to Belfast on riot duty. It was going to be a big one. “But you and your team can stay here, Sergeant Duffy, you’re busy! You’ve got work to do!” Brennan said with childish sarcasm.

  The station emptied out.

  At five we began hearing the rumble of controlled explosions and the kick of plastic bullet guns.

  Dusk.

  Incendiary-device fires. Searchlights from army helicopters. Confused reports of trouble on the BBC.

  I sent the lads home.

  I put on the news. Yup, it was a bad one.

  I stared at the killer’s note and our accumulated evidence.

  We had nothing.

  I reread the case notes three times until I was sick looking at them and then I went out to my Beemer and drove to Rathcoole.

  9 p.m. Rathcoole

  Billy pacing the snooker room, barking orders. The riots had spread to north Belfast and chez Billy it was crisis mode: gunfire, bombs, riot control; the concrete bunker back room very April ’45.

  “This is a bad time. What do you want, peeler?” Billy asked.

  “Aye, what do you want?” Shane echoed.

  “What happened after Tommy Little left here?” I asked Billy.

  “He dropped Shane off and went about his business. He went wherever he was going next,” Billy said.

  “He never made it there.”

  “Says who?” Shane said.

  “Says Freddie Scavanni, the new head of the IRA’s Force Research Unit.”

  Billy shook his head. “We didn’t kill him. We were all hanging out here until midnight. Ask any of the lads. The snooker was on the box and we were hanging out.”

  Shane was looking at me. There was something other than contempt in his eyes.

  He knew that I knew. That he and Tommy had been having an affair.

  If I mentioned this in front of Billy, Billy would have him summarily executed. Was it worth the threat? I wondered if Shane had the wherewithal to be my prime suspect? To turn Queen’s evidence?

  “Let me show you something,” I said.

  I took out my notebook, drew a labyrinth on a piece of paper and passed the notebook across.

  Shane took a gander at it. Not a flicker. Billy took a look. Similar reaction.

  Still, they were lying about something. I could feel it in my cop bones.

  Was Tommy being followed by a suspicious and jealous Walter? Was Freddie lying? Jesus, there were a million possibilities. I needed to talk to Shane on his lonesome. I needed to arrest and get him away from Billy, bring him down to the station under the bright lights.

  My beeper started ringing. “Can I use your phone?” I asked.

  “Be my guest,” Billy muttered.

  I called Carrick station. “You better get back here, Sergeant Duffy. There’s been another incident,” Sergeant Burke said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “The Mount Prospect Pub, Larne. It’s a poofter bar.”

  “When?”

  “Ten minutes ago. The details are still coming in.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I put the phone down. Looked at them. “Another attack on homosexuals. In Larne,” I said almost to myself.

  Billy grinned. “And this time you’re our alibi.”

  10 p.m. The Mount Prospect Pub, Essex Street, Larne

  Apparently a gay-friendly establishment in a gay-unfriendly town. If port cities are always more cosmopolitan than the hinterland then Larne was either the exception that proved the rule or else the hinterland had quantum tunnelled itself all the way to Iran.

  Larne announced its credentials on every route in to town with massive murals of an equine King Billy crossing the River Boyne on an almost equine horse. The Mount Prospect Pub was a sad little breeze-block building that said nothing about itself or its clientele on any sign, but which must have been a bit of an open secret.

  When I arrived the street was cordoned off and filled with uniformed officers, plain-clothes officers and an army team examining the explosive.

  A young copper filled me in on the details. The bomb had been attached to a grille covering the window, IRA fashion. Two pounds of high explosive packed around nails and screws. One man was dead, sixteen seriously injured.

  Soldiers were picking up the na
ils where they had found them and peelers were trampling over the bits of brick and broken glass.

  “All right, people! Everybody stop moving! This is a crime scene and you’re all marching around like a herd of bloody elephants!”

  Everyone stopped and turned to look at me.

  “Excuse me, who are you?” a gangly man asked. He was wearing a green gabardine knee-length raincoat, and a brown toupee. He had a moustache, round glasses and a North Down accent but all I could see was that big plank of green.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Duffy. Carrick RUC. This is my investigation,” I said.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose and shook his head.

  “Go back to your work, gentlemen!” he ordered.

  “Don’t listen to this big lump of snot, I’m the gaffer here,” I said and tried to push past him. He put his hand on my shoulder. I grabbed his hand and twisted it back against his wrist.

  “Touch me again and I’ll shoot that thing off your fucking head,” I snarled at him.

  “You’re not in charge any more, Duffy,” the man said in a nasally, civil servanty tone. “You’ve been superseded.”

  The beat coppers and the squaddies turned to look at me.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

  “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Todd of Special Branch,” he said in a loud voice meant to carry to the end of the street and back.

  “On who’s authority have you-”

  “The Chief Constable’s authority, Sergeant Duffy, the Chief Constable of the RUC. I’ll send an officer over in the morning for your evidence and your report. I expect the full cooperation of you and your team.”

  I stared at him open mouthed.

  “Do you understand, Duffy?”

  “Yes,” I muttered and — after an insolent pause — added “sir.”

  There was nothing more for me to do here.

  I got in the BMW and drove back to Carrick at 100 mph on the line.

  I kept going until I hit Greenisland and then Monkstown.

  I went to see Victor Combs.

  Up four flights. Screaming wives, screaming children, yelling men.

  I knocked on Combs’s door.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Peelers,” I said.

  He opened the door. He was still in his dressing gown. I walked into the kitchen, opened his fridge, got myself a can of Harp and sat on his sofa.