The Cold Cold Ground

by Adrian McKinty

  “You have to let the day shift in. This is an illegal picket!” Brennan said in a voice that you could have heard at the top of the power station’s six-hundred-foot chimney.

  “We will not countenance deals with the blackguards in the H Blocks! Mrs Thatcher and the British government will know our wrath as the Amalekites knew the wrath of the Lord! Just as the Sodomites have tasted the fruits of their evil ways. Just as the Antichrist in Rome felt the wrath of the Lord’s divine justice!” Seawright yelled in his apocalyptic Glaswegian accent.

  Chief Inspector Brennan hooked his thumbs under the Velcro straps of his flak jacket. “I just saw Mrs Thatcher. We were part of the honour guard at the airport and after telling us what a lovely day it was she assured us all to a man that no deal would ever be done with IRA terrorists!”

  There was a cheer from some of the picketers. Seawright seemed to waver and Brennan grabbed the initiative. “Ok, lads, you’ve had your fun, now let these hard-working lads through to do their job!”

  “Aye, let them though,” someone yelled from the crowd.

  I walked over to the first car waiting beyond the picket line.

  The driver was a thin, jumpy young man with tissue paper plastered over his shaving cuts.

  “Drive in, mate, don’t stop and you’ll be fine,” I told him.

  “It’s me mother-in-law’s car. She’ll go ape if they break me windows.”

  “Didn’t I just say you’d be fine? Drive, or I’ll bust your bloody windows.”

  He set off and the others followed behind. And with that the night shift went in and day shift came out and heat and light and power flowed to the citizens of Ulster and for once the Amalekites were triumphant.

  7 a.m. Carrickfergus

  Back in the RUC station we began hearing rumours that not one but two hunger strikers had been given extreme unction (or as the Proddies insisted upon calling it – the last rites).

  Two hunger strikers on the same day. Jesus. Already shops and businesses in Belfast were telling their staff to stay away in anticipation of a massive riot.

  Mrs Thatcher had planned a full day of events but at 8.15 she flew out on an RAF aircraft to London, which could only mean one thing: the rumours were bloody true.

  I somehow kept my eyes open until 9.15 and then I walked home, checked under the Beemer for bombs and drove to Ballycarry.

  10.30 a.m. Ballycarry

  A country chapel overlooking Larne Lough and Islandmagee and beyond that the North Channel and the blue, hazy outline of Scotland.

  Lucy’s Moore’s coffin just in front of the font where, presumably, she had been baptized and confirmed.

  “Lucy Mary Patricia O’Neill,” the Priest said.

  They had given her double protection. The mother of God. The patron saint of Ireland. It hadn’t helped. About fifty people were crammed into the chapel.

  I watched and listened. Prayed.

  The service ended in tears.

  She was waked at The Harp and Thistle four doors down the street. I went there and took a cup of tea and a sandwich and sat by myself.

  I wasn’t going to impose. This wasn’t the appropriate venue. Claire, the sister, came to me. I didn’t go to Claire.

  “You’re the peeler?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Let’s talk outside.”

  We walked round the back of the pub. Sheep fields and Larne Lough and the North Channel and Scotland again.

  “Kill for a ciggie,” she said.

  I gave her one of mine and lit it for her.

  She was a chubby, attractive lass, about thirty, with dirty-blonde hair in a Lady Di haircut.

  She pointed back at the chapel. “We had to get special dispensation because of the suicide thing.”

  I knew what she meant.

  We smoked and didn’t say anything.

  “Go on, ask the questions you’ve been asking everyone else,” she said.

  “Did she ever confide in you about the baby? Make you promise not to tell your parents?”

  “Nope. We weren’t that close. Big age gap. But still, a thing like that …”

  “After she went away did she ever call you?”

  “No.”

  “When was the last time you got any communication from her?”

  “About a month ago. A wee letter. More of a note really. Posted in the north. I looked at it yesterday. There were a few others before that. They don’t really tell you anything except that she was alive.”

  “She never mentioned that she was pregnant in any of them?” I asked.

  “Not once. I still can’t really believe that.”

  “She was pregnant. And she did give birth.”

  “Then why? Why would she kill herself?” Claire said.

  “I don’t know. I’d like to see those letters, especially the later ones. When you get back to Dublin, you couldn’t send them on to me at Carrickfergus RUC?”

  “Of course … I don’t think they’ll help you though. There was nothing odd in any of them. Except of course that the whole thing was odd. Running off. Running off to the Republic. And why wouldn’t she mention that she was up the spout? To me? Her sister?”

  “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 people’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.