The Cold, Cold Ground

by Adrian McKinty

  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 Bohème 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 Bohème. “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 Bohème?”

  “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 Bohème 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?”

  “Aye. Sounds like it’s our boy from the mystery hand.”

  “You’re joking. Where?”

  “Boneybefore.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Out near Eden Village.”

  “Assemble the gear, sign out a Land Rover.”

  “And there’s been another press call for you. This time from the Carrick Advertiser, they were asking about the body in the Barn Field.”

  “Bollocks. What did you tell them?” I said.

  “Nothing. But they’ll keep calling until you give them something,” Crabbie muttered.

  “Tell him something like: an anonymous tip led Carrickfergus RUC to a body in an abandoned car on Taylor’s Avenue. A homicide is suspected and leads are being pursued by Carrickfergus CID. The victim was a white male in his early thirties, as yet unidentified. Police officers kindly request the public to phone in tips or information about this incident to the Confidential Telephone or Carrickfergus CID. Sound ok?”

  “Aye.”

  I hung up the phone and went back to the Reading Area.

  She saw my face. No poker player me.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I have to go. The other shoe dropped.”

  Her eyes widened. “The second victim?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  She got to her feet. “Walk you out?” she asked.

  “I’ve no objection to that.”

  Outside the library the preacher was gone and over Belfast there was a pall of heavy black smoke that looked like an evil genie emerging from a lamp.

  “Listen, I’m at a bit of a loose end today. I’ll walk you out the Quarter too, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure.”

  We walked past a funeral home, half a dozen houses for sale and a boarded-up ice cream shop. I thought she was going to talk but she had nothing to say.

  I offered some remarks about the weather and such but she wasn’t biting on those either.

  “Hey, you said you were at a loose end. You wanna come? We could do with your expertise,” I suggested and that was the hook she was looking for.

  “To the murder scene?” she asked. “Am I allowed?”

  “Of course you’re allowed. I’m the big Gorgonzola in these parts. Although fair warning, it might be on the grim side.”

  “You don’t know grim, pal, trust me … Still, I’m not really dressed for it,” she said.

  She was wearing a wool coat, slacks, heels, and a white blouse.

  “Go home, get changed.”

  “All right,” she said, perking up. “It’ll take my mind off things. Meet me at the flat in fifteen minutes?”

  “Ok.”

  She turned and walked briskly in the other direction.

  It’s all on/off off/on with that lass, I thought.

  I went inside the barracks. Matty had the Land Rover out of its parking spot and Crabbie was standing next to it raring to go.

  “Jump in, Sean,” Crabbie said.

  “Hold your horses lads. With Chief Inspector Brennan gone to Belfast and with Bu
rke and McCallister away too I’m senior officer here. I can’t just tear out of Dodge. We’ve got to go organize things.”

  On the way inside Carol stopped me.

  Wonderful woman Carol. Ageless. Thin, stooped, piercing blue eyes, hard as an iron bar. Had worked in Carrick station since 1941. On her second week on the job the barracks had been bombed by the Luftwaffe. A big Heinkel 111 who saw a target of opportunity near the railway station. The Luftwaffe! You gotta love it.

  “Mr Sean?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if I could go home early today, I wanted to watch that programme about Lady Diana on BBC2.”

  “That’s fine, Carol,” I told her. I couldn’t really spare her but I knew better than to come between the great British public and Lady Di. The world could be going to hell in a handbasket but the Royal Wedding was in two months and that’s all that mattered.

  I went upstairs and asked which of the reservists had the most seniority.

  A trainee dentist called Jameson, who looked about eleven, put his hand up. He’d been in the force since ’79 which would have to do. I told him to call Inspector Mitchell who was technically Brennan’s deputy but in fact was almost never here because he more or less single-handedly ran the RUC substation in Whitehead.

  “Tell Mitchell that I’ve had to leave, maybe for the day and he probably should close Whitehead station and get up here. It’s his call, of course.”

  “And if he doesn’t come?” Jameson asked nervously.

  “Then you’re it, mate. The skipper’s gone and the sergeants are gone and now Carol’s gone. “

  He opened his mouth to speak, didn’t know what to say and closed his gob again. He looked petrified.

  “Out with it, man!” I ordered him.

  “Well, uh, I was just wondering what I should do if the IRA attack us while you’re away?”

  “Break out the machine guns and return fire. And don’t kill any tax-paying customers. Ok?”

  He nodded.

  “You know where the armoury key is?”

  “No.”

  “On the hook next to the fire extinguisher. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered as I went back downstairs. If I was an IRA mole in the RUC, this would be my moment to shine …

  I got in the Land Rover and kicked Matty out of the driver’s seat.

  I drove out of the station and over the series of speed bumps that were supposed to be a deterrent for a drive-by attack. I got into second gear and finally third and took the heavy vehicle along the Marine Highway.

  “We’re going to pick up Dr Cathcart on the way, lads,” I said.

  Neither Matty nor McCrabban seemed fazed by this.

  We stopped outside her place and she was already changed into Wellington boots and a white forensic boiler suit. “What does she look like!” Crabbie muttered.

  “Clockwork Orange,” Matty concurred.

  “We all should be wearing them things to avoid contamination,” I said. “Do you boys ever go to the training seminars?”

  “What training seminars?” Matty asked.

  “You wouldn’t catch me dead in one of them,” Crabbie said, although his orange shirt, paisley tie and beige jacket weren’t exactly Savile Row.

  “You lads get in the back. Our guest can ride up front with me.”

  There was an ancient police superstition that if you changed seats in an armoured Land Rover you were sure to cop it during the next rocket-propelled grenade attack while the person you switched with would escape completely unscathed. Why the jinx would only apply to you, and not him, was a secret known only to the elect.

  “Come on lads, move it!” I had to say again and they got in back, grumbling. I opened the passenger door and Laura climbed up and in.

  “Morning, Dr Cathcart,” I said stiffly.

  “Oh, good morning, Sergeant Duffy,” she replied. “Where are we going?”

  “Boneybefore.”

  “Stick on the radio for us, will ya?” Crabbie said from the back.

  I turned on Downtown Radio but they were in some kind of conspiracy to make Juice Newton a millionaire. I switched to Radio 1 and we listened to Spandau Ballet as I drove us along the Marine Highway and the Larne Road.

  “Do you like Spandau Ballet, Dr Cathcart?” Matty asked from the back.

  “I don’t really know them,” she replied.

  “They’re the latest thing. What about you, Sean, you like ’em?”

  I tried to come up with a witty answer and after some deliberation I said: “Spandau Ballet are to pop music what the Cretaceous-Tertiary Event was to dinosaur music.”

  Stony silence. Nobody laughed.

  “Am I the only one around here that reads New Scientist?” I asked.

  Evidently I was. I kept my bake shut after that.

  Boneybefore. A village eaten up by the Carrick expansion sometime in the ‘50s. A white thatched cottage almost on the lough shore. Another unknown young reserve officer standing by the door.

  I parked the Land Rover and we got out.

  “What are the facts, constable?” I asked the reservist.

  “Postman noticed the door was slightly ajar on the second post today. He pushed it open and found the victim. He called us.”

  “Anybody touch anything?”

  “Nope. But I had a wee look in.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I noticed that the victim had been shot and that his hand had been cut off, so I called Crabbie.”

  I put on latex gloves and went inside the cottage.

  The victim had been shot once in the head, probably as he had opened his front door, because he was still lying in the hall. He was a thin, dapper, grey-haired man in shirtsleeves, black tweed trousers and slippers. His hand had been cut off and the hand of – presumably – John Doe had been tossed, almost idly, on his chest.

  I found a wallet on the sideboard and quickly ascertained that the victim was one Andrew Young, a sixty-year-old music teacher at Carrickfergus Grammar School.

  The place was untouched. The killer had come inside only to kill Young and cut his right hand off.

  We did a thorough inspection but Matty agreed with me that the killer had not even entered the rest of the house.

  “Time of death?” I asked Laura.

  “He’s been dead about forty hours,” she said, examining the corpse.

  “Which one did he kill first?” I asked.

  “If you put me on the spot I’d say he killed the man in the car first. But only by a few hours,” Laura said.

  Matty began taking photographs and dusting for prints.

  Laura examined the body.

  McCrabban grabbed my sleeve. “Word with you outside, Sean?” he said.

  We stepped out into a salt wind coming off the lough.

  “What is it, Crabbie?”

  “I know this character, Sean. He runs the Carrick festival. He’s headteacher at the school. He met Princess Anne. Upstanding citizen and all that. But …”

  “But what?

  “Like I say, decent bloke and everything, but he’s a known poofter.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as eggs is eggs.”

  I saw the implications immediately. “So what do you think we have here, Crabbie? Someone going around killing homosexuals?”

  Crabbie shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s beginning to look like it, isn’t it?”

  “And there’s the bloody music connection again, isn’t there?”

  Crabbie nodded and began filling his pipe.

  Of course homosexuality was illegal in Northern Ireland but that didn’t mean that there were no homosexuals.

  Everybody knew somebody …

  “Don’t mention anything for the moment, let’s get the old routine working,” I said.

  We went back inside.

  Photographs.

  Prints.

  Interviews with the neighbours.
r />   A recovered 9mm stub from the wall.

  I reminded Laura to look for another concealed score when she did her autopsy.

  The day lengthened.

  Waned.

  We drove Laura home and thanked her for her help.

  We had another case conference at the station.

  Of course now that we knew who he was, the first set of finger print data came through from Belfast: Andrew Young DOB 12/3/21. 4 Lough View Way, Boneybefore, Carrickfergus. No known next of kin. No criminal record.

  The second set was still being processed.

  We bagged the evidence.

  I sent the lads on.

  It was midnight when I got home. After I’d gone back out to Boneybefore to supervise the removal of the body to Carrick hospital by a private firm of undertakers because the police were overstretched. After I had changed into a shirt and tie and went to make the notification to Young’s employer Jack Cook, the headmaster of Carrickfergus Grammar.

  “Andrew? I can’t believe it! Andrew was one of our best teachers. He was a terrific man. How? When? No, he had no enemies. Are you joking? Everybody loved Andrew.”

  Midnight and I poured myself a vodka gimlet and listened to the bad news on the radio and put on La Bohème.

  A 78. Toscanini’s own hurried, strange 1946 version.

  When I got to Mimi’s famous first aria I picked up the lyric sheet and read along: “My name is Lucia. But everyone calls me Mimi. I don’t know why. Ma quando vien lo sgelo. Il primo sole è mio. When the thaw comes, the sun’s first kiss is mine.”

  I read and listened until I fell asleep but no great revelation was at hand.

  No, that wouldn’t come until the first post in the morning.

  5: MERCURY TILT

  The tinker rag-and-bone man woke me up calling out “Tuppence for rags! Tuppence for rags!” I listened to the clip-clop of his ancient horse and then I heard those other heralds of a society attempting to keep order: the milkman, the postman, the bread man.

  I’d fallen asleep in the living room under a thin duvet and I was freezing.

  La Bohème had been playing on repeat all night and I’d probably ruined the grooves on what was a very rare recording.

  I lifted the stylus and examined the 78. It seemed ok. I blew off dust and put it carefully back into its sleeve.

  I padded into the kitchen and turned the kettle on. I flipped on Radio Ulster for the news: “Our headlines at a quarter past the hour. Fresh rioting rocked sections of Belfast last night as hunger striker Frankie Hughes was laid to rest. A police reservist was shot dead outside his house in Bangor in the early hours of the morning. A police station in County Tyrone was attacked by rockets and mortars …”