The Cold, Cold Ground

by Adrian McKinty

  I watched as the pilot boat put out from under the castle to bring a cargo vessel into Carrick’s much smaller and trickier harbour.

  “ … go on home,” Brennan finished.

  “What?”

  “I said you look like Elvis at his 1977 CBS special, why don’t you go on home?”

  “I’ve things to do.”

  “Just go. Have a drink, have a bath. Might be the last one you take for a while, I heard the power-station workers are going on strike.

  “I can’t. I’m still waiting for the prints on John Doe.”

  “I’ll wait. You go on. That’s an order, Sean.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I decided to walk home. A mistake. A downpour caught me on Victoria Road. Heavy, cold rain from a long looping depression over Iceland.

  Coronation Road.

  The quintessential Irish smell of peat smoke rising up to meet the rain.

  Light and fear and existential depression leaking through the net curtains.

  #113.

  I turned the key and went inside. I had forgotten about the phone tap and was surprised to see a black box next to my telephone. Kernoghan’s boys hadn’t left any trace apart from that. I stripped off my clothes, went into the kitchen and opened the empty fridge. Half a can of Heinz beans. Some yellow cheese. I ate beans and toast and lit the upstairs paraffin heater and went to bed.

  I found myself dreaming of the girl hanging in the forest.

  It was dusk and the stars were coming out over western Scotland and eastern Ireland and the sunken realm between the two. I’ve never liked the woods. My grandmother told me that the forest was an opening to someplace else. Where things lurked, things we could only half see. Older beings. Shees. Shades of creatures that once walked the natural world, redundant now, awaiting tasks, awaiting their work in dreams.

  “Le do thoil,” I said to them in Irish, but they wouldn’t listen, calling my name from behind oaks and fairy trees, mocking me, teasing me until 3 a.m. when I awoke to the sound of sirens.

  7: SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING

  I found that I wasn’t in bed. I was sleeping on the landing in front of the paraffin heater. This was becoming my foetal space. I was wearing a Thin Lizzy T-shirt and grey sweat pants. I had no memory of putting them on.

  I went downstairs and opened the front door.

  The whole street was out.

  I walked to the end of the garden path. Number 79 was on fire. The Clawsons’ house. I joined the gawkers because who can resist a fire? A wee milly in a dirty frock filled me in on the details. “Chip pan fire. Whole kitchen went up.”

  With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they’d be cooking chips at this hour was anyone’s guess.

  The crowd grew and I saw people that I vaguely recognized from as far away as the Barn Road. The kitchen burned and despite the best efforts of the brigade it spread to the rest of the house.

  Mrs Clawson screamed about her fish tank and when a second fire tender equipped with foam arrived one of the firemen went in and rescued the fish.

  When the blaze was finally contained the crowd erupted into spontaneous applause and tea and biscuits were pressed into the hands of the crew – which had to be nicer than getting bricked in the Catholic estates. They kept pumping in foam and it began to fill the street, taking to the air in huge tufts, blowing this way and that.

  We were in the snow again.

  Mrs Clawson was wailing now, standing there, half tore, in her dressing gown with no knickers.

  The kids were playing in the artificial snow and the firemen were flirting with the single women and some of the lonely married women whose husbands were over the water.

  I yawned and checked my watch.

  3.20. Time to head back. I began to walk in that direction.

  Someone grabbed my shirt from behind.

  I turned. Big guy, 6’9” with a gut, a Zapata moustache, a white wifebeater T-shirt and blue jeans. He was fifty or thereabouts and on his head was what could only be a wig although you’d have had a tough job getting up there to check it out.

  “Where’s your fancy car now, fenian?” he said.

  I ignored him and kept on walking.

  He pushed me and I stumbled but recovered my balance in time to see a haymaker coming at me.

  Mrs Bridewell and Mrs Campbell both screamed.

  “Look out, Mr Duffy!” Mrs Campbell yelled, her hand at her throat.

  Several people turned to look. The haymaker made its painfully slow arc across the air between us. It missed me by nine inches without me having to do anything.

  “What’s your problem, pal?” I asked.

  “What about those people at the Peacock Room, you fucking fenian bastard, what chance did you give them, ya taig piece of shit!” the big ganch said and swung another punch which also missed.

  Neither talking nor fighting were his strong points.

  “Go home, mate,” I told him.

  “I’m not your mate. Your fenian pals killed those people for nothing! I hope you all go on hunger strike. I hope you all starve to death! We should have starved you out in the bloody famine!”

  Whoever he was, he was cross and the worse for drink and there was no point arguing or getting into a fight with a drunk.

  He reached into his pocket and started fumbling with something.

  “Oh my God, he’s got a knife! Oh, Mr Duffy, watch him!” Mrs Campbell called out.

  It was a standard flick knife with a button on the handle but he was so pissed he was having difficulty getting the blade to deploy. “If you’ll allow me,” I said, snatching the knife out of his hands and pushing the button.

  “See?” I said as I put the blade in and gave him the knife back. That, I realized later, was my mistake. I had humiliated him.

  He was a friend visiting Bobby Cameron and Bobby now felt it was his duty to intervene.

  Bobby lived six doors down from me on the same terrace. We’d never spoken, but of course I knew who he was. Medium height, plump, ginger bap, twenty-eight. His wife cut your hair for two pounds in her back kitchen. He was on long-term unemployment benefit but he was also a divisional officer of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a faction of the UDA, and one of the nastier Protestant terrorist groups; he was a man who, in theory, could have you killed at the drop of a hat, but in practice wouldn’t because killing a cop – even a Catholic cop – would mean a feud with every other loyalist faction in Carrick. A feud would be bad news in strategic terms but, of course, few of the loyalists ever thought strategically. (The IRA had a graffito somewhere in Belfast that I always got a kick out of: “The IRA think, while the UDA drink.”)

  “I’m gonna kill him!” the big guy said to Bobby, still fumbling with the flick knife.

  Bobby looked at me. His brow was furrowed and there was that dark light in his eyes that seemed to shine in the eyes of everybody in Belfast who has killed a man or men.

  A crowd began to gather.

  “You should take your mate home,” I said quietly to Bobby.

  “Are you telling me to take him home?” Bobby said.

  Half the street was watching now, including the bloody firemen who wouldn’t do a damn thing to help.

  “No, Bobby, I’m asking you to take him home,” I said.

  Bobby glared at me for a full ten seconds and then seemed to make up his mind. “Show’s over, everyone!” he said and the crowd began to disperse.

  He took his mate by the arm, pocketed the penknife and led him away. Bobby turned back to look at me, then he grinned and wagged his finger as if to say, you’re the Old Bill, but just remember whose street this is.

  I went back inside feeling dissatisfied and peeved.

  The rain came on. I sat in the cold living room getting steam
ed until I finally grabbed a coat and went back out. I turned left, away from the remains of the foam and the last few ladies smoking Rothmans and comparing notes on the firemen.

  I walked past an end gable where a crude new mural had been painted – a gunman wearing a balaclava standing next to a child with a football. Underneath him was the slogan: “Remember the Loyalist Prisoners, Carrickfergus UDA.” No one, of course, could forget the Loyalist prisoners because the UDA “collected for them” in every pub and supermarket across the neighbourhood.

  Coronation Road. My little universe. The red-brick terraces ran on both sides of the street for half a mile and I knew the houses of quite a few of the residents now: Jack Irwin who worked in the pet shop; Jimmy Dooey who worked in Shorts Aircraft; Bobby Dummigan, unemployed; the Agnews with their nine kids, Da unemployed; widow McSeward whose husband was lost at sea; Alan Grimes, a retired fitter who had been a POW of the Japanese; Alex McFerrin, unemployed; Jackie Walter, unemployed …

  I walked on.

  Coronation Road to Barn Road to Taylor’s Avenue.

  I went into the field where we’d found the first murder victim. I examined the scene for ten minutes but the Muse of Detection gave me no new insights.

  I went back to Taylor’s Avenue, past Carrick Hospital and followed a sign to Barn Halt.

  Barn Halt, where Lucy Moore went missing. Not that that was supposed to be any concern of mine. Investigating a suicide was a luxury we couldn’t afford with an obvious Ripper copycat or nutcase out there.

  Still, what else was I going to do?

  Barn Halt wasn’t an actual train station, merely a red-bricked shelter on each track – one for the Larne line and one for the Belfast line. The shelters were tiny and you couldn’t get ten people in on a wet day. The one on this side of the tracks smelled of piss and was covered with the usual sectarian graffiti.

  There was an iron footbridge to the other side but at this time of night you could safely cut across the railway lines.

  I stepped over the sleepers and climbed up onto the other platform.

  Another stinking little shelter. More sectarian graffiti.

  Lucy would have been on the Belfast side so I recrossed the tracks and paced along the small platform.

  Why did no one see Lucy get on the train? Did she get on the train? If not, what did she do? Walk back to Taylor’s Avenue? Cross the iron footbridge?

  I walked to the south end of the platform where a six-foot wall prevented you from climbing over into Elizabeth Avenue. She didn’t get out that way and the other end of the platform led to a steep, exposed railway embankment where she surely would have been seen.

  Her mother’s looking for her out the window and she doesn’t see her? Where is she? I asked myself. And that guy in the car sees her just a minute or two before the train comes. Where could she have gone in a minute? Not back to Taylor’s Avenue. The car driver would have seen her. Not over the footbridge, the passengers getting off at Barn Halt would have noticed her. Not across the railway lines themselves because there was a train in the way. At one end of the platform there’s a wall, at the other end there’s a railway embankment … Is she hiding in the shelter? Why would she be hiding?

  The rain was bouncing hard off the concrete.

  I turned up the collar on my coat and stepped inside the shelter.

  I lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall.

  Of course it was busy, it was Christmas Eve. People had other things on their minds. Perhaps you could easily get on and off a train and no one would notice. The great general public were notorious for letting you down when it came to eyewitness testimony.

  I finished the ciggie just as the 4.30 Stranraer boat train came rushing by, running express from Belfast to Larne and really clipping it. The train’s four carriages were packed and I looked at the brief, flashing, happy faces of people leaving Northern Ireland, perhaps forever.

  “Ach, I’m getting nowhere with this,” I muttered but I didn’t want to think about the other case because that stank too. Stank to high heaven. It was too gothic for Ulster. The Chief was right – we didn’t do serial killers in these parts. Even the Shankill Butchers had had the sense to join the Protestant paramilitaries first.

  I yawned and ran back across the tracks and walked a minute along the sea front to the police station. I showed my warrant card to the unknown constable at the entrance. “It’s the early bird that catches the worm, sir,” he said.

  “Aye.”

  I checked to see if that fingerprint evidence had come in yet but of course it hadn’t. I reread the killer’s postcard and the tip from the Confidential Telephone. Nothing leapt out at me.

  I couldn’t think what else to do so I took my sleeping bag from out of my locker, lay down on the ancient sofa in the CID room and slept like a log until morning.

  8: ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD

  McCrabban and McCallister’s faces staring at me. McCrabban holding a mug of coffee.

  “Thank you,” I said, sitting up in the sleeping bag and taking it. “What time is it?”

  “Nine,” McCallister said.

  “What day is it?” I asked.

  “Sunday,” Crabbie said.

  “You two came in on a Sunday? Why?” I wondered.

  “Well, I have a press conference to prepare for tomorrow and Crabbie and you are on an active murder investigation,” McCallister said.

  Crabbie grinned. “And we’re all on time and a half!” he announced with glee.

  “I’ve been here since four.”

  “Sleeping time doesn’t count,” McCallister said.

  I sipped the machine coffee. “I was just resting my eyes,” I muttered.

  McCallister rubbed my head. “Back to the coalface for me,” he said.

  Crabbie was wearing a suit today. As a detective he normally wore his own clothes which consisted of various outlandish jackets, shirts and ties. I hadn’t seen him in a proper suit before.

  “What gives with the threads?” I asked.

  “Had church this morning. And this evening. You wanna come? Leave aside your Romish superstition and follow the one true faith,” he said with a glint in his eyes – the only sign of a gag in his Spock-like visage.

  I had been to an Ulster Presbyterian church service before. It was a masterclass in boredom. The building itself was deliberately bland with no ornament or accoutrements, merely simple wooden benches and a pulpit upon which a picture of the burning bush had been draped. There was no kneeling, incense, overly stimulating hymns, or raised voices. The sermons were long and focused on obscure passages of the Bible.

  “I think I’ll give it a miss, mate,” I said.

  Crabbie’s shrug seemed to convey the notion that one hour of tedium was a small price to pay to avoid eternity in the hellfire.

  “Where’s Matty?” I asked.

  “Fishing in Fermanagh,” Crabbie said.

  “Doesn’t he care about this fabled time and a half?”

  “Nothing messes with his Sunday fishing.”

  I yawned and stretched. “Is there anything going on in the world?” I asked.

  “The rumour is that the power-station workers are going to go on strike.”

  “Any more hunger strikers die?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did we ever get that fax from Belfast about John Doe’s ID?” Crabbie shook his head. “We were supposed to get it yesterday morning. You know what I think?” he said.

  “What?”

  “I think it’s being repressed. I think John Doe is somebody important and Belfast is scrambling to lay the groundwork before releasing the information to us.”

  “You’re paranoid,” I scoffed and then reconsidered. “Although William Burroughs said that a paranoid is somebody who knows what is actually going on.”

  “Billy Burroughs said that? The guy that runs the fish shop?”

  I drank the rest of the coffee and stood up. “Let’s go round the hospital and see if our patho has made any pro
gress,” I said.

  “All right.”

  It was only drizzling so we walked to Carrick Hospital along Taylor’s Avenue and over the railway bridge at Barn Halt. I stopped when we were halfway over.

  “I was here last night,” I said. “Checking out Lucy Moore’s vanishing act. I don’t see how she did it. A guy sees her waiting at the halt two minutes before the train is due to arrive. The train pulls in, her ma’s leaning out the window looking for her and she’s not there? How?”

  “Maybe somebody abducted her.”

  “Impossible. The platform was full of people.”

  “Maybe she got on the train but her mum missed her.”

  “It was only three carriages long and her ma looked in every one.”

  Crabbie shrugged. “Well, that’s all moot now, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yeah, I suppose it is.”

  We went on. The rain and the fact that it was Sunday had deterred all but the hardiest of cases and the waiting room was empty except for one crazy-looking guy with his arm wrapped up in a DIY bandage made of toilet paper.

  Hattie Jacques saw us come in. “Good afternoon, gents. You’ll have to hurry if you want to see Dr Cathcart. Her office is along the corridor and the last door on the right.”

  We walked along the gloomy corridor. I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten and my stomach was rumbling.

  “I’m starving,” I said.

  “You want half a Mars bar?” McCrabban asked.

  “Kill for one.”

  He fished a Mars bar out of his pocket, broke it in two and gave half to me. We ate it outside her door. Inside we could hear her singing along to “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. She was off key by a country mile.

  I smiled at McCrabban and he grinned back.

  We knocked on the door.

  The radio was abruptly switched off.

  “Come in!” she said.

  Her office was small and dark, packed with books, files and a couple of anatomy charts. There were no feminine or homely touches. The impression she was clearly trying to convey was business, nothing but business.

  We said our hellos and sat down. The view behind her head was of the hospital wall and the Knockagh mountain beyond.