Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

Brennan passed the musical score back across the table. He took a sip of cold coffee from a mug on his desk. “Who else have you told about this theory of yours?”

“McCrabban and Sergeant McCallister. I’ll have to tell Matty too.”

“Good. Nobody else. What’s the status of your investigation?”

“We might get a break soon, sir. Now we have two sets of fingerprints working their way through the channels.”

He nodded and put his glasses back on. I could see that I was being dismissed. I got to my feet. “Do your job, do it well and do it quietly,” Brennan muttered, examining the Daily Mail again.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sean, one more thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

“‘Idle fellow but he gives us a buzz.’ Thirteen across. Five letters.”

I thought for a second. “Drone, sir?”

“Drone? Drone, oh yes. Ok, you may go.”

I exited. It was late and the place was emptying out.

I borrowed a couple of ciggies from someone’s table and headed out onto the fire escape to think.

There was trouble up in Belfast again. Potassium nitrate flares falling through the darkening sky. A Gazelle helicopter flying low over the lough water. Little kids walking past the police station showing each other the best technique for lobbing Molotov cocktails over the fence. Jesus, what a nightmare.

This was a city crucified under its own blitz.

This was a city poisoning its own wells, salting its own fields, digging its own grave …

I smoked the fags and when the rain came I climbed back inside, locked the evidence in the CID room and drove home.

The cows were gone. The cow shit had been scraped up and bagged by entrepreneurs. Mrs Campbell told me all about the great bovine escape and how Arthur’s prized roses had been ruined and how he would be furious when he got back from the North Sea, which wouldn’t, she added, be for two more long, lonely weeks.

I went into the kitchen and made myself a pint-glass vodka gimlet. I threw frozen chips in the deep fat fryer and dumped a can of beans in a pot. I fried two eggs and ate them with the chips and beans.

At seven o’clock I shaved and changed into a shirt, my black jeans, leather jacket and DM shoes. I put on a black leather waistcoat. It looked good but there was a slight Han Solo vibe so I hung it back in the cupboard.

I went out. A stray dog began walking beside me. Black lab. Cheerful looking character. Victoria Estate had dozens of stray dogs and cats, fed, and sometimes adopted, by the local children.

I was halfway along Barn Road when a guy ran out of his house wearing a white singlet and waving a ten-pound sledgehammer.

“Now you’re going to get it!” he screamed at me. “You’re really going to get it!”

“For what?”

“Your dog just took a dump against my gate. I finally caught you, you dirty bastard! You and your dirty dog. You are going to pay, mate! Oh yes!”

“That’s not my dog,” I said.

His consternation and disappointment knew no bounds. I could sympathize: there is nothing, nothing in this world more deflating than the realization that the lumping villain who has been tormenting you is not going to get an arse-kicking after all.

He asked me if I was sure it was not my dog but I just kept walking.

I went by a DeLorean broken down on the Scotch Quarter, gull wings askew, steam coming from its rear engine, which did not bode well.

The Dobbins was deserted and I got a seat next to the massive sixteenth-century fireplace. I ordered a Guinness, took out my notebook and looked over my bullet points from the day. Twelve pages of notes. Lots of questions marks and exclamation points. This was a case already spiralling out of control.

I nursed my pint until 9.30.

She didn’t show.

“The hell with it!” I said, got up and began walking home along West Street.

“Sergeant Duffy!” she called out.

I turned. She was wearing old jeans and a red blouse, ratty sneakers. She hadn’t dressed up and her hair was wet. Spur of the moment decision?

We went back in. I got her a gin and tonic. Another pint for me.

“Look, it’s a wee bit late in the game to ask this but …” I began.

“Yes?”

“What’s your name?”

She laughed. “I must have told you.”

“Nope.”

“Laura.”

“Mine’s Sean.”

“I know. Although I bet they all call you the fenian or the left footer or something, don’t they?”

“Who? The other cops?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not like that. At least not to my face. The constables call me ‘Duffy’ or ‘Sergeant Duffy’. I’m Sean to everybody else except Carol who calls me Mr Sean cos she’s from Fermanagh. I’m only mildly exotic. Catholic hiring has gone up since Mrs Thatcher seized the reins. Even the dyed-in-the-wool bigots are going to have to get used to us soon enough.”

She seemed unconvinced.

“I’m CID,” I further explained. “Believe me, that’s more of an issue. Some divisions are more important than others and detective versus beat cop is the historic peeler schism.”

“If you say so.”

“Did you have any trouble being an RC in medical school?”

“You knew I was a Catholic? My name’s Laura, I’m a doctor, how could you-”

I pointed to her crucifix. “Proddies don’t wear those unless they’ve got a morbid fear of vampires.”

“You don’t see many Catholic policemen. Your father was a peeler?”

“God, no. A clerk, then a country solicitor. Yours?”

“Country doctor.”

She had taken precisely one sip of her gin and tonic when her pager went.

She found a telephone.

She came back ashen.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The Peacock Room Restaurant, South Belfast,” she said, her voice trembling.

“A bomb?”

“Incendiary.”

“How many?”

“Six burned alive. A dozen more in the Royal Victoria Hospital. The coroner asked me if I would help ID the victims in the morning.”

“What did you say?”

“What can you say?”

She downed her gin and tonic. I took her hand to stop it shaking. It was cold.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

Back on West Street it was drizzling and we could hear the sound of rioting in Belfast again, distant and ominous.

“Walk me home,” she said.

I walked her to one of the new flats on Governor’s Place opposite the castle. We put on the TV news. All three channels were carrying it. It was a blast bomb that had been placed next to an oil drum filled with petrol and sugar — IRA napalm. The victims hadn’t had a chance.

After five minutes she turned off the tube.

“I’ve been to that restaurant,” she said.

She began to cry.

I held her.

“Will you stay?” she asked.

I stayed.

Later. Her bedroom overlooking the harbour. Laura, asleep in the moonlight. The harbour lights dead on the black water. A Soviet coal boat tied up along the wharf. Six people. Six people trying to seize a piece of normality in an abnormal world. Burned alive by incendiaries.

Tiocfadh ar la . Up the revolution. Our day will come.

I wondered why that particular target. Maybe they hadn’t been paying their protection money? Maybe they had but it had been full of Belfast’s high society and it was just too tempting to pass up. And then there was the whole business of the oil drum, manoeuvring that into place implied careful planning and possibly someone on the inside …

I sighed — all these were questions for a different team of detectives. I had my own problems. The sheet had fallen off

Laura’s back. I looked at her long legs tucked up beneath her breasts. I fixed the sheet, slipped out of the bed, pulled on my jeans and sweater. I dressed, grabbed her keys from the dresser and went outside to have a cigarette.