Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

Water. Reflections. Pencil lines of light.

The silence of 3 a.m. Sporadic gunfire. Choppers.

I could see it even if no one else wanted to. This was the Gotterdammerung. This was a time of opportunity for people who wished to walk on the grass, to embrace the irrational, to hug the dark.

I walked down to the harbour’s edge.

Somewhere deep down I heard music. Not Puccini. Schubert’s piano trio in e-flat. His opus 100. The fourth movement where the piano takes the melody …

I looked at Laura’s apartment from the outside. I looked at the sleeping town.

The phosphorescence of bulb and beam.

You’re out here too, aren’t you, friend ? You’re awake and wondering about me. Have the peelers got your message? Do they know what’s in store?

We know.

I know.

I walked back to the apartment. I put the key in the lock.

Quiet.

The hall.

Quiet.

The bedroom.

Quiet.

“Where have you be-”

“Sssshhh. Sleep.”

“Sleep?”

“Yes. Sleep.”

And I got in beside her and we moved from one dream to another …

I could smell coffee. She cleared her throat. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was wearing my shirt, no kacks and she was holding a mug of Nescafe.

She smiled but she didn’t look happy.

I didn’t envy her her task today up at that awful morgue in Belfast.

“Thanks,” I said and took the cup.

“I didn’t know how you liked it so I just made it with milk and two sugars.”

“That’s fine.”

“You want some breakfast?”

“If you’re having something.”

“It’s already made, come and join me in the living room.”

“Ok,” I said.

She took off my shirt and laid it on the bed.

“And get a move on,” she said.

I admired her small breasts, trim, sexy body and pert arse as she walked away. She was like one of the girls you’d meet out in the country somewhere, you on a bike covered in mud spattle and she trotting past on some massive chestnut hunter. I liked that image. And I liked her. But it was evident that I was being given the bum’s rush.

She wanted me to dress, eat and go.

I pulled on me kit and shoes and followed her into the lounge.

The place looked good in daylight. Very chic: blurry black and white photographs, pastel shades, German furniture and a kitsch kitty cat lamp (at least I hoped it was kitsch). The view through the big windows was of the harbour and the twelfth-century castle.

She’d made porridge and an Ulster fry.

My porridge came in a packet, hers had been slow cooked for twenty minutes with full cream milk, salt and brown sugar and was so thick that you could stand a spoon vertical in it.

It was damn good.

The fry was fine too, sizzling: sausage, egg, bacon, soda bread and potato bread. After this I’d last until dinner or my coronary — whichever came first.

A doctor, a looker and a cook.

She was a catch.

“So what’s your home number?” I asked as I started on the last egg.

“Uh, you won’t need it. We won’t be doing this again.”

I looked for the kid, but there was no kid. She was serious.

“What? Why?”

“It was a momentary … weakness. I am not the kind of girl who bangs on the first date.”

She was looking at me, her eyes wide and her face frowning. It was, no doubt, an expression she had practised in the mirror for telling patients bad news.

“Neither am I,” I said.

She gave me a thin smile. “I’m no slag. And it’s not just that.”

“Something about me?” I wondered aloud.

“No. Not you. Timing. I just got out of a long-term relationship. It wouldn’t be fair on you.”

“I’d be the rebound guy?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

She shook her head. “No. No. It’s all too soon. You understand, right? And we’ll be friends. I’m sure I’ll see you around, on a, uh, professional basis.”

She put out her hand again for that odd formal handshake.

I was having none of it.

I pulled her close and she was having none of that.

“No,” she said and shoved .

She got up from the table, went to the radio and turned it on. Juice Newton was singing “Queen of Hearts”. It was a song I had grown to hate over the previous week.

I regarded her with amazement and she returned my gaze with a fixed, impatient look of her own.

“I suppose you think you’re better than me,” I very nearly said but didn’t.

I finished my tea in a gulp.

“All right. I imagine I’ll see you around then, Dr Cathcart,” I said, pushing the chair back.

“Yes,” she said, not looking at me now.

I got my coat, opened the front door and was down the steps and half way to the cop shop before I regretted the abruptness of my departure.

It was petulant. It lacked finesse. Cary Grant would have made a joke or something.

Annoyance changed into self-pity. The first woman I’d liked since Adele and somehow I had ballsed it all up. “Eejit,” I muttered to myself.

I walked along the Scotch Quarter past a bunch of confused looking school kids with no school to go to and nothing else to do but make trouble or sniff glue.

I went into Sandy McGowan’s newsagent next to the Royal Oak. I looked at the headlines but didn’t buy a paper: the local news was terrible, the British news irritating.

“How’s the Pope doing?” I asked Sandy.

Sandy was yet another fenian fifth columnist in Proddy Carrickfergus. Decent bloke. A bald wee fella from County Donegal. Rap sheet for smuggling cigarettes across the border but who hasn’t got one of those?

“Bless him, he’s on the mend, he’ll live to see a hundred,” Sandy said.

“I’ll put a tenner on that. Cheers, Sandy,” I said and headed for the door.

“Are you not buying a paper?”

“Improve the news, mate, and then I’ll get one.”

I walked past the Oak and stopped to look at a big convoy of army trucks and APCs going south along the Marine Highway. They were fresh painted and obviously coming straight from the ferry in Larne.

The soldiers were nervous and seemed about seventeen.

I gave them the black power salute just to get in their heads. Several of them looked suitably terrified and I had a bit of a laugh to myself.

The RUC barracks.

First one in again. Keep this up and I’d get a reputation.

I went to the coffee machine and got a coffee choc and then I checked the faxes but there was no news from Belfast. I followed up with a phone call.

Yes, they had both sets of fingerprints.

No, they had no results as yet. Yes, they knew it was a murder investigation. Did I appreciate that they were very very busy?

At nine o’clock Brennan came in with sergeants Burke and McCallister and asked if me and my CID lads wanted to earn some riot pay. It was Frankie Hughes’s funeral this morning, all RUC leave had been cancelled and trouble was expected.

“No thanks, chief, some of us have an actual job to do around here,” I said.

Brennan didn’t like that but he didn’t bust my chops.

“You’ll mind the store?” he asked.

“Aye,” I said.

The station emptied. Just Carol, a couple of part-time reservists, Matty, Crabbie and me.

I told the boys about the Puccini and both of them saw the same angle that I did.

“He’s taking the piss,” Matty said.

“He’s drawing attention to himself. That’s his method. Like Bathsheba combing her hair. There’s a reason for it,” Crabbie said.

I liked Crabbie. The sixth of nine boys. The rest of his brothers were farmers and farm labourers except for one who was a Free Presbyterian missionary in Malawi. He was the family brainbox. He had bucked the trend by not leaving school at sixteen and immediately getting married. Instead he had done his A levels, got an HND certificate at Newtownabbey Tech and joined the peelers.