Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

I kept on going.

Dolly Parton came on the radio, singing an old bluegrass song.

My knuckles were white. The downslope was coming up.

The reason the IRA used mercury tilt switches is that they only work when the mercury establishes contact on an incline or decline. While the mercury remains level the bomb is safe, thus it could sit under a car for days or even weeks. As soon as it was driven, however, eventually you’d encounter a hill …

I looked out the window.

This is what death would look like.

Victoria Council Estate, a grim appendage of consumptive Carrickfergus, itself a distension of the dying city of Belfast. Grey, wet, unloved. A ghetto supermarket, a bookies, a derelict house and on the gable terrace a massive mural of crossed AK-47s above the Red Hand of Ulster.

The downslope grew steeper. I held my breath as Dolly made her point:

When I was young and in my prime,

I left my home in Caroline,

Now all I do is sit and pine,

For all the folks I left behind …

I clenched my fists.

Counted. One. Two. Three.

The road flattened out.

The bomb had not gone off.

There was no bomb. The danger had passed.

I pulled into the car park in front of the newsagents.

Reborn.

My whole life ahead of me …

Until the next fuck up.

I turned off the engine and sat in my little existential prison before going outside into the bigger existential prison of Northern Ireland.

The car park was empty and I checked under the car just to be on the safe side. Nothing, of course.

I said hi to Oscar McDowell and perused the front pages.

“Liz Taylor Collapses” was the headline in the Sun and the Daily Mirror . “Ripper Trial Final Days” was the offering from the Daily Mail . “Royal Wedding Mix Up” was the lead in the Daily Express . A couple of the Irish papers covered the Frankie Hughes riot and were speculating about which of the hunger strikers would die next, while the others led with the ex-Mrs Burton.

“What happened to Liz Taylor?” I asked Oscar.

“Buy the paper and find out,” he said.

I bought a packet of Marlboro Lights, a Mars bar and a Coke instead.

Oscar gave me a funny look with my change.

“What?” I said.

He examined his shoes, cleared his throat.

“You’re a copper, aren’t you, Sean?”

“Yeah,” I said suspiciously.

“Look, is there … is there nothing you can do about the boys?”

“What boys?”

“I’m fed up with it. We barely scrape by here. No one has any money any more. Magazine subscriptions are off by fifty per cent since ICI closed. And you can’t tell them that … You know what I’m talking about.”

I did. He was talking about the protection money he had to pay every week to the paramilitaries. The money he gave straight out of his till to the local hoods so they wouldn’t burn him out.

Oscar was in his sixties. Everything about him radiated exhaustion. He should have sold up and moved to the sun years ago.

“What’s the going rate these days?” I asked.

“Bobby asks for a hundred pound a week. I can’t do it. Not in this economy. It’s impossible! Can you have a word with them, Sean? Make them see sense? Can you?”

I shook my head.

“There’s nothing I can do, Oscar. If you were willing to testify that would be one thing, but you’re not willing to testify, are you?”

He shook his head. “Not on your life!”

“Well then, like I say, nothing I can do.”

“There must be some kind of back channel, Sean, you know, where you can just talk to them. Just tell them that they are charging far too much for this economy. If I go out of business, everybody loses.”

“I can’t meet them. Internal Affairs would say it was collusion.”

“I don’t mean a formal meeting or anything, I’m only saying that in the course of your duties, if you happen to come across those particular gentlemen, perhaps you can drop a wee hint or two.”

I picked up my Mars bar, smokes and Coke.

“I suppose the Bobby you’re referring to is Bobby Cameron on Coronation Road?” I asked.

“You heard no names from me.”

“Ach, I’ll see what I can do.”

Oscar sighed with relief.

“Here, you forgot your papers,” he said, giving me The Times and the Guardian for nothing.

I took them as a matter of course.

I put them on the passenger’s seat and looked at myself in the mirror.

“Your first freebie in your new gig, Sean. This is how it starts. Baby steps,” I said to myself.

Another army checkpoint on the Marine Highway. This time the bloody Paras. They looked at my warrant card and sent me through with a sarcastic thumbs up.

Ray was back in the box at the RUC station and gave me a nod as he raised the barrier to let me into the barracks car park.

I got out into a drizzle and decided to leave the smokes. I was down to two or three bummed ciggies a day. Only bought my own for emergencies.

I went upstairs to the CID evidence room.

I reread the postcard through the evidence bag.

I wrote “eternal duellists/labyrinth/queers” in my notebook.

I checked for any faxes from Belfast.

Nothing.

I put my feet on the chair and had a think.

Two victims. Two hands. Symmetry. Mirrors, opposites, duellists, opponents, key and lock. It was all two.

All except the labyrinth.

“We share the path through the labirinth"

There was only one route through the labyrinth.

One true way. The labyrinth. Built by Daedalus the flyer …

Maybe that meant something.

Daedalus, Icarus, Stephen Daedalus, James Joyce, Dublin …

Nothing.

I rubbed my chin and thought and bounced a pencil off the desk.

I called ballistics.

“Preliminary indications were that the two slugs came from the same gun,” I was told.

I grabbed a typewriter and began work on the presentation. I ate the Mars bar and drank the Coke. McCrabban showed up at 8.30. I told him about the postcard.

He read it, asked me if I’d lifted anything from it.

“You think it’s the real deal?” I asked him.

“We get a lot of hoaxes on every case, but this, I don’t know, it seems different.”

“Any ideas about our boy?”

“He hates queers. Which makes me think that John Doe must be one too. Has to be, right?”

“Aye.”

Crabbie typed up a transcript of the note, made photocopies and helped me with my presentation.

At 8.45, Matty called to say he was running late because of a bomb scare on the Larne-Carrick train.

“Where are you calling from?” I asked.

“The train station,” he lied.

“How come I can hear David Frost in the background?”

“Uhm.”

“Get your arse in here, you lazy hallion!” I said and hung up.

“Youth,” McCrabban said.

“What about them?”

“They need more sleep than us,” he said.

“You know, I don’t think we can do this case with just three people.”

McCrabban nodded.

“I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed,” I said.

Crabbie didn’t like to hear that sort of thing (or anything about anyone’s feelings) and he began furiously filling his pipe to cover his embarrassment.

He lit the thing, coughed and blew a blue smoke ring out of his mouth.

“Yes,” he said, which was about as much consolation as I was going to get from that dour visage.

“Do me a favour and find out who sells postcards of the Andrew Jackson cottage in Carrickfergus and Belfast and ask them if they’ve sold any lately and if so do they remember to whom.”