Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

I drove past the GAA club where the tipster had made his phone call.

“Matty, you get out and dust for prints,” I said.

“Why me?”

“Cos you’re the bravest.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Just get out. You’re the FO, come on.”

Matty was reluctant to leave the safety of the Land Rover so I sent one of the reservists with him. He was called Brown, twenty-two, a carpenter in real life. Matty looked shit-scared. Both of them were in full riot gear and twitchily holding their Sterling sub-machine guns. It made me nervous. “Under no circumstances are you to fire those fucking guns, is that understood? We’ll be right at the end of the street. If there’s trouble, point the guns but do not bloody shoot them.”

“What do we do?” Matty asked.

“Come running down to us if there’s real bother, ok?” I told them.

Brown and Matty nodded.

We drove down to #44.

It was derelict with the windows boarded up and the front door kicked in. I parked the Land Rover and McCrabban, myself and the other reservist got out.

“I’m going in, lads. Keep an eye out for booby traps. He said we’d get a surprise and this would be perfect for a concealed explosive device.”

“In that case, I’ll go first, Sean,” Crabbie said.

“How come you always get to be John Wayne?” I said. “You just hold here, Crabbie. Stay well behind me, the pair of you. And if I’m killed, all my albums are to go to Matty, he’s the only one that will appreciate them.”

“I’ll take the country albums and any of the non-poncy classical,” Crabbie said.

“Fair enough. Now stay back, both of you.”

I was being flippant but dozens of police officers had been killed in booby traps over the years. It was a classic IRA tactic. You call in a tip about a murder, the police go to investigate and they trip a booby trap or the provos remotely detonate a landmine or pipe bomb. Sometimes they place a time-delayed device in a car in the street so they can get the rescue workers too.

I walked down the front path.

The smell of shit and piss hit me straight away.

I looked for wires, loose paving stones or any obvious trips.

Nothing.

So far.

I drew my revolver, turned on the flashlight and walked into the house.

It was completely gutted. Holes in the roof that leaked water, a few hypodermic syringes.

The stairs were wrecked and the stench of mildew was overpowering.

“Everything all right?” McCrabban shouted from out in the street.

I walked into the downstairs living room and the kitchen. More garbage, drug paraphernalia, water dripping down from the ceiling. I tracked through the entire ground floor and the back yard. I couldn’t get upstairs because of the destroyed staircase but it was obvious that no one had been in here for some time.

So why had he sent us here? Just because he could? A power trip? Was he watching us from a location across the street, laughing?

“There’s nothing here!” I yelled back.

“Let’s get back to the Land Rover then. There’s trouble!” McCrabban said.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Bunch of lads outside the GAA club.”

I went back outside. Matty and Brown were running down the street towards us. They were being chased by a dozen lads with hurley sticks and bottles.

“Don’t run, you pair of eejits,” McCrabban was muttering to himself.

“Ok, everybody, get in the Rover! You drive, Crabbie, I’ll try and reason with the lynch mob.”

I walked back down the path and was about to leave #44 Laganville Road forever when I noticed that the owners from long ago had put in a US-style mailbox with a little red flag to indicate when there was mail.

The flag was up. I opened the rusted mail box and sure enough there was a brown envelope inside. I took it out and shoved it between my flak jacket and my sweater.

Matty and a terrified-looking Constable Brown reached the Land Rover.

“Did you get the prints?” I asked.

“Are you fucking joking?” Matty said furiously. “Fucking suicide mission you sent us on.”

“Ok, calm down. Get in the Land Rover and close the bloody doors, Crabbie, get her started up!”

I holstered my revolver, reached into the front seat and grabbed a plastic bullet gun that I loaded and primed.

I walked towards the rioters.

They were the kind of kids who hung around the streets and attacked the police or fire brigade whenever they saw them. With tensions running high over the hunger strikes, one solitary Land Rover was an irresistible target.

Bottles and stones started smashing all around me.

Crabbie revved the engine and I waited until all the lads were inside before walking in front of the vehicle with the plastic bullet gun.

When the mob was twenty feet away they started directing all their bricks, bottles and stones at me. If they could put a man down or disable the vehicle they’d scarper and call in the heavy brigade who would show up with grenades and petrol bombs.

I pointed the plastic bullet gun at them.

“That’s enough!” I yelled.

Everyone froze and I knew I had about three seconds.

“Listen people! We are not DMSU. We are not the riot squad. We are detectives investigating a murder. We are going to leave this street right now and no one is going to get hurt!”

I kept the plastic bullet gun aimed at the guy on point and moved my way backwards towards the Land Rover. Their leader was an ugly ganch with a skinhead, a Celtic FC shirt and a breeze block in his hand.

“This is our patch, you fucking peeler bastards!” he said and hurled the breeze block at me. I dodged it but didn’t avoid a couple of stones that caught me in the flak jacket.

“Get in, Sean!” Crabbie yelled.

I jumped into the passenger seat of the Land Rover as an impressive hail of assorted objects came hurtling at me.

“So how did your Gandhi act go down with the locals?” McCrabban asked with dour satisfaction.

A milk carton exploded on our windscreen.

I closed the Land Rover door.

“They have much to learn about the moral authority of nonviolence.”

“I think we should be leaving now,” Crabbie said.

He turned the window wipers on, gave the engine big revs and drove slowly through the crowd. Perhaps one of them was our killer. I tried to see their faces but it was impossible through the milk and missiles. Bottles and bricks bounced off the bulletproof glass and the steel plating on the sides. The mob began chanting “SS RUC! SS RUC! SS RUC!” However, after twenty seconds of this we had successfully reached the end of the street without getting a puncture.

In another five minutes we were on the Crumlin Road and five minutes after that we were safe in Protestant North Belfast.

“Everybody all right back there?” I asked the lads in the rear.

“Everybody’s fine,” Matty said, but I could smell shit through the grill. One of the two reservists had keeked a planet in their whips.

Half an hour later, Matty opened the envelope from #44 in the CID room with myself, McCrabban, Chief Inspector Brennan and Sergeant McCallister looking on.

It was on standard A4 paper. A typed message single-spaced:

My story still has not appeared in The Belfast Telegraph!!!! You are not taking me seriously!!!!! You have until the Monday edition and then I will kill a queer every night!!!! I will liberate them from this vale of tears. The queers on TV and in the peelers and everywhere!!!! Lee McCrea. Dougal Campbell. Gordon Billingham!!!! Scott McAvenny. I know them all!!! DO NOT TEST ME!!!!! My patience is running thin!!!!

Matty carried it to the photocopier and made us half a dozen copies before setting to work on his forensic tests. It took him ten minutes to discover that the typewriter was an old manual Imperial 55.