Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“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 steamed 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.

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.