Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

It was a sizeable crowd and a mobile chip van had parked up the road selling chips, fried dough and hot jam doughnuts.

“Doughnut?” I asked Crabbie.

“Wouldn’t say no.”

We got half a dozen and drove up into the country.

New Line Lane was just off New Line Road about a mile from the village of Ballycarry.

There were a lot of potholes and the bramble bushes closed in tightly on both sides of the track to such an extent that it made me worried about the paintwork.

When we finally came to the cottage it wasn’t large: merely one floor, whitewashed stone, cubby windows and a thatched roof. No doubt tourists would have gone apeshit for it and no doubt the occupant complained about the leaks and the damp. Blue turf smoke was curling from the chimney.

I parked the Beemer, got out, and glanced behind me, down the lane, to the grey tongue of Belfast Lough and beyond it to the yellow cranes of the shipyards in Harland and Wolff. The city looked peaceful as it always did from up here. There was no fire but you could tell something serious was going on because of the number of choppers hovering over the Ardoyne: two Gazelles, a Sea King and a Wessex.

The sun had made an appearance so I left my raincoat in the cab. It wasn’t that professional to do your police work in a Deep Purple T-shirt, but what could you do?

We knocked on the little wooden door, which had been painted a fetching shade of green.

“Mr Hays?” Crabbie asked.

The door opened. Hays was tall and thin, about twenty-five. He was wearing blue-tinted John Lennon glasses and his blond hair was gelled. He was wearing white jeans and a white shirt. He had a bruise on his cheek and a split lip, barely healed from when — without a doubt — the IRA had interrogated him about Tommy’s death. He was pointing a double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun at us.

“Can I help you?” he asked in a well-to-do South Belfast accent.

“We’re the police. We’re looking into the death of Tommy Little,” I said, showing him my warrant card.

“I’ve got nothing to say,” Hays replied, before reading the card carefully.

“Until recently were you living with Tommy Little on 44 Falls Crescent?”

“Until yesterday,” he muttered.

“Until the IRA kicked you out?”

“No comment.”

“Maybe you could aim that shotgun away from my bollocks, I’m about to become a father,” Crabbie said.

Hays lowered the shotgun.

“Who were you expecting?” I asked pointing at the weapon.

“You never know, do you?” Hays said.

“Is this your house?” I asked.

“It was my da’s. We used to come here now and again to get away from Belfast.”

“You and Tommy Little?”

“No comment.”

“What do you do for a living, Mr Hays?” I asked.

“I work for the forestry commission.”

“Ah, interesting work, I’m sure. I’ve heard that as late as 1800 a squirrel could go from one side of Ireland to the other jumping from tree branch to tree branch.”

“That’s about right,” he mumbled and narrowed his eyes.

I’ve seen many a hold-out and this guy was as dour as they came. In normal circumstances he would be a tough interview, but fortunately for us he was frazzled, humiliated and best of all — angry.

“Who told you not to speak to us, Mr Hays?”

“Who do you think?”

“The IRA?”

“Them and my innate common sense.”

“Can we come in, Mr Hays?”

He shook his head.

“Look, Mr Hays, I’m a detective sergeant at Carrickfergus RUC. I’m looking into Tommy’s death. Unlike your friends in the IRA who want this whole thing just to go away, I want to find the killer. I want to find out who did it.”

“Tommy went out that night, that’s all I know,” Hays said and tried to shut the door.

I got my foot in the jam and held it open.

“Where did he go?”

“I’m not saying anything more.”

“Where did he go?” Crabbie asked.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Come on, we’re trying to find out who killed him,” I insisted. His eyes were filling with tears now but he still shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything. That much was made clear to me. I was tied to a fucking chair. They placed a gun against my forehead. I was told that I was lucky that I was being let live!”

I took a deep breath and put my hand on his shoulder. “Just tell us where he was going,” I whispered.

Hays glared at me but he kept his mouth shut.

I looked at Crabbie. Of course we could take him in, but with a Sinn Fein lawyer in the room with him it would be the stone wall … Besides we both could see that he was caving.

He was starting to tremble, not one big tremble but little shunts building towards climax, like people on the bus to the shrine of Our Lady of Knock.

This was the big holy shit. This was grief.

“We need to know where Tommy was going,” Crabbie said gently.

“Who was he going to see, Walter?” I asked.

Hays shook his head. “I read the paper. It’s nothing to do with Tommy’s job, is it? It was some nut randomly going round killing people. Killing queers!”

He said the word “queers” with a sneer — the way he thought we said it.

But it was too late now. He’d given us something important.

Tommy’s job .

“What did Tommy do for the IRA, Walter?”

“You don’t even know that?” Hays said with contempt. “You boys are fucking clueless.”

Crabbie and I shared an excited look.

“What did he do, Walter?”

“I’m telling you nothing!” Hays barked.

Different tack now. Build it like a staircase.

“Did Tommy’s car ever show up?” I asked.

Walter shook his head.

“What car did he drive?” Crabbie asked.

“1978 blue Ford Granada, BXI 1263.”

I wrote the licence plate down in my notebook.

“How long were you and Tommy together?” I asked.

“Four years.”

“Four years. He must have meant the world to you. Come on, Walter. Don’t you want us to find Tommy’s killer?”

“You’ll get nothing out of me. Nothing,” he said with a sob. “Now you’ll really have to leave!”

I reached in my pocket to give him one of my cards but he wouldn’t take it.

“If they find it in the house, they’ll top me for sure,” he said.

There were real tears now.

“It’s ok, mate,” I said. I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “It’s ok,” I said. “It’s ok.”

The tears flowed.

A minute went by.

He sniffed and pulled himself together. I looked him in the eyes.

“Who was he going to see, Walter? Give us a name.”

He sniffed again. A hint of flintiness in his expression. A resolution.

“It’s two names,” he whispered.

“Tell me.”

“It won’t help you.”

“Why not?”

“Neither one of them is the killer. The IRA already did an internal investigation and both of them are still alive.”

“Tell me anyway. Tell me the whole thing.”

He wiped his nose. “All right. If it’ll get rid of you.”

“We’ll leave, I promise.”

He sighed and took a deep breath. “Ok. Ok, so it’s half seven at night and the snooker’s on BBC2 and it’s Alex Higgins and Tommy loves seeing Alex play, but he puts on his jacket and so I ask him where he’s going and he says something about having to see Billy White about the rackets. I don’t think anything of it as he goes to see Billy once a fortnight, more or less. And I’m not really listening to him. And he’s literally going out the door and the phone rings and he picks it up and he’s talking for about a minute and I’m not paying a lot of attention cos I’m watching the snooker too and then he hangs up and I say who was that? And he doesn’t answer. And so I turn to look at him and I ask him what’s up. And he mutters something about business to take care of and after that he’s going to have to go down to Freddie Scavanni’s house. And then he goes out. And that … that’s the last I ever saw of him.”