Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

He did not inspect my ID. I gave Matty a wry look and shook my head. A buzzer sounded and a metal gate opened.

With that we were into the main prison compound.

There were eight H Blocks in separate wings for Republican and Loyalist prisoners — in fact separate wings for the various Republican and Loyalist groups. There was a Provisional IRA wing, an INLA section, a UVF section, a UFF/UDA wing and areas for various other smaller factions.

We parked the Rover and got out.

“Sergeant Duffy?” an aged, grey moustachioed, sad-faced man in a prison officer’s uniform asked me from under a giant black umbrella.

“That’s me.”

“I’m Davey Childers, RUC liaison.”

We shook hands.

“We’ve arranged to have you meet Moore in the visitor’s area.”

“He’s not in the hospital?”

“Oh no, he’s only been on hunger strike for a week. That’s not necessary yet.”

I looked at Matty and we were both relieved.

We went through a series of narrow-fenced easements topped with razor wire until we came to a bunker-like one storey building that was also surrounded by a razor-wire fence.

This place was not like the Victorian prisons of England with their imposing red-brick and neo-gothic architecture that was supposed to impress inmates with the power of the state; no, this place looked cobbled together, shoddy and temporary and the only thing it impressed upon you was how current British policy on Ireland was dominated by short-term thinking.

We walked through a set of double doors, checked in our weapons, patted an amiable sniffer dog and immediately saw a fairly healthy looking Seamus Moore sitting waiting for us at a long Formica table. He was bearded, long-haired and wearing pyjamas. He was smoking a cigarette and drinking what looked like a mug of tea.

“I didn’t know they were allowed tea,” Matty muttered.

“Don’t comment on it, we don’t want him to take the huff and storm off,” I hissed.

We sat down opposite and I did the introductions. Seamus was a good-looking wee skitter with green cat’s eyes, arched eyebrows and a bit of a sleekit grin; he had a violet-coloured scar running from his chin to his lower lip but that didn’t detract from his easy-going, handsome face. He was thin, of course, but he didn’t look emaciated. He was in for possession of a stolen shotgun, which had only garnered him a two and a half year sentence. Why he had taken it upon himself to go on hunger strike was a bit of a mystery to me. You could understand why a lifer or a ten-year man would do it, but not someone who’d be paroled in twelve months. Maybe it was just to establish his credentials and he’d be one of the ones who pulled out of it in a fortnight “after listening to the pleas of his family”.

“You’ve got five minutes, peeler,” he said. “I’ve got a phone interview with the Boston Herald at half nine.”

“All right. First, let me say that I’m very sorry about your wife, Seamus. I was the one who found her,” I said.

“Ex-wife.”

“Regardless. Ex-wife.”

“Suicide, right?” he asked.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Silly bint. And she’d got herself knocked up, hadn’t she?”

“Where did you hear that?” I asked.

He laughed and blew smoke. “You hear things, you don’t know where,” he said.

His attitude needed serious work but that was not a job for me — I had to be relatively gentle with him. At any moment he could turn round and waltz back to his cell and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.

“When did you last hear from Lucy?”

He shook his head. “Jesus. Last November? After the divorce came through. She said I owed her two thousand pound for her car which was total bollocks. We agreed to give that wee Mini to my ma. I didn’t owe her bloody anything.”

He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, lit another and looked at his watch.

“I heard that she ran away to Cork,” he added.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Cos she sent postcards to her ma and her sister Claire. I mean, who fucking runs away to Cork? Stupid wee milly. If you’re knocked up ya go to fucking London and get it fucking seen to.”

“I would have thought you’d be upset that she’d gotten pregnant while you were stuck in here?”

“What the fuck do I care? We were divorced. She could marry fucking Prince Charles as far as I’m concerned.”

“So you haven’t heard from her at all since Christmas?”

“Nope,” he said with thin-lipped finality.

“Did you ever threaten her at all, Seamus?”

“Did I fuck. I haven’t wasted two seconds thinking about her since last year.”

“So you wouldn’t have objected if she’d taken up with someone else?”

“Are you deaf, peeler? I’ve fucking told ya, I didn’t give a shite.”

I rubbed my chin, looked at Matty, but he said nothing.

“Borrow a smoke?” I asked.

“Help yourself,” he said.

I lit a Benson and Hedges and gave Matty one.

“What makes a man want to starve himself to death?” I asked.

“For Ireland!” Seamus said vociferously.

“You know what my barber said?”

“What did your bloody barber say?” he asked.

“He said that nationalism was an outmoded concept. That it was a tool capitalists used to divide the workers and keep them down.”

He shook his head. “In a free Ireland, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant will be united!” he said.

“Do you really believe that? Is that what’s happened in the Republic?”

He stood up. “I’ve had enough of you, peeler. I have important people to talk to.”

“Seamus, sit down. You told me you’d give me five minutes. Come on, mate. Is neamhbhuan cogadh na gcarad; ma bhionn se crua, ni bhionn se fada ,” I said in the glens dialect of Irish that I had grown up with.

He was taken aback by the Gaelic and blinked a couple of times before sitting down again.

“Can you think of any reason why anyone would want her dead?” I asked.

“Somebody topped her?” he asked with what looked like genuine surprise.

“We’re awaiting the coroner’s verdict on that. It seems like a suicide but you never know. I was just wondering if anybody would have wanted her dead.”

Seamus shook his head, but I could tell he was thinking it over.

“I don’t think so,” he said at last.

There was a but in there.

“But …” I began.

“Well,” he looked behind him and lowered his voice. “The old-timers might not have taken too kindly to her getting knocked up while I’m up for me stretch.”

“Even after you got divorced?” I said.

Seamus laughed. “In the eyes of the church there is no divorce, is there?”

I was about to follow up on this but before I could a voice yelled to us from the other side of the visitor’s room.

“What is going on in here?”

I turned and saw Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams, and another tall man that I didn’t know, marching towards us. Matty and I stood up.

Adams was furious. “Are you a peeler? Are you a cop? Who gave you permission to talk to one of the martyrs?” Adams demanded.

“Shouldn’t you wait to call them martyrs until after they’re dead?” I said.

This was the wrong thing to say.

Adams’s beard bristled.

“Who gave you permission to talk to our comrade?”

“I’m investigating the death of his ex-wife.”

The other man got in my face. “You are not permitted to talk to any of the prisoners in our wing of Long Kesh without a solicitor being present,” he said in a soft southern-boarding-school/almost-English accent.

“Seamus doesn’t mind,” I insisted.