Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“The clock’s ticking,” Scavanni said.

“What is all this?” I asked pointing at the offices.

“It is an adjunct press office for Sinn Fein. We’re getting a thousand calls a day for interviews and quotes. We just couldn’t cope on the Falls Road.”

“And what do you do for Sinn Fein, Mr Scavanni?”

“I’m just a lowly paid staffer.”

“And what do you do for the IRA?

He rolled his eyes at me. “Sergeant, I have absolutely nothing to do with the IRA.”

“Why was Tommy Little coming to see you the night he disappeared?”

“Admin stuff. Nothing that interesting.”

“It might have been a wee bit interesting. It was a sudden change of plans, wasn’t it? We’ve been told that Tommy was on his way to see a certain Billy White and then he got a phone call and then he said had to come see you too.”

Freddie didn’t flinch. “Talking to Walter, were you? Yes. I called him. I just wanted to have a chat about getting more cars. Tommy was one of our drivers and we’ve been having to double and triple up on cars for American journalists.”

“You called him? To talk about cars?”

“Yes. Check the phone records.”

“We will,” Matty said.

“So was this a long conversation?”

“As far as I recall we settled the whole thing in about a minute. I asked him if he could make more cars available for the US media and he said he’d take care of it.”

“So if it was all settled why was he coming to your house?”

“I have no idea why Walter told you that he was coming over to see me, but I do know that he never made it.”

“Did you see him at all on Tuesday night?”

“No.”

“Do you not find that a bit strange, that he said he was coming to see you but then he didn’t?”

“Yeah, it would be strange if he hadn’t been shot in the head somewhere between Belfast and my house.”

“Where do you live, Mr Scavanni?”

“Straid.”

“Where’s that?”

“Near Ballynure,” Matty said.

“And you’ve no idea why Tommy felt the urge to come and see you in person?”

“None at all. I asked him if he could sort out more cars for the American hacks and he said that he’d take care of it. I thought the matter was settled.”

“What did Tommy do for the IRA?” I asked.

“I have no idea. I know very little about the IRA. I’m a press officer for Sinn Fein,” Scavanni said.

“Will you be going to Tommy’s funeral?”

Scavanni shrugged. “I’m very busy. And I didn’t know him that well.”

“We’ve been told that Tommy’s death is something of an embarrassment. No military honours, no firing squad, nothing like that,” I said.

“There’s no point asking me. I have no clue.”

I was getting nowhere with this character. I looked at Matty and gave him a kick under the desk.

“You father came over from Italy?” Matty asked.

“He did.”

That was it.

There was no follow up.

Jesus, Matty.

“How do you feel about homosexuals, Mr Scavanni?” I asked.

“I think they’re great. More women for the rest of us,” he said sarcastically.

“How does Sinn Fein feel about homosexuals?”

He laughed. “We don’t have a policy.”

“Where were you on the evening of May twelfth?”

“I was at home watching TV.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“I don’t know. Eleven?”

“What were you doing the whole night?”

“Watching TV.”

“And you went straight to bed?”

“Yup.”

“And you fell asleep?”

“Almost immediately.”

I frowned and bit my lip.

“Frankie Hughes was dying on May twelfth. Hunger striker number two. All of Sinn Fein must have been abuzz with excitement and you just went to bed?”

“There was nothing I could do for Frankie. And I knew that the Wednesday was going to be an emotional and busy day. And busy it was, I can tell you that.”

Freddie pointed at his watch.

“Look, I’m sorry but … time, gentlemen, please.”

We got to our feet and on the way out I did one more question Columbo style: “You didn’t know Lucy Moore, did you?”

“Lucy who?” he asked with a blank face.

“Seamus’s wife.”

“The wee doll who topped herself?”

“Aye.”

“’Fraid not. What’s she got to do with anything?”

“Sweet Fanny Adams, by the looks of it,” Matty grumbled.

“You speak Italian, Mr Scavanni?”

“Of course.”

“ Che gelida manina … you know what that means?”

“Well, obviously the dialect is important … something to do with hands?”

“Yeah.”

He pointed at his watch again. “Officers, please, it’s been fifteen minutes.”

He gestured to the door with a look that told us that if we had any more questions we shouldn’t hesitate to “fucking get lost”.

I took Matty to the Crown Bar and we got a fantastic pork rib stew and Guinness for lunch. A couple of lasses were sawing away on fiddle and acoustic guitar giving us Irish standards about the famine, horses, the evil Brits …

“What do you think, chief?” Matty asked.

“About Scavanni?”

“Aye.”

I took a sip of the Guinness. “I think he’s hiding something,” I said.

“My vibe too.”

“Did you notice the typewriters? All electric.”

“Aye. Did you hear what he said about Tommy? ‘I have no idea why Tommy told Walter that he was coming over to see me.’ What’s the implication behind that?”

“That Walter is lying?”

“Or maybe that Tommy was lying to Walter? And what was with his wee bit of cluelessness about Lucy when he knew that that was the reason for our visit to the Maze this morning? Was he so concerned with concealing something important that he decided to conceal everything?”

“You’ve lost me,” Matty said.

We finished our excellent lunch, chewed the fat with the peelers at Queen Street cop shop, spent twenty minutes checking the phone records at British Telecom (Scavanni had indeed called Tommy Little on the night of May 12) and arranged an appointment with Billy White.

We retrieved the Land Rover and drove to Rathcoole Estate in North Belfast.

This was a Protestant ghetto made up of bland, grim, tower blocks and rows of dismal terraces. There were few services, much concrete, much sectarian graffiti, no jobs, nothing for the kids to do but join a gang.

They didn’t throw petrol bombs at us as we drove into the estate but from the four iconic tower blocks we got a good helping of eggs and milk cartons.

We pulled into the strip mall and easily found Billy White’s joint wedged between a Bookies and an Off Licence. It was grandly named the “Rathcoole Loyalists Pool, Snooker and Billiards Hall”.

The graffiti on the walls all around announced that this was the territory of the UVF, the RHC (the Red Hand Commando, yet another illegal Protestant militia) and the Rathcoole KAI, a group I hadn’t heard of before.

The hall had a bullet-proof grille, speed bumps in front of it and half a dozen guys in jeans and denim jackets hanging around outside.

Matty and I parked the Rover, walked through the riff-raff and went inside the place.

There were a few pool tables and more men in denim playing darts and snooker.

“Are you the peelers come to see Billy?” one of them asked, a giant of a man whose skinhead was brushing against the nicotinestained ceiling.

“Aye,” I said.

“Let’s see some ID,” he demanded.

We displayed our warrant cards and were shown into a back room.

An old geezer was sitting behind an unvarnished pine desk in a scary, claustrophobic little room that would have given the Fuhrerbunker a run for its money. There were UVF posters on the wall and a large what you might call naive art portrait of Queen Elizabeth II sitting on a horse.