Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“What was it your man on the telly says: the only two things that are infinite are the universe and human stupidity.”

“It’s a fair point.”

“Oi, lads, I’m not done yet!” Matty said over the radio.

“There’s more?” I asked.

“There’s more.”

“Go on then.”

“I cross-tabbed all the pervs and kiddie fiddlers that have been released from prison in the last year. The probation office tells me that every one of them has left Northern Ireland except for three. Lad called Jeremy McNight who is in Musgrave Park Hospital with terminal lung cancer, a guy called Andy Templeton who was killed in a house fire. Suspicious house fire, I might add. And finally after a lot of gruelling leg work and-”

“Just get on with it.”

“One name. Could be our boy. Got four years for homosexual rape. Released two months ago.”

“Better not give his name out over the airwaves,” I said.

“Of course not! I’m not a total eejit. Give you it back at the station.”

“Ok. Good work, mate.”

We turned off the radio.

“Where to then, kemosabe?” Crabbie asked.

“Billy’s first. 18 Queens Parade. We’ve got a wee window here.”

We drove about half a mile to an end terrace with a big mural of King William crossing the Boyne on the gable wall. It was a modest home. A council house, which made me think that Billy had all his money in a secret bank account — either that or he had lost it all down the bookies like every other medium-level crook. Which reminded me: 100 quid on Shergar for the win even if it meant an overdraft.

We walked along the path and rang the bell. While we were waiting we heard an explosion in Belfast. “Two hundred pounder by the sound of it,” Crabbie said.

A woman opened the door. She was an attractive, skinny blonde in a denim skirt and a union jack T-shirt. She had a cigarette dangling out the corner of her mouth, a glass of gin in one hand and a crying baby in the other. I assumed this must be Caitlin.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

“We’re the Old Bill,” I said.

“He’s not in.”

“That’s why we’re here,” I said.

We brazened our way inside. I sent Crabbie upstairs to get the gun Billy no doubt kept under his pillow, while I hunted downstairs. The place was filled with boxes of cigarettes, crates of Jameson whiskey and two or three dozen Atari Video Game consoles. I ignored all of this and went to the record collection.

Sinatra, Dean Martin, Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, more Sinatra.

The baby screamed.

The TV blared.

I looked in the laundry basket for bloody clothes and I looked for traces of blood in the washer/dryer. Nothing.

Caitlin followed me with the screaming baby, saying nothing, looking anxious.

I went into the back garden and examined the clothes on the line. No blood-stained items there either.

Back inside. Crabbie came downstairs and showed me the piece, a Saturday Night Special, snub-nosed.38. He was holding it on the end of a pencil. I slipped it into an evidence bag.

“Well take this,” I said. “And you might want to give your wee girl there something to eat.”

We drove to 134 Straid Road, #4.

It was a small square apartment complex. A dozen flats, each with a little balcony. It could have been nice but for the fact that they’d painted the exterior a kind of sheep-shit brown.

The front door was open and we walked up one flight of steps to #4.

“Now what?” McCrabban said.

“Now this, me old mucker,” I said and took out my lock-pick kit.

Crabbie put his hand on my arm. “Sean, get a grip! We can’t break in!”

“I shall note your protest in the log,” I said doing an English naval officer’s accent.

McCrabban shook his head. In Protestant Ballymena such things were not tolerated. It was one thing to take the occasional carton of ciggies from a paramilitary, but a man’s house was sacred.

It was a Yale standard and I had keyed the mechanism in under a minute.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said.

“I’m not going in,” Crabbie said petulantly.

“Yeah, you are.”

“No, I’m bloody not.”

I flipped on the light switch with a knuckle. A small two-bedroom apartment with a neat two-person leather sofa, bean bags, red-painted walls and several framed posters of boxers: there was Ali versus Frazier back in the glory days; there was Joe Louis versus Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium.

The apartment had a 22-inch TV, a Betamax video recorder and a dozen tapes: The Godfather, The Sting, Close Encounters of The Third Kind , etc.

Shane had a sensitive side: in perhaps an echo of Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji he had done half a dozen watercolours of Kilroot Power Station. The last two weren’t bad although a magenta sunset was somewhat fanciful.

It was the laundry bin and the record collection that I was after.

Laundry first: briefs, T-shirts, a pair of jeans. No blood.

Records next. I put on a pair of latex gloves and looked through them. Shane’s tastes were similar to mine: David Bowie, Led Zep, Queen, The Police, Blondie, The Ramones, Floyd, The Stones. What did they say about the pair of us?

“What did you find?” Crabbie asked from outside.

“No classical. No opera,” I said.

“I can see his bookcase from here. They’re all comics and Enid Blyton. The guy’s sub-literate.”

“Let’s do a thorough shakedown before we jump to any conclusions.”

“You do it. I’ll keep watch.”

I worked the bedroom and the bathroom. I found some grass, a sheet of acid tabs and a couple of body-building magazines.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

We left the.38 at the ballistics lab in Cultra and told them to match it against the slugs on Tommy Little and Andrew Young and then headed for home.

We drove back to Carrick and picked up Matty.

The released perv was one Victor Combs of 41A Milebush Tower, Monkstown. Ex-schoolteacher, currently unemployed. He’d been caught having sex in a park with another man. The other man — a seventeen-year-old — had accused him of rape and the judge had bought it.

It sounded like he’d gotten the shaft but we drove over to see him anyway.

Milebush Tower was another of those shit-coloured four-storey concrete blocks of flats that had grown up in the sink estates of Ulster in the ’60s and ’70s. They were damp, cold and seemingly deliberately unlovely. The day the Northern Ireland Housing Executive gave you your key they probably gave you a suicide information leaflet.

We parked the Land Rover and hoofed it up to 41A.

Mr Combs was in.

He was wearing a bathrobe and listening to classical music which got our attention.

He was heavy, balding, forty-five, but he looked twenty years older and he walked from the door back to the sofa with a cane.

The flat was as nice as he could make it.

There were books, records and he kept it clean. He had a cat.

I let McCrabban run it while I looked through the books and records.

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

“I was here.”

“All night?”

“Yes.”

“Can anyone vouch for that?”

“What’s this about?”

“Can anyone vouch for the fact that you say you were here all night?”

“Not really, no.”

“Do you own a car, Mr Combs?”

“No.”

“Do you know a man called Tommy Little?”

“No.”

“Do you know someone called Andrew Young?”

“No. What is this about?”

The records weren’t that impressive. Boring collections of classical music done in the early ’70s by cheapo German firms. No sheet music.

I looked at Crabbie and he shook his head. Combs certainly didn’t look as if he could get too physical with anyone.