Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“You will be putting those people’s lives in jeopardy! Let me speak to your editor.”

“I am the editor, Sergeant. Look, we already know from our sources that the people on the list are getting Special Branch protection. We’re endangering no one.”

“You can’t publish it! It’s dangerous and it’s libellous.”

“It’s not libellous to publish a list of alleged homosexuals.”

“You can’t do this, Mr O’Rourke, it’s completely irresponsible. I don’t want to have to threaten you-”

“I’d love to hear you threaten me, Sergeant.”

“Come on, Tony, please. Surely you can see that this is completely the wrong thing to do.”

“Ask me that on Monday when our circulation has doubled.”

“Don’t you see that he’s using you?”

“So you’ve no official comment then?”

“No. Of course not.”

“All right then,” he said and hung up.

I ran into Brennan’s office and told him. He hit the roof.

“How could you let this happen?” he yelled.

“The killer must have sent them his list. We’ve got to stop them publishing it. We’ve got to take out an injunction.”

“They’re based in the Republic, right?”

“Yes.”

“How in the hell could we can get an Irish court to issue an injunction restricting prior publication?”

“I don’t know but we have to. You have to make some phone calls, sir!”

Brennan nodded and dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

He summoned me back into his office an hour later.

“There’s nothing we can do, Duffy. They’re publishing,” he said.

“How can they-”

He held up a hand. “Don’t speak. Don’t say a fucking word. There’s nothing we can do. Sit down, Duffy.”

I sat. “Sir?”

“What progress are you making finding this guy?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, like I say in my report, I’ve interviewed Freddie Scavanni and Billy White and I’ve talked to Walter Hays and uhm …”

“Were you in Ballycarry this morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was at Lucy Moore’s funeral.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe I would talk to her parents or her sister or-”

“Why are you going to the funeral of a suicide in the middle of a double homicide investigation?”

“Sir, I-”

“You complain about a lack of resources and having to do riot duty and how precious your time is and you’re off at a wake for some dead wee lassie who got herself knocked up and whose husband is an IRA hunger striker?”

I had no answer to that.

“You’re in over your head, aren’t you, Duffy?”

“No sir, I don’t think so, sir.”

“You know the Chief Constable’s office is involved now, don’t you? The Chief Constable’s breathing down my neck!”

“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve been doing my best.”

“Your best clearly isn’t bloody good enough, is it? The Chief Constable!”

His eyes were blazing and his face heart-attack pink.

“Sir, I-”

“Get out of my office!”

I slunk out with my arse kicked, almost literally.

At four the entire station was called out to go up to Belfast on riot duty. It was going to be a big one. “But you and your team can stay here, Sergeant Duffy, you’re busy! You’ve got work to do!” Brennan said with childish sarcasm.

The station emptied out.

At five we began hearing the rumble of controlled explosions and the kick of plastic bullet guns.

Dusk.

Incendiary-device fires. Searchlights from army helicopters. Confused reports of trouble on the BBC.

I sent the lads home.

I put on the news. Yup, it was a bad one.

I stared at the killer’s note and our accumulated evidence.

We had nothing.

I reread the case notes three times until I was sick looking at them and then I went out to my Beemer and drove to Rathcoole.

9 p.m. Rathcoole

Billy pacing the snooker room, barking orders. The riots had spread to north Belfast and chez Billy it was crisis mode: gunfire, bombs, riot control; the concrete bunker back room very April ’45.

“This is a bad time. What do you want, peeler?” Billy asked.

“Aye, what do you want?” Shane echoed.

“What happened after Tommy Little left here?” I asked Billy.

“He dropped Shane off and went about his business. He went wherever he was going next,” Billy said.

“He never made it there.”

“Says who?” Shane said.

“Says Freddie Scavanni, the new head of the IRA’s Force Research Unit.”

Billy shook his head. “We didn’t kill him. We were all hanging out here until midnight. Ask any of the lads. The snooker was on the box and we were hanging out.”

Shane was looking at me. There was something other than contempt in his eyes.

He knew that I knew. That he and Tommy had been having an affair.

If I mentioned this in front of Billy, Billy would have him summarily executed. Was it worth the threat? I wondered if Shane had the wherewithal to be my prime suspect? To turn Queen’s evidence?

“Let me show you something,” I said.

I took out my notebook, drew a labyrinth on a piece of paper and passed the notebook across.

Shane took a gander at it. Not a flicker. Billy took a look. Similar reaction.

Still, they were lying about something . I could feel it in my cop bones.

Was Tommy being followed by a suspicious and jealous Walter? Was Freddie lying? Jesus, there were a million possibilities. I needed to talk to Shane on his lonesome. I needed to arrest and get him away from Billy, bring him down to the station under the bright lights.

My beeper started ringing. “Can I use your phone?” I asked.

“Be my guest,” Billy muttered.

I called Carrick station. “You better get back here, Sergeant Duffy. There’s been another incident,” Sergeant Burke said.

“Where?” I asked.

“The Mount Prospect Pub, Larne. It’s a poofter bar.”

“When?”

“Ten minutes ago. The details are still coming in.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I put the phone down. Looked at them. “Another attack on homosexuals. In Larne,” I said almost to myself.

Billy grinned. “And this time you’re our alibi.”

10 p.m. The Mount Prospect Pub, Essex Street, Larne

Apparently a gay-friendly establishment in a gay-unfriendly town. If port cities are always more cosmopolitan than the hinterland then Larne was either the exception that proved the rule or else the hinterland had quantum tunnelled itself all the way to Iran.

Larne announced its credentials on every route in to town with massive murals of an equine King Billy crossing the River Boyne on an almost equine horse. The Mount Prospect Pub was a sad little breeze-block building that said nothing about itself or its clientele on any sign, but which must have been a bit of an open secret.

When I arrived the street was cordoned off and filled with uniformed officers, plain-clothes officers and an army team examining the explosive.

A young copper filled me in on the details. The bomb had been attached to a grille covering the window, IRA fashion. Two pounds of high explosive packed around nails and screws. One man was dead, sixteen seriously injured.

Soldiers were picking up the nails where they had found them and peelers were trampling over the bits of brick and broken glass.

“All right, people! Everybody stop moving! This is a crime scene and you’re all marching around like a herd of bloody elephants!”

Everyone stopped and turned to look at me.

“Excuse me, who are you?” a gangly man asked. He was wearing a green gabardine knee-length raincoat, and a brown toupee. He had a moustache, round glasses and a North Down accent but all I could see was that big plank of green.