Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“This time I’m a customer.”

Laura saw me in her surgery. “What happened to you?”

I told her the truth. She was appalled. She gave me an x-ray and it turned out that there was a micro-fracture in the ulna.

“I’m afraid there’s very little we can do about that,” she said.

“It hurts like hell,” I said.

“I’ll prescribe anti-inflammatories and codeine.”

We got the medicine and went back to Coronation Road. She drove the Beemer through the biblical rain. I self-medicated with vodka until the codeine finally kicked in. We ate the rest of the spaghetti and lit the fire and listened to Etta James.

She had news. Good news, she said, but I saw it differently. She told me that her parents were buying her a house. She was leaving Carrick but she wouldn’t be too far away.

“Leaving? Where will you be?” I asked groggily.

“Five minutes up the road in Straid. It’s my great-aunt’s house.

We’re buying it from her. It’s lovely. It backs onto Woodburn Forest. She wants to move to Tenerife. Have you ever been to Tenerife? Black sand. And the mountain with snow on it even in summer. You go up to the top — they give you hot chocolate with brandy in it.”

“Don’t go. Move in with me.”

“Here? In this house?”

“Yes. It’s bought and paid for. Move in with me.”

“I can’t. I can’t live here with all these … I can’t live here.”

“They don’t bite.”

“Not so far.”

We went upstairs to bed. I lay on the mattress and I was so beat she made love to me in the cowgirl and swan positions with my cock deep inside her and she grinding with her hips and knees. We came together and she lay beside me laughing.

“All that riding was good for something,” she said. I lit the paraffin heater and took a couple more codeine to help me sleep. And the rain came and the wind blew.

“It’s all going to be all right, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Aye,” I said. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine.”

Dreams. Dreams of labyrinths. A labyrinth is not a maze. There are no dead ends. All paths lead inexorably to the centre. All paths lead from the outside in. From the inside out. Daedalus was no genius. Only a joiner. Only a chippie in the yard.

Labyrinths are shaped like nooses.

Lucy Moore’s finger was in the noose. She wished to see the baby again. She wished to live. The man wished death upon her. Motherless child, you have no protector. I am your voice. I am your avenger.

The darkness.

Falling, tumbling, into that black pit.

The falling will never stop. The numbers will go on counting until the end of time. The integers are infinite. The spaces between the integers are infinite. Let me tell you about the trees, Lucy. We climbed out of the trees. We walked away from the trees. Trees are a step backwards.

Everyone calls me Mimi, I don’t know why because my name is Lucia.

Straid.

The woods. Woodburn Forest.

The letter S.

The labyrinth.

He killed her.

He was the man.

I opened my eyes wide. Rain had flooded the gutters. Liquid skitter clinging to the windows like a beaten wife clinging to a bad marriage.

I bolted out of bed.

Laura looked frightened.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Where did you say you were moving to?”

“Straid.”

“What did you say about the forest?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said something about your grandmother’s house backing onto the forest!” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders.

“You’re scaring me, Sean.”

I let her go. “You said something about the house backing onto the forest.”

“Oh … yes. I said that her house was nice because it backs onto Woodburn Forest.”

I grabbed my jeans and fell over trying to put them on. My wrist had swollen to the size of a marrow.

“Help me get dressed!”

“What’s going on?”

“Please!” I yelled at her.

“All right, all right, keep your hair on.”

She pulled up my jeans and buttoned them and I grabbed a black sweater.

I went out onto the landing and down the stairs.

I looked at the kitchen clock. 8.45. I waited until 9 and called up the Sinn Fein press annex in Bradbury House.

“Hi, this is Mike Smith from the New York Times , I’d like to speak to Freddie Scavanni, please,” I said.

“Just one moment,” his secretary replied.

“Hello?” Freddie said.

Freddie was at work. Good for him. I hung up. I called Jack Pougher in Special Branch. “Hi, this is Duffy from Carrickfergus RUC. You couldn’t do me a favour and find out Freddie Scavanni’s home address, could you? It’s never been in our files but I assume you boys must know, cos you boys know everything.”

Jack didn’t see through the compliment and after a minute he came back on: “This is a weird file, Sean. Lots of blank pages and I’m not supposed to give out Scavanni’s home address to anyone beneath the rank of Superintendent.”

“That’s all right, Jack, I’ll get it from a mate of mine in army intelligence. Those boys are always a wee bit better at giving you stuff.”

Of course I had no mate in army intelligence and even if I had they’d give me shit. Jack didn’t know that though. “Hold your horses, Sean. You’ll owe me a favour, all right?”

“I’ll owe you a favour.”

“All right then. 19 Siskin Road, Straid and you didn’t hear it from me.”

I hung up, opened the drawer under the phone, grabbed the ordnance survey map of East Antrim and looked for the village of Straid. I found it and then I looked for Siskin Road. It ran parallel to Woodburn Forest

I got my raincoat and checked that the.38 was in the pocket.

I pulled on my Converse Hi-Tops and looked for my car keys.

“Oh, no, you’re not driving anywhere with that wrist,” Laura said, snatching the keys out of my hand.

“Gimme the keys!”

“No way. You’re not driving. Doctor’s orders,” she said. Her eyes were firm.

“I need the car,” I said in a quieter tone.

“Get one of your constables to drive you.”

“Impossible. I can’t involve them in this. I’m not supposed to be looking at these cases any more. They’d be up the shite sheugh with me.”

“Where are you going?”

“Siskin Road, Straid, near Woodburn Forest.”

“What’s there?”

“Answers, goddamit!”

“Calm down, Sean.”

Calm? We should be out in the street screaming: Death is coming. For ever and ever. And there’s nothing we can do.

Nothing we can do, but bring down his disciples.

“Sean, what-”

“He killed Lucy Moore, I don’t know why, but he did and I’m going to take him in for it.”

“Who?”

“Freddie Scavanni.”

“What?”

I grabbed my car keys from her.

“Where are you going?”

“His house near Woodburn Forest.”

She had performed the autopsy. She had never been completely happy with her report.

“I’ll drive you,” she said.

“No way!”

“I’ll drive you or you don’t go. Let me tie up your laces while you think about it.”

She tied my laces while I thought about it.

“You’ll do as I say, if it looks dodgy, you’ll wait in the friggin car.”

“You’re so butch! I like it,” she said, mocking me.

We got in the Beemer and we drove down Coronation Road as far as Taylor’s Avenue when I screamed, “Hit the brakes!”

The BMW screeched to a halt.

I got out and looked underneath for a mercury tilt bomb but didn’t find one.

“Ok, let’s head on.”

We drove up the Prospect Road to the New Line and along Councillors’ Road to the Siskin Road. For the last half mile of our journey the forest ran alongside the road. That familiar dense, exterior pine forest and the older deciduous wood behind.