Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“And Tommy Little was coming to see him. And he listens to Puccini.”

“Let’s go before he comes back. You’ll lose your job, Sean.”

“No. It’s all about Tommy! It has to be. Tommy Little did come to see him. Tommy Little was here in this room.”

“He killed Lucy and he killed Tommy?”

“Yes! They’re linked. They’ve always been linked!”

“Maybe you can pin all the unsolved murders in Northern Ireland on Freddie Scavanni,” she said sensibly enough, but I barely heard her.

“It’s him. It has to be,” I said, with a touch of panic now.

“Why does it have to be? So you can solve the case and be the hero? Come on, Sean, let’s go.”

“Five more minutes. We’ll find something.”

“Yesterday you were saying that it was Shane Davidson. That he had an affair with Tommy Little and killed him to cover it up. That he was the one who made the false trail …”

“I was wrong about that! They had nothing to do with killing him. Shane is Billy White’s boy and Shane was having an affair with Tommy Little but he didn’t kill him.”

“I’m sure Shane will be relieved to hear that.”

The grandfather clock ticked.

Crows cawed from the woods.

Laura got to her feet and pulled me up with two hands.

“Let’s get out of here,” she whispered.

I stood there for another minute, thinking, desperately … but finally I had to admit defeat.

“I was so sure,” I said.

“I know,” she replied and kissed me on the cheek.

“Everyone wants a chance at redemption.”

We went back outside and I closed the door behind me.

“Come on. Let’s go get lunch somewhere,” Laura said.

I hesitated. “Let me look in the woods for two minutes and then we’ll head.”

She was much happier now that we were out of the house. She took my hand.

“Let’s say he topped both of them. He’s got to get rid of Tommy’s body well away from here. And her. He can carry her over his shoulders and hang her in the woods,” I said.

“Why doesn’t he just bury both of them?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Time is a factor. He’s got a couple of hours at the most before Tommy going missing rings all the alarm bells. A couple of hours to concoct a plan …”

“But why is he doing all this, Sean? Don’t you need a motive?”

We went to the badhun ’s cast-iron back gate, lifted an interior latch and walked in the wood. It was damp and dark. Strange white mushrooms were pushing their way through the sodden earth. Giant ferns were growing from the shells of fallen trees. There was a dungy smell, the smell of rotting leaves, autumn, graveyards.

“Just a couple of steps and we’re in Woodburn Forest,” I said.

“But remember Lucy wasn’t found anywhere near here. It was all the way over that hill, wasn’t it?” Laura asked.

“Obviously he can’t hang her right next to his house.”

“How does he carry her?”

“Over his shoulder. Fireman’s lift. You could carry someone for a mile like that.”

She was sceptical.

“Let me show you.”

“Ok.”

Favouring my good wrist, I lifted her up onto my right shoulder and slapped her bum.

“Hey!” she yelped.

I walked for about fifty feet and stopped.

“See? You’re out of breath and-”

I put her down.

“Jesus! Look! There!” I said, pointing through the trees. About thirty yards from the road in a broad valley between two enormous chestnut trees there was a burnt-out Ford Granada.

I ran to it.

The glass had melted and buckled, the interior was a mess of black debris and blackened foam but there was no rust or erosion. This had been done recently. Within the last month. I opened a door and looked inside.

It had been doused with gasoline and burned but then someone had killed the fire with a foam extinguisher. The number plates had been stripped off and when I lifted the bonnet I saw that the serial numbers on the chassis had been blow-torched away by arc-welding gear.

“Mother of God!”

“What is it, Sean?”

“It’s Tommy’s car. Has to be.”

“He drove a Ford Granada?” she asked, but I wasn’t even listening.

“For some reason Tommy comes over and Freddie kills him. The girl’s a witness so he has to hang her. He cuts Tommy Little’s hand off and shoves a musical score in his rectum. He drives to the home of the only other poofter he knows. He shoots him. He cuts off his hand. He leaves Tommy’s hand there.”

“Are you sure this is Tommy Little’s car?”

“It’s Tommy’s car. Freddie can’t be caught driving it and he can’t have the IRA finding it at his house, so he gets it off the road and burns it out.”

“I don’t get it. He killed Tommy Little and drove him to Carrick?”

“He kills him. He puts Tommy in the boot of his car. He drives carefully through the police and army roadblocks. He gets far away to the Barn Field in Carrickfergus, he dumps Tommy’s body where he hopes it will be quickly found along with Andrew Young’s hand. He hurries back here. He drives Tommy’s car off into the woods and torches it. But he doesn’t leave the car burning all night in case it attracts attention. He waits until Tommy’s body is found and then he calls the police and finds out my name and writes a bunch of gibberish on a postcard and sends it off to me. He calls the Confidential Telephone and starts in with the threats and false clues. He calls the Sunday World . He leads every one of us on a merry dance through the labyrinth. His bosses in the IRA know that Tommy is coming to see him but he tells them Tommy never made it over. The IRA are suspicious, sceptical, but when they find out that Tommy is mixed up with a sordid homosexual serial killer the whole thing is brushed under the rug. The misdirection works.”

“But why, Sean? Why kill Lucy? Why kill Tommy?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll find out. I’ll arrest him and charge him with terrorist offences and question him and crack him. Come on! Let’s go back to his house and call Carrick RUC. I don’t care if I do get bloody suspended, I’m taking him down.”

“I still don’t see-” she began but was interrupted by a loud crack and bark flying from the chestnut tree behind her.

“What was tha-”

“Hit the deck!” I yelled at her. “And stay down!”

She dived into the thick layer of leaves on the forest floor. I took out my service revolver and turned to look behind me.

No one.

Another crack and this time the bullet missed my head by inches.

Where had it come from?

Somewhere up ahead in the direction of the house.

I ditched my raincoat, slithered through the undergrowth, got back into a crouch and ran through the trees in a big semicircle to my right.

I kept Laura and the car in view and looked for him.

He had anticipated my move and was waiting for me near a lightning-struck oak. I saw him out of the corner of my eye a split second before he fired. I dived to the ground and heard the crack of the 9mm three more times, I rolled behind the nearest tree, a slender Scots pine and then kept on rolling down a little embankment.

Back on my belly again, moving sideways, silently, deliberately, holding my breath.

“Where are you?” he yelled and I could see his profile ten yards to my right. He was still wearing his office suit, holding the gun in two hands and looking into the space where I had been.

This time I had successfully outflanked him.

I got to my feet.

One step in front of another, carefully, toe then heel in my Converse gutties. Gently down onto the leaves, onto the twigs, gently right up behind the fucker.