Adrian McKinty: The Cold Cold Ground

I understood. I understood it at all now. The necessity of doing everything quickly. Why he had to get rid of Tommy immediately. Why he had to get rid of Lucy as fast as he could. “Go on,” I said.

“So now what do I do? I’m fucked. They’re sending a couple of boys over to my place to suss me out. I’ve got seven or eight hours at the most. And the streets are full of rioters and army and peelers are everywhere and there’s checkpoints and roadblocks. So again I’m thinking: parachute your way out. Escape. Run.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. Because I am the alpha wolf. I am fucking Finn McCool.”

“You knew you could outwit them?”

He was grinning at the memory of it. He was impressed by himself. “I had to think quickly. Nobody would buy an argument between me and Tommy or something crazy like an accidental discharge of my weapon. No way. They wouldn’t buy Tommy getting killed by the army, the cops, or the loyalists. Tommy’s a protected man and nobody’s killing him without starting World War Three.”

“So you thought outside the box.”

“The IRA high command is ultra-conservative. Tommy was a queer, everybody knew it and they didn’t like it. Tommy was only tolerated because he was very good at his job. Tommy was the best of us. But he was vulnerable because he was a poofter. I mean, who knows what they get up to?”

“So you killed him to make it look like that?”

“The queer angle was my lifeline. He had to be meeting someone before he met me and that someone was a queer pal and that queer pal killed him. That was the story I was going to go with. No, sorry lads, never heard from Tommy, don’t know where he is. And then Tommy’s body shows up. Some sicko’s killed him. Shock, horror!”

“You had to make it weird.”

“Something to get the lace curtains twitching. Something to get you coppers all in a tizzy. And then I thought why not a serial killer? Tommy is just the first in a series of victims. The IRA Army Council is not even going to want to think about that. A serial killer going around shooting queers? How dare he take publicity away from the hunger strikers? How dare Tommy get himself mixed up in this disgusting business?”

“So you realized you were going to have to kill Andrew Young too?”

He sighed. “Andrew Young was the only other queer I knew. I’d seen him at the record shop and at the Carrick festival. Nice enough fella but a bender and so he had to die, poor sod. I had eight hours. The clock was ticking. I mean, first things first. I carried Lucy deep into Woodburn Forest. I hung her from a tree and I left her ID at her feet so everybody would know who she was. I wasn’t worried about her at all. Her husband’s on hunger strike, she’s run away from home, she’s feeling guilty, your pathologist is going to find out that she gave birth, more guilt, guilt, guilt. That’s the Irish condition. So that’s an easy one.”

“And you’re not worried because there’s no link to you.”

“Right. Nobody knew about us! Nobody. We were so careful. Only the midwife and I already told you about her. Anyway I hung Lucy, went back to the house, removed all traces of her from the place and burned all her clothes in the incinerator out the back. Even hosed down the ashes and scooped them out.”

“And then you cut off Tommy’s hand and put the note up in his rectum?”

“Did you like that? I had to link him to Young. Make you peelers think this was a sex crime. More importantly, make the IRA and FRU think it was a sex crime.”

“Why not cut his dick off?”

“I considered cutting his dick off and swapping his dick with Andrew’s dick, but then I wondered if your patho would spot that, you know? One dick looks pretty much like another. And hands have fingerprints, so I settled for his hand. I cut his hand off and shot him in the head. I took the hand, got in the car and drove to Young’s house in Boneybefore.”

“How did you know his address?”

“He was in the phone book like you. Anyway, I park the car. Knock on his door, check there’s no one around. Knock, knock, knock. Finally he opens the door. I ask him if he’s alone. He says yes, I shoot him in the forehead with my silenced Glock and push him into the hall. Then it’s out with the old hacksaw. I leave Tommy’s hand with him and I take his. I knew you boys would eat up the stuff about the music so I left another wee note. I’m in and out of Young’s house in two minutes flat. He could have had the Vienna Boys Choir upstairs and I wouldn’t have known about it.”

I nodded. “It was easy after that. You drove Tommy’s body to Barn Field where it would be discovered fairly soon. Then you went down to your meeting with the quartermaster in Newry while the FRU boys searched your house and found nothing.”

“That’s right. Easy. I burned and buried everything: receipts, women’s clothes, the whole shebang. Drove Tommy’s car deep into the woods, torched that. They searched the house and they found nothing. I was as clean as a whistle. So they told me afterwards when I became their boss.”

“What about me? Carrick CID?”

“I needed to get that serial-killer angle running as quickly as possible so I found out your name from your switchboard and the address was easy.”

“The stuff you wrote on the postcard was just meaningless? Right? Like the list?”

“Of course. Just random shit off the top of my head.”

“I spent days looking at that bloody thing.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Then what?”

“And then I went and took care of Martha.”

“Martha?”

“The midwife!”

“You killed her?”

“Of course. I had to. She knew everything.”

“And then I just waited for twenty-four hours cos I knew that when it all came out I would be in the clear. Tommy got mixed up with some queer nutcase, poor old Tommy.”

“What about the others? The bar in Larne?”

“Hell, yeah. I knew I had to do maybe one or two more attacks just to establish the pattern. You boys love your patterns.”

“After you typed that hit list you got rid of the Imperial 55?”

“Nice work tracing the typewriter. I knew you would, though, so, aye, of course I got rid of it. Thought about planting it in your man Seawright’s office, but that was only a passing fancy.”

I sighed. “You got us excited, Freddie. We finally thought we had an ordinary, decent killer on our hands.”

Freddie laughed. “Yeah. I got you jumping. Patterns. Codes. Once I had the time I read up on the Yorkshire Ripper and the Zodiac killer and I …”

I stopped listening.

Of course there were more questions: the phone calls, the hoaxes, was it all part of the smoke trail or did he just enjoy messing with us? But none of that mattered.

It all seemed so distant now.

It was like events that had happened long ago in another age.

He talked and I pretended to listen and finally his mouth stopped moving.

He was looking at me. He had asked me a question.

“Sorry?” I said.

“Did MI5 contact you after the hospital?” he wondered.

“Yes, just a few days ago,” I replied.

“Aye, that’s when they pulled me in for questioning. I told them everything of course. By then I knew it was ok. It didn’t matter how close you got. I had been appointed head of FRU. I knew I was safe. They needed me. I am the head of IRA’s internal security. Can you imagine it? The head of IRA internal security is a British agent! The guy who’s in charge of investigating every informer, double agent, and piece of intel. What a joke!”

He leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. He was smiling again. It was a confident, infectious smile that I could not bring myself to hate. Even after all he had done.