Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“Why did you pick those particular pieces of music? Puccini and Orpheus?”

He shrugged. “I liked them. I played them on the piano.”

“And of course che gelida manina . Another joke, right?”

“I thought that was hilarious! Even with all the shit going down, that cracked me up. Of course I had the score for the piano and I hoped that you’d find out the words … I considered writing them in but I just didn’t have the bloody time. I knew a detective with time on his hands would really burrow into that. Go off on some fucking tangent, really think it was a devious psycho nutcase.”

“That I did.”

Freddie laughed. “That’s brilliant, isn’t it?”

“They weren’t clues? To Lucy? In La Boheme Mimi’s real name is Lucia.”

He seemed shocked. “God no! Lucy? The last thing I wanted was anybody thinking about Lucy.”

I nodded. They were tells. Maybe I’d exaggerated them but they’d been tells none the less. If he hadn’t been rushed maybe he would have seen that.

“You were lucky, Freddie,” I said.

That ticked him off a little and his expression clouded. “No, you were lucky! Your government was lucky to get someone as sharp as me. Look at me! The head of FRU! Everything the IRA does for the next twenty years will be known about by me. And hence by your government. In advance. You were lucky!”

I reached in my pocket and took out the box of Italian cigarettes.

I lit one and blew smoke towards the ceiling,

I let the ash fall on the carpet.

Yes, we were lucky to have Freddie Scavanni on our side.

He had killed five people to protect his sorry ass.

He had killed dozens in a sordid career.

As head of FRU he would undoubtedly kill and torture dozens more.

He was a monster. He was a serial killer by any definition of the word. It didn’t matter if it was for politics or to protect his own skin. He was a sociopath.

He looked at me, and seemed a little worried. “What are you doing here, Duffy? They told me that they put the fear of God into you. They told me that the Sean Duffy problem was finished.”

“It’s not finished.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think so. I knew different. I knew that your sort can never see the big picture.”

“What’s the big picture, Tommy? The hunger strikes?”

“Of course. It’s a big victory. For both sides. Mrs Thatcher hasn’t publicly conceded anything to the IRA prisoners and her reputation as the Iron Lady has only become enhanced among the electorate. The martyrdom of ten IRA and INLA prisoners who starved themselves to death has been a recruiting poster for both organizations. They were desperate to find volunteers in the late ’70s and now they’re turning away men by the score. And there’s the political angle: Sinn Fein has shifted from being a minor political party of extremists into a major electoral force in Northern Ireland politics. The whole match has changed.”

“And you’re at the centre of it.”

“Damn right!”

“You can’t blame people like me for feeling like pawns.”

He shook his head. “I don’t blame you, Duffy, but you’re tangling with the big boys now and, as Clint Eastwood so rightly says, a man’s got to know his limitations.”

I took another draw on the ciggie, coughed and looked out the window. Snow was falling in big flakes.

“I’ve investigated six murders since becoming a detective and not had a conviction on any of them.”

“That’s a shame,” he replied with a sneer.

“What am I going to do with you, Freddie?”

He laughed. “You’re not going to do anything. We’re on the same side. Like I say, it’s a win/win for everyone, isn’t it?”

You could look at it that way. Freddie had only been protecting himself. The war was long but one day peace was going to come to Northern Ireland and it was going to come because of people like him.

“Don’t you feel bad for the innocent civilians, Freddie?”

“Who? The fucking queers? We probably should ship them all off to some island like Seawright says. And Lucy? Fucksake, look at the state of her. Her husband’s up for a stretch and she’s banging me? Come on, you don’t do that.”

“No, I suppose not.”

He yawned. “Look, Duffy, it’s getting late and I’ve told you all you need to know. So grow up, put the gun away, get out of my sight and we’ll say no more about this. I won’t report you to your betters.”

I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I still wasn’t sure.

After all this time and travelling.

“I don’t think I can go just yet, Freddie,” I said.

“Well, I’ve had enough of this. You’re boring me. You’ve bored me from the start. I don’t need to explain myself to the likes of you. What’s going on in that head of yours, Duffy? Forget your wee stupid case and appreciate the big picture. Appreciate it on the plane back to Belfast.”

I nodded and stamped the cigarette out on his living room floor.

“I see the big picture, Freddie, but I wonder … I wonder if you’re missing the big gallery the picture’s hanging in?”

“What do you mean by that?” he said with a snarl.

“If you’re so valuable why have I been allowed to live? Why have I been allowed to know. Why am I here? Who’s pulling my strings?”

“Sorry?”

“Let me give you one possibility that’s occurred to me and that might intrigue you. What if there’s an even bigger rat than you, Freddie? What if it’s one of the very top guys. I mean the very top guys. Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Marty Ferris, Ruari, one of them boys. What if MI5 turned one of them and has been running them for the last decade?”

His brown eyes darkened and he shook his head. Ah, so this thought had occurred to him too.

“I’m their agent, I’m the best they’ve bloody got! I’m the best there’s ever been. I’m Garbo. I’m Kim Philby!”

“I’m sure you are, Freddie. I’m sure you are. But it makes me wonder a wee bit why I was told that you were in Italy. It couldn’t possibly be that MI5 didn’t want to rub you out, but some crazy, pissed-off copper … well, that would be quite another thing, wouldn’t it? I mean, look at the mess you’ve made. Look at the big bog trail of shite you’ve made covering your tracks. Maybe, just maybe, Freddie, you’ve become, oh, I don’t know … dispensable . Did you ever think about that?”

He leapt at me, one hand going for the gun, another punching me in the kidney. He took me completely by surprise, knocking the gun out of my hand and winding me. The gun flew across the room and clanged off the plate-glass window.

He hit me with his left, a hard metallic blow in my ribcage, and he followed quickly with a gut punch. He shoved my shoulders, forcing me down into the glass coffee table which smashed underneath me. He dived for the gun and grabbed it.

“ Nessuno me lo ficca in culo! ” he yelled delightedly.

I ducked as Freddie’s first shot missed me by a cigarette length.

I scrambled out from under the smashed coffee table, rolled to one side, grabbed a broken table leg and threw the bloody thing at Freddie. He dodged it and shot again. I picked up a shard of glass with my gloved hands and threw it at him and this time he couldn’t get out of the way. I hit him on the forearm and before he could shoot again I jumped him. He smacked me with the butt of the Beretta, but it was a glancing blow off my scalp and with both my hands I squeezed the wrist of his gun arm until he winced in pain. His fingers slackened and I wrestled the gun out of his grip and pistol-whipped him across the face.

He collapsed to his knees, got to his feet and then staggered backwards into the TV set, knocking it off its stand and exploding its cathode ray tube.