Adrian McKinty: The Cold Cold Ground

The lights flickered, went out for two seconds and then came back on again.

“Now you’ve wrecked my telly! This has gone beyond a joke, Duffy! Get the fuck out of here!” Freddie yelled.

I shook my head. I wasn’t going anywhere. Not now that I had seen the real Freddie Scavanni. It was a question of trust, wasn’t it? I knew Freddie’s identity. Freddie knew that I knew. Laura knew. He knew about her too. Could we really leave our lives in the hands of a man like him?

I raised the Beretta.

“You know why they sent me to Carrick RUC? They sent me to learn, Freddie. And you know what? I have learned. I’ve grown up.”

“Is this about the queers, Duffy? Fuck the queers! And Lucy? I gave her every chance. At least it was over quick!”

“Quick? Is that what you think? I cut her down, Freddie. She was still alive when you strung her up. You hadn’t quite killed her. She got one finger between the rope and her neck. She wanted to live. She fought to live.”

“This isn’t justice, Duffy, this is revenge!”

“What’s the difference?”

The nearest house was 400 metres away.

Perhaps they heard a crack and then one more crack almost immediately after the first. Perhaps if they’d been looking in the right direction at the right time they would have seen a sudden flash of light through the plate-glass windows.

I had thought about making it look like a suicide but there wasn’t much point after all this.

I left the gun on the floor and went into Freddie’s study.

I checked myself in the mirror. There were a couple of holes in my leather jacket from the glass table, a few cuts and bruises but hopefully nothing that would attract too much attention.

I opened the filing cabinet and took the big spool of tape from the MI5 machine and put it in my rucksack. This would be my insurance from the blowback.

I closed the front door and walked down the valley, back into Campo to the bus station. At 6 a.m. a van dropped off the morning papers outside the cafeteria. I looked at the headlines. The big news was from Egypt: President Sadat had been assassinated in Cairo. The story came with pictures. Men with machine guns firing into a crowd.

Finally the bus pulled in on ice tyres. It had set out early from St Moritz and was nearly full.

The driver was cautious and I arrived at Milan Airport with only minutes to make my plane.

The flight was uneventful. I bought Laura a bottle of Chanel in the duty free. We touched down at Prestwick Airport outside Glasgow just after 11.

I knew that if I really hoofed it I could catch the noon ferry from Stranraer to Larne …

The crossing was rough, the North Channel a mess of chuddering green sea and white-storm surf. I had a smoke, buttoned my duffle-coat hood and went to stare at the cauldron-like wake over the rear deck rail.

I watched Scotland slowly fade behind me.

I watched Ireland loom ahead.

This was the only acceptable place to be in these barren lands. On that grey stretch of sea between the two of them.

It was raining in Larne.

It was always raining in Larne.

I caught the train, got off at Barn Halt, said a brief Ave for Lucy, grabbed a six-pack of Harp from the off licence and a fish supper from the chippie. I strolled up Victoria Road eating the chips in the rain. On Coronation Road there were few cars and only a couple of kids kicking a ball around. A man was walking the streets with a handheld megaphone proclaiming the imminent return of the Messiah.

“Are you ready for Christ’s return, son?” he asked me.

“In about twenty minutes I will be,” I replied.

#113.

I opened the gate, walked up the path, put the key in the lock, went upstairs, lit the new paraffin heater, stripped out of my wet clothes.

I poured myself a pint-glass vodka gimlet and listened to Ghost in the Machine , the brand new album by The Police. Classic case of three good tracks and eight fillers.

I called Laura in Straid and she asked how I was doing and I said I was doing just fine. I drank the six-pack and the vodka and by 8 o’clock I was a long way gone. I went to bed singing rebel songs.

The next morning, early, there was a knock at the door.

Big guys. Plain Clothes. Special Branch/MI5/Army Intelligence. Something like that. One with a ginger moustache, the other with a black moustache.

“Are you Sean Duffy?” Ginger asked.

“Could be,” I said cagily.

Ginger pulled out a silenced 9mm and shoved it in my face. I took a step backwards. His mate followed him into the hall and closed the door behind him.

“First things first. Where’s the tape?” Ginger said.

“What tape?”

Ginger pointed the revolver at my right kneecap.

“We’ll shoot you in both knees, both ankles and both elbows. Then we’ll go to work with the blowtorch. Why don’t you save us all some trouble?”

“In my rucksack. It’s still in my rucksack in the kitchen.”

Ginger’s mate went and got it.

“Ok. Now we’d like you to come with us,” Ginger said.

“Let me get my kit on,” I said.

They watched while I got changed and they led me outside not to a Land Rover but to an unmarked Ford Capri — which was a bit of a bad sign.

A tight squeeze too. A driver. Them two boys. Me.

We drove through Carrick, Greenisland, Newtownabbey, Belfast.

After Italy I saw the city anew.

A fallen world. A lost place.

Ruined factories. Burnt-out pubs. Abandoned social clubs. Shops with bomb-proof grilles. Check points. Search gates. Armoured police stations.

Smashed cars. Cars on bricks.

Stray dogs. Sectarian graffiti. Murals of men in masks.

Bricked-up houses. Fire-bombed houses. Houses without eyes.

Broken windows, broken mirrors.

Children playing on the rubbish heaps and bombsites, dreaming themselves away from here to anywhere else.

The smell of peat and diesel and fifty thousand umbilical cords of black smoke uniting grey city and grey sky.

We drove to the top of Knockagh Mountain.

There was no one else around.

No one for miles.

“Get out,” Ginger said.

“What is this?” I asked, scared now.

They pushed me out.

“What is this?” I asked again, panic clawing at my throat.

They shoved me to the ground, took out their revolvers.

“For some reason. For some unearthly reason, they like you, Duffy,” Ginger said.

“Who likes me?”

“ They like you and that’s why they’re letting you live,” Ginger said. He pulled the trigger, the cylinder turned, the hammer came down. It was only a mock execution. They should have told me about the reprieve afterwards. I wanted to laugh. They’d botched it.

“The Moore case is over. Is that understood, Inspector Duffy?” black moustache said with an English accent.

“Aye, I understand,” I replied.

“You watch your step, now, ok?” Ginger added.

They got back in the Capri and drove away.

The rain pattered my face.

The tarmac under my back felt reassuringly solid.

I lay there and watched the clouds drift past a mere hundred yards above my head.

I got to my feet. Belfast was spread out before me like a great slab of meat in a butcher’s yard.

Who liked me?

Why had they let me live?

Why had they called me Inspector?

These were things to think about.

It would keep my mind busy on the long walk home.