Adrian McKinty - The Cold Cold Ground

“Any claims of responsibility yet?” I asked Crabbie.

Crabbie shook his head. “No one’s said anything.”

“So we’ve got no prints, no physical evidence, no recovered slug, no claim of responsibility, no missing person’s filings, absolutely nowt,” I said.

The other two nodded their heads.

“Right fool I’ll look going to Brennan with this.”

“We could put his picture on TV,” Matty said. “Get an artist to fix up a sketch of his face pre-gunshot.”

“Brennan won’t like it, asking the public for help. Hates that,” Crabbie said.

“Does he now?” I muttered. He seemed like a man with a yen for the bright lights of a BBC studio, but that was maybe just me projecting, and again it made me think that Prods were different and Prods from East Antrim were even differenter .

“Aye, he does. He doesn’t want a lot of focus from the powers that be on our wee set-up down here,” Crabbie explained.

The three of us sat there for a minute looking at a filthy coal boat chugging down the lough. Matty lit a Rothmans. Crabbie began assembling his pipe. I played with a paper clip. I sighed and got to my feet. “Maybe the doc will help, who wants to come?”

“Will they be cutting him open?” Matty asked.

“I expect they will.”

Matty coughed. “You know what? I’ll stay here and chase up on our boy’s prints,” he said.

“I’ll pass too,” Crabbie muttered.

“You’re both a couple of yella bellies,” I said and put my coat on.

Crabbie cleared his throat. “If I could make an observation before you head off, Sean,” he said.

“Go on.”

“Very unusual this for these parts. No prints on anything? Believe me, I know these local hoods and no one in the Carrick UVF or the Carrick UDA is this careful. It gives ya pause for thought,” McCrabban said.

“Aye, it does,” Matty agreed.

“And no ‘thirty pieces of silver’ either,” I said. “They usually love that shit.”

Brennan saw me on the way out and dragged me to the Royal Oak public house next door.

He ordered two Guinnesses and two Bushmills.

“That’s some lunch. I’ll have the same,” I told him. He smiled and we took the drinks to the snug.

My pager was going like the clappers and under Brennan’s withering look I turned it off.

“What news, kemosabe?” he asked when we’d drunk our chasers.

“Drawing a blank so far, skipper, but I still have the patho to see and the victim’s prints are up in Belfast getting run through the database as we speak.”

“Thought I told you last night to handle this ourselves,” Brennan muttered with a scowl.

“Not the leg work too, surely? Besides, them boys in records have nothing better to do. If I sent Matty up there to do it manually it would take him two hours just to drive through the police road blocks.”

Brennan nodded. He fixed me with his Viking peepers. “And I heard you authorised ‘additional photography’?”

“Yes sir, but I’ll pay for that,” I replied.

“See that you do. I have to account for every penny.”

“There was some thought among the lads that we could go on the BBC and put our mystery man’s face on the telly, but Crabbie has crushed my show-business dreams by saying that’s not your policy? Sir?”

Brennan pointed heavenwards. “No. Let’s keep this nice and discreet. Once they start breathing down your neck …”

“Ok to authorise flyers and a poster of our poor unfortunate on the board outside the station?”

“One poster and don’t make it grim, let’s not upset the natives.”

Sergeants Burke and McCallister spotted us and joined us at the table, but I had things to do and couldn’t afford a lunch-time session with them boys. After I finished my Guinness, I went back in the cop shop and got my car. Carrick Hospital was a small Victorian building on the Barn Road, only about three hundred yards from the police station as the crow flew, but the crow could juke over a railway line, a stream and Carrick Rangers FC so it took me ten minutes to get there in the Beemer.

The waiting room was full of people with runny noses, colds and other complaints. A child was vomiting into a bag. A teenage hood stinking of petrol was holding a singed hand. A man with a face caked with dried blood was wearing a T-shirt that said “No Pope Here”. Considering his present condition, the Pope could consider himself lucky. There were, however, no young men lying on gurneys with their kneecaps shot off, which you always saw in the bigger Belfast hospitals.

I walked to the reception desk.

The nurse behind the counter was channelling Hattie Jacques from the Carry On films. She was fidgety, scary and enormous.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked in one of those oldtimey upper-crust English accents.

“I’d like to see Dr Cathcart,” I said with what I hoped was a winning smile.

“This is not one of her days.”

“It’s not? Oh? Where is she?”

“She’s doing an autopsy, if you must know.”

“That’s what I wanted to see her about,” I said pulling out my warrant card.

“You’re Sergeant Duffy? She’s been trying to reach you for the last hour.”

“I was busy.”

“We’re all busy.”

She showed me the way to the morgue along a dim black and white tiled corridor that seemed unchanged since the 1930s.

A leak was dripping from the ceiling into a large red bucket with the words “Air Raid Precautions” stamped on the side.

I stopped outside a door marked: “Autopsy. Strictly No Admittance Without Permission of Staff Nurse.”

I knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” a voice asked from within.

“Sergeant Duffy from Carrick police.”

“About time!”

I pushed the door and went inside.

An antiseptic, freezing little room. More black and white tiles on the floor, frosted windows, a buzzing strip light, charts from a long time ago on “hospital sanitation” and “the proper disposal of body parts”.

Dr Cathcart was wearing a mask and a white cotton surgical cap. A little Celtic cross was dangling from her neck and hanging over her surgical gown.

The star of the show was John Doe from last night who Dr Cathcart had opened up and spread about like a frog on a railway line. There were bits of him in various stainless steel bowls, on scales and even preserved in jars. The rest of him was lying naked on the table uncovered and unconcerned by these multiple violations.

“Hello,” I said.

“Put on gloves and a mask, please.”

“I don’t think he’s going to catch anything from us.”

“Perhaps we’ll catch something from him.”

“Ok.”

I put on latex gloves and a surgical mask.

Cathcart held up the severed right hand. “Were you responsible for fingerprinting this hand?” she asked. Her eyes were blue and I could see the hint of black hair under the cap.

“One of my officers did it, but I take full responsibility for him. Why, did we do something wrong?”

“Yes, you did. Your officer cleaned the fingers in white spirit before taking fingerprints from this hand. We therefore lost any evidence that may have been under the victim’s nails.”

“Oh dear, sorry about that.”

“Sorry doesn’t fix things, does it?” she said sternly in what I realized now was some kind of posh South Belfast accent.

I really didn’t like her tone at all. “Love, in a murder investigation getting the fingerprints is a priority so that we can establish who the victim was and hopefully trace their final movements and question witnesses when things are fresh in their minds.”

She pulled down her mask. Her cheeks were pink and her lips a dark red camellia. Her eyes were a vivid azure and her gaze icy and disturbing. She was imperious, attractive and she probably knew it.