The Cold Cold Ground

14: THE APARTMENT

And then … nothing. Twenty-four hours of nothing. Not so unusual in the life of a copper. Action stations, red zone, 100 mph and then zilch. Another reason why you need a good book.

Zilch in our case meant no leads, no further developments, no witnesses, no tips to the CID or the Confidential Telephone. The gay angle was probably hurting us. No one wanted to leave a tip about a homosexual murder. Not everybody in Ulster was George Seawright crazy but this was Northern Ireland in 1981 which was slightly less conservative than, say, Salem in 1692. If they knew anything about such things it probably meant that they were queer too.

Procedure keeps you going. I checked for bombs under my car and drove to work. We tabbed the files, filed the reps. I called up the DMV and found out that Shane drove a VW Beetle. I pestered Special Branch about Tommy Little until a chief super came on the blower to tell me that I was barking up the wrong tree, that the police’s intelligence was very good and that if Tommy Little was a player he was a minor actor in the play.

We interviewed Lucy Moore’s pals in person and got nothing from them. We examined the Boneybefore postcard and the only prints were mine and the letter carrier. We looked and looked again for any links between the victims but there were none that we could find. We checked for Tommy Little’s missing Ford Granada but came up empty. I examined the music scores and played the records. I looked at the “hit list” and asked Crabbie to see if there were any links between the people there. Again none beyond the obvious. The inferences we drew from our inquiries took us down several blind alleys just like in a real labyrinth.

On Tuesday afternoon we got a fax from the coroner’s office. Sir David Fitzhughes, the Coroner for East Antrim, had read Dr Cathcart’s pathology report and our notes and had issued a preliminary finding of death by suicide on Lucy Moore. The full inquest would be in November but this preliminary finding was enough to have Brennan breathing down my neck to bin the case.

On the one hand we didn’t know where Lucy had been staying since Christmas. On the other hand hiding a pregnant woman wasn’t a crime. Not even in Belfast. Brennan wanted my full attention on the murders. The patho said Lucy killed herself, the coroner said Lucy killed herself, the papers said Lucy killed herself.

I wasn’t that happy about it. I agreed to suspend the investigation but not close the case. I wrote “Possible suicide” on the file.

I completed my psych profile of the killer. It was standard stuff from the Wrigley-Carmichael index: A white male, 25–45, moderately high IQ, almost certainly an ex-prisoner, and almost certainly a sex offender of some type. We ran the names through the database. We got twenty-three matches but no one who was still around. Every single one of them was living in England, Scotland or further afield. As soon as they got out of prison sex offenders fled Northern Ireland because they knew that sooner or later they would be kneecapped or murdered by a paramilitary chieftain looking to make a name for himself.

In a normal society that’s where you’d look for your leads.

But this was not a normal society.

No leads. Brick walls. And then there was Shane. Shane boy was as bent as a five-bob note. Billy and Shane jungled up together? Or was Shane a heroic loner in a murderously intolerant world? If Shane and Tommy Little were having an affair, Shane might have killed him to cover it up. Anything could have happened: lovers’ quarrel, fear of exposure, you name it. Sure he talked the talk about incurring the wrath of God from the IRA but in the heat of a fight you don’t think of such things.

The problem with Shane was his alibi. After Tommy Little left he said that he played snooker with Billy and the other lads until midnight. They would cover for him as a matter of course.

I thought about the angles. Shane didn’t seem like the type who embraced opera and Greek culture, but you never knew, did ya? It would be nice to have a nosey around his place …

On Tuesday night Laura and I went to see Chariots of Fire. It was about running. The two British guys won. I had a feeling they might. No one, however, blew up the cinema and there were no bomb scares.

Laura asked me about Heather. I told her part of the truth. A reserve constable who was a little drunk and freaked out after a riot in Belfast had briefly come on to me. She was, I added, married.

“You’ve every right to see whoever you want, we’re not really going out,” she said.

“I’m not going to see anybody else,” I told her.

I walked her to her apartment door but she wouldn’t let me in for a coffee. I didn’t mind. She kissed me on the cheek and said something about the weekend.

I said something in reply.

I was distracted.

I was thinking about that other kiss.

Trying to get it the fuck out of my mind.

On the way home from the station I met Sammy, my Marxist barber, walking his bulldog. He told me that I looked depressed. I said that I was. He said that it wasn’t surprising because the collapse of capitalism was imminent. He said that this was a reason for celebration, not anxiety, and that I should start listening to Radio Albania on the shortwave.

I went home, made myself a vodka gimlet and found Radio Free Albania. Sammy was right — it did cheer me up. The Americans were denounced, the Russians were denounced, Mao was praised, Comrade Enver Hoxha’s achievements at chess, athletics, in research physics, agricultural innovation were all saluted …

Wednesday morning: I checked under the car for bombs, drove to the cop shop and sat staring at McCrabban’s ugly mug from 9 until 10.

“Crabbie, you want to go up to Belfast with me?”

“What for?”

“Let’s go see Scavanni.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to get your take on him, Crabbie. I didn’t like him and I think he’s hiding something.”

Crabbie yawned. “Aye, why not? I’ve just been pretending to work.”

We signed out a Land Rover and drove up the Shore Road. We passed the Loughshore Park in Newtownabbey. There was no point telling either McCrabban or Matty about Shane. Not yet. Not until I knew something.

The rain was heavy, the traffic light.

We drove past a fresh bombsite that was, with ruthless efficiency, being bulldozed into a car park. Soon Belfast would be the only city in the world with more parking spaces than cars.

We left Queen’s Street RUC and walked through the search gates into the centre of town.

“Oi, chief, I’m starving, I had no breakfast this morning, can we get something to eat?” Crabbie said.

“No breakfast?” I said, staring at the ghost of his black eye. “Are you sure everything’s sweetness and light at chez McCrabban?”

“The, uh … she’s been a bit … Pregnant, you know.”

This, I felt, was a major breakthrough in my attempt to get him to open up.

“My treat. Breakfast. Question is where?”

Because of the sky-high insurance rates there were no major chains in Belfast: no McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Kentucky Fried Chicken, nothing.

“Anywhere.”

We found a greasy spoon off Anne Street and I got the cornflakes. Crabbie got the Ulster fry and I waited while he scarfed: pancakes, potato bread, soda bread, sausages, bacon, egg, black pudding, white pudding — all of it fried in lard. A heart-attack special.

We walked over to the Cornmarket and found Bradbury House.

The painters were in doing the lobby in Mental Hospital Beige.

“Scavanni’s in a new Sinn Fein press office up on the second floor,” I was explaining when I noticed on the directory that the offices of Councillor George Seawright were on the ground floor.

That was interesting. It was like finding Rommel and Montgomery sharing the same tent.

I pointed it out to Crabbie.

“I’ve heard rumours about him,” McCrabban said.

“About who? Seawright?”

“They say he’s tight with the paramilitaries.”

“Let’s go pay him a visit.”

“What for?” Crabbie asked.

“He hates homos, doesn’t he? Let’s see what he was doing on the night Tommy got himself topped.”

“You’re reaching, mate,” Crabbie said.

“Exactly the sort of thing you do when you have no leads.”

I was wearing my black polo neck and leather jacket and Crabbie was in his orange shirt and tie so Seawright’s secretary had to be convinced that we were peelers by our warrant cards. She showed us into his office which, like Scavanni’s, also overlooked Cornmarket Street where they had hanged the United Irishmen, the last time Protestants and Catholics had ever come together to fight the blah, blah, blah …

Unlike Scavanni’s digs, however, Seawright’s office was adorned by several Union Flags and boxes and boxes of a little DUP pamphlet entitled Proof The Bible Is True. Seawright was a big guy with a mop of greasy hair and thick 1970s glasses. He was wearing a grey checked suit that was a size too small. The Napoleon haircut and the suit gave him a comedic air and in truth he wasn’t that funny.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked after his secretary showed us in.

I told him that we were from Carrick RUC and were investigating the murders of Tommy Little and Andrew Young.

“The two fruits? That guy should get a medal, so he should,” he said with a hideous grin.

“Where were you on the night of Tuesday the twelfth?”

“I was in bed with my wife, so I was.”

“She’ll vouch for that?”

“She better.”

“Did you know either Tommy Little or Andrew Young?”

Seawright leaned back in his chair. “Your investigation must be in a sorry way if you’ve come to question me just because I’ve said a few things about the queers. I mean, excuse me, officer Duffy, but isn’t being queer still illegal in Northern Ireland?”

“Being homosexual isn’t, homosexual acts are, but there is an interesting case up before the European Court of Human Rights that-”

“Fucking Europe. The fucking whore of Babylon will bring about the apocalypse. Sixteen years, Sergeant Duffy, 1997. Not 2000, no. The fenians got the calendar wrong. 1997, that’s the Millennium. That’s when our Lord Jesus Christ will return and cleanse this world of the idolaters and fenians and queers and all the mockers of the holy Bible.”

“Any particular day I should keep clear?” I asked him.

“August twenty-ninth,” he said immediately. I was a little thrown by that and I glanced at Crabbie and he asked Seawright if any of his followers had been bragging about the murders. Seawright denied that they had.

Seawright’s secretary spoke through the intercom: “Councillor, I’m afraid you have another appointment.”

Crabbie gave me a “Why are we wasting our time here?” look.

I nodded and got to my feet.

“If any of your followers do feel the urge to hasten the work of the Millennium I hope you’ll dissuade them, Councillor Seawright. Murder is a crime too,” I said and left my card on his desk.

I picked up one of the Proof The Bible Is True pamphlets and walked out into the reception area. It would be an understatement to say that I was surprised to see Freddie Scavanni talking good-naturedly to Councillor Seawright’s secretary. He was wearing a tailored black silk suit with a black shirt and a black tie. Anywhere else you wouldn’t have given Freddie a second look but in Northern Ireland terms Scavanni was a bit of a dandy.

“Hello, Freddie,” I said cheerfully, “We were just coming to see you. Fancy you hanging out here. With Councillor Seawright of all people. That’s interesting isn’t it, Detective McCrabban?”

“Very interesting,” McCrabban agreed.

“What do you want see me about?” Scavanni asked, clearly irritated.

“We’ll wait for you upstairs and then we’ll talk,” I said, winked at him and we went up.

Freddie’s office was buzzing with earnest young men with beards and bell-bottomed corduroys. The women were in miniskirts and tight Aran sweaters and looked as if they’d bang you at the drop of a hat if you said you were on the run from the Johnnie Law.

I nodded at Scavanni’s secretary and waltzed into his office.

“Don’t worry, Freddie’s expecting us,” I said.

McCrabban lit his pipe and I read Proof The Bible Is True until Freddie came in fifteen minutes later.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, apparently in a better mood.

I passed him across the DUP pamphlet. “Fascinating stuff, Freddie. Your buddy Seawright down there thinks the fossils were placed under the ground by God to test our faith. Is that what you think?”

Freddie took the pamphlet and dropped it in the trash can.

“I don’t have time for games. As you can see, we are very busy at the moment.”

“What were you doing hanging with George Seawright? Aren’t you supposedly mortal enemies or something?”

“Don’t be naive, peeler.”

I nodded. Yeah. I had been naive. Freddie had something that Seawright didn’t. An aura, a charisma, an arrogance. He was relaxed. Too relaxed. Two detectives had come to see him about a murdered man and he didn’t even break a sweat. He was cool as a goddamned Irish summer.

When people like Freddie came into a room the gravity changed. You could feel it. Freddie had presence, like Billy Wright and Gerry Adams. Perhaps all players had it. Was that what Freddie was … a player?

I thought about it for a heartbeat or two.

“This job is largely a front isn’t it?” I suggested.

“What?”

“A front, a cover, a beard.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You work for the Force Research Unit too don’t you, Freddie?”

McCrabban looked at me in amazement.

“Never heard of them,” Freddie said.

“The FRU, the ‘nutting squad’, the IRA internal security unit.”

“I have no idea what you’re going on about,” he said with a shake of the head.

“Something’s been troubling me, Freddie. Tommy Little was the head of the Force Research Unit. He was coming over to see you the night he was murdered. If I’m an ordinary foot soldier and the head of the FRU is coming to see me I’d be shitting my pants. I’d be on a plane to fucking Indochina. But not you. Why is that, Freddie?”

“I called him. About cars. Remember?”

“The story about the homosexual serial killer didn’t break for two full days after Tommy went missing. That’s two days in which the IRA knows one fact and one fact only: Tommy Little, the head of their internal security branch, is on his way to see you. Why aren’t you dead, Freddie? Why didn’t they torture you and kill you?”

He sighed. “I’m assuming these are not rhetorical questions.”

They had been twenty minutes ago but they weren’t now. If you were setting up a press office why have Councillor Seawright from the DUP in the same building? Surely office space in Belfast wasn’t that precious, was it? Why share a building with Seawright? I suppose the real question was why not? What have you got to fear if you’re FRU? If you’re FRU everybody else better watch out, not you. You certainly don’t fear a punk like Seawright.

I smiled, leaned back in the chair and tried another bluff: “I know who you are, Freddie. You’re FRU too, aren’t you? More than that. You were Tommy Little’s deputy, you were the second in command of the FRU.”

“Brilliant!” he said and laughed.

“Why was Tommy coming to see you? It crossed my mind that you and Tommy were having an affair. You’re a good looking guy, but that can’t be it, can it? If you’re homosexual you wouldn’t still be in this job, would you? There’s a purge going on right now to distance the IRA from this nasty business.”

“You have quite the imagination, officer. You’re clearly wasted in the RUC.”

“And Tommy wasn’t coming over to brace you, was he? If he was coming over on orders from the IRA Army Council he would have brought an entire team, wouldn’t he? Nah, he was coming over to consult you about something. The reason you’re not dead, Freddie, is because you’re still a valued member of the team, aren’t you?”

“Maybe he’s the one who’s leading the investigation into Tommy Little’s death? Maybe he’s the one bracing other people?” Crabbie said, jumping on the bandwagon. I liked that and I grinned at him.

“All this, the new job, the new office with the DUP just one floor below. Seawright’s UVF isn’t he? Seawright’s UVF, Billy White is UDA and you’re the brand new head of FRU and the new liaison between the loyalist paramilitaries and the IRA,” I said.

Freddie folded his hands across his lap and chuckled. “That’s a very good story. You boys should turn pro.”

“You want to hear a story? How about this? You wanted Tommy’s job so you fucking topped him and then you went and shot some random gay guy that you knew about. And you did this because the IRA army are a conservative bunch and they’d buy any old shite about poofters killing each other or a lunatic running around killing homosexuals,” I said.

Freddie grinned at me. He looked at McCrabban. “You must have a great time keeping up with him, I’ll bet you lads don’t even need TV down the station.”

“Do you like opera, Freddie?”

“Some.”

“Do you play an instrument?” I asked.

“A piano,” Scavanni said with an open easy grin. “Where the hell are you going with any of this?”

“What about Greek? Do you know Greek, Freddie?” I asked quietly.

“Ancient Greek?”

“Yes.”

“I studied it in school.”

“You know the story of Ariadne?”

“The Minotaur, of course.”

He didn’t deny it. He didn’t hum and ha. He just sat there, amused by me. Fifteen seconds went past. His grin widened a little.

I began to think that I was the one lost in the labyrinth.

I closed my eyes and tried to think.

The secretary said: “Mr Scavanni, the calls are stacked up, if you’re through here …”

“Gentlemen please, I’m really jam-packed today,” Freddie said.

I opened my eyes, got to my feet. “Let’s go, Crabbie,” I said and, turning to Scavanni, I added, “You and I will be talking again.”

“The next time you try and barge in here you better have a warrant, Sergeant Duffy. Some of us have work to do.”

I nodded, but did not reply.

We went outside and walked back to Queen’s Street police station.

In the cop shop we ate sandwiches and I found their local Special Branch rep and asked him if there was any intel at all on Freddie Scavanni. He pulled the folders. Freddie had a file, of course, but he’d been out of the game for at least six or seven years and had restricted his activity purely to the political side.

“Not a player?”

“Not a player.”

In the Land Rover back to Carrick Crabbie put on Downtown Radio and we listened to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. When we got through the roadblocks and army checkpoints McCrabban turned to me in the passenger’s seat.

“I’m surprised you’re not seasick, Sean,” he said.

“Oh, aye? Why’s that?”

“After that fishing expedition.”

“You’re funny.”

“No, that was really something.”

“You don’t think Scavanni’s holding out on us?”

“He’s definitely holding out on us. But even if he is FRU it means what exactly? We’re looking for Tommy Little’s killer and if Freddie Scavanni was that man, he’d be dead by now, wouldn’t he?”

“You may have a point.”

“You want me to drive us home?”

I shook my head. “Let’s take this old trawler to Rathcoole and see if we can piss off Billy White and his dashing young assistant Shane the same way we pissed off Freddie.”

North Belfast. The Shore Road. The M5 motorway. Rathcoole Estate. All the previous beats: Drizzle, tower blocks, terraces, murals of masked gunmen proudly displaying that icon of the second half of the twentieth century: the AK-47.

Stray dogs. Stray cats. No women. No cars. Rain and oil separating into strange colours and patterns by a process of organic chromatography.

The snooker hall. The back room.

The boxes of ciggies and UDA posters. Billy pouring over a ledger filled with accounts. Shane reading a comic book.

“You again?” Billy said, looking vaguely disappointed.

“What? You thought you’d bought me off with two cartons of cigarettes?”

“I thought you weren’t going to bother me since I was so nice as to answer all your questions.”

Shane was looking at me over the top of the comic.

Batman.

Do you have a secret identity, Shane my lad? What do you get up to after dark?

“Are you a married man, Billy?” I asked conversationally.

“Aye, two kids.”

“Boys? Girls?”

“One of each, Caitlin, two, Ian, four. You want to see pictures?”

“Love to,” I said.

We saw the pictures. They’d been taken on a pilgrimage to the site of the Battle of the Boyne in County Meath.

“Charming,” I said.

“Lovely,” Crabbie added.

“So,” I said.

“Tommy Little.”

“Jesus! Not this again, peeler.”

“Aye, this again. And again and again until we are satisfied,” Crabbie said, not liking Billy’s tone one little bit.

I looked at McCrabban. You run it, mate.

“What time did Tommy come by here last Tuesday?” he asked.

“About eight,” Billy said with a sigh.

“Why did he come here?”

Billy looked at Crabbie and then he raised his eyebrows at me. “You can mention the heroin to my colleague,” I said. “We’re not interested in that.”

Billy sighed. “Tommy gave us a couple bags of dope, we chatted about one or two things and then he left. That’s it,” Billy said.

“What things did you chat about?” McCrabban asked.

Billy shrugged. “He was reassuring us that despite the craziness around the hunger strikes all of our bilateral deals would be intact. He said that there would be a lot of rhetoric from Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness but underneath it all we would keep to our arrangements regarding territory, rackets and narcotics. It was standard stuff but it was still good to hear.”

“The conversation would have taken how long? Ten minutes? In which case he left at ten past eight? Eight fifteen?”

“I don’t know, but no later than eight twenty.”

“He got in his car and drove straight away?”

Neither man spoke.

McCrabban and I exchanged a look.

“Well?” McCrabban insisted.

“He didn’t exactly do that,” Billy said.

I felt a little burst of electricity along my spine.

“Go on,” I said.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Shane said.

The Sphinx speaks. Excellent.

“What wasn’t a big deal?” I asked.

“He said he was going to Straid to see someone.”

Freddie Scavanni.

“And?”

“Well, it was lashing and I asked him if he could give me a lift,” Shane said. “I live in a flat out on the Straid Road.”

“You’ve a car though, don’t you, Shane?”

“It was banjaxed.”

Convenient.

“So what happened next, Shane?” I asked.

Shane bit his lower lip and shook his head. “Fuck. This is why I didn’t even want to mention it. Nothing happened. He gave me a lift. He was in a big hurry. I was at the house five minutes later and then he went on his way.”

“This would have been eight thirty?”

“Yeah.”

“He gave you a lift and then he drove off?”

“That’s it. Like I say, he was really pressed for time.”

I let silence sink into the room for thirty seconds or so.

Silence is also a form of conversation.

Billy spoke through his hard man look, Shane through his gaze which never left the floor.

“Why didn’t you lads tell me all this the other day?” I asked.

“There was no point complicating things. If we’d told you, you’d have thought we had something to do with it. And we had nothing to do with it. We wouldn’t be that buck daft,” Billy said.

“And why are you telling us now?” Crabbie asked.

“Shane and I were talking and we wondered what would happen if you found Tommy’s car with Shane’s fingerprints in it,” Billy said. “You might get the wrong idea.”

“Or the right idea,” I said.

Crabbie didn’t know what I knew about Shane. And I wondered for a moment how exactly I could tell him.

“Are you sure Tommy didn’t meet with some kind of unfortunate accident when he was here?” Crabbie asked.

Bobby shook his head. “Come on, peeler. Why would we do that? There’s no angle in it for us.”

“Maybe Detective Constable McCrabban’s on the right lines. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe you were showing Tommy your brand new Glock 9mm when … boom!”

“Wise the bap!” Billy muttered.

I looked at McCrabban. He shrugged. I stood up. “Are the pair of you going to be here for a while? We might have more questions,” I said.

“We’ll be here,” Billy said.

We went back outside to the Land Rover. While we’d been talking some wee shite had graffitied “SS RUC” on the rear door.

“Oh my God,” I said. “If Brennan sees this!”

Crabbie put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t have an eggy fit, Sean. We’ll drive past a garage, get some white spirit and clean it off before we get back to Carrick.”

“Wee fucking shites!” I yelled at the estate and my voice echoed off all the concrete at right angles.

I checked underneath for a mercury tilt bomb and we climbed in and I called up Matty on the radio. They took forever to get him because he was on the bog.

“Yes?” he said.

“Give me the addresses of Billy White and Shane McAtamney and make it sharpish,” I said.

He took his sweet time about it. “18 Queens Parade, Rathcoole and, uhm, number 4, 134 Straid Road, Whiteabbey. Oh, and I’ve got a bit of news,” he said at last.

“What news?”

“Your man, Seawright. Back in his Glasgow days, him and a bunch of welders allegedly beat up a couple of transvestite hookers. Beat them near to death,” Matty said.

“Cheers, Matt,” I said.

I looked at Crabbie. “What was that you were saying about fishing expeditions?” I added.

“Back to Belfast, talk it over with Seawright?” McCrabban wondered.

I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t really see it, mate. He’s hardly going to go on the BBC calling for death to the queers if he’s actually out killing queers.”

“What was it your man on the telly says: the only two things that are infinite are the universe and human stupidity.”

“It’s a fair point.”

“Oi, lads, I’m not done yet!” Matty said over the radio.

“There’s more?” I asked.

“There’s more.”

“Go on then.”

“I cross-tabbed all the pervs and kiddie fiddlers that have been released from prison in the last year. The probation office tells me that every one of them has left Northern Ireland except for three. Lad called Jeremy McNight who is in Musgrave Park Hospital with terminal lung cancer, a guy called Andy Templeton who was killed in a house fire. Suspicious house fire, I might add. And finally after a lot of gruelling leg work and-”

“Just get on with it.”

“One name. Could be our boy. Got four years for homosexual rape. Released two months ago.”

“Better not give his name out over the airwaves,” I said.

“Of course not! I’m not a total eejit. Give you it back at the station.”

“Ok. Good work, mate.”

We turned off the radio.

“Where to then, kemosabe?” Crabbie asked.

“Billy’s first. 18 Queens Parade. We’ve got a wee window here.”

We drove about half a mile to an end terrace with a big mural of King William crossing the Boyne on the gable wall. It was a modest home. A council house, which made me think that Billy had all his money in a secret bank account — either that or he had lost it all down the bookies like every other medium-level crook. Which reminded me: 100 quid on Shergar for the win even if it meant an overdraft.

We walked along the path and rang the bell. While we were waiting we heard an explosion in Belfast. “Two hundred pounder by the sound of it,” Crabbie said.

A woman opened the door. She was an attractive, skinny blonde in a denim skirt and a union jack T-shirt. She had a cigarette dangling out the corner of her mouth, a glass of gin in one hand and a crying baby in the other. I assumed this must be Caitlin.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

“We’re the Old Bill,” I said.

“He’s not in.”

“That’s why we’re here,” I said.

We brazened our way inside. I sent Crabbie upstairs to get the gun Billy no doubt kept under his pillow, while I hunted downstairs. The place was filled with boxes of cigarettes, crates of Jameson whiskey and two or three dozen Atari Video Game consoles. I ignored all of this and went to the record collection.

Sinatra, Dean Martin, Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, more Sinatra.

The baby screamed.

The TV blared.

I looked in the laundry basket for bloody clothes and I looked for traces of blood in the washer/dryer. Nothing.

Caitlin followed me with the screaming baby, saying nothing, looking anxious.

I went into the back garden and examined the clothes on the line. No blood-stained items there either.

Back inside. Crabbie came downstairs and showed me the piece, a Saturday Night Special, snub-nosed.38. He was holding it on the end of a pencil. I slipped it into an evidence bag.

“Well take this,” I said. “And you might want to give your wee girl there something to eat.”

We drove to 134 Straid Road, #4.

It was a small square apartment complex. A dozen flats, each with a little balcony. It could have been nice but for the fact that they’d painted the exterior a kind of sheep-shit brown.

The front door was open and we walked up one flight of steps to #4.

“Now what?” McCrabban said.

“Now this, me old mucker,” I said and took out my lock-pick kit.

Crabbie put his hand on my arm. “Sean, get a grip! We can’t break in!”

“I shall note your protest in the log,” I said doing an English naval officer’s accent.

McCrabban shook his head. In Protestant Ballymena such things were not tolerated. It was one thing to take the occasional carton of ciggies from a paramilitary, but a man’s house was sacred.

It was a Yale standard and I had keyed the mechanism in under a minute.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said.

“I’m not going in,” Crabbie said petulantly.

“Yeah, you are.”

“No, I’m bloody not.”

I flipped on the light switch with a knuckle. A small two-bedroom apartment with a neat two-person leather sofa, bean bags, red-painted walls and several framed posters of boxers: there was Ali versus Frazier back in the glory days; there was Joe Louis versus Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium.

The apartment had a 22-inch TV, a Betamax video recorder and a dozen tapes: The Godfather, The Sting, Close Encounters of The Third Kind, etc.

Shane had a sensitive side: in perhaps an echo of Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji he had done half a dozen watercolours of Kilroot Power Station. The last two weren’t bad although a magenta sunset was somewhat fanciful.

It was the laundry bin and the record collection that I was after.

Laundry first: briefs, T-shirts, a pair of jeans. No blood.

Records next. I put on a pair of latex gloves and looked through them. Shane’s tastes were similar to mine: David Bowie, Led Zep, Queen, The Police, Blondie, The Ramones, Floyd, The Stones. What did they say about the pair of us?

“What did you find?” Crabbie asked from outside.

“No classical. No opera,” I said.

“I can see his bookcase from here. They’re all comics and Enid Blyton. The guy’s sub-literate.”

“Let’s do a thorough shakedown before we jump to any conclusions.”

“You do it. I’ll keep watch.”

I worked the bedroom and the bathroom. I found some grass, a sheet of acid tabs and a couple of body-building magazines.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

We left the.38 at the ballistics lab in Cultra and told them to match it against the slugs on Tommy Little and Andrew Young and then headed for home.

We drove back to Carrick and picked up Matty.

The released perv was one Victor Combs of 41A Milebush Tower, Monkstown. Ex-schoolteacher, currently unemployed. He’d been caught having sex in a park with another man. The other man — a seventeen-year-old — had accused him of rape and the judge had bought it.

It sounded like he’d gotten the shaft but we drove over to see him anyway.

Milebush Tower was another of those shit-coloured four-storey concrete blocks of flats that had grown up in the sink estates of Ulster in the ’60s and ’70s. They were damp, cold and seemingly deliberately unlovely. The day the Northern Ireland Housing Executive gave you your key they probably gave you a suicide information leaflet.

We parked the Land Rover and hoofed it up to 41A.

Mr Combs was in.

He was wearing a bathrobe and listening to classical music which got our attention.

He was heavy, balding, forty-five, but he looked twenty years older and he walked from the door back to the sofa with a cane.

The flat was as nice as he could make it.

There were books, records and he kept it clean. He had a cat.

I let McCrabban run it while I looked through the books and records.

“Where were you on the night of May twelfth?”

“I was here.”

“All night?”

“Yes.”

“Can anyone vouch for that?”

“What’s this about?”

“Can anyone vouch for the fact that you say you were here all night?”

“Not really, no.”

“Do you own a car, Mr Combs?”

“No.”

“Do you know a man called Tommy Little?”

“No.”

“Do you know someone called Andrew Young?”

“No. What is this about?”

The records weren’t that impressive. Boring collections of classical music done in the early ’70s by cheapo German firms. No sheet music.

I looked at Crabbie and he shook his head. Combs certainly didn’t look as if he could get too physical with anyone.

“Under the terms of your probation I have the right to search these premises for a firearm. I am exercising that right,” I said.

No gun. No contraband. Nothing suspicious.

But there was the fact that he had no alibi.

“Why are you still in Northern Ireland, Mr Combs? Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be kneecapped because you’re a sex offender?” I asked.

Combs’s grey face became greyer. “Let them kneecap me. Let them do anything they want. I don’t care. Let them kill me. I didn’t do anything wrong and they know it. My life’s ruined. Everything’s ruined. My family won’t speak to me. My friends. Fuck it. Let them come. Let them do their fucking worst.”

“I like the defiance. Do you have anything to back it up? A wee pistol maybe?” I asked.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

He nodded. “Who’d sell me a piece anyway?”

“Just about anybody,” Matty said.

I sat on the sofa and looked at him. “What happened to you, mate?”

He didn’t reply for a long time.

“Love happened,” he said at last.

I looked into his strangely pale eyes.

“Go on.”

He shook his head. “It was my mistake. I flew too close to the sun.”

We took our leave and drove back to Carrick Police Station.

“Big tubby,” Matty scoffed. “He flew too close to the bun more like.”

Crabbie laughed and then pointed at me.

“Remind Matty about Icarus, why don’t you, Sean.”

“Icarus was the son of Daedalus who was famous for building the labyrinth before he got famous for building wings that didn’t work.”

“Coincidence,” Matty said.

“Probably,” I agreed.

We got to the station. I sent the lads home and I went in and briefed the Chief. Brennan poured me some Jura while he listened to my report.

“Not much progress, eh, Sean?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, at the least the nutter hasn’t struck again, has he?”

“Not that we know of.”

“What else is new?” he asked.

I drank the whiskey. “In my life, sir?”

“In your life, Sean.”

“I went to the flicks, saw Chariots of Fire.”

“Any good?”

“They go for a run along the beach at the Old Course in St Andrews. I think you’d like that bit, sir.”

He yawned. “All right. Sally forth! And take my advice and go to bed early. We’ll be needing you before dawn.”

“What for?”

He tapped his nose. “Top Secret VIP on her way.”

Her could only mean Mrs Thatcher or the Queen. Either would be bad news.

I went home but I couldn’t go to sleep early. Never could. I took some of the EEC bacon, fried it with eggs and potato bread. I ate it in front of the TV. There was a brand new cop show on called Magnum P.I. He was a PI. He was called Magnum. Like Serpico he had an impressive moustache. This, I realized, was my problem.

I phoned Laura but she told me that she was just on her way out.

“Who with?”

“A friend.”

“What friend?”

“A friend from college.”

“Man or woman?”

“Oh, you’re impossible!” she said and hung up.

I called an old mate of mine, Jack Pougher, from Special Branch intel. I span him my “Freddie Scavanni is a major player” theory. He’d heard nothing about it. He told me I should stick to detecting. I told him I was shite at that. We discussed cop moustaches and agreed that they were on the way out.

I took a pint glass out of the freezer and made myself a vodka gimlet.

The phone rang. It was ballistics. “This gun did not fire the bullets that killed your homicide victims,” some fucking Nigel said in a home-counties accent.

“Are you sure?”

“We can say it with 99 per cent confidence.”

I thanked him and hung up the phone. Billy White did not shoot Tommy Little. At least not with that gun. I drank the vodka and thought about the killer. He’d been so quick to get our attention before with postcards and sawn-off limbs and now nothing: no new victims, no new communications. Surely that meant something. But what?

I thought about Dermot McCann, a boy I’d known at St Malachy’s. Dermot had been very sexually adventurous even for 1968 … Dermot was now inside doing ten years for bomb making.

I thought about him from Loughshore Park. Stopped thinking about him. Got annoyed. I opened the front door and left out the milk bottles. I went back in, stripped down to my jeans and T-shirt, got an oil can from the garden shed and pretended to oil the squeaky front gate. If Mrs Campbell came out now and did her “Oh, Mr Duffy, it’s such a shame about the Pope” thing I’d lift her over the fence, carry her into the living room and fuck her goddamn brains out.

I oiled the gate. The rain came on. Mrs Campbell did not come out.