The Cold Cold Ground

11: THE FRIENDS OF TOMMY LITTLE

The sky was blue and Concorde was doing a big burn above our heads on the outward leg of the TransAt. We watched it for a moment before getting in the BMW and driving through the gate. Outside the police station a bunch of elderly Jesus freaks were singing about homosexuals, the Second Coming, and proclaiming that we coppers were agents of the anti-Christ.

It was a sizeable crowd and a mobile chip van had parked up the road selling chips, fried dough and hot jam doughnuts.

“Doughnut?” I asked Crabbie.

“Wouldn’t say no.”

We got half a dozen and drove up into the country.

New Line Lane was just off New Line Road about a mile from the village of Ballycarry.

There were a lot of potholes and the bramble bushes closed in tightly on both sides of the track to such an extent that it made me worried about the paintwork.

When we finally came to the cottage it wasn’t large: merely one floor, whitewashed stone, cubby windows and a thatched roof. No doubt tourists would have gone apeshit for it and no doubt the occupant complained about the leaks and the damp. Blue turf smoke was curling from the chimney.

I parked the Beemer, got out, and glanced behind me, down the lane, to the grey tongue of Belfast Lough and beyond it to the yellow cranes of the shipyards in Harland and Wolff. The city looked peaceful as it always did from up here. There was no fire but you could tell something serious was going on because of the number of choppers hovering over the Ardoyne: two Gazelles, a Sea King and a Wessex.

The sun had made an appearance so I left my raincoat in the cab. It wasn’t that professional to do your police work in a Deep Purple T-shirt, but what could you do?

We knocked on the little wooden door, which had been painted a fetching shade of green.

“Mr Hays?” Crabbie asked.

The door opened. Hays was tall and thin, about twenty-five. He was wearing blue-tinted John Lennon glasses and his blond hair was gelled. He was wearing white jeans and a white shirt. He had a bruise on his cheek and a split lip, barely healed from when — without a doubt — the IRA had interrogated him about Tommy’s death. He was pointing a double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun at us.

“Can I help you?” he asked in a well-to-do South Belfast accent.

“We’re the police. We’re looking into the death of Tommy Little,” I said, showing him my warrant card.

“I’ve got nothing to say,” Hays replied, before reading the card carefully.

“Until recently were you living with Tommy Little on 44 Falls Crescent?”

“Until yesterday,” he muttered.

“Until the IRA kicked you out?”

“No comment.”

“Maybe you could aim that shotgun away from my bollocks, I’m about to become a father,” Crabbie said.

Hays lowered the shotgun.

“Who were you expecting?” I asked pointing at the weapon.

“You never know, do you?” Hays said.

“Is this your house?” I asked.

“It was my da’s. We used to come here now and again to get away from Belfast.”

“You and Tommy Little?”

“No comment.”

“What do you do for a living, Mr Hays?” I asked.

“I work for the forestry commission.”

“Ah, interesting work, I’m sure. I’ve heard that as late as 1800 a squirrel could go from one side of Ireland to the other jumping from tree branch to tree branch.”

“That’s about right,” he mumbled and narrowed his eyes.

I’ve seen many a hold-out and this guy was as dour as they came. In normal circumstances he would be a tough interview, but fortunately for us he was frazzled, humiliated and best of all — angry.

“Who told you not to speak to us, Mr Hays?”

“Who do you think?”

“The IRA?”

“Them and my innate common sense.”

“Can we come in, Mr Hays?”

He shook his head.

“Look, Mr Hays, I’m a detective sergeant at Carrickfergus RUC. I’m looking into Tommy’s death. Unlike your friends in the IRA who want this whole thing just to go away, I want to find the killer. I want to find out who did it.”

“Tommy went out that night, that’s all I know,” Hays said and tried to shut the door.

I got my foot in the jam and held it open.

“Where did he go?”

“I’m not saying anything more.”

“Where did he go?” Crabbie asked.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Come on, we’re trying to find out who killed him,” I insisted. His eyes were filling with tears now but he still shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything. That much was made clear to me. I was tied to a fucking chair. They placed a gun against my forehead. I was told that I was lucky that I was being let live!”

I took a deep breath and put my hand on his shoulder. “Just tell us where he was going,” I whispered.

Hays glared at me but he kept his mouth shut.

I looked at Crabbie. Of course we could take him in, but with a Sinn Fein lawyer in the room with him it would be the stone wall … Besides we both could see that he was caving.

He was starting to tremble, not one big tremble but little shunts building towards climax, like people on the bus to the shrine of Our Lady of Knock.

This was the big holy shit. This was grief.

“We need to know where Tommy was going,” Crabbie said gently.

“Who was he going to see, Walter?” I asked.

Hays shook his head. “I read the paper. It’s nothing to do with Tommy’s job, is it? It was some nut randomly going round killing people. Killing queers!”

He said the word “queers” with a sneer — the way he thought we said it.

But it was too late now. He’d given us something important.

Tommy’s job.

“What did Tommy do for the IRA, Walter?”

“You don’t even know that?” Hays said with contempt. “You boys are fucking clueless.”

Crabbie and I shared an excited look.

“What did he do, Walter?”

“I’m telling you nothing!” Hays barked.

Different tack now. Build it like a staircase.

“Did Tommy’s car ever show up?” I asked.

Walter shook his head.

“What car did he drive?” Crabbie asked.

“1978 blue Ford Granada, BXI 1263.”

I wrote the licence plate down in my notebook.

“How long were you and Tommy together?” I asked.

“Four years.”

“Four years. He must have meant the world to you. Come on, Walter. Don’t you want us to find Tommy’s killer?”

“You’ll get nothing out of me. Nothing,” he said with a sob. “Now you’ll really have to leave!”

I reached in my pocket to give him one of my cards but he wouldn’t take it.

“If they find it in the house, they’ll top me for sure,” he said.

There were real tears now.

“It’s ok, mate,” I said. I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “It’s ok,” I said. “It’s ok.”

The tears flowed.

A minute went by.

He sniffed and pulled himself together. I looked him in the eyes.

“Who was he going to see, Walter? Give us a name.”

He sniffed again. A hint of flintiness in his expression. A resolution.

“It’s two names,” he whispered.

“Tell me.”

“It won’t help you.”

“Why not?”

“Neither one of them is the killer. The IRA already did an internal investigation and both of them are still alive.”

“Tell me anyway. Tell me the whole thing.”

He wiped his nose. “All right. If it’ll get rid of you.”

“We’ll leave, I promise.”

He sighed and took a deep breath. “Ok. Ok, so it’s half seven at night and the snooker’s on BBC2 and it’s Alex Higgins and Tommy loves seeing Alex play, but he puts on his jacket and so I ask him where he’s going and he says something about having to see Billy White about the rackets. I don’t think anything of it as he goes to see Billy once a fortnight, more or less. And I’m not really listening to him. And he’s literally going out the door and the phone rings and he picks it up and he’s talking for about a minute and I’m not paying a lot of attention cos I’m watching the snooker too and then he hangs up and I say who was that? And he doesn’t answer. And so I turn to look at him and I ask him what’s up. And he mutters something about business to take care of and after that he’s going to have to go down to Freddie Scavanni’s house. And then he goes out. And that … that’s the last I ever saw of him.”

“What was at Scavanni’s house?” I asked scribbling in my notebook.

He opened his mouth, closed it, looked away.

“There’s more, come on, Walter, out with it.”

“No. There’s not much more. That same night, one of the higher-ups phoned looking for Tommy — about an hour after he left home — and I told him what Tommy had said.”

“What do you mean ‘higher-up’?”

“One of the big bosses. But you won’t be getting his name from me, ever.”

“Do you mean one of the big bosses in the IRA?”

“Yes.”

“How big?”

“The top. The very top. That’s all I’m going to say.”

I looked at Crabbie. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing either.

“Ok, Walter, so you told this big boss what exactly?”

“That Tommy had gone out already. That he was going to see Billy White and Freddie Scavanni.”

I wrote it down. “And then what happened?”

“Well, Tommy didn’t come back and the bosses called again at midnight looking for him and I said I hadn’t seen him yet. A lot of times Tommy will do an all-nighter for the boys so I wasn’t that worried. But then the bosses starting calling again in the morning and all that afternoon. And I began to get really concerned, and then that evening a couple of thugs wearing balaclavas knocked at my door and they took me away for the third degree …”

He hesitated and then stopped speaking as if he had just caught himself doing something terribly wrong. “Informer” has always been a poisonous word in Ireland and these days “informer” was anyone who so much as opened their mouth in the presence of a policeman.

“Ok, Sergeant Duffy, that’s it. You know what I know. Please leave and please don’t ever come back,” Walter said wearily.

He pushed me out onto the porch.

“Wait, a minute, Walter, I-”

Before I could get another word out he shut the door.

I stood there for a moment and then turned to Crabbie. “Either of those names ring a bell?”

“Don’t know who Freddie Scavanni is but Billy White is a Prod paramilitary in Newtownabbey. UVF divisional commander for East Antrim.”

“Why would an IRA man be going to see a UVF divisional commander?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“Drugs?”

“Aye, dividing up territory for drugs, arranging truces, sorting out territory for protection rackets, that kind of thing. But the thing is, Sean, the question we have to ask ourselves, is why Billy White is seeing some low-ranking IRA guy?”

“And we know the answer, don’t we? Because Tommy Little isn’t some low-ranking IRA guy at all, is he?”

“Nope. I reckon he isn’t,” Crabbie agreed.

We drove back to Carrick station and while Crabbie filled in Matty I looked up the file on Billy White:

Born 1947, Belfast. Smart kid. Methodist College. 10 O-Levels. 2 A-levels. 1966-71 moves to Rhodesia where he joins the police. 1971 expelled from Rhodesia for unspecified reasons. 1972 arrested for receiving stolen goods in London. ’72-’74 Her Majesty’s Pleasure in various English Stretches. ‘74 returns to Belfast. Joins UVF, arrested for attempted murder. Witness disappears. Never arrested again. Suspected hitman, suspected bagman, suspected narco distributer. Current UVF rank: senior commander and quartermaster.

The file didn’t say what Billy did now for the UVF but if he was a liaison officer with other paramilitary groups it would make him almost untouchable.

I looked up the file on Freddie Scavanni:

Born 1948, Ravenna, Italy. Relocated to Cork 1950 and to Belfast 1951. Father one of the many Italian immigrants who came to Ireland just after the war. Educated on a scholarship at the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. 12 O-Levels. 3 A-Levels. Another smart kid. Interned for IRA membership 1972 and released in 1973. BA in journalism from Queen’s University Belfast 1976. Currently Sinn Fein press officer. Current IRA rank: unknown.

I closed both files and put them on my desk.

I called up Sinn Fein HQ and asked to speak to Scavanni but they told me to take a long, spiritually fulfilling walk into the nearest peat bog.

“Oi, Crabbie, remember when the chief said that it was great that we had a nice wee normal murder case for once that didn’t involve the paramilitaries or have a sectarian angle?”

“Yeah,” he said sourly, looking at his watch.

“I’m not sure we have that any more.”

I rubber-banded the files on Scavanni and White and chucked them over to him. He read them and whistled.

It was five o’clock. “Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day, mate,” I said. “You better go home.”

“Busier than today?” he asked.

“Oh aye. We’re going to interview Lucy Moore’s ma and da and her husband in the Maze to close that investigation and then we’re going to have to interview our two new best friends: Freddie and Billy.”

“I’ll be late in, Sean. I have to go to Derry tomorrow for me Uncle Tom’s funeral,” Crabbie said.

“All right then, it’ll be a busy day for Matty.”

“I’ll write those names up on the scoresheet.”

Crabbie wrote FREDDIE SCAVANNI and BILLY WHITE on the whiteboard.

He put on his coat. “Is it really ok if I go on home?”

“Aye.”

“What about me?” Matty asked.

“Jesus, you’re here? Where are you?”

“Lying on the floor by the radiator.”

“Why?”

“My back’s killing me. I must have done something to it. I could barely reel in that ten-pounder yesterday. I should be off on sick leave.”

“No sick leave! Did you find out where the homosexuals go to do their business?”

“No.”

“Did you find where Lucy Moore’s been hiding since Christmas?”

“No.”

“Did you find out if there was a link between Tommy Little and Andrew Young?”

“No.”

“Did you find out what Tommy Little really did for a living?”

“No.”

“Brilliant. All right, you can go home too.”

Matty grinned and thanked me. When they were both gone, I turned on the portable TV to catch the Six O’Clock Northern Ireland News. Our story was only the fifth lead, behind a bus bombing, the Royal Wedding, the hunger strikes and an attack on an army helicopter: Two homosexual men had been shot in possibly related incidents. The BBC, in their wisdom, interviewed Belfast City Councillor George Seawright of the DUP, who, as a responsible elected representative called homosexuals an “abomination under God deserving of the very worst torments of hell”.

I turned down the sound and called Special Branch and asked them to send me their latest intel files on the IRA High Command and Army Council. Then I called the Northern Ireland Prison Service to ask how you went about interviewing a prisoner on hunger strike.

Until Heather Fitzgerald’s shift ended I killed some time working up my psych profile of the killer, but there wasn’t a whole lot to go on. Male 25–50. Intelligent. Into classical music. Into mythology. Knowledge of Greek? That didn’t really narrow it down as I’d learned Latin and Greek as did most kids who went to Catholic school or a Proddy Grammar.

At seven o’clock Heather and I walked to the Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant on North Street. We were the only customers.

She had changed into her civvies: a black sweater, long brown skirt and short-heeled boots. She’d kept her end up and she looked lovely.

I ordered half a dozen things off the menu and instead of any of that they just brought us what they’d already made. The waiter grew strangely evasive when I asked for details so I didn’t press him. She pecked at her food like a bird, eating practically nothing. I hadn’t had a proper meal in days and I scarfed what she left.

We were both on three Kingfishers when we walked hand in hand down to the Dobbins on West Street. She wanted a gin and tonic and I got a pint of bass.

Two more drinks and we were getting on famously.

She went off to the toilet and I stood by the fireplace watching the peat bricks crack.

“I thought you might be here,” a voice said.

I turned round. It was Laura.

“I came looking for you,” she said. “I wanted to ask you if you wanted to go to the cinema this week.”

“I thought the IRA had blown up all the cinemas.”

“Not all of them,” she laughed.

“What’s playing?”

“Chariots of Fire? Have you heard of it?”

“Some kind of Ben Hur remake?”

“It’s about the olympics.”

Just then Heather came back from the toilet. She saw me talking to Laura and immediately put her arm through mine and kissed me on the cheek.

Laura blinked a couple of times.

“Laura, this is my friend, Heather. Heather, this is Laura,” I said.

The two women looked at one another and said nothing.

Heather put her hand on my cheek, turned my face to hers and kissed me on the lips.

When the kiss was done, Laura, naturally, was gone.

“Let’s finish our drinks and get out of here,” Heather said.

We went outside and called a black taxi.

It took us to her house in the wilds of Greenisland.

It was a surprisingly big house for a young reserve constable.

If I hadn’t seen her in the RUC van with us today, I would have been thinking: oh shit, IRA honey trap.

She stripped off her clothes revealing fishnet stockings and a black basque.

What the fuck is this? I was thinking when she grabbed my cock through my trousers.

“We were nearly killed today,” she said.

“Not really.”

“Doesn’t it turn you on?” she said.

“You turn me on,” I replied and kissed her again.

She tasted of gin and better times.

I kissed her breasts and her belly and laid her down on the bed.

“Fuck me, you bitch!” she moaned.

I didn’t need any more encouragement.

We had hard, rampant animal sex and then she climbed on top of me and we fucked again.

I fell asleep until 1.30 when she shook me hard.

“My husband gets back from the night shift at two,” she said. “Get your clothes on and get the fuck out of here.”

“Are you serious?”

“He’s a sheet welder, he’ll fucking break you in half, wee man, now get out.”

I had to walk five miles home in the rain.

When I got back to #113 Coronation Road I was shattered. I ripped off my wet clothes, lit the upstairs paraffin heater and put on the Velvet Underground and Nico. I slid the stylus across to “Venus in Furs” and clicked the repeat switch. When John Cale’s crazy viola and Lou Reed’s ostrich guitar kicked in, I went to the bookcase found the Britannica Encyclopaedia of Art and skipped through the centuries until I came to the painting of Orpheus in the Underworld by Jan Velvet Brueghel. I lay in front of the heater as the rain came on and the wind rattled the bathroom windows. I looked at Brueghel’s hell: flying demons, fires, tormented souls and in the foreground two ladies in rather nice frocks.

I lay there and let the minutes wash over me. The minutes. The hours. All eternity. I thought of Orpheus searching for his beloved in the realms of Hades. I thought of Laura and Heather. I thought of Tommy and Walter. I looked for meaning. But there was no meaning. It was nonsense. All of it. There was method but no key. They’re all just playing with us, I thought. And then at three o’clock exactly the lights went out again.