The Cold Cold Ground

18: LIFTED

Days. As Philip Larkin says: days, they come, they wake us, where can we live but days? Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Monday.

This particular day was a Tuesday. The mood was black. A policeman in Lurgan had been killed by a mercury tilt bomb under his Mini Cooper. That’s what happens when you skip the routine.

“The Chief wants to see you,” Carol said as I came in.

I wonder what I’ve fucked up now, I thought.

I sat down opposite him. “What have I fucked up now?” I said.

He handed me a letter. Scavanni had followed through on his threat. The eejit. It was a boilerplate lawyer’s letter. Words like “intimidation” and “harassment”.

I read it and handed it back.

“You know that you’re off this case, don’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you sure you realize that? Am I going to have to explain how the fucking chain of command works around here?”

“No, sir.”

“Tell me you’re not a maverick, Duffy.”

“I’m not, sir.”

“Then why were you hassling a senior Sinn Fein press officer, on a Saturday, outside an auction?”

“I ran into him by accident. It was a coincidence. It won’t happen again, sir.”

“You know what you have, Duffy?”

“What sir?”

“A lean and hungry look, that’s what.”

He glared at me, shook his head, opened a drawer, took out a packet of cigarettes.

“Only child, aren’t you, Duffy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s been my experience that only children never learn when to keep their fucking traps shut. An older brother would have beat that out of you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you getting on with the Ulster Bank Fraud?”

“Oh, we solved that easily enough. It was a guy over the water. He didn’t think we Micks would have had the wherewithal to check into the offshore deposits.”

Brennan sniffed and took a draw on his ciggie. He did not seem particularly jubilant about our success. “What are you working on now?”

“The bicycle thefts.”

“Any leads?”

“A couple, sir.”

He nodded. “Do me a favour, Duffy?”

“Yes?”

“Stay the hell away from Freddie Scavanni and anybody else who has access to a scary team of barristers, or hit men, ok?”

I nodded. He waved his hand at me. “Be fruitful and multiply.”

“Yes, sir.”

I was being dismissed but I didn’t move.

“I was telling you to fuck off in a jocular manner, Duffy,” Brennan said.

“I know that, sir. But I have a question.”

“Quickly.”

“Have DCI Todd’s team made any progress on the homosexual murders? I’m only asking because I’ve heard nothing. I was taken off the case after a week because I had made no progress and they’ve had it since Thursday and …”

“You take things personally, Duffy, that’s your trouble. I suppose it’s some kind of Catholic thing. Now, please, get out of my office before I bloody kick you out.”

“With respect, sir, they’ve made no progress because they may be looking in the wrong place. The list of names, the attacks. Why hasn’t there been an attack since last Thursday? Because he doesn’t need to do any more attacks. The scent trail has been sufficiently laid now. We’re off and running. I think there won’t be any more attacks because-”

“Did you not hear me? Get out of my fucking office!”

I skulked back to my desk. Again my cheeks were burning. I’d always been an A student. A good pupil. House Captain. Deputy Head Boy. I had never so much as been sent to the Principal. This was humiliating. Humiliating and I knew that every motherfucker in here was looking at me. Constable bloody Price was positively beaming: that’s taken the uppity fenian down a peg or two.

At lunchtime I went to see Laura at the hospital but she was busy at her surgery.

From the phone box on Barn Road I called my mum. I told her I was well.

“When are you coming to see us? It’s been a month.”

“Next weekend, I promise.”

“Are you sure you’re well? You sound like you’ve got a bit of cold.”

“Nah, nah, I’m fine. Tell Dad I was asking for him.”

I turned up the collar on my coat and walked back out into the rain. A car pulled up next to me with a screech of brakes. Black E Type Jag. Tinted windows. I looked in my raincoat pocket for my service revolver but of course I’d left it at the station.

Billy White opened the rear door and pointed a 9mm at me.

“Let’s go for a ride, Duffy,” he said.

“You’re not going to shoot me in broad daylight,” I said.

“Won’t I?” he replied, grinning.

I shook my head and took a step backwards. “You don’t kidnap peelers from the middle of the street.”

“Don’t fucking test me. Get in the fucking car,” he said.

His eyes were wide and they had a dangerous whiteness to them. I got in the back of the Jaguar. Billy leaned across me and closed the door.

I noticed that Shane was the only person in the car. In the driver’s seat. Where was Billy’s crew? What was this?

Shane’s face was badly bruised. His lip was split. That was the face. The pretty part. What did the rest look like?

I began to panic now. No witnesses. No problems. He wasn’t crazy enough to top a copper in the middle of Carrick, was he? The Jaguar centrally locked.

“Drive!” Billy said and Shane took us out onto the Marine Highway.

“What is this?” I said trying to keep my voice level.

“This is just a couple of friends having a chat,” Billy said. “A little bird tells me that you’ve been kicked off the Tommy Little investigation.”

I said nothing.

“You’ve been kicked off the investigation yet you’ve been slandering young Shane here. You’ve been telling your bosses that he’s been hanging around the toilets in Loughshore Park near Jordanstown. That he’s a fucking poofter! Isn’t that right?”

So he had seen my report. It had been leaked to him. He had connections with the RUC. But then why wouldn’t he? He’d been a copper in Rhodesia, and perhaps dozens of ex-Rhodesian police had joined the RUC.

“You’ve got no proof and if you fucking repeat that lie you’ll be hearing from our solicitors, or worse.”

He waggled the gun. Shane stopped the car at the red light at Carrickfergus Castle and my heart beat quickly until he released the central locking.

I got out of the car.

“And then, of course, there’s the good lady doctor to consider,” Billy said.

“What did you say?”

Billy closed the door, the light went green and the Jaguar drove off. My hands were shaking. I ran to the hospital and sprinted down to Laura’s office. She was eating a sandwich.

“Are you ok?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Has anyone been bothering you?”

“No. What’s going on?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Billy was bluffing. For now. “It’s probably nothing. Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Can I see you later?”

“Ok,” she said, giving me a funny look.

I went back to the station. The duty officer was Sergeant Burke. I typed up an incident report about my ride with Billy and left it in Sergeant Burke’s in-tray.

Typing.

I had a bit of a brainwave. I got out my notebook and wrote: “The killer sends us a hit list and a letter and types it flawlessly. Freddie Scavanni would have learned to type in journalism school. Where else did you learn to type? The police! And our friend Billy was in the Rhodesian police for four years …”

Food for thought …

I worked the bike theft case and at five I went to the hospital to meet Laura. “Have dinner with me,” I said. “My house, I’m making spaghetti.”

“You can make spaghetti?”

“Lived on it for three years at Uni.”

“That doesn’t sound encouraging, but all right.”

I walked her up Coronation Road where she noted the red, white and blue kerbs with disapproval. I put on Ray Charles and opened a bottle of Italian red that had been out in the garden shed for a month. I cooked the spaghetti with some Parmesan from the cheesemonger. “Delicious,” she said as if she meant it.

I had no appetite. I told her about my ride with Billy.

She was horrified. “How can they just lift you off the street like that? The nerve of them!”

I told her about my pet theory. “Billy and Shane are an item. Shane was seeing Tommy Little on the side. Instead of killing him, Billy has forgiven him. But the rot has to stop here. I had to be threatened with the law and the gun. If the big bugs ever found out that Billy is a queer, minimum he gets kneecapped and exiled and divorced, but more likely they’d just kill him.”

“Do you have any proof of this?” she asked.

“None at all,” I said with a grin.

We drank the wine. Sufficient time had obviously passed: I didn’t need to ask if she wanted to go upstairs. We made love in the double bed.

I lit the paraffin heater and, when the lights went out, the Chess Records guitar shaped oil lamp. We lay in bed. “I can’t believe a man pointed a gun right at you in broad daylight,” she said.

She clearly had no idea the shit I had to deal with on a daily basis.

“How can you live here, among them?” she asked.

“Among who?”

“The Protestants! We’re like Anne Frank and her family up here,” she said.

“It’s not as bad as all that. They’re ok to me.”

“For now. And it’s a question of class too, isn’t it? What’s going to happen when you hear one of them get drunk and start knocking his wife about? What are you going to do then?”

“I’ll stop it,” I said.

“And how do you think they’ll treat you after something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head, smiled and kissed my furrowed brow. Her lips were soft and she smelled good.

I kissed between her breasts and I kissed her belly and I kissed her labia and clitoris. She was a woman. I wanted that. I needed that.

We made love until the rain began and the light in the guitar lamp turned yellow, and the bishop on the Chess logo faded and finally guttered out.