The Cold, Cold Ground

not supposed to give out Scavanni’s home address to anyone beneath the rank of Superintendent.”
    “That’s all right, Jack, I’ll get it from a mate of mine in army intelligence. Those boys are always a wee bit better at giving you stuff.”
    Of course I had no mate in army intelligence and even if I had they’d give me shit. Jack didn’t know that though. “Hold your horses, Sean. You’ll owe me a favour, all right?”
    “I’ll owe you a favour.”
    “All right then. 19 Siskin Road, Straid and you didn’t hear it from me.”
    I hung up, opened the drawer under the phone, grabbed the ordnance survey map of East Antrim and looked for the village of Straid. I found it and then I looked for Siskin Road. It ran parallel to Woodburn Forest
    I got my raincoat and checked that the .38 was in the pocket.
    I pulled on my Converse Hi-Tops and looked for my car keys.
    “Oh, no, you’re not driving anywhere with that wrist,” Laura said, snatching the keys out of my hand.
    “Gimme the keys!”
    “No way. You’re not driving. Doctor’s orders,” she said. Her eyes were firm.
    “I need the car,” I said in a quieter tone.
    “Get one of your constables to drive you.”
    “Impossible. I can’t involve them in this. I’m not supposed to be looking at these cases any more. They’d be up the shite sheugh with me.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Siskin Road, Straid, near Woodburn Forest.”
    “What’s there?”
    “Answers, goddamit!”
    “Calm down, Sean.”
    Calm? We should be out in the street screaming: Death is coming. For ever and ever. And there’s nothing we can do.
    Nothing we can do, but bring down his disciples.
    “Sean, what—”
    “He killed Lucy Moore, I don’t know why, but he did and I’m going to take him in for it.”
    “Who?”
    “Freddie Scavanni.”
    “What?”
    I grabbed my car keys from her.
    “Where are you going?”
    “His house near Woodburn Forest.”
    She had performed the autopsy. She had never been completely happy with her report.
    “I’ll drive you,” she said.
    “No way!”
    “I’ll drive you or you don’t go. Let me tie up your laces while you think about it.”
    She tied my laces while I thought about it.
    “You’ll do as I say, if it looks dodgy, you’ll wait in the friggin car.”
    “You’re so butch! I like it,” she said, mocking me.
    We got in the Beemer and we drove down Coronation Road as far as Taylor’s Avenue when I screamed, “Hit the brakes!”
    The BMW screeched to a halt.
    I got out and looked underneath for a mercury tilt bomb but didn’t find one.
    “Ok, let’s head on.”
    We drove up the Prospect Road to the New Line and alongCouncillors’ Road to the Siskin Road. For the last half mile of our journey the forest ran alongside the road. That familiar dense, exterior pine forest and the older deciduous wood behind.
    “Where’s Straid from here?” I asked.
    “Oh, it’s another few miles on up the road.”
    “I’d heard of the village of Straid but I had no idea at all that it was so close to Carrickfergus, so close to Woodburn Forest.”
    We passed a sign on a gate that said #19 Siskin Road.
    “Here!” I said.
    She pulled the BMW over and I got out and examined the gate. It had an electronic-locking mechanism that opened by remote control. Freddie could open it without leaving his car, which was the sort of thing you wanted if you were a high-ranking IRA man. A subject getting out of his car, fumbling with his keys in the early morning or the late evening was the ambushers’ dream.
    The gate was made of thick, shipyard steel and ran on a roller across the entranceway. A stout high stone wall went all the way around the property and the wall was topped by rotating iron spikes.
    Nasty.
    “You’re breaking into this guy’s house? Don’t you need a warrant or something?” Laura said.
    “Nah, we’ll be fine.”
    “We’ll be fine he says. And how are you going to get in there?”
    “Easy enough for a resourceful chap like me,” I said.
    I took out my lock-picking kit and unscrewed the cover from the remote control box. I fused the exposed wires in the control box and the gate slid open.
    “Quick, back in the car before the thing closes again,” I said.
    Laura had a disapproving frown. “I’m not sure about this. If he comes back and finds us …”
    “When he comes back we’ll be waiting here with half the RUC to arrest him.”
    We drove along a short tree-lined gravel drive until we came to