The Cold, Cold Ground

appetite.”
    “Speaking of appetites, his last meal was fish and chips.”
    “I hope he enjoyed it.”
    “The fish was cod.”
    “You’re just showing off now, aren’t you?”
    She grinned, got up and came back with two slices of Madeira cake. Despite my protestations she gave me one of them.
    “How come you ended up in the police?” she asked.
    Her real question had been “So what’s a nice, bright, Catholic boy like you doing in the peelers?”
    I thought about what I’d said to Brennan last night. “I just wanted to be part of that thin blue line holding back the chaos.”
    “Thin green line,” she said.
    She was right about that too, bless her: in the nineteenth century British peelers had been given a blue uniform to distinguish them from the Red Coats, but the Royal Irish Constabulary hadworn dark (very dark) green uniforms from the start. The successor to the RIC after partition was the Royal Ulster Constabulary, based in Belfast, and the uniform hadn’t changed even though green was a colour associated with Irish nationalism.
    “Thin green line doesn’t really work as a metaphor though, does it?” I said.
    “No,” she agreed. She ate her slice of cake and looked at her watch. “Do you have any more questions or are we about done here?”
    I shook my head. “I can’t think of anything. You’d better give me your number though, in case something comes up.”
    “You can reach me here,” she said.
    She hadn’t liked that. It was too sly. Maybe the direct approach: “What are you doing later? Do you want to go out for a drink or anything?” I asked.
    “You’re fast,” she said.
    “Is that a no?”
    She didn’t say anything, just tapped her fingers on the Formica table.
    “Look, I’ll be at the Dobbins from nine o’clock onwards, if you fancy a quick drink, drop in,” I said casually.
    She stood up. Got her bag. Gave me the once over. “Maybe,” she said.
    In an odd, formal gesture, she offered me her hand. I shook it.
    “It was nice meeting you,” she said.
    “Nice meeting you too,” I said and gave her a conspiratorial wink. Here we were: two wee fenian agents in Proddy Carrickfergus.
    I watched her walk into the car park and saw her get into a green Volvo 240.
    I finished my tea and was thinking about the remaining cake when Sergeant McCallister showed up with the photocopy of the musical score from poor John Doe’s arse.
    “What are you doing here, Alan? I asked Crabbie to send this over via some useless ganch.”
    Alan took off his hat and fixed his thin thatch of greyish brown hair.
    “No, Sean, no reserve constables this time. You’re going to have to be more careful about the protocols, mate. Looks like you’ve got yourself a freaky one.”
    “Aye, you’re right,” I thought, slightly chastened. The reserve constables were all chatty bastards.
    “There’s been two phone calls already this morning asking for the head of Carrick CID.”
    “Shit.”
    “Carol said that Sergeant Duffy was not available and could she take a message.”
    “And?”
    “They hung up.”
    “The press?”
    “My advice: don’t give them anything.”
    “Did you hear about the rape?”
    “I got Crabbie to tell me everything. Different hands? Pieces of music? Queer sex? This thing’s far too complicated already,” McCallister muttered darkly.
    McCallister was close to fifty, a twenty-five-year man with a lot of experience both before and after the Troubles.
    “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I asked.
    “No, I haven’t and I don’t like it.”
    “Me neither.”
    “Are you eating that cake?”
    Alan walked me back to my car and I drove to the centre of Carrickfergus.
    A bunch of kids were walking around aimlessly. There was nothing for them to do with school cancelled except that there was always potential for a rumble since the Proddy kids were easily identifiable by their red, white and blue school uniforms and the Catholics by their uniforms of green, white and gold.
    There were few actual shoppers. Since ICI had shut downthe centre of Carrick had withered. The bookshop had closed, the shoe shop had closed, the baby clothes shop had closed …
    I easily found a parking place on West Street and dandered past a boarded-up grocers before I came to Sammy McGuinn, my chain-smoking, short-arsed, Marxist barber.
    He’d given me two good haircuts since I’d come here which was a high batting average for Ulster and probably why he was still in business.
    I