The Cold, Cold Ground

Duffy!” she called out.
    I turned. She was wearing old jeans and a red blouse, ratty sneakers. She hadn’t dressed up and her hair was wet. Spur of the moment decision?
    We went back in. I got her a gin and tonic. Another pint for me.
    “Look, it’s a wee bit late in the game to ask this but …” I began.
    “Yes?”
    “What’s your name?”
    She laughed. “I must have told you.”
    “Nope.”
    “Laura.”
    “Mine’s Sean.”
    “I know. Although I bet they all call you the fenian or the left footer or something, don’t they?”
    “Who? The other cops?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s not like that. At least not to my face. The constables call me ‘Duffy’ or ‘Sergeant Duffy’. I’m Sean to everybody else except Carol who calls me Mr Sean cos she’s from Fermanagh. I’m only mildly exotic. Catholic hiring has gone up since Mrs Thatcher seized the reins. Even the dyed-in-the-wool bigots are going to have to get used to us soon enough.”
    She seemed unconvinced.
    “I’m CID,” I further explained. “Believe me, that’s more of an issue. Some divisions are more important than others and detective versus beat cop is the historic peeler schism.”
    “If you say so.”
    “Did you have any trouble being an RC in medical school?”
    “You knew I was a Catholic? My name’s Laura, I’m a doctor, how could you—”
    I pointed to her crucifix. “Proddies don’t wear those unless they’ve got a morbid fear of vampires.”
    “You don’t see many Catholic policemen. Your father was a peeler?”
    “God, no. A clerk, then a country solicitor. Yours?”
    “Country doctor.”
    She had taken precisely one sip of her gin and tonic when her pager went.
    She found a telephone.
    She came back ashen.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “The Peacock Room Restaurant, South Belfast,” she said, her voice trembling.
    “A bomb?”
    “Incendiary.”
    “How many?”
    “Six burned alive. A dozen more in the Royal Victoria Hospital. The coroner asked me if I would help ID the victimsin the morning.”
    “What did you say?”
    “What can you say?”
    She downed her gin and tonic. I took her hand to stop it shaking. It was cold.
    “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
    Back on West Street it was drizzling and we could hear the sound of rioting in Belfast again, distant and ominous.
    “Walk me home,” she said.
    I walked her to one of the new flats on Governor’s Place opposite the castle. We put on the TV news. All three channels were carrying it. It was a blast bomb that had been placed next to an oil drum filled with petrol and sugar – IRA napalm. The victims hadn’t had a chance.
    After five minutes she turned off the tube.
    “I’ve been to that restaurant,” she said.
    She began to cry.
    I held her.
    “Will you stay?” she asked.
    I stayed.
    Later. Her bedroom overlooking the harbour. Laura, asleep in the moonlight. The harbour lights dead on the black water. A Soviet coal boat tied up along the wharf. Six people. Six people trying to seize a piece of normality in an abnormal world. Burned alive by incendiaries.
    Tiocfadh ar la . Up the revolution. Our day will come.
    I wondered why that particular target. Maybe they hadn’t been paying their protection money? Maybe they had but it had been full of Belfast’s high society and it was just too tempting to pass up. And then there was the whole business of the oil drum, manoeuvring that into place implied careful planning and possibly someone on the inside …
    I sighed – all these were questions for a different team of detectives. I had my own problems. The sheet had fallen off
    Laura’s back. I looked at her long legs tucked up beneath her breasts. I fixed the sheet, slipped out of the bed, pulled on my jeans and sweater. I dressed, grabbed her keys from the dresser and went outside to have a cigarette.
    Water. Reflections. Pencil lines of light.
    The silence of 3 a.m. Sporadic gunfire. Choppers.
    I could see it even if no one else wanted to. This was the Götterdämmerung. This was a time of opportunity for people who wished to walk on the grass, to embrace the irrational, to hug the dark.
    I walked down to the harbour’s edge.
    Somewhere deep down I heard music. Not Puccini. Schubert’s piano trio in e-flat. His opus 100. The fourth movement where the piano takes the melody …
    I looked at Laura’s apartment from the outside. I looked at the sleeping town.
    The phosphorescence of bulb and beam.
    You’re out here too, aren’t you, friend