The Cold, Cold Ground

but didn’t buy a paper: the local news was terrible, the British news irritating.
    “How’s the Pope doing?” I asked Sandy.
    Sandy was yet another fenian fifth columnist in Proddy Carrickfergus. Decent bloke. A bald wee fella from CountyDonegal. Rap sheet for smuggling cigarettes across the border but who hasn’t got one of those?
    “Bless him, he’s on the mend, he’ll live to see a hundred,” Sandy said.
    “I’ll put a tenner on that. Cheers, Sandy,” I said and headed for the door.
    “Are you not buying a paper?”
    “Improve the news, mate, and then I’ll get one.”
    I walked past the Oak and stopped to look at a big convoy of army trucks and APCs going south along the Marine Highway. They were fresh painted and obviously coming straight from the ferry in Larne.
    The soldiers were nervous and seemed about seventeen.
    I gave them the black power salute just to get in their heads. Several of them looked suitably terrified and I had a bit of a laugh to myself.
    The RUC barracks.
    First one in again. Keep this up and I’d get a reputation.
    I went to the coffee machine and got a coffee choc and then I checked the faxes but there was no news from Belfast. I followed up with a phone call.
    Yes, they had both sets of fingerprints.
    No, they had no results as yet. Yes, they knew it was a murder investigation. Did I appreciate that they were very very busy?
    At nine o’clock Brennan came in with sergeants Burke and McCallister and asked if me and my CID lads wanted to earn some riot pay. It was Frankie Hughes’s funeral this morning, all RUC leave had been cancelled and trouble was expected.
    “No thanks, chief, some of us have an actual job to do around here,” I said.
    Brennan didn’t like that but he didn’t bust my chops.
    “You’ll mind the store?” he asked.
    “Aye,” I said.
    The station emptied. Just Carol, a couple of part-time reservists,Matty, Crabbie and me.
    I told the boys about the Puccini and both of them saw the same angle that I did.
    “He’s taking the piss,” Matty said.
    “He’s drawing attention to himself. That’s his method. Like Bathsheba combing her hair. There’s a reason for it,” Crabbie said.
    I liked Crabbie. The sixth of nine boys. The rest of his brothers were farmers and farm labourers except for one who was a Free Presbyterian missionary in Malawi. He was the family brainbox. He had bucked the trend by not leaving school at sixteen and immediately getting married. Instead he had done his A levels, got an HND certificate at Newtownabbey Tech and joined the peelers.
    He was married now, though, to a twenty-two-year-old from the same Free Presbyterian sect and she was already pregnant with twins. Doubtless they were planning to sire an entire clan.
    “He? You’re thinking solo? One guy?” I asked him.
    He nodded. “If they’re topping an informer it’s going to be a team of hit men from the UVF or UDA, but if it’s some pervert I reckon he’s a loner.”
    He was dead right about that.
    Double acts were rare in this kind of case.
    The three of us talked evidence, ran theories and got nowhere.
    We waited for the fingerprint data or ballistics or any good ideas.
    Nothing.
    “Do either of you know anything about women?” I asked them as I made a fresh pot of tea.
    “I’m the expert,” Matty claimed.
    Without mentioning Laura’s name I told him how I’d been turfed out this morning.
    “You underperformed, mate. Simple as that. They say it’s all about having a good sense of humour and a nice smile and allthat bollocks but when push comes to shove it’s all about what you do upstairs. Some of us have it, Sean, some of us don’t. You clearly don’t,” Matty said.
    Crabbie rolled his eyes. “Don’t listen to him, Sean, he hasn’t had a girlfriend since he took Veronica Bingly to The Muppet Movie .”
    The rioting at Frankie Hughes’s funeral began exactly at twelve and we could see black smoke from hijacked buses five miles across the lough in the centre of Belfast.
    “My treat for lunch,” I said and took the lads to the Golden Fortune on High Street. We ate your typical low spice Irish-Chinese chips, noodles and spare ribs. We were the only customers.
    I got us a trio of brandies and we milked the lunch hour well past two o’clock.
    On the way back to the barracks I sent the boys on and I stopped off at Carrick Library.
    There was a preacher outside who tried to give me something as I went in. It was a pamphlet about the imminent