The Cold, Cold Ground

wearing a top hat and tails.
    “Hurry up, Duffy, I don’t have long,” he said.
    “Aye, you don’t want to be late for the play Mr Lincoln,”Sergeant McCallister said and everyone roared.
    “Maybe he does a magic act on the side,” Sergeant Burke said.
    “I’m off to my niece’s wedding. Get on with it, Duffy!” Brennan snapped.
    I read them the presentation. There were seven main points:
1. The as yet unidentified victim in Barn Field had been shot execution-style by a 9mm.
2. He had had a recent homosexual encounter and a piece of music had been inserted in his anus.
3. His right hand had been replaced with the hand of Andrew Young, a known homosexual who had also been murdered in his house in Boneybefore also by a 9mm.
4. The musical score was La Bohème and contained the lines “your tiny hand is frozen” sung by Rudolfo to Mimi.
5. Andrew Young was a music teacher at Carrick Grammar School and ran the Carrick festival. No, he had never done La Bohème at either the school or the festival.
6. The killer had apparently called up Carrick Police Station, found out who the lead detective was and sent me a bizarre postcard (photocopies of which I passed around) that might contain clues or might be a complete distraction.
7. The 9mm slugs from both victims matched.
    Brennan and the two sergeants listened to the whole thing without interruption.
    “What is your current working hypothesis, Sergeant Duffy?” Brennan asked when I was done.
    “Obviously the two murders are linked. Dr Cathcart feels there was a two- or perhaps three-hour delay between the two deaths. She’ll know more precisely when she’s performed an autopsy on Mr Young. Therefore I feel that we have a potential serial murderer on our hands. At this stage I do not see anyevidence of a paramilitary link, which would make this the first non-sectarian serial killer in Northern Ireland’s history,” I said.
    “Why would he come out of the woodwork now?” McCallister asked.
    “I don’t know. Jealousy, perhaps? He’s been watching all the publicity the Yorkshire Ripper trial has been generating and it’s been getting his goat?” I ventured.
    “Maybe the chaos of the hunger strikes has given him the cover and opportunity he needs,” McCrabban said.
    “Sounds like this old fruit, Young, got someone riled up and that someone went mental and decided to kill some more fruits,” Burke said.
    “Matty’s checking to see if there are any allegations against him,” I said.
    “And I don’t like this music angle. It’s bloody weird,” Burke said.
    “I don’t like it either. There something about it that stinks to high heaven. I’ve read the libretto to La Bohème but nothing jumped out at me,” I said.
    “Jesus, what will we do if this Young fella has something up his arse too?” Brennan muttered.
    “Keep our cheeks squeezed together?” McCallister offered and everybody laughed again.
    “We’re waiting on the autopsy report on that, sir,” I added when the tittering had died down.
    Silence descended, punctuated by a distant rumbling in Belfast that could be anything from a ship unloading in the docks to a coordinated series of bombings.
    “What’s your next step, Sergeant Duffy?” Brennan asked.
    I told him about the various angles we were chasing down and the fact that we were supposed to finally get the prints on John Doe today.
    “And if our letter writer gets in touch again?” Sergeant Burke asked.
    I told them about my call to Special Branch.
    I could tell Brennan wasn’t too happy about that but he didn’t say anything. And besides he was getting worried about the time and he had one other fish to fry.
    “Have you thought about the press?” he asked.
    “Uh, obviously, we’ll need to brief the press at some point,” I said. “But we can probably put it off for a bit. It’s not exactly a slow news week.”
    Brennan sighed. “This is going to blow up in our faces, Sergeant Duffy. If we don’t go to the papers you can be sure that our anonymous note writer, or one of Mr Young’s neighbours, or someone will. Do you have a media strategy?”
    “Uh, no, not as such, not a, uh—” I stammered. I looked at Matty and McCrabban who had both discovered something fascinating about the wall-to-wall carpet.
    Brennan looked at McCallister. “What about you, Alan? It’s a bloody thankless task but we need someone and DS Duffy has quite a full plate by the looks of it. You could do a good defensive briefing to a