The Cold, Cold Ground

Gordon Billingham, a sports reporter on UTV. Scott McAvenny ran Scott’s Place, the only decent restaurant in Belfast. Of course they were all gay men, not out as such, but well known.
    “What’s the verdict, gentlemen?” I asked.
    “He’s a nutter!” Matty said.
    “A nutter who can type without making a single mistake,” I said.
    Brennan looked at me. “That’s good, Sean, what else jumps out at you?”
    “It’s not a very comprehensive list, is it? Four pretty obvious homosexuals.”
    “Aye, plus the two he’s already topped,” McCallister added.
    “I suppose we better have that press conference on Monday morning,” Brennan said.
    “And we better give those boys protection,” I suggested.
    “I’ll call Special Branch,” Brennan said wearily.
    I reread the note and sat down. I had a splitting headache. I had been hit by a dozen stones and half bricks, one right off the top of my riot helmet.
    I looked out the window at the lights of ships moving down the black lough into Belfast’s deep water channel.
    Brennan was talking to me but I didn’t hear him.
    I watched as the pilot boat put out from under the castle to bring a cargo vessel into Carrick’s much smaller and trickier harbour.
    “ … go on home,” Brennan finished.
    “What?”
    “I said you look like Elvis at his 1977 CBS special, why don’t you go on home?”
    “I’ve things to do.”
    “Just go. Have a drink, have a bath. Might be the last one you take for a while, I heard the power-station workers are going on strike.
    “I can’t. I’m still waiting for the prints on John Doe.”
    “I’ll wait. You go on. That’s an order, Sean.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    I decided to walk home. A mistake. A downpour caught me on Victoria Road. Heavy, cold rain from a long looping depression over Iceland.
    Coronation Road.
    The quintessential Irish smell of peat smoke rising up to meet the rain.
    Light and fear and existential depression leaking through the net curtains.
    #113.
    I turned the key and went inside. I had forgotten about the phone tap and was surprised to see a black box next to my telephone. Kernoghan’s boys hadn’t left any trace apart from that. I stripped off my clothes, went into the kitchen and opened the empty fridge. Half a can of Heinz beans. Some yellow cheese. I ate beans and toast and lit the upstairs paraffin heater and went to bed.
    I found myself dreaming of the girl hanging in the forest.
    It was dusk and the stars were coming out over western Scotland and eastern Ireland and the sunken realm between the two. I’ve never liked the woods. My grandmother told me that the forest was an opening to someplace else. Where things lurked, things we could only half see. Older beings. Shees . Shades of creatures that once walked the natural world, redundant now, awaiting tasks, awaiting their work in dreams.
    “ Le do thoil ,” I said to them in Irish, but they wouldn’t listen, calling my name from behind oaks and fairy trees, mocking me, teasing me until 3 a.m. when I awoke to the sound of sirens.

7: SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING
    I found that I wasn’t in bed. I was sleeping on the landing in front of the paraffin heater. This was becoming my foetal space. I was wearing a Thin Lizzy T-shirt and grey sweat pants. I had no memory of putting them on.
    I went downstairs and opened the front door.
    The whole street was out.
    I walked to the end of the garden path. Number 79 was on fire. The Clawsons’ house. I joined the gawkers because who can resist a fire? A wee milly in a dirty frock filled me in on the details. “Chip pan fire. Whole kitchen went up.”
    With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they’d be cooking chips at this hour was anyone’s guess.
    The crowd grew and I saw people that I vaguely recognized from as far away as the Barn Road. The kitchen burned and despite the best efforts of the brigade it spread to the rest of the house.
    Mrs Clawson screamed about her fish tank and when a second fire tender equipped with foam arrived one of the firemen went in and rescued the fish.
    When the blaze was finally contained the crowd eruptedinto spontaneous applause and tea and biscuits were pressed into the hands of the crew – which had to be nicer than