The Cold, Cold Ground

get rid of you.”
    “We’ll leave, I promise.”
    He sighed and took a deep breath. “Ok. Ok, so it’s half seven at night and the snooker’s on BBC2 and it’s Alex Higgins and Tommy loves seeing Alex play, but he puts on his jacket and so I ask him where he’s going and he says something about having to see Billy White about the rackets. I don’t think anything of it as he goes to see Billy once a fortnight, more or less. And I’mnot really listening to him. And he’s literally going out the door and the phone rings and he picks it up and he’s talking for about a minute and I’m not paying a lot of attention cos I’m watching the snooker too and then he hangs up and I say who was that? And he doesn’t answer. And so I turn to look at him and I ask him what’s up. And he mutters something about business to take care of and after that he’s going to have to go down to Freddie Scavanni’s house. And then he goes out. And that … that’s the last I ever saw of him.”
    “What was at Scavanni’s house?” I asked scribbling in my notebook.
    He opened his mouth, closed it, looked away.
    “There’s more, come on, Walter, out with it.”
    “No. There’s not much more. That same night, one of the higher-ups phoned looking for Tommy – about an hour after he left home – and I told him what Tommy had said.”
    “What do you mean ‘higher-up’?”
    “One of the big bosses. But you won’t be getting his name from me, ever.”
    “Do you mean one of the big bosses in the IRA?”
    “Yes.”
    “How big?”
    “The top. The very top. That’s all I’m going to say.”
    I looked at Crabbie. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing either.
    “Ok, Walter, so you told this big boss what exactly?”
    “That Tommy had gone out already. That he was going to see Billy White and Freddie Scavanni.”
    I wrote it down. “And then what happened?”
    “Well, Tommy didn’t come back and the bosses called again at midnight looking for him and I said I hadn’t seen him yet. A lot of times Tommy will do an all-nighter for the boys so I wasn’t that worried. But then the bosses starting calling again in the morning and all that afternoon. And I began to get really concerned,and then that evening a couple of thugs wearing balaclavas knocked at my door and they took me away for the third degree …”
    He hesitated and then stopped speaking as if he had just caught himself doing something terribly wrong. “Informer” has always been a poisonous word in Ireland and these days “informer” was anyone who so much as opened their mouth in the presence of a policeman.
    “Ok, Sergeant Duffy, that’s it. You know what I know. Please leave and please don’t ever come back,” Walter said wearily.
    He pushed me out onto the porch.
    “Wait, a minute, Walter, I—”
    Before I could get another word out he shut the door.
    I stood there for a moment and then turned to Crabbie. “Either of those names ring a bell?”
    “Don’t know who Freddie Scavanni is but Billy White is a Prod paramilitary in Newtownabbey. UVF divisional commander for East Antrim.”
    “Why would an IRA man be going to see a UVF divisional commander?”
    “Lots of reasons.”
    “Drugs?”
    “Aye, dividing up territory for drugs, arranging truces, sorting out territory for protection rackets, that kind of thing. But the thing is, Sean, the question we have to ask ourselves, is why Billy White is seeing some low-ranking IRA guy?”
    “And we know the answer, don’t we? Because Tommy Little isn’t some low-ranking IRA guy at all, is he?”
    “Nope. I reckon he isn’t,” Crabbie agreed.
    We drove back to Carrick station and while Crabbie filled in Matty I looked up the file on Billy White:
    Born 1947, Belfast. Smart kid. Methodist College. 10 O-Levels. 2 A-levels. 1966-71 moves to Rhodesia where he joins the police. 1971 expelled from Rhodesia for unspecified reasons. 1972 arrestedfor receiving stolen goods in London. ’72–’74 Her Majesty’s Pleasure in various English Stretches. ‘74 returns to Belfast. Joins UVF, arrested for attempted murder. Witness disappears. Never arrested again. Suspected hitman, suspected bagman, suspected narco distributer. Current UVF rank: senior commander and quartermaster.
    The file didn’t say what Billy did now for the UVF but if he was a liaison officer with other paramilitary groups it would make him almost untouchable.
    I looked up the file on Freddie Scavanni:
    Born 1948, Ravenna, Italy.