The Cold, Cold Ground

since her disappearance, nobody had any insights into boyfriends or a pregnancy. The friends were Catholics, we were the police … it was a brick wall.
    “Where to now?” Matty asked.
    I looked at my watch. “I suppose we’ll go see our new friend Freddie Scavanni.”
    We drove into Belfast along the M5. Burnt-out buses. A wrecked Saracen. A post-office van on fire. Soldiers walking in single file.
    We parked the Land Rover at Queen’s Street RUC station.
    Because of endemic fire bombs, blast bombs and bomb scares the roads into the city centre had been blocked. No cars wereallowed into the heart of Belfast and all shoppers and civilians were searched at one of a dozen hastily built “search huts”.
    A long line of uniformed civilian searchers patted you down, looked into your bag and waved you on past the canine officers. Once through the search huts you were free to walk the area around the City Hall.
    This inner area was still heavily patrolled by the police and the army and with all these precautions it meant that the square mile of Belfast City Centre was one of the safest shopping precincts in the world. Bombers couldn’t get in and muggers, rapists and shoplifters couldn’t get out. Still, the search huts were a major fucking hassle and sometimes it took fifteen minutes to get through.
    Of course plain-clothes detectives could just show their warrant cards and skip to the head of the line.
    We heard “fucking pigs” and “SS RUC” behind us as we pushed through.
    The civilian searchers were usually women and usually attractive young women at that, so it was a mixed blessing avoiding their attentions. The reason they were universally called civilian searchers was so that they could be distinguished from the agents of British Imperialism: the police, the army and prison officers. It was hoped that the IRA would never issue a communiqué designating them as “legitimate targets” and so far they had not. Unlike Matty and me, of course, who could be killed with impunity.
    We walked to Bradbury Place and found Bradbury House in a cobbled street near Pottinger’s Entry. It was an older building that had recently been renovated and divided into various subunits: an optician, a travel agency, a hairdresser.
    Suite #11 was on the second floor.
    It was packed with chippies and painters and men in white boiler suits laying down phone lines.
    Scavanni was standing there with one of the sparks examininga complicated fuse box that must have been put in shortly after World War Two.
    He saw us and came over with a hand out although he looked annoyed as if he hadn’t really expected us to actually show up. I shook the hand.
    “Mr Scavanni, if we could just steal you away for a few moments,” I said.
    He sighed. “All right, Sergeant Dougherty, this way.”
    “Fucker forgot your name,” Matty muttered as we followed him along a pastel-shaded corridor.
    I shook my head. “No. He didn’t,” I replied.
    Scavanni’s office was new and had nothing in it apart from a phone, a desk and a few plastic chairs.
    He sat behind the desk, took his watch off and set it on the table.
    “You have fifteen minutes,” he said.
    Behind him there was a view of the Cornmarket where they had executed Henry Joy McCracken and the other leaders of the northern branch of the United Irishmen during the 1798 rebellion. That rising had been the last time when Protestants and Catholics had been on the same side; since then it had been divide and conquer in spades.
    “The clock’s ticking,” Scavanni said.
    “What is all this?” I asked pointing at the offices.
    “It is an adjunct press office for Sinn Fein. We’re getting a thousand calls a day for interviews and quotes. We just couldn’t cope on the Falls Road.”
    “And what do you do for Sinn Fein, Mr Scavanni?”
    “I’m just a lowly paid staffer.”
    “And what do you do for the IRA?
    He rolled his eyes at me. “Sergeant, I have absolutely nothing to do with the IRA.”
    “Why was Tommy Little coming to see you the night he disappeared?”
    “Admin stuff. Nothing that interesting.”
    “It might have been a wee bit interesting. It was a sudden change of plans, wasn’t it? We’ve been told that Tommy was on his way to see a certain Billy White and then he got a phone call and then he said had to come see you too.”
    Freddie didn’t flinch. “Talking to Walter, were you? Yes. I called him. I just wanted to have a chat about getting more cars. Tommy was one