The Cold, Cold Ground

get that?”
    Matty was in the bog again, Crabbie was still out at lunch.
    I picked up the phone. “Hello, I’d like to speak to Sergeant Duffy, please,” a Dublin-accented voice said.
    “This is Sergeant Duffy.”
    “Sergeant Duffy, this is Tony O’Rourke from the Sunday World . We’ve just received a letter on a sheet of A4 here in our Dundalk offices. It’s a hit list. It says above it, ‘Queers who will die soon’. There’s half a dozen names. The first two, TommyLittle and Andrew Young, have been crossed out. The others are all prominent people in Northern Ireland. We’ve photocopied the note and sent the original to the Dundalk peelers.”
    “Ok,” I said.
    “Listen, we’re going to run the list and the story about the killer in this Sunday’s paper and we were wondering if you had any comment.”
    “Wait a minute! You can’t run that. You’ll be putting those people’s lives in danger.”
    “You’ve seen it then?”
    “Yes. He sent it to us too,” I admitted.
    “We’re publishing the list, Sergeant, it’s newsworthy. We just wanted to know if you had any comment.”
    “You will be putting those people’s lives in jeopardy! Let me speak to your editor.”
    “I am the editor, Sergeant. Look, we already know from our sources that the people on the list are getting Special Branch protection. We’re endangering no one.”
    “You can’t publish it! It’s dangerous and it’s libellous.”
    “It’s not libellous to publish a list of alleged homosexuals.”
    “You can’t do this, Mr O’Rourke, it’s completely irresponsible. I don’t want to have to threaten you—”
    “I’d love to hear you threaten me, Sergeant.”
    “Come on, Tony, please. Surely you can see that this is completely the wrong thing to do.”
    “Ask me that on Monday when our circulation has doubled.”
    “Don’t you see that he’s using you?”
    “So you’ve no official comment then?”
    “No. Of course not.”
    “All right then,” he said and hung up.
    I ran into Brennan’s office and told him. He hit the roof.
    “How could you let this happen?” he yelled.
    “The killer must have sent them his list. We’ve got to stop them publishing it. We’ve got to take out an injunction.”
    “They’re based in the Republic, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “How in the hell could we can get an Irish court to issue an injunction restricting prior publication?”
    “I don’t know but we have to. You have to make some phone calls, sir!”
    Brennan nodded and dismissed me with a wave of his hand.
    He summoned me back into his office an hour later.
    “There’s nothing we can do, Duffy. They’re publishing,” he said.
    “How can they—”
    He held up a hand. “Don’t speak. Don’t say a fucking word. There’s nothing we can do. Sit down, Duffy.”
    I sat. “Sir?”
    “What progress are you making finding this guy?”
    I cleared my throat. “Well, like I say in my report, I’ve interviewed Freddie Scavanni and Billy White and I’ve talked to Walter Hays and uhm …”
    “Were you in Ballycarry this morning?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “What were you doing there?”
    “I was at Lucy Moore’s funeral.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. I thought maybe I would talk to her parents or her sister or—”
    “Why are you going to the funeral of a suicide in the middle of a double homicide investigation?”
    “Sir, I—”
    “You complain about a lack of resources and having to do riot duty and how precious your time is and you’re off at a wake for some dead wee lassie who got herself knocked up and whose husband is an IRA hunger striker?”
    I had no answer to that.
    “You’re in over your head, aren’t you, Duffy?”
    “No sir, I don’t think so, sir.”
    “You know the Chief Constable’s office is involved now, don’t you? The Chief Constable’s breathing down my neck!”
    “I’m sorry, sir, I’ve been doing my best.”
    “Your best clearly isn’t bloody good enough, is it? The Chief Constable!”
    His eyes were blazing and his face heart-attack pink.
    “Sir, I—”
    “Get out of my office!”
    I slunk out with my arse kicked, almost literally.
    At four the entire station was called out to go up to Belfast on riot duty. It was going to be a big one. “But you and your team can stay here, Sergeant Duffy, you’re busy! You’ve got work to do!” Brennan said with childish sarcasm.
    The station emptied out.
    At five we began hearing the rumble of controlled explosions and the kick