The Cold, Cold Ground

gaffer here,” I said and tried to push past him. He put his hand on my shoulder. I grabbed his hand and twisted it back against his wrist.
    “Touch me again and I’ll shoot that thing off your fucking head,” I snarled at him.
    “You’re not in charge any more, Duffy,” the man said in a nasally, civil servanty tone. “You’ve been superseded.”
    The beat coppers and the squaddies turned to look at me.
    “Who the fuck are you?” I asked.
    “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Todd of Special Branch,” he said in a loud voice meant to carry to the end of the street and back.
    “On who’s authority have you—”
    “The Chief Constable’s authority, Sergeant Duffy, the Chief Constable of the RUC. I’ll send an officer over in the morning for your evidence and your report. I expect the full cooperation of you and your team.”
    I stared at him open mouthed.
    “Do you understand, Duffy?”
    “Yes,” I muttered and – after an insolent pause – added “sir.”
    There was nothing more for me to do here.
    I got in the BMW and drove back to Carrick at 100 mph on the line.
    I kept going until I hit Greenisland and then Monkstown.
    I went to see Victor Combs.
    Up four flights. Screaming wives, screaming children, yelling men.
    I knocked on Combs’s door.
    “Who is it?” he asked.
    “Peelers,” I said.
    He opened the door. He was still in his dressing gown. I walked into the kitchen, opened his fridge, got myself a can of Harp and sat on his sofa.
    “Account for your movements from seven o’clock onwards,” I said.
    He told me the story of the TV shows he’d watched and of a brief phone call to his sick mother.
    “What’s this about?” he asked.
    I finished the beer, crumpled the can, chucked it at the TV set and drove back to Carrick.
    I sped up the Tongue Loanen to Walter Hays’s. He was half drunk and watching the riots on TV. But again he had no alibi.
    I searched the house for musical scores or manual typewriters. Nada on both.
    He offered me a martini. I took it. He offered me another. I went out to the Beemer and drove home.
    11 p.m. Carrickfergus
    I knocked on Laura’s door but she didn’t answer. I drove back to Coronation Road. Kids had spent the day painting the kerb stones red, white and blue.
    “You look as if you’ve had a day of it,” Mrs Campbell said, putting out the milk bottles.
    “Who are you talking to?” a man asked from inside the house.
    “Our neighbour,” she told him and then in a whisper to me, “he’s back.”
    “Haven’t met him. Invite him in,” the voice said.
    “Would you like to come in?” Mrs Campbell asked.
    “No thank you, I better go,” I replied.
    “What’s he say?” Mr Campbell asked.
    “He wants to go home. He hasn’t had his tea,” Mrs Campbell said and smiled.
    “Nonsense! He’ll have tea with us. Sure I’m just sitting down now,” Mr Campbell bellowed.
    Mrs C shook her head at me. “He won’t take no for an answer,” she whispered.
    A very late tea with the Campbells: sausages, fried eggs, chips, beans, fried soda bread.
    Mr Campbell looked like somebody’s dangerous uncle who only came down from the hills to whore and drink and take revenge for petty slights. He had a hedge of black hair, a black beard and a crushing handshake. Easily six six, 250.
    I ate the food and the kids looked at their father for the first time in a couple of months with a mixture of awe, excitement and terror. For this household, tea, especially tea at eleven o’clock, was a time for eating not talking. When we were nearly done Mr Campbell asked me my team. I told him Liverpool. He seemed satisfied with that. One of the kids asked me my favourite colour. I told him it was a tie between red and blue. That also elicited murmurs of approval.
    I finished up, thanked the Campbells, went next door, turned on the midnight news. The riot was still going on. The cops had lost control of the situation and the army had been called in. Eighteen police officers had been injured by petrol bombs. Fifty cars had been hijacked and set alight. Eighty-eight plastic bullets had been fired. A helicopter had been forced down by gunshots. A paint factory had been set on fire.
    In other news: Mrs Thatcher had paid a brief visit to the City Hospital in Belfast this morning; Courtaulds were closing down their remaining factories in Northern Ireland putting five hundred people out of work; Harland and Wolff were laying off twelve hundred welders for an indefinite