The Cold, Cold Ground

Indigo. I lit a cig. I swam in blue. I tripped on blue.
    I sat there for a while and then I swiped the strips off my desk into the wastepaper basket.
    I typed up my report mentioning that I had “followed Shane to a public lavatory where suspected homosexual cottaging took place”.
    My report was nine pages long. I showed it to McCrabban and he thought it was fine. I showed it to Sergeant McCallister and he thought there was a distinct sarcastic tone that I should probably remove.
    I faxed it anyway. At lunchtime I saw Todd on BBC Northern Ireland news which was more than I had ever managed to achieve – so perhaps the powers that be were right in firing me.
    “His dad’s a viscount,” Sergeant Burke told me over bangers and mash in the Oak. “He has three older brothers and if they all die and he outlives them he’ll become Lord Todd of Ballynure.”
    “Seems like the sort of cunt who would do precisely that,” I muttered.
    After lunch I went to get a haircut. Anything but work on that bloody Ulster Bank fraud case. After a murder investigation all other cases were anticlimactic.
    Carrick was a goddamn mess.
    There were two more TO LET signs in empty shop windows, three stores had been boarded up completely and the library had a notice in the window that said “Book Sale! New, Old, Fiction and Non Fiction! Thousands of Books!” which could not be a good thing.
    West Street had two competing street preachers, one of whom was saying “Repent for the millennium is at hand and ye are doomed” but the other felt it was the time to “Rejoice now, for Jesus died that we might live!”
    Sammy, as usual, was doing a roaring trade. Of course Friday evening was his busy time. Men getting “a little something for the weekend”.
    He had three guys lined up in the chairs and another two waiting.
    I picked up a paper. The English press was dominated by the Yorkshire Ripper trial. A verdict was expected today.
    Sammy looked at me, nodded. “Guilty on all counts,” he said. “It just came through on the wireless.”
    Good. That was one less bastard for us coppers to worry about. When it was my turn in the chair, I ordered a short back and sides. Sammy went to work with the scissors. “You like your music, don’t you, Sean? Thought I’d let you know. Town hall. Auction tomorrow morning at nine. The entire stock of CarrickTrax.”
    “Paul’s going out of business?”
    “Moving to Australia. Selling everything. Three thousand LPs. It’s breaking his heart. Classical. Non-classical. You name it. Rarities. Everything.”
    “I’ll be there,” I said.
    “Aye, me too. You’re not a Beatles fan, are you?”
    “No. Not really.”
    “Are you more of a Stones fan?”
    “Aye.”
    “Well, look, if you don’t bid on the Beatles, I won’t bid on the Stones. Ok?”
    “Ok.”
    “What about Mozart?”
    Like ghouls we split up his collection between us and I wondered exactly how much money I had in the bank. A hundred quid? One fifty? I’d saved up six years pay to buy the house for cash. Still, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. CarrickTrax was the deepest and best record shop in East Antrim and had been in business forever. The stuff they might have …
    We moved on to other topics. He told me about the record renting shops in Moscow and then he got to talking about the Red Army choir and finally about his father who had been interned by the Japanese. “Fascinating people, the Japs. They say that death is lighter than a feather but duty is heavier than a mountain …”
    I had heard the story of his father’s experiences in Burma twice already so I changed the subject. “What do you think of yon girl marrying Princess Charles?”
    “When I think of that wee lassie in the clutches of that corrupt family of decadent imperialists …”
    When I left the rain was heavier. I crossed the railway lines at Barn Halt and channelled Lucy Moore again.
    “Your mother didn’t see you, Lucy, because you were on the Larne side of the tracks waiting for the Larne train to get you to the ferry. Isn’t that right? You and your boyfriend were going to Glasgow to get an abortion. But you got cold feet. You decided to have the baby and live with your boyfriend until it was born. Decent enough plan. What went wrong, Lucy?”
    What went wrong? I stood there getting soaked. Walked home. Heated soup. Drank vodka and lime. I put on La Bohème again. This time the classic 1956 Sir Thomas Beeching version.
    Read the lyrics