The Cold, Cold Ground

as I listened. Mimi’s solo aria.
    “My name is Lucia. But everyone calls me Mimi. I don’t know why. Ma quando vien lo sgelo . Il primo sole è mio . When the thaw comes, the sun’s first kiss is mine.”
    I lifted the needle and put it down on the record and played it again. And again. I’d heard it before but this time it struck a nerve. Lucia = Lucy? Was that a stretch? Could Lucy Moore’s death have something to do with the murders of Tommy Little, Andrew Young and the others? A deliberate or even a subconscious link?
    I listened to the record over and over, getting drunker and drunker. At midnight I played Orpheus in the Underworld . I began to see patterns there too. Eurydice is a daughter of Apollo, the lord of light. Lucia means light. The more I listened I began to see links everywhere, in everything. In Mozart, in Schubert, in Bowie.
    Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It’s part of our DNA. That’s why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.
    The more I delved the clearer it all became. DC Todd was in on it. Brennan was in on it. It was the masons. It was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Yeats was in on it. All the crazy Prods were in on it. I drank so much vodka that I made myself sick. I kept on drinking. The one smart thing I did was unplug the phone lest I call Laura or my ma. I climbed upstairs and hugged the toilet. Alcohol poisoning. Pathetic. What was I? Sixteen? I began to cry. Eventually the power went off and I closed my eyes and fell asleep dry heaving.

17: ARIADNE’S THREAD
    I woke on the bathroom floor sometime after first light. I was a sorry spectacle in the mirror, and the house was worse.
    I put on the Ramones, cleaned up the vomit, had a cold shower, brushed my teeth, made a Nescafé, drank the coffee, replugged the phone and called Laura.
    “You wanna get breakfast and go to an auction?” I asked her.
    “I have my clinic in the afternoon.”
    “This is at nine. Come on. We’ll get breakfast at the Old Tech and bid on some records.”
    The Old Tech. I couldn’t face the Ulster fry so I just got a cup of tea instead.
    Laura got pancakes.
    We talked and read the papers.
    The headlines on all the tabs were the same: GUILTY over a picture of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. The broadsheets too were obsessed by the Ripper with his trial and the verdict occupying most of their front pages with a little bit about the hunger strikes. According to The Times , senior figures in the Tory party were speaking about “compromise” and “new ideas” but Thatcher was having none of it; she had come to Ulster to stiffen the resolve of the troops: the lady would not negotiate with terrorists, the lady was not for turning.
    Only the local papers, the Irish News and the Newsletter had the attack on the gay pub in Larne.
    One dead. Twenty hospitalised.
    The report was done in a restrained, let’s not talk too much about this , style.
    The killer had used a tried and true terrorist grille-bomb method. Had Todd seen that? Maybe I should call him?
    No.
    I shouldn’t.
    I went to the cashier and asked if she had any aspirin.
    She said that she did and I popped a couple and splashed my face in the bathroom and went back to Laura who was reading a fold-out special on Lady Di’s wedding plans from the Daily Mail .
    I didn’t tease her.
    We finished our breakfast and went round to the auction in the town hall.
    The place was packed.
    Word had got out and the vultures had come in from high and low. Only Paul himself had not come by to watch his valuable records gets sold to the hoi polloi.
    I nodded to Sammy.
    He nodded back.
    I ignored the first few lots which were ’30s-’40s Americana.
    I bought some ’60s Motown and a mint condition, first pressing of Dusty in Memphis for a pound, which was an absolute sin.
    It was when we were into the classical section that I noticed our old friend Freddie Scavanni in the audience.
    He was buying early Italian stuff with not much competition.
    I watched him bid and buy.
    He was initially cautious but eventually he lost his patience and jumped on the things he wanted like everybody else. I let Sammy take most of the Mozart. I bought the Schubert.
    I bought some knick-knacks too: some anti-static cloths, an oil lamp from Chess Records in the shape of a guitar, Beatles pencil sharpeners.
    None of it was terribly interesting and I could see that Laura was bored out her