I easily found a parking place on West Street and dandered past a boarded-up grocers before I came to Sammy McGuinn, my chain-smoking, short-arsed, Marxist barber.
He’d given me two good haircuts since I’d come here which was a high batting average for Ulster and probably why he was still in business.
I went in and sat down in the waiting area.
He was finishing work on a man in a brown suit with a ridiculous comb-over. Sammy was only five five and he had lowered his customer practically to floor level.
“Nationalism is a plot by international capitalism to keep the working classes from uniting. Irish independence separated the working classes of Dublin, Liverpool and Glasgow which destroyed the union movement forever in these islands just when capitalism was entering its crisis stage …” he was saying.
I tuned him out and read the cinema reviews in
When Sammy was finished with his customer I showed him the musical score.
As well as being Carrick’s only remaining barber Sammy was a violinist with the Ulster Orchestra and had two thousand classical records in his flat above the shop. A collection he had shown me when he’d found out from Paul at CarrickTrax that I bought the occasional classical record and that I’d done ten years of piano. Ten years of piano under protest.
“What do you make of that?” I asked him, showing him the photocopy of the music.
“What about it?”
“What is it?”
“Surprised at you, Sean. I thought you knew your onions,” he said, with an irritating sneer.
Like a lot of barbers, Sammy was completely bald and that chrome dome really invited a Benny Hill slap right about now.
His lips were tightly shut. He wanted the words:
“No, I really don’t know,” I said.
“Puccini,
“Aye, I thought it was Puccini,” I said.
“You say that now. Anybody could say it now.”
“The words are missing, aren’t they? It’s not the overture, is it?”
“No.”
“You don’t happen to know what the missing words are, by any chance?”
“Of course,” he said with an eye roll.
“Go on then!”
“
“Very nice.”
“Do you need a translation?”
“Uhm, something about hands, fortune, the moon?”
“Your little hand is freezing. Let me warm it for you. What’s the use of looking? We won’t find it in the dark. But luckily it’s a moonlit night, and the moon is close to us.”
I got out a pencil and made him say it again and wrote it down in my notebook.
“What’s this all about?” he asked.
“Nothing important,” I said and drove back to the police station.
I knocked on Chief Inspector Brennan’s door.
“Enter!” he said.
He looked up from the
“We may be in trouble,” I said.
“How so?”
“I think we have a sexual murderer on our hands, perhaps even a nascent serial killer.”
“Have a seat.”
I closed the door. His cheeks were ruddy and he was a little the worse for drink.
“What makes you think that?” he asked in a cold burr, leaning back in his pricey Finn Juhl armchair. I filled him in on all the details but he was sceptical of my thesis. “Northern Ireland’s never had a serial killer,” he said.
“No. Anyone with that mindset has always been able to join one side or the other. Torture and kill with abandon while still being part of the ‘cause’. But this seems different, doesn’t it? The sexual nature of the crime, the note. This is not something we’ve encountered before.”
“I already put the paperwork through that this was a hit on an informer,” Brennan said with a trace of annoyance.
“I’m not ruling anything out, sir, but at this stage I’m thinking it’s not that.”
“Let me see that piece of music.”
I passed across the photocopy under which I had written: “Your tiny hand is frozen. Let me warm it for you. What’s the use of looking? We won’t find it in the dark. But luckily it’s a moonlit night and the moon is close to us.”
He examined it and shook his head.
“He’s mocking the victim, sir. And us. He’s taking the piss. He’s telling us that he’s cut the victim’s hand off and he’s taken it somewhere else. He’s making game of us, sir.”
Brennan shook his head and leaned forward. He took his reading glasses off and set them on the table. “Look, Sean, you’re new around here. I know you want to make a name for yourself. You’re ambitious, I like that. But you can’t go bandying words like ‘serial killer’ around for all and sundry. The shit’s hitting the fan everywhere. You cannae throw a brick out there without clobbering a journalist. They’re all looking for an angle, aren’t they? And believe me, I know Carrick, so I do. Serial killers. Come off it. We don’t do that in these parts. Ok?”
“If you say so, sir.”
He smiled in a conciliatory manner. “And besides, for a serial killer you need more than one victim, don’t you?”
“Our guy in the Barn Field and then the hand from the other bloke. That’s two.”
Brennan passed the musical score back across the table. He took a sip of cold coffee from a mug on his desk. “Who else have you told about this theory of yours?”
“McCrabban and Sergeant McCallister. I’ll have to tell Matty too.”
“Good. Nobody else. What’s the status of your investigation?”
“We might get a break soon, sir. Now we have two sets of fingerprints working their way through the channels.”
He nodded and put his glasses back on. I could see that I was being dismissed. I got to my feet. “Do your job, do it well and do it quietly,” Brennan muttered, examining the
“Yes, sir.”
“Sean, one more thing.”
“Yes, sir?”
“‘Idle fellow but he gives us a buzz.’ Thirteen across. Five letters.”
I thought for a second. “Drone, sir?”
“Drone? Drone, oh yes. Ok, you may go.”
I exited. It was late and the place was emptying out.
I borrowed a couple of ciggies from someone’s table and headed out onto the fire escape to think.
There was trouble up in Belfast again. Potassium nitrate flares falling through the darkening sky. A Gazelle helicopter flying low over the lough water. Little kids walking past the police station showing each other the best technique for lobbing Molotov cocktails over the fence. Jesus, what a nightmare.
This was a city crucified under its own blitz.
This was a city poisoning its own wells, salting its own fields, digging its own grave …
