heater. The heater had been a gift from my parents when I first moved to Belfast and I had lugged it to Armagh, Tyrone and lastly to Carrickfergus. Even now the gorgeous, heady kerosene aroma time-travelled me across the decades to my childhood in Cushendun.
For five minutes I lay there listening to the rain pouring off the roof and then, reluctantly, I went downstairs.
I made tea and toast with butter and marmalade. I showered, dressed in a sober black polo-neck sweater, black jeans, black shoes. I put on a dark sports jacket and my raincoat. I put the revolver in my coat pocket and left the ridiculous machine gun on the hall table.
I went outside.
Grey sky that began fifty feet above my head. Drizzle. There was a cow munching at the roses in Mrs Bridewell’s garden. Another was taking a shit in Mrs Campbell’s yard.
When I looked to the left and right I could see other cows further along the street wandering stupidly to and fro. I’d been here three weeks and this was the second time the cows had escaped from the field next to Coronation Road. It would never have happened in Cushendun. These Carrick eejits were not good cattle farmers. I walked down the garden path ignoring Mrs Campbell’s cow and buttoning my coat. There was a frost in the high hills and my breath followed me like a reluctant
I checked under the BMW for car bombs, didn’t find any, looked a second time just to be sure, turned the key in the lock, flinched in expectation of a booby trap, opened the door and got inside.
I did not fasten my seat belt. Four police officers had died in car accidents this year, nine police officers had been shot while trapped in their vehicles by their seat belts. The statistical department of the RUC felt that, on balance, it was better not to wear a seat belt and a memo had been sent around for comments. This memo had obviously been seen by someone in the Chief Constable’s office and quick as a flash it had become a standing order.
I stuck on Downtown Radio and got the local news.
Riots in Belfast, Derry, Cookstown, Lurgan and Strabane. An incendiary attack on a paint factory in Newry. A bomb on the Belfast to Dublin railway line. A strike by the Antrim Ulsterbus drivers in protest at a series of hijackings.
“Because of the Ulsterbus strike schools in Belfast, Newtownabbey, Carrickfergus, Ballymena, Ballyclare, Coleraine and Larne will be closed today. Now a little George Jones to soothe your morning,” Candy Devine said.
I flipped to Radio 1 and drove up Coronation Road listening to Blondie.
“It’s like bloody India,” the milkman said to me coming down the street in his electric float. “Aye and without the cuisine,” I muttered and drove slowly to avoid killing a cow and thus incurring an unfavourable incarnation in the next life.
I turned right on Victoria Road and saw a bunch of teenagers in school uniform waiting for a bus that was never going to come. I wound the window down.
“School’s off, I just heard it on the radio!” I yelled across to them.
“Piss off, ya pervert!” a seventeen-year-old slapper yelled back, flipping me the bird as she did so.
“I’m the bloody peelers, ya wee shite!” I thought about replying but when you’re in an insult contest with a bunch of weans at 7.58 in the morning your day really is heading for the crapper.
I wound the window back up and drove on to the sound of jeers.
Two hundred yards further on I went past a Twelfth of July bonfire which was already two storeys high and stacked with pallets, boxes and tyres. On the top someone had a stuck an effigy of the Pope wearing a blood- stained bed sheet.
Nice.
I pulled into McDowell’s newsagents.
Oscar was serving two hacks from the Associated Press. You could tell they were hacks from the Associated Press because they were wearing jackets that said “Associated Press” in big yellow letters on the back and because they were trying to buy a couple of Mars bars with a fifty-pound note.
I bought the
At the bottom of Victoria Road there was an army checkpoint. Three green armour-plated Land Rovers and a bunch of Scottish soldiers smoking Woodbines.
I showed them my warrant card and they lifted their rifles and waved me through.
“Nice Beemer,” a big Jock squaddie said as I drove on. Was he implying that because I was driving a BMW, I was a corrupt cop on the take to the paramilitaries while he was a hard-working son of Caledonia trying to keep the murderous Paddies from killing one another? Maybe, or maybe he just dug the wheels.
I drove south west along the sea front.
Ahead of me Carrickfergus Castle, the town and harbour.
To my right a dismal line of houses and shops, to my left the — always — gun-metal grey waters of Belfast Lough.
The police station was about half a mile along the front.
A small two-storey brick affair, surrounded by a blast wall and a high fence for deterring hand grenades and Molotov cocktails.
I nodded to Ray behind the bulletproof glass. Ray raised the gate barrier and I drove into the police station compound. There was hardly anyone in because everyone had been up the night before on riot duty. I easily found a parking space next to the entrance.
I got out gingerly. The yard was full of potholes and puddles and since all the police Land Rovers leaked oil, you could really take a nasty spill if you didn’t watch your step. I said “Good morning, Miss Moneypenny,” to Carol and went upstairs. The second floor was open plan with an interview room, an incident room and offices for the senior sergeants and Chief Inspector Brennan.
CID had all the window desks overlooking Belfast Lough. The view was pleasant and on a clear day you could see Scotland, which was nice if you ever wanted to see Scotland on a clear day. Detective Constable “Crabbie” McCrabban had built an elaborate and paranoid conspiracy theory around these prized window desks. It was his feeling that CID were given this prime position so that we would get it first in the event of an IRA missile or RPG attack, but I chose to believe that Brennan had assigned us these desks as reward for our hard graft day in and day out.
I sat down in my swivel chair and flicked through the report that Matty had inexpertly typed up:
Carrickfergus RUC, CID Div. Case #13715/A. Homacide. Barn Field, Taylor’s Avenue, Carrickfergus, 13/5/1981. Srce: anon tip Wed evening. Victim: victim unknown. Victim’s personal effects: none. Other evidence: blood sample, victim’s hair sample, victim’s right hand, CS photographs. Remarks: victim found in abadoned car, one hand severed, prints taken. Victim not yet IDed. Patho Rept: awaiting patho rept. #13715/A CS: Inq to Det Sgt Duffy. 14/5/1981: body devilered to Carrick Hospital c.o. pathologist Dr Cathcart.
Matty had written nothing about getting prints off the victim’s clothes. I wondered if he’d done it and found nothing or just not done it. It was a toss up.
I went to the coffee machine and pushed the buttons for white coffee and chocolate simultaneously. Armed with this dubious concoction I went back to my desk. Matty had not left me the photographs but I found them in the darkroom hanging on the drying line. 7x10 glossies of the body, the hand, the car, the pool of blood, the AC/DC jacket, the victim’s face, other aspects of the crime scene and a few of the moon, clouds and grass.
I gathered the pics and took them to my desk.
Other officers started to arrive, doing whatever the hell it was that they did around here. I said good morning to Sergeant McCallister and showed him the pics of our boy. It didn’t ring a bell.
McCrabban appeared twenty minutes later sporting a black eye.
“Jesus, mate! Where’d you get that shiner?” I asked.
“Don’t ask,” he replied.
“Not the missus?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s all right with you,” he said taciturnly. These Proddies. They never wanted to talk about anything.
