and age?
There was also the fact that many of the hated disbanded B Specials had joined the UDR and that occasionally guns from their depots would find their way into the hands of the paramilitaries. I mean, I’m sure ninety-five per cent of the UDR soldiers were decent, hardworking people, but there were definitely more bad apples in the regiment than in the RUC.
Not that any of that mattered now. We should have known about the death of a security forces comrade and we didn’t.
“Hold on there, that tea’s too wet. I’ll get some biscuits,” Mrs McAlpine said.
When she had gone Matty put up his hands defensively.
“Don’t blame me, this was your responsibility, boss,” he said. “You just asked for an address. You didn’t tell me to check the births and deaths …”
“I know, I know. It can’t be helped.”
“We’ve made right arses of ourselves. In front of a good-looking woman, too,” Matty said.
“I’m surprised the name didn’t ring a bell.”
“December of last year was a bad time, the IRA were killing someone every day, we can’t remember all of them,” Matty protested.
It was true. Last November/December there’d been a lot of IRA murders including the notorious assassination of a fairly moderate Unionist MP, the Reverend Robert Bradford, which had absorbed most of the headlines; for one reason and another the IRA tended not to target local politicians but when they did it got the ink pots flowing.
The widow McAlpine came back in with a tray of biscuits.
She was still wearing the dressing gown but she’d taken the towel off her head. Her hair was chestnut red, curly, long. Somehow it made her look much older. Late twenties, maybe thirty. And she would age fast out here in the boglands on a scrabble sheep farm with no husband and no help.
“This is lovely, thanks,” Matty said, helping himself to a chocolate digestive.
“So what’s this all about?” she asked.
I told her about the body in the suitcase and the name tag that we’d found inside the case.
“I gave that suitcase away just before Christmas with all of Martin’s stuff. I couldn’t bear to have any of his gear around me any more and I thought that somebody might have the use of it.”
“Can you tell us where you left it?” I asked.
“Yes. The Carrickfergus Salvation Army.”
“And this was just before Christmas?”
“About a week before.”
“Okay, we’ll check it out.”
We finished our tea and stared at the peat logs crackling in the fireplace. Matty, the cheeky skitter, finished the entire plate of chocolate digestives.
“Well, we should be heading on,” I said, stood and pulled Matty up before he scoffed the poor woman out of house and home.
“We’re really sorry to have bothered you, Mrs McAlpine.”
“Not at all. It chills the blood thinking that someone used Martin’s old suitcase to get rid of a body.”
“Aye, it does indeed.”
She walked us to the front door.
“Well, thanks again,” I said, and offered her my hand.
She shook it and didn’t let go when I tried to disengage.
“It was just out there where your Land Rover was parked. They must have been hiding behind the stone wall. Two of them, they said. Gave him both barrels of a shotgun and sped off on a motorbike. Point blank range. Dr McCreery said that he wouldn’t have known a thing about it.”
“I’m sure that’s the case,” I said and tried to let go, but still she held on.
“He only joined for the money. This place doesn’t pay anything. We’ve forty sheep on twelve acres of bog.”
“Yes, the—”
She pulled me closer.
“Aye, they say he didn’t know anything but he was still breathing when I got to him, trying to breathe anyway. His mouth was full of blood, he was drowning in it. Drowning on dry land in his own blood.”
Matty was staring at the woman, his eyes wide with horror and I was pretty spooked too. The widow McAlpine had us both, but me literally, in her grip.
“I’ll go start the Land Rover,” Matty said.
I made a grab at his sleeve as he walked away.
“He was a captain. He wasn’t just a grunt. He was a God-fearing man. An intelligent man. He was going places. And he was snuffed out just like that.”
She looked me square in the face and her expression was accusatory – as if I was somehow responsible for all of this.
Her rage had turned her cheeks as red as her bap.
“He was going to work?” I muttered, for something to say.
“Aye, he was just heading up to the fields to bring the yearlings in, him and Cora. I doubt we would have had a dozen of them.”
“I’m really very sorry,” I said.
She blinked twice and suddenly seemed to notice that I was standing there in front of her.
“Oh,” she said.
She let go of my hand. “Excuse me,” she mumbled.
“It’s okay,” I said, and took a step backwards. “Have a good morning.”
I walked back across the yard towards the Land Rover.
The rain was heavier now.
The Alsatian started snarling and barking at me again.
“That’s enough, Cora!” Mrs McAlpine yelled.
The dog stopped barking but didn’t cease straining at its rope leash.
“That is one mean crattur,” Matty said as I got into the front seat of the Land Rover.
“The dog or the woman?”
“The dog. Hardly the temperament for a sheep dog.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sheep dogs are supposed to like people.”
I looked back at the farmhouse and Mrs McAlpine was still standing there.
“Jesus, she’s still bloody staring at us – get this thing going, Matty.”
He turned on the Land Rover and manoeuvred it in a full circle in the farmyard. The sodden chickens flew and hopped away from us.
We drove out of the gate and began going down the lane.
The man with the pipe across the valley was still there in front of his house looking at us and another man on a tractor one field over on a little hill had stopped his vehicle to get a good gander at us too.
We were the local entertainment for the day.
“Where to now, boss?” Matty asked.
“I don’t know. Carrick Salvation Army, to see if they remember who they sold that suitcase to?”
“And then?”
“And then back to the station to see if Customs have that list of names yet.”
Matty put the heavy, armoured Land Rover in first gear and began driving down the lane keeping it well over on the ridge so that we wouldn’t get stuck in the mud.
He stuck on the radio and looked to see if I would mind Adam and the Ants on Radio One.
I didn’t mind.
I wasn’t really listening.
Something was bothering me.
