The Cold Cold Ground

“No, I suppose not.”

He yawned. “Look, Duffy, it’s getting late and I’ve told you all you need to know. So grow up, put the gun away, get out of my sight and we’ll say no more about this. I won’t report you to your betters.”

I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I still wasn’t sure.

After all this time and travelling.

“I don’t think I can go just yet, Freddie,” I said.

“Well, I’ve had enough of this. You’re boring me. You’ve bored me from the start. I don’t need to explain myself to the likes of you. What’s going on in that head of yours, Duffy? Forget your wee stupid case and appreciate the big picture. Appreciate it on the plane back to Belfast.”

I nodded and stamped the cigarette out on his living room floor.

“I see the big picture, Freddie, but I wonder … I wonder if you’re missing the big gallery the picture’s hanging in?”

“What do you mean by that?” he said with a snarl.

“If you’re so valuable why have I been allowed to live? Why have I been allowed to know. Why am I here? Who’s pulling my strings?”

“Sorry?”

“Let me give you one possibility that’s occurred to me and that might intrigue you. What if there’s an even bigger rat than you, Freddie? What if it’s one of the very top guys. I mean the very top guys. Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Marty Ferris, Ruari, one of them boys. What if MI5 turned one of them and has been running them for the last decade?”

His brown eyes darkened and he shook his head. Ah, so this thought had occurred to him too.

“I’m their agent, I’m the best they’ve bloody got! I’m the best there’s ever been. I’m Garbo. I’m Kim Philby!”

“I’m sure you are, Freddie. I’m sure you are. But it makes me wonder a wee bit why I was told that you were in Italy. It couldn’t possibly be that MI5 didn’t want to rub you out, but some crazy, pissed-off copper … well, that would be quite another thing, wouldn’t it? I mean, look at the mess you’ve made. Look at the big bog trail of shite you’ve made covering your tracks. Maybe, just maybe, Freddie, you’ve become, oh, I don’t know … dispensable. Did you ever think about that?”

He leapt at me, one hand going for the gun, another punching me in the kidney. He took me completely by surprise, knocking the gun out of my hand and winding me. The gun flew across the room and clanged off the plate-glass window.

He hit me with his left, a hard metallic blow in my ribcage, and he followed quickly with a gut punch. He shoved my shoulders, forcing me down into the glass coffee table which smashed underneath me. He dived for the gun and grabbed it.

“Nessuno me lo ficca in culo!” he yelled delightedly.

I ducked as Freddie’s first shot missed me by a cigarette length.

I scrambled out from under the smashed coffee table, rolled to one side, grabbed a broken table leg and threw the bloody thing at Freddie. He dodged it and shot again. I picked up a shard of glass with my gloved hands and threw it at him and this time he couldn’t get out of the way. I hit him on the forearm and before he could shoot again I jumped him. He smacked me with the butt of the Beretta, but it was a glancing blow off my scalp and with both my hands I squeezed the wrist of his gun arm until he winced in pain. His fingers slackened and I wrestled the gun out of his grip and pistol-whipped him across the face.

He collapsed to his knees, got to his feet and then staggered backwards into the TV set, knocking it off its stand and exploding its cathode ray tube.

The lights flickered, went out for two seconds and then came back on again.

“Now you’ve wrecked my telly! This has gone beyond a joke, Duffy! Get the fuck out of here!” Freddie yelled.

I shook my head. I wasn’t going anywhere. Not now that I had seen the real Freddie Scavanni. It was a question of trust, wasn’t it? I knew Freddie’s identity. Freddie knew that I knew. Laura knew. He knew about her too. Could we really leave our lives in the hands of a man like him?

I raised the Beretta.

“You know why they sent me to Carrick RUC? They sent me to learn, Freddie. And you know what? I have learned. I’ve grown up.”

“Is this about the queers, Duffy? Fuck the queers! And Lucy? I gave her every chance. At least it was over quick!”

“Quick? Is that what you think? I cut her down, Freddie. She was still alive when you strung her up. You hadn’t quite killed her. She got one finger between the rope and her neck. She wanted to live. She fought to live.”

“This isn’t justice, Duffy, this is revenge!”

“What’s the difference?”

The nearest house was 400 metres away.

Perhaps they heard a crack and then one more crack almost immediately after the first. Perhaps if they’d been looking in the right direction at the right time they would have seen a sudden flash of light through the plate- glass windows.

I had thought about making it look like a suicide but there wasn’t much point after all this.

I left the gun on the floor and went into Freddie’s study.

I checked myself in the mirror. There were a couple of holes in my leather jacket from the glass table, a few cuts and bruises but hopefully nothing that would attract too much attention.

I opened the filing cabinet and took the big spool of tape from the MI5 machine and put it in my rucksack. This would be my insurance from the blowback.

I closed the front door and walked down the valley, back into Campo to the bus station. At 6 a.m. a van dropped off the morning papers outside the cafeteria. I looked at the headlines. The big news was from Egypt: President Sadat had been assassinated in Cairo. The story came with pictures. Men with machine guns firing into a crowd.

Finally the bus pulled in on ice tyres. It had set out early from St Moritz and was nearly full.

The driver was cautious and I arrived at Milan Airport with only minutes to make my plane.

The flight was uneventful. I bought Laura a bottle of Chanel in the duty free. We touched down at Prestwick Airport outside Glasgow just after 11.

I knew that if I really hoofed it I could catch the noon ferry from Stranraer to Larne …

The crossing was rough, the North Channel a mess of chuddering green sea and white-storm surf. I had a smoke, buttoned my duffle-coat hood and went to stare at the cauldron-like wake over the rear deck rail.

I watched Scotland slowly fade behind me.

I watched Ireland loom ahead.

This was the only acceptable place to be in these barren lands. On that grey stretch of sea between the two of them.

It was raining in Larne.

It was always raining in Larne.

I caught the train, got off at Barn Halt, said a brief Ave for Lucy, grabbed a six-pack of Harp from the off licence and a fish supper from the chippie. I strolled up Victoria Road eating the chips in the rain. On Coronation Road there were few cars and only a couple of kids kicking a ball around. A man was walking the streets with a handheld megaphone proclaiming the imminent return of the Messiah.

“Are you ready for Christ’s return, son?” he asked me.

“In about twenty minutes I will be,” I replied.

#113.

I opened the gate, walked up the path, put the key in the lock, went upstairs, lit the new paraffin heater, stripped out of my wet clothes.

I poured myself a pint-glass vodka gimlet and listened to Ghost in the Machine, the brand new album by The Police. Classic case of three good tracks and eight fillers.