The Cold Cold Ground

I called Laura in Straid and she asked how I was doing and I said I was doing just fine. I drank the six-pack and the vodka and by 8 o’clock I was a long way gone. I went to bed singing rebel songs.

The next morning, early, there was a knock at the door.

Big guys. Plain Clothes. Special Branch/MI5/Army Intelligence. Something like that. One with a ginger moustache, the other with a black moustache.

“Are you Sean Duffy?” Ginger asked.

“Could be,” I said cagily.

Ginger pulled out a silenced 9mm and shoved it in my face. I took a step backwards. His mate followed him into the hall and closed the door behind him.

“First things first. Where’s the tape?” Ginger said.

“What tape?”

Ginger pointed the revolver at my right kneecap.

“We’ll shoot you in both knees, both ankles and both elbows. Then we’ll go to work with the blowtorch. Why don’t you save us all some trouble?”

“In my rucksack. It’s still in my rucksack in the kitchen.”

Ginger’s mate went and got it.

“Ok. Now we’d like you to come with us,” Ginger said.

“Let me get my kit on,” I said.

They watched while I got changed and they led me outside not to a Land Rover but to an unmarked Ford Capri — which was a bit of a bad sign.

A tight squeeze too. A driver. Them two boys. Me.

We drove through Carrick, Greenisland, Newtownabbey, Belfast.

After Italy I saw the city anew.

A fallen world. A lost place.

Ruined factories. Burnt-out pubs. Abandoned social clubs. Shops with bomb-proof grilles. Check points. Search gates. Armoured police stations.

Smashed cars. Cars on bricks.

Stray dogs. Sectarian graffiti. Murals of men in masks.

Bricked-up houses. Fire-bombed houses. Houses without eyes.

Broken windows, broken mirrors.

Children playing on the rubbish heaps and bombsites, dreaming themselves away from here to anywhere else.

The smell of peat and diesel and fifty thousand umbilical cords of black smoke uniting grey city and grey sky.

We drove to the top of Knockagh Mountain.

There was no one else around.

No one for miles.

“Get out,” Ginger said.

“What is this?” I asked, scared now.

They pushed me out.

“What is this?” I asked again, panic clawing at my throat.

They shoved me to the ground, took out their revolvers.

“For some reason. For some unearthly reason, they like you, Duffy,” Ginger said.

“Who likes me?”

“They like you and that’s why they’re letting you live,” Ginger said. He pulled the trigger, the cylinder turned, the hammer came down. It was only a mock execution. They should have told me about the reprieve afterwards. I wanted to laugh. They’d botched it.

“The Moore case is over. Is that understood, Inspector Duffy?” black moustache said with an English accent.

“Aye, I understand,” I replied.

“You watch your step, now, ok?” Ginger added.

They got back in the Capri and drove away.

The rain pattered my face.

The tarmac under my back felt reassuringly solid.

I lay there and watched the clouds drift past a mere hundred yards above my head.

I got to my feet. Belfast was spread out before me like a great slab of meat in a butcher’s yard.

Who liked me?

Why had they let me live?

Why had they called me Inspector?

These were things to think about.

It would keep my mind busy on the long walk home.