The Cold Cold Ground

by Adrian McKinty

  “Why would he come out of the woodwork now?” McCallister asked.

  “I don’t know. Jealousy, perhaps? He’s been watching all the publicity the Yorkshire Ripper trial has been generating and it’s been getting his goat?” I ventured.

  “Maybe the chaos of the hunger strikes has given him the cover and opportunity he needs,” McCrabban said.

  “Sounds like this old fruit, Young, got someone riled up and that someone went mental and decided to kill some more fruits,” Burke said.

  “Matty’s checking to see if there are any allegations against him,” I said.

  “And I don’t like this music angle. It’s bloody weird,” Burke said.

  “I don’t like it either. There something about it that stinks to high heaven. I’ve read the libretto to La Bohème but nothing jumped out at me,” I said.

  “Jesus, what will we do if this Young fella has something up his arse too?” Brennan muttered.

  “Keep our cheeks squeezed together?” McCallister offered and everybody laughed again.

  “We’re waiting on the autopsy report on that, sir,” I added when the tittering had died down.

  Silence descended, punctuated by a distant rumbling in Belfast that could be anything from a ship unloading in the docks to a coordinated series of bombings.

  “What’s your next step, Sergeant Duffy?” Brennan asked.

  I told him about the various angles we were chasing down and the fact that we were supposed to finally get the prints on John Doe today.

  “And if our letter writer gets in touch again?” Sergeant Burke asked.

  I told them about my call to Special Branch.

  I could tell Brennan wasn’t too happy about that but he didn’t say anything. And besides he was getting worried about the time and he had one other fish to fry.

  “Have you thought about the press?” he asked.

  “Uh, obviously, we’ll need to brief the press at some point,” I said. “But we can probably put it off for a bit. It’s not exactly a slow news week.”

  Brennan sighed. “This is going to blow up in our faces, Sergeant Duffy. If we don’t go to the papers you can be sure that our anonymous note writer, or one of Mr Young’s neighbours, or someone will. Do you have a media strategy?”

  “Uh, no, not as such, not a, uh—” I stammered. I looked at Matty and McCrabban who had both discovered something fascinating about the wall-to-wall carpet.

  Brennan looked at McCallister. “What about you, Alan? It’s a bloody thankless task but we need someone and DS Duffy has quite a full plate by the looks of it. You could do a good defensive briefing to a couple of the local hacks. Seen you do it before. “

  McCallister smiled at me and shook his head. “No, no, fellas, that’s not the way to handle this at all. No defensiveness. We present this as a triumph. Through clever police work we have linked two murders. We talk about modern forensic techniques and how even during these difficult times we hard-working honest peelers are able to spend due care and attention on every single case.”

  Brennan nodded. “I like it.”

  “We won’t get TV because of all the other nonsense going on but we can call in some of our pals from the Belfast Telegraph, the Carrickfergus Advertiser, the Irish News and the Newsletter and let them have it. Maybe your woman Saoirse Neeson from Crime Beat on Downtown Radio.”

  Brennan looked at me. I shrugged. When I’d thought this was a nothing case I was keen for the telly but now it had got more complicated there was, at the very least, an element of stage fright; however, if big Alan McCallister wanted to help out. “If Alan wants to do it, that’s great,” I said.

  “Ok, we’ll defer everything to Sergeant McCallister,” Brennan said.

  Hold the phone. Defer everything? What did he mean by that?

  Fortunately Alan saw my face and did his best Uri Geller: “Nope. I’m not CID. This is not my case, it’s Duffy’s. Run everything through Sergeant Duffy. I’ll only be his press officer. He tells me what to say and I’ll say it and that’s that.”

  “Well said, Alan. These CID boys are flighty, sensitive creatures who don’t like their toes stepped on,” Brennan said. He got up and put his arm around me. “What kind of a loony are we dealing with here, son?”

  “We’re dealing with a type none of us have encountered before in an Ulster context. A careful, intelligent, non-sectarian, serial murderer.”

  “A total freak psycho,” Burke said.

  “Not in the way you think. Sociopaths tend to have no regard or empathy for the feelings of others but they may in fact be personally charming with considerable charisma. I expect that our boy (and I’m pretty sure he’s a boy) will challenge us, but we’ll get the bastard, I’m confident of that,” I said and looked Brennan in the eye.

  “That’s good to hear,” Brennan said. “But let me just say something here. Sean, I want you to tell me if you think we’re in over our heads. It’s not a weakness to admit the truth. You yourself were saying it the other night. You’re relatively new at all this and we are understaffed … we can always get a real expert in from Special Branch or even someone from over the water …”

  The thought of having this case snatched from under me sent a chill down my spine. Because Carrickfergus was a Protestant town most of the mischief was expected to come from the Loyalist paramilitaries who were not as efficient at carrying out attacks as the IRA and who, anyway, were unlikely to attack the cops. As safe postings went, there were only four or five better ones in Northern Ireland, which is why I had initially not been that excited to end up here, a relative backwater. If you wanted to make your name you had to be in Belfast or Derry, but it would be worse if they were going to take all the good cases away from me …

  “You yourself told me that resources are stretched thin. Belfast needs every available man until the hunger strikes and the riots are over. And running to mummy in England would be embarrassing for the whole RUC. No, I think we can handle this here in Carrick, sir, we really can.”

  “Ok,” he said, not completely convinced. “I won’t ask you again. I’ll trust you to come to me.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Any other comments?” Brennan asked but nobody could think of anything.

  Brennan whispered something in Matty’s ear and he got up and came back with a bottle of Jura single malt. He poured us all a healthy dose in plastic cups and raised his glass.

  “Unlike some stations that have been radically transformed with fairy gold from London, we’re still a small barracks, a small barracks with a family atmosphere, and this is going to be a challenge, but we can handle it if we all pull together. Can’t we, fellas? Can’t we, Sean?”

  “We’ll have to, chief.”

  We drank our whiskeys. It was the good stuff and it tasted of salt, sea, rain, wind and the Old Testament.

  “Ok, boys, get that dram down your neck and get out there. Get working! I’ll have to tell Superintendent Hollis before I tell the media and it would be nice if I had one crumb to throw at his fat, dozy face. I may pop in after the wedding but now I have to go,” Brennan said.

  “Yes, sir,” we all replied.

  We skipped lunch and made phone calls. We discussed the postcard and the music but we made no headway.

  Brennan came back from the wedding and demanded progress but we had none to offer him. He went into his office to change.

  I had just finished a conversation with Andrew Young’s boss who denied all knowledge of Andrew’s homosexuality (sensible because he could have been charged as an abetter under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which considered homosexual acts to be “gross indecency”) when a now uniformed Brennan put his big paw on my shoulder and sat down on my desk.

  “Do you know Lucy Moore?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “How long have you been here now, Sean?”

  “Nearly a month, sir.”

  “Lucy O’Neill was her maiden name. Local Republican family, the O�
�Neills. Big deal in these parts. Fairly well off Catholics. Her dad’s a human rights lawyer, her mum is high up in Trocaire – that big Catholic charity. Ringing a bell now?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” I said.

  “They both met the Pope when he came to Ireland in ‘79. Come on, you know who I’m talking about.”

  Brennan had that unfortunate habit of assuming that all Catholics went to the same mass in the same chapel at the same time.

  “Nope.”

  “Ok, well, anyway, Lucy’s husband Seamus goes up to the Maze Prison last year for weapons possession and for one reason and another they get divorced.”

  “He’s IRA?”

  “Of course.”

  “They don’t like it when their wives divorce them and they’re in prison.”

  “No, not in theory. But apparently he didn’t mind too much because Seamus Moore has a wee woman on the side. More than one.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Anyway. They’re divorced. He’s up for his stretch. She’s living back with her ma and da and everything’s normal until last Christmas Eve. And then she goes missing. The family can’t find her so they put out feelers in the community and when that doesn’t work they call us.”

  “Seamus had her killed from the inside?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. Seamus doesn’t have the power for that. He’s a pretty minor player. She just goes missing. It’s Christmas time and we’re short-staffed, so I took charge of the investigation.”

  “You were lead?” I asked, a little surprised.

  “It was a defining case. It’s my job to show that we are the cops for both sides in Carrickfergus, Protestant and Catholic. So yes, I was running it and I ran Matty and McCrabban ragged and I pulled out all the stops but we couldn’t bloody find her.”

  “What were the circumstances?”

  “Christmas Eve. Barn Halt. She was waiting for the Belfast train to come and she just vanished.”

  “Poof! Gone! Just like that?”

  “Poof. Gone. Just like that. I was pretty aggrieved that we couldn’t find a trace of her. But then in January the family started getting letters and postcards from her saying she was ok and not to worry about her.”

  “Genuine letters?”

  “Aye. We had the handwriting analysed.”

  “Where were they posted?”

  “Over the border. The Irish Republic: Cork, Dublin, all over.”

  “So she just ran away. No mystery there. Happens all the time. Not a happy ending but not a tragic one either,” I said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Brennan said with a sigh. “That’s what I told Mrs O’Neill. ‘Don’t worry, she’s run away, I’ve seen it a million times. She’ll be all right’.”

  He got up, walked to the window, leaned his forehead against the glass. His big greying, Viking head of hair mooshed against the pane. He suddenly looked very old.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “She’s been found.”

  “Dead?”

  “Get your team, get a Land Rover and drive up to Woodburn Forest. You’re meeting the ranger there, a man called De Sloot,” he muttered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  In ten minutes we were in the country.

  Rolling hills, small farms, cows, sheep, horses – a world away from the Troubles.

  Another ten minutes and we were at Woodburn Forest, a small deciduous wood surrounded by new plantations of pine and fir. The ranger was meeting us at the south-west entrance.

  “There he is,” I said and pulled in the Land Rover.

  He was a lean, older guy with ruddy red face and close-cropped grey hair. He was wearing a Barbour jacket, hiking boots and a flat cap.

  “Everybody out!” I said to Crabbie in the front and Matty in the back.

  “I’m De Sloot,” the ranger said with a Dutch accent. We did the handshakes and I helped Matty unpack his gear.

  De Sloot was all business. “This way, if you please,” he said.

  We followed him through a cutting in the wood up a steep hill and into one of the older sections of the pine forest.

  The trees were tall and densely packed together. So dense in fact that the forest floor was a dark, inert wasteland of pine needles and little else. As we went deeper we had to turn on our flashlights. The hill was north-facing and it was a good five or six degrees colder than the temperature outside the wood. In hollows and against rock faces there were even patches of snow that had survived the spring rains.

  “Who found the body?” I asked De Sloot.

  “I did. Or rather my dogs did. A fox had been reported attacking sheep and I thought they had found him or a badger, but of course I was mistaken.”

  “You saw the fox?”

  “No, it was a report.”

  “Who reported it?” I asked.

  “A man,” De Sloot said.

  “What man?” I insisted.

  “I don’t know. I got a phone call this morning that a fox had been attacking sheep and it had gone into Woodburn Forest.”

  “Describe the man’s voice.”

  “Northern Irish? I think. Male.”

  “What else? How old?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What exactly did he say?”

  De Sloot thought for a moment.

  “He asked me if I was the ranger for Woodburn Forest. I said that I was. He said ‘A fox has been worrying sheep. I saw him go into Woodburn Forest.’ That was all. Then he hung up.”

  “What time was this at?” Crabbie asked.

  “Around ten o’clock, perhaps ten thirty.”

  “And what time did you find the body?”

  “Some time after two. It’s quite deep into the forest, as you can see.”

  “Yes.”

  “Aye, how much bloody further?” Matty asked, struggling with his lights and sample kit.

  “Gimme something,” I said, taking one of his bags.

  “Quite a bit yet,” De Sloot said cheerfully.

  The trees were even more tightly packed here and it was so dark that we’d have been hard pressed to find our way without the flashlights.

  The incline increased.

  I wondered how high we were up now.

  A thousand feet? Twelve hundred?

  I was glad that I was in plain clothes today. The polyester cop uniforms were murder in any kind of extreme temperature. I took off my jacket and draped it over my shoulder.

  We stopped for a breather and De Sloot offered us water from his canteen. We took a drink, thanked him, soldiered on. On, through the dark, lifeless carpet of rotting pine needles before De Sloot finally called a halt. “Here,” he said, pointing to a snow-filled hollow in the lee of a particularly massive tree.

  “Where?” I asked.

  I couldn’t see anything.

  “Near that grey rock,” De Sloot said.

  I shone my flashlight and then I saw her.

  She was fully clothed, hanging under the limb of an oak tree. She had set up the noose, put her head in it, stepped off a tree stump and then regretted it.

  Almost every person who hanged themselves did it wrong.

  The noose is supposed to break your neck not choke you to death.

  Lucy had tried desperately to claw through the rope, had even managed to get a finger between the rope and her throat. It hadn’t done any good.

  She was blue. Her left eye was bulging out of its socket, her right eyeball had popped onto her cheek.

  Apart from that and the lifeless way the breeze played with her brown hair she did not look dead. The birds hadn’t found her yet.

  She was early twenties, five two or three, pale and once, not too long ago, she had been beautiful.

  “She left her driver’s licence on the tree stump over there,” De Sloot said.

  “Any note?” Crabbie asked.

  “No.”

  In a situation like this what saves you is the routine. There is something about process and procedure that dis
tances you from the reality. We were professionals with a job to do. That’s also why you’re supposed to look under your car every morning – it isn’t just the possibility of finding a bomb, it’s the heightened sense of awareness that that routine is supposed to give you for the rest of the day.

  Process, procedure and professionalism.

  “Everybody stay here. Matty, get your camera and start snapping. Mr De Sloot, have you moved anything at all?”

  “No,” De Sloot said. “I read the driver’s licence and then I went back home and called the police. I kept the dogs away.”

  We set up the battery-powered spotlights. I spread the team out and we combed the immediate area for footprints, forensic proofs or anything unusual.

  Nothing.

  Matty took the pictures and I made sure that his camera strategies were formal and correct.

  The body was clean and there was no sign of anyone else having been here.

  I looked at Matty. “Are you happy with the protocols? Shall we close the circle?”

  “Aye. We’ve plenty of coverage. At least three rolls of film on just the wide shots.”

  “Good. Keep snapping and damn the torpedoes,” I said.

  I let Matty finish his photography.

  “Better not fingerprint her just yet, or we’ll have to deal with Cathcart,” I said.

  “Do you know the woman?” De Sloot asked.

  “Lucy Moore, nee O’Neill. Missing since last Christmas,” I said.

  “Until now,” McCrabban muttered.

  “Until now,” I agreed.

  We stood there in the dark understory. It began to get very cold.

  “I think we’re done here, boss,” Matty said.

  “Cut her down, have them take her to the patho,” I said.

  “Have who take her? You’ll never get an undertaker to come out here,” McCrabban said.

  “We’ll bloody do it then!” I said.

  We cut the body down, Matty took a hair sample and we carried her back to the Land Rover.