The Cold Cold Ground

by Adrian McKinty

  “Aren’t they?”

  He pointed heavenwards. “They see it as a rogue cell that they would have had to take out anyway. And Bobby and Shane being queers and all? You fucking did them a favour. What an embarrassment.”

  “So they’re not going to kill me?” I asked.

  “Only if, in the course of a future investigation, you step on anyone’s toes.”

  I grimaced. “It’s my job to step on people’s toes.”

  “And you’re still a peeler and a fenian peeler and a bit of a famous fenian peeler at that, so the other side will still be trying to kill you, won’t they?”

  “I suppose they will.”

  Bobby walked to the front door. “Congratulations on your police medal. Say hello to her majesty for me. I’ll see myself out.”

  Out he went.

  Days, nights. Autumn turning into early winter. I went walking around Carrickfergus. Along Coronation Road and the sea front and sometimes all the way to Whitehead and back.

  I grew stronger. I began lifting weights. Eating steak.

  I went to the range at the UDR base and practised my shooting.

  I had been home ten days when the great Maze hunger strike was formally ended at last. Two days later Secretary of State James Prior announced that IRA prisoners would be allowed to wear their own clothes, have separate cells and free association: “political status” would be returned in all but name.

  For the first night since April Belfast had no rioting.

  It was over.

  The very next day the man came to see me.

  He rang the bell just after I had gotten back from a run.

  I was in sweat pants and my Ramones T-shirt.

  He was dressed in a tweed suit and hand made shoes. It was a relatively dry day but he was wearing a raincoat, a trilby and carrying an umbrella. He was about sixty years old with a handsome face, sunken blue eyes and a grey pallor. He reminded me a little of Sir John Gielgud and his voice had the same commanding authority although tinged with a West Country accent.

  “Detective Sergeant Duffy?” he said when I answered the door.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Peter Evans. May I speak with you for a moment?”

  I was breathing hard.

  “Are you quite well?” he asked.

  “I’ve just got back from a run. Let me get myself a drink of water, go on into the living room.”

  I got my water and followed Mr Evans into the living room.

  He had sat himself down on the leather sofa and was examining the copy of The Thin Red Line that I had left there.

  “A good book?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I was in Burma under Orde Wingate, quite an extraordinary fellow. Unorthodox.”

  I sat opposite him in the recliner. “You’re MI5, aren’t you?”

  “We don’t like to use that name.”

  “You’ve come here to put the fear of God into me, haven’t you? Have you seen Laura? You better not hurt her.”

  “Oh, there’s no question of that. Oh, my goodness, no. We’re quite sure about you both. We’ve had many conversations about you and Dr Cathcart.”

  “We won’t talk. We get it,” I agreed.

  He smiled. “Yes, we know. I told them that all the way back in June. I said, gentlemen, these two young people are good eggs.”

  The proverbial cold chill. Of course if we hadn’t been good eggs we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d be dead.

  Evans sighed and tapped The Thin Red Line.

  “War is so much easier than this business that we’re in. You know who your friends are and, most of the time, who your enemies are. Usually they’re the ones shooting at you.”

  “But you work in the grey area,” I said.

  “Not quite. In my world everything is binary. Black and white. Friend and enemy. Traitor and hero. The problem is that today’s friend is tomorrow’s enemy and vice versa. It can be confusing. It can destroy the finest minds. I had a colleague, an American colleague, who rose to the top of a well-known agency but became convinced that everyone working in that agency was a traitor. Everyone was in a conspiracy except for him. The President, the Vice-President, they were all working for the Russians. Poor chap. He couldn’t trust anyone in the end. He used to speak about the ‘wilderness of mirrors’, a line from Eliot I think (not my bag, the modern stuff). Anyway, a wilderness of mirrors where faces were reflections of reflections and nothing was as it seemed.”

  “Would you care for some tea?” I asked.

  “That would be lovely.”

  I made it and brought chocolate biscuits, which Mr Evans seemed inordinately excited about.

  “You’re getting the Queen’s Police Medal,” Evans said.

  “So they tell me.”

  We sipped our tea and I looked through the window at the rag and bone man’s balloon-filled cart making its melancholy way down Coronation Road.

  “What have you come here to talk about, Mr Evans?”

  He laughed. “Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio, and I wasn’t even very brevis!”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to tell me?”

  He nibbled at his biscuit and smiled. “Three quick things and then we’re done, Sergeant Duffy. Firstly, I want to tell you that we’ve thoroughly examined your psychology assessments and I believe we can trust you and Dr Cathcart completely. So please put any residual uneasiness out of your mind.”

  “I will.”

  “Secondly, the so-called ‘gay serial killer’ case is now closed both officially and unofficially. You do see that, don’t you, Sergeant Duffy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thirdly, we do not want you going near Stakeknife. We don’t want you going to his office in Belfast, or his house in Straid … or to his home in Italy where he will be until the end of the month.”

  “Italy?”

  “A little town called Campo on the northern shores of Lake Como. Charming place by all accounts. Tells everyone he got it from his grandfather. There’s a little article about it in August’s … in fact, hold on a minute … I just happen to have …”

  He reached into the pocket of his raincoat and placed August’s Architectural Digest on my coffee table.

  I looked at the magazine, looked at him.

  He smiled and got to his feet.

  He pointed at the room.

  “Love the colour scheme. Striking. Such a breath of fresh air after all the usual dreary Sybil Colefax stuff.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I suppose I should be jollying along. Just wanted to check in. For a long time everything was so delicate, so finely balanced, but now, well, the hunger strikes are over and we have a new broom as Secretary of State and …”

  “Everything’s changed?”

  “Yes … well … look, it was awfully nice meeting you.”

  He reached out his hand.

  I shook it.

  “I’ll see you out,” I said.

  I opened the front door and he walked onto the porch.

  “When do you return to duty, Sergeant Duffy?” he asked.

  “I was thinking about next week but the Chief says I can take until the end of October if I want to.”

  Evans put on his hat and waved to a man in a black Daimler who turned the engine on and threw his cigarette out the window.

  “It’s been my experience, Sergeant Duffy, that after a traumatic event the best thing to do is to leap back into the saddle as soon as you can. Although you have been through so much that perhaps it would be best if you take a little holiday abroad first.”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh yes. Yes indeed.”

  “Then perhaps I’ll go.”

  23: THE ITALIAN JOB

  I landed at Linate Airport just before dusk. I changed two hundred quid into lira and at the airport gift shop I bought a hunting knife and a map of the Como area. I had an espresso and some kind of meat filled pastry which made me
feel that this was the first time I had tasted food in my life.

  A taxi took me to the Central Bus Station in Milan without too much trouble. It was off season, too late for summer travel, too early for the skiers.

  The bus to Como left at 6. A Red Brigade bomb scare delayed it until 7.30 and made me feel at home.

  At Como I caught a local bus up the Via Regina.

  We arrived at Mezzagra in the middle of a street party. It was a harvest festival and kids were dressed as grapes and ears of wheat.

  It was cold and braziers had been set up to warm the crowd. More good food. Beautiful women. People enjoying themselves.

  Italy with its chaotic politics and twenty-plus prime ministers since World War Two was still the inverse of Ireland – bomb threats notwithstanding. This, I thought, is what normality looked like.

  I found a stand selling home-made toys and, changing my mind about the knife, I bought a realistic-looking cap gun in the shape of an ACP. In Ireland all toy guns had to be orange so weans didn’t get shot by cops or soldiers on foot patrol. But this one, from a distance, looked like the real thing.

  I laughed.

  It would be funny if this worked and funny if it didn’t.

  I watched a puppet show about the capture of Mussolini by the Resistance which, if I understood it correctly, happened on this very spot.

  At 9 o’clock I caught the last local bus to Campo.

  Lake Como was the black empty mass to my right as we hugged the shore and drove past the homes of the very rich. Beautiful villas from the baroque and rococo right up to the present day. Father Faul told us that the Younger Pliny had owned two villas on Lake Como. One on a hill and one on the lake. The upper home he called Tragedy, the lower Comedy.

  The bus stopped at every village and went slowly along the shore road. It finally left me off at the hamlet of Campo at around 11.30.

  A quiet, attractive, unearthly little place in the foothills of the Alps.

  There were no people.

  No cars.

  Occasionally a truck roared by under the vast yellow arc lights of the SS36. The rest was silence.

  Snow had been falling since the day before and the bus station car park was a frozen world.

  An ice mirror reflecting the winter constellations. A landing strip for migrating birds.

  I unfolded my map, strapped the rucksack across my shoulders and headed east.

  The house was at the end of a long track off Vicolo Spluga.

  The incline was steep and I had to catch my breath a couple of times.

  Wind was whistling down from the Swiss border, eight miles to the north.

  These were not the high Alps but it was still freezing. According to the map we were up at 1400 metres which I reckoned was over 5500 feet. I was wearing a leather jacket, jeans and Adidas trainers. I was underdressed. I hadn’t expected it to be this frigid in early October.

  I took another breather to steady my nerves.

  From up here I could see the lights of planes landing at Milan and boats putting across the black waters of the Lago di Mezzola.

  I walked on. I passed a ruined mill, a couple of small cottages and a barn that had been destroyed by fire.

  Freddie’s house was built in a typical Tyrol style: wood beams, a deck facing south, a steep timbered roof. It wasn’t particularly large but I knew that he owned much of the surrounding forest too. He told everyone that he had inherited the place from his grandfather but that wasn’t true. The whole shebang was bought and paid for by MI5.

  Since June and Freddie’s ascension to the Army Council things had really begun to happen for him.

  Gerry Adams had been out here. All the top guys in Sinn Fein and the IRA.

  Even a couple of US Congressmen.

  I imagine that it was bugged. And since people were chattier out of their natural environment the intel must be pouring in.

  There was a brand new silver Mercedes SL parked under the deck.

  The moon was out and I could read my watch without hitting the backlight. 12.20 now. Getting late. I walked around the ground floor looking for a way in but there was none.

  You had to go up the steps and enter from the first level.

  The stairs were sparkled with frost so I gripped the hand rail and took them cautiously.

  The deck had sliding French doors, large plate-glass wraparound windows and a view to the south-west of Lake Como and to the north, between two mountains, the 4000 metre-tall Piz Bernina.

  The view, the mountains, the chalet, Freddie and his scary pals – the whole thing had a Berchtesgaden vibe circa 1939.

  At the top of the steps I took out the knife and the cap gun. I weighed the two options. “Aye, let’s try the bluff, Freddie will appreciate that,” I said to myself.

  I pulled on a pair of leather gloves and reshouldered the backpack.

  I walked round the deck, looked in through the glass windows and saw Freddie standing there in front of a large TV set. He had videoed an Inter Milan match on his Betamax and he was fast forwarding through the game in search of goals.

  I took a step backwards and retraced my steps around the deck until I came to a door.

  I had brought my lock-pick kit but when I turned the handle and pushed, the door opened.

  I stepped cautiously inside.

  I took off the rucksack and set it down on a tiled floor. I removed the note I had written on the plane and looked again at the cap gun. Was it convincing? We’d soon see.

  I walked through a large, modern kitchen illuminated by night lights.

  I pushed the kitchen door and tiptoed my way along a hardwood corridor until I made it to the enormous living room.

  Freddie was sitting now, watching and rewatching a beautiful goal by a blond-haired Inter player.

  “Lovely stuff,” Freddie kept repeating to himself.

  I slipped behind Freddie’s reclining leather chair.

  The knife would have done just as well.

  I shoved the cap gun against Freddie’s ear.

  “What the—” he began.

  I put my finger to my lips and still keeping the cap gun in his ear, handed him the note.

  He looked at me and read the note. It said: “Turn off all the recording equipment and make no sound until you do so.”

  Freddie was reassured by this. It told him that I was a reasonable, forward-thinking young man, not a nutcase bent on some vendetta.

  He nodded. I took one step backwards keeping the cap gun pointing at him and letting the sleeve of my jacket droop over it so that he wouldn’t get a good look at it.

  He got to his feet and pointed to a door at the end of the living room. I gave him the OK sign.

  We walked into his study and he turned on the light.

  There was no tremble in his gait and he didn’t look frightened in the least. I didn’t like that and it put me on my guard.

  The study was small, with a desk and a few metal filing cabinets.

  There were signed pictures on the wall.

  Freddie with Vanessa Redgrave. Freddie with Senator Ted Kennedy.

  He pointed at the desk and began walking towards it. I shoved the gun in his back and he froze. I pushed him to the ground, stepped over him and opened the desk drawer.

  The gun in the drawer was a Beretta 9mm.

  I checked that it was loaded and put the cap pistol back in my pocket.

  Freddie sighed.

  “Can we speak now? There’s no tape going. It’s not turned on, is it? I mean, what’s the point? It’s just me here,” Freddie said.

  “Show me,” I said.

  He got to his feet and looked ruefully at the gun barrel of his own pistol aimed at his chest. He pulled open the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets.

  “Look in there,” he said. “If it was recording, the spools would be going round, wouldn’t they?”

  I looked in the filing cabinet.

  Two enormous spools of tape on an expensive looking recording device.
r />   The thing was evidently turned off and the spools were not going round.

  Of course there could have been a back-up somewhere in the house.

  “Is there a back-up? The truth now, Freddie,” I whispered to him.

  “Back-up? That one cost two grand. Those cheap bastards are not going to install a bloody back-up, are they?” he said with an attempt at levity.

  I tried to impart the seriousness of my question with a waggle of the Beretta.

  “No! There’s no back-up. This is it.”

  I believed him.

  We returned to the living room.

  I switched off the TV.

  I motioned him to sit down in the leather recliner and I sat on the glass coffee table opposite him.

  “Talk,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Tell me everything.”

  24: THE WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

  That sleekit handsome hatchet-face broke into a grin. “What do you wanna know?”

  “What happened on Christmas Eve, 1980?” I asked.

  “With Lucy, you mean?” he asked.

  “Aye. With Lucy. The train. The aborted abortion.”

  “You know about that?” he asked, surprised.

  “You got her pregnant and there was only one way out of it. The abortion special. Ferry to Larne, train to Glasgow. One night in the hospital. Back for Christmas Day.”

  His left cheek twitched, the first minute chink in that force field of confidence. We’re all projecting multiple images of ourselves all the time but for Freddie it must be so much harder to maintain the likeness …

  “Her mum decided to get the Belfast train and she was looking for Lucy at the Barn Halt but she didn’t see her because Lucy was on the other platform, wasn’t she? The Larne side. She was going to Larne,” I said.

  “She was. Lucy saw her mother stick her big bonce out the train window and the poor girl almost had a heart attack.”

  “What did she do? Hide in the shelter?”

  “She hid in the shelter until the train left. But that was where it all fell apart. Seeing her mother really spooked her. We’d arranged to go to Scotland together on the boat train. I got off the train at Barn Halt but of course she wasn’t bloody there. She was supposed to meet me on the platform but she’d got cold feet. I knew she’d bottled it. She finally came to see me and I suppose I should have ended it there and then but she was bawling her eyes out and I felt sorry for her.”