The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

Author:Adrian McKinty
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Published: 2012-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

13: HE KISSED ME AND IT FELT LIKE A HIT

I waited in a gutted living room among the rats and human excrement, drug paraphernalia and dead pigeons. Outside the rain was pouring so hard it was as if hate rather than gravity was sucking it down to Rathcoole.

I had a perfect view of the snooker hall and the sad little strip mall. Only the bookie was doing any business but that wasn’t surprising with the Derby coming up and the beautiful bay stallion Shergar, even at 1-6, a horse to bet your pension on.

Evening.

The scene at the snooker hall began to wind down and Billy drove off in his Merc at seven on the zero zero. Shane came out at 7.01 with a leather jacket over his head in lieu of a raincoat. I turned up the collar on my mac and followed him at a discreet distance, into the estate, along the Doagh Road, through Abbots Cross (the very place where Bobby Sands had been born) past Whiteabbey Hospital and down the Station Road.

He stopped at the station bar for a drink. I followed him inside and got a whiskey against the cold. The local news was on. The murder of Tommy Little and Andrew Young was now the sixth lead. No one was interested. I wondered if that would piss off our killer. Perhaps he’d go bigger or perhaps he’d take his game over the water where it would play better. The story ran for less than a minute and that included another incendiary remark from Councillor George Seawright who said that homo-sexuals should be shipped to an island in the Atlantic and left to starve to death.

Shane finished his drink, bought a book of matches and left by the side door.

I waited ten beats and went out after him.

Several times Shane looked back to see if he was being tailed, but he never checked the far side of the street, two hundred yards behind. There were many ways to shake a tail and he knew none of them. “Who do you think’s after you, Shane, my lad? Or is just the dark you’re afeared of?”

He turned left on the Shore Road and walked a good quarter of a mile to Loughshore Park, a pleasant little bit of greenery right on the water. We were nearly at the University of Ulster now but instead of doing the obvious and turning up the Jordanstown Road or going straight on, he cut across the busy Shore Road and went to the public toilets at the park.

I waited for him to come back out.

He didn’t come back out.

The wind was whipping up the boats in the lough and forcing spray onto the highway. It was freezing and the rain was running down the back of my neck.

I saw that there was an exit to the toilets on the park side so I crossed over the Shore Road and waited under the branches of a small confederacy of white oak trees.

At least with the rain there will be no rioting tonight, I said to myself.

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