Read Online In the Morning I'll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty - Free Book Online Page A

population . . .” she said, and smiled.
    “Well, get in. It’s probably best if you don’t say anything. I’ll introduce you as . . . Not sure that I caught your second name?”
    “Use my mother’s maiden name. Randall.”
    “OK. I’ll say that you’re Detective Constable Randall but if you speak with an English accent the jig will be up.”
    “I can do an Irish accent. My father’s old Anglo-Irish gentry.”
    I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you’re great but it’s probably best if you keep your gob closed.”
    She got in the car.
    “ Your parents live around here, don’t they?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “We can drop in on them if you want.”
    “I don’t want.”
    “Gosh, you’re all business, aren’t you?”
    “Aye, I’m all business. When I’m on a case I’m on a case.”
    I fumbled in my cassette box and put on the B side of Kind of Blue .
    Miles Davis is usually a way in to someone’s musical background, but Kate didn’t object, hum along, or make any other comment. Instead it was the same intense, stony “I’m just stepping outside for a moment” stiff upper lip.
    I wasn’t impressed. She was trying too hard.
    We drove along the busy A2 to Portstewart. The rain was elemental and you couldn’t see a thing—a shame, because on a fair day this was the most attractive part of the coast. I kept us on the road through Coleraine and Limavady, where I finally stopped at a little café I knew.
    “Are you hungry?” I asked Kate.
    “I might be,” she said, looking skeptically at the place, which was just a bog-standard roadside joint.
    “They do a mean Ulster fry when Suzanne’s working and you can always tell when Suzanne’s working because her Vincent Black Shadow is parked outside.”
    “Is that thing over there a Vincent Black Shadow?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is the fry the specialty of the house?” Kate asked.
    “Aye.”
    “I’ll try it, then.”
    “My treat,” I insisted.
    We went inside. I ordered two Ulster fries and two teas. I grabbed an Irish News and a Newsletter and we sat in a booth by the window. I read the sports news and Kate the proper news.
    Our fries came: potato bread, soda bread, pancakes, eggs, thick pork sausages, fatty bacon, black pudding—all of it pan cooked in beef dripping.
    “I don’t think I can eat this,” Kate said.
    “And a round of toast!” I yelled to Suzanne.
    Kate nibbled at the toast but I needed to get some weight on so I got most of the fry down my neck.
    The rain hadn’t let up so we ran out to the car, almost going over into the mud. We drove on and were in Derry just after ten.
    For the thousand years before the Normans had come to Ulster late in the twelfth century this had been the territory of the O’Neills, a particularly fierce and independent people. The English settlers had renamed the city Londonderry and survived a famous siege in 1690 by King James’s Catholic armies. After 1690 east of the Foyle had remained a Protestant, English city and west of the river had become Catholic Derry. The city, tragically, had remained divided between Catholic and Protestant ever since. We drove into the Catholic Bogside, which can be an intimidating place for outsiders what with the IRA murals and the maze of estates. Not for me, though, even though I was a peeler and they would have kidnapped and killed me at the drop of a hat. I had gone to school here and I knew the town and its ways inside and out. It was good to be back, in fact. Belfast would never feel like home, but Derry . . . yeah, I could handle Derry.
    We drove through the Shantallow Estate with its rows of grey houses, street urchins, bonfires, burnt-out cars, and welcoming AK-47 motifs on every gable. Then it was across the A515 to the Lenamore Road and the Ardbo Estate.
    Just a mile from the border with Donegal in the Irish Republic, this place was basically unpoliceable. The RUC and the British Army claimed that there weren’t any no-go areas in Northern Ireland but I’d be