‘Breathe,’ they said.
He thought he heard Freya’s voice, someone trying to fob her off, and he wanted to explain that she was smarter than all of them put together, that if anyone could help him it was her.
‘How old are you?’ the paramedic said. Kindness. Hair. A big blurry nose into which all her other features fell. He adored her for speaking so softly.
‘Forty-five,’ he tried to say, but the number was muffled by the mask. He said it again and the pain in his veins was amazing. Everyone standing around looked huge. He was scared of all the ways they might hurt him.
Lying here undressed in the hotel with five or six people managing his movements, every illusion of power and privacy vanished. He was a dust mote among them. A zero, a speck. They made comments he couldn’t respond to. They moved the canister and it knocked his knee.
Tongue-tied. He never knew what the phrase meant until now. All bets were off. All hands to the pump. Took the clichés right out of my mouth.
‘How old are you?’
Four, five.
‘We need to know that you know.’
His eyes started to close. Shut out the world. Thin dreams through which his father’s voice rippled along with his Uncle John’s. A little to-and-fro joke the two of them liked to do in their unexplained mock-American accents.
What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy, Tom?
I don’t know, John, and I sure as hell don’t care.
Someone slapped his face. He heard a voice much like his own mumbling the word ‘Promotion’.
‘What did he say?’ they said.
The pretty paramedic asked what he’d had for breakfast. Did she mean his first breakfast or his second? She asked him who the Prime Minister was. Margaret Thatcher! She’s coming to stay! She asked him what year it was. ’84! ’84! She asked if he had any pets. No. She said she owned a small brown dog. Her dog was called Potato.
As the light withdrew from the room he thought: I wish I’d had another child, a son, what would the son I never had be doing now? And then he thought: I could love a woman with a dog called Potato. A woman with a dog called Potato could be exactly what I need.
PART TWO. THE FLIGHT OF A DIVE, 1979–1984
I
DAN’S FIRST OP for the Provos was in darkness, an alley off the Falls Road, half a decade before Dawson would ask him to become Roy Walsh. He was crouched with his back against a rough brick wall and a man called Colum Allen was beside him. Colum was sometimes called Hallion or Hallinan or the Welsh Saint, the last of these nicknames persisting despite his energetic claims to have no Welsh in him at all. He was tall and thin with a great vein forking up the left side of his neck. Even in the dim you could see it flickering. It moved whenever he spoke, which was always. His leg jerked up and down. Punching his palm was a frequent hobby too. Nodding his head. Biting his fingernails. Humming. Singing. Some of the many daily ways Colum relieved the pressure of being Colum.
‘Predetermined is what it is.’ Colum’s voice was a quick whisper. ‘Last time was unlucky, isn’t it? Whole season unlucky. Fuckers this season are on the ropes. Inevitable. Fuckers home in an ambulance. Fuckers been lucky. Got a destiny that’s not what they think, to be sure.’
Chance and fate, Dan had started to see, were a great preoccupation of guys engaged in reckless deeds. He didn’t trust Colum to do a good job. Didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut after. It was exhausting to think of all the ways he didn’t trust him and why had they been paired together? Dawson kept telling Dan he’d be able to work soon with Patrick. Kept telling him Patrick was too well known to the authorities now — couldn’t be the face of operations, only the brains, needed help. Dawson kept saying Dan and Patrick would make a great team one day, but here he was, teamed with Colum Allen, talking football.
‘Agree with sacking Steiny? How could a man. How could. But a man gets no silverwear for the Celtic, his history is history, isn’t it? Fuckers got short memories is what they’ve got. Anyway —’ he coughed — ‘this your debut, is it?’
Dan stood for a moment to grant some relief to his legs, then went back to crouching and squinting. Occasional shapes animated the gloom at the end of the alley. Occasional voices too. There was advance word of RUC raids happening here tonight. The idea was for Dan and Colum to disrupt the raids as much as possible. They had gear on the ground in two zipped bags.
Nerves. When Dan was nervous he didn’t gibber or fiddle with his hands like Colum. Instead, basic questions surfaced. Such as: What am I doing here? Or: Will I end up with a bullet in my brain? Another cool wind was picking up grit. They waited.
‘Paddy’s your man, is he?’
Dan was silent. Disconcerting to think a guy as simple as Colum could have a read on your thoughts.
‘Internment, was he?’
‘Yeah,’ Dan said. ‘I think so.’
‘Whole year?’
‘No idea.’
‘Two?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Fuckers keep their secrets.’
He knew exactly how long Patrick had been interned by the Brits without trial. But he’d also learned that it was unwise to give your facts away for free. Sharing less — sometimes less than was decent — made the other person uncomfortable. In an uncomfortable silence, people gave you more of themselves. The RUC had apparently come at dawn to pick Patrick up. The whine of the Saracens, bulky six-wheeled monsters, being slipped into a low gear. A dimmed stage, black vehicles, blackened faces, not unlike the expected scene tonight; the occasional white blotch from a Catholic paint bomb. The whole of your life in Belfast was organised around light and dark, visibility and invisibility, silence and sound, information and secrecy, the private rubbing up against the public and making you feel tired. None of this Dan said to Colum.
‘Heard about your initiation,’ Colum said. ‘Aye. The dogs. That one’s getting nice and famous. Though I expect he was only preparing Your Majesty for obstacles others might raise.’
Don’t give in, Dan thought. But he gave in. ‘What did you hear?’
Colum grinned and scratched his neck, staring at the ground as if it were the future. ‘Other option, course, is he just wanted to give you nightmares. Dawson McCartland’s nice like that. Fuckers love a good nightmare.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘My first time? They gave me a wee gun and an address and that was that.’
‘I won’t be doing any of that stuff.’
‘What?’
‘House calls.’
‘Ha,’ Colum said, and allowed himself an unusual pause. ‘Demoralises the police, stiffing them at home. Shows all the other police there’s no place that’s their own to relax, they said. Hadn’t even occurred. I was even younger than you, probably. I was seventeen. So I’m realising quick I’m going to have to get a ride into an Orangies’ area. And I’m realising a certain amount of planning needs to be done for the runback, though I’ve got only a day to do it. So the day comes and I’m wearing a Rangers badge, right? Though it kills me, so it does. And I’m wearing a pair of Beatle boots I got hold of from a fat lad. And all the while they’re not telling me much about this guy I’m going to stiff or any real advice, tips if you will, but I’m used to that, aren’t I? Grandfather used to be an Ulster fiddler, a virtuoso in Donegal — really. Took an awful reddener when he forgot his music one day. None of those fiddler men would let you in on their performance practices, no way; that’s what I’m sayin’. It’s a similar thing. So anyway, I go and stiff the guy and his wife comes screaming into the hall, looking at the pool of blood. Cool as anything I was. Just did the thing and left.’