Blood Will Be Born

by Donnelly, Gary

  Sheen sighed, reached into his jacket and took out his wallet. They had taken the long way round, but had got there all the same. Every grass he had ever hooked in, every low life and bottom feeder prepared to talk about the big fish; money. It always came down to money with these people.

  ‘Not here. Later,’ hissed black top.

  Sheen looked up at black top, his eyes wide and surprised, innocence melting across his features. He slipped his wallet back into his jacket and the twins set two empty pint glasses on the bar. The newspaper on the end of the bar shuffled gently once more. Sheen could feel eyes on him, but when he stole a glance to the right, the paper was like a wall.

  ‘We’ll go, this way,’ said white top. He started towards a door with an unlit exit sign over it, at the end of the bar. Sheen hesitated. How many fools had left Belfast pubs during the troubles in the 1970s and ended up on butcher’s hooks, getting sliced to pieces? His Chief Inspector in London had a point; he needed to be careful digging round in Belfast’s history. Not all of it, maybe not any of it was his. He reached for his mobile: Time to call Gerard.

  ‘Uncle Mick’s place is only a street away, mate,’ said black top, gormless smile on his face.

  Sheen returned his phone to his pocket, took half a dozen steps and surveyed of his surroundings. He looked at the curving arm of the bar. The muffled sounds from the stalls rose and fell like waves. The barman was drying glasses, setting them in rows along the shelf above his head. All normal, he had nothing to worry about. White top banged the door open and strode through. Sheen could see what looked like a brick alley way beyond. It made sense. Twenty minutes, chat with Uncle Mick, a few quid, back in the hotel before Aoife could get suspicious.

  The door was slowly closed in white top’s wake. Sheen quickened his pace and pushed it open. He heard the broadsheet newspaper rustle once again from his right as he passed the solitary punter at the end of the bar before he stepped through the door, black top close enough behind him for Sheen to smell his beer breath. Sheen saw the bricked up exit over white top’s shoulder a second too late. He heard the door close.

  A hard knock exploded between his shoulders, full of force and like an enormous strike from a fat wooden mallet. Air forced from his lungs, he tumbled forward, feet tangled, the grey paving stones surged up to meet him, too fast. He raised an arm, a flash of heat exploded from his elbow, then numbness.

  His face was mashed into the paving; mouth was full of new wetness, warmer and bitterer than the aftertaste of the stout. He gasped for air, coughed as he inhaled wet warmth into his wind pipe, and sprayed the grey stone with blood. He had to react, now.

  Sheen rolled to the right, pulling the deadness of his right arm under him. Pavement grey rotated to bright sky, he hit a brick wall, black top loomed above him, an Eiffel tower of a man, eyes wide and livid, the closed over door of Muldoon’s useless fire exit behind him. He scrambled to his knees, eyes on black top. He stepped forward, ate up the small distance between them. Sheen braced to rise and slam into him with all he had, but a dense supernova of pain, silent and furious, exploded from his right kidney.

  He cried out, heard the music from the bar rise in volume momentarily as though in synchrony with his pain. The music dulled, his pain did not; a dull throb from Hell pulsed up his back, and through his pelvis, Sheen collapsed, head between his knees. It was white top, visible behind him, upside down and backing away. He launched toward Sheen, whose rear end waited. White top was the kicker, Sheen the ball.

  ‘Bust his hole!’ shouted black top, from Sheen’s right. Sheen watched him run in, blood from his split lip trickled up his sinuses, down the inside of his nose, building. It dropped and Sheen rolled his body to the right, jack in the box fast, his back screamed. White shirt’s toe connected with the brick wall hard enough to shower Sheen’s head in dust. The wall responded as only a wall will, reversing the force of the kick back through white top’s foot and back up his leg. The cry from white top was something between a professional tennis player serving an ace and a big game beast getting speared.

  He staggered back, pogoing like a one legged man dropped from the back of a train, and Sheen dragged himself up, hurled himself at him, gripped the upturned sole of white top’s boot, pushed. White stopped the one legged bogey and went flying. Sheen followed him up, used their shared momentum to make distance from black top, still behind him. White top crashed into a crate of empty beer bottles stacked two deep in plastic crates along the far wall.

  Sheen rounded on black top, his elbow slicing like a sickle. If black top had a blade Sheen was a dead man, his heart and vital organs open for the taking under his raised left arm. He needed black top to step in, otherwise Sheen would saw uselessly in thin air, probably unbalance. That would be bad. The twin was younger and stronger; Sheen’s back had felt like it was hit with a Range Rover. Thankfully, black top was also a mouth breather; he did not disappoint.

  He charged, and Sheen’s elbow connected precisely as planned with the ridge of black top’s nose. It cracked like a green twig in a camp fire. It sent him back, but not down. Sheen panted, more blood expelled from his mouth. Black top’s right arm vaulted out, like it was on a piston. His palm stuck to the brick wall and he steadied himself.

  Jesus Christ, that piece of meat could take a hit.

  His flat brown eyes went out of focus, but then rested on Sheen, full of hate. His nose, crooked as a hill street in San Francisco, oozed a single globule of blood. Black top’s tongue slowly appeared and licked it away, leaving a light red smear for a moustache. Probably concussed, but still moving for now, a good kick in the bollocks should finish him.

  White light flashed, like a clean, brilliant bed sheet pulled over his world. A tin whistle, screamed without melody, pitched at the top of a thousand lungs. He was Saul on the road to Damascus, blinded and falling, the white sheet turned grey and the screaming whistles faded, replaced by something else; slap, slap, slap, getting closer, as Sheen’s world turned from grey to black.

  The slap of his feet echoed up Dockview Parade as he sprinted after the ball, the sharp pant of his breath, the orange glow of the concrete street lamps, already on but it’s not yet fully dark. A car turns the corner up ahead and he darts up on the pavement, skips a few more strides out, lets it pass, then he’s back on the road, eye on the ball, Kevin will kill him if he loses the ball. Still, he slows, because the car screeches to a stop. A door slams and he hears the sound of feet, heavy, grown up strides, running away. Then the world turns white and when he looks up, he is down, dozens of small fires are burning on the road, and black snow falls on his hand.

  ‘Hey boy! You OK? Hey!’ Sheen blinked awake; saw the grey landscape of Muldoon’s back yard, his blood on the ground. Dockview Parade, the fires and the burning ball gone.

  ‘Alive at least you buck edgit.’ Sheen responded with a groan, yes he is alive, the pain tells him so. He opened his eyes, sees the man’s face, red cheeked, a brown tweed cap on his head, eyes furious looking and huge behind his thick lenses. The reek of beer from his breath wafts on Sheen. Sheen strained to place him; he has met this man before. But his mind is too slow.

  ‘Buck fucking edgit you,’ he said, then his face lifts away.

  ‘Yes I’m OK,’ said Sheen but this was far from true. Pain pounded from the back of his head like a meteor had struck. Pain pulsed from his right kidney, low and long, like a fat double bass string being played. Sheen groped the ground for purchase, raised up a few inches and collapsed on one elbow and ejected his cooked breakfast, the stout, everything he contained in an unholy stew of hot bile and sour foulness that projected over a beer keg and up the wall. At last he stood, his world in mescaline hyper colour, but head clear.

  The man stood, squat and stocky between him and the twins, it was the punter who was at the end of the bar, behind the paper. But also the same man Sheen met on the plane this morning, the one who recited Yeats, and who threatened him so politely. The old boy had probably just saved his life. S
heen stepped forward, time to even up the odds, explanations could wait.

  The twins were stood shoulder to shoulder, filled the width of the bricked up back yard in front of the old boy, both bristled as he approached. White top held a thick brown glass bottle by its neck, like a nightmare ice cream. Its base was a jagged mouth of protruding glass. That was what the bastard had hit him with. His head hurt like hell, but it could have been worse, a lot worse. One slice from the end of that bottle could have had an artery in his neck. Black top sported a brass knuckle duster on his right hand. Brass balls, worn and evil looking, protruded half an inch over the line of his knuckles. No wonder Sheen had hit the floor like a sack of coal when he’d thumped him from behind. If black top had have punched him in the back of the neck, Sheen would have been communicating with the world through blinking. Lucky, he had been very lucky again.

  The twins could stand the sight of their prey no longer. Both men moved at once, collided shoulders and came to an almost immediate standstill again. They looked at each other, black nodded to white who moved half a step forward, eating more distance between himself and the old boy and Sheen, the bottle in hand, shards facing out.

  ‘That’ll do you Nesbit,’ said the old boy. ‘Enough from the both of you. Drop that bottle-’

  ‘Fuck you off, old man,’ said white top. Then, to Sheen, as he inched forward, another half step, ’You’re a dead man, Brit, a dead ma-’

  It took place so fast that Sheen almost missed the move.

  The old boy, stock still until white top reached touching distance, seized his upheld hand, holding the broken bottle and twisted it away a fraction. He pushed up off the momentum, jabbed his head into white top’s face. Sheen heard a slap crack sound and watched white top’s head whip back, a spray of claret hit his twin in the same instant. White sagged, slack jawed, eyes dead like stones. His nose was now a snap for his brother’s. His long body loosened and turning to jelly.

  Black bellowed and swung the knuckle duster through a wide right at the old boy, round the slackening form of his brother. The old boy pulled out of the head butt and pushed white top’s arm up and back, the broken bottle held loosely, but still in play. The jagged mouth connected with black top’s right fist, breaking with a low clunk and crunch. The old boy dropped white top’s arm and stepped back. Black top let out a howl, hoarse and horrible, clutched his right arm in front of him and stared at it like it was a new species of monster. White top’s knees now gave way entirely and he collapsed in a limp pile, the crates broke his fall once again, face down, no movement.

  The brown bottle was embedded by the neck in the meat between black top’s thumb and index finger. Blood coursed from the wound, a fountain of red pumping down black top’s arm and dribbling to the concrete below. Sheen could hear it patter. Sheen reached in his pocket, searching for something to tie black top’s arm. He needed a tourniquet, he could bleed out.

  The old man stepped back and to the side, giving black top space. His anticipation, like his head butt, was perfectly timed. Black top staggered past, his ruined hand held aloft, knuckle duster now dark with blood. He blundered through the fire exit and back into Muldoon’s, and was gone. The whole dance, from the old boy’s first hit to black top’s bloody exit, had taken no more than ten seconds. Sheen returned his attention to white top. He was out cold. The old boy grunted as he heaved him free from the crates, and turned white top on his side, arm beneath his body, mouth open, tongue out.

  ‘That’s the recovery position. Good idea, you don’t want him swallowing his own tongue,’ said Sheen. The old boy straightened up.

  ‘Very clever, Seamus Heaney,’ he said. ‘Now maybe you can think of what I can tell their Uncle Mick, who happens to be a friend of mine?’ he said. The old boy walked past him, back into Muldoon’s. Sheen followed. His body cried out for mercy with each step and he could feel a tight egg at the back of his head. Sheen stopped, surveyed the damage, the vomit, and the blood on the floor. Maybe he did not speak the lingo here after all.

  Chapter 19.

  Aoife stared back at her own face, still projected on Cecil Moore’s big television screen, and reached out, groped the hard corner of the door, tried to steady herself on legs that had become boneless. She over balanced, stumbled, banged her head on the corner. The pain, searing and eye watering, fed her rising fury. She glared at Moore, reached for her weapon, lips pulled back in snarl.

  ‘You bastard!’ she screamed. She would kill him, shoot the fucker right here. Her finger moved from the guard to the trigger and she stepped forward.

  ‘Put that gun down,’ said Moore. His voice was calm, reasonable.

  ‘Down, I said. One push on this remote and that home video will be on the big screen down stairs. The regulars will be pissed off for the first ten seconds, but after that they’ll be queuing up for copies. They will get one too, whether that gun goes off or not, Nelson will see to it. You have three seconds,’ he said, then started counting.

  ‘One,’ said Moore.

  How had this happened? Did Charlie stitch her up, was he in on it? He wanted to tell her something yesterday at lunch, before she had walked off. She had been angry with him for being pissed and incoherent. No wonder the sod wanted to get blitzed, right now all she wanted was oblivion.

  ‘Two,’ he said.

  It was the drugs. Moore was the king pin for coke in Belfast. He must have got to Charlie through the drugs. One way or the other Charlie had brought this on himself, and now her. Pull the trigger now and Moore dies, but she would lose. Life in prison is no place for a copper, she’d be better eating her own gun, if she could get out of The Bad Bet alive. But what about Ava? The thought snapped her back to her senses. She holstered her gun.

  ‘Very sensible. You are a smart woman, and you will go far. Together, we will go far,’ he said.

  ‘You need your head examined,’ she said. ‘Just cos you made a dirty bloody video of me with a married man, you think I am going to be somehow beholden to you? Go ahead, show the pub, upload it for all I care,’ she said. Moore shrugged, nodded.

  ‘Getting caught at it might even do your career a bit of good. Drugs, on the other hand, now that takes it to a whole new level. You, DC McCusker, were not having a love affair with a married man, you were involved in a seedy drug and sex fling with a bent copper, and you know as well as I do what the press and your superiors will make of that. And I’d be surprised if they let you keep custody of that wee mulatto child you look after,’ said Moore. She ignored Moore’s racist comment. For now.

  Bent copper? So Charlie was in on it, from the start. Moore must have read her, no more poker face games now.

  ‘Ah now don’t you fret, your boyfriend didn’t know about the camera, but he worked for me, still does. Sick man that Donaldson, drugs and gambling, bad mix. Lots of debts, on both counts. I am the poison, and I am the remedy you see. In exchange I get a little information here and there, the greatest form of wealth, apart from good art that is!’ laughed Moore.

  ‘Which is where you come in, DC McCusker. See I wanted Charlie in Serious Crimes, but the poor fella has reached his use by date, no good. He told me not to worry, he told me he knew just the person, a woman, and a taig, no less. A ticket for promotion if ever there was one in these fucked up times we have found ourselves living in,’ he said.

  ‘I was promoted on my own merits,’ she said, sounding weak and unconvincing to her own ears.

  ‘Aye, keep on telling yourself that. Charlie was right about one thing, you’re a good peeler, maybe the last of them, no vice. Very hard to control that sort of asset,’ he said.

  ‘So I knew I needed a wee insurance policy, something to keep the peace pipe burning, DC McCusker. And now I have you, a friend no less, in Serious Crimes,’ he said. Tears, hot and hateful, filled her eyes, shaming her. She was trapped, career suicide and losing Ava on the one hand, throwing away every principle and becoming Moore’s bitch on the other. She was totally screwed. She looked at the awful still im
age still frozen on the screen.

  ‘How can I trust you? You have a thousand copies. All it takes is one to leak and it’s over,’ she said.

  ‘There is one copy and one copy only, this is it,’ he said, showing his mobile. ‘No hard drive copies, no USB copy, no online copy. You have my word,’ said Moore. ‘You don’t know if you can trust me, but you will. We need a professional understanding to work together, DC McCusker. If it leaks, the arrangement is null and void, you lose, I lose, the kid loses. So this stays with me at all times, and if I remain safe, so does our wee secret. If not..’ he tailed off.

  ‘Get that off the screen,’ she said.

  Moore did as she asked, football returned, sound muted.

  ‘Don’t worry, DC McCusker, this will work out fine, and don’t concern yourself that I will be making this thing my bedtime viewing, really not my taste.’ Aoife looked at this man who was blackmailing and threatening her, and whom she was powerless to oppose, and said nothing because right now, for the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to be powerless. Moore rummaged in his desk drawer, took out a cheap pay as you go Nokia mobile. He tossed, she caught.

  ‘We keep in touch,’ he said.

  ‘Once again, my take on Mother’s death. It was some looper Dissident from Ardoyne or the Bone across the way. Those Fenians are animals, you know? I want to hear that spoken in public, by you Aoife, before this day is out. A test of our new relationship. I want to hear on the evening news. Keep it simple. IRA filth, up to their old tricks.’ he said. She bit her bottom lip, eyes hot and wet, and stared at the painting on the wall, a woman with no head to think, no legs to run, prostrate and on public display. She nodded once, barely.

  ‘Good girl, now off you trot, the match has started. Rangers will get a hiding, but you never know your luck, the other scum might have a bad day,’ he said, breaking into a laugh now. She did as he bid, turned and walked out to the commentary of the match and Moore’s deep laugh. She floated down the passage, and down the stairs, a ghost in her own body, dead and beaten.