Blood Will Be Born

by Donnelly, Gary

  ‘Last night I didn’t know I had a pension owed, and you just made me a rich man. You best think hard money man, or get ready to hurt hard. I’ll leave you here to squeal and die slowly,’ said Fryer.

  ‘Dempshey, Dempshey sold you out John. Not Jusht when he put you in the Heighsts, before, before. He shet you up with the British. He wanted you gone, said it wash time for peace, time for peace…’ said the Accountant, his voice beginning to drift off. He was losing consciousness, Fryer prodded him in the mouth, felt the sodden tissue paper give under the pressure of his finger tip. The Accountant jolted back to life again, started crying, pleading.

  So he’d been right about Dempsey; the bastard had hung him out to dry, but not before Fryer had done enough carnage to make the whole place so war sick all sides were ready for peace. The irony of it, it made his blood boil. But this was not it, the thing Dempsey tried to sell. If he’d told Fryer this, he would have been a dead man anyway.

  ‘There’s more. Tell me my business, and I’ll leave. My word,’ he said, salt grains sprinkling like fine snow on the floor from his fist. The Accountant’s eyes darted left and right, that clever fucking brain of his working overtime now for John Fryer. Then his eyes lit up, his eyebrows raised. He had something.

  ‘You have kin, John, there is blood that is yours, family that you don’t know about,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ asked Fryer.

  ‘You have a granddaughter,’ said the Accountant.

  And just like that, all at once, it was true. He did; Fryer had a grandchild, he felt it, as fully as though he had been in the waiting room in the hospital and received the news from a nurse.

  The Accountant quickly mapped it out. Kieran’s child, he’d got a dark woman pregnant, she had been deported, and then Kieran had died.

  ‘What’s her name?’ said Fryer. His heart was racing, but for the first time in so many years it was not from fear, or hate.

  ‘Ava, the child’s name is Ava,’ he replied.

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘No idea,’ said the Accountant. Fryer raised the salt.

  ‘But I know where she ish today,’ he said. He told Fryer her could find her at the Culturlann, the Irish language centre on the Falls Road, not half a mile from where Fryer now stood. The Accountant said the child had been spotted in the area, she stood out after all. Her stepmother was a peeler. People talked.

  Fryer nodded, that much was true. He let the salt cascade to the floor. Ava, it was a beautiful name. He set the Accountant’s mobile beside him. With a little luck he would be able to make the 999 call before he passed out. Fryer took the plastic bag with the money and headed for the exit. He cast one furtive glance into the darkest reaches of the storage room, and flicked the last grains of salt on his hand over his left shoulder before he left.

  Chapter 5.

  Fryer’s scanned the pavement outside the Culturlann, a converted sandstone Presbyterian Church, one hand on the plastic bag filled with cash on the passenger seat next to him. This was Ava’s money, and she was going to have it. He would meet her as she arrived. Today he was going to call himself a friend, an old friend who had lost touch with the family. He would hand her the bag, tell her it was for her, her and nobody else. He wanted to see her expression change when she saw the money. Then he would smile back at her and walk away, but he could be in touch, this was only the beginning. Ava was Kieran’s baby, and Kieran had kept Fryer safe in the dead of night, a light in the darkness. The Moley could never touch him. It would be the same with Ava. This was Fryer’s second chance; to be a grandfather, and to break the Moley’s curse at last. He would defeat it with Ava, his blood, but this time there was no need to spill it.

  Movement, as the doors leading into the Culturlann opened from within. A young woman carried out a metal sign advertising coffee and stood it at the entrance. Fryer checked his rear mirror, saw a convoy of traffic, including one black taxi, turn the corner at the Royal Victoria Hospital and drive towards him. A few pedestrians were walking from the same direction, older, not children. He turned his attention to the road ahead; saw what he was waiting for. A group of three little girls approached, a woman with them, on a mobile phone. One child was a ginger, proper carrot head, pale and a face full of freckles. Fryer disregarded her, focused his attention on the girl beside her. Fryer laughed, his eyes wide, taking in every detail of her face as she came closer. It was her, this was Ava. She was so swarthy, skin the colour of caramel, accentuated by the light blond hair that was held in two curly bunches on either side of her head. They were full of chatter, all three speaking at the same time.

  Fryer shook his head in disbelief, reached for the bag full of cash beside him. This was just a down payment. He would find more for this child, he would provide for her, give her what he was never able to give Kieran. And be there in a way he had never been for that boy. He glanced back at the road ahead. They were closer. He gazed at Ava, the buttery smoothness of her beautiful skin; the child actually glowed.

  ‘Like an angel,’ said Fryer to the inside of the taxi, and opened the door. As he did so, his eyes rested for the first time on the third kid in the group.

  He stopped.

  Fryer’s heart kicked and his stomach dropped. He knew that face, seen her before, recently. She had black hair that bounced in ringlets at her shoulders.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Fryer, feeling hope drain away like blood in a sink. The girl was Dempsey’s granddaughter. She must be Ava’s friend. He recognised her face from the photograph on the fridge the night before. Dempsey’s words in his mind:

  That’s my granddaughter, she is nine. Her name is-

  And his reply: I don’t need to know her name.

  Same child, there was no doubt about that. Fryer looked down at his hand on the bag. There was blood caked under his nails. The lines on his knuckles stood out like etchings. Fryer could hear the children’s chatter, very near. He let go of the bag and closed the door. He couldn’t meet her with this blood on his hands. And he could never explain to this child why Dempsey deserved to die the way he had.

  Jim Dempsey, the bastard had fucked him over yet again.

  Fryer watched the girls skip into the Culturlann and pass out of sight, and then in his mind’s eye he watched the true story of how things would pan out if he got out of the taxi and approached a nine year old girl offering money. Someone would call the peelers, and they would come fast. He racked his mind for another way, but each scenario ended the same. Even if he managed to speak to her alone, Dempsey meant he had to build on lies. The truth was he could never be a part of her life. He was good for nothing; just an old dog that had been trained to kill, but now long past its prime.

  Fryer twisted the key in the ignition and gunned the engine, felt the vibration hum in his hands and scarred fore arms as he pulled away without indicating or checking his mirrors. He clenched his jaw, did not look back. Fryer drove up the Falls, took the taxi down the Donegall Road, Bangor bound. There was an ambulance outside the 7/11. He slowed to a stop as a tattered old man tottered out in front of the taxi. Fryer looked at Ava’s money, thinking, then revved the engine to life and turned the taxi into one of the side streets.

  He stopped minutes later, engine still running, outside McKenna’s house, suddenly unsure. He grabbed the money bag and padded over to the front garden. He opened the blue recycle bin and dropped the bag inside, left the lid yawning. Fryer mounted the steps to the front door and gave it three hard bangs with the flat of his fist, turned and jogged back to the taxi and drove off. He stopped a hundred yards down the street, made sure he could see her house in his mirror. It took her a while but eventually the front door opened. She looked like death, even from that distance. She stared around; turned to go back inside, then noticed the open recycle bin and went to it. She passed out of Fryer’s line of sight. He waited, counted the seconds, the idling engine buzzing in his hands.

  He saw her. She climbed the steps. She had the bag, she had the money. Good.
Fryer found first gear and moved off, still watching. He wanted to see her face, maybe a smile. Then he would know; he had done something good. She stared up the street, looked directly at the back of Fryer’s taxi, where the blue exhaust smoke chuffed out and rose into the air. Something was wrong, she wasn’t happy. She was weeping. In that moment, she looked like her son, after Fryer had smashed him in the face. Fryer jammed his foot on the accelerator, the tyres screeched, he sped off, but not fast enough.

  ‘Come on, you stupid old cunt ye, COME ON!’ screamed Fryer, but it was no use. The taxi moved in slow centuries and he could feel her eyes burn judgement into him, as he cursed himself for being so old and so stupid.

  Chapter 6.

  ‘Daddy?!’

  Christopher awoke in a mess of bed clothes, his cheeks wet. He stared wide eyed at the bedroom door. His Daddy was hanging there, dressed in full uniform; his heels drummed the back of the door as he convulsed. Drum drum drum. Christopher closed his eyes; the memory of his awful dream replaced the terrible vision before him, his nightmare still raw and lurid.

  Bad Daddy had been drumming there too, but this time it was the kitchen table, the one where they used to eat their breakfast together, after Daddy returned from night shift, when he was a little boy. He was drumming the beat of an Irish jig with his hands on the table, the way he did when he wanted Christopher to do his impression of River Dance. Daddy used to laugh, but in the dream he wasn’t laughing.

  Rap and pat, rap and pat, rap and rap and rap and pat, went his hands on the table.

  His face was blue and swollen, black puffed eyes, one already popped from its socket and resting on his cheek. The same way Daddy had looked the day Christopher had come home from school and found him swinging from the bannister. In his dream, he was smiling horrifically, the jelly of his popped eyeball jiggling as he rapped and slapped the table top. A trickle of blood was running from his raw socket, and had started to drip off his chin, dark and black, into his bowl of cornflakes. Round his neck, Christopher could see the rope from his dressing gown; it had cut deeply into his flesh.

  In the dream, Daddy was having a bit of trouble with his voice. He was mouthing words he could no longer say through vocal chords which had been crunched like wafers in a paper bag. But Christopher understood. The same thing he had said, all those years before:

  Let’s dance.

  Let’s dance.

  Let’s dance.

  From under the sheet Christopher heard Daddy’s feet drum again and he moaned. Another drum, drum, drum, but this time from the window, not the door. Christopher peeked out. The blind swayed in the light wind, the balsa wood stick that kept its base rigid tipped to one side and then clanked against the sill; drum, drum, drum. Not Daddy’s heels after all, it did not even sound remotely like it. Christopher let the sheet fall off him, looked again at the bedroom door. Just a layered mound of towels, his dressing gown over them, arms hung loosely on each side.

  Christopher kicked off the bed clothes, made his way to the bathroom and relieved himself in the rust stained bowl. At the sink his red ringed eyes returned his gaze from the circular shaving mirror. The blonde stubble that has covered the point of his chin and lined his top lip was longer now than the hair on his recently shaved head. He picked up the disposable razor from beside his frayed headed tooth brush but dropped it. It could wait. His beard would not grow much thicker than this, no matter how long he left it.

  Movement in the room behind him, caught in the mirror. Christopher spun round; room was empty, nothing there. In the corner was an empty chair against the door leading to the copper boiler. Beside it a busted plastic mesh laundry basket, empty, but rocking on its side; like it had just been knocked over. Christopher watched as it very slowly rolled first to the left, then back to the right.

  He laughed, not a spasm, just a scoff, but his heart now skipped along like he had just finished a fair paced run. He turned back to the sink, slowly adjusted the shaving mirror, and pointed it at the corner and the chair. Still empty, but before it had been occupied. Somebody had been sitting there, he’d caught just a glimpse; the pressed crease of a pair of bottle green police uniform trousers, and the buffed tips of a pair of best parade shoes, catching the morning light. His eyes left the empty chair, returned to meet his tired reflection.

  Bad dreams and Bad Daddy, and things were getting worse. John Fryer the common denominator. Fryer had tried to bring a killer dog into Christopher’s home, why would he want to do such a thing? Christopher had no answer, but what he did know, was John Fryer would rather see him dead than that fat dog, he’d read it in his eyes. Perhaps, he would rather see Christopher dead, full stop? And what would happen when their mission was over, after Fryer had planted a bomb at Jim Dempsey’s funeral, and when Christopher had done the same to Uncle Cecil and the Orange Order on the 12th of July? There would be chaos, of course. But what would he do with John Fryer?

  From downstairs, the sound of the front door closing, keys dropped on the table. Moments later the acrid whiff of a freshly lit cigarette. John had gone out, but now he was back. Christopher returned to his bedroom, dressed and headed downstairs. As he walked past the open bathroom door, he stopped, but didn’t turn round to look into the very empty room. Even though he knew what he heard. The unmistakable creak of a chair leg moving, followed by the thin rasp of the plastic laundry basket’s rim rolling in a half circle on the linoleum floor. He knew who had moved it. A figure dressed in a creased uniform, with urine darkened crotch. Bad Daddy, no longer confined to his dreams, a terrible apparition drawn by the man sitting downstairs. Christopher walked slowly, heart racing, a decision made.

  Their mission was on, but John Fryer must not return.

  John Fryer was seated in the same spot he’d occupied the night before. Christopher bid him good morning. Fryer grunted in response, refused his offer of a cup of tea. The ash tray was full of squashed roll up butts next to the Armalite on the dining room table, same as before. But there was something else, something different. Fryer’s fingers were stained dark with dried blood. And next to his Armailte, was a tight roll of what looked like 100 Euro notes. Christopher forgot about his morning brew, pulled out a chair and sat down.

  ‘Trouble, John?’ he asked. Fryer raised his eyes, looked tired, no beyond that, utterly defeated.

  ‘Don’t worry about it kid,’ he said. Christopher reached for the roll of cash, felt its dry weight in the palm of his hand, before John Fryer’s fat paw pinned it to the table, the money beneath. Christopher reluctantly let go of the cash, pulled his hand free. Fryer let him go, but he enclosed his fist round the wad.

  ‘That’s my pension money,’ he said. Christopher nodded as though he understood, eyed the roll, tried to calculate how much it was. ‘This must have fallen outa the bag,’ said Fryer, his voice bleak and emotionless. The bag? Christopher licked his lips, his thoughts a fireworks display of many explosions, but together, this could be the perfect finale. Whatever had happened this morning, it had beaten John Fryer into a new man. A man, almost, without any fight left. That was a John Fryer he could do business with, the same man he’d met in the Heights and got talking, who’d agreed to follow him. This was a man who just might see the need for a change of plan, a kamikaze mission; do not pass GO, and do not collect £200. Or Euros. Christopher pulled his eyes off the money. The wad was thick enough to fill Fryer’s hand.

  ‘Do you need my help?’ he asked, voice full of concern. Fryer sighed, shook his head, and then, beautifully, he started to talk. He told Christopher about his morning adventure, the Accountant, the money, the gems in the well. By the end, Christopher’s mouth was dry.

  ‘That bastard Dempsey betrayed you throughout your whole life. He deserved everything he got John,’ he said. Christopher reached over the table, squeezed John Fryer’s billowing shoulder. This was it. The perfect time to reel the big fish in, he had him on the hook. ‘There’s a way we can get closer, be sure to wipe them all out, John. But it means we don’t c
ome home,’ said Christopher quietly. John Fryer did not reply. Christopher kept going, explained the plan. He waited, expecting Fryer to tell him to go to Hell. But instead the man shrugged, pushed his chair from the table, shuffled towards the stairs. With his back to Christopher, he replied.

  ‘I’ll do it. Don’t care anymore.’ Christopher smiled, glanced at the table. The wad of cash was gone; John Fryer had it in one hand, the gun in the other, a dead man walking up the stairs one step at a time, wearing his expensive trainers.

  ‘What happened to the bag?’ asked Christopher, keeping his voice conversational. Fryer paused, did not turn.

  ‘I gave it away. I owed it to somebody,’ he said, then kept going. Christopher sat at the table, listened to the toilet flush, and John’s bedroom door close. He may not be able to get his hands on that bag, but he knew, roughly, where the so called well was Fryer told him about. You could get old maps on the Internet, he would find it; watch as Belfast burned below him. And then, who could say? With that sort of money a man could start again. When he was finished with Belfast and John Fryer, he could find another palace of hypocrisy that needed torn down. With the funds, he could make anarchy his life’s mission. Daddy’s voice, clear and true, gave him a jolt.

  He’s asleep son, let’s pay a visit to the Culturlann, and make that donation to the Irish language.

  Christopher quietly carried the materials he needed from the armoury downstairs, starting with the heavy canisters of petrol. The garage was cool and smelled of old oil and creosote. He could also smell the bitter sweet marzipan odour of the Nobel 808 that he set down carefully on the surface of the scarred wooden workbench. Not many tools, just an old screwdriver, and a pair of tarnished wire cutters.