Blood Will Be Born

by Donnelly, Gary

‘Where does this take us?’ said Sheen. Gerard did not answer immediately. The road between them and the taxi shortened, then the black taxi pulled away again, swerving into the other lane, over taking two cars, no safe way for them to follow.

  ‘It takes you the long way round to north Belfast, or west, through Turf Lodge,’ shrugged Gerard. Despite everything he had been asked to do, he remained impassive, so cool. Sheen glanced at him, in a place where everyone had a past, for the first time he thought about what Gerard’s might be, almost certainly not an airport taxi driver.

  ‘Or up there,’ he said, nodding up at the green slope of the Black Mountain. The taxi hurtled across an intersection, through a set of red lights. A car in the cross section lane skidded to an emergency stop, giving Fryer clear passage, but the one coming from behind it was too slow; it smashed into the back of the stopped car and knocked it into the oncoming lane. More screeching tyres, and the bumped driver was now smashed from the front by an oncoming removal van. Horns blared, rubber burned, it was mayhem.

  Beyond the intersection, Sheen watched as Fryer’s taxi pulled off the main road, without slowing down, heading up an even steeper incline, to the foot of the mountain. He turned to Gerard, who nodded, eyes fixed on the road. They accelerated into the madness, but braked hard, barely avoided what happened next. A battered flatbed truck full of rusted scrap metal entered stage left and collided with the car that had first rear ended its neighbour into oncoming traffic. The momentum of the impact part crushed the rear of the car, but the flatbed kept coming, mounted it like a ramp, and was tipped up on two wheels for a second of sweet balance, before it crashed to earth. Its cargo of rusted metal smashed massively, spreading across both lanes. No way through it. Sheen strained to see beyond the rising dust, but the taxi had disappeared entirely from his sight.

  Chapter 10.

  Aoife sprinted hard, her mobile still held in one hand, her service weapon in the other. A small crowd of men were streaming out from the entrance of the protest camp on her left to where an ice cream van was parked on the kerb at the other side of the roundabout. A woman emerged from behind the van, screaming hysterically. Cecil was still at least twenty metres in front of her. She lost sight of him as he rounded the corner and disappeared behind the ice cream van. Seconds later she arrived, skidding to a stop, eyes wide.

  Left; a woman was flat on her back, a black blood halo spread on the pavement behind her head, eyes blank and open, dead. More people from the camp now arrived by her side, stood gawking. Splattered gore, red, mingled with milky grey, was slowly dripping to earth down the side of the van. The remains of any brains she might have had. Right; Cecil and his men, all panting hard, looking at the mess on the van and the dead woman. His bodyguard had a gun in his hand, but his face said he had not yet arrived. Dead ahead, a skinheaded man in a wheel chair with a gun in his right hand, and a bag on his lap. He was laughing, high and jagged, the only sound. His eyes were dancing, his jaw horribly askew. It was him, this was Christopher Moore. She stepped forward, gun raised and pointed at their killer.

  ‘PSNI! Drop your weapon, now!’ she shouted. Christopher’s eyes, unblinking and glittering, fixed on her. He was still laughing, and the gun was still in his hand. She took another step, her gun aimed at his centre of mass. Sheen’s words played in her mind.

  Don’t hesitate, take the shot.

  ‘Throw it down, Christopher, I will shoot you!’ she said. Her finger was on the trigger, part compressing it, her palm slick with sweat, his laughter spearing her ears. She took a breath and closed one eye, aimed for his heart.

  ‘Arrrrrhhhhhh! Bastard!!’ It was Cecil Moore, coming from her right. He charged at Christopher, head low like a bull, fists at his side. Christopher’s eyes flashed to him, the laughter still spilling forth. His expression transformed to one of pure salvation. He pointed his gun at Cecil.

  Aoife lunged into the gap between Cecil and Christopher, and squeezed the trigger. Her gun barked once, but the bullet entered the bag on Christopher’s lap with a hard thud. She squeezed again, a clean shot, Christopher rocked back in the wheelchair, his face contorted, then a flash of orange from the eye of his gun. Aoife had time to think that this was the first time she had shot anyone, and then she was kicked in the chest by an invisible race horse, stopping her dead. The air was driven from her lungs but she squeezed her trigger once more, felt her gun recoil. Christopher’s left shoulder exploded, leaving the fabric of his tee shirt frayed and smoking. He pointed his gun and it spat fire in slow motion. Aoife felt the horse kick her once more, left shoulder, and this time it turned her like a blow from a heavyweight fighter, the sound of the gunshot arriving just shy of the first blast of pain which exploded in her gut.

  Cecil barged into her, his body briefly in extreme close up, before his rough shove sent her down. Aoife landed on her side, skidded in the deposited slime that was running off the side of the ice cream van, then rolled and found herself beneath the iron undercarriage, looking up at its oily intestines. She turned, ignoring the white core of pain burning a hole through her centre. The world was a forest of feet, stampeding from right to left, and under the high pitched din in her ears, she heard their panicked cries and screams. They cleared as one and then it was Cecil on the screen, diving at Christopher Moore. Two shots snapped out, but Cecil did not stop, hands outstretched, going for Christopher’s neck. The chair with Christopher in it overturned, and Cecil followed.

  A super bright flash of white, blinding and sudden, filled her vision followed by a blast of heat searing her face, scalding her eyes. Aoife turned and rolled, pure reflex. An explosion roared out, the ice cream van rocked on its springs over her head and a hot wall of air shoved her, powerful as the piston of a car crusher. She was wedged deeper under the van, into the cleft between the kerb and the underside of the vehicle. She cried out, but could not hear her own voice over the blast. The force pushing her stopped and she felt crashing overhead, broken glass fell and danced in front of her eyes. Then there was only the distant whistle in her ears, her perforated ear drums mute to the world.

  *

  With it, the pain returned, crippling and awful in her stomach, a dull echo repeating in her ruptured shoulder. She touched her middle, her hand came back red. Her heart was rolling in her chest like a snare drum about to announce a magician’s prestige, but her head was light and weightless. She felt it rise up and start to float.

  Aoife gasped, and opened her eyes (she did not remember closing them, but she must have). Cecil, she had to get to Cecil Moore, find his phone. She rolled her body round and started to crawl, crying out in pain as the rough surface of the pavement beneath her scraped her stomach. She gritted her teeth, blinked away tears, kept crawling, used her right arm, the left a dead weight at her side.

  She emerged from under the van, chunks of windscreen glass embedded into her palm and lower arm. Three bodies to her right, Cecil’s men who were still wearing their Orange sashes, splayed on the pavement and not moving, blood coming from their ears. Ahead of her was a mini wasteland; a buckled wheel, half its rubber tyre burning, a smoking shoe, and a human leg, impossibly complete and naked lay across her path like an obscene hairy log. She did not stop, clambered over it, pulled her torso after her, feeling it roll both firm and soft beneath her. Aoife had her eyes fixed on the smoking remains of Christopher’s upturned chair, his hand protruding over the rim of the seat, held fast by the ring of a hand cuff. Cecil must be near.

  She reached the chair, her head now as weightless as a helium balloon and held only by the single hair of an angel. It strained to fly away from all of this horror. Christopher Moore was gone, only his arm remained, a thick branch of super white bone marking its end point. She looked to her left; saw him, his shaved head slick with blood, limbs missing, but alive, his lips moving as he talked to the sky above. She turned from Christopher, found her quarry. She came to his legs first, but the rest of Cecil Moore was ten feet away. Aoife raised herself up on her right elbow beside Cecil’
s legs, whimpering and panting, trying not to look at the spew of his entrails that formed a slick path to the rest of his body. She gritted her teeth, sat up, howling at the massive twist of pain in her tummy, and quickly drove her hand into first one trouser pocket, then the other. She pulled out a roll of fifty pound notes from one, spare change from the other. No phone.

  She tossed the money away and turned to face the grotesque path ahead. She set off, dragging her body after her, eyes on his jacket, not thinking about the way his chest was so unnaturally caved in, definitely not looking at the warm, squelching rope and liquids that her right hand now dug and scooped. It was just inches below her mouth, its steam rising to greet her; offal and faeces filling the air. Aoife gagged, nothing came up, just dry heaving, but she refused to stop, she heaved herself forward one last time and her hand touched the dry refuge of Cecil Moore’s jacket. She struggled to a sitting position, wiped a hand down Cecil’s sash, and started to check his pockets, her eyes half closed.

  The front pockets of his suit jacket were still sewn closed, never used. She reached inside the right breast pocket, pulled out a foil backed packet of pain killers. She dug inside the left, and felt the weight of a phone. She slid it out and tried to focus on it, blinking to concentrate. It was the same phone he had used in the Bad Bet to cast the blackmail video for her. She pocketed it, and let herself fall back, feeling the crunch as her head hit the street, but there was no more pain, not even from her stomach. She turned her head and looked into Cecil Moore’s dead eyes as the angel’s hair snapped silently and the balloon streamed away. Was he telling her the truth, did this phone contain the only copy of the video? Cecil did not reply. His face grew smaller as Aoife was lifted up, through the blue and into the black, her mind holding on to one word until the very last.

  Ava.

  Chapter 11.

  ‘It’s OK, Ava, you’re safe baby, everything’s OK,’ said Fryer. She was squeezed into a tight ball in the passenger seat. Fryer knocked the taxi down into second and pushed it up the steep incline of what used to be the old mountain lonan. He had lost the private taxi; same car that had been parked and waiting at Milltown. Fryer coughed, tasted blood, wiped it away. Not a bit of wonder the girl was frightened, he was a state. Some way to meet your Granda this.

  He gave the engine one final rev, they lurched forwards before it conked out. Fryer pulled up the hand brake before they could roll back and groaned at the pain. The peeler had shot him in the side. More blood in his mouth, Fryer swallowed it, wheezed. The bag on his chest made it even harder, but that was not coming off. When he searched in his back pocket for his blade before going into the Culturlann it was gone. He must have lost it when he pulled the cuffs out.

  Fryer got out, took his Armalite from the side well of the door. He walked round to let Ava out, and then paused; saw billowing black smoke a few miles below. That was the Culturlann, the place where Ava had nearly died so horribly. He had saved her, whatever else he had done in his miserable life, he had saved her, and now he was going to give her the gems, if they really existed at all. He opened her door and she shrunk away from him. Fryer asked her gently to get out now. But it was no good, she would not come. He glanced down the hill; they would catch up with him, men like that always did.

  ‘I said get out! I have a gun! Come,’ he shouted. She flinched, stared at the gun, did as she was told. She was petrified, he knew it, but it was necessary. He slammed the door, grabbed her hand and walked laboriously up the mountain side, from grassy tuft to tuft. He stopped every ten paces to catch his breath, blood on his lips. Up ahead was a cairn of fist sized rocks, waist height. This was the well, but not as he remembered it. Fryer held her shoulders, felt her tremble, her eyes on the dirt.

  ‘Ava, I know I look like a bad monster, but I would never hurt you. Sorry I scared you. I need your help, we need to dig for buried treasure,’ he said. She raised her pale green eyes to his, a flicker of interest now replacing the shock and fear. Fryer hesitated. Then he spoke, the clean mountain air on his hot brow. ‘I’m your Granda, I never knew, but it’s true. I’m sorry I scared you, but I had to come and get you,’ he said. He let go of her. If she wanted to run, he could not chase her. Fryer turned to the cairn, started to move the rocks. Ava did not run away.

  ‘Help me. Please,’ he said and she did. Fryer stepped away, watched her dismantle the marker. Her fear was forgotten, pure joy on her face as she completed a simple task. There was a metal plate, four feet in diameter beneath. It was rested on the stumps of old bricks of the well. He bent down, pushed the lid, grunted. It did not budge. He checked his watch, it had gone 12.30pm. Time was running out, fast. He pushed it again and this time she joined him, her face set and determined. Fryer felt the plate shift, then it slid open with a hollow, metallic scratch.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. Ava stared at the black cavity; hands on hips, her frizzy yellow curls danced in the mountain breeze.

  ‘Are you going to put me down there?’ she said. Fryer laughed, and then started to cough, warmth and coppery wetness filling his mouth. He shook his head.

  He walked round the mouth of the well and knelt down, reached into the blackness and felt beneath the overhang that extended round the circumference inside; soft earth, the crumbling base of the original brick well. It was pitch black beneath, but Fryer reached inside, up to his elbow. He was not afraid; Ava was with him. He groped in the dark, followed the perimeter of the hole, found nothing but wet earth. He’d almost come back to the starting point and then he felt it. His fingers touched the cold edges of a metal box. Fryer lifted it out, it was heavy. He set it on the grass beside his gun. It was a black steel safety deposit box that had been doctored, edges welded together and a hinged lid fixed on the top, secured with a padlock, spotted with rust.

  ‘Rock, please,’ said Fryer. She returned with a pointed lump of granite, good. Fryer raised the rock and brought it down, three targeted hits, as hard as his sapping strength could manage. The final blow did the trick, the padlock sheared off and Fryer tossed it into the well. He opened the lid, and took a sharp intake of breath, coughed.

  Inside was a single bar of gold, yellow and mesmerizing, identification marks filed off. Next to it was a transparent freezer bag full of gems. Fryer lifted it out, watched as the sunlight caught the jewels and sparkled beautifully. The Accountant had told him the truth. Ava gasped.

  ‘Are they real?’ she asked. Fryer looked up, was about to tell her that yes, they were all real and they were all for her, but his world turned grey and she blurred in his vision. He slumped to the ground; saw the yellowed green grass in close up. He tried to tell her to run now, take the gems and run, before it was too late, but instead he uttered a wet gasp. Fryer looked across the mouth of the well. There, coming from the lonan path was the man in the tan jacket, and he had a gun. He coughed, blood spattered across the grass. Fryer grabbed his Armalite, forced himself to stand. The world was a spinning disc; he was the single point of stillness. Fryer blinked, the scenery stopped rotating. He reached over to the hazy shape which he hoped was Ava's hair, held out the bag of gems, and felt her take it. Fryer smiled, he swayed, like a sapling in high wind. The man was close, he shouted, but what he said made no sense. He had a gun. It was pointed at them, at Ava.

  ‘John Fryer! Look at me! You killed my brother, look at me!’ Fryer stood in front of Ava, shielded her from this mad bastard. He raised his Armalite, pointed it at the man.

  ‘Drop your gun, or I drop you,’ said Fryer.

  Chapter 12.

  Sheen took another two steps forward, still pointing the gun at Fryer who was now doing the same at him, the little girl, Ava, standing behind him. He was at the open mouth of a black hole in the hillside, small rocks scattered as though disturbed. Sheen’s hand was trembling; he strained to focus on Fryer’s face. It was definitely him, he recognised him from his photograph, despite the years and the shaved head. So this was his man; the one who had murdered his brother. Fryer called for him to stop, drop
his gun, threatened to shoot. His voice was rasping and words slurred. Sheen saw blood on his lips, his face livid and corpse white. Sheen stood his ground, weapon raised.

  ‘Let her go Fryer!’ he called. He looked from Fryer’s face to the heavy looking pack on his chest. Sheen thought about the explosion at the Culturlann, and the substation. Links in a chain; if Fryer had intended to kill his former comrades at Dempsey’s funeral, he would have maximised the damage using a bomb, not simply the small rifle which he still pointed at Sheen. As though in response, Fryer spoke, his voice barely carrying over the rolling wind.

  ‘This is a bomb, I can’t take it off. Going to blow any minute now. Lower the gun, take her and run,’ he said. Sheen hesitated; he believed him about the bomb, but if he dropped the gun, Fryer could kill him. And if he ran now, it would all be for nothing. Stalemate, seconds ticked by, Ava’s life in the balance.

  ‘Answer me Fryer. Did you plant the Sailortown bomb? It killed my brother, the other kids who were playing in the street that day, it nearly killed me!’ shouted Sheen. Fryer slowly shook his head, his face a mask of confusion.

  ‘Sailortown? What the fuck has that got to do with anything? Who are you? Special Branch? SAS? I saw you at Milltown,’ said Fryer. He was slurring now, and swayed like a man who had slid off his bar stool after too much whiskey. Sheen took another three steps, close enough now to look John Fryer in the eye.

  Sheen said he was Historical Offences, told him to answer his question. Fryer’s eyes momentarily lit when Sheen mentioned the SHOT. He started to sway, lids fluttering.

  ‘I’ll answer your question boy, but first you listen and promise me something. If you need a sweetener, look inside that box, it’s yours,’ said Fryer, nodding to something gold, gleaming at his feet. Sheen did not take his eyes off him.