Matt McGuire - Dark Dawn

‘We’re going to make an appeal for information, sir,’ O’Neill said. ‘Oh — and don’t expect to hear too much about punishment beatings. Apparently there’s no such thing any more.’

‘Said who?’

‘The Chief Inspector, sir.’

‘Well, if he said it,’ Ward said sarcastically, ‘it must be true.’

The reinforced steel door thundered shut behind Burke. He stood outside Musgrave Street and looked at his watch. It was just after four.

The rain was coming down but had eased off from the morning. It was already dark. Burke put his hands in his pockets and walked towards the shops and the city centre.

Four streets from Musgrave Street he stopped at a phone box. Inside he took out his mobile and scrolled through the numbers. He dropped a pound into the phone box and dialled.

Two miles away in The George a man sat at the bar reading the Irish News. He was working his way down a pint of Guinness. It was late afternoon and the bar was half-empty. His mobile rang, flashing ‘Number Withheld’. Michael Burke put the phone to his ear.

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s me. They took me to Musgrave Street. They were asking about you — nothing they didn’t just pull out of a file. . It was Ward and some new guy. Think you need to get out of Dodge for a few days. Aye. . OK.’

Burke hung up the receiver. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out another pound. He slotted it in before scrolling through his mobile again. When he got to ‘Spender’ he stopped. He punched the number into the call box and waited as it rang on the other end.

A businesslike voice answered at the other end. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me.’

O’Neill went to the autopsy. He watched the boy, laid out on the cold steel slab. The table had a slight tilt, to allow fluids to drain away. He watched Rob Leonard, the State Pathologist, slice open the teenager. He removed his organs, examining each one carefully, taking samples for the toxicology report before putting them in a plastic bag and back into the empty chest cavity.

O’Neill was embarrassed to be there, watching such a private thing. He was embarrassed for the boy. Embarrassed he’d been laid out like this, that he’d been stripped bare, that there was no one there for him. No one to give a shit. No one to claim him, to say he was theirs.

He returned to Musgrave Street and spent three hours filling out paperwork. At eleven o’clock he drove to the flat in Stranmillis and showered. He still had the smell on him. Decomposition mixed with disinfectant. You couldn’t wash it off. He’d wear fresh clothes the next day and it would still be on him. It would be there for several days. Only after the steady accumulation of other smells, the grime of everyday life — sweat, cigarettes, petrol — might it finally start to become less noticeable.

Petesy’s cousin lived in the Ardoyne. He was in his twenties and had been dealing for a few years. Marty and Petesy had been at it for six months, starting off for Johnny Tierney and Sean Molloy who ran the lower Ormeau Road.

Tierney gave them dope. Ten quarters. Told them to get rid of it and come back with the money. They hung around outside the Spar for six hours, speaking to people they knew and anyone that looked as if they might smoke. It was cold and afterwards Tierney paid them by giving them each a quarter. He told them to come back when they wanted to earn some more.

Two weeks later Marty had had enough.

‘This is shite. Even in McDonald’s they don’t pay you in fucking hamburgers.’

They decided they would get their own gear. Go into business. Sell it for themselves.

‘Entrepreneurs, Petesy. That’s us. Fucking Dragon’s Den. Here we go.’

They started with a nine bar from Petesy’s cousin. He had scales and cut it into ounces, then quarters. Petesy and Marty wrapped them in clingfilm. They knew the drill. You kept a few on you at a time, left the rest stashed away somewhere. You kept them in your keks, tucked behind your balls — that way if the peelers searched you they wouldn’t find them. And even if they did, they’d only get a couple of quarters and would probably just take them off you.

Getting the gear was Marty’s idea. Petesy made the mistake of mentioning his cousin and Marty practically marched him up the Ardoyne.

‘A nine bar at six hundred quid. Thirty-six quarters at twenty pounds a go. Seven hundred and twenty quid. That’s over a hundred for us.’

‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ Petesy said. ‘What about Johnny Tierney? And Sean Molloy? They’ll have our fucking knees if they find out. Remember Jackie Magennis.’

Everyone remembered Jackie. Tierney caught him skimming and had beaten the fuck out of him at half one in the afternoon in the middle of Cromac Street. He put him in hospital. Fractured skull, two broken ribs and a punctured lung. Tierney was twenty-four, Jackie fourteen. He’d lain there, completely motionless, until the ambulance came and took him away.

‘You know where Jackie went wrong though?’ Marty said, looking at Petesy’s eyes. ‘He got caught. There’s two of us. We can look out for each other. Batman and Robin. Butch and Sundance.’

‘Who the frig are Butch and Sundance?’ Petesy asked.

‘Never mind. Listen, the boys working for Tierney and Molloy are slaves. Do you want to be skint your whole fucking life? No? Well then. You have to use your initiative. He who dares, Petesy, he who dares.’

They shifted the nine bar in a week, selling it round the Markets and in the Holy Lands where the students from Queen’s University lived. Cairo Street. Damascus Street. Jerusalem Street. Marty and Petesy’s own Promised Land.

They came out with over a hundred quid. Petesy’d bought his granny a box of chocolates but she wouldn’t take them as she thought they were nicked. They blew the rest on a two-day bender. White Lightning and a load of Es. Steako and Micky came round and they all got fucked. Marty and Petesy were like kings, doling out the goods. It was brilliant.

After a few weeks the students started asking if they could get them other things. Speed. Coke. The first time they took coke into the Holy Lands they doubled their takings.

Marty bought a mobile phone. He used it to text birds to try and get his hole. Hey drln. Cnt stp thnkng abt u. Wt u up to later. MTxxx He would scroll through and send the same message to six different girls.

‘You gotta be in it to win it, Petesy.’

Round the back of the twenty-four-hour Maxol was where they counted their takings. Petesy stood up and started trying to do keepy-ups with an empty can of Club Orange.

‘We need to calm ourselves, Marty. Locksy was telling me that Tierney and Molloy are out looking for us. Someone said they were the ones that done that boy down at the river.’

‘Nobody knows who the fuck that guy is.’

‘It doesn’t matter. He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘That’s his fucking problem. Grow a dick, will you, Petesy. Sometimes I feel like I’m out here working with a wee girl.’

‘I’m just saying, I don’t want to end up limping round on a pair of walking sticks.’

Petesy managed two keepy-ups before the can clattered to the ground.

‘Aye.’ Marty nodded. ‘It would ruin your chances with Man United and all.’

Marty stood up and started walking. He shouted back, over his shoulder, ‘Come on, Beckham. Let’s go and find that Cara one. Apparently Sean McAteer got a go at her tits at a party last Saturday.’

The sleeping tablets only half-worked. Lynch looked at the clock. 3.42 a.m.

He lay in bed, his thoughts going back to what the psychologist had said. As much as he hated the plush furniture and the rooftop views, Burton had been right. He could have gotten sleeping pills from anywhere. He was right about the memory as well — the taste, the smell, the metal. Lynch began to wonder what else Burton might know.