Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“Is he part of that Samson thing? But you’ve done nothing wrong,” Dad said.

“I know, but he’s going to persecute me, I’ve got to go somewhere.”

“Your brother would put you up in London.”

“England’s no good. Besides, he wouldn’t put me up anyway.”

“He would, Alexander. Look, what’s going on?”

I got up and went into the hall. I climbed up into the attic, I felt I was nearly going to cry. I was pathetic. Douglas was right. I stopped myself, found my coat, came back down the ladder.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked.

“Out.”

I knew what I had to do, I had to get to the water. I had to get to my place. Raining again. But I had to get down there. That’s where everything would become clear.

“Where are you going?” Dad insisted.

“Nowhere.”

“Do you want some tea? You have to eat, Alex, you never eat,” Dad said, shaking his head, worried.

“I’ll get something.”

I put on my coat and hat and ran out the door.

Pissing down. Hard. Bouncing off the stones and making lakes on the tar macadam. My wool hat was drenched in a minute. My place. Not going to panic. My place. Close, soon. Yes. Think. Think, man. Maybe John could lend me some money. Maybe Dad would come through. In any case, I had to lie low. Where? My brother and sister, in England. Hardly talked to them since the funeral. We weren’t that close and Mum had been the glue holding the family together. And wasn’t I right? They’d find me.

I shook my head. No. No money for a bus ticket to the airport, never mind an airfare. My left eyebrow hurt, everything hurt. What to do? Keep out of the shit. I could lie low. I had enough ketch for a couple of weeks. I could avoid Spider until then. Yeah, everything be fine. Yeah, all work out somehow. Douglas, looking at my personal file. Bastard. What does he know? Used me. Buck McConnell used me. Transferred me to narcotics because they knew I’d been arrogant. Curious. Knew I’d pursue the leads wherever they went. So stupid. Messed up. They were smarter than me. Thank God for ketch, ketch saved my life….

The railway lines. The beach. The heroin. Thank God.

Everything in my coat pocket. Lunch box. Dry. I find my spot under the tiny cliff. Out of the wind, out of the rain. Open the lunch box. Ketch in a cellophane bag. Needles and syringe. New needles as important as supply. Can’t share needle, ever. AIDS, hepatitis B and C. Death. Distilled water. Cotton balls. Some people use citric acid to make it dissolve better. Basic safety. New needle, alcohol swab, cotton filter. Spoon. Heroin so pure now some smoke it. Smoke it off aluminum foil. Eejits. Get brain damage, lung cancer. Injection safe. Safe as houses. Spoon, water, heroin, lighter under spoon. It boils. Ketch, beautiful. Check it’s a vein. Draw it in. Draw it in….

The beach.

The beach is not a beach. The sea is not a sea. The clouds are not clouds.

The beach is a slick of seaweed, jetsam, garbage, and shopping carts embedded in the sand like abstract sculpture. The sea, a tongue of lough. The clouds, oil burn-off from the smokestacks at the power station, two chimneys that fuck any residual hope of loveliness in the Irish landscape.

Belfast just across the water, its yellow cranes, its ferry terminus, its back-to-backs, its poison of estates. Everything dissolves. The rain stops. The sky clears. The world ceases to spin. Time slows. The power station vanishes into the sludge of history. The sky quiet. Birds. Gray seals. Sun. It’s Ireland before people came. Before that Viking bark, that pine coffin of this morning, before the coracle. An Eden. A meditation of hill and forest. I stand there — an anachronism. A dead girl walks past me, in bare feet along the golden shore.

“Hey, you’re a Christian really. What was all that Hindu stuff you were always going on about?”

“My heritage.”

“You’re really beautiful.”

“Death doth improve my face.”

“No, it never needed improving. But it is true, you are dead.”

“I am and you’re what, now, a junkie?”

“Why does no one understand? I’m not a junkie, you have to really try to become a junkie. I’m not a functioning heroin addict, because I’m not an addict.”

“Sounds like you have that all rehearsed.”

“Did you come here to give me a hard time?”

“I didn’t come here at all.”

“Oh yeah.”

“It’s just you and me on the boat.”

“I remember.”

“I know.”

Your lips, your hair, oh, Victoria. I was terrified. My first time ever. Your breasts and those dark eyes. Jesus. And it was something you wanted too. You pushed away the silk spinnaker sail and made room. You kissed me and the saliva caught the light as you sat up and climbed on top of me. And you said, “This is position twenty-one from the Kama Sutra” in an Indian princess accent. A joke against yourself, the exotic Oriental. And I thought it was the funniest thing ever and laughed and relaxed and we screwed for an hour and a half. I remember. Truth, is that what heroin brings?

“No,” she says.

But that was truth. Her words fade. Gone into the smoke in the air above the river. And in every gasp I can’t help but breathe in ash, little particles of sandalwood and cherrywood and her. The wind changes its direction and the rain comes down and I open my mouth and it’s cold, like the coldness in my heart.

Things happen to fuck you up. Little things. You get chased from a boat and you accidentally forget your heroin. It forces you to go to the pub quiz but you get the crucial question wrong and have to steal more heroin from your dealer — Spider. Spider realizes it could only be you that stole from him and wants to get you. And how to get me? Tell the peelers that an English copper has been seen going into my house. That’s all it would take. Everyone would know what that meant.

And they got me. A week after Victoria Patawasti’s funeral. Walking along the sea front. They were so smooth that I didn’t even notice the Land Rover pull in beside me.

“Lawson,” a voice said.

I turned, saw the open door at the back of the Land Rover, legged it, got about twenty feet. A burly man tap-tackling me to the ground. I didn’t recognize him. In his forties, alcoholic face. Leather jacket. Old stager. Reliable. He had two fingers missing from his left hand. Bombing, shooting, accident?

“You’re under arrest, Lawson,” he said.

“What for?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

The man slapped cuffs on me, hauled me up, dragged me to the Land Rover. Three more men inside. One was Facey, looking guilty. The second, a copper in a flat cap, green sweater, tanned face, and finally a bald man with glasses and a raincoat, trying to cover a police uniform. High one, too, chief super or above. The Land Rover drove off. It came back — that familiar stench of diesel and lead paint and ammunition. Same claustrophobia.

“Alex, I’m sorry, they needed someone to ID you,” Facey said.

Flat Cap turned to Facey: “You shut up and don’t speak again,” he said.

The bald man nodded at the big guy, he held my arms, Baldy leaned over and punched me in the stomach. I retched. I looked at Facey but he was looking away. Flat Cap grabbed me by the hair. Shook me. Shit, they weren’t going to kill me, were they?

“What do you want?” I managed.

“We heard you were talking to the Old Bill, the Metropolitan fucking Police,” the bald man screamed in my face.

“Think we don’t know about everything that happens in this town, in this country? Your mate Spider told us. Wipe your fucking arse and we know,” Flat Cap continued.

“You know what we’ll fucking do to you. You’ll go down. You’ll go down, Lawson. I don’t care what they promise you,” Baldy said.