Stephen Leather - The Double Tap

‘Don’t hurt him,’ she sniffed. ‘Please don’t hurt him.’

‘Do you understand?’ Lynch repeated. ‘Say anything and we’ll be back. And it won’t just be for the boy.’

The woman nodded. She averted her eyes and began to mumble the Lord’s Prayer as she fingered the polished amber beads of the rosary. Lynch straightened up and motioned with his head for Davie to follow him. They joined O’Riordan at the foot of the stairs. O’Riordan had taken his sawn-off shotgun from under his coat. He nodded at Lynch and they moved silently up the stairs, Davie bringing up the rear.

There were four doors leading off the top landing. Only two were closed. Lynch put his ear to one of the doors but heard nothing. He eased it open. It was the bathroom, a cheap yellow bathroom suite and a green knitted cover on the toilet seat, with a matching cover on a spare toilet roll. He closed the door.

Davie was breathing like a train, his nostrils flaring. He had the tea towel in his left hand, the Browning in the other, and Lynch was pleased to see he had the safety off and the barrel pointing straight up. His finger was outside the trigger guard, just as he’d been told. Davie swallowed nervously as Lynch brushed by him and stood by the second door. Lynch seized the handle, nodded at O’Riordan, and thrust open the door.

The boy was standing in the middle of the bedroom, his back to them. He was listening to a Sony Walkman through headphones and playing air guitar, whipping his long red hair backwards and forwards in time to the music. The three men filed into the room and Davie closed the door behind them. It was a typical teenager’s room: rock ’n’ roll posters on the wall, a pile of dirty laundry in one corner, a cheap veneered bookcase filled with paperbacks, and a single bed with the bedclothes in disarray. It smelt of old socks and sweat and was almost as unsavoury as the stable where O’Riordan kept his arms cache.

The boy whirled around then froze as he saw his visitors. His mouth fell open, then he was suddenly galvanised into action, throwing himself across the bed and clutching for the window. O’Riordan dropped the carrier bag on the floor, stepped forward and grabbed one of the boy’s legs, pulling him hard and throwing him onto his stomach. The boy began to scream as O’Riordan sat across the base of his spine, pinning him to the bed. The boy lashed out with his arms but O’Riordan wriggled up his back and used his knees to hold him down. ‘Fuck off, yez bastards!’ the boy screamed, bucking and twisting even under O’Riordan’s weight.

‘Davie, come on lad,’ urged O’Riordan. ‘Get on with it.’

Davie rushed forward and used the tea towel to gag the struggling boy, then moved around to the foot of the bed and grabbed the boy’s ankles. O’Riordan put his head down close to the boy’s face. The towel muffled his screams. His cheeks were pockmarked with old acne scars and his red hair was unkempt and dirty, flecked with dandruff. O’Riordan grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head back. ‘Listen to me, Ger. This is going to happen whether you struggle or not, do you hear me?’ The boy said nothing but continued to try to get up. O’Riordan thrust the barrel of the shotgun against the boy’s temple and tapped it, hard enough to hurt. ‘If you cooperate, they’ll be able to patch you up and you’ll be on your feet in a few months. Carry on fucking with us and you’ll never walk again. It’s up to you. Am I getting through to you, Ger?’ The boy suddenly went still. ‘That’s better,’ said O’Riordan. ‘Now take your punishment like a man and we can all get on our way.’ He sat up, keeping his weight pressed down on the boy’s shoulderblades.

Lynch reached around to the front of the boy’s waist, unclipped his leather belt and pulled his jeans down to his ankles. ‘Sit on his calves, it’ll stop him kicking out,’ Lynch told Davie and the young man obeyed. The boy began to cry, his tears staining the pillow.

Lynch was a veteran of more than a dozen kneecappings and he knew how important it was to seize control from the outset and to give the victim no opportunity to resist. Kneecapping was a particularly brutal form of punishment, but it worked, serving as a permanent reminder both to the victim and to others. No matter how good the surgeons — and the surgeons in Belfast were the best in the world at repairing and replacing shattered joints — the knee would never be as good as new. Even after the ceasefire, the IRA used kneecapping to punish drug dealers, rapists and joyriders, and men like Lynch had become experts at the technique. O’Riordan hadn’t lied when he’d told the boy it could be done easily or painfully. Depending on how the gun or drill was used, the kneecap could be merely damaged or the leg destroyed. Drilling from the side was painful enough, but drilling from the back of the knee would shatter the kneecap into dozens of splinters.

Lynch took the drill out of the carrier bag and switched it on. He pressed the trigger and the bit whirred and buzzed. The boy’s body went into spasm and Lynch pressed down with both his hands. The pillow and the gag stifled most of the noise.

‘Okay?’ asked O’Riordan.

‘Yeah,’ said Lynch. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Davie Quinn had his eyes closed. Lynch smiled. The first was always the hardest. Lynch placed the whirling bit against the side of the boy’s left knee with all the precision and care of a surgeon. There was very little blood as the bit tore through the flesh, then the noise of the drill changed from a high pitched whine to a dull grinding sound as it ripped through the cartilage. The drill shuddered in Lynch’s hand as the bit grated against bone and he fought to keep it steady.

Davie opened his eyes but shut them quickly when he saw the bit emerging at the far side of the knee, covered in blood and flesh and bits of white cartilage. The boy went still on the bed, his face deathly pale. They usually passed out, Lynch knew, more from fear than from the pain. If they really wanted to make the victim suffer they’d wake him up before working on the second knee, but the boy was being capped more as a warning to others than to hurt him. Lynch kept the bit turning as he pulled it out of the injured knee so that it wouldn’t jam, then wiped his forehead with the back of his arm and went back to work, drilling through the second knee as easily as the first. When he’d finished, he pulled out the bit, switched off the drill and put it back into the carrier bag. O’Riordan climbed off the unconscious boy and untied the gag. Saliva dribbled onto the pillow.

Lynch checked the boy’s wounds. There was some bleeding, but it was far from life-threatening. He took a sheet and wrapped it around the boy’s legs. ‘He’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘You can get off now, Davie.’

The three men went downstairs to the sitting room, where Paulie was standing over the woman and her daughter, his Browning in both hands. ‘Wait five minutes, then call an ambulance,’ O’Riordan told the woman. ‘Make sure they take him to the Royal Victoria and if you get the chance, ask for Mr Palmer. He’s the best for kneecaps, okay?’

The woman nodded and kissed her rosary. ‘Thanks, son,’ she whispered. The girl burst into tears and buried her head in her mother’s lap.

Lynch drove the Quinn brothers to the Falls Road and dropped them off a short walk from their home, then headed for the M2 and Ballymena. ‘Did I ever tell you about the first capping I was on?’ asked Lynch. O’Riordan shook his head. ‘It was a guy who’d been taking pictures of little boys, naked. Didn’t touch them, but he was heading that way, so he had to be taught a lesson. Do you know Paddy McKenna? He’s in the Kesh now.’

‘Heard of him, yeah.’