Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

But the evil waits. Biding its time. It moves the clouds, it stirs the breeze.

Whispering with a voice so delicate that it will throw a switch on a circuit board. Click-and a breath of a wire shifts into a new and more significant alignment. A minuscule voltage disappears from a battery and jolts into a doughnut ring of industrial detonator. Viper quick, the Semtex expands a millionfold into a couple of bags of fertilizer or roughly two hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate, home-made, stomach-churning, disemboweling explosive. A chain reaction and the fertilizer rips through a police station, or the floor of someone’s car, or into a bag of sharpened roofing nails.

Ulster had a thousand of these bombings in twenty years.

And the force behind them is still here. Unknown, undefinable. Waiting, watching, under the death murals of the Hunger Strikers, Mother Ireland, and the IRA. Tourists come and take photographs of these giant wall paintings, but I know that those are armed men on the street corners. Excons with walkie-talkie phones. Bookies’ runners wearing sneakers. Drug dealers in shell suits. Weans in the ubiquitous Yankees hats.

All along the Falls Road. This dingy terrace of redbricked houses. This heartland of the IRA.

Aye.

I turn down Valencia Street.

The Rat’s Nest.

A pokey corner pub, with grilles on the window and homemade speed bumps on the road outside to stop terrorists from the other side driving past and hurling petrol bombs.

I pause outside.

Take a breath.

Sniff the air.

Heavy thoughts, Michael.

Heavy and a little prescient.

But don’t worry, you needn’t fear the random Semtex bomb, the mobile phone ignition system, those roofing nails.

You just look out for bullets and the odd grenade.

You just look out.

I shake the cobwebs from my head, compose myself, and walk into the bar…

Seen one paramilitary pub, seen ’em all.

Low ceilings, blackedout windows, pool table, dartboard. All male, all hoods, waiting around for something to do. Imagine an old-fashioned western. The piano player stops and everybody turns around, the villain looks up from the card table, and the doc says it’s probably best that you leave. No piano player, no poker, no friendly doc but an identical vibe. I strode to the counter.

“Are you lost?” the barman asked.

“No. I’m looking for Seamus Deasey.”

The young barman said nothing.

A pause.

A cold, elongated silence. I knew Deasey was looking at me.

I turned.

Six men walking over from a booth next to the pool table. All of them in jeans, T-shirts, and shitkicking boots.

“I’m Deasey,” Seamus said. He was the shortest of the six. Shaved head, pug face, long arms, boxer’s nose. In fact, he looked like a middleweight who could have been good but just wasn’t tall enough. Two of his mates were bringing over their pool cues. I stepped away from the bar in case the keep cold-clocked me from behind with a hurling stick.

“What the fuck do you want?” Deasey asked.

I let him get four paces away and as fast as a cat on vetvisit day I pulled out the.38-caliber revolver, extended my arm completely, and pointed the gun at Deasey’s broken nose. This was the third time I’d threatened someone with a bullet in the brain since arriving in Belfast, but this time I decided I was not fucking backing down.

Deasey didn’t react but his mates produced assorted hand cannons, shiny pimp pistols, and other flashy pieces of shite that would kill me just as good as a proper gun.

“You know who I am?” I said.

Deasey smiled, unafraid.

“Should I?”

“I’m Michael Forsythe. You might have heard of me, I killed Darkey White in America.”

Deasey nodded.

“Aye, I heard of you. You’re the rat Bridget Callaghan’s been looking for.”

“Aye, well, times have changed. Bridget Callaghan needs my help to find her missing wean. She’s called me to look for Siobhan. The last place she was seen was the Malt Shop with a ginger-haired kid. It’s one of your places and that’s why I’ve come to see you.”

“Great fucking story. You’re a regular raconteur,” Deasey said and winked at his mates, who dutifully chuckled.

“I want to know the name of the kid that met her in the Malt Shop,” I said, and nodded the gun at him.

Some of his buds made a move but Deasey stopped them. He didn’t want them screwing up and getting him killed. But even so, he didn’t look in the least freaked by the revolver.

“I suppose you believe your own hype, Forsythe,” he said.

“I have hype? I didn’t even know I had hype.”

“They say you’re unfucking-killable,” Deasey said.

“Is that what they say?”

“Aye, they do. They say you need a fucking army to take the man who topped Darkey White. Well, I’ve got news for you, Forsythe. Take a gander about ye. This is a fucking army. Every person in this place works for me.”

I looked around the bar at the assorted ne’er-do-wells, killers, probationed terrorists, and murderers released under the Good Friday Agreement.

“I’m not here for trouble,” I said slowly.

Deasey laughed.

“Funny way of showing it.”

“I just need your help. I need the name of that kid,” I said.

“First of all, Forsythe, how in the name of fuck would I know the name of any kid that goes to the fucking Malt Shop on Bradbury Place. That’s not exactly my kind of joint.”

“Listen, Deasey, I don’t have the time. I know you didn’t want to tell the police, but if you don’t tell me I’ll bloody shoot you.”

“I don’t know who told you to come here, but you’ve put yourself in big-time shit.”

“The Malt Shop is your place. Chopper Clonfert told me that. The kid’s one of your dealers. Now, I know he wasn’t acting under your orders when he went after the girl. You would never have been allowed to kidnap Bridget Callaghan’s daughter in Belfast. The IRA do not want a war with her and the whole of the fucking Irish mob in America. But the kid was working for you and I wouldn’t want it to get back to Bridget that you were implicated.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“No, this fucking.38 pointed at your head is supposed to be a threat.”

“I had nothing to do with the disappearance of Bridget Callaghan’s wean. And I don’t fucking know anybody who has.”

“Deasey, just tell me the lad’s name and I’ll get out of here.”

“I’m telling you nothing, Forsythe,” he said, cool as mustard.

“Deasey, you must have been born stupid. When I tell Bridget you’re working with the kidnappers-”

Deasey interrupted as much to reassure his own men as me.

“You’re not listening, Forsythe. I don’t know anything about any fucking kidnapping. You said yourself no fucking hood in Belfast would kidnap Bridget Callaghan’s wean. And you’re right. There’s too much spread coming in from the States. There’s no percentage in it, see? It wouldn’t be good for business. You are barking up the wrong tree. Now get the fuck out of here and count your lucky stars you caught me in a good mood today.”

I sighed with impatience.

“Deasey, I’m not leaving until you tell me that kid’s name. Redheaded wee lad, dealer in your bar. You know who I’m talking about. I know you know. You better fucking tell me.”

“Or you’ll what?”

“I’ll fucking top you.”

“You’ll be dead before I hit the fucking floor,” Deasey observed.

“Aye. More than likely. We’ll both die because of some piece-of-shit pot dealer who helped lift Siobhan Callaghan,” I said.

One of the boys could take it no more and swung his pool cue at me. I shot him in the stomach. Someone else shot at me, missed, and almost killed the barman behind me. I rushed Deasey, shoved the.38 against his throat, and cocked the hammer.