They were going to kill him.

  It would be a relief, although he could have done without the pain.

  Then, through the hysterical yells, he heard something, something loud and sharp and authoritative and the rain fell to a drizzle and then to a spit and suddenly there was just the angry murmur of war clouds and someone picked him up and he thought thank God for teacher, then blinked his glued shut eyes open.

  It was Mary Coyle.

  Someone aimed another kick at him and she spun on her heel, striking out with the palm of her hand. A bigger, fatter girl than Mary Coyle screamed and backed away, holding her nose. 'I'm fuckin' warning yees,' Mary Coyle yelled, her finger now moving around the half moon of attackers, 'leave him alone . . .'

  'But Mary, he's a . . .'

  'He's a hero . . . don't you know who this is? This is Mohammed Maguire.'

  'You don't mean . . . Mister Shitey Pants?'

  The girl got another slap in the chops. 'Now fuck off,' Mary shouted, and as she did the bells sounded on either side of the wall and the girls began to back away like unsatisfied vampires from the dawn.

  Mo was sniffling, trying his best to stop the tears. Mary picked up the shoe where it had fallen and watched for a moment while he tried to pull it back onto his foot, but he was in such pain and distress that he couldn't get his foot into it. She took it back off him, sat him back against the wall, untied it, then slipped his foot in and began to tie it.

  'You shouldn't really be in here, Mo,' Mary said.

  He nodded. As she tied she saw that the bare inch of flesh between the bottom of his trousers and his rolled-down socks was bruised black. Her brow furrowed. The beating the girls had given him wouldn't show its results for a good while yet. She pushed the trouser leg up; he tried to push it down, but she slapped his hand out of the way. The bruises went all the way up his leg. She checked the other. It was the same. She sat back, looked at him.

  'Mo,' she said softly, 'what has happened to you?'

  He shook his head. The playground was mostly empty now. He would have to go, he would have to get to class. He tried to get up, but he'd no strength left. He moaned.

  'Mo! Tell me, who did this?'

  He shook his head.

  'Was it the boys in your class?'

  He shook his head.

  'Please tell me, Mo. This isn't right.'

  'Doesn't matter,' he said.

  'Mo . . .'

  'What do you care anyway? You're Tar McAdam's . . .'

  'He asked me to look after you, Mo, and he never told me to stop. So I'll look after you.'

  'But he doesn't . . .'

  'Tell me about the bruises, Mo . . .'

  'They'll heal . . .'

  'Mo, if you don't tell me I'll march right in there and I'll tell Father McVeigh. Then he'll pull you right up in front of the whole school and make you tell him who did it. Make you point them out. You tell me, and I can sort it out.'

  'Just leave me alone.'

  'Right.' She stood up. 'I'm going to see Father Mc—'

  'No!'

  'It's the only . . .'

  'No! For Jesus' sake . . .'

  'I'm going . . .'

  She began to move towards the gate. He threw himself at her. He was only a wee lad, and she shrugged him off.

  'Please!'

  She stopped. 'So tell me.'

  He looked at the ground. 'It was the Father.'

  'What?'

  'Father McVeigh done it.'

  She smiled, then frowned. 'Mo . . .'

  'He done it! He fuckin' done it.' He pushed himself back up onto his feet. 'Every fuckin' day this week!' The tears returned; he dropped his head, hiding his face, then tried to push past her back to his school, but she pushed him back, right up against the wall.

  'Why?' she said simply. He tried to break free, but she held him tight. 'Why, Mo?'

  'Because he wants me to write about what happened in the desert. And I won't.'

  'Why won't you?'

  'Because.'

  'And he beats you because . . .'

  'Yes.'

  'The bastard,' said Mary. 'I'll tell Tar.'

  'Tar knows.'

  'You told him?'

  Mo shook his head.

  They looked at each other for several seconds. Mary shook her head. 'Oh,' she said. She let him go. She stood back against the wall, beside him, then let herself slip down till she was sitting on the ground. Mo slipped down beside her.

  'I guess he doesn't like you very much,' she said.

  'I guess not.'

  'He thinks you let Ireland down.'

  Mo shrugged.

  'Mo, you can't go on getting beaten.'

  'Yes I can.'

  'You can't, Mo. You'll get septicaemia. Or something.'

  He shrugged. They looked at the gravel.

  'Mo?'

  'What?'

  'What would your Mum have done?'

  He shrugged. 'What difference . . . ?'

  'Mo. She was the greatest freedom fighter ever to come out of Ireland. You're her son. You walked out of the desert. You're made of the same stuff. You have to fight back.'

  He shook his head. 'I can't,' he said sadly. 'I'm only ten.'

  Now she looked like she would cry. She put her arm around him and hugged him to her, then kissed the top of his head. He snuggled into her. It felt warm and safe and lovely. She stroked the back of his neck and whispered, 'You won't always be ten, Mo.'

  8

  Three years passed. The beatings had stopped long ago because Mo had stopped going to school long ago. His granda didn't know any better; Mo just waited round the corner until the old man had gone out to the bookie's or the community centre and then slipped back into the house. The government's truancy inspectors rarely ventured into their part of town. No Cock Simpson called several times, but he never got in; Mo watched from behind the yellowed Venetians, wanting to say hello, or at least fuck away off, but he remained quiet, then one day No Cock's tyres got slashed while he was knocking on Mo's door and after that he didn't come back. Father McVeigh wasn't going to waste time looking for him. Tar McAdam had other things on his mind.

  There had been an escalation in violence. The Protestant paramilitaries, for so long a bigoted joke, had finally got themselves organised. For many years they'd just been gangsters, making a nice living out of it and occasionally slicing the throats of easy Catholic targets. If they tried something real, like planting a bomb, they invariably blew themselves up or were shopped to the police by an informer. When, for example, they attempted to kill Tar McAdam, they pumped sixty-three bullets into the black taxi carrying him to an election count and grazed his elbow. They were crap, and they knew it.

  So they decided to get serious. Where the Banoffi and the Provos had benefited from the patronage — and, indeed, the madness — of Colonel Qaddafi, the Protestant paramilitaries like the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Red Hand Commando and the Ulster Freedom Fighters — ostensibly one and the same but giving the impression of independence, mainly for tax purposes — turned to American benefactors for training and finance.

  As Octavia Maguire had turned earnest young patriots into polished freedom fighters in the heat of the Sahara, so the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the Ku Klux Klan and White Armed Resistance had lent their assistance in turning cheeky little cut-throat gangsters into cheeky little cut-throat gangsters with the ability to kill and maim professionally. They also taught these educationally subnormal racketeers how to explain away their crimes by way of historical justification, sometimes using words with more than three syllables.

  You can only teach stupid men so much, but for a while it jolted Tar McAdam out of his easy gypsy existence and turned his attention away from such frustrating little problems as the continued reticence of Mohammed Maguire.

  So life became fun again, kind of. Freed from the twin constraints of education and ritual beatings, Mo blossomed, aided and abetted every step of the way by Sandy O'Boyle, expelled from school and now with a sixty-a-day habit to support. They divided their time between the amusement arcades on Castle Street and breaking into cars. They learnt to drive by trial and error.

  On good days, when there were no security alerts about the city and they had had enough of sniffing petrol, they'd steal a car and drive all the way up the coast to Portrush. They took turns at the wheel, perched on top of cushions. Automatics were the best, you didn't need to reach any clutch pedal. They wore false moustaches to avoid second glances. A day on the beach, then break into one of the holiday homes, get drunk on sherry and cans of beer past their drink-by date, then sneak into a disco by the fire exit, stealing drinks, cadging fags, eyeing up cars outside. In the mornings they walked in the mist over Royal Portrush golf course gobbling magic mushrooms. It was an idyllic existence, and it couldn't last.

  They'd broken into a Volvo parked outside Sean Graham's bookmakers on the Ormeau Road; there'd been a couple of hundred cigarettes in the glove compartment and some cassette tapes that they bundled into their pockets. It was late on, but not as late as they thought, and suddenly the Hatfield bar a few yards down the street had disgorged its last drinkers.

  Sandy hissed at him to move it, but Mo lingered, trying to wrest the cassette-radio from its base. Then Sandy was screaming in his ear, but Mo needed just one more second . . . and then it was too late; they were trapped inside the vehicle while a drunk searched for his keys. There was nothing to do but ram the doors open and run for it, but the drunk wasn't that drunk and brought Mo down with his foot. In the seconds before Mo scrambled away, laughing, into the darkness, the drunk got a good look at him and there was an instant of recognition.

  Two days later the door of their little house burst open and four hooded men raced up the stairs and pulled Mo out of his bed. His granda came tearing in but they beat him over the head with baseball bats and he fell bleeding while Mo was dragged down the stairs wearing just his pyjamas and protesting his innocence of charges that had not yet been laid. He was bundled into a car and told to shut up, then taken to a drinking club on Beechmount Street off the Falls. When he got there Sandy O'Boyle was lying face down on the ground with a foot on his neck.

  The first thing Sandy squeezed out was, 'I never gave them your name, Mo.' His face was thick with tears and his nose red with blood.

  The other hoods took their hoods off. Mo only recognised the gingerhead driver who'd twice taken him places he didn't want to go. Another door opened and Tar McAdam entered, shaking his head. 'Mo,' he said, his moccasined footsteps barely audible on the wooden floor, 'what have you been up to?'

  The hoods sat him roughly down on a chair. 'I didn't do nothing,' Mo said flatly.

  'Ah now,' said Tar, 'there'd be witnesses said you did.'

  'Aye, an oul' drunk,' Mo said, and then realised what a fucking eejit he was.

  'If you'd been mine,' Tar said, up close now, circling, 'you'd have a bit more fucking sense. But you're fucking half marsh Arab, I suppose we can't expect much more.'

  'Fuck you,' said Mo.

  'On the contrary,' said Tar, 'fuck you,' and punched him in the face.

  Mo went clattering back, his head bouncing off the floor. The other hoods laughed, Tar with them. Gingerhead came over and kicked Mo up the arse. When he turned his head Sandy was crying even more.

  Tar flipped Mo over with his foot. 'Mo, son, there's enough fucking mayhem out there without wee skitters like you joining in.' Then he picked him up by the hair and pressed his face into Mo's, so close he could feel the brush hairs of his beard. 'We're fighting a war, Mo, and thus far you've done your level best not to get involved. And if you're not with us, you're against us, understand?'

  Tar nodded Mo's head for him.

  Mo spat in his face.

  Tar threw him to the ground, then turned to Gingerhead and put his hand out. The hood gave him a gun; he stood over Mo, aimed at his head. Mo stared at him. He would not close his eyes. He would watch death coming for him.

  Tar turned suddenly and shot Sandy O'Boyle twice in the legs.

  9

  'This is just fucking class,' Sandy said, both legs in plaster, like Laurel or Hardy.

  Mo had brought him Lucozade. Lucozade aids recovery. He had stolen it from the Spar, that and a packet of Jaffa Cakes, but he'd wolfed the Jaffas down on the way over.

  'Fucking class.'

  He didn't mean it, of course. It was sarcasm. The lowest form of wit. Sandy thought sarcasm was fucking class, and he wasn't being sarcastic about it.

  'You'll recover,' Mo said.

  Sandy enquired about a can of petrol to sniff.

  Mo said, 'Fuck off, I'm not bringing that into a fucking hospital.'

  Sandy opened the Lucozade as quick as he could, checking to see if it was really four star. But it wasn't. It was Lucozade.

  'Fucking class,' Sandy said again. He looked at his poor plastered knees. 'I wanted to be a footballer.'

  'Sandy, you were crap at football.'

  'But I wanted to be a footballer. I could have got better. Now I'll never know.'

  'Aye.' Mo tutted. 'Look on the bright side. At least you're alive. And you'll probably get a claim out of it.'

  'Aye, like I'll see that. The old guy'll get it and stick it on a three-legged horse. You know what he's like.'

  'Has he been to see you?'

  'Of course he has. Ate my grapes. Imagine doing that.'

  'Imagine.'

  'Don't be so fucking sarky. And he spat the seeds under the bed.'

  Mo looked under the bed. He had. They looked like mouse droppings.

  They sat silently for a while, listening to the coughing. Then Sandy said, 'I hate that cunt.'

  'Your da's all right.'

  'Not him. Tar McAdam.'

  Mo nodded. 'Yeah.'

  The next day he came back with another bottle, but on the third day he got caught by a store detective and even though he was able to do a runner he got picked up by the cops later on at home and was obliged to keep his head down for a couple of days. When he did get back to the hospital Sandy was gone.

  Mo just gave a flat, 'Oh,' and said, 'That was quick.'

  'Yes, it was,' said the nurse.

  'What's he have, like, crutches or a wheelchair? I'll bet the lazy bugger got a wheelchair.'

  The nurse looked at him. She raised a finger to her lip. Mo stared at her. She'd gone very pale. 'I'm sorry, son. I . . .' She trailed off. Her eyes avoided his. 'Oh, God, son . . . nobody told you?'

  'Nobody told me what?'

  'The wee fella, Sandy . . . he . . .' Her eyes were red and her skin was white and her uniform was blue and the way her shoulders seemed to have crumpled down while she spoke she reminded him of a Union Jack at half mast, and he hated the Union Jack, although he'd been trained to love seeing it at half mast.

  'Blood poisoning,' the nurse managed to say.

  'Blood poisoning what?' Mo asked, his voice starting to crack.

  'I'm sorry, love. It was on the news. Did you not see it on the news?'

  'See what was on the news?'

  'His funeral.'

  There was a tiny metallic ting, the sound of a shilling dropping.

  'Fucken wise up,' Mo said.

  'I'm serious.'

  'Fucken wise up,' Mo said again.

  She looked at him sadly. 'I'm sorry. I thought they would have . . .'

  'Fucken wise up!'

  He turned and he ran. Somewhere along the corridor he heaved a Lucozade bottle through a window.

  There was a little white cross. A little white cross and loads of flowers with the messages on the cards all run with the rain. It took him a while to track it down, and in the end he only found it because he found Sandy's dad standing on the far side of the graveyard, eating a sandwich, getting soaked.

  'I've been here all day,' his dad said.

  Mo had approached with some trepidation, thinking he might get blamed for Sandy getting shot in the first place. But there were no words of admonishment, just a great big sadness sitting on his shoulders like a cape.

  'I only just found out,' Mo said.

  'Do you want some?' Sandy's dad said, offering him a sandwich. Mo shook his head. It was a big thick doorstop, and the bread had been dyed red by the jam soaking through. 'I used to make them for him, every morning, for school. Only found out yesterday he hadn't been to school for two years. Funny the things you find out.'

  Mo nodded.

  'He was only fourteen,' his dad said.

  Mo nodded again and said, 'I'm sorry.'

  Later, at home, staring mindlessly at the TV, he came to a decision.

  There had been words echoing in his head all day, old words from Mary, his friend Mary. You walked out of the desert. You're made of the same stuff. You have to fight back.

  That's what she'd said. Mary. He hadn't seen her since that day. For a while he'd wondered what had happened to her. She was older, had probably left school now, was working in a factory somewhere or was married and watching the BBC, her revolutionary fervour as spent as the semen her flared trousered wispy-moustached barman husband drunkenly left in her every night.

  Mo shook himself.

  You have to fight back.

  He got up and went out into the back yard. It was cold, near freezing, and his breath made big misty puffs in the night air. He smoked an Embassy Regal, then began to dig around in the coal shed. He pulled quickly at the slack, his fingers working through the fine granules like a dog looking for a bone. It only took a few moments to find. His grandfather no longer had the strength, he said, to bring the coal in, so Mo had guessed it would be safe enough hiding it there. A black plastic bag. And within it a gun.

  Sandy 'n' him had found it. Sandy, really. They'd been burgling a house out Malone way and had settled into their usual routine: Mo searching out the valuables and Sandy looking for somewhere to have a shite. Sandy always had a shite somewhere. In a handbag. In slippers. In the fruit basket. Nerves, Sandy had said, but he never used the toilet. Mo thought he probably just liked shitting in handbags and slippers. As the burglaries had moved on to progressively more exotic locations — they'd started on the estates and ended up in the mansions — so had his quest for more exotic and inaccessible places to shit. On one of these, rifling through cupboards, squeezing himself into just the right position, he had upset a cardboard box, and out had tumbled the gun.

 

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