Kiss the Bullet

by Catherine Deveney

  He senses her hostility and feels his own.

  “It’s hard to understand the history of another people when you’re not part of it,” he continues, his voice tipped with steel, “what they think and what they feel and what they aspire to. You can’t know.”

  “And what did you aspire to?”

  “What everyone else did who joined.” Not everyone, he thinks. Not Pearson. “A free and united Ireland. An Ireland that belonged to its own people and was at ease with itself, and lived in peace.”

  “Peace!”

  Her voice is loud, ricocheting round the room like a bullet. The silent, elderly couple look over. Danni sees the man finally speak, saying something to the woman and glancing over.

  “What would you know about peace?” she says, and while she has lowered her voice, the heat is pouring out of her like sweat.

  Johnny puts down his glass and pushes back his chair as if about to leave.

  “Sometimes, Danni,” he says quietly, “you have to fight for peace. That’s the irony of life and of human nature. But I don’t really think there’s any point to this. You’re not here to find out anything.” He stands up. “You’ve made up your mind already – so write what you like.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Damn it. She’s thrown it already. Discipline. Discipline.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” she says, holding up her hands.

  She tries to force her lips into a smile.

  “Sorry … I’m just trying to understand … Stay for a bit. It’s like you say … it’s hard when you’re not from here.”

  He hesitates and he doesn’t know why.

  “Please,” she says, “sit down.”

  Her eyes are so familiar.

  They sit in silence. Danni runs her finger up the side of her glass, catching a drip, licks her finger.

  “How did you meet Pearson?” she asks.

  “We grew up together, went to school together.”

  “Why is it that whenever you talk about him you do that?

  “Do what?

  “Clench the muscles in your cheek.”

  He shrugs.

  “Are you friends?”

  “No. I don’t think you could call us friends.”

  “But you were?”

  “A long time ago. But Pearson …”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Across the room, the older couple are leaving, the man walking ahead, the woman following with her brown, gold clasped handbag hanging over her arm. Danni’s eyes are drawn to her, watching her strange, companionable isolation. Johnny follows her eyes.

  “We had this group at school,” he says. “Pearson was in charge.” A whisper of a smile flits across his mouth, rippling across his cheek and blowing instantly away into solemnity. “We called it Rebel Sons of Ireland, because we were a bit grand, like.” He looks at her and she forces her mouth to twist into a semblance of a smile but her eyes are cold.

  “Sounds a bit unlikely. I can’t imagine being that politically aware at school.”

  “You didn’t grow up in Belfast.”

  He says it mildly enough but she takes it as another rebuke that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

  “And you didn’t go to school with Pearson,” he continues. “You know, most kids threw stones at the army. That was as far as their politics went. But Pearson saw politics as … well as an opportunity I suppose.”

  “An opportunity for what?”

  “To make money. And to legitimise what he was.”

  She waits for him to explain but he doesn’t.

  “And that was?” she prompts. Why is he making her dig for everything?

  “A cruel, ruthless bastard.”

  He looks her straight in the eye and she blinks, unnerved.

  “He was bright, you know?” he continues. “He would gather us all together and talk about how we needed to fight for Ireland, fight till we bled and give till we dropped. It was a lot of shite but he had a way with words. It took us years to understand he didn’t mean a word of it.”

  “He’s not to be trusted?”

  He laughs.

  “Pearson? I wouldn’t advise it, no.” He looks at her curiously.

  “What’s your connection with him?”

  “Don’t have one. A journalist friend put me in touch with him.”

  “So you are a journalist.”

  “No, I write books mainly. I am writing this for a newspaper but maybe it will become a book.” She won’t be writing any more books if she kills him, she thinks. Or maybe that’s all she’d do if she ended up in prison? God, no. She’d rather kill herself too.

  “Anyway, you were saying … Rebel Boys of Ireland or whatever it was you were called …”

  “Half the time we didn’t know what Pearson was talking about but he stirred you sometimes you know? … The sound of the words, the feeling in the room. One time he read this extract from Yeats’ poem, Easter Rising 1916.” He takes a sip from his glass.

  “Everyone heard about it. Next time, there were twice as many at the meeting. Most of those who crammed through the door didn’t have a clue what it was all about but they all knew something was going off with Pearson and they didn’t want to miss it. Pearson talked a lot about blood and guts and that appealed to teenage boys as well. Who doesn’t want to be a rebel son when they’re sixteen?”

  She watches him, his face like a movie screen, emotions dancing across and evaporating into nothing.

  “It was Pearson’s way of making money, of course. Everyone had to give him money every week and Pearson said it was for the armed struggle of Ireland. Was it hell. But those who paid were offered protection and those who didn’t, weren’t. And that, of course, was the whole point. It was a racket that he has continued ever since.”

  “What if you couldn’t afford to pay him?”

  “Then you were in trouble, so you were. Not me, so much. I was part of his inner group. But there was this kid … Joseph. His dad was dead, his mum was on her own. He never had any money. He was terrified of Pearson and my God Pearson loved it, the power of that. He always sniffed weakness. He went looking for Joseph one Friday afternoon, took three of us with him. I tried to tell him …” He shakes his head. “Joseph was round the back of the school, hiding, praying for the bell to go, poor bastard … The look on his face when he saw us … Jesus.”

  “What happened?”

  “He told Joseph he had to meet us after school. There was an area of woodland that bordered on the cemetery near the school and he told him he had better be there or he’d get hold of him and rip him apart. Then he passed the word round the boys that everyone was to be there.”

  “Did he go, this kid?”

  “He knew it would be worse if he didn’t.”

  “What did Pearson do?”

  Johnny exhales, raising his eyes to the ceiling.

  “Ritual humiliation. Pearson’s speciality. Asked the kid for his money in front of everyone and of course he didn’t have any. Pearson said he didn’t think he was committed to the struggle for Ireland and he would have to pay some other way. He got hold of this huge branch thing and said maybe he should lash him and then he made him take his shirt and jumper off. He was skinny, Joseph, and just white as a sheet by this point. He stood there shivering while Pearson toyed with him.”

  And what did you do? She thinks. But she is frustrated. She does not want to talk about this. She wants to talk about Glasgow and does not know how to.

  “Then Pearson told him he’d better take his trousers off,” Johnny continues. “The whole place was in uproar when he got down to his underpants, all this whistling and laughing and cheering. And then Pearson says, ‘take them off’, pointing to the underpants. A couple of us tried to tell him he was going too far but he wouldn’t listen. So Joseph ends up naked.” He shakes his head. “Shivering and crying he was, with Pearson watching.”

  “You all just watched?” she says. “You didn’t stop him?
”

  His eyes catch hers and challenge them.

  “We were just kids. Don’t you remember what it was like to try and go against the group? You didn’t. Part of you was ashamed, but the biggest part of you was just glad it wasn’t you at the centre of it. And if you spoke out, you knew it would be you next.”

  She wants to dismiss him as a coward but she’s knows it’s true.

  “I told Pearson afterwards, though, that if he ever stripped anyone again, I would tell the others it was because he was a bent bastard and he got his kicks from it.”

  “And did he?”

  He looks shrewdly at her.

  “Yeah, I think he did. Pearson mixes everything up with the kick of violence. But that day was the first time he saw me as a threat. He was furious, went for me physically when I said it, but he was smaller than me. That’s why he developed other techniques over the years. Anyway, he didn’t strip anyone again.”

  “You know Coyle?”

  His eyebrows raise in question and he shakes his head.

  “Young guy … thin … pretty … but vicious-looking somehow …”

  Johnny’s snort of laughter is short and unamused.

  “Sounds like Pearson’s type.”

  “You know what business he’s in now?”

  He nods. “Oh I know all right. Yes. I know.”

  She senses a bitterness in his knowledge that she doesn’t yet understand.

  “He said to tell you he wanted to see you.”

  “Yes. You said last night.”

  “And …?”

  “And what?”

  The pause that follows grows into uneasy silence.

  “When did you last see him?” she says eventually.

  “Years ago.”

  “Is he still active?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe. The IRA was a way of making money for Pearson and for indulging the sick violence that was inside him. He can do both inside his own empire now … prostitution … protection … But he’ll still have his contacts and if there’s money to be made, he’ll take it.” Johnny’s tone is clipped. He taps impatiently on the table with the fingers of one hand. “He’s using you as a connection to get back to me.”

  “Why does he need a connection?”

  “Pearson never does anything directly. And we didn’t part on the best of terms.”

  His eyes drop to the table and he says nothing for a minute.

  “Why not? What happened?”

  She’s alert now, sniffs the importance of this.

  “Steer clear of him, Danni.” He uses her name as reinforcement, but the intimacy of it jars with her.

  “What did he do?”

  “Steer clear of him.”

  “I’ve got nothing to fear from him. I’m nothing to do with him.”

  Johnny shakes his head.

  “When you’ve crossed his path once, you’re in his life.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It is getting late. She is running out of time.

  “Did you ever kill a man?”

  Danni picks up her glass to cover the rush of emotion she feels asking the question. She has to be sure. The ice has made the glass cold and her fingers are chilled. But when Johnny looks at her, his expression freezes her all over.

  Not like that, he thinks. Not in the way she means. Pearson was the one who liked killing. Though Johnny certainly knew anger. He didn’t fully understand his own anger.

  He closes his eyes and he can see them all at fifteen, the way they were, him and Pearson and the boys. A fug of smoke. Twenty Embassy and four one-litre bottles of cheap cider. Down the graveyard, sitting on the dead, curved bark of a lightning-struck tree, the dry whitened remains resting on the sodden ground. He can remember it so clearly right now that he shifts slightly, as if he can feel the gnarled stump in his back still, the rough hewn edges where one of the branches has sheered off. Him and Pearson, Brendan Murphy and wee Seamy. Seamy got on his nerves that night, getting giggly and stupid after just half a bottle of cider and continually pushing him off the log of the tree.

  “Quit it Seamy,” Johnny had said, until the fourth time when the anger flared in him, seized the inside of his head and rattled it, and he grabbed hold of Seamy by the collar and banged him up against a nearby tree.

  “Fucking quit it, I said,” he hissed, and he looked into Seamy’s surprised, watery grey eyes – eyes so vacant that Johnny felt his anger shrivel into nothing. He could feel the silence of the others at his back rather than hear it, a silence that prickled the base of his neck, and he let Seamy go abruptly, left him sprawling at the base of the tree.

  Jesus, where did the anger come from, anger that flared from his belly and shot into his veins like an injection? It scared him sometimes, what he might be capable of. Other times it made him feel powerful, seeing the wariness in the eyes of others. He turned back and took a swig out of a bottle of cider to cover his confusion. Pearson was smoking a cigarette and watching him, his eyes lit with curiosity and relish. A ghost of a grin hovered on his lips and Johnny felt a rush of repulsion.

  “Got something to show yous,” said Pearson.

  Johnny lit a cigarette and took an opened bottle of cider to a grave stone slightly away from the others. The grave had a marble slab set into the ground as well as a head stone and he sat on it, the stone cold and slightly damp through the seat of his trousers. He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, the bottle held between his thighs. He could feel Pearson’s irritation that he had removed himself, diminished his audience.

  “Fuck, where d’you get that Pearson?” he heard Brendan ask. He glanced up. An air pistol. Pearson grinned.

  “No questions, no lies,” he said, with a self importance that made Johnny draw deeply on his cigarette. He leant his head back on the headstone. His backside was numb already. He shouldn’t be sitting here, he thought. Sitting on the bones of the dead. He turned and looked at the stone. Padraig James Mulvaney. Aged 88. Y’d a good innings Padraig, he thought, swallowing a mouthful of cider. And I’m sorry if you think I’m not showing much respect for the dead. But maybe Ireland needs a bit more respect for the living and a bit less for the dead, he thought bitterly.

  “Cheers man,” he muttered.

  “Bit o’ huntin’,” he heard Pearson say. “C’mon Johnny boy!”

  The three of them headed off, Pearson flanked by Brendan and wee Seamy, Pearson glancing back at Johnny to see if he followed. Johnny sat perfectly still, light fading, barely watching them leave. His bones felt hard and sore and brittle against the cold stone but he couldn’t be bothered moving. He was still there, like a statue, when they returned, shadows looming towards him, the three of them pushing and shoving and laughing over-loudly.

  Johnny saw the rabbit corpse slung over Pearson’s shoulder, then the body hurtled towards him, landing with a thud at his feet.

  “Present for you Johnny!”

  Johnny reached out a foot and kicked the body away instinctively, repulsed, a little fearful of the open eyed corpse.

  Pearson grinned. He took a torch out of his pocket.

  “Need to get used to blood in our business boys,” he said, looking straight at Johnny. Johnny took a puff of cigarette and blew it upwards, ignoring him.

  Pearson stretched the rabbit out on the grass and took a knife from his pocket. Johnny felt his eyes reluctantly pulled towards it.

  “Here,” Pearson said handing wee Seamy the torch. “Shine it on there.”

  The steel knife glinted, the point of it indenting the soft flesh, then he sliced cleanly with the tip of the blade up the length of the animal’s abdomen. The muscles were thin, easy to cut through.

  “Fuck!” said Brendan, screwing up his face as blood spurted over Pearson’s hands.

  “That’s the liver,” said Pearson, pulling the right and left segments of the organ out of the cranial end of the abdominal cavity. His face glowed cold in the torchlight, Johnny thought, lit with an unquenchable curiosity. Pearson looked
at wee Seamy and Brendan, hard, intelligent eyes sharpening into focus.

  “Put your hand in there,” Pearson said to wee Seamy. Brendan’s face was still twisted into a grimace and he looked at wee Seamy who burst into an explosion of nervous laughter.

  “Aw Jesus no …” he said, half laughing, half horrified, jostling into Brendan to move back.

  Pearson looked at him.

  “Put your hand in there,” he repeated, with such calm calculation that they all went quiet. “Do it.”

  Wee Seamy’s eyes darted to Pearson, gauging with an animal instinct how much choice he had. None. He moved forward, his hand hovering over the bloodied mess in Pearson’s, Pearson watched him intently. Wee Seamy reached out an arm stiffly, his hand almost disembodied from the rest of him, his fingers paddling blindly as if being dipped into water. Pearson grabbed hold of his wrist and pushed it in to the open abdomen of the dead rabbit.

  “Properly,” he said. “C’mere you,” he said to Brendan and Brendan lumbered forward warily. Pearson still had tight hold of Wee Seamy’s wrist and he yanked his hand towards Brendan, smearing the blood on his face.

  “Aw fuck, Pearson!” Brendan spat.

  “Get used to it,” Pearson said. “Imagine it’s the belly of a soldier!”

  It struck Johnny that he had never seen Pearson more animated, more alive. As he watched him, Pearson caught his eye.

  “Johnny,” he said. “Your turn.” His eyes are vicious now, lost inside his own fantasy. Johnny is the only one he avoids confrontation with normally. Johnny can feel it sometimes, a wall that’s made up of interlocking bricks of wariness and regard. He doesn’t want to force their parting. He wants Johnny there. But sooner or later Pearson has to assert his leadership.

  “Johnny …” The three of them are watching him but he feels detached from them already. Johnny picks up the cider bottle from between his thighs and drains it, then turns with the sudden speed engendered by instinct and hatred and anger and he smashes the bottle off the side of the gravestone. The bottom of the bottle shatters into pieces on the stone below and he’s left with the jagged neck in his hand. So fast, so unexpected, that even Pearson starts, then his eyes narrow warily.