by Matt McGuire
No. This thing had ‘punishment beating’ written all over it. Sure, they’d been a bit over-enthusiastic with the bats, but it was a punishment beating nonetheless.
O’Neill rolled his eyes. Punishment beatings were a Grade-A nightmare. They were a paramilitary thing, a hangover from the Troubles, when Catholics and Protestants policed their own areas and handed out vigilante justice to drug dealers and joy-riders. A bullet through the knees. A couple of rounds with a baseball bat. One thing was sure, you didn’t forget in a hurry. O’Neill thought about the ASBOs the PSNI gave out for the same thing. A curfew? In bed by ten? No wonder the kids laughed in their faces.
With a punishment beating the victim never pressed charges. There were never any witnesses. Victim dragged from a crowded bar? Folk were always in the toilet. Peelers joked that Belfast pubs had some of the largest toilets in the world. Entire bars had been known to all go for a piss at exactly the same time. What were the odds of that?
No one pressed charges and after a while, a punishment beating went away. A few forms, a few questions, that was it. A murder inquiry though, a murder inquiry had legs. It always went the distance.
If all men were created equal, all victims certainly weren’t. You’d hear people:
‘He deserved what he got.’
‘Fucking wee hood.’
‘He had it coming to him.’
O’Neill peered into the black river as it flowed under Queen’s Bridge and out into Belfast Lough. Anything tossed in — a bat, say — would be long gone. He knew the stats. PSNI solved three out of four murders. Northern Ireland hospitals had treated over 300 punishment beatings last year. The cops hadn’t made an arrest for a single one.
O’Neill felt Ward standing beside him.
Up front on this one?
He looked at the rain, pulling out another cigarette. There was no doubt about it: someone up there didn’t like him. At least it was one thing he could be sure of.
TWO
Marty and Petesy were hoods.
Hoods because they wore tracksuits. Because they stood on street corners and stared down traffic. Because they hung outside off licences, drinking Buckfast and White Lightning. Because they were fifteen and hadn’t been to school for two years. They liked it that way. So did the school. Hoods because security guards followed them round shops. Because every second word was ‘fuck’ or ‘cunt’. Because they loved getting off their faces. Because they liked happy hardcore. Because they stole cars. Because they were joy-riders. Because they were drug dealers. Because they had shaved heads, black eyes and baseball caps. Because they didn’t give a fuck, because what the fuck are you looking at, because I’ll knock your fucking ballicks in. They were hoods.
It was half ten on Monday morning. The boys had been busy. They hunkered behind a large bin in an entry off High Street. The alley smelled of piss and rotting food. Marty and Petesy sucked in air, trying to get their breath back.
‘You’re a mad bastard,’ Petesy said. Marty raised his eyebrows, taking the compliment and smiling.
‘The guard was a fat cunt. He couldn’t catch a fucking cold. Mind you, he fairly got a hold of you. Fuck me, Petesy. My ma’s quicker than you are.’
‘Fuck away off,’ Petesy said. ‘You were running before we were even in the door.’
Marty had always been quick. When he was selected for the Belfast U-12s the coach said he was greased lightning, one of the quickest things he’d even seen on a football pitch.
‘No flies on you, Martin Toner.’
Marty was kicked off the team three weeks later. Fighting. He’d skinned the full-back, some brick shithouse from Ballymacarrett, who’d brought him down. Marty got up and whacked him. It was only training, but so fuck, what were you going to do. There were no flies on Marty.
That morning the security guard had grabbed Petesy, and Marty had had to go back for him. Now he pulled off his old jersey and put on the white Kappa top, courtesy of the morning’s outing. Marty adopted a mock melodic voice, like he was announcing the football results.
‘Martin Toner one — JJB Sports nil.’
JJBs was one of the only shops in Belfast that didn’t have foreigners working as security guards. Lithuanians. Poles. You didn’t fuck with them.
‘Hard to make a living these days,’ Marty had said after his first and last encounter with the latest addition to the Northern Irish workforce.
Before they showed up, it was a piece of piss. The security men were all locals. Guys that didn’t give a shit. They stood round all day, chatting up sixteen-year-old shop assistants. They’d chase you round the corner and give up. The Polish guys, the Lithuanians, they were different. Chase you for miles. Like it was personal. Like it was their shop or something.
‘It’s fucked up,’ Marty said, after his one experience with a Lithuanian security guard. He’d run full pelt the whole way down Donegal Place, past the Belfast Telegraph, all the way down York Street.
‘I was near in Carrickfergus before he stopped. I mean, what the fuck does he care?’
‘No flies on those Poles,’ Petesy joked.
In the entry off High Street, Marty stroked the sleeve of his new top. He leaned off the wall, not wanting to get it dirty. Petesy laughed.
‘I thought I was fucked when your man had me. Next thing, I turn round and he’s got the fucking Tasmanian Devil on his back.’
Marty held up his fists, kissing the right then the left.
‘Told you. I taught Muhammad Ali everything he knew.’
‘That’s what your ma said.’
‘Away and fuck yourself. You’d be in the back of a peeler wagon right now if it wasn’t for me. Who’s the one with a new top? Meanwhile you’re walking round looking like Stig of the Dump.’
‘Up your hole. You bolted before we were even inside the shop.’
Marty peeked round the bin and down the entry. There was no sign of anyone. He pulled out a packet of Regal and lit one. He took a drag and exhaled, clicking out three neat smoke-rings. He then passed the cigarette to Petesy.
‘Here. Have a smoke and dry your eyes.’
Petesy took the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. His cheeks hollowed as he took a draw. One of his cousins had taught him how to smoke when he was eleven but he could never blow smoke-rings like Marty.
Marty looked at his new top. ‘That Cara’s definitely going to let me ride her when she sees this.’
‘Wise up to yourself. You’ve no chance.’
‘That not what your ma said.’
Petesy went quiet. He’d lived with his granny for three years since his mother moved to Derry with a guy she’d met one Saturday night at the GAA club in Andy Town. He was about to hand the fag back but hesitated and took another long drag. Marty received the butt, his voice going up an octave.
‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?’
Petesy smiled, pleased to get his own back. Marty took the last drag and flicked the butt off the wall. A shower of red ash cascaded to the wet ground.
Petesy remembered him doing the same thing to Brendy McIlroy. ‘Mackers’, everyone called him. He was two years older than them and had three big brothers. He had been picking on Petesy, slagging him off, saying his ma had run off with the first bit of dick she got her hands on. After a minute of ignoring him, Petesy told him to go fuck himself. It was what Mackers wanted. He announced, John Wayne-style, he was going to finish his can of Harp, then come over and beat the fuck out of Petesy. Marty sat there, not saying anything. Then he took the final drag from his cigarette and flicked it in Mackers’ face. They went for each other and Petesy piled on. Some old boy pulled them apart, threatening to call the peelers. That was Marty though. He didn’t give a fuck.
Hiding in the entry of High Street, Marty stroked his new top and thought about Cara. She was a wee ride. He was going to take her somewhere with the money they’d made from dealing the week before.
‘Has your cousin come through with more gear yet?’ he a
sked.
‘He said to come up to the Ardoyne and see him tomorrow.’
‘Nice one,’ Marty said.
THREE
Joe Lynch sat on the black leather sofa and waited.
The receptionist was slim, early thirties. She had looked at him over the top of her glasses, saying Dr Burton would be right with him. Lynch asked how long the appointment was. She told him half an hour.
Nothing about the plush reception suggested a psychologist’s office. Lynch had imagined One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Formica floors, sudden outbursts, occasional drooling. Instead it was burgundy carpets, dark mahogany and abstract painting.
He chided himself. This was a mistake. This was what you got for going to the doctor’s — an appointment with a shrink. All he’d wanted were a few pills, just to help him sleep. He didn’t need his head examined. A few nights’ kip, he’d be right as rain. Instead he got a week’s worth of tablets and an appointment with Sigmund Freud here.
Lynch was fine, when he’d just come out of prison. He’d gone to London. Needed to get away from Belfast. All the old contacts, the familiar faces, the knowing looks. He’d stayed almost two years, trying to make a life for himself, working in bars, doing shift-work in kitchens. One day, he just woke up and realized, enough was enough. He couldn’t do it any more. The constant lying, making things up, taking shit from middle managers, baby Hitlers he could have dropped in half a second. There was nothing else to do. He had to go back.
It was coming home when the sleep problem started. Lynch tried to laugh it off at first, joking about the Northern Irish air — too frigging fresh. He told himself to harden up. He’d done interrogations, solitary confinement, twenty-four-hour lock-down. He could do a few all-nighters. After three months he realized why they used sleep deprivation as a torture technique. He felt like a ghost, as if he only partially existed. Dr MacSorley had suggested the psychologist. It might help to talk. Lynch didn’t think so, but made a deal. It seemed to be all the rage these days: negotiation, compromise, agreements. He’d see the psychologist, in return for a prescription. MacSorley was in his sixties, an old-school doctor. He gave him a week’s worth of tablets.
‘Come back after the appointment and I’ll give you next week’s.’ He smiled. ‘Just to keep you honest Joe.’
MacSorley had been around the block a few times and it was only this that made Lynch agree to the deal.
Dr Burton’s office was on the fifteenth floor of a glass tower-block on Bedford Street. Out the window Lynch saw the green copper dome of Belfast City Hall. After ninety years, the shining white limestone had faded to grey. Daily life had taken its toll and the architect’s allusions to civic virtue were now no more than a vague memory. In the gardens, the Belfast wheel arced upwards, lifting spectators above the roofline of the City Hall. From its height, tourists gazed out at the hills that surrounded Belfast. The mountains themselves, looking down on the city, like disapproving adults on their recalcitrant offspring. Lynch looked towards the waters of Belfast Lough and the dark green slopes of the Cavehill in the distance. The colours were muted, depressed by the dark grey sky and the low January light.
As he waited, Lynch reminded himself he wasn’t a fruitcake. It was simple. He just couldn’t sleep.
A door opened and Dr Burton walked into reception. He wore a brown suit and had a swarthy complexion. He was in his fifties and spoke in a low, confident voice.
‘Joe Lynch? Come on in.’
The room continued the theme of comfortable opulence that had begun in the reception area. A wide oak desk and a high-backed chair sat in front of a row of large windows. Along the wall a beige sofa and two chairs huddled round a rectangular coffee-table. Burton motioned to the chairs.
‘So. What have you come to see me about?’
‘I’m not sleeping.’
‘Why aren’t you sleeping?’
Joe paused. He hadn’t thought they’d get right into it. He’d imagined some chit-chat. A warm-up or something. He looked round the room, raising his eyebrows.
‘Must be some money in this psychology business.’
‘I do all right.’
‘How come you aren’t in a hospital?’
‘Private clients.’
‘What does a man charge for that these days?’
‘One hundred pounds an hour.’
Lynch hadn’t thought Burton would tell him.
‘I must be in the wrong line of work.’
‘What line of work are you in, Joe?’
Silence.
Fifteen floors up. The traffic was quiet on the road below. Cars hummed past, providing a low background music. Joe knew what was going on. The short, staccato answers. They were to encourage him to speak. Make the patient do the running.
‘Why can’t you sleep, Joe?’
‘You tell me, Doc.’
‘That’s not how it works.’
Silence.
Burton stopped speaking. He wasn’t going to chase Lynch. If someone wouldn’t meet you halfway, he knew there was no point.
The silence hung in the air for ten seconds, then twenty. It was a stand-off, neither man wishing to blink. After a minute Lynch spoke.
‘So what do you know about me, Doc?’
‘Nothing.’
‘MacSorley must have sent a file.’
‘No.’
‘How come?’
‘Works better this way.’
‘So you’re telling me you have nothing?’
‘Joe Lynch. Monday. Eleven o’clock.’
For a moment Lynch imagined himself as a blank page. No marks. No scars. Free to be whatever he wanted. Free to. .
In the Maze they had tried to use psychologists. Rumour had it the room was bugged and there was someone from Special Branch taking notes next door.
Burton continued. ‘Why are you here, Joe?’
‘MacSorley made me come.’
‘Made you come? What are you, six years old?’
‘I’m not sleeping.’
‘You’re not sleeping.’
‘I wanted a prescription. It came with strings.’
‘You could have gotten sleeping pills from anywhere. They’re not exactly hard to come by.’
Lynch looked at the dark wooden bookcase along the wall. The Effect of Trauma. The Invisible Injury. The Psychology of Conflict.
‘I haven’t suffered a trauma.’
‘I never said you had.’
‘That’s what you do though. Isn’t it?’
‘Among other things.’
‘Do you see peelers?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Soldiers?’
Silence.
‘Not much of a talker, Doc. I thought that is what this was all about. Talking. Feelings.’
Burton turned it back on him.
‘How do you feel, Joe?’
Lynch paused, turning his gaze inwards. He groped around, trying to get hold of something. He rummaged in the dark. He was tired. No, exhausted. More than that though, he had no idea how he felt. There was a kind of emptiness. A hunger. It was as if he had lost something, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
Burton waited, watching Lynch’s eyes search the empty space in front of him.
Lynch snapped back to the room, remembering where he was. He stood up and walked to the window, looking down on the street. A woman rushed through the rain. A couple huddled under an umbrella. A homeless man sheltered in the doorway of the Ulster Hall. The fifteenth floor was high. It gave a sense of perspective, made things seem smaller, less difficult somehow. Lynch looked out over Belfast, as it sprawled into the distance.
‘Why are you-’
‘Where do you live, Doc?’
Burton raised his eyebrows.
‘OK then. What car do you drive?’
‘Audi.’
‘That’s my point.’
‘That’s your point,’ Burton repeated sarcastically.
‘The car. The house. The subu
rbs. Stranmillis. Dunmurray. The leafy streets, the grammar schools, the university degrees. You took the tests, passed the exams. Dinner parties, drinks with friends. The wife. The kids.’ Lynch was gathering momentum. ‘The books, the office, the view. My point is: what the fuck could you possibly know about me? About where I come from. About what I’ve seen. About what I’ve done.’
Lynch took a breath, letting his words hang in the air between them.
‘A hundred pounds an hour. Listening to a bunch of rich pricks. Their colleagues don’t respect them, their kids won’t talk to them, their wives won’t fuck them. And when you get bored with that, you go for a bit of Troubles tourism, a wee holiday in someone else’s misery. A bit of gritty realism, like reading a book about it. And all from the safety of the fifteenth floor. It’s cosy cushions and pretentious paintings by cunts that can’t draw to save themselves.’
Lynch stared at Burton. The doctor held his gaze, allowing the silence to hang between them. Burton waited. He wasn’t intimidated.
‘Impressive, Joe.’ His voice was calm, almost monotone. Lynch had become more animated the more he tried to dismiss Burton and everything he stood for.
‘Were you practising that on the way over? The self-righteous indignation. Gives you an edge, I’ll bet. A bit of purchase. I’ve known you for twenty minutes and you’re right. What the fuck could I possibly know? About you. About where you’ve been. What you’ve seen. What you’ve done.’
The doctor paused.
‘I’ll tell you what though, Joe. It still doesn’t answer the question: why can’t you sleep?’
Lynch paused, knowing he hadn’t thrown Burton off and that they were back where they started.
‘Thousands of people don’t sleep.’
‘We’re not talking about thousands. We’re talking about you.’
Joe glanced at the clock on the wall. 11.25. Burton saw the look and knew they were coming to the end of the session.
