by Shane Dunphy
‘You know, Malachi, you don’t always have to do what she says. I mean, you’re locked up in here because you told the judge and the police that everything that happened at home was your fault. I know that Vera made you take all the blame.’
Again, the eyes, with surprisingly long and feminine lashes for such a huge man, flicked in my direction, a spark of anger alive in them now.
‘She tole me not to ever – ever – talk ’bout that to nobody.’
‘I know, I know, Malachi. It’s okay, I’m not going to go into it right now. It’s just, well … do you like it in here?’
He leaned back on the chair, sighing deeply. ‘No. I don’ like it here.’
‘Well, it was doing what Vera told you that got you locked up in the first place, wasn’t it?’
He nodded, and, to my surprise, a tear rolled down his corpulent cheek. ‘Mister, d’you think they’ll let me go home soon? I gets awful scairt here at night. There’s voices all over and people cries, and when I has bad dreams no one will sit and talk to me till I ain’ scairt no more.’
I reached over and patted him on one of his shovel-like hands. ‘I’ll talk to one of the guards about that, Malachi, okay? I’m sure we can arrange someone to talk to you if you get frightened.’
He nodded, sniffing, and squeezed my hand so hard I winced involuntarily in pain.
‘Would you ask them to leave the light on in my room too? I can’ get to sleep in the dark, see? Would y’ask them for me, mister?’
‘Sure, Malachi. I’ll arrange that for you.’
‘Thanks.’
I lit the cigarette, which had been hanging, unlit, from my lower lip during Malachi’s unexpected outburst. ‘So Vera doesn’t want me to visit you.’
He shook his head vigorously and ripped open the net covering on the punnet of mandarin oranges I had brought him. ‘I’m no good at peelin’ these,’ he said sheepishly.
I pulled the plastic box over and took one out, quickly removing the skin and passing him the fruit. I peeled another while he swallowed the first in two mouthfuls.
‘Would you like me to keep coming out to see you?’
He nodded again. ‘You bring me stuff, and you talk to me, and you don’t look at me like some of the guards do, like I’m a right bad fella.’
I started to peel a third mandarin. ‘Mind if I have one?’
‘No, go ahead. They’re not bad – for fruit.’ He laughed as if he had made a great joke.
I grinned. ‘See? It’s not so terrible when you give it a go, is it?’
His face took on a sullen expression. ‘I shouldna’ done some o’ that stuff to Larry and Francey, should I?’
‘No, Malachi. It was very, very wrong to do what you and Vera did to the twins.’
‘I din’ know.’ His voice broke with emotion, and then the tears flowed down his cheeks like water from a tap. ‘My daddy, he done them things to me, an’ he told me it was what parents done wit’ their childers, to make them good and to show them how to act when they gets married. An’ Vera, she said the same thing when we had them twins. “You has to show ’em who is the boss of the house,” she said. I din’ know we was hurtin’ ’em. I wouldna’ done it if I knewed it was a wrong way to go on.’
‘Well,’ I said, unsure how to respond. There was a part of me that found it almost impossible to believe there wasn’t a place deep inside Malachi Byrne where he knew damn well that his actions towards his children, actions that encompassed physical, sexual and psychological abuse in their most sadistic and extreme forms, were appallingly wrong. Yet he was a childish, unformed personality, and perhaps his own abusive and tormented childhood had left him without the capacity to know right from wrong. I chose my words carefully and continued, ‘It’s good you know that what you did was wrong, Malachi. I want you to think about that. Part of the reason you’re in here is to think about what you’ve done, and to work out how to put some of it right.’
‘Maybe I could tell Larry and Francey that I’m really, really sorry.’
‘That would be a start, I think. I reckon they’d like to hear that. But there’s more you could do. Have you ever told anyone else about what your dad did to you, when you were little?’
‘No. ’Cept Vera.’
‘When you get scared at night and have bad dreams, have they sometimes got to do with things that happened when you were little?’
‘Sometimes. Not always.’
‘I think that a really good way of helping to make things better would be to make you feel better. Remember the man who came in and played those games with you, with the cards and the pictures and the words?’
‘Mr Giles?’
‘Yeah. Mr Giles is what’s called a psychologist, and his job is to talk to people, and help them to make sense of things that happened to them and might be making them sad. Now I think that it would be really good for you to chat with Mr Giles.’
He handed me another mandarin. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘And you want me to keep coming, even though Vera doesn’t?’
He took the peeled fruit and put the whole thing into his mouth. ‘She doesn’ need t’ know, does she?’ he said around the juicy segments.
I grinned, patting that massive hand again. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’
I walked slowly back down the stone steps that led to the dock, wind lashing my coat about my legs and the sleety rain coming in at a 45-degree angle. The nausea and drenching sweat of the repressed panic attack held me tightly and refused to give me up. I took a deep gulp of salty, moist sea air and felt somewhat better. Despite my sickness, I was pleased with the results of the visit. If Malachi would start seeing Giles, the psychologist, and was prepared to flout Vera’s wishes and continue seeing me, I thought we might just be on the verge of getting him on our side. His gradual realization of the innate wrongness of the abuse of the twins was monumental, and it meant, I hoped, that Vera’s days of freedom might be numbered.
I put an unsteady foot on to the wooden platform of the dock, and saw that I was not alone. Standing with his back to me, looking out to sea, was a figure I recognized immediately from the long dark hair and angular lean build. Today he was swathed in a long brown leather trench coat.
‘You took your time,’ he said, without turning. ‘I thought you didn’t like prisons.’
‘I don’t. But Malachi was feeling talkative today.’
Karl Devereux turned, a grim smile on his thin lips. ‘Sit down before you fall,’ he said, steering me to a metal bollard. ‘Why are you still pursuing the Byrne case? I thought it was closed.’
‘It’s supposed to be. It’s just that I’m not finished with it yet.’
Devereux nodded and, in a single fluid motion, squatted on his haunches beside me. Somehow he actually looked comfortable in the position. ‘I need your advice.’
I raised an eyebrow. I had, from time to time, approached this slim, quiet man for help or a guiding hand, but I was unaware of his ever having gone to anyone for assistance.
Karl Devereux was an ex-career criminal: an assassin, leg-breaker and occasional explosives expert who had eventually been framed by one of the organizations he sometimes worked for and served an eight-year sentence in Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail, the toughest and most unpleasant penal institution in the country. As he was not officially a member of the aforementioned paramilitary group, he received none of the privileges accorded to political prisoners and did his time among the mainstream prison population. He had emerged a seemingly reformed man and dedicated his life to voluntary social-care work, basing himself in a small office in the community centre in Blackalley, the ghetto where he grew up, the child of an abusive, alcoholic single mother who had never wanted him and had no qualms about letting him know it.
Prison had left other marks on Devereux too. He spoke in a peculiar, controlled manner, every word carefully chosen. He had once explained to me that in The Joy, a thoughtless phrase or a slip of the tongue can lead to
offence, which can, in turn, lead to injury or even death. He had educated himself while serving his sentence, and was completely familiar with even the most obscure theories and ideas about social-care and youth work. This newfound knowledge showed in his speech too – he knew the correct phrases and terminology for everything he did, and was not afraid to let social workers who looked down their noses at him know it.
Karl Devereux remained spectacularly unorthodox, and a lot of professionals gave him a wide berth, unable to put aside the latent threat his past carried or the fact that, reformed or not, he still exuded a tangible hardness. Devereux might understand John Bowlby’s theory of maternal separation, but he also knew how to break your arm with very little effort. This frightened a lot of people. I was convinced of his commitment to his clients, however, and knew that he had done a tremendous amount of good since his release. I also had reason to have been glad of his assistance on more than one occasion, in particular when, three months earlier, he had helped me locate a client, a young woman with Down’s Syndrome who had been abducted by a predator intent on abusing her.
‘How can I help?’ I asked.
‘Do you know St Callow’s Home?’
‘The residential unit? It’s an assessment centre for young offenders, isn’t it?’
‘It used to be. It’s become a community-based facility for mainstream clients over the past twelve months.’
Assessment units took in young people, usually through the courts, for short terms of observation, in order to establish which kind of treatment would best suit their needs. There had been a move over the past five years or so to base most residential childcare within the community – a normal house on a normal street, where the children could take part in local activities and, with luck, be accepted – and, rather than group problem children together and stigmatize them, the plan had been to disperse them among less troubled populations, and use existing staff teams to carry out observation and assessment.
‘Most places are moving that way now,’ I said. ‘There’s only a few real juvenile detention centres left. It’s probably for the best, I suppose.’ I paused. ‘How does this involve you, Karl? I thought you worked mostly with youth clubs and voluntary outreach programmes. You’re not involved in residential work now too, are you?’
Devereux wandered over to the waterside again, gazing back across the dark expanse of water at the city. ‘You know that I was born and raised in Blackalley.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Bleak Alley we used to call it,’ he said, laughing drily. ‘And it was. There was nothing there for any of us, no hope of ever getting out, of making a life for yourself.’
‘I don’t think it’s changed much,’ I said. It was turning out to be a strange morning: Malachi Byrne opening up to me, and now Karl Devereux. I was on a roll. ‘Blackalley is still pretty much run by the gangs, as far as I can tell.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes still on the horizon. ‘They offer something education, or religion, or an apprenticeship, can’t: money, power and, better than that – better than anything else – respect. When I was young, you just had to prove that you were as tough as nails and prepared to do anything. I was. I was meaner, angrier, tougher and more vicious than any of the kids my age, more so than even a lot of the adults.’
‘A young man destined for greatness,’ I said.
‘Oh, most certainly. When I was fifteen, the gang I ran with asked me to become an enforcer. A professional bully is all that is, really, but I jumped at the opportunity. If they wanted someone to give them money, or stop dealing drugs in a particular area, and that person refused, I’d be sent over there to persuade them. I was tall for my age and had no problem with inflicting hurt on others, and I was furious with the world for the hand it’d dealt me. If I arrived at your door and asked you to do something, you didn’t argue for very long. I was good at my job.’
‘It’s nice to have a skill.’
‘I learned how to hurt people, but I also learned not to have to. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t about mercy – beating people up is hard work. I was simply saving energy. I worked out how to use my voice, my eyes or the way I moved to scare people so much I never even had to hit them.’
‘I can imagine there are circumstances where that could be very useful.’
‘Oh, there are. But you see, there’s always a danger when you’re used to being met with fear and awe that you’ll come across someone who won’t be scared; someone who has good reason not to be scared. I came across just such a person, a few months before my sixteenth birthday, in a betting shop in the Oldtown. Did you ever hear of Sparky MacDonagh?’
‘No.’
‘He’s dead now. Killed in a feud. But in his time he was one of the toughest gentlemen in this or any other city. Sparky was a member of the travelling community, and a bare-knuckle boxing champion. A little guy, not more than five foot six or seven, but every single inch of it muscle and bad attitude. The owner of this particular betting shop was aware that my superiors would be sending someone around, because he just flat refused to pay us a nominal fee for protection and insurance. He happened to know Sparky, probably through running a book on some of his matches. So Sparky, at his request, took to hanging around the shop, just in case someone like me should show up.’
‘Did you know he’d be there?’
‘Of course I did. But I was young, cocky, full of my own self-importance, and believed I was the baddest gangster in town. Sparky MacDonagh was forty-five, an old man, as far as I was concerned, and a scruffy tinker. I thought I’d have him on his back seeing stars in less than a minute.’
‘I take it Mr MacDonagh did not go quietly.’
‘No. The second I walked in, all the customers in the place walked out, but they stayed hanging around outside, trying to peep in through the windows to see what would happen. Sparky just stood there, leaning against one of the counters. He looked to be as broad as he was tall. He had the longest arms I’ve ever seen, and his knuckles were all knobbly and covered in scar tissue. He had the look of someone who’d been in a lot of fights, but then I’d seen plenty of people who looked like that, and I thought nothing of it. I told him that I knew who he was, and that he should step aside and let me do my job. He smiled at me, friendly as you please, and very politely advised me to turn around and walk back out the way I’d come in. He said’ – Devereux stifled a laugh – ‘he said he didn’t want to have to hurt me. Well, that was it. I charged him.’ Devereux turned back to face me, a wistful smile on his lips. ‘Big mistake.’
‘What happened?’
‘I received the soundest beating I have ever had. He broke both my arms, three of my ribs, my jaw. Loosened most of the teeth in my head. Cracked my left eye-socket. Punctured one of my lungs. And he did it with such … sympathy! He kept begging me to stay down. He was almost in tears by the end of it, caught me as I fell and laid me down, cradling me like a baby as I passed out. But I couldn’t stay down, you see. There was quite a crowd outside now, and someone had wedged the door open to see the fight. I had a reputation to maintain. I knew after he’d landed his second punch, which knocked out three of my teeth and fractured one side of my jaw, that there was no way I could beat him. The only way for me to come away with any dignity was to take the beating like a man, and try to give something like as good as I got. Oh, I planted one or two on him, but I honestly believe that he allowed me to, to save me some face. He had barely a hair out of place when he finally knocked me unconscious.’
‘I suppose it’s true what they say: no matter how tough you think you are, there’s always someone tougher. A painful way to learn the lesson, though.’
‘Oh, the lesson didn’t end there. Sparky and the bookie loaded me into the back of a Hiace van and brought me around to the local priest’s house. The bookie wanted to leave me on the green in the middle of Oldtown, let the police pick me up, but Sparky wouldn’t hear of it. So Father Niall McDrumm found me on his doorstep, beaten to a pulp and bleeding all
over his crazy paving. He brought me to the hospital, where it was established that I was actually still fifteen, and therefore under the law still a minor. My mother, the old bitch, was uncontactable. I was placed in care, for the first and last time.’
‘St Callow’s Home.’
Devereux nodded. ‘It was an industrial school in those days, and every boy in the place was aware which priests or brothers were to be avoided, but I was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of one of the more enlightened clerics, Brother Finn. I was there for less than a year – once I was sixteen I was an adult, and they were never going to keep me for long – but he was the first person I ever encountered who treated me with kindness and asked for nothing in return. At the time, I was too young and damaged to understand, but later, during the long nights in The Joy, I remembered. It made a difference.’
‘Sometimes that’s all we can hope for in this work: that a short period of real care can make enough of a difference to change the trajectory of a life. Even years later.’
‘I looked him up, Brother Finn, when I got out of prison. He still works at St Callow’s. We stayed in touch. I received a call from him yesterday. The problem he’s facing, it’s not really my area of expertise. I thought you might have some thoughts.’
The boat pulled up beside us, bringing with it more visitors, and we climbed aboard for the return trip.
‘How’d you know I was here?’ I asked him as we pulled back out into the foam.
‘No one else in the city drives a bright red 1981 Austin Allegro. It’s distinctive, to say the least. You’re not hard to track down.’
I nodded. ‘So what’s up at St Callow’s?’
Devereux took a tube of mints from the pocket of his trench coat and put one in his mouth. He offered the tube to me, and I took one from it before handing it back. ‘Since the changeover to purely therapeutic work, Brother Finn has been intent upon creating as safe an environment as he possibly can. Settings for young offenders, as I’m sure you know, are often as much about containment as they are about healing, and Finn wished very much to move away from that. At his request, he was sent an almost completely new contingent of children ten months ago: early adolescents, a mixed group of males and females. They’ve come from a wide variety of backgrounds: for some, this is their first care placement; others have been in the system for years. He was very mindful not to ghettoize them in any way. The problem is that, almost immediately, they began sexually abusing one another.’
