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GUN BABY GUN
A Bloody Journey into the World of the Gun
IAIN OVERTON
Published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2015 Iain Overton
All photographs © Iain Overton
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 78211 342 3
Export ISBN 978 1 78211 343 0
eISBN 978 1 78211 344 7
For G.
For S.
For A.
In memory of my grandparents
Carolina Bernal (1917–2014)
Pablo Antonio Bernal (1919–2014)
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
1. THE GUN
Brazil – a murder in São Paulo – a child’s sorrow and a dead mother – the descent into a police arms cache – a revelation – a journey conceived – Leeds, UK – a secret museum and a meeting with an expert – to a Swiss canton to visit an oracle
It began with a death.
The five-year-old had lain alone with his lifeless mother all night long, curled up at her cold feet. It was only when the thin light of dawn lifted some of the darkness from the bedroom that the neighbours had heard the boy’s cries. And only then did people realise what had happened in those sunless hours before.
The bullet had entered the left side of the young woman’s temple and exited at the back of her head, splattering flecks on the leprous wall. There had often been wild-voiced arguments in that cramped house, but no one ever thought it would come to this.
After the boy was found the police arrived quickly, but the murderous lover had already fled that Brazilian city and, like the gun he had used, he was nowhere to be found.
By the time we reached the quiet roadside home the child had also been spirited away, covered in a blanket – lifted from his dark pietà and carried out into the light. His mother was still inside.
Cars passed, leaving São Paulo for the north, and we stood awkwardly and watched them go. They slowed down and watched us too, a huddle of cops and a documentary crew crowded beside a white ambulance that was never really needed. A dog barked in the distance, and I took out my video camera and walked inside.
The dead woman had run a small shop out the front, and it was filled with packets of coloured sweets and warm bottles of luminescent drinks. On the counter was a tray of Catholic pendants, which she had sold to the weary lorry drivers who would stop here. But these plastic icons had not helped her last night, and now she lay beyond, past a dusty glass counter, down a narrow corridor, there in a pool of silence.
They say death smells sweet. That’s what I thought as I walked into her bedroom. A taste touched
