road. The transit was gone in a screech of tyres, leaving behind it a chemically sharp smell of rubber and gunfire. Ian stood in the small green patch of lawn in front of his house. His mother was kneeling by his father. Parts of his father were splattered over the paving stones and against the back of the bread-van. His mother had run out carrying a two-litre bottle of Coke for some reason. She must have been looking for something in the big cupboard by the fridge. Ian watched her crouch forward and try to wipe blood away from her husband’s face. Then she opened the bottle of Coke – it fizzed and hissed like someone stage-whispering shush – and she poured Coke over his dad’s face, and tried again to wipe the blood off. Then she leant over him and tried to mop at it with her baggy white T-shirt. Alfie’s face had looked all shiny and sticky.
They’d got the wrong man, some said. They’d just gone for a Prod, said others. The IRA said they’d got the treasurer of the local UVF. As Alfie McAleece, apolitical and apathetic in everything but football, had seen three businesses fail and twice been declared bankrupt, this seemed the least likely of the explanations. But if you throw enough shit, some of it sticks. A man at the funeral called Gerry approached Ian. He thought that the bastards who’d done this should pay. He was from the Organisation. And that was that. As it turned out, well, Ian was here and now none of that stuff mattered any more. He recounted the story of the shooting to Geordie in three short sentences, all of them broken with curses and pauses.
Geordie nodded, a little embarrassed by the new knowledge. Ian seemed a nice enough bloke. Bit lonely maybe. Geordie responded with a few stories of his own: a friend of his dad’s beaten to death in a pub; his uncle, a policeman, shot dead through the jaw at a checkpoint; how his cousin was killed with a red-hot poker pushed into his throat. He didn’t tell him about his own shooting, the kneecapping. Ian probably knew enough to have noticed the stiffness in his gait, and Geordie felt, obscurely, that he couldn’t tell him because he didn’t want Ian to see him as one of the victims, the losers, the ones sobbing face down in the car park, covered in gravel and piss. Geordie bought two more pints of the black. The pub was starting to fill up with people skiving off early from work. He remembered Danny and his agreement to make dinner. He’d slip off after this next one.
‘Well why don’t I come back with you to Danny’s? We can get a few tinnies on the way home.’
‘No mate, I can’t do today. But Dan’s having this party tomorrow evening so come round for that, yeah? We’ll make a proper night of it.’
‘Yeah, all right. Gis the address then.’ Ian couldn’t be bothered to argue. He felt exhausted. He was sure Geordie wasn’t going anywhere. And tomorrow night was fine. He could stay late and find the money in Geordie’s things or, failing that, beat it out of him. He wouldn’t be any problem. Geordie might still just tell him about it anyway. You never knew. And he might be a useful wee fella to have round.
Cycling home, Danny felt relieved that Geordie would be there when Olivia came round to pick up her things. She would cause a scene. She would start to cry. And he would feel that he’d made the wrong decision. They had met through a friend of hers who worked on a cricket magazine with Danny’s mate from uni. He pulled his brakes and slowed to a stop at the Old Street roundabout lights. A bus pulled up beside him. She had managed, in only a few months, to push him right over to the side of his life. Albert had pointed out to him one day that before he arranged to do anything he had to ask her permission.
The lights changed and Danny pushed off, fairly sure that a kid on the bus was giving him the fingers but not wanting to give him the joy of turning around and seeing it confirmed. Tonight then, he would make sure that when she turned up her stuff would be sitting out for her in his sky-blue hallway – sky-blue because she’d decorated it. Not actually decorated it, but she’d told Danny what colours to paint it and had been instrumental in finally getting it done. She recycled the colour cards as bookmarks, and had left them in the various novels she’d begun and abandoned. Over the last two months, rereading Graham Greene, Danny had learned the colours of the walls in his bedroom and boxroom: apricot and cinnabar. The card wedged between the twelfth and thirteenth pages of The Great Gatsby, his favourite novel and the one he’d pulled out from the shelf, sleepless, to reread three nights back, had revealed the kitchen to be either cowslip or mustard, depending on the light. Someday, possibly, Danny might learn that his hallway was, in fact, teal, if he happened to make it past the fifth chapter of Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, left behind by the flat’s previous owner.
Danny was turning into Sofia Road when he noticed Geordie at his storm porch, trying to turn the Chubb lock. He looked like the wiring for a man, with none of the casing, and he was shuffling and mumbling. He’s been drinking, thought Danny, amused more than dismayed. He pulled up onto the pavement and freewheeled towards him.
‘All right wee man,’ Danny shouted when he was right up at the gate. Geordie electric-fenced it into the air.
‘Aw you cunt, you scared the life out of me. Fuck off out of that.’
‘Where you been causing trouble then?’
‘I went into the centre there, to meet that fella from the boat, Ian. I’ve told him to pop along tomorrow night.’
‘Okay, why not.’ Geordie still hadn’t opened the front door.
‘Here, you hold this.’
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