Visiting Trish was just a time-killer, with the remote possibility of no-holds-barred sex, while I waited for my anointed appointment with Boogie Wilson, publican, poet, and brigadier general of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Only two of these professions featured on his business card. He had come by the name Boogie not because he was scary in any way, although he was, in many ways, but because as a teenager in the seventies he had briefly been Northern Ireland disco-dancing champion. He always seemed inordinately proud of that. His poetry was widely regarded as ‘shite’, but he hadn’t had a bad review yet. Boogie always said he had a soft spot for me because I’d been instrumental in the permanent removal of his rival for the top position in the organisation, Billy ‘Dainty’ McCoubrey, nearly twenty years previously. Any time I’d met him since, he had been friendly, a great story-teller and liberal with the free drinks. You just had to keep at the back, or indeed front, of your mind that he was the leader of possibly the most vicious terror organisation in Europe.
Boogie Wilson’s pub is on the Newtownards Road in east Belfast. It is called, for some reason, the Red Hand, and if you sit at the right table, and crick your neck in a particular way when you look out of the window, you can gaze through a decorative arch above the road outside, celebrating the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and see the massive twin cranes Samson and Goliath, permanent tombstone reminders of the shipyard that had once seemed to employ every Protestant in Northern Ireland. The gable wall of the Red Hand is completely covered in a mural showing the men of the Ulster Rifles falling at the Somme in 1916. Inside there are framed posters, photos and newspaper clippings depicting the rise of the UVF in the mid-sixties and its hooded men armed to the teeth on various manoeuvres; there are pictures of POWs from inside the Maze, paintings by prisoners, photographs of visiting Hollywood stars calling in for a little local colour and to perfect their accent for an upcoming movie. You can buy T-shirts emblazoned with Proud to Be a Prod, UVF badges, scarves, jigsaws, No Surrender hoodies, flutes, twirling batons, and Oranjeboom lager imported from the homeland of the Duke of Orange.
The thing is, I’d been in the pub a little over a year previously on a different story, and there’d been none of this. It had just been an ordinary spit-and-sawdust bar, albeit the only one in town you could still smoke in because the inspectors were too scared to tell Boogie otherwise. The decor had been strictly seventies, and the menu consisted of a box of crisps and some salted KP nuts. Now you could order à la carte.
Boogie shook my hand, and I said, ‘What the fuck is going on with this place? It’s like Disneyland designed by a Kick the Pope band.’
Boogie did me the honour of giving an embarrassed grin, and said, ‘Ach, Dan, you gotta move with the times. We’re celebrating our Ulster-Scots heritage, so we are. We got a grant from the tourist board to do it up. Most of our drinkers now come off the tour buses. Tourists or Italians doing their PhDs on fucking post-Troubles stress. Isn’t it great? And it’s a licence to print money.’
‘You used to do that anyway,’ I said.
Boogie put a finger to his lips. ‘Shhhh . . . I still do.’ He gave me a wink. He probably wasn’t joking. He showed me to a table and then went behind the bar. ‘A pint, is it?’
‘No thanks, I’m driving.’
‘Latte?’
‘Seriously?’
‘We use only the finest beans, Fairtrade, hand-picked by Somalians, then smuggled in to avoid the VAT.’
I took that on board, and asked for a Diet Coke. It came via a spray and tasted like rusty water. It probably wasn’t made by Coca-Cola. In fact, it probably was rusty water.
Boogie made himself a latte and brought it across. He was in his sixties now, almost completely bald, muscled still but a little overweight. He wore a white shirt open at the neck and a thin gold chain. His sleeves were rolled up, purposefully revealing his many and varied UVF tattoos.
I said, ‘So the bar business is booming.’
He said, ‘Aye.’
‘And how is the poetry business?’
‘Cut-throat.’
‘And what about the business of saving Ulster from the Republican hordes?’
‘Ongoing.’ He shook his head. ‘Every year, every year on Remembrance Day, I issue a proclamation solemnly declaring that it is time for us to lay down the arms we haven’t already laid down and for us to disband. Every year I get roundly ignored by the rank and file. So I soldier on, trying to keep a lid on it.’
He gave me a wan smile. I nodded with fake sympathy. It was a bit like me and Trish, constantly fantasising about peace but locked in a perpetual state of war, except he seemed to enjoy more of the benefits.
I took a sip of rust. ‘And what about the Miller boys leaning on some poor wee woman and her one-legged son on the Shankill?’
‘Is that why you’re here? I thought it was to do with Jack Caramac?’
‘It is, I think.’
I mentioned the threat to little Jimmy.
‘Really? A note in his wee pocket? I’m not convinced either of the Millers can actually write. Anyway, it seems a bit anaemic for them, if you know what I mean?’
‘I know. But I thought that seeing how it was Jack, and the publicity that might come with it, they probably didn’t want to go the traditional route, something a bit more subtle.’
‘Aye. Right. Bollocks. Sure they love the publicity. It’s what the half of them is in it for. It used to be they modelled ourselves on The Godfather – now it’s all gone Sopranos, you know what I mean? They lack class.’
‘I hear what you’re saying, Boogie.’
‘What’s it with the Murray woman anyway? If she just shut her bake, she wouldn’t get half the hassle. She goes blabbing to the likes of Caramac, she’s just pouring petrol on the fire, you know? She’s her own worst enemy. I’ve people in the Housing Executive, so I know she’s been offered houses outside the Shankill and she’s refused them. She’s an obstinate, mouthy cow and she’s up against the likes of the Millers? Come on. I mean, how many legs does the boy have to lose before she realises she can’t beat them? You know how it is, Dan, they can’t be seen to look weak.’
‘I know that, but Jesus, there must be some way of sorting it.’
‘Dan, it’s their problem, they need to deal with it. It’s not a good time to rock the boat. I notice you didn’t take this direct.’
‘Well, different generation. I thought maybe you . . .’
‘Could have a quiet word?’
‘Or have them shot or something.’
‘As if I would be involved in any of that! But tell you what, seeing as how I probably owe you one, I’ll do you a deal.’
‘I don’t really . . .’
‘Hear me out. You’re well in with Caramac, right?’
‘He’s a client.’
‘He’s a useless waste of space, but he has the ears of the nation.’
‘You get me a mention for my new poetry collection and I’ll see what I can do about the Millers. And when I say a mention, I don’t mean him tearing into it and saying who do I think I am publishing poetry when I’m responsible for this and that, and then every man jack phoning in to rip me to shreds. And I don’t mean him reading them out in a silly fucking voice and taking the piss. You get me a serious mention, then I’ll see what I can do about getting the heat taken off the auld doll, and maybe that’ll ease up the pressure on Jack and his wee lad. What you say?’
I looked at him. I took a sip. ‘Sounds good to me,’ I said. ‘What’s your book called?’
‘Love and Rockets,’ said Boogie.