I was through the front door almost before Patricia had opened it. And before she could say anything, I was spitting out: ‘Where the fuck is fucking Peg Leg?’
‘Dan . . . Jesus . . . what’s got into you?’
She followed me down the hall. When he wasn’t in the kitchen, I went into the lounge. When he wasn’t in the lounge, I went into the living room.
‘Where is he?’
I went to leave the living room, heading upstairs. Trish stood in the doorway.
‘Dan. Settle down.’
‘Don’t tell me to . . . The little fucking—’
‘Dan.’
I had the Xbox in my arms. I blew air out of my cheeks. I sucked it back in again. In, out, in, out.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Where is he?’
‘Upstairs.’
‘Call him down. Please.’
‘Trish. It’s fine. Honestly. All will be revealed.’
‘It’s not fine if you’re going to smack him.’
‘He’s fourteen, I’m not going to smack him. I’m going to punch his head off. Please. Just get him.’
She raised an eyebrow. I raised one back.
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’
She turned for the stairs. I retreated back across into the living room and set the Xbox on the coffee table. I heard her calling him. I paced. A couple of minutes later he came into the room. He had on an old pair of my football shorts and a twenty-year-old Liverpool top. His eyes immediately went to the Xbox. Patricia leant against the door frame, arms folded.
‘Got your Xbox,’ I said. He grunted. He moved towards it. I said, ‘Why don’t you plug it in, we can have a game.’
‘There’s a TV in my room.’
‘I’ll come up there, then.’
He screwed his eyes up. ‘Yeah, right. I just want to play by myself.’
‘Hey, son, you’re here as our guest; the least you could do is have a game. Our wee family. Go on, plug it in. I got you a game. A new one. Thought you’d appreciate it. Grand Theft Auto Remember 1690. It’s a special Belfast edition. Come on, plug it in, Bobby. Plug it in.’
He stood where he was.
‘Dan . . .?’
‘PLUG IT IN!’
‘Fuck off!’ Bobby exploded. He spun on his one heel and would have fled if Patricia hadn’t blocked his path. ‘Get out of my fuckin’ way,’ he growled. His fingers bunched into fists. His head jutted forward, right up against Patricia’s. ‘GET OUT OF MY FUCKIN’ WAY!’
He didn’t know Trish. She could have made the defenders of Stalingrad look flaky. She remained resolutely in position, even as he grabbed her blouse and tried to drag her out of the way. That lasted for all of one second; then I had him by the throat. I dragged him backwards and threw him down. He landed in a heap. I stood over him.
‘You ever put a hand on her again, and I’ll fucking kill you. Do you hear me?’ He said nothing. I crouched down. I took a hold of his hair and pulled his head up. ‘Do you fucking hear me?’
Still nothing.
Patricia knelt beside me. ‘Dan . . .’ she said softly. ‘Dan . . .’
She took hold of my hand and eased it off his hair one finger at a time. I was shaking. She got the last finger free and he slumped back to the floor.
I stood up. ‘You ungrateful little shit,’ I spat.
‘Dan . . . Dan . . . it’s okay. We all just need to calm down.’
‘We need to get our fucking heads examined, taking him in, looking after . . .’
She put a calming hand on my chest, and I breathed in, out, in, out, against it.
It eased.
‘Good,’ said Trish. ‘Now what’s this all about?’
I stepped up to the coffee table. I removed the top of the Xbox. ‘This is what it’s about.’
Patricia moved up beside me. She looked down. She looked at me. We both turned to look at the boy.
He said, ‘If you touch me again, I’m calling ChildLine.’
‘If you call ChildLine, I’ll break your fucking head,’ I said.
‘And I’ll help him,’ said Trish.
What a team.
When Bobby refused to get up off the floor, Patricia asked me to leave the room. I did so, eventually, and under protest. I left them together for ten minutes. I stood in the garden, fuming. It was neater than I remembered. There was new furniture. I saw Trish through the French doors, on her knees beside him. I was disappointed with him, and myself. I’d known he was trouble, I had all the evidence for it, yet I’d still brought him into our lives. I had made the cardinal error of trusting him because he was disabled, as if that somehow made him incapable of being evil.
Trish waved me in and we took our places at the kitchen table. Between us we had the gun, the cash and the drugs, two cans of Diet Coke and a cappuccino made with a cappuccino machine for which I’d been denied visitation rights. We had one Twix. I took one leg of it, Patricia the other. Apply your own metaphor.
She said, ‘No shouting, no storming off, no fighting, agreed?’
I stared at Bobby, he stared at the table. Trish gave me a look, and then a second, and then, ‘Dan?’
‘Yes. Okay. If you insist.’
‘Bobby?’
He nodded.
‘Dan, for fuck . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Bobby, do you agree?’
‘Yes.’
‘And have you anything to say about what we found in your Xbox?’
‘Apart from some half-arsed excuse,’ I said. ‘Own it.’
‘Dan?’
‘Okay!’
‘Bobby – what do you want to say?’
His eyes flitted up to Trish. She gave him an encouraging nod.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t mean it,’ I said.
Patricia rolled her eyes. ‘Jesus, Dan, give him—’
‘Okay. All right. Apology accepted. Now you need to tell us about . . . this.’ I indicated the gun. Bobby reached out for it. ‘Without touching it,’ I added.
‘It’s a nine-millimetre short-barrel Luger.’
‘O . . . kay.’
‘It’s semi-automatic with an eight-round detachable box magazine and—’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Bobby, I’m not really concerned about the mechanics of it; I want to know how you came to have it and why. And the same applies to the money, and the drugs. My mum used to say, if you’re going to do something, do it well. You appear to be dealing on quite a remarkable scale for a fourteen-year-old.’
Bobby shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not . . . I wasn’t . . . only a bit . . . just some draw and pills for me mates.’
‘This isn’t a little . . . there’s enough here to start a bloody—’
‘Let him talk,’ said Trish.
I showed her my Twix finger.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Bobby. Continue.’
He kept his eyes on the gun.
‘It’s not mine,’ he said.
‘Oh, you’re just holding on to it for someone? Right.’
‘Dan, cut the sarcasm . . . Bobby, please, everything’s going to be okay . . . Just tell us . . .’
‘I am telling youse if youse would just bloody listen. It’s not mine, okay, all right? The Millers, they don’t keep anything themselves, don’t want to get caught with it, so they spread it out across the boys. I was okay just selling some dope, but they made me take all this other stuff. They just kept sending people to the house. I’d more customers than the bloody Mace on the corner, and I didn’t want any of them. But I’d no choice.’
‘There’s always a choice,’ I said.
‘Jesus fuck!’ Flecks of spit sprayed from the corners of his mouth. He brought his fist down hard on the table. The gun, the drugs, the cash, Trish and I all jumped. He jabbed a finger across at me. ‘This is why I hate fucking do-gooding wankers like you, oh there’s always a choice, well it’s easy for you to say that in your fucking show-house or here on fucking Cypriot Avenue. In case you didn’t notice, they shot my leg off . . . you . . . you know nothing . . . nothing.’
‘It’s Cypress Avenue,’ I said. ‘Like the song.’
‘FUCK!’ He held his hands to the sides of his skull and pressed.
‘Nobody is fucking listening to me!’
He cracked his forehead down on the tabletop, hard.
‘Don’t,’ said Trish. ‘Please.’
‘It’s her favourite table,’ I said.
Trish looked daggers at me, but, most unexpectedly, Bobby laughed. He banged his head again, but not as hard. And then he laughed some more.
‘This is so fucking fucked up,’ he said.
He rested his head on the surface. I looked at Trish and raised my eyebrows. She raised her own and nodded at me to say or do something.
I said, ‘Bobby. There’s sixty grand here. I counted it. God knows how much the coke is worth.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s why they’re after you.’
‘Yes.’
‘So why don’t you just give it back to them?’
Bobby finally sat back. There was a spot of blood right in the middle of his forehead. He was looking across the table, but not at me, somewhere way beyond. When he spoke, his voice was tired, almost a monotone: ‘I can’t give it back, because my mum found the coke. And before I could stop her, she flushed half of it down the bog. Maybe forty grand’s worth. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just go to them and say, sorry, I’ve lost half your stash. So I tried to raise the money myself, but y’know . . . Christ . . . I was cutting it weaker and weaker and the Millers heard about it and thought I was ripping them off, so they did my leg and said get us the money, get us our gear, or you’re fuckin’ dead. One of me mates got the gun, we was going to do a post office or fucking Marks and Spencer’s even though I could hardly walk and they’re fucking useless anyway. But we would have done it, except me mum started all that shite on the radio, and it made it ten times worse. I couldn’t even leave the house. She kept at it and kept at it, like she was daring them, so they came for me, and that would have been okay, but they didn’t get me, they got my ma instead. They killed her.’ He shook his head violently. He looked to Trish, and then to me, his eyes big and red. ‘I don’t want the Xbox back for the money or the drugs. I want it for the gun. I want it for the Millers. They killed my mum. And I’m going to fucking kill them.’
He was fourteen, for fucksake, and Patricia was in tears.