Four whiskeys in and I was starting to feel not too Craigavad. I had slept some more. It was now dark. The only light came from an ancient TV screen. The sound was turned down. There was music from an old analogue radio. It was a sixties show and the DJ was playing vinyl, so there were two different kinds of hiss coming from the speakers; three if you included the speakers themselves, which were big and heavy and lush. If I’d had a girl there, say Patricia, or Lenny, or anyone this side of human, it would have been nice and romantic. Unfortunately, I did not. I had a Shankill Butcher. It seemed to me that whatever he did, whether it was sitting where he was on a slightly ripped comfy chair, his feet up on a stained coffee table, or footering with the radio to tune the station back in, or up getting us a drink, or ice, he made sure that he was never more than an arm’s length away from some kind of cleaver. There were huge big ones that could take an ox’s head off with one blow, or little tiny almost ornamental ones, which might not much trouble a vole, but they were there all the same, dotted about the place, and I suspected there was a reason for them beyond simple butchery, something in his history that might come out with the whiskey, or something in his psyche, like him being violently insane. That said, it was not unpleasant, and I was not unrelaxed.
‘That was a good thing you did, with the boy,’ I said. I was sitting up in the bed, propped against two pillows.
He was in his chair, holding the whiskey up under his chin, staring at the radio. ‘I need the help,’ he said.
‘Do you not have anyone else?’
‘No. Did. Had to let them go.’
‘Times are hard.’
‘Times are harder when you catch them with their hand in the till.’
‘Did you – cut off that hand?’
He laughed. ‘Should have. Someone who’d worked for me for fifteen years. Getting so that you can’t trust anyone.’ I hmmm-hmmmd. ‘This boy, I won’t go easy on him; he messes me around, he’s out.’
‘That’s fair enough.’
The Rolling Stones came on. ‘Under My Thumb’. We tapped.
I said, ‘Do you want to know about him?’
‘Expect he’ll tell me in his own time.’
‘Not even about his leg, or lack thereof?’
‘Horse’s mouth, always best.’
I sipped. It was Black Bush. It had medicinal value.
‘What about you? How come you’re here? Living in the shop, I mean.’
‘Just protecting what’s mine.’
‘Does it need protecting?’
‘Probably not. A habit I got into in prison.’
‘Prison,’ I said.
‘Prison,’ he said.
I sipped again. Mick Jagger had become a little red rooster.
‘Expect you’ll tell me in your own time,’ I said.
He smiled over the top of his glass. ‘Ask away.’
‘How long have you been out?’
‘Is that not a bit arse-about-face?’
‘I didn’t want to just jump in with what you did. Or didn’t do.’
‘Oh, I did it.’
‘It.’
‘I shot a man. Just to watch him die.’
‘Where was this, Reno?’
Joe let out a low rumble of a laugh. ‘Very good.’ He gave it an American drawl: ‘The Outlaw Johnny Cash. Well I tell you something, he never came to sing in our bloody prison.’ He nodded to himself for a bit, maybe imagining it. Then he said: ‘I did shoot a man. I was given his name and where he worked and a photocopy of a photo. Those days the police used to pass mug shots to us, point out someone and say he’s a bad ’un, topped one of our lads, see what you can do boys. And we did. He was my first one, Padraig Cree, twenty-five, lived in the Ardoyne. Caught him coming out of his work, the Ormo bakery, two shots to the back of the head. There was a motorbike waiting for me. He was told to keep it running, but it kept cutting out. I jumped on the back and we just sat there, going nowhere, and then the police just happened to be passing by and saw the commotion. It’s a good job they did, I think the bakers of Ormo would have lynched us. Eighteen years old, and I got twenty-five. The kicker being that it wasn’t Padraig Cree I shot, it was Frederick Clarke, a good Protestant boy, whose main crime against Ulster was looking a little bit like Padraig Cree.’
For a while there was only the soft beat of an era and the TV news in a low-definition mime. The floor was of dark wood, but against it hundreds, maybe thousands of little flecks of sawdust.
I said, ‘That’s a bugger.’
‘Aye.’
‘How long did you serve?’
‘Eighteen. Soon as I went in, I told my fellow defenders of Ulster – no more, I’m out. The other side – they just wanted some revenge. So every day, and every night, watching my back. You learn who your friends are by not having any friends. Old Johnny had it right, get tough or die he said, get tough or die.’
‘“A Boy Named Sue”.’
‘Killed a man at eighteen, and the smell of blood in my nostrils ever since.’
‘You have family?’
‘Nope. Not now. Was married for a while shortly after I got out. Didn’t work out. She was my probation officer. She thought I was institutionalised.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘I thought she talked too much.’
He got up and fixed us another drink. He handed me my glass and sat again, taking a moment to get into his ideal position. He took a sip, and with the glass still at his lips said: ‘So what’s troubling you, son? Or what’s troubling others that they want to beat on you so much?’
I took a sip. I swirled it in the glass. I said, ‘I’m not sure I’ve worked it out enough in my head to tell you what’s going on.’
‘Or you don’t quite trust me.’
‘I . . . Well, I’m in your bed, I must trust you a little bit.’
‘I hope you feel the same way in the morning.’
He gave me a long, hard look and then we both laughed at the same time. Mine sounded a little more nervous.
Joe drained his glass and stood up. ‘I’m for bed,’ he said. ‘Early start. You need anything, give me a shout.’
I said, ‘Thanks, Joe, I appreciate . . . this. When I’ve something to tell you that makes sense, I’ll tell you.’
‘None of my business,’ he said. He moved to the door, and then paused with it half open. ‘The boy, Bobby, I know who he is.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘Hard not to know,’ he said. I nodded warily. ‘What you’re doing, that’s a good thing. There’s not many would.’
‘It’s mostly Trish,’ I said.
‘It’s both of you. But your wife . . .?’
‘Yes, Joe?’
‘She’s a fine-looking woman.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Be a fool to let her go.’
‘I know that,’ I said.