Extrait
Maybe if he had one more drink they’d leave him alone. Gerry Fegan
told himself that lie before every swallow. He chased the whiskey’s
burn with a cool black mouthful of Guinness and placed the glass back
on the table. Look up and they’ll be gone, he thought.
No. They were still there, still staring. Twelve of them if he counted
the baby in its mother’s arms.
He was good and drunk now. When his stomach couldn’t hold
any more he would let Tom the barman show him to the door, and
the twelve would follow Fegan through the streets of Belfast, into his
house, up his stairs, and into his bedroom. If he was lucky, and drunk
enough, he might pass out before their screaming got too loud to
bear. That was the only time they made a sound, when he was alone
and on the edge of sleep. When the baby started crying, that was the
worst of it.
Fegan raised the empty glass to get Tom’s attention.
“Haven’t you had enough, Gerry?” Tom asked. “Is it not home
time yet? Everyone’s gone.”
“One more,” Fegan said, trying not to slur. He knew Tom would
not refuse. Fegan was still a respected man in West Belfast, despite the
drink.
Sure enough, Tom sighed and raised a glass to the optic. He
brought the whiskey over and counted change from the stained table -
top. The gummy film of old beer and grime sucked at his shoes as he
walked away.
Fegan held the glass up and made a toast to his twelve companions.
One of the five soldiers among them smiled and nodded in return.
The rest just stared.
“Fuck you,” Fegan said. “Fuck the lot of you.”
None of the twelve reacted, but Tom looked back over his
shoulder. He shook his head and continued walking to the bar.
Fegan looked at each of his companions in turn. Of the five
soldiers three were Brits and two were Ulster Defence Regiment.
Another of the followers was a cop, his Royal Ulster Constabulary
uniform neat and stiff, and two more were Loyalists, both Ulster
Freedom Fighters. The remaining four were civilians who had
been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He remembered doing
all of them, but it was the civilians whose memories screamed the
loudest.
There was the butcher with his round face and bloody apron. Fegan
had dropped the package in his shop and held the door for the woman
and her baby as she wheeled the pram in. They’d smiled at each other.
He’d felt the heat of the blast as he jumped into the already moving
car, the blast that should have come five minutes after they’d cleared
the place.
The other was the boy. Fegan still remembered the look in his eyes
when he saw the pistol. Now the boy sat across the table, those same
eyes boring into him.
Fegan couldn’t hold his gaze, so he turned his eyes downward.
Tears pooled on the tabletop. He brought his fingers to the hollows of
his face and realised he’d been weeping.
“Jesus,” he said.
He wiped the table with his sleeve and sniffed back the tears. The
pub’s stale air clung to the back of his throat, as thick as the duncolored
paint on the walls. He scolded himself. He neither needed nor
deserved pity, least of all his own. Weaker men than him could live
with what they’d done. He could do the same.
A hand on his shoulder startled him.
“Time you were going, Gerry,” Michael McKenna said.
Tom slipped into the storeroom behind the bar. McKenna paid
him to be discreet, to see and hear nothing.
Fegan knew the politician would come looking for him. He was
smartly dressed in a jacket and trousers, and his fine-framed designer
glasses gave him the appearance of an educated man. A far cry from
the teenager Fegan had run the streets with thirty years ago. Wealth
looked good on him.
“I’m just finishing,” Fegan said.
“Well, drink up and I’ll run you home.” McKenna smiled down at
him, his teeth white and even. He’d had them fixed so he could look
presentable for the cameras. The party leadership had insisted on it
before they gave him the nomination for his seat in the Assembly. At
one time, not so long past, it had been against party policy to take a
seat at
