Blood Will Be Born Read online

  DESTROY AFTER USE

  His hands hung heavily at his sides. He could feel a cool draft on his behind, sagging out of the cavity beneath the seat. He stared at his knees, saliva beginning to drool from the left corner of his half open mouth. But he was alert, sharper than he had been in years. For near three months he had palmed the pink pills he was meant to swallow three times a day, hid them under his mattress.

  The door slammed behind him, the sound clean and brittle in the small tiled chamber followed by the squeak of rubber soled shoes, getting closer. Ade, the big African fella who had wheeled him in, walked across the room to where a black hose was wound round taps on the wall. He unfurled a length. Fryer was as still as a reptile, only his eyes moved. He heard a sharp screech, and then the hose pulsed and stiffened; water spurted over the tiled floor. When he turned Fryer dropped his eyes, felt icy rain fall on the tops of his bare feet as Ade lumbered towards him. Ade hosed Fryer’s legs, cold water. The paper bib quickly saturated and stuck to his skin, chilling him, but Fryer did not move.

  ‘OK Mr. Fryer, now’s the time to pee pee or poo poo if you want to.’ Ade squatted down and sponged Fryers shanks and did a quick wipe over what protruded through the hole in the chair.

  ‘No? Ok then, easier for me that way.’ He was breathing in short pants as he went about his chore, his rubber shoes squeaking in complaint as he trudged around the chair. He tossed the running hose into the middle of the room where the floor sloped down. The water gurgled into the open mouth of a drainage hole. It sounded like it was falling a long way down. Ade shuffled round and started to carefully scrub Fryer’s feet. It tickled like fuck, but Fryer only stared at his knees, drool slipping from his slack jaw. ‘Why you never talk to me no more Mr. Fryer, huh? You make me sad. Maybe I’d give you a pedicure if you talked to me, no?! Lots of nice gentlemen they do it these days,’ Ade chuckled, his jest offering Fryer a welcome but momentary warmth, quickly replaced by the hollow echo of the water, falling into that deep, dark drain.

  Fryer shivered, gritted his back teeth as Ade’s wet sponge did its work up and down his legs. A man was singing, across the courtyard. The sound leaked in with the dusky Belfast light through the single window above Fryer, steel bars visible through opaque glass.

  Your man could hold a tune, but hard to make it out.

  Bars on a cell and singing at twilight, just like when he was in the H-Blocks, when he had been surrounded by comrades, and friends, men he had fought alongside with rifle and grenade, men like himself who had taken an oath to one another, to Ireland, to the IRA.

  But those boys could sing back then; they had filled up the dead zone of that prison, its galleys and cells and featureless courtyards. They had filled it with songs from the heart, rebel songs, made a home in a place designed to break a man, isolate an army, to destroy resistance.

  North and south men had stood side by side, comrades and friends. They’d been on the one road, singing the Soldier Song together.

  Fryer blinked. Your man had started to scream, like a trapped animal.

  The H-Blocks were closed up now, empty. He’d heard it was going to be a museum. All his comrades were gone. Some dead but many were free men, but all on different roads now, not on the one road. No-one wanted to sing the Soldier Song any more. No-one wanted to know him, not even so-called blood brothers like Jim Dempsey, a man he would have died for, the man he had killed for many times. Dempsey had dumped him here ten years ago, and left him to rot.

  Fryer’s chest tightened under the wet paper, he clenched his teeth once more, but this time, not because of the cold.

  ‘I leave the pedicure for next time, Mr. Fryer,’ said Ade, wheezing as he stood up. He trudged to the spewing hose pipe on the floor, still feeding water into that hole. Fryer relaxed his fists, which were balled at his sides, tried to calm his breathing, think of something else, not Dempsey. But no matter what, he would not look at that drain. It was very deep, which meant it was also very dark. And the dark spelled danger for John Fryer. The milky light from the small window was weaker now, and twilight shadows had pooled in the wet room where, minutes before, none had been.

  Fryer’s heart gave an unpleasant wallop, and he reluctantly lifted his gaze to the darkening room. Ade bent down and picked up the hose, and as he did so, Fryer caught a glimpse of the black drain. It held his attention as only an awful thing can and he stared into it, unblinking. Sweat pimpled Fryer’s forehead, in spite of the numbing cold. Every nerve cell screamed in unison for him to jump up, run and get the fuck away. Because IT was coming for him, out of the darkness, always from the darkness. And it was close. He caught a whiff, very faint, but unmistakable; something decayed, and yet lively, like a monkey enclosure on a hot day. His pulse beat in his ears, bump, bump, bump, and he breathed in laboured rasps. The cords in his neck stood out as though straining to carry a dead weight. Yes, still time to run, to hide, but to what end? It would find him again sooner, or later, as it always did. And aside from letting it devour his body, his soul, there was only one thing which John Fryer could feed it, to keep it at bay. Blood, only freshly spilled blood.

  The smell hit him, it was thick and damp; wet pelt and black fungus. It had found him.

  It was the Moley.

  He looked up to the high bars of the solitary window, not caring now if Ade noticed him move or not. The meagre light was fading fast, but any light at all was good. The waves of stink kept coming.

  The Moley was closer.

  Ade yanked on the hose and pushed Fryer’s wheel chair out of his way. The wheels screeched, and his medical chart clacked against the back of the seat. Fryer glanced there, two words caught his eye, before he turned his attention back to the drain, a man in a living nightmare, not wanting to see but powerless to resist. The Moley’s smell filled the air, coated his sinuses, his throat. Any second now he would see it coming up and out of the darkness. Running was not the answer. It needed to be fed.

  It needed blood.

  Ade stopped dead and dropped the hose, icy water sprayed Fryer’s feet. He spun round, and started very cautiously back in the direction of the drain, head cocked to one side like a man listening for a rare bird call. He froze. Fryer could see that his left hand was trembling. Fryer listened too: the beat of blood in his ears, the hiss of the hose, Ade’s wheezing breaths. Ade’s voice faltering:

  ‘You hear dat sound Mr. Fryer? You hear that sound just now, yes?’ Fryer was motionless, staring past his knees to a cracked tile on the floor. The smell was hammering him in thick waves. If he looked at the drain he would see it now. On cue, Fryer heard Ade gasp, and then watched as he back stepped. He said something in a foreign tongue and made a gesture with his right hand. He turned back to Fryer.

  ‘OK Mr. Fryer, let’s get you finished. And then let’s get out of here. It too cold here,’ he said. Fryer was shaking, not from the chill. Ade picked up the sponge and hose. He sprayed Fryer’s upper body, and hastily scrubbed Fryer’s arm pits, top of his shoulders, and the back of Fryer’s neck, faster and rougher than before. He ran the sponge down Fryer’s left arm, stopped, the stepped away. Fryer heard him gasp again.

  ‘Oh, Mr. Fryer, I am so sorry, I should be more careful, Mr. Fryer.’

  Now Fryer felt the sting from his arm, the warmth of his blood, coursing from him. He’d cut him; maybe just pressure from the big sponge. It did not take a lot. His skin was paper thin in parts, a lattice work of scars, like the damaged surface of one of Jupiter’s frozen moons. Countless episodes of cut and heal, blood offering to keep the Moley away. He could see the black ribbon of his blood on the tiled floor, mixing now with the stream of water from the hose. As his blood approached the hole, the stench of the Moley started to recede, and then it disappeared as the blood flowed into the blackness below.

  Ade snorted, dropped the sponge to the floor and cast the hose down. Fryer heard the Ade slam the wet room door open, and his huge brown paws encased Fryer’s cold hands and gently guided him into the wheel chair. Ade ri
pped the paper bib from Fryer and carefully wrapped a soft white towel twice round his lower arm. It throbbed comfortingly under its new duvet. Ade pushed the chair, the wheels squeaked high and low, and Fryer was freed from the shadows of the wet room at last. His chart clacked against his back reminding Fryer of the two words he had read.

  Two words: No Sharps.

  Chapter 2.

  Christopher Aaron Moore killed the engine of the London black taxi after pulling to a stop outside his Granny’s terraced house in Tiger’s Bay, North Belfast. His hands and lower arms buzzed with the ghost of the old engine’s rattle. He flexed his gloved fingers, the tingling stopped, and the sudden silence of the engine dead cab was replaced by the faint flutter of the Union Jack bunting, draped between lampposts the length of the terraced street.

  It looked smaller now, and there were more cars, at least one per house, plus satellite dishes pointed skyward, so different from what he recalled. Until now, in his mind’s eye, Granny’s street was an endless corridor flanked by kerbstones; children swinging on ropes from the lampposts, ball games and dogs chasing. The first, and until now the only time he had been here, Christopher had been a child too. It had not ended well. Everyone on the street had stopped and stared, to see what the commotion was. The commotion was Granny Moore’s shrill voice, coming from this very doorway, breaking like dinner plates down the street, directed at him, and at his Daddy.

  Don’t either of you come back here! You or that mongrel Fenian taig bastard.

  Fenian and taig; the insults were directed at him. What nigger was for black America, Fenian and taig were for the Catholics of Northern Ireland. In his case, not strictly true, but Christopher’s Daddy, though a decorated member of the RUC, had also married a Catholic, Christopher’s mother.

  Her house looked the same. The window frames had been freshly painted in the same shade of royal blue. The sill was smooth and gleaming white as a surgeon’s smock. Her front door was a glossy fresh red, proud as a post-box in the afternoon light. Red white and blue, the colours of a loyal Ulster Protestant and one who had no room at her hearth for a half blood like Christopher. Christopher was here to have a word with her about that day. But it was not petty revenge, or at least not completely that, which had brought Christopher back to her door after so many years. Daddy had explained exactly what must be done, told him he had a special mission. The fact that Daddy was dead did not bother Christopher unduly. He had spent too long wandering in the wilderness. Daddy had called him in the night, and he had answered, and he had listened. Daddy told him that Belfast was a fallen place, a Gomorrah of hypocrisy and perverted justice, where evil men now ruled and the just, like him, had been cast asunder. Daddy told him he must bring the refiner’s fire to Belfast, and where better to set the flame alight but here?

  Granny’s front door opened first a crack, then wide. A man with a thick brush of grey hair filled the frame, facing in. He said something Christopher could not make out. Christopher stayed still, but he did not hide. The man tugged the door shut, turned and walked past the taxi, his face briefly visible as he pulled out a mobile phone and gave it his full attention.

  Uncle Cecil.

  Older, a few more saddle bags and much more grey. No paint brush moustache these days but definitely him. Cecil had been there that day too, arm round his mother as she ranted, burning contempt in his eyes. Christopher watched in his left wing mirror until Uncle Cecil turned the corner and passed out of sight. Let him go, for now. Cecil had his own part to play. When he discovered what Christopher would leave of his mother he could be relied on to wreak more havoc than Christopher could ever start. When his usefulness had expired, Christopher would deal with him too and then a fire would rage in Belfast, the hypocrites and traitors would be consumed.

  But first, the spark. He reached into the passenger foot well for his black mahogany truncheon, tucked it into the inside lining of his jacket and touched the front pocket of his jeans, felt the folded hunting knife. He grabbed the holdall with his change of clothes and towel and got out.

  He was wearing what he thought of as the unofficial uniform of a Belfast street Provo from the 1980s (something he was not, had not even been born). Black Doc Martin boots, a pair of stone washed blue jeans, a padded bomber jacket and a pair of leather gloves. He unrolled the black beanie down his face to reveal a balaclava, two eye holes and one for his mouth. Christopher looked up and down the empty street, closed his eyes and listened to the flapping applause from the bunting, started to smile. The stage was set. Christopher raised one gloved fist to Granny’s gleaming door.

  BANG, BANG, BANG!

  A policeman’s knock, as Daddy used to say. He heard a muffled voice from within. Christopher moved his mouth to the letter slot and gently pushed it open.

  ‘It’s Cecil. Forgot something.’

  Faintly from within: ‘I only just sat down. Use yer key.’ A litany of muffled curses followed, then the clack and creak of a walking stick or a frame. He released the letter slot and turned his back to the door. The red white and blue bunting, a sudden riot of colour in his eyes, like so many of his earlier oil covered canvases. They were now gathering dust in the attic of his childhood home, not hanging in galleries as he had once dreamed. That work was naive, like his wanting to become an artist, of that kind, in the first place.

  And yet, Christopher’s face flushed beneath the balaclava; art college rejection letters from Belfast and London, softly worded glasses in the face. He breathed it out, felt his rippling pulse flatten, as the front door unlatched behind him. His calling was higher than all that, and he was about to create a different kind of art, his masterpiece. He could hear her creak and shuffle off, a fair pace on her; she must have warmed up a bit. ‘You are some sort of spastic son. The age of me, my knees may be shot but least I have my marbles. Hurry you up, my show’s about to start.’ Christopher turned to the open door, slipped in. He clicked it closed with the heel of his boot, and slowly walked down the hall.

  The smell of an Ulster Fry hung in the hall; fried bacon, sausage, egg and greasy bread. The sound of a television turned way up coming from the parlour further back. A wooden shield with dozens of miniature spoons hung on the wall. On each spoon was a flag of the world. The tricolour of Eire was not among them.

  To his left, a white door with rectangular glass panels was slightly ajar. The sound of the television blared. The air here was stale with smoked cigarettes. Christopher nudged the door open. Granny was in a high backed chair diagonally opposite. A grey plastic crutch leaned against one of the arms, and a small table was on the other side, with a full ashtray. She was wearing a pair of horn rimmed glasses and a nylon kitchen coat.

  Christopher stepped into the room, reached behind the television and pulled the plug. All was suddenly quiet, only the stitch of the clock on the mantelpiece. She stared at him, her mouth open.

  ‘You’re… You’re not Cecil,’ she said.

  ‘No, unlucky for you Esther, I am not.’

  Chapter 3.

  DC Aoife McCusker tapped the big fish tank at the back of the booth where she and Sergeant Charlie Donaldson sat, finishing their Chinese. The lunchtime throng of Belfast Friday office workers and early bank holiday bargain hunters had come and gone, and the place was quiet. Charlie was already drunk. He had polished off five large Bushmills in the time it had taken her to work through one small rose wine. She could smell the sourness of the whiskey wafting over from across the table and feel his bleary gaze on her.

  This was a mistake, she should never have agreed to meet him, the poor guy obviously could not handle it. In the three months since their affair had ended she had shared only a few professional meetings with him, always with others present, despite the fact that he was her boss. Since the last one a month ago, he had lost half a stone of handsome muscle and had black bags under his eyes. In contrast, she was flourishing. First week working Serious Crimes, the promotion she had waited for, had worked for. Charlie was no longer her boss. He was jus
t an old flame, and sputtering out before her eyes.

  She heard the ice clink as Charlie finished off the dregs of his drink and then a rattle as he shook it in the direction of the young waitress, waiting in the shadows. She lifted a finger and tapped the thick wall of the fish tank again with the tips of her fingernails three times; one for her little girl Ava, one for her job, and one for luck. Another drink arrived.

  ‘You’re not supposed to tap the tank,’ said Charlie, gesturing to the peeling sign beneath the fish tank. ‘It upsets them,’ Charlie said, his bloodshot eyes meeting Aoife’s over his wire rim glasses. He drained half his glass, smacked his lips. ‘Even fish have feelings you know,’ he said. She glanced at Charlie’s hand, wedding ring still on. Charlie spotted her looking.

  ‘I know. I should take it off. But I’m not divorced yet.’

  ‘I am so sorry Charlie, about everything. I shouldn’t have come today, this is bad for both of us,’ she said. Her apology had escaped unchecked, left a sour residue in her mouth. She picked up her water glass and took a sip.

  ‘We have been over this. The end of me and Lisa’s marriage was not your fault,’ he said, beginning to slur.

  ‘Look, you said you needed to talk to me about something, something important. So just talk, and then I should go,’ she said. He raised a hand, shaking his head at her mention of leaving, then picked up a white cloth napkin and padded his greasy lips.

  ‘Jesus Charlie, talk to me; you said on the phone that it was serious, you sounded serious.’ Charlie studied the table mat and palmed the air between them in a slowdown gesture.

  ‘We can get to that,’ he said, gravely. ‘Yes we need to have a serious chat, about something serious,’ he said, his stoned eyes fixed on the blue world of the fish tank. This was pointless, if Charlie had important news he was patently too smashed to deliver it.