Free The Scattering by Jaki McCarrick Page A

moved in behind a van and, for a second, thought I might have been seen for the figure did not pass. A match was struck and tipped to the ground, a cigarette sucked upon. The man continued past the van and a row of wood-panelled houses, stopped at the end of the street by the tall palm, opened the gate. It was Devlin. And apart from the close-clipped hair and greying sideburns he’d hardly changed: the same casual self-assurance, the almost effeminate gait.
    I became perturbed by something: my heart, pounding against my ribs. This was not how it was to have gone. Think of The Congo, I kept telling myself. Think of The fucking Congo. I closed my eyes, and for a few chilling moments supposed I was actually there.
    *
    â€˜Where d’yez think you’re goin’, you lot?’ Staunton leaned into the car and thumped the glove compartment open. He rummaged inside, probably looking for drugs or drink, and pulled out my book. ‘War and Peace ,’ he read out, venomously. Devlin stared straight ahead. None of us spoke. ‘Yez have been drinkin’, am I right?’
    â€˜Aye. We’re all under the affluence of incahol, Sergeant,’ Devlin replied, deadpan, at which the rest of us cracked up. Staunton bit his lip. Devlin reached out, grabbed the book, threw it back to me. At this I knew the cop would do one of two things. Either pull us over and quiz us, maybe roughly, with a slap to the back of Devlin’s head, or he would leave it, sensing what so many others had: the stirring power of this young man with ink-black hair and obsidian-like eyes who spoke with alarming authority. Then Devlin drew close, whispered something inaudible into Staunton’s ear. Something he had on him, something we could tell was sexual. The cop paled, was breathless, his appointed authority gone like a mirage, so much so that when he asked what had happened to the missing wing of my Hillman Hunter, I confidently responded that it had ‘flown away’.
    â€˜Well, go on. To wherever you’re off ta, but yez can’t stop here,’ Staunton said, oblivious to the fact that we had just left the publican in a torrent of blood, his rooms upturned, his cash register emptied, his skull in pieces under a corn-yellow canister of gas.
    We had not gone to bed that night. Under Devlin’s orders, the twins had taken the simpleton, Gascoigne, into the cemetery and tied him with rope to a stone Celtic cross. Devlin had wanted to teach Gascoigne a lesson. To get him to keep his mouth shut about things he’d seen in his mother’s B&B: somebody else’s girl, somebody’s wife. Mikey peeled the bananas while Joe forced them, one by one, into the lad’s mouth. It was my job to watch over all of this. Watch, as the Crilly twins pissed on the poor wretch, bound and stuffed like a pig on a spit, the piss-steam rising off him like smoke. Under Devlin’s orders we left Gascoigne in full-dark, wailing and crying for his mother. Then, later, when I’d slipped back to let the boy go, I saw Devlin walk him out of the cemetery, his arm around the boy. I imagined Devlin saying to Gascoigne that it was he who had saved him, that he would look out for him, like he’d done to me. That was how Devlin operated. Like all bullies, he sought out the feeble-minded, misfits and outsiders, who, having experienced the ferocity of his power also knew its narcotic warmth and radiance.
    Later, after we’d left the bar and its publican for dead, I drove to the Cooley hills. All the way up the meandering lane, Adamski’s Killer boomed (as if accusingly) from the car stereo. I parked the car by the gates. We clambered out and walked into the bog, sat high up on the plum-coloured heather.
    I looked down at the town, all amber in the evening light, at the Irish Sea below us winding around the stark blue Mournes across the border. I felt cold. The hills filled with an icy sea-wind that closed around us like a