Palimpsest_Features
26th Jan 2004, 14:02
Billy McGowan had always known he was different from other boys. Age 11, and now he had proof of it. No-one else could see it, but God knew.
Just as long as Miss McCrocodile didn't know, 'sall.
There she was lingering outside the Spar, waiting. For him. Trouble was that God and Miss McCrocodile were great mates.
At Sunday School at the Armagh Road Free Presbyterian Church hadn't she said - "God has marked each one of ye in some special way. No two of ye are the same. He knows exactly who ye are. And exactly what wickedness ye've been up to, Billy McGowan"?
Billy'd stopped going to Sunday School years back but he would still see old McCrocodile pushing her bike around town. Now she was peering at him through the letters on the shop window that spelt out, in reverse, Baked Beans 7p. Like a bloody vulture.
He'd lurked for as long as he could among Dairy Products, pretending to be searching for something, but she still hadn't budged. She rapped on the window with her bony knuckle. Nothing for it - he was going to have to face her.
At the checkout, Billy paid for the digestives. The till girl was singing along to "Gonna Make You A Star". All the girls Billy knew loved David Essex. The song had been number one for two weeks. Boys didn't like David Essex much - they liked "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas. Rusty Chandler said it was "ace", and would do karate chops in the air while singing it.
Outside the Spar, Billy tried to make a dash for it up Carson Street, but McCrocodile was bloody fast, considering her age. Her white hand shot out and grabbed his sweater, holding on tightly.
"Are ye all right, young Billy McGowan?"
"Oh, hello Miss McCorquadale." Billy McGowan hung his head.
"A little word." She tugged him towards the ally at the side of the shop.
Four days now, his secret had burned away at him. In a way it'd be a relief to share it. McCrocodile would have been the last person he would chose to tell the truth to, mind.
Billy braced himself for a tongue-lashing, but to his surprise McCrocodile just threw her arms around him. "Ye poor wee snipe," she said, quietly.
Rigid with shock, Billy waited for her to unbind him but her spindly arms remained locked around his neck. He smelled her nylon coat - an unexpected sweet whiff of perfume. Craning his neck upwards, he saw tears dripping down her crinkly face.
"Just a poor little innocent lamb."
Which was sort of funny really, considering how when he was eight, Miss McCrocodile had always been telling him, what an evil, pernicious influence he was on all the other boys.
"The people who did this terrible thing to your family," she whispered, "they will not escape the wrath of the Lord. For God shall bring every secret thing into judgement, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
"Yes miss."
She gawked down at him, milky-eyed. "If ye need to talk to anyone, ye can always come to me." And to his horror, she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.
With a mighty tug, he managed to wrench his sweater out of her gnarly grasp and ran all the way up Carson Street.
He ran on past Martin's newsagents, past the Unionist Hall, past the swimming baths, through the Army checkpoint, past the bored soldiers who swung their black guns lazily and turned left on Zion Lane to run on up the steep hill.
That sealed it. If McCrocodile couldn't fathom his secret, no one would. God excepted.
He was different from other boys, but no one but himself would understand that, 'cause he couldn't tell them why.
Course he'd always believed he was special. Back in Sunday School, when McCrocodile had told him that God had made no two boys alike, it had made perfect sense to him. No one else at Armagh Road Primary could roll their tongues completely upside down. He'd never met another boy who had a scar shaped like an arrow on the back of his knee, the way Billy did. Nor did he had he ever met any boy who could train a dog to walk on its hind legs, the way he'd trained Auntie June's Jack Russell last Christmas.
These things marked him out as his own man, Billy felt - as special as the tiny lines on his fingertips which were his and his alone. But he also knew that most boys on the estate had some individual talent, or some peculiarity that made them believe they too were just a little bit different.
Rusty Chandler could belch the national anthem, start to finish. Hearing him practising it in Billy's bedroom one day, Billy's dad - the late Willy McGowan - had smacked Rusty so hard on the ear it bled. "Show some fuckin' respect," his father had yelled.
Lanky Patrick Hamilton was double-jointed and could bend his left arm backwards at the elbow until it made a right angle.
James Creedy had only one eye, having lost the other in a firework accident the previous year - and not only that, but he said he had a hole in the heart, too. Creedy was a boaster though. As yet another sign of his own superiority he had once claimed to have had sex with his cousin Maureen McBride, two years older than him, when half the other boys in their year hadn't even seen a fanny yet. No one believed him on that score. Besides, if he had, it was disgusting, because Maureen was as fat as a whale and always smelt of grease from the chippie her daddy worked in.
But Billy McGowan's specialness was an altogether different matter. The shitter was, he couldn't tell no-one about it.
He ran on past the electricity substation to the playground. The climbing frame there had been recently painted in red, white and blue, and not by the council either.
The McGowan's house was at the top of the estate, where the town ended and the fields began.
By the time he reached it, the unmarked Ford Escort was already parked outside. The word "GrAss" was still splashed in blue paint across the glass of their front room window, big drips that dried as they ran down the glass. The council said they'd sent someone to clean it off yesterday, but the workman had called in sick. Surprise.
His ma was waiting at the door for him. "What kept ye so long?"
"Bumped into Miss McCorquadale, like."
"Oh yes. And what did she want?"
"She told me I could talk to her any time."
"Nosy cow," said Billy's ma. "Tell her to mind her own beeswax. Come on in now, fast, they're here."
Behind her, in their small living room stood the RUC man who had called twice before, a big, veiny, red-faced man who smelled of beer and farts. This time there was a tweedy woman with him who dressed like a schoolteacher.
"This is Miss Sullivan," said his ma, unwrapping the digestives.
"Hello Billy," the woman smiled, holding out her hand. The living room looked especially bare since they had taken up the carpet. They had to, on account of the blood.
Dad's favourite chair was gone too.
His ma and he didn't go in the living room any more, if they could avoid it. They had moved the TV into the kitchen. Once ma had caught him in there, staring at where the carpet had been. There was now just bare linoleum in front of the fire. But all she'd said was, "Come away. Don't make things worse, ye poor boy," and she'd kissed him on the forehead.
They excused his silence, his sulkiness, the way he had withdrawn from the world. After all, his daddy had just been murdered, hadn't he?
"Poor wee Billy. The boy looks terrible," the neighbours whispered. "Is he not sleeping? Well, he'd be bound too take it hard. Such a terrible thing. Such wickedness."
The three - his mother, the Inspector and the policewoman - sat on stools in the kitchen. Billy leaned against the cooker, dunking his biscuit into his tea. The inspector held a pencil in one hand and a blue notebook in the other. "Write down what ye like," his ma said. "But ye know I am not saying anything."
"No," he said, sadly, "You aren't."
"I have a child," she said. "I have to bring him up on my own now in this world. Ye know I can't say a single word."
"No," said the Inspector mournfully. "No. I know that."
"To be honest," she said. "I'm not even angry at them for killing him. Just that they had to do it here. In my home."
The policewoman looked shocked. "Come," she said nervously, yanking Billy away, and dragging him towards the narrow staircase. "Shall we go to your bedroom and have a chat?"
"What's she doing?" said his ma.
"Do you have any more tea?" said the Inspector, hurriedly. "It's a great cup you make."
.
The house was two-up two-down. Billy had the back bedroom next to the bathroom.
"Mind the top step," said Billy. "The carpet's loose."
Ma kept badgering da to nail it back down but he never had. Billy pushed the door to his bedroom open.
First thing she said was, "So, you like dogs?"
"Ay," answered Billy.
The walls were covered in hundreds photographs of dogs he had cut from magazines. It was his aim to cover the whole wall above his chest of drawers. He was about three-quarters of the way there.
"You have a dog yourself?" It was just conversation, he thought, to make him feel better. She was just trying to be nice. She didn't know anything.
"No," said Billy.
She shook her head and looked at him sadly. He felt embarrassed.
"You found your daddy didn't you?"
He nodded. "He wasn't moving. He was lying on the carpet," he told her. In the four days Billy hadn't once told an actual lie. Da was, indeed, lying on the carpet when Billy came back from Rusty's house at gone eleven. Mam was still in the bar. Supposed to be at the bingo, but everyone knew she was always in at Kelly's.
"It must have been a shock."
Bloody well was, thought Billy, nodding. His father, the big man, lying on the floor, head bleeding and fingers broken, eyes shut, and breathing heavily through a reddened nose that had never looked that shape before. His daddy, strong as a JCB, arms like telegraph poles, punch like an express train, sprawled uselessly and broken-legged on his own carpet under the portrait of Her Majesty that hung above the fireplace. There had been a half-finished cup of tea on the table by his dad's armchair. It had still been warm. The armchair was tipped right over, as if they'd started beating him with the baseball bats while he was still sat in it. Maybe he had tried to scramble up the back of it to get away as the blows rained down. And somehow just as shocking, on his daddy's own windows, (which he insisted his wife clean every Monday with vinegar and newspapers because he wasn't spending any money on those fancy proprietary cleaners), in great big letters the word: "GrAss."
"What had you been doing at your friend's house?"
"It was bonfire night. Guy Fawkes. Only ma wouldn't let me go because she said there was goin' t' be trouble. So we was just watching the fireworks, ye know? From his bedroom window.'
"Tell me, Billy, when you came back from your friend, Mr Chandler's house, did you see anything strange - before you let yourself in the door, that is?"
"The writing. On the glass."
"Good. But nothing else?"
Billy shook his head, and curled his lower lip down. That much was true, too.
"Nobody hanging around in the street outside?"
"No."
"No unusual cars."
Billy shook his head again.
"Think, Billy. Think really hard."
He picked up a Stuka that he had built a few weeks earlier. There was polystyrene cement all over the cockpit. He could never build the stupid things properly. They never seemed to end up looking anything like the picture on the box. The policewoman pulled out a packet of Rolos from her handbag. It was a new tube - probably she'd bought it especially. She unwrapped one and held it out to him. He took it silently.
"Did your dad have any enemies?"
That was a tricky one to duck. Was shrugging with a spastic look on your face actually lying? But just then, fortunately, ma pushed the bedroom door open, practically knocking the young policewoman down.
"What the damnation are ye doing?" she demanded, belligerently.
The policewoman looked terrified. "I was just talking to your son."
Billy gulped down the Rolo. His ma would not like him taking sweets from strangers.
"Ye've no right. Ye've no bloody right. If ye're talking to him, I should be there, isn't that right, Inspector?" she shouted down the stairs.
"Whatever you say, Mrs McGowan" said the policewoman.
His ma grabbed him and cradled his head in her bosom, tightly. "Get out of his bedroom." Pressed to her books, Billy could hardly breathe. Embarrassed, Billy still relished the feeling. Her smell. Her plump softness.
"Ye OK, Billy?" she said, quietly.
She released him. "Yeah," he said, sucking air.
"Ye poor boy," she said, tenderly. "Ye poor boy."
.
On the doorstep, the Inspector said, "I know what things are like, Mary. The way things are round here."
"Ye don't," his ma said, staring past him.
"What is it coming to, Mary, when we start killing our own?"
Ma stood silent. Mrs Chandler across the road peeked out from behind her nets at them.
They were a mile from bandit country. The border was less than five. There was a time not long ago when his dad told them all that IRA were ready to come marching over it any moment and they should prepare for the worst.
One summer night when he was about seven or eight, his da had woken him from his bed and said, "Come on, we've got work to do."
Together they'd walked down to the little lane at the bottom of the estate. There his da had handed him the torch and had said, "Shine it on the tarmac."
Da had pulled out a paintbrush and set to work. There was something clumsy about the way the big man worked, tongue protruding through his teeth as he concentrated. Occasionally he'd mutter, "Fuck," as he'd dripped paint on his brogues.
When he'd finished he'd stepped back to review his handiwork. "NO POPE HERE." The letters were uneven, diminishing in size as they went.
Billy remembered how his father had frowned at his rotten hand writing, disappointed that it hadn't turned out better. "As long as the taigs can read it, I suppose. That's the main thing."
"One thing," the inspector was saying to Billy's mother. "You said, 'They killed him.'" The policeman lifted his notebook. "'I'm not even angry they killed him.' So you know for sure it was more than one person?"
"Goodbye, Inspector Van Der Bloody Valk." Billy's mother tried to close the door, but the policeman still had one foot in the way. The inspector rubbed the back of his neck. "Listen, I should tell you this, only I'd appreciate ye keeping it to yourselves. The gun they shot him with," he said. "It had been used before."
"I don't want to hear any of this," said his mother.
"Ye know they found the bullet in him? Well, they matched it up with others they found from other killings. They can do that, ye know."
"Go away from here," whispered ma through her teeth.
The inspector continued regardless. "It had already been used in two murders. One in 72, and another the next year. A Catholic taxi driver and a young lad picked off in the street. The UVF claimed responsibility. So we know it was the Volunteer Force, more than likely."
"So?" she said.
"So if ye don't want to tell me anything then we'll never catch them. Ye want us to catch them, don't ye?"
"Ye want my son to have no parents at all?" said his mother stonily.
"Your man. He used to be UVF, didn't he? He fell out with them, I heard."
"Oh just eff off away from here and leave us alone," Mary McGowan sighed. "What good's it going to do anyway?" She slammed the door on the Inspector, turned, and leaned back against the closed door, weeping.
Standing at the bottom of the stairs, having listened to the entire conversation, Billy marvelled. The gun that killed his father had already killed at least twice before.
He longed to tell someone why that piece of information was so amazing to him, about the secrets that fact let loose for him. But he couldn't. For to say anything would be to give his own secret away.
With a strange detachment, he noted how secrets quickly breed more secrets.
He went to the window and watched the Inspector and the policewoman scuttling over the grass to their white Escort, eager to get away from this estate.
Billy watched the car drive away, passing over the words his dad had written. "NO POPE HERE." The older boys from the estate touched them up every few weeks now. The letters were bolder, straighter and more certain than they had been when his father had first scrawled them.
A fortnight ago, underneath "NO POPE HERE", some lad had sprayed "LUCKY BLOODY POPE". Da had been so furious he'd grabbed Billy by the neck and demanded, "Which of your degenerate little fuckin' friends did that?"
Billy hadn't even been able to breathe, let alone tell him.
.
Just as long as Miss McCrocodile didn't know, 'sall.
There she was lingering outside the Spar, waiting. For him. Trouble was that God and Miss McCrocodile were great mates.
At Sunday School at the Armagh Road Free Presbyterian Church hadn't she said - "God has marked each one of ye in some special way. No two of ye are the same. He knows exactly who ye are. And exactly what wickedness ye've been up to, Billy McGowan"?
Billy'd stopped going to Sunday School years back but he would still see old McCrocodile pushing her bike around town. Now she was peering at him through the letters on the shop window that spelt out, in reverse, Baked Beans 7p. Like a bloody vulture.
He'd lurked for as long as he could among Dairy Products, pretending to be searching for something, but she still hadn't budged. She rapped on the window with her bony knuckle. Nothing for it - he was going to have to face her.
At the checkout, Billy paid for the digestives. The till girl was singing along to "Gonna Make You A Star". All the girls Billy knew loved David Essex. The song had been number one for two weeks. Boys didn't like David Essex much - they liked "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas. Rusty Chandler said it was "ace", and would do karate chops in the air while singing it.
Outside the Spar, Billy tried to make a dash for it up Carson Street, but McCrocodile was bloody fast, considering her age. Her white hand shot out and grabbed his sweater, holding on tightly.
"Are ye all right, young Billy McGowan?"
"Oh, hello Miss McCorquadale." Billy McGowan hung his head.
"A little word." She tugged him towards the ally at the side of the shop.
Four days now, his secret had burned away at him. In a way it'd be a relief to share it. McCrocodile would have been the last person he would chose to tell the truth to, mind.
Billy braced himself for a tongue-lashing, but to his surprise McCrocodile just threw her arms around him. "Ye poor wee snipe," she said, quietly.
Rigid with shock, Billy waited for her to unbind him but her spindly arms remained locked around his neck. He smelled her nylon coat - an unexpected sweet whiff of perfume. Craning his neck upwards, he saw tears dripping down her crinkly face.
"Just a poor little innocent lamb."
Which was sort of funny really, considering how when he was eight, Miss McCrocodile had always been telling him, what an evil, pernicious influence he was on all the other boys.
"The people who did this terrible thing to your family," she whispered, "they will not escape the wrath of the Lord. For God shall bring every secret thing into judgement, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
"Yes miss."
She gawked down at him, milky-eyed. "If ye need to talk to anyone, ye can always come to me." And to his horror, she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.
With a mighty tug, he managed to wrench his sweater out of her gnarly grasp and ran all the way up Carson Street.
He ran on past Martin's newsagents, past the Unionist Hall, past the swimming baths, through the Army checkpoint, past the bored soldiers who swung their black guns lazily and turned left on Zion Lane to run on up the steep hill.
That sealed it. If McCrocodile couldn't fathom his secret, no one would. God excepted.
He was different from other boys, but no one but himself would understand that, 'cause he couldn't tell them why.
Course he'd always believed he was special. Back in Sunday School, when McCrocodile had told him that God had made no two boys alike, it had made perfect sense to him. No one else at Armagh Road Primary could roll their tongues completely upside down. He'd never met another boy who had a scar shaped like an arrow on the back of his knee, the way Billy did. Nor did he had he ever met any boy who could train a dog to walk on its hind legs, the way he'd trained Auntie June's Jack Russell last Christmas.
These things marked him out as his own man, Billy felt - as special as the tiny lines on his fingertips which were his and his alone. But he also knew that most boys on the estate had some individual talent, or some peculiarity that made them believe they too were just a little bit different.
Rusty Chandler could belch the national anthem, start to finish. Hearing him practising it in Billy's bedroom one day, Billy's dad - the late Willy McGowan - had smacked Rusty so hard on the ear it bled. "Show some fuckin' respect," his father had yelled.
Lanky Patrick Hamilton was double-jointed and could bend his left arm backwards at the elbow until it made a right angle.
James Creedy had only one eye, having lost the other in a firework accident the previous year - and not only that, but he said he had a hole in the heart, too. Creedy was a boaster though. As yet another sign of his own superiority he had once claimed to have had sex with his cousin Maureen McBride, two years older than him, when half the other boys in their year hadn't even seen a fanny yet. No one believed him on that score. Besides, if he had, it was disgusting, because Maureen was as fat as a whale and always smelt of grease from the chippie her daddy worked in.
But Billy McGowan's specialness was an altogether different matter. The shitter was, he couldn't tell no-one about it.
He ran on past the electricity substation to the playground. The climbing frame there had been recently painted in red, white and blue, and not by the council either.
The McGowan's house was at the top of the estate, where the town ended and the fields began.
By the time he reached it, the unmarked Ford Escort was already parked outside. The word "GrAss" was still splashed in blue paint across the glass of their front room window, big drips that dried as they ran down the glass. The council said they'd sent someone to clean it off yesterday, but the workman had called in sick. Surprise.
His ma was waiting at the door for him. "What kept ye so long?"
"Bumped into Miss McCorquadale, like."
"Oh yes. And what did she want?"
"She told me I could talk to her any time."
"Nosy cow," said Billy's ma. "Tell her to mind her own beeswax. Come on in now, fast, they're here."
Behind her, in their small living room stood the RUC man who had called twice before, a big, veiny, red-faced man who smelled of beer and farts. This time there was a tweedy woman with him who dressed like a schoolteacher.
"This is Miss Sullivan," said his ma, unwrapping the digestives.
"Hello Billy," the woman smiled, holding out her hand. The living room looked especially bare since they had taken up the carpet. They had to, on account of the blood.
Dad's favourite chair was gone too.
His ma and he didn't go in the living room any more, if they could avoid it. They had moved the TV into the kitchen. Once ma had caught him in there, staring at where the carpet had been. There was now just bare linoleum in front of the fire. But all she'd said was, "Come away. Don't make things worse, ye poor boy," and she'd kissed him on the forehead.
They excused his silence, his sulkiness, the way he had withdrawn from the world. After all, his daddy had just been murdered, hadn't he?
"Poor wee Billy. The boy looks terrible," the neighbours whispered. "Is he not sleeping? Well, he'd be bound too take it hard. Such a terrible thing. Such wickedness."
The three - his mother, the Inspector and the policewoman - sat on stools in the kitchen. Billy leaned against the cooker, dunking his biscuit into his tea. The inspector held a pencil in one hand and a blue notebook in the other. "Write down what ye like," his ma said. "But ye know I am not saying anything."
"No," he said, sadly, "You aren't."
"I have a child," she said. "I have to bring him up on my own now in this world. Ye know I can't say a single word."
"No," said the Inspector mournfully. "No. I know that."
"To be honest," she said. "I'm not even angry at them for killing him. Just that they had to do it here. In my home."
The policewoman looked shocked. "Come," she said nervously, yanking Billy away, and dragging him towards the narrow staircase. "Shall we go to your bedroom and have a chat?"
"What's she doing?" said his ma.
"Do you have any more tea?" said the Inspector, hurriedly. "It's a great cup you make."
.
The house was two-up two-down. Billy had the back bedroom next to the bathroom.
"Mind the top step," said Billy. "The carpet's loose."
Ma kept badgering da to nail it back down but he never had. Billy pushed the door to his bedroom open.
First thing she said was, "So, you like dogs?"
"Ay," answered Billy.
The walls were covered in hundreds photographs of dogs he had cut from magazines. It was his aim to cover the whole wall above his chest of drawers. He was about three-quarters of the way there.
"You have a dog yourself?" It was just conversation, he thought, to make him feel better. She was just trying to be nice. She didn't know anything.
"No," said Billy.
She shook her head and looked at him sadly. He felt embarrassed.
"You found your daddy didn't you?"
He nodded. "He wasn't moving. He was lying on the carpet," he told her. In the four days Billy hadn't once told an actual lie. Da was, indeed, lying on the carpet when Billy came back from Rusty's house at gone eleven. Mam was still in the bar. Supposed to be at the bingo, but everyone knew she was always in at Kelly's.
"It must have been a shock."
Bloody well was, thought Billy, nodding. His father, the big man, lying on the floor, head bleeding and fingers broken, eyes shut, and breathing heavily through a reddened nose that had never looked that shape before. His daddy, strong as a JCB, arms like telegraph poles, punch like an express train, sprawled uselessly and broken-legged on his own carpet under the portrait of Her Majesty that hung above the fireplace. There had been a half-finished cup of tea on the table by his dad's armchair. It had still been warm. The armchair was tipped right over, as if they'd started beating him with the baseball bats while he was still sat in it. Maybe he had tried to scramble up the back of it to get away as the blows rained down. And somehow just as shocking, on his daddy's own windows, (which he insisted his wife clean every Monday with vinegar and newspapers because he wasn't spending any money on those fancy proprietary cleaners), in great big letters the word: "GrAss."
"What had you been doing at your friend's house?"
"It was bonfire night. Guy Fawkes. Only ma wouldn't let me go because she said there was goin' t' be trouble. So we was just watching the fireworks, ye know? From his bedroom window.'
"Tell me, Billy, when you came back from your friend, Mr Chandler's house, did you see anything strange - before you let yourself in the door, that is?"
"The writing. On the glass."
"Good. But nothing else?"
Billy shook his head, and curled his lower lip down. That much was true, too.
"Nobody hanging around in the street outside?"
"No."
"No unusual cars."
Billy shook his head again.
"Think, Billy. Think really hard."
He picked up a Stuka that he had built a few weeks earlier. There was polystyrene cement all over the cockpit. He could never build the stupid things properly. They never seemed to end up looking anything like the picture on the box. The policewoman pulled out a packet of Rolos from her handbag. It was a new tube - probably she'd bought it especially. She unwrapped one and held it out to him. He took it silently.
"Did your dad have any enemies?"
That was a tricky one to duck. Was shrugging with a spastic look on your face actually lying? But just then, fortunately, ma pushed the bedroom door open, practically knocking the young policewoman down.
"What the damnation are ye doing?" she demanded, belligerently.
The policewoman looked terrified. "I was just talking to your son."
Billy gulped down the Rolo. His ma would not like him taking sweets from strangers.
"Ye've no right. Ye've no bloody right. If ye're talking to him, I should be there, isn't that right, Inspector?" she shouted down the stairs.
"Whatever you say, Mrs McGowan" said the policewoman.
His ma grabbed him and cradled his head in her bosom, tightly. "Get out of his bedroom." Pressed to her books, Billy could hardly breathe. Embarrassed, Billy still relished the feeling. Her smell. Her plump softness.
"Ye OK, Billy?" she said, quietly.
She released him. "Yeah," he said, sucking air.
"Ye poor boy," she said, tenderly. "Ye poor boy."
.
On the doorstep, the Inspector said, "I know what things are like, Mary. The way things are round here."
"Ye don't," his ma said, staring past him.
"What is it coming to, Mary, when we start killing our own?"
Ma stood silent. Mrs Chandler across the road peeked out from behind her nets at them.
They were a mile from bandit country. The border was less than five. There was a time not long ago when his dad told them all that IRA were ready to come marching over it any moment and they should prepare for the worst.
One summer night when he was about seven or eight, his da had woken him from his bed and said, "Come on, we've got work to do."
Together they'd walked down to the little lane at the bottom of the estate. There his da had handed him the torch and had said, "Shine it on the tarmac."
Da had pulled out a paintbrush and set to work. There was something clumsy about the way the big man worked, tongue protruding through his teeth as he concentrated. Occasionally he'd mutter, "Fuck," as he'd dripped paint on his brogues.
When he'd finished he'd stepped back to review his handiwork. "NO POPE HERE." The letters were uneven, diminishing in size as they went.
Billy remembered how his father had frowned at his rotten hand writing, disappointed that it hadn't turned out better. "As long as the taigs can read it, I suppose. That's the main thing."
"One thing," the inspector was saying to Billy's mother. "You said, 'They killed him.'" The policeman lifted his notebook. "'I'm not even angry they killed him.' So you know for sure it was more than one person?"
"Goodbye, Inspector Van Der Bloody Valk." Billy's mother tried to close the door, but the policeman still had one foot in the way. The inspector rubbed the back of his neck. "Listen, I should tell you this, only I'd appreciate ye keeping it to yourselves. The gun they shot him with," he said. "It had been used before."
"I don't want to hear any of this," said his mother.
"Ye know they found the bullet in him? Well, they matched it up with others they found from other killings. They can do that, ye know."
"Go away from here," whispered ma through her teeth.
The inspector continued regardless. "It had already been used in two murders. One in 72, and another the next year. A Catholic taxi driver and a young lad picked off in the street. The UVF claimed responsibility. So we know it was the Volunteer Force, more than likely."
"So?" she said.
"So if ye don't want to tell me anything then we'll never catch them. Ye want us to catch them, don't ye?"
"Ye want my son to have no parents at all?" said his mother stonily.
"Your man. He used to be UVF, didn't he? He fell out with them, I heard."
"Oh just eff off away from here and leave us alone," Mary McGowan sighed. "What good's it going to do anyway?" She slammed the door on the Inspector, turned, and leaned back against the closed door, weeping.
Standing at the bottom of the stairs, having listened to the entire conversation, Billy marvelled. The gun that killed his father had already killed at least twice before.
He longed to tell someone why that piece of information was so amazing to him, about the secrets that fact let loose for him. But he couldn't. For to say anything would be to give his own secret away.
With a strange detachment, he noted how secrets quickly breed more secrets.
He went to the window and watched the Inspector and the policewoman scuttling over the grass to their white Escort, eager to get away from this estate.
Billy watched the car drive away, passing over the words his dad had written. "NO POPE HERE." The older boys from the estate touched them up every few weeks now. The letters were bolder, straighter and more certain than they had been when his father had first scrawled them.
A fortnight ago, underneath "NO POPE HERE", some lad had sprayed "LUCKY BLOODY POPE". Da had been so furious he'd grabbed Billy by the neck and demanded, "Which of your degenerate little fuckin' friends did that?"
Billy hadn't even been able to breathe, let alone tell him.
.