“On The Brinks tells the story of an IRA activist imprisoned in the worst jails in Ireland, prior to one of the most famous robberies in American history. It this were fiction, it would be an excellent thriller, but it’s a true story, sustained by terrific writing.”

Rolling Stone

“The indomitable Irish. On The Brinks is an amazing book built in two stages. Belfast, firstly, New York, each other. Two cities for two extraordinary lives. The story of those years is terrible humiliation, torture, acts of barbarism, man reduced to the level of a beast. Between Nazi concentration camps and gulags, Long Kesh finds its place among these horrors.”

Le Figaro

“The life of Samuel Millar is worthy of an extraordinary film noir. And for once, the expression is not overused.”

Le Parisien

“This man [Millar] is a true force of nature … with a strong will, a spirit unswervingly tough. On The Brinks is a piece of history narrated with humor, humility and simplicity. How can such a combination be possible? Yet it is true and an incredible story of Sam Millar, the indomitable Irish. Grab a copy now.”

Corine Pirozzi, Huffington Post

“Cleverly structured as a succession of short, incisive chapters, the earthy titles despite the darkness of the story, the story grabs us from the very first lines. Humorous and self-deprecating … you are insured of a terrific and poignant read.”

La Croix

“Security guards told the police that they were surprised by assailants who had somehow evaded the sophisticated security system. They could not say how many robbers there were … it appears to be one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history.”

New York Times, front page

“Michael Mann’s Heat meets In the Name of the Father. Powerful …”

Village Voice, New York

“Naked … for years on end in a freezing cell … beatings … whatever … Millar went through it all.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Sherman, Esquire magazine

“… fascinating …”

“Dateline NBC”, New York

“His extraordinary life …”

Irish America magazine

“One of the most powerful thrillers of the year.”

Olivier Van Vaerenbergh, Le Vif, Belgium

“A book that will become a classic …”

Irish Herald, San Francisco

“While most writers sit in their study and make it up, Irish crime writer, Sam Millar, has lived it. Read this remarkable book and see how.”

Cyrus Nowrasteh, award-winning writer/director, Warner Brothers

“Powerful. Brilliant. On The Brinks is the kind of book all writers wish they had written – but thank the gods they didn’t have to live it! Millar’s the genuine tough guy personified who makes all other crime writers look like wimps.”

Jon Land, New York Times bestselling author, Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down

“Mesmerizing and fascinating, On The Brinks is one of the most revealing and powerful memoirs you will ever read.”

New York Journal of Books

“Hollywood couldn’t have done it better.”

Irish Voice, New York

“… many twists and turns … perfect for a film …”

Irish Times

“His brilliant memoir, On The Brinks, is a tale of surreal childhood in Belfast, of years of horror and torture and brutality in Long Kesh … The title of the book is testament to the author’s blackest humour which courses through the dark red memories of prison torture …”

Irish Examiner

“By any standards Sam Millar has led a remarkable life. This memoir divides comfortably between the North [of Ireland] and New York. Millar’s vivid recollection of privations withstood during the blanket protest offers grim testimony to the limits of human endurance. Like others around him Millar would not be broken, even when political conviction was reduced to dogged resistance against a repressive prison regime. He then emigrated to New York, worked in illicit casinos. The American chapters unveil a gambling underworld run by New York’s Irish gangs. The empire wasn’t built to last but Millar eyed a much bigger prize … teaming up with an associate to rob $7.2 million from the hitherto impregnable Brinks Security operation in Rochester. It was a daring and bloodless heist … No one can dispute Sam Millar is an incredible survivor. Most certainly, a life less ordinary … compulsive reading …”

Irish Independent

“Incredible … a masterpiece. A story Millar details in breathtaking panache.”

Verbal Magazine

“His memoir, On The Brinks, has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster … cool narration of a life on the edge … he has a distinctive style and a compelling story. With the right marketing, this book will become a bestseller.”

Books Ireland

“Millar takes the reader into the centre of one of the biggest robberies in US history. An extraordinary book … a gripping story of his life in prison to best-selling author … readers of On The Brinks will be on the edge of their seats waiting for another from Millar …”

Books, Belfast Telegraph

“Once you put On The Brinks down, you will immediately pick it up again. Breathtakingly honest … a compelling tour de force …”

Irish News

“Sam Millar is a fascinating guy. One of Ireland’s top crime writers … On The Brinks is an electrifying memoir …”

Irish World, London

“An extraordinary life … a terrific book – absolutely.”

Pat Kenny, Today With Pat Kenny, RTÉ

“Pat Kenny on RTÉ Radio 1 was positively revelling in the presence of Belfast writer Sam Millar and his memoir On The Brinks. It wasn’t too hard to hear why … we remain unused to hearing such conviviality from Kenny, or indeed most other RTÉ presenters … Kenny will be kicking himself that he hadn’t saved this for his Late Late Show …”

Harry Browne, Radio Review, Irish Times

“A remarkable life by any standards … a fascinating read …”

Mark Cagney, TV3

“On The Brinks is a tremendous read. The treatment of character is tremendous and the narrative is entirely gripping. The style is a well-controlled first-person telling which could very well not work if you were not so sure of what you are about. It belongs in the wider sense to the same literature as On Another Man’s Wounds, or rather the sequel The Singing Flame.”

Dr Bruce Stewart, The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature

“On the Brinks is compelling and powerfully written with a style that makes it hard to put down … it is Millar’s ability to give a detached view of the brutalities and mistakes of his own life that makes On the Brinks read more like a work of fiction than the memoir it actually is.”

Irish Emigrant, Book Review

“On The Brinks is an epic tale … his amazing life story … Millar is a great story teller who takes us right into the darkest recesses of his mind … gripping as he gives readers a rare insight into the US system of justice … an extraordinary journey … I have read many accounts of the H-Block/Blanket Protest, but Millar’s intensely personal account of the routine deprivation, brutality and isolation is by far the best I have read to date.”

North Belfast News

“A masterpiece. Make no mistake about that.”

Andersonstown News

“Millar who is wrongly imprisoned for being part of an ‘illegal organisation’ is sent to the notorious fortress boasted by Thatcher as the ‘H-Blocks’. In On The Brinks we encounter some of the most inhuman acts of this century, as we follow the plight of the prisoners, their hardship and their horrific human endurance. Even though Millar describes these times in a brutal, honest and disturbing way, he also exerts humour which takes your mind off the brutality for a moment and creates a perfect juxtaposition. On The Brinks deals with human suffering and endurance which is so horrific it makes it hard to believe that it actually happened. It is Millar’s ability to relieve his suffering in such a brutality honest way that gives the book its real strength.

Emma Horgan, The Voice

“A remarkable life … reads like a movie script … an amazing story … riveting.”

Marty Whelan, Open House, RTÉ

“It is not often that a reader is fortunate enough to strike gold and come across a gem of this quality. On The Brinks is one that reviewers sometimes take to awkwardly describing as unputdownable. That rings as gawkily as unletgoable. A term like ‘stunning’ better fits the elegance with which Sam Millar conveys his story. His early life prior to going to jail is fascinating for his story telling ability alone. This former republican prisoner came up on the outside track unnoticed, eventually leaving his literati comrades watching the dust kicked up by his heels. Riveting … brilliant …”

Dr Anthony McIntyre, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism

“Read this brilliant memoir from the creator of the equally brilliant Karl Kane books. A review couldn’t do it justice. It goes from Millar’s depressing and oppressed childhood as an Irish nationalist in the North of Ireland, to his long stint in prison where he is tortured for his political activities, to his time in New York as a blackjack dealer, and finally to his famous caper – a Brinks robbery in upstate NY. Goes from sad to funny to exciting. Good advice: don’t expect an old van to start with eight million dollars in the back – it’s heavier than you think! Absolutely unputdownable!”

Noir Journal, USA

Dedication

I dedicate this new edition of On The Brinks to the memory of my father, Big Sam, a rebel and nonconformist in the true sense of the word. And to my mother, Elizabeth. The dark place has finally gone, and redemption has been granted to both of us.

An Appreciation

Many thanks to my family circle here in Ireland as well as Europe, Argentina, Australia, Canada and USA, and all my relations and friends for their support of my previous books. To all the clans: Millars, O’Neills, Morgans, Clarkes and McKees. A special thank you goes to my brothers and sisters, Mary, Danny, Joe and Phyllis. To all those who helped On The Brinks win the prestigious Aisling Award, and making it a bestseller. A special mention to Dr Roger Derham, Brenda Derham, Valerie Shortland and all at Wynkin de Worde, for having faith in the original book, and the dedication and kindness you granted me. Also, Gaye Shortland, author of Rough Rides in Dry Places, for leading me to their doorstep. Also, The O’Brien Press for bringing the book to a new generation of readers, and special thanks to Eoin O’Brien for his meticulous eye to detail. Finally, and most importantly, a big kiss and thank you to my best friend and wife, Bernadette, and children, Kelly-Saoirse, Ashley-Patricia, Corey-Joseph and Roxanne. Now that On The Brinks is ready for my publisher, once again I no longer have an excuse not to cut the grass, make the tea, see the latest movie, go for a walk, stop drinking so much damn coffee …

A writer without interest or sympathy for

the foibles of

his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

We have always found the Irish a bit odd.

They refuse to be English.

Winston Churchill

Contents

1. Reviews

2. Title Page

3. Dedication

4. Epigraph

5. Introduction

6. Prologue

8. Part One Belfast Bloody Belfast

10. Chapter One The House

11. Chapter Two Leaving

12. Chapter Three A Very Hot Summer

13. Chapter Four Hares or Rabbits? Or Just Hairy Rabbits?

14. Chapter Five Blood On Their Bloody Hands

15. Chapter Six A Catholic with Protestant Blood? An Explosive Combination!

16. Chapter Seven Bloody Hell! All The Meat Ye Can Eat!

17. Chapter Eight A Sticky Situation Called Welsh Taffy

18. Chapter Nine Have You Got the Bottle for the Battle of Long Kesh?

19. Chapter Ten Bloody Hand-to-Hand is Never Handy but Always Bloody

20. Chapter Eleven Return of the Native

21. Chapter Twelve The Nightmare Journey Begins

22. Chapter Thirteen Bare Soles and Bare Souls

23. Chapter Fourteen Footprints in History Aren’t Made Sitting Down

24. Chapter Fifteen The Volunteer

25. Chapter Sixteen Squeaky Booters

26. Chapter Seventeen Dead Heroes of Our Youth Now Breathing

27. Chapter Eighteen Forced Fingers up your Hairy Bum, Really isn’t any Fun

28. Chapter Nineteen Josef Mengele and the Human Wart

29. Chapter Twenty John Wayne, Where are Ye when we Need Ye?

30. Chapter Twenty-One Hospital, Tobacco And Vietnam

31. Chapter Twenty-Two Never Kick a Man when he’s Down? Name Me a Better Time!

32. Chapter Twenty-Three A Word in your Ear, Much Later in Time

33. Chapter Twenty-Four The Angel of Death Comes A-Strutting Minus Strutts

34. Chapter Twenty-Five Tony Blackburn and Pan’s People

35. Chapter Twenty-Six Hope

36. Chapter Twenty-Seven Tragedy

37. Chapter Twenty-Eight Catch 22

38. Chapter Twenty-Nine The Real Great Escape, Minus Steve McQueen

39. Chapter Thirty Unfinished Business

41. Part Two Beautiful New York

43. Chapter Thirty-One Casino

44. Chapter Thirty-Two A Meeting of Minds and Minders

45. Chapter Thirty-Three Brothers and Sisters, Thicker than …

46. Chapter Thirty-Four Have You Ever Ridden a Harley D? Me Neither!

47. Chapter Thirty-Five Titanic: Built by a Thousand Irishmen. Sunk by One Englishman

48. Chapter Thirty-Six Dodgy Drilling Dentist Devouring Danish

49. Chapter Thirty-Seven Beers, Hotdogs and Money. Lots of Money. Did I Mention Money? Lots of it?

50. Chapter Thirty-Eight Opening Doors

51. Chapter Thirty-Nine The Whale Hunter

52. Chapter Forty A Telling of Truth

53. Chapter Forty-One Wrong Turn? Wrong Person?

54. Chapter Forty-Two Showtime!

55. Chapter Forty-Three Room for Heroes

56. Chapter Forty-Four Once Again, The Hulk

57. Chapter Forty-Five The Rat

58. Chapter Forty-Six Money? Don’t Mention that Word to Me

59. Chapter Forty-Seven Fly Men

60. Chapter Forty-Eight Money Money Money, in a Rich Man’s World

61. Chapter Forty-Nine Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

62. Chapter Fifty A Room With a View

63. Chapter Fifty-One Caught by the Balls. Again

64. Chapter Fifty-Two Arrest and Diesel Therapy

65. Chapter Fifty-Three Making Headlines Again for All the Wrong Reasons

66. Chapter Fifty-Four A Lawyer. A Very Expensive One

67. Chapter Fifty-Five Hey! What the Hell are You Doing with all those Bags of Money?

68. Chapter Fifty-Six A Judge. A Real Good Honest To Goodness Judge

69. Chapter Fifty-Seven Our Strategy

70. Chapter Fifty-Eight Jury Selection

71. Chapter Fifty-Nine The Trial Begins

72. Chapter Sixty A Horseshoe up my Arse? An Entire Stable!

73. Chapter Sixty-One The Verdict

74. Chapter Sixty-Two Thoughts From a Court – A Gathering

75. Chapter Sixty-Three Execution (The Millar’s Song)

76. Chapter Sixty-Four Millar’s Crossing

78. Au revoir et prendre soin

79. Other Titles by Sam Millar

80. Copyright

81. Other Books

Introduction

By James Thompson, critically acclaimed bestselling American author, Snow Angels and the Inspector Vaara series.

On the Brinks is a story of the Old Gods. The Fenians. Bran, Sceolan, Lomair, others. Sam Millar. Belfast boy. IRA man. Political prisoner. Long Kesh. The Maze. The H Blocks. The protests. On the blanket, freezing and naked, covered in human filth. An engineer of the largest prison break in European history. The mastermind behind the fifth-largest heist in US history.

Millar is our Oisín, and like Oisín, when he entered the gates of Long Kesh Prison, three hundred years of age fell upon him. He suffered unimaginable torment for his beliefs. He could have stopped that torment at any time with two simple words. ‘I relent.’ But he never uttered those words, and relent he never did. To read On the Brinks is to feel shame. To feel shame because almost all of us know, deep in our hearts, that we would have relented within hours, that we would have lacked the inner strength of will to stand up for our beliefs, the courage of our convictions, while our minds and bodies were ravaged, year after insufferable year. To feel shame because we belong to a race which inflicts such savagery upon its own kind. Yet On the Brinks leaves us with hope, because no manner of brutality led to the destruction of Millar’s spirit. Despite all, his remains a powerful voice today.

Well over a hundred years ago, in his poem “The Wanderings of Oisín”, William Butler Yeats summarised the story of Millar and those that suffered with him, predicting it as if he were Nostradamus peering into still water and watching the future of Ireland unfold. I leave it to Yeats, in his conversation between Oisin and St Patrick, to tell the tale.

James Thompson

Prologue

Hollywood couldn’t have done it better.

Irish Voice, New York

Security guards told the police that they were surprised by assailants who had somehow evaded the sophisticated security system. They could not say how many robbers there were … it appears to be one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history.

New York Times, front page

When I met him later that night, he was smiling, hand outstretched, as if greeting me for the first time in years.

“Don’t say a word in the car,” I whispered, a plastic grin on my face. “There’s a possibility of it being bugged.”

We drove down Lake Avenue, towards the beach, in total silence.

I parked the car behind some sand dunes, and then proceeded to remove a few Buds from the back seat.

Not too far away from us, a young couple were sitting on a grassy hill, eating greasy sandwiches, watching people on the beach beginning to pack and leave.

It was late evening but the heat was still horrendous. A fleshy-coloured moon dangled in the late sky, hanging like unsacked testicle. Crickets were making small talk and mosquitoes bit on my ears as I watched calmness come to splintered waves. A seagull hovered effortlessly in the thick air, killing itself laughing. Later, I would remember the albatross in the Ancient Mariner. Much later, I would remember a seagull by the name of Stumpy in Long Kesh prison …

When we were out of earshot, I quickly came to the point. “How’d you like to make some serious money?”

“How serious?” he asked, taking a slug of Bud, balancing his words carefully. He remained noncommittal.

“Maybe a million,” I answered nonchalantly, placing the beer to my lips while watching his reaction.

The Bud hit the back of his throat, making him cough and splutter.

“Are you shitting me?” he said, wiping the spillage from his chin.

“This is our target,” I said, kneeling on the sand, ignoring his question.

With my finger, I started to draw a deep wound in the sand. Before long, I had sketched the rough layout of a bird’s-eye view of the building in question, a collage of rectangles and squares. I didn’t speak. Even when the waves slowly crept in, erasing my work, I said nothing, waiting for it to disappear.

“Let’s go,” I eventually said, brushing the sand from my jeans while rays of rolling water embraced the sand, kissing it before retreating like a chased child.

We began walking along the beach, whispering into each other’s ears like lovers on a first date. An old lady walked by, exercising her dog, her eyes never leaving us. Shaking her head with disgust, she watched us disappear behind sand dunes, as if witnessing some sort of secret, sexual encounter.

When the time came, I looked back on that eventful day, realising I had been shitting him. It was more than a million. A hell of a lot more.

American history was about to be made, and I was the one going to pen it …

PART ONE

BELFAST BLOODY BELFAST

I care not. I have been stripped of my clothes and locked in a dirty, empty cell, where I have been starved, beaten, and tortured, and like the lark I fear I may eventually be murdered. But, dare I say it, similar to my little friend, I have the spirit of freedom that cannot be quenched by even the most horrendous treatment. Of course I can be murdered, but while I remain alive, I remain what I am, a political prisoner of war, and no one can change that.

Bobby Sands

In Britain, we are often told there is an Irish problem, but the truth is there is a British problem in Ireland. Occupation failed, partition failed, Stormont failed, direct rule failed, strip-searching, plastic bullets and the H-Block failed because they were all designed to retain British rule.

Tony Benn

CHAPTER ONE

The House

APRIL 1965

And this also … has been one of the dark places of the earth.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse

I was born in Belfast and lived in Lancaster Street, a street whose most famous sons included world boxing champion John Joseph “Rinty” Monaghan, and renowned Irish artist John Lavery. Among Lavery’s many famous paintings was that of Kathleen Ní Houlihan on the first Irish Free State bank-notes; his wife, Hazel, was used as the model.

After moving from his humble abode in the street, it wasn’t too long before Lavery became internationally famous. He moved to London, where he subsequently lent his palatial house at Cromwell Place in South Kensington to the Irish delegation led by Michael Collins during negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. After Collins was killed, Lavery painted a portrait of him, titled Michael Collins, Love of Ireland. This despite rumours that Collins was having an affair with Hazel while staying in London.

Lavery may well have been good enough company for Collins, but he sure as hell wasn’t good enough for our wee street. We never spoke much of the gifted man, for the simple reason that he committed one of the most unpardonable sins known to us: accepting a knighthood from the British Empire. From a street that would see three-quarters of its male population interned without trial, or sent to Long Kesh by the infamous non-jury show-trials of Diplock, it was easy to understand why.

Lancaster Street had a history of sectarian riots, dating back as far as anyone could remember. Orange Order mobs, accompanied by the peelers, attacked it frequently, usually leaving gallant defenders of the street wounded or dead. In September 1921, the New York Times reported on page five that: SHOOTING IS RESUMED IN BELFAST STREETS: Boy Dies of Wounds, Making Total Dead 18.

The street was named after a Quaker school and educational system founded there, but those of us living in the street much preferred the story that it was named after Burt Lancaster, the brilliant American actor whose grandparents originated from Belfast before immigrating to America.

My mother, Elizabeth, was a workaholic, perpetually scrubbing and cleaning. She always smelt of Daz, bleach and the carbolic soap that stained her hands the colour of raw wounds. While my father, Big Sam, worked as a merchant seaman, she ran a semi-boarding house that contained the grand total of one lodger. She never made a penny from the house and was perpetually in debt because of it. Her purse was testimony to that. It was a working-class purse. Fat. Fat with the pain of pawn tickets and IOU’s. Fat with poverty, like the false swelling bellies of starving children in far-away Africa.

That night before my father’s departure to sea, they were arguing over her loneliness and his need to be free.

Silently, I crept to their bedroom door, tapping meekly on it, hoping neither would hear. This was my way of clearing my conscience, the rationalisation of a coward trapped in his own paralysis. The door never opened, and I managed to quickly slither back to bed, relieved, dreading the distorted looks on their faces, knowing they would have hated me for what I knew.

The next day, I returned home from school with my friend, Jim Kerr. We kicked at an old ball we had found on the way.

“Will I call for you after supper?” he asked, while heading the ball expertly.

“I’ll call for you,” I said, dreading the thought of my mate seeing what I knew was waiting for me.

“Okay. Make sure you call.” He kicked the ball ahead, and rushed after it, probably thinking he was Georgie Best.

When I entered the house, my mother was sitting on the sofa, smiling strangely to herself. She stood, and then leaned to kiss me, but I pushed her away, betrayed.

“You’ve been drinking,” I accused. “And after all you said?”

Her skin always glistened in the dull sunlight as the alcohol rose to the surface, seeping through her pores. She smelt strongly of mints – a smell I came to dread – using the sweets in a vain effort to camouflage the horrible stench of dead leaves that settled heavily on her breath; of brandy in all its degrading cheapness. It never failed to transform her into a mumbling, sobbing wreck.

“Your father’ll be home next month, Son,” she said, wiping her flour-covered hands nervously on an apron. The apron was covered with windmills and trumpet-headed daffodils swaying in the breeze. “He doesn’t need to know, does he, about the wee bit of drinking?”

Already her words were coming out slurred. Soon she would start crying, telling me how lonely she was; how my father was to blame, for being away so long at sea.

I hated her when she was like this. Did she not know how humiliating it was for me to sneak into the off-license, hoping no one – especially my mates – would spot me? To add insult to injury, the man behind the counter always gave me that knowing, devious wink that said: Your ma’s secret is safe with me, wee Sammy. Don’t you worry your wee head. His words were slippery, like a snail captured by the sun. I would remember him and his sneaky face, years later, even though he no longer existed in this world.

“You won’t tell your father,” she repeated again, fearful of my silence.

“Leave me alone,” I said.

She smiled sadly, attempting another kiss, burning my mouth with the brandy wetness on her lips.

“Keep away from me! You’re disgusting!” I shouted, pushing her back onto the sofa. “I hate you when you’re like this. I’m telling Dad, when he comes home!”

But when she sobbed those terrible sounds, her hands covering her face with shame, I knew I would never tell.

I placed my hands on her head, hoping to soothe her. “Don’t cry, Mum. I won’t tell him.”

But she couldn’t look at my face; simply wanted me to leave the room. When I did, she continued her mumbling, whispering, “Your father need never know …”

As time progressed and her mental health deteriorated further, she began picking at the wallpaper with her fingernails, leaving them a bloody mess and the walls devastated like leprosy. Neighbours began to talk about her, about the state of the house.

It was shortly after that she solved it all, choosing to live in the shadow of the dead in exchange for the debt of the living. And while we slept, the rain against the window filled her head with a reservoir of eerie dreams, easing the pain that had crushed her for years.

CHAPTER TWO

Leaving

MAY 1965

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.

Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse

Between the idea, And the reality,

Between the motion, And the act

Falls the shadow.

TS Eliot, The Hollow Men

As a child, Saturday mornings always attracted me to the local pub, at the bottom of our street on York Street. Outside the pub, crates of empty Guinness bottles were pyramided against the wall, smell fermenting in the early sun. Their contents were gone with last night’s dreams, leaving only a few teardrops of the black stuff glimmering at the bottom of each bottle. Flies, vile and lazy, nestled drunkenly on the bottlenecks, buzzing angrily at their hangovers.

“Whaddye want?” asked the barman, suddenly appearing at the doorway of the pub, scrubbing brush and bucket in his large, working-class hands.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just looking.”

“Then go look elsewhere.”

He hated anyone watching him struggle with last night’s vomit. It permeated the ground, staining it like great maps of the world.

“Not want me to kill the flies for you?” I asked, showing him my Irish News rolled into a peeler’s baton.

He stared at me for a few seconds, then skyward for divine guidance.

“Okay … but don’t eat ’em,” he grinned, but I only nodded solemnly and turned to the task of transforming fat-bellied flies into perfect inkblots of death.

A dog came to watch, but soon became bored, and began chasing itself in an odyssey of arse-sniffing circles, as if fascinated by its own hairy hole.

Sometimes, if the barman remembered, he brought me a Coke, making me swear to Our Lady that I’d return the empty bottle. I always did, no matter how much I wanted to keep it for target practice in Alexander Street’s derelict houses.

The dog suddenly began sniffing suspiciously at a dead sparrow on the ground. The bird’s anorexic legs were protruding upwards, like miniature branding irons towards the sky.

“Can ye hear ’em?” asked the barman as he threw a bucket of steaming hot water and disinfectant about the pub’s entrance. “Well? Can ye?”

Of course I could hear them. The lexicon of Clockwork Orangemen floating acoustically from Clifton Street, where they had gathered en masse below the pigeon-stained statue of King Billy. From there they would march to the Glorious Field, unfurling their banners of intolerance and hatred, flanked by benign old ladies resplendent in their Union Jack dresses and Fuck The Pope hats.

As the Orangemen approached the shadow of Saint Patrick’s Church, it was as if they had suddenly become possessed: leaden faces swelling with anticipation; eyes bulging like ping-pong balls, and thick, ruddy necks trafficking with corduroy veins the size of football laces exposing their congenital abhorrence of all things Catholic.

My father always said that Orangemen were full of sour grapes and whine. It was hard to argue against his logic, because he would know, of course, his father being a leading Orangeman …

* * *

My grandfather, Alexander Millar, came from a staunch Protestant family whose loyalty to God and Ulster was never questioned. He marched to the Field every Glorious Twelfth, and no doubt had his eye on becoming Grand Master, with great visions of riding down Clifton Street atop a white horse like his hero, King Billy, long hair cascading like singer, Tiny Tim.

He was one of the first to sign the Ulster Covenant, at City Hall, 28 September 1912, protesting against Home Rule. Over half a million men and women signed the Ulster Covenant, and the parallel Declaration.

It was rumoured he signed it in his own blood. Unfortunately, that’s all it was – a rumour. Contrary to all the urban legends surrounding the signing of the Ulster Covenant, only one signature was ever dipped in blood, that of Frederick Hugh Crawford, who was to become the Ulster Volunteers’ Director of Ordnance.

Because of his strong Protestant beliefs, Catholics meant little to my grandfather. Their strange beliefs and customs were difficult to comprehend. They were an invisible people. There, but not really there; moving, but going nowhere. He believed the dogma that Catholics in the North had only themselves to blame for their dire situations of abject poverty and unemployment, and that, perhaps, they didn’t really want to work. They bred too quickly, also, and didn’t believe in controlling their sexual urges – or at least using conventional methods to mitigate their effects.

At the Somme, he was badly wounded, and received three medals for bravery. Tragically, however, two of his brothers were to die on the same bloody field in France, fighting for an empire I would later fight against.

Despite his Orange Order credentials, he didn’t hate Catholics, but he certainly had no love for them. He was a very tolerant person, my grandfather. As long as Catholics knew their place and didn’t bother him, things would be fine. That was until he actually met a Catholic and committed the ultimate crime of falling in love with one.

My grandmother, Elizabeth O’Neill, was a Catholic, from the South. A fiery woman, she took nonsense from not a soul – including her soon-to-be husband.

Elizabeth quickly established the law the first time Alexander proposed to her: “Any children that God may bless us with, will all be brought up Catholics.” No ifs, ands or buts. “If you don’t like it, end this right now.”

Had he ended it there and then, of course, my life would no doubt have taken a different course. Instead, he decided if not to actually become a Catholic, to at least help them on their way, by fathering almost a dozen little Millars, outdoing “The Waltons” by at least two.

Most of the children gave Elizabeth or Alexander little or no trouble, with the exception of son, Danny. It was rumoured that he had left home secretly to become a priest, rather than offend his father by becoming one in Belfast, causing more embarrassment for Alexander’s side of the family. The truth was a bit more complicated, and slightly more interesting. Prior to his leaving, Danny was having an affaire de coeur. Unfortunately, the woman was married. Worse, her husband was a member of the RUC.

Perhaps Uncle Danny had been watching too many romantic Errol Flynn swashbuckling movies, but in a bold – some would say foolish – move, he stole the man’s gun and shot him, in the privates and privacy of his own home, which can be quite sore, apparently. Hauled off to jail, court papers state:

MAGISTRATE MR P.J. O’DONOGHUE R.M. and other MAGISTRATES:

DANIEL MILLAR of 18 LANCASTER STREET was charged with having on MONDAY in his possession or under his control a WEBLEY REVOLVER and 24 rounds of ammunition with intent to endanger life or enable other persons to do so. He was further accused of having an explosive substance in his possession for an unlawful object and without holding a firearms certificate, and with occasioning actual bodily harm to WILLIAM MELI. DISTRICT INSPECTOR FERRIS prosecuted and MR G. MAGEE defended. DET SERG W.J. McCAPPAN gave evidence that he went to the residence of the accused and told him that he called to see him regarding the shooting incident with a revolver that had occurred between himself and WILLIAM MELI at ALEXANDER STREET on MONDAY. He replied: “I know nothing about it.” On being cautioned he said that he had given it away to a boy, and that he could not give his name, as he lived a long way from LANCASTER STREET. He then requested witness to accompany him to his bedroom where he took the revolver from his suitcase, which was underneath his bed. He handed witness the revolver, which was loaded in six chambers. He also took from the suitcase a box containing nine live revolver cartridges and handed them to witness also. When charged at GLENRAVEL STREET POLICE STATION, accused said that: “I did not mean to do any harm with the revolver – it was just a practical joke.” WILLIAM MELI said he knew of no reason why the accused should do him any injury. DANIEL MILLAR was released on bail for a week, and told to report to GLENRAVEL STREET POLICE STATION.

It was practically unheard of for a Catholic to have bail granted for such serious charges in the sectarian satellite, but granted it was. Some people said my grandfather reached out to old friends in the Orange Order, asking them to persuade the judge to grant bail. Some say William Meli dropped the charges, fearing a scandal and becoming a laughing stock for being shot in that most private of places. Whatever the reason, money was raised, and within that week of freedom, Uncle Danny disappeared from the land of Ireland forever, ending up on the streets of Buenos Aires, where he soon discovered that life really is a box of chocolates. Life suddenly got a lot sweeter for Danny, when he married into one of the wealthiest families in Argentina, makers of fine chocolate.

Ironically, years later, when our house was searched for guns belonging to the IRA, it was my grandfather’s Orange sash hanging proudly on the wall beside portraits of the Pope and John F Kennedy that not only confused the raiding party of peelers, but made them rethink their strategy and offer profuse apologies for searching the house of a true son of Ulster. They quickly abandoned the search, empty-handed.

* * *

“Bastards,” said the barman to himself. “Hope to fuck a few of ’em die of a heart attack in this heat. That’ll take the sectarian marching out of ’em. Orange bastards.”

Just as the dog bowed its spine, preparing to leave its shitty mark, there was the sickening sound of wood on bone, as the barman cracked the unfortunate creature over the head with his scrubbing brush.

“Get, ye dirty bastard!” he screamed, sending the injured dog running for its poor life. A few seconds later, he spat, just where he had spent all morning scrubbing, before walking back to serve a customer tapping an empty glass annoyingly against the counter.

Peering in the window, I could see the counter lined with pints of perfect Guinness. Rivulets of condensation were forming on the fat bodies of the pints, sitting there, sweating tantalisingly, tight, like a synod of clergy in secretive discussion.

Suddenly, in the window’s reflective glass, I spotted a familiar shape jumping up and down, directly behind me.

“Yer da’s lukin’ fer ye, Sammy!” screamed Gerry Green, waving his hands frantically, from across the street.

There was nothing Gerry loved better than bringing bad news. The more distressing the news, the happier he became. He was the local bully, but an unusual one because he had a conscience and only hit you when you deserved it – which was usually twice a day, except on Fridays when he got his pocket money. He never touched you on Friday. A decent bully, I suppose. He was three years older than me, with glass-cutting blue eyes. A family of pimples inhabited his entire face. He’d no doubt be a horror to look at in later years.

“Yer da’s shoutin’ all over the place like a mad man fer ye. Luks like yer in fer it!” he hallelujahed, as I crossed over to the other side of the street.

To see someone “in fer it” could bring tears of joy to Gerry’s blue eyes. He was practically pissing himself with happiness escorting me back down Lancaster Street, fearful I would escape whatever justice awaited me.

“Luks like yer gonna get a good boot up the arse, Sammy,” said Gerry, encouragingly, marching triumphantly behind me.

From a distance, I could see the towering and intimidating figure of my father, standing outside our house. As I neared, a rosary of knots formed in my stomach, warning me.

“Where’ve you been?” Dad was putting on his jacket, as he handed me a bag of fruit. His shoes were gleaming, as usual, because he was a great believer in the Cherry Blossom legend: A shine on your shoe says a lot about you. “Didn’t I tell you not to be going away from the door?”

“I was just helping the barman kill flies.”

“You shouldn’t have left the door. When I tell you to do something in future, make sure you do it. Now, hurry up and get your coat and let’s get going. We’re late.”

Gerry was devastated. I didn’t get a good boot up the arse. Not even a slap on the head. For a moment, I thought he would complain to my father about misguided leniency. Instead, he simply walked away, head down, despondent.

“For heaven’s sake, will you cheer up a bit?” Dad said, as we turned the corner of the Crumlin Road. “It’s the hospital; not O’Kane’s – not this time, anyway.”

O’Kane’s was the local undertakers, but as far as I was concerned there was little difference between it and the dreary wards of the Mater Hospital, which we entered twenty minutes later.

“How is she today, doctor?” Dad said, stopping beside the young doctor outside the ward.

“A slight improvement from yesterday, Mister Millar. We hope to give her soup, later. She had some tea last night, but couldn’t hold it down for long. I’m sure you appreciate that it’s a very slow process.”

A soft breeze suddenly began rallying the combined stenches of piss, vomit, disinfectant and the dry talc smell of death, filling the corridors and my nostrils with a debilitating dread of all hospitals.

Entering the small ward, a nurse escorted us to a bed at the end. The nurse looked sadly at me before moving on with the rest of her duties.

On the bed, my mother lay motionless, her pallid complexion as one with the linen sheets, making her almost invisible.

It wasn’t her first attempt at suicide, but it was her most imaginative as well as elaborate. Instead of simply opting for an overdose, she had decided to slash both her wrists also. This time she almost made it, having been pronounced DOA by the doctor on duty. Her effort was frustrated only by the attentive eyes of my older brother Danny, who, upon hearing the doctor’s verdict, became maniacal and demanded a medical miracle.

It worked. God granted the miracle. She would live to die another day.

I knew she could hear me whispering in her ear as my father sat silently, chained to the guilt of wasted memories that were cemented in the heat of anger and fury. “You could’ve waited,” I accused. “I told you my exam results were due and that I would do well. But you don’t care, do you? I hope you die, next time.”

She ignored me, feigning the death she had yet to perfect. A log, stiff with shame and loneliness. Suddenly, her exhausted eyes turned dark. The way a beetle’s shell looks when raindrops fall on it.

It was the last time I would ever see her, as she fled into shadows a few nights later. And when neighbours snidely insinuated she wouldn’t be back, I knew they were mistaken. They didn’t know what I knew: she had only smoked two of her Park Drive. She would be back for the rest.

But even the pictures on the wall knew better. The Sacred Heart became more melancholy, while the vulpine grins of the princes of Rome and Camelot mocked my naiveté. They knew.

Oh, what a fool I had been.

From that day, I could never listen to Middle of the Road’s classic wee number, “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep (Where’s Your Mama Gone?)” without feeling sick to the stomach with anger and betrayal.

CHAPTER THREE

A Very Hot Summer

AUGUST 1965

Everything that deceives also enchants.

Plato

And life is thorny and youth is vain

And to be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness on the brain.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A madness of sorts possessed Dad now that he was on his own. For a while, things were great, as he pitied me more than himself. But as the cold reality began to bite at him, he slowly reversed his feelings in favour of himself, finding fault with everything I did. I had to run like hell when he sent me on an errand. He would time me, always criticising with a “what the hell kept you?” It would have made no difference had I broken the world record, it would still be “what the hell kept you?”

Of all the days I hated, Friday mornings, before school, were the worst, having to deal with George Flanders, the greengrocer from hell.

“How many, young Millar?” asked Flanders, a giant with tight clothes, lamb-chop side-burns, a ruddy complexion and an enormous nose that defied gravity. The kids called him Banana Nose. His eyes had the tight look of someone who scrutinised beaten dockets, hoping beyond hope. The same eyes could remove skin, burn you with their intensity.

“Fifty, Mister Flanders,” I squeaked, hating this part: the barter of apples from my father’s tree.

Flanders handled one of the apples, rubbing his thumb against the texture, before smelling it with his giant nostrils. “Four cabbages. Howsabouthathen?”

“My dad said five cabbages, four carrots and a quarter stone of blue spuds.” I always wished Flanders would speed it up, in case one of my mates came in for an apple, and ended up witnessing my humiliation.

“Ha! Yer da’s arse is out the window! I’m a greengrocer, but I’m not green.” Flanders laughed. He was now juggling some of the apples, like a clown, winking as he pretended to let them fall.

Dead, supine flies lined the window of the fruit shop like a contiguous military convey debilitated by superior forces, while their air-borne comrades struggled menacingly above, attached to flypaper, tearing off their own limbs. I would stare at the adhesive, fascinated by its struggling victims, trying in vain to detach themselves from the sticky graveyard. It reminded me of the currant buns sold next door in Mullan’s bakery. I had never tasted one in my life. Never would.

That’s life, I thought, one big sticky ending that comes to us all.

“Ye’ve caught me in a generous mood, young Millar,” Flanders said, his face a politician on polling day. “Four cabbages. And here’s some carrots as well.”

It was over. He had won. I had lost. As usual.

As I left his shop, Flanders handed me a pear. It was badly bruised and had his teeth marks in it. “Here, that’s for yerself. And tell yer da he’s gotta git up early ta catch me!”

I could still hear his laughter halfway down the lane.

“That’s all you got?” Dad said, looking on the exchange with disdain.

Why didn’t you go yourself? I would ask, in my dreams. Afraid of the humiliation?

But if Friday mornings were bad, Friday nights were a nightmare. I had to run to Peter Kelly’s for fish and chips. And even though I would run like a madman and the fish and chips would’ve burnt the mouth off him, Dad would still greet me with: “These are freezing. What the hell kept you …?”

As I ran, people would stare at me, as if I’d become completely mad. Despite this, I still couldn’t find the courage to refuse to run, in case I incurred Dad’s wrath. But all that was about to change, when one Friday night someone else’s madness intervened.

The line at the chippy snaked the corner, stretching all the way to McCleery Street. Everyone loved Peter’s fish and chips, so there seemed to be a perpetual queue at it, especially Fridays and Saturdays, when working-class people had some money in their pockets.

Dad’ll kill me, was all I could think of as I ran even faster to get my place in the queue.

“I watch ye every Friday night. Ye think ye are somebody, don’t ye?”

He was a bit younger than me. His face was filthy, as if a dirty rag had attached itself to his skin, sucking the life out of him.

I was so exhausted I could hardly breathe, let alone answer.

“What’s its name?” he said, running in perfect unison beside me.

“What? Get away from me, will you?” Everyone was watching the two of us.

“Yer horse, stupid? What’s yer horse’s name?”

I tried to ignore the head-case.

“They call my horse Silver. Just like the Lone Ranger’s,” he said, proud as a peacock up at Bellevue Zoo.

My chest was burning with exhaustion. I needed to stop.

“The great thing about Silver is that he’s invisible. I’m the only one who can see him.” Suddenly, he did a strange, jerking movement, before patting the neck of the invisible horse. “Easy, boy. Easy. No one’s gonna hurt ye.”

Ignoring the threat on my face, he continued talking.

“The great thing about Silver being invisible is when he shites all over the street. Nobody can see it, so they walk on it! I laugh when I see them walking into their houses, trailing Silver’s invisible shite along with them! And the smell! Worse than visible shite, I can tell ye! Everyone laughs at me, but I always get the last laugh. Don’t I, Silver?”

Without warning, he leapt two feet into the air, patting the nervous horse, reassuring it. “Easy! Easy, Silver. Good boy.”

Everyone was grinning at us, but before I could grab him he shouted: “See ye! Hi ho Silver, away!”

And away he went, slapping the arse off himself, jumping over bin lids and empty cardboard boxes.

That was it, I decided. No more running like a madman. Dad could do what he liked to me, but I’d been humiliated enough.

I was more than surprised when Dad didn’t force the issue and was quite proud of my stand. But pride always comes before a fall and a week later, to my horror, he enrolled me in the local boxing club, where I won many friends as a walking punch-bag.

It would be many months before I’d meet the Lone Ranger again. His face was a mask of sweat as he cleared three bins with ease.

“What happened to yer horse? And where did ye get the black eyes?” he asked.

He seemed genuinely concerned, so I humoured him.

“He went limp, so I shot him. Got the black eyes when I fell from the saddle and hit my head on a rock.”

He shook his head. “That’s sad. He was a good horse. Maybe ye’ll find another one, some day.” He studied the ground for a few moments, then said: “Well, got to go now. See ye about.”

I hoped not. Then he began to laugh that weird laugh of his.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Who’re you laughing at?”

“Ye just walked on Silver’s invisible shite! Shouldn’t have shot yer faithful horse!” And with that, he was gone, jumping over boxes, screaming, “Hi ho Silver, away!”

CHAPTER FOUR

Hares or Rabbits? Or Just Hairy Rabbits?

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

But by the barber’s razor best subdued.

John Milton, Samson Agonistes

To escape Dad’s mood swings in the aftermath of Mum deserting him, I would climb to the top of Saint Patrick’s school, impervious to the caretaker’s threats to get the peelers for me. How the hell could heavy cops master the fragile drainpipe that sighed wearily under my youthful weight?

As I lay there, invisible to all except those empowered with flight, my mind would fill with the imagery of velvet butterflies and cooing pigeons. In the distance, the imposing cranes known as Samson and Goliath, stood guard, like futuristic Orwellian sentinels watching the modicum of Catholics labour below them like hostile bugs. An anathema to Catholics, the cranes were a salient reminder – as if we needed one – of our second-class citizenship, and British and Unionist ascendancy.

But at that time, of course, I knew nothing of such things: of the gerrymandering, discrimination and squalid housing conditions. I was only eleven and didn’t care about any of it. That would come later. Right now, I was king of the castle, looking down on my subjects in Lancaster Street.

From the roof, I could hear stones breathing and the soft whisper of distant traffic. A handball game was in progress and the ball was making hypnotic, heartbeat staccato thumps. I could discern bare hands slapping, slicing, and aiming for points. Despondency and triumph manifested themselves in the voices of the untiring warriors.

Gazing towards the yards, I could see washing lines full of fluttering clothes. The garments resembled gulls scampering for food. Dirty water was snaking through the striation of arteries in the pavement, suffusing discarded oil from an old abandoned car that lurked like a great wounded beast against the scrapyard wall.

At the end of the street, the horses utilised by the local glazier now stood in unison, eating, pissing and shitting. They never stopped. Their great arses perpetually pushed out fist-sized boulders with slivers of undigested straw protruding from them like burnt cacti. Kamikaze sparrows darted in and out between the horses’ legs, capturing the spillage.

There was one other place I – along with a few mates – sought shelter, and God help us if ever we were caught in it. The rag store …

Sadie reigned as the de facto boss of the rag store, irrespective of the grumbling from the proprietor, Mister Jacobs, to the contrary. She negotiated the prices, hired and fired, and took care of the cats that helped to control the rat population. She was a pleasant-faced woman, with wide hips like freshly baked bread. An enormous money bag rested on those hips with a cosy familiarity, its leather lips worn and scuffed from the constant transactions performed in the store. And, oblivious to the danger of flammable rags, a Park Drive cigarette dangled perpetually from a dark gap where a tooth had once been.

Sadie often joked of having accumulated enough tar in her lungs to cover York Street, all the while releasing menacing plumes of fog from her nostrils like an exhausted dragon. When she spoke – which was rarely in conversation – her voice was a raspy, sandpapery growl.

Her smoking wasn’t the only health hazard in the store. The rats topped the list. Sly and bold, they harassed and then banished most of the mangy, bounty-hunter cats, which turned out to be quite cowardly.

Sadie had been bitten so many times she seemed immune. Her legs were a constellation of horseshoe-shaped bites. Sometimes on Fridays, with too much Mundies wine, she’d hoist her flowery gypsy dress, pull down her knickers and slap her bare arse, saying: “Whaddya think of ’em, eh? Bit me arse, dirty bastards!”

Had the place been on fire, we couldn’t have cleared out faster, after being exposed to her sagging buttocks, scarred black and blue.

Our parents, of course, had warned us to steer clear of the store, with its fleas, stench and disease. And even though Sadie’s name was never mentioned, it was implied with subtle innuendo that she had a history as a loose woman. We were naïve to the message, but the dark whispers with their torn curtains of resentment were enough to convert us to her side.

So most Friday evenings, like moths to a flame, we gathered with jumping fleas and cowardly cats to watch Sadie’s bloody ritual of cutting throats and gutting.

“Rabbits!” we exclaimed in unison upon first seeing the caged creatures.

“Hares,” she said, with the voice of a gangster’s moll, cigarette jerking in her mouth.

“No, rabbits,” we insisted.

“Hares,” she reiterated, pulling a squealing creature unceremoniously from the cage by the ears. It made the sound a hungry baby makes searching for a nipple: a haunting sound so pitiful it reached to the ghetto of my soul, tattooing it forever.

She held the struggling creature inches from our mesmerised faces, its whiskers nervously capturing dust motes, making them dancing rhinestones. Then, with sleight-of-hand, from nowhere she produced an evil-looking cutthroat razor and, to our shock – but puerile delight – she slit the animal’s throat, releasing a leaf of blood that covered her fingernails like crimson varnish. Our hands moved instinctively to our own throats, as if feeling the pain.

As the day progressed, twenty hares met a similar fate. Sadie’s skinning, gutting and curing the hares followed. I recall that we were baffled as to how something dead could be cured.

The mercuric entrails, slipping through her fingers like crimson sand, were deposited into a tin bucket to be sold to the butcher on York Street for sausages. The dried skins, festooned upon the walls and resembling leaves of tobacco, retained their tiny faces, each adorned with grotesque, posthumous grins. Pity and wonder emoted from the scene.

And there, amongst the rags and pungent attar of cat piss, we came of age with the knowledge that life is arbitrary to a fickle god, who alone understands the strangeness of birth and death and their seamless, paradoxical partnership.

“Don’t pay ’em no heed,” Sadie said, watching my eyes skim over the dead. “They’re only animals. Nothin’ more.”

She took a sip of Mundies from a chipped cup with Made in Hong Kong stencilled in bold blue letters on the bottom. The wine glazed her lips, making them fat and obscene like naked snails.

“Ye’ll be able to do this one day,” she said, nodding her head sagely.

Ice formed in my stomach at her words. I knew I could never carry out such a bloody deed.

“Yes ye will. Yes ye will.” Her slurred voice sounded like a needle stuck in a groove. “Everyone knows it was ye who forced yer dear mother to run away.”

I ran home, never stopping, my heart banging in my chest and Sadie’s torturous words ringing in my ears. I didn’t sleep that night. Or the next. I vowed never to return to the store. But I’d forgotten: I was a moth and Sadie the flame.

* * *

The coolness of evening came. It was time to come down from the roof as the pervasive shadow of autumn bled from summer. But a wave of dread swept over me at the thought of going home. I could hear Dad’s strong and intimidating voice shouting, “Sammy! Where the hell are you? Get home now.”

Somewhere below, a radio captured Marvin Gaye singing “What’s Going On”. I closed my eyes, squeezing in the night, feeling my lids flicker as if housing angry ants.

I didn’t want to go home. Not now. Not ever.

CHAPTER FIVE

Blood On Their Bloody Hands

30 JANUARY 1972

What you need is a civil war. Julius Caesar

A land … where light is as darkness. Job 12:2

Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

It was about this time that Neal Armstrong made one giant step for mankind, while here in the North, Unionists were taking their usual two steps back for the Empire. Neal claimed there were no moon men up there, and he was right. They were all down here, in the biggest spaceship mankind would ever witness, in a place called Stormont.

Black people were marching for civil rights in America, and Catholics in the North had the audacity to try and sample some of that pie also. It was around this time that my oldest brother, Danny, purchased a car. Not too many Catholics had cars in those days, so it was the talk of the street. It was a sky-blue Mini, and it was his pride and joy.

One Sunday, before sunrise, he shook me from a deep sleep. “C’mon, kid. Hurry and get dressed. We’re going.”

For two weeks he had been promising me a drive in the car, some place special. But I didn’t believe him. I thought he was full of shit. But here I was, squeezing into his tiny car, filled to capacity with three of his mates.

It was brilliant. I didn’t care where we were going, or that I could hardly breathe through lack of room; just being in the car was heaven.

When we finally reached our destination many long hours later, he said, “Out, kid. We’re here.”

“What do you call this place?” I asked, my legs buckling with pins and needles.

He laughed. “Derry. We’re here to join the march for civil rights.”

I hadn’t a clue where Derry was, but it sounded magical. I could smell fish and chips in the air, and it made me think of Bangor on a Sunday afternoon. It was 30 January 1972, and little did I – or anyone else – know what a terrible nightmare awaited us. It became the seminal moment in my life, a baptism of fire into the real world of being a nationalist in the North of Ireland.

The smell of fish and chips was quickly swept away by the stench of CS gas and gunpowder, as British paratroopers began firing on unarmed protesters and marchers. The smell and sound followed us all the way home. On the journey to Derry we couldn’t stop talking, filled with the delight of navigation on wheels, laughing. But the entire journey home was spent in stony silence, as if not talking meant it hadn’t happened.

My father almost cried, telling us the terrible news as we entered the house. “The British have murdered thirteen innocent people. I thought the two of you were …” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

My brother said nothing. His silence said it all: there was no way they would get away with it. The world would make justice prevail.

It was laughable how naïve we were in those days. That same year, a British so-called judge named Widgery exonerated the paratroopers of the murders, and placed the blame on the civil rights marchers, ludicrously stating: ‘There would have been no deaths if there had not been an illegal march.’ Soon, the British media would start re-murdering the victims of that nightmarish day with insinuations that they were gunmen or bombers.

It would be almost forty years before the filthy lie was firmly nailed to the Union Jack, and the British government was forced to admit what the rest of the world already knew: those murdered were all innocent victims.

CHAPTER SIX

A Catholic with Protestant Blood? An Explosive Combination!

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. HP Lovecraft, The Outsider

There may be trouble ahead …

Irving Berlin, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”

Whenever I visited my cousins in the staunchly loyalist Tiger Bay, I would see tessellated pavements of red, white and blue surrounding their homes, like talismans, chasing away Fenian evil spirits.

The young girl who lived next-door to my uncle was a couple of years older than me. She was beautiful, and each time I saw her I could never take my eyes from her face.

“See enough?” she said, catching me watching her one day.

“I … well … oh …” My face was burning.

“Why’re ye takin’ a reddener?” she smiled, walking towards me in the street, her gorgeous eyes trapping me.

I quickly disappeared into the safety of my uncle’s house.

A couple of days later I saw her again.

“What’s yer name?” she asked.

“Sammy,” I replied, amazed at my courage. “What’s yours?”

“Judy,” she replied, before walking down the street, out of sight.

That summer changed my life forever; a summer filled with rushing daylights that banished the misery of a squeaky voice and spotted skin.

“What kept ye?” Judy said, sitting on a dilapidated swing, sucking on a blood-red ice lolly. “I thought ye’d chickened out.”

I shouldn’t have come here. It was too far from home. Dad had always warned me, for some arcane reason, to avoid the park. But Judy had gone on and on, calling me a chicken, a mummy’s boy. I had to prove her wrong.

“That lolly makes you look like you’re wearing lipstick,” I said.

“So? I do wear lipstick – so there!” She pursed her lips, and to prove her point produced a tube of lipstick from her beat-up jeans and applied it expertly.

“See?” she said.

I was shocked as I took the adjacent swing, the rusted chains staining my hands.

Suddenly, she leaped from her swing and stood facing me. She placed the ice lolly an inch from my startled face.

“Suck,” she demanded.

It was mushy with her slobbers. The ice dripping on her fingers looked like melted candle grease. I found it repulsive and jerked my head away. “I … I don’t want any.”

“Snob!” There was anger in her eyes. Dark, challenging anger.

“Am not!”

“Prove it. Suck if ye’re not a snob.”

I wondered if anyone was watching. “Okay! Okay! Don’t stick it in my gob!”

I sucked, disgusted with myself, amazed at what I was doing.

“Ha! Sammy’s wearing lipstick! Sammy’s wearing lipstick!” She circled my swing, singing.

“You’re crazy, wee girl. Know that?”

“Judy. My name’s Judy. Say it.”

“I know your effing name!”

“Say it. Whisper it. Here. In my ear.” She leaned to me and I could smell Lifebouy soap and Sunsilk shampoo oozing from her.

“Judy,” I whispered, but not before checking her ear for wax.

She slowly turned her face and kissed me hard, causing our teeth to clink like early-morning milk bottles. I could taste the ice on her breath.

“C’mon. Over here.” She pushed me towards the old green hut that functioned as toilet, shelter and storage. Its hoary paint was peeling, revealing initials of lovers long gone. A few yards away, discarded condoms lay guiltily in the grass, pregnant with their owners’ imagination.

Without warning, she opened her shirt and placed my hand on her breast. It was warm and small, like an egg after a hen goes to feed.

“I love ye. I’ll always love ye,” she whispered.

My head was spinning. I never knew things like this existed.

“Say I love ye,” she said, suddenly coy.

“I … love you,” I managed to say, my throat dry with anticipation. At that moment, I would have said anything. I would have said Fuck the Pope and God save the Queen. I would have become a traitor for this strange magic that was being weaved on me.

Unexpectedly, the sound of released water filled the air. We held our breaths as the park ranger made some tea, inside the hut. A colony of dead tealeaves danced in the drain’s vortex of dirty rainwater as the water spouted out.

“If he spots us, we’re dead,” I whispered.

“He’s not the only one who’ll kill us.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

“My da would kill me if he caught me with ye,” whispered Judy, once the silence returned.

“I know. My da’d kill me if he caught me doing this,” I agreed.

She laughed softly. “No. Not for this. Because ye’re a Taig.”

“A what?” I was baffled.

“A Taig. A Catholic.”

“Why? What’s wrong with that?”

She just shook her head. “Nothin’. Just be careful when ye come to our street.”

Even though I hadn’t a clue what Taig meant, it made me feel dirty, uncomfortable. Later I discovered it was a derogatory term for Catholics, the equivalent of a black person being called “nigger”. It was my first taste of the tensions between Catholics and Protestants, of the real world of sectarian hatred in the North.

After that, Dad forbade me to visit my cousins, describing them as the dung beetles of the insect world: hating the rose but wallowing in its manure.

“Catholics are the saucers in the North of Ireland: close to the cup but never allowed to savour its contents,” he said, angrily.

It was an anger I hoped never to see again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Bloody Hell! All The Meat Ye Can Eat!

For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously. Friedrich Nietzsche

There are horrors beyond horrors, and this was one of those …

HP Lovecraft, The Shunned House

I started work in a timber yard near the docks, as one of about twelve Catholics in a work force of over a hundred. Needless to say, we weren’t given warm welcomes – except near the Glorious Twelfth when, consumed with booze and hatred, our loyalist fellow workers would utilise our tiny, separate tea-hut as a bonfire. If any of us were in it then that was a plus. Not a week went by without some sort of threat being made against us.

The Twelfth was always the worst, animating tribal animosity and sewing the bones of the dead into a patchwork of biblical absurdity.

After a few months of walking home backwards for the sake of survival, I decided that life as a joiner was not my calling. I ended up working in an abattoir, a stone’s throw away from the timber yard. A railway track stretched away behind the industrial wasteland where the abattoir stood. On summer days, heat rose off the tracks in crimped patterns that made them look soft and familiar in the baking distance. If someone placed an egg – usually a pilfered seagull’s egg – upon the track’s gnarled metal, the egg would fry perfectly as if on a hot pan.

In summer, the wasteland had a rough beauty about it. Juniper and sage housed gossiping insects, their orchestral wings perpetually in motion. Clumps of purple and red, white and violet wild flowers burst triumphantly through rusted metal and rotting carcases of dead dogs and cats, making it something that could be tolerated, despite its roughness. In fact, these gritty imperfections gave the industrial wasteland character. There was beauty out there in the rapidly diminishing landscape, something true and necessary and soothing in its quiet reassurance of vastness and power.

Unlike the abattoir.

“I don’t know how you can stand that place, Sam,” said Jim Kerr, my old school mate, standing beside me at the intimidating gates of the bloody institution. We hadn’t seen each other since leaving school, almost a year earlier.

“No choice, have I? You’re lucky. You can fix cars. Wish I had a wee job like yours, working in a garage.”

“It’s not as great as ye imagine. Covered in oil most of the time. A bit like us when we used to do the art with Miss Smith.”

The memory made us both smile. We were all in love with Miss Smith, our art teacher at secondary school. She was drop-dead gorgeous, and took no shit from anyone. Perhaps her black belt in judo had something to do with it?

“Ah, those were the days,” I said.

“Listen to him, would ye? Talkin’ like an auld man. We only left last year.”

“Seems forever. Wish to hell I was back, instead of this. I thought it would be great getting away from school, earning some money. What a nightmare, ending up working in the abattoir.”

“At least you don’t have to worry about getting the crap beat out of ye by some sadistic teacher for being late.”

“No, just worry about getting the crap beat out of me by loyalists.”

Suddenly, his voice went all serious. “Listen, Sam, be careful in there. Watch yer back. Not too many Catholics.”

“With a good Protestant name like Sammy Millar, I won’t have any problems.” I grinned.

“Just be careful. Okay?”

“Don’t worry, mate. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Don’t get too cocky. I’ll see ye the next time I’m down this way.”

I watched him slowly disappear out of sight down the long narrow road.

Taking a deep breath, I walked towards the main entrance. Dove-grey smoke drifted upward from a massive chimney, like a ghost, formless yet controlled, as if the building was a living being, breathing steam. Dull light filtered dimly through frosted glass. The smell of something floated heavily in the air, something at once familiar and strange, and for a very brief moment a specific sensation of everything being unreal hit me. It reminded me of old black-and-white documentaries on concentration camps I had seen on television.

The abattoir was a gothic conveyor belt of transmogrification: live, bewildered creatures entered at one end, only to emerge naked, humiliated and dismembered at the other. Galvanised by the smell of blood, some, in a futile attempt to escape the inevitable, would leap the barrier, only to break their legs, laying in a mangled, bellowing heap. They would quickly be set upon by angry butchers, who would leave a bloody highway of intricate veins and vestigial nerves strewn everywhere, some still ticking with shock.

Animals would crane their necks sideways, watching the bloody hands and lethal steel doing their terrifying work. The dismembered bodies were quickly captured on unforgiving ‘S’ hooks, giving the scene a grotesque, Bosch-like madness, populated with the ruddy violins of sheep carcases and cello-shapes of cows. The place was massive and held no boundaries. It was breathtakingly horrible, like the Sistine Chapel bloodied by barbarians, seething with rage in a hideous frenzy of activity. Its dank coldness reeked with tension, void of all things human.

The workers were saturated in blood, as red as the mangled wreckage of meat they hacked at. Distinguishable only by the tiny whitenesses of eyes, teeth and fingernails, they worked their endless choreography of death as though immune, moving in perfect harmony as if part of some farcical play performed for an invisible audience. They seemed to be talking at once; loud yet ambient.

On my first day, my nostrils began to flood with the stomach-churning smell. The same stinking stench from outside the building assaulted me, but with greatly magnified force – the filth of rotten flesh, of fear and hate, oozing from the ruins of carcases and their tormentors.

One group of workers were seated comfortably in a tiny corner of the room, seemingly immune to the chaos about them, talking and reading newspapers. They devoured their meal of fried eggs and freshly slaughtered meat, wiping their stained mouths with bloody, ragged handkerchiefs.

I felt my stomach move at the thought of eating a creature I had seen alive and well only minutes before. How could they hold down the food? I felt my head go light, and wondered was I going to vomit, would my resolve evaporate?

“Are ye feeling okay?” grinned the foreman. “Ye look pale.”

“No, don’t you worry about me. This is nothing,” I lied. “Get me my knives …” It was then I remembered Sadie’s prophetic words: You’ll be able to do this one day …

On the plus side of this nightmare, I was able to bring home as much meat as I could carry, each Friday evening. Some of the Catholic workers refused to take any, perceiving it as an insult to the Fishy Friday imposed by Rome. It didn’t bother me for a moment. Steak will beat fish any day of the week, said the Protestant blood in me.

Thankfully, my stay in the bloody place was shortlived. After only six months, I got a job as a barman, working in Kelly’s Cellars, one of Belfast’s oldest drinking establishments. There I would listen to longhaired and bearded radicals mixing with left-wing students, espousing social change and discussing how to bring down the status quo of Unionist domination. They spoke of Che Guevara, Martin Luther King and James Connolly, of street strategies and struggles. I listened, but wasn’t listening. Despite my family’s republican background, I had little interest in politics and banter. The brutal murders in Derry were pushing me towards militant republicanism. All I needed was one more shove.

It soon came.

I had only been a barman for about a week when I heard the terrible news on the TV: Masked loyalist terrorists have shot a Catholic teenager in his workplace, on the Lisburn Road. The so-called Red Hand Commandos have admitted the murder, stating all Catholics were targets. Police have named the victim as seventeen-year-old Jim Kerr …

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Sticky Situation Called Welsh Taffy

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Henry David Thoreau

He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.

Thomas Hobbes

Not too long after Jim’s sectarian murder, I found myself being arrested on trumped-up charges of belonging to an ‘illegal organisation’, namely the Irish Republican Army. At seventeen, I met my very first Englishman as he kicked in the door of my home in the early morning, forcefully dragging me out of bed using my ears as a rope.

There with his squad of fully armed mates attired in British Army uniforms, he insisted on aiming an SLR (Self-Loading Rifle) inches from my left eye and calling me a dirty Paddy bastard, despite the fact that I kept groggily telling him my name was Sammy, not Paddy. He wasn’t too impressed by my grandfather’s Orange sash, or the photos of Kennedy and the Pope. Perhaps if we had placed a photo of Lizzy Windsor alongside them, it might have tempered his temper, and the house wouldn’t have looked as if it had been visited by a mini-tornado of vandalism and destruction.

Dad always allowed our home to be used as a safe house for IRA men on the run, feeding and sheltering them. I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone informed on him.

Fortunately for Dad, he wasn’t home when the armed foreigners arrived to ‘have a word with him’. Unfortunately for me, I became a suitable substitute, and was quickly taken away to the notorious Castlereagh Interrogation Centre, a sinister place with a terrifying reputation for torture and human rights abuses of political suspects, as recorded by Amnesty International.

Suspects were often beaten, burned with cigarettes or lighters, and forced to assume stressful positions for long periods. They were stripped and humiliated, and sometimes threatened with murder. Some were treated to a technique known as ‘dorsi-flexing’ – stretching a suspect’s wrists or elbows into painful positions, sometimes for hours at a time. It wasn’t unusual to be sent to the hospital after a visit to Castlereagh, though you weren’t guaranteed a bunch of flowers and grapes.

One notorious peeler, Bill Mooney, would fire up his interrogators before they entered the interview rooms, demanding: “What are you, men or mice? get in there!” If the other peelers failed to quickly break a suspect, he would ask them: “Have I got to get in there and do it myself?” The charitable Mooney would later be awarded the rank of Detective Chief Superintendent, for his kindly work and communications skills.

After my three-day lodgings in Castlereagh, I was sent to Crumlin Road Gaol, with quite a few bruises and cuts about my body – though not on my face. ‘Never on their faces, lads. Never the face …’

Belfast’s infamous Crumlin Road Gaol – known to locals as the Crum – was an intimidating place, gothic in atmosphere. Had the bleak structure been built on top of a mountain instead of on a main roadway, it would have made a great set for a Hammer movie. Built from black basalt rock between the years of 1843 and 1845, its ten-acre site housed four wings, fanning out from a central area known as The Circle – or Control Area. Each cell measured twelve by seven feet, and ten feet in height. The gaol was originally built to house between 500 and 550 prisoners, in single-cell accommodation. In later years – especially in the 1970s – up to three prisoners, chiefly republicans, could occupy a single cell.

The first official use of the hellish place was in March 1846, when 106 unfortunate prisoners – men, women and children – were marched here in chains from the county gaol in Carrickfergus. Six of these original 106 souls were eventually transported to the ‘end of the world’, Australia.

In the early years of the gaol, starving children were imprisoned here for stealing food, in a city where poverty and starvation were rife in working-class areas. Sentences handed down to children by the compassionate and god-fearing judges ranged from one week to one month, and usually included a whipping. The sentence could increase if the judge did not like your face. This was the fate of ten-year-old Patrick Magee, who found himself before a judge for a second time in April 1858 for the unpardonable crime of stealing dirty clothes from a washer woman. Patrick was sentenced to three months. Tormented and threatened by the jail’s cowardly hangman and screws, the young boy was forced to hang himself in a cell.

In the gaol’s lifetime, seventeen men were executed by hanging. Their bodies were buried within the prison walls in unconsecrated ground, the only marker being the men’s initials and years of execution, scratched into the wall.

The gaol’s most regular hangman was Albert Pierrepoint, a ghoul who relished his grisly trade. As an eleven-year-old he wrote, in a school essay: “When I leave school I should like to be the Official Executioner.”

And so you shall, lad, and so you shall …

* * *

Sunday nights in the Crum were always the worst. For supper, a boiled egg and a slice of soda bread had to suffice until the next morning’s bowl of hardened porridge. The only things to break the stultifying monotony were searches carried out by armed British soldiers, wrecking your cell and confiscating the few belongings you had managed to accumulate. The searches usually lasted from Sunday night into the wee hours of Monday morning.

Most of the time, the searches went on without too many problems. Prisoners were placed in the prison canteen, watched by a handful of eagle-eyed screws. Normally, once the searching of your cell was over, the soldiers would leave, and you would be escorted back to your cell by the screws, to clean up the mess.

Usually …

“Millar,” snarled a screw, interrupting my conversation with my cellmate.

“What?” I said, waiting for the screw to tell us to go back to the cell.

“You’re wanted in your cell,” said the screw, a sinister smirk on his slimy gob. “Someone wants to talk to you – alone.”

“Who?” I said, trying to sound as if alarm bells weren’t suddenly ringing in my head.

“You’ll find that out soon enough. Come on. We haven’t all night.”

“Don’t go down, Sam,” said my cellmate, concern on his face. “The bastards are up to something.”

“If you don’t come now, Millar,” cut in the screw, “we’ll drag you down to your cell – feet first.”

On cue, three more screws appeared at the canteen door. They didn’t have smiley faces on.

“Fuck it. I’m not afraid of them,” I lied, practically shitting myself. Heading out of the canteen, I kept wondering how many pairs of clean underwear I had left?

All four screws escorted me down the wing, whispering and laughing. Just as I approached my cell, one of them said, “You’re fucking in for it, Millar. Hospital bed for you tonight.”

I entered the cell. A British soldier stood there, arms folded. He was a giant of a man, in length and breadth. How the hell they managed to get him in the cell was beyond me. They must have used a giant shoehorn, just to squeeze him through the door.

“Do you need our help, Sergeant?” Smirking Screw asked.

I almost burst out laughing.

Sergeant Giant must have found it funny also. He grinned, before saying in a Welsh accent, “No, officer. I think I can manage this lad on my own.”

The screws fled quickly, obviously not wanting to be called as witnesses to the carnage about to befall me.

“Do you know me?” Sergeant Giant said, slowly walking towards me.

I shook my head, mumbling, “No … don’t think so …”

“Have a good look,” he said, bringing his face to mine. “A real good look.”

I quickly gave his face a real good look, while waiting for a killer punch to my gut.

“No, I don’t know you …” I finally managed to say.

“Then why the fuck do you want to kill me, eh?” he said, sounding like an angry Tom Jones.

The guy had clearly lost his marbles, and I was alone with him. Why did bad things always have to happen to me? “I … Why would I want to kill you? I … I don’t even know you.”

His shovel-sized Welsh hand came up to my face. I waited for him to wrap it around my skinny Irish neck and squeeze the life out of me. Instead, he gently guided my face towards the back wall of the cell.

“See that picture?”

There were hundreds of pictures on the wall, mostly of beautiful women and pop singers.

“Which one?” I croaked.

“That fucking one,” he said, jabbing his finger.

I looked at the picture in question. A newspaper clipping, from a British red top. The newspaper had been running a moustache-growing competition between British Army regiments, trying to discover who had the best-looking moustache in uniform. The eventual winner had an enormous moustache, groomed to perfection, looking like Jimmy Edwards. Childishly, I had drawn a crosshair on the winner’s forehead, and written the word Bang! across it.

“Well? What have you to say for yourself?” Sergeant Giant said, obviously offended that one of his mates should be treated in such a coldblooded fashion.

I shrugged my shoulders. There was nothing I could say. His mate was the enemy, and would be treated as such.

“That’s me before I shaved the moustache off,” Sergeant Giant growled.

Oh fuck. I farted loudly with nerves, and hoped it wasn’t the sound of things to come.

“I won the award for best moustache in the army. I beat the Sais – the English – at their own game. They were gutted,” Sergeant Giant continued, pride in his voice while staring at the clipping. Then he quickly turned his attention back to me, his voice changing dramatically. “So, you’d shoot me, if you saw me on the street in Belfast, would you?”

I knew what was coming next, a punch or a kick, and wondered how painful it would be.

“I … well … this is my country, and you’ve no right to be here.” I was shocked at how big my balls had grown. I was sure it wouldn’t be too long before they were kicked back to pea-size.

Sergeant Giant looked taken aback at my audacity. Then he spoke very softly. “Let me tell you something. My brother was a member of Byddin Rhyddid Cymru – Free Wales Army. Ever hear of them?”

“No.”

“They were a bit like your IRA, only a hell of a lot smaller. They did thier bombings, just like your IRA – though they weren’t very good at making them. Killed a couple of themselves with their bombs. Never got Wales anywhere. Like yourself, my brother spent time in prison for them. Know where he is today?”

“No.”

“Homeless in Swansea, an alcoholic. Marriage destroyed. That’s what joining Byddin Rhyddid Cymru got him.”

A head popped itself into the cell. Another soldier. “Sarge? We’re packing up. Time to go.”

Sergeant Giant nodded. “Coming,” he said, turning his attention back to me. “Byddin Rhyddid Cymru had a motto: Fe godwn ni eto. That means, ‘We will rise again.’ Ha! Some hope.”

Turning, he lifted one of my felt-tipped pens from the top of the table, and scrawled “Taffy” on the clipping of himself.

He smiled, handing me back the pen. “Think about what I said. No one gives a fuck about you, rotting away in here. No one …”

And with those pearls of wisdom, he was gone.

* * *

Two-and-a-half months later, I had the dubious distinction of being the first Irish nationalist to appear in front of the infamous non-jury Diplock court, on 15 October 1973.

“Not to worry,” said my lawyer at the time. “You’ll probably only be fined. Probably about thirty quid. That’s what they’re all being fined.”

Thirty quid! Where the fuck was I going to get thirty quid? Dad would have a buckle in his eye if he ended up having to borrow the money. I doubted if he had three quid to his name, let alone thirty. I didn’t know if I could face him after this was over.

Before I could say a word, my lawyer added ominously, “… provided, of course, we don’t get Judge Lowry …”

Robert Lowry’s father was a bitter old Ulster Unionist and notorious anti-Catholic, and the apple never falls far from the tree, as the saying goes. Of course, with my luck – i.e. a complete lack of it – I ended up getting Lowry. I’ll never forget the sight of him that day, sitting there in his red-cushioned bidet with that stupid-looking white rag on his skinny dung-beetle head.

“There is no doubt in my mind that you are a dedicated terrorist …” Lowry mumbled in his summing up.

I glanced at Dad’s stress-burnt face, wondering what his reaction to having to pay thirty quid was going to be.

“… I have, within the law, the power to sentence you to eight years. But I am forced and somewhat reluctant to take into consideration your age of seventeen years,” moaned Lowry. “I sentence you to three years in prison …”

For one terrible moment, I thought old Rag Head had sentenced me to three years. Dad was taking the fine a lot worse than I thought. A gang of screws were restraining him. He was screaming and shaking his fist at Lowry.

My lawyer kept touching my shoulder, offering condolences. “I can’t believe he simply didn’t fine you … so sorry …”

A few years after this, the IRA tried to kill old Rag Head, but unfortunately the devil looks after his own, and he survived. It took until 15 January 1995 for Lowry to finally die, and go to meet a real Judge; one who would surely remind him: Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged. I hoped his contribution to my innocent youth being destroyed would be taken into consideration by the Big Lad Upstairs.

CHAPTER NINE

Have You Got the Bottle for the Battle of Long Kesh?

OCTOBER 1974

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

George Bernard Shaw

It was well after midnight that we had a quiet period for about two hours. In the meantime, we could hear the prisoners singing in their burning compounds. Their morale was quite high. I can remember thinking what great people the Irish are to have on one’s side.

British soldier participant, Battle of Long Kesh

Prison always seems to get a bad rap, but there are many positive attributes overlooked. Laxatives, for example, are never needed, as you are always anticipating some piece of utter nightmarish madness munching its way in your direction. If you’re into losing weight at an alarming rate, forget Jenny Craig, prison is the place for you.

It was now October 1974, and I’d been in Long Kesh – the Kesh or the Lazy K, as some laissez faire prisoners colloquially referred to it – for just over a year. The Kesh was situated in the former air force base of Long Kesh, on the outskirts of Lisburn. Political prisoners and internees were incarcerated there in huge numbers and in dreadful conditions, in what were fittingly termed cages. I happened to be in Cage 20. Originally, the vast majority of prisoners were republicans and socialists, but over the years, loyalists would come to form a significant piece of the incarceration pie chart.

In prison, there’s always someone who wants to stir things up; almost as if they have an aversion to sense, sanity and serenity. This particular person in this scenario happened to be the governor of the Kesh. An arrogant sort of chap, he constantly tried to chip away at our political status.

After months of continual harassment, he was eventually told in no uncertain terms by our OC that if he didn’t rein in his horns, the place would be set alight and burned to the ground.

Sitting in his office, the governor simply smirked and pulled a box of matches from his coat pocket.

“Here, use these,” he said, throwing the box on top of a table as a gauntlet.

The OC calmly picked up the box and put it in his pocket, before walking out of the office. The rest, as they say, is history, and what a piece of bloody history it would turn out to be.

Later that same evening, the OC informed us that the place was to be ‘set ablaze, leaving no stone upon another. Let the whole of Ireland see the flames. Let the darkened sky turn to light. Let all eyes see the terrible and justifiable anger of …’

Well, perhaps not in those dramatic biblical terms, but the message was the same: Burn the fucker down.

It has to be said that the OC’s order wasn’t entirely unexpected, though it was entirely unwanted. Lest the worst-case scenario should happen, we’d been training for months to get physically fit, running round the exercise yards and clambering over man-made obstacles in the canteen. A bit like “Dad’s Army” meets “Benny Hill” – only without the theme music.

When I say we, I actually mean the other prisoners. Never one for any form of physical exertion, due to childhood asthma and laziness, I always managed to make myself scarce, hidden someplace with a paperback, usually one by Sven Hassel and his motley crew of German soldiers. Nothing like a bad war book in a bad time of war.

Prior to the burning, a couple of would-be inventors in our ranks constructed gasmasks, from charcoal and cloth that looked suspiciously like well-used underwear. Indents of buttocks could be clearly seen in the flimsy cloth. In all honesty, those gasmasks would barely stop a good fart, never mind the CS gas heading inevitably in our direction. The creative force behind the masks had obviously been watching too many episodes of “Blue Peter”.

Out of common prisoner-of-war courtesy, we briefed our loyalist counterparts on what was soon to happen, and fair play to them, they said we could use their cages as first-aid posts, so I guess even they knew what was coming our way. Some of the more ballsy loyalists even readied themselves to participate in the fighting, but were quickly overruled by their commanding officers. Realistically, it wouldn’t look too good in their neighbourhoods if they were seen fighting alongside the republican foe.

A terrible pity, I thought at the time. What beautiful irony that would have been: loyalists and republicans fighting as one against a common enemy.

Within minutes of our OC giving the command, the flames began nibbling greedily at all and sundry. The screws, seeing howling, blackened-faced madmen emerging from the cages, made the most sensible decision any of them probably ever made: they ran like hell from the hellish sight, howling louder than us. If running and howling in uniform had been an Olympic event, gold medals would have been handed to the screws by the crane load.

Almost immediately after breaking out of the cages, we dedicated ourselves to destroying as much of the prison complex as humanly possible. Watchtowers were toppled, administration buildings annexed, prison generators destroyed, as well as the notorious prison kitchen, producer of all things bland and indigestible. A small number of prisoners even managed to arm themselves with batons and shields, liberated from the screws as they hastily went AWOL.

As the hours went by, the night sky became vividly illuminated, with flames seemingly reaching its ceiling. The flames danced with frightening power, in amazing hues of purple, blue and green, like some mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes. It would be many long hours before the flames had finished feasting, leaving nothing in their wake but the ravaged skeletons of razed huts and buildings.

Throughout the night, miniature skirmishes took place between some of the more macho prisoners and equally macho British. Nothing serious in scale; more a testing of wills, strength and ball-size. Morale was high, and old comrades who hadn’t seen each other in years met and hugged like … old comrades who hadn’t seen each other in years. Fires were made – as if we hadn’t had enough of the bastards already – to ward off the night’s coldness. In another time, in another place, we would have looked like boy scouts, gathering in circles of campfires, telling ghost stories.

As I stood by one of the fires, trying desperately to warm my freezing arse, I wondered why the hell we had done this mad thing in winterish conditions? Wouldn’t summer have been more appropriate? Or would that have been just a little bit too sensible?

As dawn finally broke, we made our way, exhausted yet triumphant, towards the massive security gates. What the hell we were going to do when we reached the gates was anyone’s guess. Mixed feelings of dread and excitement were coursing though my body.

Some of us were attired in blankets, draped poncho-like over our bodies, like followers of Emiliano Zapata. To cushion the pain of the kicks in the balls I expected to be receiving very soon, I had a towel stuffed down the front of my jeans. The bulge made me walk funny, and I must have looked like an actor from a porn movie, but I didn’t give a shit.

With adrenaline flowing like Guinness on Saint Paddy’s Day, we suddenly seemed invincible. Fuck yeah we did! Seemed, alas, turned out to be a most appropriate word.

Outside the Kesh’s perimeter, waiting patiently to beat the shit out of us, were numerous regiments of hardened British soldiers, chiefly from Marines, Hussars and Paratroopers. And just to make sure we didn’t stand any sort of a chance, they had brought along helicopters, six-wheeled Saracen armoured personnel carriers, and shit-inducing guard dogs the size of grizzly bears.

Little did we realise at the time, but we were setting the scene for one of biggest, boldest, bloodiest, badassest battles between the British Army and the Irish Republican Army – ever.

Had it been a movie instead of real life, we could have called it Apocalypse Now meets Spartacus. Unfortunately, we all know what happened to brave Spartacus …

Ah well, think of all the money saved on laxatives.

CHAPTER TEN

Bloody Hand-to-Hand is Never Handy but Always Bloody

To say it was a turkey shoot is no exaggeration.

British soldier participant, Battle of Long Kesh

We started to pack up and leave during the early evening of the second day. The prisoners back in their compounds, most of them had built small shelters out of breeze blocks and tin sheets and were sitting around small camp fires. I spoke with many of them and thought what splendid soldiers some of them would make.

British soldier participant, Battle of Long Kesh

At the first set of security gates, our OC quickly ordered us into military formation. A small no-man’s land of concrete was sandwiched between each set of security gates, usually guarded by a handful of screws. This time, of course, the screws were long gone.

The absence of humans, and all natural sounds, gave the entire scene an unnerving atmosphere of gut-tightening dread. A grey, slightly spooky morning mist had settled in the small distance, making visibility very limited.

“Wonder what they’re up to?” I whispered, to nobody in particular.

Before anyone could answer, a little hum went skimming through the air, breaking the silence.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked.

“An engine,” someone directly behind me said. “I’d know that sound anywhere. I’ve worked on engines all my life. That’s a heavy-duty bastard.”

Before I could ask another question, out of the distant mist appeared the grilled metal face of something quite fearsome-looking.

“Fuck the night …” whispered a voice behind me. “Armoured cars …”

The engine of the metal beast began to bellow like a bull’s battle call. Its enormous wheels started grinding in the dirt, causing thick black smoke to funnel from its arse. It was preparing to charge at us, as if we were matadors covered in red blankets. Then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, another metal beast appeared directly behind its friend.

“Oh … shit …”

Both beasts came charging at us, quickly accelerating to top speed as they approached. The sounds of their engines became bone-rattling. There was little doubt in my mind that they intended to run us over, if we didn’t move.

Obligingly, we quickly parted like the Red Sea, but instead of Moses appearing with his magical staff and tribe of escaping Israelites, we saw mobs of British soldiers, rushing at us and firing rubber bullets at point-blank range.

Immediately, brutal gladiatorial combat commenced, Irish and British clashing with batons and bare fists. Heads were cracked. Teeth went flying. Faces and noses were mashed. It seemed to last forever.

Then helicopters appeared, hovering menacingly in the background.

Ultimately out-gunned and out-manoeuvred, we did an about-turn, hastily moving in the direction of the fenced football fields. We may have been heading towards the playing fields, but they sure as hell weren’t going to be level ones.

Rubber bullets were zipping past my ears, like little black turds of electricity. I kept waiting for my head to be smashed open by one of them, but thankfully I managed to squeeze my way into one of the fields before the grilled gates were slammed in my face.

Inside, hand-to-hand fighting continued unabated. In the intense mêlée, three British soldiers became separated from their unit, and quickly captured by us. Their faces were etched with panic and fear, and who the hell could blame them in this hell?

I remember one of the captured soldiers being bigger than Clint Eastwood, but he looked like a terrified little kid. Blood was spurting from his nose, into his mouth. Despite everything we were going through, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He could easily have been one of my brothers, Danny or Joe, getting a thumping for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thankfully, all three men were handed back unharmed to their unit by our OC. A strategic move so as not to incur the wrath of the enemy? Or gesture of humanity? I like to think the latter.

No sooner were they handed back than the fighting recommenced.

The helicopters had now reached us, and hovered directly above. Their rotor blades created small windstorms, knocking us off balance. Soldiers, feet dangling from the fuselages, began firing canisters at us at close range. Each canister split into clusters upon impact, filling the air with the stench of gas. A gooey greenish mist engulfed everything within its reach, like thick London fog. Visibility was nil.

I had encountered CS gas before, during numerous riots in Belfast, and was slightly acclimatised to it, as most Belfastians were. CS gas works by stimulating the corneal nerves, irritating the mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, mouth and lungs. This produces crying, sneezing, coughing and difficulty in breathing, alongside temporary blindness. A bit like drinking raw poteen.

This time, however, there was something startlingly more evil about the gas we were being bombarded with. First of all, this gas felt like a living, breathing thing, crawling all over my skin. My eyes felt as if someone had jammed hot ashes and onions inside them; snot was running from my nose at an alarming rate, like a busted water tap. To make matters worse, I had pissed myself. At least I thought I had pissed myself, until I realised it was blood: I had ripped my leg trying to squeeze through the closing gates. I began tearing at the skin on my face, thinking it was on fire. I was drowning in gas fumes, and screamed to God not to let me die like this.

Suddenly, everything became soul-quieteningly calm, as I encountered the Twilight Zone effect. The gas was making me hallucinate, in an almost psychedelically utopian freefall. I felt myself sinking into the ground, as if I had wandered into a deadly swamp. I couldn’t feel my legs. Directly above, the Yellow Submarine floated by. John, George, Paul and Ringo were waving out of the portholes. Ringo kept reaching out his drumstick for me to grab, hoping to get me out of the swamp.

“Grab that, Sam,” he kept saying in his Liverpudlian accent, while the other three looked on, bemused.

But each time I touched the drumstick, it turned into particles of sawdust.

“Got yourself in another hole, Sam?” said a voice directly behind me. I thought it was God, but it turned out to be semi-god Hunter S Thompson.

“Can … you … help … me … Hunter?” My words were coming out slurred and in slowwwwwwwwwww motion. My mouth felt and tasted like rubber, as if I’d just been to the dentist.

“Ha, man! You got yourself into that hole. Gotta get yourself back out. Think of the shit I went through writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I didn’t cry like a sissy boy. Did I?”

Before I could say how much I loved that book, the Big Yellow with the Fab Four went under the Velvet Underground. Hunter winked, and then was lifted up to the heavens in a pink chariot, but not before giving me some sound advice. “Write about it, kid. Write about it. That’s the best way to deal with it. Write about it …”

As he faded out, Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Pluto arrived on the scene.

Goofy was laughing that goofy laugh of his, and Mickey kept taking the mickey, asking what the hell I was doing down there, in that great big hole? Pluto kept licking at my face, making me giggle like a nappy-wearing infant. Donald Duck was nowhere to be seen, but I suspected it was only a matter of time before he would appear, wise-quacking. He was probably away somewhere, screwing Minnie, behind Mickey’s back.

Before I knew what was happening, Goofy began hitting me with an enormous cartoon hammer. Each time he hit me, the word Pow! blazed in front of my eyes, followed by little birds and stars circling my head. I couldn’t feel a thing. We laughed. We laughed so much my ribs hurt.

Then, as the effects wore off, the pain started to register. Mickey and Goofy were gone, replaced by two British soldiers smacking me across the back of the head and ribs with batons, and not cartoon ones, but solid-as-a-fucking-rock, real-life batons.

At some point – I don’t exactly remember when – I found myself being dragged along the ground by the same two jolly chaps, and not in a genteel manner. They were using my long hair (it was the seventies, after all!) as a rope, and trailed me for what seemed like miles, but in reality was probably a few feet.

In all honesty, I was glad to be out of that evil Fog of War, and to be getting semi-fresh air once again into my lungs. In the distance, I could hear screams, men howling in agony.

“What was all that about, mate?” asked a British soldier standing over me. I could barely breathe, let alone talk.

I shrugged my shoulders, which is quite hard to do when pinioned to the ground by your own dead, frightened weight.

To my surprise, he held out his hand. I took it, and he pulled me up. My head was spinning. I stank of gas. It was everywhere on my being: skin, pores, hair, clothes – even those places we don’t like to talk about, at least not in public.

The young soldier couldn’t have been any older than me. He looked thirteen, but was probably seventeen, eighteen at most. Same size, same build. Had yet to tackle a razor with any seriousness.

“Smoke?” he offered, reaching into the top pocket of his uniform and pulling out a crumpled pack of cigs.

If I hadn’t felt like crying, I would have laughed at his question. Gas smoke kept coming from my clothes and arse, like a locomotive driven by the notorious blackleg and strikebreaking bastard Casey Jones.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ve had enough smoke to last me a lifetime.”

He lit the cig, and we began walking.

“You Irish are fucking mad,” he said, a small smile on his small face, the lit cig doing a jig at the side of his mouth.

I couldn’t disagree, looking behind me at the madness of fighting against hugely overwhelming and superiorly-equipped odds.

“You’ve got to fight for what you believe in, no matter what,” I finally managed to mumble, shocked to see smoke coming out of my mouth as I spoke. I wondered if I’d been turned to ash, and hadn’t noticed?

For the next few minutes, we made small talk, mostly about football and pop music. He was from Newcastle, a proud Geordie and fanatical Magpies supporter. He could barely understand my accent, nor I his, but for now he was my new best friend, who had taken me away from Apocalypse Now, if only for a few fleeting moments. In another time, another place, we could easily have been drinking buddies, except that he was probably too young to be permitted into a pub.

Just as our friendship was blossoming, a snarl came from behind.

“Harper! This isn’t a fucking nursery! Get that prisoner over here, to the wire.” It was a sergeant. He looked like a grizzly in uniform. A bit like Smokey Bear, but without the warmth and cute smile.

“Yes, Sarge!” said New Friend Harper, quickly discarding his cigarette. “Sorry, mate. Orders are orders.”

“Fuck, don’t I know …”

Before I knew it, Sarge was shoving my face against the wire at the football pitch.

“Stand there! Move a muscle, I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands,” he said.

He looked very sincere and his bare hands looked like bear hands, so I did as requested. I did not move a fucking muscle, even though my eyes and face still stung like hell, and I wanted to rub them so bad it hurt. My arse demanded a good scratching also, but I ignored it, knowing it was trying to get me into shit, in more ways than one.

For an hour I stood there with other prisoners, most bleeding, all coughing like old men in iron lungs. Then we were marched back, en bloc, in the direction of the cages. I thought I could hear the theme music to The Bridge on the River Kwai playing in the background. Above us, a helicopter followed, like a sky-high sheepdog, watching our every move.

As we neared the cages, the devastation we had wreaked was a marvel to behold. They looked as though an atomic bomb had been dropped on them.

As we were herded in, a welcoming party of Royal Marine Commandos welcomed us with their usual friendly banquet. For hors d’oeuvre we had punches, hair grabbing and verbal insults. Le plat principal consisted of batons, boots and bloody fists du jour. And finally, for le dessert we finished with some divine, backbreaking press-ups, of which our hosts insisted upon us finishing every last one, despite our protestations.

Six hours later, fait accompli, the Marine Commandos departed, all in high spirits and singing various British conquest songs of old. Our spirits, however, weren’t high, and we had to forego any singing. Instead, we quickly set about trying to build some makeshift shelter from the freezing night ahead. Unfortunately for us, we had gone a bit crazy when burning the cage. Perhaps, after all, the OC really did tell us to ‘set the place ablaze, and leave no stone upon another …’

While other cages still had some sort of structural value left, ours had gone belly-up and bankrupt. The Marine Commandos had bulldozed what was left into one giant heap of bricks and mangled metal: a modern pyramid of nothingness.

As we all looked at the scene in shock and awe, suddenly the heavens opened in a deluge so heavy the rain literally took our breaths away with its power. With nowhere to run or take shelter, we huddled close together – though not too close, being macho and all that. On the plus side, it did help to wash the remnants of gas from us.

An afterthought

after an aftermath

For months, we were kept in horrendous conditions, with little or no shelter to shield us from wintry onslaughts. Food was meagre, one bowl of porridge in the morning, and a bowl of stew at night. On rare occasions, some bread was handed out. If you were a sparrow, the amount would have burst your feathered belly. Unfortunately, we weren’t sparrows.

On a more serious note, many of these ex-prisoners, disproportionately to their age group, have since died from, or developed, cancer. The gas that was used turned out to be CR gas (Dibenzoxazepine), rather than CS. CR gas, ten times more powerful than CS, was developed in the fifties in Britain. A heavy carcinogenic agent and distributor, most civilised countries have banned it. Some, however, still use it to suppress and oppress. In the late 1980s, CR was used in the townships in South Africa, causing fatalities, particularly among children. Thousands of tons of CR gas were used by the US forces in Vietnam to bring the Viet Cong into the open, rather than fight them in the jungles. North Vietnamese forces also used it in 1968, and during the Easter Offensive in 1972, and Bashar Assad’s regime has allegedly used it in the current conflict in Syria.

Despite all our hardship, morale remained high. Evidently, we had caused millions of pounds worth of damage, but more importantly had taken on the full force of the Establishment, head-to-head, in what would become the definitive kickstarter of the conflict on the outside. The British may have won the physical battle of Long Kesh, but we had won the all-important psychological war. Scenes of the Kesh burning nightly on TV, brought recruitment for the IRA to an all-time high. So much so, in fact, that would-be volunteers had to be turned away.

Finally, after long, brutal winter months of sleeping on the ground with little covering, we were shipped to a new cage. I was never so glad to be inside one: hot showers, electricity, warm beds, clean sheets, the chance to catch up with Norman Stanley Fletcher in “Porridge” and, even more importantly, Pan’s People on “Top of The Pops”.

Some things just never change. Or so we thought …

Behind our cage, workmen began building an enormous Berlin Wall copy, eighteen feet in height and smothered in razor wire. Initially, we simply regarded it as a tightening of security, an inevitable consequence of The Burning.

However, rumours started circulating that behind the wall a new prison was being built, to contain political prisoners. The rumours eventually proved false. Not just one prison was being built, but eight. Prisons within a prison, so to speak, like Russian matryoshka dolls. Each prison would consist of four wings, with each wing containing twenty-five cells. Most important to the British Government was that the new prison would be escape-proof, designed by their top escape-proofing engineers. A name had even been given to these impossible-to-escape-from prisons, making them sound sinister, like something from a concentration camp: H-Blocks.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Return of the Native

1975

When one man says no … Rome trembles.

Spartacus

I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists. I tell them that I was also a terrorist yesterday, but, today, I am admired by the very people who said I was one.

Nelson Mandela, “Larry King Live”

I was released eventually in 1975, a changed person. Never one for modern-day politics or history, I had consumed both insatiably in the Kesh. The education that I had been denied on the street eventually filtered down to me via other prisoners, some with university degrees.

Secretly, I wanted revenge for having been put in the Kesh simply for being Irish. If the British had the audacity to imprison me in my own country, for no other reason than being a nationalist from a republican background, then I may as well make it worthwhile. Payback would be a bastard. I would become a thorn in the side of the British Government, and teach the fuckers some manners.

Unfortunately for me, the British very quickly took that thorn out, and shoved it right up my arse, sentencing me to ten years of incarceration for allegedly having guns and explosives.

I was on my way back to my old alma mater, Long Kesh, the place where men made rules but rarely obeyed them. A place where, sometimes, men could change the course of history …

The van’s wipers scythed the windscreen, leaving iridescent ellipses in their wake as I peered tentatively through the grilled windows. In the oblique distance, the chalky headlights swathed silhouettes of starving trees and serpentine hedges, transforming them into a Gothic vignette. I could only steal a quick, last glance at freedom before the ponderous gates of Long Kesh slammed thunderously behind us, making the van quiver.

The old Nissen huts were now mostly replaced with what would eventually become notorious around the world for mistreatment of political prisoners: The H-Blocks.

They were the jewels of the British Government’s doomed-to-failure “normalisation” policy; a policy they hoped would prove to the world that everything was honky-dory on this wee piece of earth, that all the brutality and discrimination you might hear about were just figments of the imagination.

“Out!” a gruff voice shouted, and out we tumbled, myself and two loyalist prisoners, into the incandescent glare of the Reception, where we were quickly herded into tiny, solo cubicles. The doors – standing in an uneven wave, de-crucified by time and wear – quickly slammed shut behind us, their bolts shooting into place. The bolts sounded like old .303 rifles being cocked, and I had no doubt in my mind that the screw at the other side of the door would have loved to have had one of those in his hands at that moment.

The narratives on the walls of the cubicle kept reminding me of something I no longer wanted to remember, but, like a long-lost diary, you simply had to turn the page.

After a few minutes, the door suddenly opened, causing the light to bleach my eyes.

“Here ye go! Strip! Put this on! We don’t have all fuckin’ night!” said a voice, before slamming the door violently.

Resting at my feet, like a dirty pool of water, was a brown prison uniform, or gear, as the political prisoners called it.

On the wall to my left, someone had scrawled: “You’ll have to nail the gear to my back!”

A nice act of defiance, I thought, but in all honesty it did little to steel me. My heart had not stopped banging in my chest, causing white sparks to dance in front of my eyes.

The door flung open and once again my eyes stung. My stomach lurched like a trap door.

“What the fuck’s wrong with ye?” said the screw. He was the size of nothing divided by something, and his oversized hat kept falling over his bloodshot eyes. His breath stank of last night’s whiskey. “Didn’t I tell ye to strip and put the uniform on?”

I had perfected my speech in my head, reiterating it each night on my bunk in Crumlin Road Gaol. Now that it was time for the main event, my throat had turned arid.

“I …” My stomach started churning, causing purgative acid to ferment in my bowels. I needed to take a shit. “I refuse to … wear … the … gear.” There! I’d said it! God, I’d said it!

Just like magic, a great weight eased from me, even though, in my heart, I knew what was coming next.

The screw stared at me in disbelief, as if he had been struck by lightning. He blinked a couple of times, then slammed the door, leaving the smell of shirt starch floating in the air. It made me think of Dad dressed for a Saturday night, and it made me feel so terribly alone and, yet, afraid to be afraid.

From inside my cubicle, I could hear the muffled best-of-mates laughter from the loyalist prisoners and screws, the sound fading as they boarded a van for one of the Blocks. I could even hear the van’s fat tyres crunching on the expanse of gravel, then fading to an echo. Then silence.

Suddenly, the Reception became as eerie as a tomb, and my nerves began to play havoc with my mind. Like a fox, waiting in the dark.

Anticipation. Silence. Of course, I thought, almost smiling. I knew from experience that a perfect measure of silence had the potent power to be as terrifying as the actuality. This was all part of the meltdown procedure. Dehumanising the senses.

When the door opened this time, the screw was no longer alone.

“This is yer last chance, Millar. Put the fuckin’ uniform on now!”

Defiantly, I crossed my arms, taut as springs, and waited for the inevitable.

It wasn’t long coming.

The plus side of being attacked in such close confines is that your attackers usually do as much damage to themselves as they do to you.

“All right now, wee hard man? Bet yer fuckin’ ma and da would be proud of ye layin’ there, bollock-naked. We should take a photo of ye and send it to ’em, ye Fenian bastard!”

It had only taken them a matter of minutes to literally rip my clothes from my back and give me a “jolly good” kicking into the bargain. Two of the screws lay on top of me, sweating and heaving, cursing and threatening. When they got their breath back, I was jerked up by the hair and pulled to my feet.

“I’m not going anywhere naked. No matter what you or –”

I was kicked in the balls, and collapsed immediately to the floor, vomiting. Seconds later, I was being dragged outside into the yard, like a chariot in Ben-Hur. The rough tarmac surface was flaying my skin, embedding it with tiny pebbles. A few more kicks were administered to my balls and head.

“Take ’im to Block One. They’ll sort ’is wagon out for ’im,” said a screw with an English accent.

It was Friday night. I should be in the Star club, drinking a pint and listening to a terrible band doing terrible impressions of Fleetwood Mac. Instead, I was bollock-naked, my arse tattooed with tarmac buckshot, and my balls a wicked magenta.

And I still hadn’t reached the Block. Fuck, this was going to be a very long day’s journey into night.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Nightmare Journey Begins

SEPTEMBER 1976

The English have a divine right to fight the Irish on their native soil, but every Irish man fighting against the British government is to be treated as an outlaw.

Karl Marx

I will not make any deals with you. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.

Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner

The contiguous bone-coloured cells, their starkness augmented by a dark-blue sky, came into view as I descended from the van. A salient moon floated merrily above, its devious grin belying the madness at its feet. It was a fat moon, and reminded me of an Auguste Rodin nude – just like myself at this moment in time.

In the corner of my vision, a tiny red nipple faded in and out amongst the shadows, like an SOS beacon. A screw, his face sheltered from the chill, had ensconced himself in a corner as he sucked on a cigarette. A village of discarded butts lay about his feet like spent ammo shells. He could have been Clint Eastwood in Hang ’em High.

For a second, I thought he shook his head at me, as if questioning my sanity. But it was probably just the moon playing games.

“Go on! Git yer bare Fenian arse in there!” screamed the screw in the van.

“Take it easy, for fuck’s sake!” I shouted back.

“Shutdafackup and git in!”

I took a deep breath; entered.

The astringent smell of polish was overpowering as I entered the Circle – the hub of the Block. The floor was constantly polished, buffed and shined, giving it the colour of horse-eye ebony and the smoothness of oil on water. The surreal feeling of being on a giant mirror flashed into my mind.

An orderly – a non-political prisoner – was buffing the floor. He stared at me for a second before continuing his mindless task, as if naked prisoners were the norm in this hellish place.

The screw knocked on a door. A voice said, “Enter,” and I was shoved forcibly into a room. Four screws, dripping with cheap aftershave, flanked me.

At his desk, pretending to write, sat the so-called PO. His eyes strolled leisurely along a yellow pad, discerning imaginary mistakes, which he noted with invisible ink.

His hair was the colour of damp straw; a sore-looking, ruddy complexion evoked habitual scrubbing of the sour face, as did his bleached shirt. Tiny bars of brass rested on his solid shoulders, completing the propaganda poster.

After what seemed an eternity, he finally placed the pen down and nodded to the screw.

“Number 606, Millar, Sir!” barked the screw behind me, into my left ear. “Refuses to obey a direct order, Sir! Refuses to wear his uniform, Sir!”

Straw Head placed his fingers under his chin.

“Is that correct, Millar?” Straw Head said.

“More or less,” I answered.

“More or less, Sir!” screamed the screw, into my right ear this time. “Ye’ll address the Principle Officer and all members of staff as Sir, Millar!”

Sir Millar? I thought. That has a certain ring to it.

Straw Head tilted forward and removed an orange from his desk. Deliberately, he nipped its skin, tunnelling under it with his finger. Citrus engulfed the room as he tore the orange in two.

“I remember ye,” he said, nodding. “Crumlin Road. Seventy-three. Remember me?”

There was hate in his eyes; not his own hate, but an ancestral, genetically gifted hate, anchored in memory.

Yes, I remembered. His name was Docky Fada, and in those days he held no rank. He was as quiet as a mouse, never looking you in the eye, galvanised by his own shadow. Now here he was, all brass and bogus toughness.

He picked up his pen and tapped his finger with it. “Different days now, eh?” he said, his left eyebrow forming a hairy question mark. “No more special status. No more ridiculous scenarios of inmates having the audacity to tell staff what to do. Now the tables are turned. The shoe is on the other foot, Millar. Better get used to it.”

“Whatever you say,” I said.

“Sir!” screamed the screaming screw behind me. “Ye’ll address the Principle Officer at all times as –”

“It’s okay, Officer Wilson. Time is on our side. A few weeks of solitary confinement will teach Millar some respect,” Docky said, grinning. “Ye realise, of course, that each day that ye refuse to wear the uniform and go to work, will result in loss of remission and all privileges? Think about that in yer cell, tonight.”

Somewhere in the night, sounds gathered force: the drone of a military helicopter slicing the air, drowning out the anxious call of a lost bird, and the lonely lament of rain beating on the windows.

“I can tell ye’re no longer listening, Millar,” Docky said. “Very well. But let me make one thing clear. If ye fuck with my staff, ye fuck with me. I don’t tolerate disrespect. The rules are simple: when a member of staff, governor or myself come to your cell, ye’ll stand to attention. Our maxim is: key in the door – foot on the floor. Understand?”

I ignored his question, simply eyeballing him with disdain.

Eventually, he made a motion to dismiss me, but stopped. “Where did ye acquire those cuts and bruises?”

I remained silent, but the screw behind me boomed: “Sir! 606, Millar, acquired said cuts and bruises when he slipped on the slick step of the van. We advised 606, Millar, to wear his uniform so as to at least shelter himself from the elements. Our advice was ignored by 606, Millar, Sir!”

Docky nodded, satisfied with said answer, but had some prudent advice before dismissing me.

“See the doctor in the morning, Millar. Yer balls look like they’re ready to explode.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bare Soles and Bare Souls

A great part of the information obtained in war is contradictory, a still greater part is false, and by far the greatest part is of a doubtful character.

Clausewitz, On War

This is one thing I love and I admire about the Irish people, you have been underdogs for hundreds of years, people dominating you and ruling you and you can identify with this freedom struggle … I have my own on the other side of the water but we all have the same cause and ideals.

Muhammad Ali

Papillary lights, each the size of a baby’s toe, correlated the entire stretch of the wing. A bluish darkness added to the eerie silence, ruined only by the plop plop plopping of my bare feet.

The door of the cell slammed behind, stinging my ears and making me jump. But for some inexplicable reason, it also bathed me with relief, as the day’s events seeped away, melting with the metal echo.

I was in the cell no more than a minute when a voice shouted: “Sam!”

“What?” I replied through the door’s edge, a sliver of freedom.

“Get to yer door.”

“I’m at the bloody door! Who is it?” It was disorientating, speaking in the darkness, my voice boomeranging back, hollow and strange.

“Finbar,” replied the voice. “Any scéal, mate?”

Finbar was the present Officer in Command of the protesting prisoners. Even though I had arrived virtually at the embryonic stage of the protest, he, together with eight other volunteers, had been on protest for at least five weeks. I would soon find out that five weeks without visits, reading material, radio or TV felt more like five months. Adding to the monotonous, mundane repetitiveness was the fact that our mail was at the mercy of the screws’ impulses, which were guided by their sectarianism and sadistic forgetfulness.

I began with the little bit of scéal – news – I could remember from the night before.

“There was a peeler shot in …” Slowly, I began to relay the war news from the last few weeks that they wouldn’t have heard, hoping this might be a lift for morale. But the icy, cynical voice of McJoke soon taught me what was meant by news on the protest.

“Fuck that crap! Have ye any news concerning the protest? That’s what we want to hear.”

I could hear beds creak as bodies lifted, waiting for my response. I had been told what to say by the OC in Crumlin Road jail: Tell ’em it’ll all be over soon. Anything, so long as it keeps them from leaving the protest …

“The word is that it’ll all be over soon.”

“How fuckin’ soon?”

Anything, so long as it keeps them from leaving the protest …

“Christmas.” I felt my face burn at the lie.

“Christmas?” said McJoke. I pictured his eyelids tightening with disbelief, smelling something not right. “Christmas?” he repeated, giving me the chance to get out of the hole I had just dug with my tongue.

“That’s the word. If not Christmas, definitely January at the latest.”

“Did ye bring any snout with ye?” asked the gruff voice of Teapot.

Snout was tobacco in Block jargon.

“No, Teapot. The screw took it from me in the reception.”

“Bastard.”

I didn’t know if he meant the screw or me.

“It’s freezing in this cell, Finbar,” I said, quickly changing the subject. My nerves probably made it feel a lot colder.

“The screws turn the heat off in the winter,” replied Finbar, “and put it up full blast in summer. Part of their moronic strategy to make us come off the protest. Ye’ll soon get used to it, mate. Wrap one of those hairy blankets on ye. Toughen ye up.” He was laughing his famous contagious laugh.

I immediately grabbed a blanket and felt its coarse, Brillo-pad hairs bite my skin. It was torturous, but little did I know then how many years it would be my shadow and skin.

“This blanket’s rough,” I moaned.

“Not as rough as the protest! Dry yer eyes!” responded a chorus of voices.

“Who was it told ye Christmas?” McJoke was at it again. A dog refusing to let go of a bone.

“Well … I don’t really want to mention names out the door. The screws could be listening.” My lie got bigger. My face got hotter.

“Never mind him, Sam. How’d the Hammers do on Saturday?” asked Finbar, West Ham United’s number one fan.

“Fuck the Hammers,” said McJoke, oozing with diplomacy. “This is more important than all of that shite.”

“What do ye mean, fuck the Hammers? Fuck you, McJoke,” said Finbar. “What were we saying, Sam, before we were so rudely interrupted?”

“Never mind all that auld political nonsense,” complained Teapot, panic in his voice. “Are ye certain ye didn’t even bring a wee bit of snout?”

“Never mind snout,” cut in McJoke. “Get one answer at a time.”

“What d’ye mean, never mind snout?” Teapot replied, full of indignation. “Ye don’t smoke. So shut yer mouth. And anyway, this protest is never gonna end. So dry yer eyes.”

The verbal jousting went on unabated, like table tennis, back and forth. I left the door, walked to the bars attached to the window and gazed at the night sky. It was beautiful, peopled with infinitely numerous, lucid stars and washed in God’s shadow. Screeching conquistador starlings flew to the safety of the enormous, mushroom-shaped orbs of the security lights. The lights splashed a pyrite-coloured web over the Block, animating it in charcoal and cheese.

Before I fell asleep, wondering if I should admit I had made the date up, Teapot’s voice grumbled in the dark: “Bastard. No snout. Probably made that date up as well.”

Tonight would be a long day’s journey that I couldn’t wait to finish. I would remember forever that things we do not know make us speculate. Information, no matter how delightful at the time, is always dangerous in the aftermath.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Footprints in History Aren’t Made Sitting Down

I am pent up in frowzy lodgings, where there is not room enough to swing a cat.

Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker vol. 1

To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up the soul, freeze thy young blood.

Shakespeare, Hamlet

Next morning, reveille was announced with the screws’ orchestral ensemble of baton and boots against the cell doors. The screws stood, their grinning eyes peering through the security-flap, bang bang banging in staccato until each prisoner got out of bed.

“A beautiful morning like that and still in yer bed! Naughty, naughty. Up! Keys in the door, feet on the floor!” The screw rattled the keys, hoping to aggravate.

Occasionally, a prisoner would rise to the bait. “Work the keys up yer arse, ye wanker!”

Unperturbed, the screw continued his woodpecker tap tap tapping. “How do ye want yer eggs done, lads? Sunny-side up? Bacon? Well done? What about a sausage?”

“Ask yer wife,” shouted a gruff voice. “She was gettin’ one last night while ye were on the night-shift!”

“Ooooohhh, Teapot. I’m shocked at yer language. And ye a good Catholic boy.”

Outside, the starlings had left to search for food, but a posse of synchronous homing pigeons skimmed the air, riding the surf that oozed from the sun. Its golden rays were barely melting the early morning darkness. Suddenly, without warning, the birds dropped like blue crashing waves, disappearing behind the horizon of my window.

There was no bacon for breakfast, of course. Nor a sausage. Just bland porridge without milk or sugar, and suspicious-looking bread, freckled with blue dots of mould.

Shortly after breakfast, Finbar provided me with a brief rundown from his cell.

“The screw’s comin’ to slop us out soon. Go, even if ye don’t need to. It gets ye out of the cell, if only for a few minutes. Always remember that we go nowhere naked, or with the gear on. Stick the tiny towel on ye.”

The screw was getting closer for slop out, so I sat on the bed waiting.

Without warning, the flap went up and a pair of eyes glared in at me. They resembled concentric gob-stoppers that had been sucked and dipped in varnish.

He said nothing. Simply stared. I stared back, disregarding the disconcerting effect of staring at a green door with bulging eyes. I’d be damned if I would give him the satisfaction of looking away, intimidated.

The flap slammed down!

Slowly it opened again. Bulging eyes. Lids closing. Opening …

What an annoying bastard, I thought, as we began our staring contest again.

“Ye know the rules, Millar. Keys in the door – feet on the floor! Don’t have me call for reinforcements.”

I didn’t budge, but my stomach tightened at the threat.

Slam! went the flap.

I could no longer see him, but he was there. I could hear him breathing.

The flap opened again. “Peek-a-boo!” said his annoying voice. “I can seeeeee yeeeeeeee. Do ye see meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?”

Sick bastard.

“Last chance, Millar. Four officers are on the way. We’ll teach ye a thing or two if ye don’t stand.”

He began a countdown. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seveeennnn. Six … wise up and save us all the bother, will ye?”

I refused to answer, but my stomach was churning with nerves. I needed to take a shit.

“Four. Threeeeeeeeee! Last chance. Here come the officers now. Two and a half …”

His voice was torture. I wanted the beating over with.

“One!” The door gave a terrible rattle and I held tight to the bed, my knuckles popping.

For the longest time, the door remained closed. Nothing but a sly silence. Then a crazy laugh screamed: “Ha-ha! Got ye there, Sam! Caught ye lovely! Thought I was the screw, didn’t ye! Ha-ha!”

I bounced quickly off the bed just in time to see a prisoner known as Polar Bear, zigzagging up the wing, going from cell to cell, shouting: “Got ’im, lads. Should’ve seen Millar’s gob! Ha-ha! He was shittin’ himself!”

Then he stopped outside Finbar’s cell. “Hey, Finbar? Millar put his feet on the floor. He thought I was the screw.”

That’s a load of bollocks, I was about to shout, when I realised he was trying to wind me up.

“I thought he was gonna shite himself,” continued Polar Bear loudly for everyone to hear. “Wee hard man from the New Lodge, my balls. Ha-ha!” He was wiping the tears from his bearded face as he walked back to my cell. “I’m surprised at ye, Sam. Falling fer that auld one.”

“I’m too wise to your tricks, Polar Bear,” I lied. “You’re played out.”

He threw his head back laughing, as if caught in an invisible hook.

Polar Bear was infamous for his mixes – pranks – on unsuspecting prisoners. In Crumlin Road Gaol, he masqueraded as a doctor or social worker, alternating as the moods took him. But his forte was perfected in the parody of a fire-and-brimstone priest by the name of Foxx, whose weekend antics brought “converts” from every landing in the jail. Each Saturday night, with a line of new arrivals, he’d transform his cell into a confessional, partitioning it with a bed-sheet replete with a spy-hole to watch the sinner’s reaction.

“Come in, my son,” said Father Polar’s sacerdotal voice behind the sheet.

A carrot-top prisoner, his anxious face a map of freckles the size and colour of rusted nail-heads, entered and sat down.

“Yes, my son?”

The young man coughed to clear his throat. “It’s been almost …” his voice trailed off as he noticed the solo eye in the white sheet beaming at him.

“C’mon! I don’t have all day, ye know!” declared Father Polar.

“It’s … it’s been almost three … months since my last …”

“Three months! What kinda Catholic are ye with no sins in three months? Eh? Eh?”

“I’m truly sorry, Father, but this is the first chance I’ve –”

“Cut the bloody martyr crap, for heaven’s sake! Get down to the nitty-gritty!”

Carrot Top’s hands were damp and he wiped them on his jeans, leaving dark snail-stains on them.

“I’ve had … impure thoughts … actions. Also –”

“Hold it!” screamed Father Polar. “Who the hell’s in charge here? Take it easy. What kinda impure action?”

Carrot Top licked his dry lips. “Ye know … wanked.”

“Wanked? What’s that?” Father Polar was biting his lips, suppressing a laugh-bubble in his chest.

“Well, master … bate, Father …” The young man shifted nervously on the chair. “Ye know what I mean …”

“Know? Know? How the hell would I know a thing like that? Disgusting! What did yer impure thoughts consist of?”

You could hear an audible sucking in of air as Carrot Top prepared for the plunge.

“Well … I’ve … had these terrible thoughts about my best mate’s girlfriend, ye know?”

“As God is my witness, if you have the cheek to say ye know to me again, ye’ll feel the hand of God across the back of yer gingey head! I’m a priest, ye big eejit! How am I supposed to know ’bout stuff like that?”

“Sss … sorry, Father. It’s just –”

“Details! Give me some details about yer best friend’s girl, ye Judas ye.”

“I … well, she’s lovely.”

“Lovely?” mimicked Father Polar, sarcastically. “Lovely? Never mind that. How’s she built?”

“Built? Oh! Great. She’s built really great. Powerful,” gushed Carrot Top.

“Good pair of knockers, eh?” asked Father Polar.

“Unbelievable!” enthused the young man, warming, loving this liberal-minded priest. “She makes Dolly Parton look flat! Hee-hee!”

Polar couldn’t help but smile at that one.

“Really? What about the rest of her? Her face?”

“Ach, she’s gorgeous, Father,” boasted Carrot Top, elevating her from lovely. “And the arse on her! Powerful! Ye know?”

In a split second, Father Polar’s hand came from behind the sheet, crashing down on Carrot Top’s head, spiralling him to the ground.

“Didn’t I warn ye about that ye know business? Didn’t I?”

“Hey!” shouted Carrot Top indignantly. “No need to fuckin’ hit me, Father!”

“What? What the fuck did ye say? What kinda fuckin’ language is that to use in front of a priest? Eh, ye dirty-mouth bastard?” Whack! Whack! Whack! More slaps administered to Carrot Top’s head.

“Hey! Hey!” screamed Carrot Top, getting back to his feet as Polar administered a swift kick to his arse.

“Now get the fuck out of here before I tell yer mate about Dolly fuckin’ Parton!”

The unfortunate Carrot Top tumbled out of the cell, passing a line of sinners. He couldn’t help but give advice.

“Whatever ye do, don’t curse in front of that priest. He’s a fuckin’ maniac!”

Admittedly, Polar Bear’s pranks were puerile, but without the likes of him, time in prison stretched into an infinite duration; a never-ending shadow lost in its own abyss.

He leaned against my cell door, and in a conspiratorial voice whispered: “I heard what ye said ’bout the protest ending in three months. A load of bollocks, wasn’t it?”

Before I could answer, he walked away, grinning, but not before he got a last dig in: “Hate to be ye on Christmas morning, mate. A selective memory can only marshal ye so far down the path. Ye should never fuck with people’s minds, especially on the Blanket.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Volunteer

NOVEMBER 1976

How many things I can do without.

Socrates

He’s an oul butty o’ mine – oh, he’s a darlin’ man, a darlin’ man.

Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock

“Hey, Sam? Get to yer door a minute,” Teapot said, early one morning.

I was standing at the window, daydreaming. It was a pleasant daydream of walking in the Water Works on a summer day, watching girls in tight, washed-out jeans the colour of the sky. I was wearing a white Ben Sherman, Levis and a pair of Dr Martens gleaming with ox-blood polish. I was about to touch for a girl I had had my eye on for weeks when Teapot’s growl broke the trance.

“What, Teapot? What is it?”

“Can ye see that screw outside Cell Four?”

I looked through the slit in the door and could just about see the screw. He was opening the doors for slop-out.

“Yes. And what?”

“We call him the Volunteer. Watch and ye’ll see why.”

I watched as the screw neared Teapot’s cell. He opened it, releasing Teapot, who strolled by and winked at me as he walked by the slit in my cell, singing, “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go …”

Usually the screw would have a sour look on his face at that sarcastic song. Part of our protest was refusal to work, and they took it personally. However, this particular screw wore a grin. Very unusual for our environment.

He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, scanning the wing to his left. I was about to walk away, bored, when suddenly he bent down to tie his lace. The only problem was it didn’t need tied. In fact, for some strange reason, he loosened both laces, then began to re-tie them. Had I not been watching closely, I wouldn’t have spotted the sleight-of-hand as his fingers touched the edge of the cell’s mat, flush to the cell door entrance. This was unusual also, as we normally keep the remnant in the centre of the cell to walk on.

The screw, still trying to tie his lace, was now peeping under his armpit as if looking for sweat-stains. What he was actually doing, I found out later, was watching the other screw behind the security grille, whose job it was to monitor the wings on either side of him. Finally, having learned to tie his laces, the screw stood up, stretched, yawned and with the tip of his boot edged the mat back into the cell.

On cue, Teapot returned, singing, “Oh, what a beautiful morning …”

Before the screw closed the door, I could see him winking, no doubt at Teapot: operation completed.

Later that morning, Teapot explained the strange behaviour. The screw had placed ten cigarettes under the mat. “Does it every Saturday and Sunday morning when he’s on the wing.”

The cigarettes were worth their weight in gold to the men who smoked, more so because as part of the punishment for refusing to wear prison uniforms or do prison work, all so-called privileges were denied us.

Each real cigarette would be crushed, rerolled into ten needle-thin Blanket cigarettes, and then evenly distributed among the smokers – Teapot taking a tiny extra commission for his work, of course.

I was fortunate in that I didn’t smoke, but to those who did it was a windfall that was greatly appreciated knowing it may be a long time before the next one arrived.

The monotony which seeped longevity into each day was sustained by the sheer weight of the nothingness: no radio; no visits; no reading material – except a bible; no sweets; no clothes; no tobacco. No! No! No! On the bright side, of course, having nothing meant the screws and Brits could take nothing else from you. In the interest of sanity, it’s always good to look on the bright side of life with a clear perspective.

The Volunteer also handed-out football results each Sunday morning and made sure we received an extra few rounds of bread with our grub – what little we received. All in all, he behaved like a human being. Had he been caught, he would have been ostracised, at best, by his fellow screws. At worse, fired. He was an enigma, but as long as he supplied the cigarettes and football results, he could remain one.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Squeaky Booters

I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

Job 19:20

Rattle his bones over the stones; He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

Thomas Noel, The Pauper’s Drive

Usually at about 1pm, the Blocks became quiet as a tomb. Most screws had gone for lunch, or for a beer in their club. We always took advantage of this either with a quick nap, or learning a bit of the Irish language.

I was at the window, daydreaming as usual, when Finbar’s voice asked, “Sam? Can ye hear that?”

“What?”

“Someone’s in Cell 26.”

Cell 26 was where the screws kept prison uniforms, just in case their wildest dreams came true: that we would all get up one morning and plead with them to allow us to go to work; and give their shoes a quick shine into the bargain.

It was unusual for it to be open at this time of day, but Finbar was correct. Someone was moving about in there.

The door slammed, and all went quiet, except for Cowboy snoring his head off.

“Can ye hear that?” asked Finbar.

“No. What?”

“A little squeak-squeak sound. Such as …” here he paused for drama, “… that made by a new pair of prison-issued boots.”

I thought he had been reading too much Sherlock Holmes. We’d been on the protest for over a year now, and perhaps it was just starting to get to him.

“And? What do ye reckon?” I said.

“Someone’s put the gear on and fucked off,” Finbar insisted.

I began to laugh. No one had ever left the protest. Yes, men had refused to come on the protest, but no person coming on had ever left. It was inconceivable.

“You’re talking a load of shite, Finbar.”

“We’ll have to find out from Blade, later on. But my money says someone is gone.”

Blade was the new OC. Finbar had resigned his position because of the stress of the job. It was a thankless task, not one for the fainthearted.

After siesta, we attempted to wake Blade, but to no avail. He was a notoriously heavy sleeper, so we decided to wait until later in the day.

A Derry prisoner, JCB, didn’t allow us to wait.

“Finbar, Blade isn’t in his cell. I saw him leave about an hour ago. Oh, by the way, he was wearing the gear.”

JCB said it so matter-of-factly that it took a few moments to sink in. The silence was tangible. Immense. No one spoke, except Finbar.

“I rest my case,” said Finbar. Agatha Christie would have been proud of him.

The rest of us just couldn’t fathom anyone, never mind an OC, leaving the protest. Equally as bad was the fact that he hadn’t had the courage to tell us he was going. It was a blow against our morale, and against our ironclad belief that we were infallible. After this traumatic experience, we would look at each other with a different perspective, wondering who, if anyone, would be next.

As for Blade, he unknowingly introduced a new expression into our lexicon: squeaky-booters.

But the day hadn’t been a complete disaster. Polar Bear was to be released from the madness. Despite threats from the screws, he came to each of our cells, wishing us all the best, encouraging us to keep at it and promising that he would do everything he could to highlight our plight.

The look of impotent hatred on the screws’ faces was one we would savour for a very long time. Polar Bear had defied them since his first day on the protest. Their twenty-four-hour lock-up, and deprivation of all basic human necessities, had been to no avail. There wasn’t a single thing they could do about it, except stand looking with their sick smiles and angry eyes.

Of course we were delighted for him, but also more than a bit envious. In a short while he’d be dressed, and eating real food. Tonight he’d be with a woman. God! What we’d give to be in his shoes – whenever he finally gets them!

A big hairy grin and a thumbs-up were the last we saw of him as he disappeared, swallowed by the van.

Little did we know that in two months he would be dead, killed in a car crash on his way home from a meeting to gather support for our protest.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dead Heroes of Our Youth Now Breathing

JANUARY 1977

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.

Mark Twain

It’s my rule never to lose my temper till it would be dethrimental to keep it.

Sean O’Casey, The Plough and the Stars

A new year. A new beginning.

But as far as we were concerned, there was nothing new. It was just another day. We were no longer permitted by the screws to wash in the washroom, and had to make do with a basin of cold water, once a day. Slopping out had become a game of Russian roulette; we never knew what would happen next, as far as the screws’ thuggish behaviour was concerned.

Walking up the wing to slop out was always an occasion for two or three screws to gather round, trying to intimidate. They couldn’t resist telling you that it wouldn’t be long until you were conforming, cleaning their boots and calling them “sir”. Being called “sir” by a Blanket Man was a fantasy that lived in the screws’ and governors’ heads. The foolhardy amongst us would respond to the taunts by issuing a “yellow shower” – pouring the contents of the piss pot over the screws’ heads, despite the inevitable beating that would follow.

Outside the window, Stumpy, the paraplegic seagull with one leg and devastated beak, was fighting another, healthier bird, over a scrap of bread. Stumpy had lost its leg flying too close to the razor wire. A week after that horrendous accident, a drunken screw threw a brick at the bird, breaking its beak.

Stumpy was giving as good as he/she got, showing great resilience despite its handicap. Finally, having succeeded in chasing away the protagonist, it attempted to shovel the bread into its mouth by scraping its bit of beak along the ground. It took thirty minutes to achieve this goal, painful to watch. But the lesson was there: it always endured, and eventually conquered all obstacles and antagonists.

The weather was perfect outside: heartbreakingly beautiful. You knew God was getting a sly dig in at you. A collection of smells touched me as I stared out between the bars of the window: melted tar cooling in the day’s breeze; a soft, faint aroma of washing powder; eggs frying on a pan. I thought I could hear Mister Softy, and I pictured all the kids lining up for their ice cream, big solid grins on their tiny faces.

Sometimes you hear things that make you remember days you thought you’d long forgotten, like the childhood days of November with their decaying scent of falling leaves, when time moved so imperceptibly slowly. Sometimes you hear music that makes you remember pictures hidden in some darkened corner of your mind, when everything in the world seemed perfect, less suspect and open to error.

I was just about to call Finbar to the window for a conversation when the voice of Hippo, the wing’s latest OC, quickly spoiled the moment, staining the day.

Hippo dived into full flow, lecturing out the window about heroes and martyrs who had died for Ireland. There was something patronising in his telling us that what was needed were men of the calibre of James Connolly, Patrick Pearse or Wolfe Tone. Perhaps the fact he had only been on the Blanket a couple of months, against the years the rest of us had done, was what really grated.

Still, despite his droning voice, all in all, we were feeling buoyant. The screws had even put sugar in the porridge and milk in the tea at supper – though not both in either, of course.

“Take Tone, for example,” Hippo lectured. “Even when he realised –”

“He’s hardly any use to us now, is he?” I said, squeezing my head against the bars. “He’s dead, the last I heard.”

“What? What’s that ye say?” he asked incredulously, not believing he was hearing such mocking treachery.

“I said, they’re all bloody dead. What we need is someone like the Incredible Hulk to get us out of this mess.”

A ten-second silence.

“Who? What the fuck are ye rambling ’bout?”

“The Incredible Hulk. That’s who. He could knock down these doors with one of his gamma-ray farts. Not a load of dust and bones like Tone and the rest. Unless you’ve got the dragon teeth to bring them to life?”

Laughter from the Wing.

“I haven’t a clue what yer slobbering about, ye buck fuckin’ eejit. I never heard of the Invinciblewhatever.”

“I’m not slobbering. Simply stating a fact. The Incredible Hulk, a.k.a. Bruce Banner, a scientist hit with gamma rays that turned him green, so obviously he’d be on our side.”

Hippo false-laughed, and then said, “Oh, I get it.” Then, returning to his original topic and listener, he said, “As I was saying, John, the calibre of leadership in those days was nothing less than stellar. Connolly wouldn’t even contemplate –”

“I’m serious,” I said, squeezing my head tighter against the bars for better acoustics. “If we had the Hulk, we’d beat the Brits in a week.”

“Lay the fuck down,” he said, anger barely under control.

“Then there’s the Thing, from Fantastic Four,” I continued. “Not up to par with Hulky in the strength category, but a damn good second. The only problem is, he’s orange, so we’d have to keep a good eye on him.”

There was more laughter from the cells. I was on a roll.

“Listen,” said Hippo, voice quivering with emotion. “I don’t tolerate people makin’ fun of Ireland’s dead. Don’t push it.”

“Ooooohhhh. Better watch yerself, Sam,” shouted Cowboy. “He’ll have ye kneecapped when ye get out!”

“What about Superman? Couldn’t he help us?” someone asked, laughing.

“Naw. These doors are really green kryptonite. Deadly to Superman,” I answered. “We have to ensure that when we summon help, we don’t lure them inadvertently to their doom.”

“Wise up, the lot of ye!” Hippo shouted. “The screws are listenin’ and laughin’ their balls off.”

“What balls? Screws don’t have balls!” shouted Joe McDonnell, bringing more laughter to the windows.

“What about the Lone Ranger?” Cowboy asked, before answering his own question. “Naw. Trigger couldn’t get down the wing.”

For the next three days, conversation revolved around the heroes of our childhood, bringing with it the quiet comfort of nostalgia. Then, just like us, it burned itself out.

“Can ye imagine what the people out there would think if they heard all the crap that was talked in here in the last few days?” Hippo was talking loudly out the window for all to hear. “They’d think we were nuts. Youse should be ashamed of yerselves, republicans talkin’ ’bout superheroes on the TV. I only hope this never gets out.”

Outside our cells, rusted rain began to fall, ripples the size and colour of burnt pennies forming in the stagnant piss rings below our windows.

“You just don’t get it, do you, Hippo?” I said, arranged on my back, staring at the ceiling.

“Get what? That ye’re all a bunch of headbangers?”

“No. Far from it. Pay attention and learn,” I advised. “First: we don’t give a fuck what anyone out there thinks. We’re the ones trying to survive, not them. Second: for the last three days, we’ve escaped this place – albeit in our minds only. But escaped all the same. And it was all thanks to the Incredible Hulk. So stick that up yer arse and sit on it!”

Cowboy chuckled. “The Lone Ranger too. He played his part, Sam. Don’t forget.”

Forget? How could I ever? That was the day when the new order arrived. The real nightmare was about to begin.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Forced Fingers up your Hairy Bum, Really isn’t any Fun

AUGUST 1978

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

Shakespeare, Macbeth

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Elie Wiesel

“Was it just me, or did I imagine that new order, Sam?”

I couldn’t answer Finbar, momentarily, as the contents of my stomach threatened to head south. We were to throw our excrement out the windows, now that the screws and prison governors had refused to give us an assurance that no more beatings would take place when we slopped out. It was degrading, embarrassing and dehumanising, but the alternative was more beatings and more men coming off the protest. Besides, I told myself that it would probably last only a few days, a week at most. The protest had become sedimentary, settling into a comfortable niche of complacency. This would finish it once and for all.

One month later …

“What do you reckon, Finbar?” I asked, looking out the window at the posse of obese rats patrolling the yard, eating the unthinkable.

“I thought the screws would’ve given in by now,” he answered, throwing a piece of rock-hard bread to a rat named Goofy, its buck teeth protruding like tiny planks of wood. “This place is a disaster. Look at the state of it.”

The cells were now minus all furniture, as punishment for our uncivilised behaviour. The sickly white paint had been replaced by even sicklier brown, which, unfortunately, was not paint. The screws, with their thick rubber gloves – the same rubber gloves they used to give out our grub – had thrown our excrement back into the cells, forcing us to spread it upon the cell walls.

Next came the high-powered hoses, directed into the cells, turning the grounded mattresses into saturated sponges. If you were unfortunate enough to be at the receiving end of the hose, you would quickly find yourself on the ground, knocked on your arse.

The never-ending stench of shit and piss made you crave the friendly smells of Old Spice aftershave, Lifebuoy soap and Cherry Blossom shoe polish, or any sort of olfactory escape. Now I knew how poor Job must have felt, sitting on his dunghill. The only consolation was that this, surely, would bring the madness to an end. There was no way even the British Government would allow this to continue.

“Two more weeks, Sam. I reckon it’ll all be over,” Finbar said.

“Four at the most, Finbar. You know how slow the Brits are to surrender. Stiff upper lip and all that, old chap.”

“Yeah. Ye’re right, mate. Give them about four. Bastards …”

Four months, not weeks, later …

The screws, in another futile attempt to break us, had now boarded up the windows from the outside, blocking out all light and air. The cell seemed to have physically shrunk, squeezed into a bone-tight coffin. Tiny demons of panic began dancing in my head, inducing breathlessness, marrying the insufferable heat and stench into one sensory hell.

Worse, the pipes had been turned up full blast to exacerbate the stench of piss and shit. It was an overwhelming, claustrophobic torture, not for the fainthearted. It made you want to tear skin and hair, rip them clean off, as the cell became an oven and coffin, getting smaller and hotter. The excrement that wallpapered the cells began to flake and detach itself, like a shedding reptile. It fell on your hair, and into your mouth as you slept. Miniature pyramids of decaying food granted life to maggots that found their way into your ears, nose and mouth as you tried to sleep, forcing you to listen to their never-ending munching.

The thirty-first of July brought us a visit from Archbishop (later Cardinal) Tomás Ó Fiaich. Initially, his visit was greeted with a healthy dose of cynicism from most of the prisoners. What had the Church ever done to help our situation? Their usual cowardly response was that they were “working behind the scenes”.

While not restoring our confidence in the Church, his visit, overall, did have a lasting consequence. What he witnessed he would never forget. He testified to the brutality and horror of the H-Blocks:

“Having spent the whole Sunday in the prison,” he told the world media, “I was shocked at the inhuman conditions prevailing in H-Blocks 3, 4 and 5, where over 300 prisoners are incarcerated. One would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being. The nearest approach to it I have seen was the spectacle of hundreds of homeless people living in filth in sewer pipes in the slums of Calcutta. The stench and filth in some cells, with the remains of rotten food and human excreta scattered around the walls, was absolutely unbelievable. In two of them, I was unable to speak for fear of vomiting. The prisoners’ cells are without beds, chairs or tables. They sleep on wafer-thin mattresses on the floor, and in some cases I have noticed they are quite wet. [The men] have no covering except a small towel or rough blanket, no books, newspapers or reading material except the Bible (even religious magazines have been banned since my last visit), no pens, or writing materials, or TV, or radio, no hobbies or handicrafts, no exercise or association. They are locked in their cells for the whole of every day and some of them have been in this condition for more than a year and a half.”

Just when we thought the barbarians couldn’t get any more barbaric, the British Government’s cynical response to Archbishop O Fiaich was to increase the number of wing-shifts and beatings.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Josef Mengele and the Human Wart

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

Edmund Burke, trial of Warren Hastings

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Those prisoners – including myself – who had been naïve enough to believe Archbishop Ó Fiaich’s statement would force the British Government to see sense, were in for a nasty surprise. Early one morning, we were moved, one at a time, to an empty wing that had just been painted. The move was uneventful – each of us was placed in the shower area and told to remove and shake the tiny cloth that covered us, then proceed through the Circle to the newly painted wing. While no force was used, the eerie feeling of a necklace of silent screws watching your every move was unnerving. Despite this, the general consensus was, “Not too bad.”

Our second move was five days later. While not traumatic, it was differentiated by the introduction of a seemingly innocuous prop: a mirror. This object would subsequently become a nightmarish presence, one that would haunt us to the very end of the protest. And beyond.

On our third move, the mood changed dramatically. Tension permeated the air, introducing an almost tangible taste of copper into your mouth. Instead of three screws, there were now six. The tiny towel was forcefully pulled from you while the screws straddled you naked over the mirror, forcing you to squat by their sheer force of numbers.

As each new wing-shift came into operation, a new brutality would be added: hair pulling, face slapping, kidney punching, kicks in the genitals, anal probing and spits in the face. Individually, they were not monumental terrors, but collectively they played havoc with your mental and physical stability. The screws had carte blanche from the British Government to implement the tortures du jour, and they carried them out with relish. We had promotion written all over us – their promotion. If they could break us, by hook or by crook, by fist or by boot, then everything was there for the taking.

Each prisoner had his own nemesis among the screws, and mine was known as the Human Wart. He was a sadistic pervert, whose repertoire of party tricks included urinating in the mouths of sleeping prisoners and watching them through the security flap as they went to the toilet. His favourite proclivity was the use of a miniature hangman’s noose that he carried with him during the wing-shift. Once the prisoner had been forcibly squatted naked over the mirror, Human Wart would pull out the noose and swing it like a pendulum.

“Tock-tick get the dick. Tick-tock get the cock.” Then he would place the noose over your penis, laughing at your futile efforts at struggling. “Hold ’im steady, men. Will ye fer God’s sake stop that wrigglin’ like a fish! Hold ’im! That’s more like it. There, now!”

“There, now” meant the noose was tight around the penis.

“Up ye get. Good boy. That’s the way.” He would be pulling hard, forcing you to move like a dummy on a string, his acne-ravaged face grinning from ear to ear. The fear that he would decapitate your penis from the scrotum never left your terrified mind, making it easy to hate him.

Only two things were certain after that. First, when a naked finger probed your arse, it was the Wart. And second, God had ceased to exist.

The five days it had initially taken the screws to clean a wing were now reduced to three. Bonuses of large sums of money were being used as incentives for them to work continuously, speeding up the wing-shifts at a frightening rate. Instead of hearing the dreaded We’re moving! once a week, we now had to face it two or three times a week, with grinning screws telling us to: “Keep it up, lads. I’m buyin’ the wife a cracker wee car with all this overtime money. Goin’ to Spain next week with the kids. We’ll buy you a wee poke with a big Cadbury’s flake stuck right in it.”

Unfortunately, not all the prisoners could keep it up. Some opted to leave, no longer able to endure the madness. There was little sympathy for those who left, as each time a prisoner came off the protest it encouraged the screws to step up the brutality, in the false belief that the rest of us could be beaten off also.

A few weeks later …

“What do ye think now, Finbar?” I asked, watching the screws across the yard steam-hosing the wing we had just vacated. We had just been through a rough wing-shift, and two men had squeaky-booted. Morale was at rock bottom.

“Could be worse. Look at H3. What a nightmare that Block is. Everyone seems to have had their nose broke by the screws.”

“That’s that animal Paddy Joe, the PO,” said Seamus, a normally quiet prisoner. “The ’Ra [IRA] should be goin’ out of their way to get that fucker, show the screws that we can get them any time, any place. Shoot a few of ’em, then we’ll see how tough they are. Wouldn’t be naked prisoners who’ll be comin’ to their fuckin’ house, and it won’t be their dicks they’ll have in their hands. Fuckers.”

We were all taken aback. Seamus was perhaps the quietest man on the Blanket; he simply never swore, let alone talked about killing people.

“You’re one hundred percent, Seamus. It’s time the ’Ra got the finger out and started putting pressure on these bastards,” I said out the window – though not too loud. You never knew when the screws would be outside the cell, listening.

“That’s right, Seamus,” Finbar enthused.

“If only I were out,” Hippo said. “I’d fix the bastards.”

“We’re talkin’ ’bout one in the head, Hippo. Not borin’ them to death,” laughed Cowboy.

We joined in the laughing, and only stopped when someone shouted that there was a civilian coming down the wing, surrounded by a bunch of screws.

The civilian turned out to be a “doctor”, and one we would never forget. His attire consisted of a tweed jacket with elbow patches, brown pants, and a green pair of Dunlop water-boots that reached practically to his thighs. He wore a bow tie, which earned him the nickname Doctor Dickey-Bow. He was a mercenary, brought in by the Brits to implement a new policy; one that they hoped would break the protest.

And just when we thought we had faced everything they could throw at us, along came the horror of forced washing.

We had heard rumours that some men in one of the other blocks had been made to run the gauntlet of kicks and punches, only to be grabbed by screws and thrown into a bath of freezing water. There they were scrubbed with yard brushes, disinfectant and Ajax scouring powder. We hoped it was only a rumour, but the problem with rumours in the block, if they were negative and nightmarish, was that they were usually true. Only the good ones were lies, and we soon realised this latest rumour was no exception.

You could hear a pin drop as Dickey-Bow opened the flap on each cell door, staring in for a minute before writing something in a folder.

“What the fuck do ye think he was writin’?” asked JCB nervously, after Dickey-Bow had gone.

We could hazard a guess, of course, but nobody wanted to say it. Nobody except bucket-mouth Hippo.

“Victims. Bet yer balls on it. Dickey-Bow’s lookin’ to see who’ll be the one for the Grove Baths, the old rub-a-dub-dub, Blanket-man-in-the-tub routine.”

“Shutta fuck up will ye, ye morbid bastard, Hippo,” shouted a voice in the wilderness. “Hopefully it’ll be ye.”

“You know somethin’, Hippo?” said Cowboy. “Ye’re the only one who could squeaky-boot and not a word would be said against ye. It would be good for morale if ye were to take yerself off.”

Hippo thought he was joking. Little did he realise the truth.

“I’ll be here when no one else is here, Cowboy. So don’t go holdin’ yer breath.”

“We’ve had plenty of so-called hard men saying exactly the same words, Hippo, only to fall at the fist hurdle and not even attempt to come on the protest,” said Joe. “And look where they are now. Up cleaning the screws’ boots and makin’ their tea. So be careful yer words don’t come back to bite you on the arse.”

Days later …

Two days had now elapsed, without any sign of Dickey-Bow. It seemed like we could breathe a bit easier.

“Looks like it was just a rumour, Sam. Old Dickey-Bow must’ve taken a powder and blown. Probably couldn’t bear the smell,” JCB said.

“Forget about it, JCB,” Cowboy said. “Ye know the rule.”

None of us had dared to mention Dickey-Bow, for fear of jinxing ourselves. It was an unwritten rule: don’t talk about anything negative that hasn’t yet happened, otherwise it’ll happen.

But it was too late. Finbar was the first to hear it: “Ssshhhh! Will youse keep quiet for one minute? Listen.”

We all strained to hear. It was music. Ghostly. Simon and Garfunkel’s classic, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. The first music we’d heard in years, and it was beautiful. At least until we realised the fiendish significance of the words: When you’re weary, feeling small … A tap was releasing water into a bath. You could almost smell the rust from its years of neglect … When tears are in your eyes … Laughter was coming from the screws … I’ll comfort you … Footsteps approached, halting. Our stomachs churned; hearts pumped …

Thoughts raced around my head: A perfect measure of silence is as threatening as the actuality when you learn to experience and understand the ruthlessness of that silence, how it manipulates. In the silence of our minds, each of us could hear the flap go up and knew what lurked outside, waiting.

Dickey-Bow, armed with his list of victims, nodded silently to the screws before requesting a door to be opened. It was impossible to hear what was being said, but a few seconds later a mob of screws rushed in, trailing a naked prisoner out by the ankles and hair. The man moaned from the pain, but Dickey-Bow simply walked nonchalantly behind. It was terrifying to witness, and we were powerless to do a thing about it.

Like a bridge over troubled water … water … water … The screws had deliberately stuck the needle on the last word.

Another door opened and another prisoner was dragged out, placing the same thought firmly into each of our minds: Am I next? What will they do to me? Why doesn’t anyone give a fuck about what they’re doing to us? If this was happening in Russia there would be a universal outcry … Fuck you, JCB, you jinxsy bastard!

Suddenly there was an absence of movement, a core of quiet, and stillness complete. The blood started throbbing in my head as the screws stopped between my cell and the adjacent one. Dickey-Bow was talking in a whisper to the screws. I froze, as if any movement would alert them to my presence. I started to tell God I would believe in Him again if only they would leave me alone – leave us all alone. But when I heard the key slowly turning in the lock, I told God not to worry about the rest, just save me. Take him next door. He’s only been here a couple of years. Take Hippo. That bastard deserves it, God. I’ll even start going to Mass again if –

But it was all in vain. God was away somewhere. Probably doing a heavenly crossword puzzle, because right in front of my eyes stood the dreaded Dickey-Bow, a phalanx of screws at his side.

“How do you do?” he said, by way of introduction. “I’m a doctor.”

Allegedly, so was Josef Mengele, I wanted to say, but lacked the balls at that specific moment in time. I refused to acknowledge Dickey-Bow, which didn’t have the slightest impact whatsoever.

“You’re asked to come for a wash. Will you come, please?” His voice was void of emotion, the words innocuous yet slippery as a greasy fried egg.

Trying to prevent your chest heaving at the best of times is an effort, but being naked leaves no room for pretence. My entire body was shaking.

“Answer the doctor!” Human Wart growled.

“It’s okay, gentlemen. Please escort the prisoner to the ablutions, where I can make a better observation of his needs.”

My needs? I doubted if my needs could be facilitated in the wash area.

Refusing to walk voluntarily meant being transformed into a Roman chariot and dragged naked up the wing by the ankles, your skin on fire as it flayed against the ground.

Water … water … water … water …

I remember sailing through the air, naked, the truly exhilarating experience that birds must feel at the start of take-off. A swirl of colours glided over my perspective as I watched my penis wobbling from side to side, making horrible slapping sounds, as it winked at me like a one-eyed pirate. When they dropped me into the bath of freezing water it took away my breath, but that was the least of my worries as my mouth and nostrils began to fill, and fear of drowning raced in my brain.

Water … water … water … water …

“Always the hard way, youse boys,” the Human Wart said, as other screws pulled me up for a few seconds of air. “I think youse love all this.”

Water … water … water … water …

They started to pour the disinfectant into the bath and onto my hair as a shampoo. Next came the Ajax, which was scrubbed into my skin with the yard brush. If you thought you had any skin left after the Roman chariot, you knew now it was all gone after the scrubbing. The Human Wart, God love him, was fastidious in seeing me clean, paying special attention to my penis and genitals, while Dickey-Bow, seemingly fascinated, stood writing notes and smiling at the wonder of it all.

Water … water … water … water …

The disinfectant was taking its toll on my stomach, and I felt that at any minute now I would throw up. That was when hands started pushing me further, down deeper, into the water and I knew I was going to die – not in a gun battle with British and Loyalist terrorists, but drowned in a fucking filthy bath in Long Kesh. Yet, through it all, in my mind, I believed I could accurately form a picture of how the bath had been apportioned, where the screws had positioned themselves. Reflecting on it afterwards, I realised I was having an out-of-body experience.

Suddenly, the sound became peaceful, dissolving into an accommodating stillness, a degree of salvation.

I can remember becoming aware that I was now back in my cell, but how I got there was a mystery. It was near dark and the wing was quiet. Every sorry part of my sorry body was aching. Only the smell of disinfectant and Ajax in my hair and pores told me it had all been for real.

The only good thing to be had from it all came the next morning, when JCB told me the news we had all waited and prayed for. Hippo, the man who would be here when nobody else would, had squeaky-booted. Dickey-Bow had been the final straw to break that particular camel’s back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

John Wayne, Where are Ye when we Need Ye?

MARCH 1979

Never find your delight in another’s misfortune.

Publilius Syrus

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

The Nuremberg Principles

Outside the cell’s embrasure, crows had assembled, disturbing the Sunday morning peace. They had encircled a dead rat, not believing their luck.

“Fuck off, ye bastards!” screamed Goose, who could no longer bear the insanity of the caw-caw-cawing.

Tranquillity spent, another morning in the Blocks had begun.

An hour later, the hollow thud of doors being slammed into their niches could be heard, emitting prisoners to the canteen for Mass.

I, along with a few others, had ceased attending Mass since the Angel of Death had made the remark that cleanliness was next to godliness. A not-so-subtle vilification of the protest by this Judas priest, minus the heavy metal.

While the wing became sleep-inducing with the legato of responsorial psalms, I decided to go for a walk, pacing the liquorice- black floor, accumulating feet to yards, yards to miles, in a going-nowhere wanderlust.

As I child, when I went to the zoo, I would watch the beat-up lion pace up and down in its tiny cage. I thought it was following me, waiting to pounce and fell me with its great paws. Unfortunately, the truth was less colourful: the poor beast was depressed.

Pace pace pace went the lion, trying desperately to burn the depression off, only to have it return more vengefully once it stopped walking. Occasionally it would leap at the wall, bouncing off it with the dead thud of a busted ball. Bewildered. Sad. Pathetic.

Pace pace pace went I, the same depression burning my chest, feeling an affinity with that old lion. In my mind’s eye as I walked, the sky opened, revealing a delicious picture, a kaleidoscopic quilt of orange and blue bleeding into a vermilion peacock, proud in all its splendour. A gull hung motionlessly on swirls of invisible beams, laughing.

“Sam?” JCB called from next door, in a barely audible stage whisper. He had promised me a synopsis, a rough for A Book at Bed-Time, a cowboy book as requested by Cowboy, our foremost authority on the Wild West.

Cowboy loved cowboy books. He always said that if they were good enough for Yeats, then they were certainly good enough for him. Cowboy was a legend, having escaped from British prisons at least twice, and been shot at more times than Charles De Gaulle. Rumour had it that he had full-sized cowboy guns tattooed on either side of his body, and that the Brits had shot him while he was sunbathing, claiming the guns looked real!

“Yes, JCB? What’s happening?” I replied.

“Cowboy’ll love this one, Sam. Of course, I don’t expect verbatim, so I’m givin’ ye artistic freedom to embellish.”

I couldn’t see JCB – I didn’t even know what he looked like, despite the fact that we had been next-door neighbours for years in the Block.

“Go ahead, JCB.”

“Okay …” He cleared his throat, drank a gulp of water, began. “There’s a black cowboy called White, and a white cowboy called Black …” He was laughing now, all paradox and irony.

A warm breeze played on my face, bringing with it forlorn memories of promises not quite kept. I could smell the sweaty attar of rotten apples and it made me think of school days and untouched, naked lunches housed secretly in desks. In the distance, a lawn mower droned across the expanse of grey brick and rusted wire. I could picture it slicing, shooting green needles skyward. Suddenly, it went quiet, leaving a steel period of nothing buzzing in my head. Not even this are we allowed, I thought, angrily. No outside sounds of normality. That, too, has become a luxury, a privilege.

“… and the stagecoach is carrying all this gold from Mister Silver’s mine …”

I was grateful for JCB’s interruption. His Derry voice had a pleasant, sonorous sound, and I found myself engrossed, drifting to the Old Wild West.

While JCB spoke, I failed to detect the soft kiss of shoe leather outside my cell …

“Anyway,” continued JCB, “the gun-slinger has only one arm. His name is Jack Handy …” He was laughing at his own wit.

… failed to detect the slick movement of a key being inserted in the lock …

“Nancy Campbell, the can-can dancer, loves Mister Silver. Can-can. Campbell. Get it, Sam?” He was giggling.

… didn’t feel the prickle of preying eyes on the back of my neck…

“The saloon owner is pissed because his girl – say ‘gal’, ’cause Cowboy’s fussy about authenticity – his gal, Nancy, has her azure eyes …”

Kabam!

I’ve experienced, like most people, various levels of pain, but I had never before experienced the degree of pain generated by a devastating left-hook to the kidneys, applied with such force that Ali or Foreman would have been proud. Ape Face had focused all two hundred and fifty pounds of his prodigious matter into that punch, lifting me from the ground a good two or three inches.

JCB, oblivious to what was happening next door, continued on with his book. “Ya all dig deep in tham thar pockats.” He was now Bad Luck McCrae, the unluckiest robber this side o’ the Mississippi. “No fancy moves, or ya all be dead …”

“Think youse are all hard men, don’t ye?” Ape Face hissed into my ear. “Not too hard now.” He squeezed his knee against my windpipe, as I lay doubled-up on the ground, my skinny, naked frame about to be smashed.

“The other partner, Fargo, owns the only well for miles …” continued JCB, halting for me to capture his pun. When I failed to respond, he said: “Fargo … wells. Get it? Wells Fargo …”

“See how easy it is?” said Ape Face. “Snap yer wee neck without a peep. Easy, isn’t it?”

There was little point in trying to answer. Anyway, his knee crushing my throat made that futile, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself by talking like a ventriloquist’s dummy. On my periphery, Desperate Dan, the biggest screw in the world, stood, eerily silent, a grey shadow blending seamlessly into the sepia swirls and whirls of shit that adhered to the walls. His head touched the ceiling, such was his size. He was the antithesis of Ape Face: stoic and taciturn.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, JCB had morphed into the persona of Bad Luck McCrae: “Sheriff, if ya think fer one minute yar takin’ me back to that hole ya call a jail, then yar as stupid as a two-tailed dog …”

Satiated, Ape Face came to the end of his workout, his enormous chest heaving at the effort. He left the cell without another word. Only the smell of sweat and fear remained.

“The two cowboys, Black and White, git on thar harses – say it just like that, Sam: git on thar harses – and ride into a blazing sunset of red,” finished JCB. A pregnant pause followed, waiting for my opinion to fill it. What he got, instead, was a visit from Ape Face and Desperate Dan.

Kabam! Kabam! Kabam! went JCB’s head against the wall, and for one terrible moment I thought he would come right through, saying: Looks like Ape Face didn’t like the ending!

Whack! Whack! Whack! It went on and on, a brutal madness. And may God forgive me, I was just glad it was no longer me.

About an hour later, my cellmate returned from Mass. Pacing the floor angrily, he began, “You’ll never believe what I heard about that cheating girlfriend of mine. Remember I told ye she went to Spain with her sisters?”

No, I didn’t remember. Nor did I want to. I could barely breathe with pain, and my kidneys were on fire. My nose felt squashed. Ribs smashed. I wanted to cry.

“Well, apparently she didn’t go with her sisters at all! No. I just heard that …”

He rambled on for twenty minutes, cursing his girl – or ex-girl – then took a nap, snoring like a pig. It wasn’t until later in the day he commented: “Are ye okay? Ye look a bit sick. Hey! Whaddya think about that girl of mine? Unfuckinbelievable!”

My sentiments exactly, I thought, as Cowboy shouted out the window, “Sam? JCB? All set for tonight, mates?”

Later that night, there was little sympathy for either JCB or myself when we told them of our ordeal at the hands of Ape Face and Desperate Dan. Stop whining. Dry yer eyes. My rendering of JCB’s book was a total disaster. Most of the men fell asleep. Even JCB moaned at my terrible puns, which had replaced his. Though, to be honest, he told me later that most of his moans came from the beating.

“It wasn’t that bad,” my cellmate said, seeing my despondency. “Could’ve been worse.”

The book? The beating? His girlfriend’s infidelity? I didn’t ask him to elaborate. Instead, I watched the night’s sky suddenly light up with slivers of electricity. Lightning scintillated the dark, giving the cell a silver hue. Rain started to invade the glass-less window.

“Look at that fuckin’ sky, will ye! It’s on fire!” my cellmate exclaimed, joining me at the window.

We squeezed our faces tight against the concrete bars, preventing most of the cell becoming waterlogged and allowing ourselves a de facto wash, which, technically, was cheating.

The sky’s canopy suddenly became raw, angry, unforgiving. It was the colour of chopped liver and purple ink set on fire, creating a circus; a carnival full of strange and beautiful creatures in gorgeous images of God’s own manic zoo. Raindrops, the size of frogspawn, trickled down our receptive faces as the glare of lightning transformed us into oblique, grinning phantoms of the opera. My cellmate’s greasy hair stuck to his forehead like a crown of hairy thorns. Beads of rain stained his face instead of blood.

Ach, God, You are true and wonderful, and thank You for this wet and beautiful night and washing some of this muck from our poor faces. But You don’t mind, do You, if I don’t fall to my knees in adoration?

As the pain in my kidneys shredded my insides, I asked God to allow the lightning to hit me, split me, engulf me with fire. I was wet enough. Good conductivity. Even my feet stood in small, vice-like puddles of stagnant water.

Go on. Do Your magic on me, God. Take me away from this madness. Hit me with one good bolt. Kill me where I stand.

But He didn’t. Instead, He let the rain mingle on my face and allowed me to remain a man among men. It was only then that I realised how sadistic He really was. He didn’t send you to Hell; simply granted you memory so that you could torture yourself, over and over again, for always.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Hospital, Tobacco And Vietnam

APRIL 1979

Man grows wise against his will.

Aeschylus

I am just going outside and may be some time.

Lawrence Oates, polar explorer. Last words in Scott’s Last Expedition

The beating from Ape Face actually ended up being perversely beneficial. After weeks of urinating burgundy-coloured blood out the door of the cell, the so-called doctors finally relented, sending me out to the military wing of Musgrave Park Hospital. I was quickly isolated in a room without a view, in case I should contaminate some other unfortunate being within the hospital.

The room was terrible: fresh linen, delicious food, lovely-looking nurses, TV, and all the books and newspapers I could consume. I doubted if my Blanket metabolism could withstand such an assault on the senses, but I decided to try and endure it for dear auld Mother Ireland.

There was little conversation between the nurses and myself, as they all came from loyalist areas and weren’t too shy in letting me know by their paradoxical silence. Still, I have to say, they treated me very well, considering the circumstances.

After the operation on my kidneys, I was introduced to Morpheus, the god of sleep. He came every night in the tube of a needle, carried by a fifteen-stone woman who could easily have beaten the best Russian wrestler. Each night she came, tossing me over like a rag doll, plunging the needle into my thigh, ignoring the raw stitches that snaked from my stomach to the top of my spine, lined like a map of Chile.

“This’ll make ye feel better,” she said, grinning, ignoring my teeth-clenched moans. “Be thankful it’s morphine.” She did a wicked wink, and tossed me again. I waited for the Half-Nelson, but it failed to materialise. “Good night,” she said, not meaning a word of it, and flicked off the light, leaving me to stare at “Vietnam: A Television History”.

My head was swirling. I could hear the gunships overhead and Tricky Dicky’s static voice talking about not being a crook and no surrender – or was it Big Ian’s? – somewhere from the Fields of Fire. As the pain eased, I floated to the ceiling in a haze of purple and blue, laughing.

Even in sleep I moved fraught with twitching nerves. In my mind I chased echoes forged in childhood; echoes of safe, familiar voices, smells and laughter. Now the same thoughts brought me back, draining me, lonesome beyond redemption.

My recuperation was shortened by the tremendous skills of the doctors in the hospital who, despite my protestations at the pain I was in, decided four days and not four weeks were warranted. Being a Blanket Man had nothing to do with my aborted stay, and Tricky Dicky still claimed innocence as I staggered from the room, in agony, handcuffed and flanked by four big peelers.

I returned to the Block at the pace of a reluctant snail, crouched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. My stitches were like a corset covering my body, and my knuckles almost trailed the ground as I walked back up the wing. A voice shouted, “Sam’s back,” then a couple more joined in. Anyone else would have been asked for news, but the men knew better than to ask me. They still hadn’t forgiven me for lying about Christmas ’76.

“I suppose you don’t have any snout with ye?” came the solemn voice of Teapot, going through the motions, knowing it would be impossible for me to get anything from the high-security hospital. He repeated the question, and when I still hadn’t answered a third time, he left the door, mumbling, “Bastard. What a fuckin’ wanker.”

Even through my pain, I had to grin at Teapot’s remarks. No, it wasn’t good to be back; it was harder now that I had tasted what we had all been missing these last few years. But tonight would be different. Teapot would mumble an apology to me, as he and the rest of the lads would smoke their brains out, all thanks to a fifteen-stone woman whose bark turned out to be a lot worse than her bite; who had given me so much tobacco to take back with me – smuggled up my arse – that when I farted it smelled like Gallagher’s cigarette factory.

I would relive the last few days I had had in the beautiful hospital surroundings over and over again in my head, sustaining myself with the unquenchable belief that at the end of all this madness, we could all go home again. Alas, the great American author Thomas Wolfe had been right on the money with his classic, You Can’t Go Home Again. Little did I know that none of us could ever, realistically, go home again. We had been smelted in a furnace. We had changed, utterly and forever. We would never be the same again. All our heads would be fucked up, for ever and ever.

The screws could – and did – smash bone and tear our flesh. Our existence was minimalist in the extreme. We were zero, and naked as womb departure. But what they could never do was colonise our thoughts. They could never comprehend what made us tick, for the simple reason that we were beyond what had come before, and were never to be matched ever again. We were the Spartans. Fuck, we were better than the Spartans. We were the Blanket Men.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Never Kick a Man when he’s Down? Name Me a Better Time!

DECEMBER 1979

La Revolution is like a great love affair. In the beginning, she is a goddess. A holy cause. La Revolution is not a goddess but a whore. She was never pure, never saintly, never perfect.

Jesus Raza (Jack Palance), The Professionals

The revolution? When the shooting stops, and the dead are buried, and the politicians take over, it all adds up to one thing: a lost cause.

Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster), The Professionals

The British Government and screws had upped the ante with the forced washing, wing shifts, mirror searches and beatings. They believed their methods were paying dividends, and who could argue? Men were leaving the protest at an uncomfortable rate, most of them practically beaten to a bloody pulp. We were always on the defensive, which meant victory was unattainable. New rules of engagement would have to be implemented to prevent the protest becoming an inescapable quagmire.

The morning shift of screws entered the Block, unusually quiet this particular morning. Instead of thunderous raps from their batons – their usual method of waking us – they merely opened the spy-flaps, looked in and then left, mumbling. They were in an extremely sombre mood. We all realised that something had happened, but what?

It wasn’t until Charlie, the orderly, tapped my cell door gently with his broom, that we found out.

“Did ye hear the news?” he whispered. An asinine question, really, considering he was our main – only – source of news.

“No, Charlie. What was it?”

“The IRA shot a screw last night, in his car,” he whispered, talking as if his life depended on it. If the screws caught him he’d be in trouble.

“Is the bastard dead?” I asked.

“He better be. They’re burying him tomorrow.” He moved away quickly. Of all days to be seen talking to us, this wasn’t it.

The news of the dead screw spread instantaneously. Everyone seemed to have heard it at the same time, whispering their opinion down at the pipes. But not all the opinions were the same.

“We’re in for it now. Bet yer balls on it.”

“Dry yer eyes, will ye! Best thing that ever happened. Now they’ll think twice about beatin’ the crap out of us durin’ the wing shifts.”

“It plays into their hands. Now they’ll make martyrs out of the screws. ‘These poor men only doing their jobs,’ it’ll say. I can write the NIO press release better than the fuckin’ NIO, for fuck sake!”

As far as I was concerned, though, shooting the screws couldn’t come soon enough. My only wish was that our wing wouldn’t be the next to be moved. But we were due a move in the next day or two, and there was little point trying to escape the inevitable: this wing-shift would be a nightmare.

When the screws eventually returned to give out breakfast, they were whistling. The grins on their faces could have cut glass. A propaganda pantomime was in progress – for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, don’t let the Blanket Men see your emotions. Go about yer duty as normal. Pretence. Wear it like a mask.

As a mark of respect for their fallen comrade, the screws downed tools, announcing a three-day no-work period. No mail. No visits. No food parcels. No TV. No radio. Terrible. How would we survive this ordeal? We’d go mad without all of these. Unfortunately for the screws, we weren’t getting any of these anyway. They had already taken everything, leaving their bargaining tools a big fat zero.

“How on earth can we punish these bastards when we’ve nothing left to punish them with?” was the apparent remark from the governor, who devised the notorious mirror search as a way to break us.

As for ourselves, we got lucky – at least for three days. The screws refused to steam-hose any cells or conduct wing-shifts as part of their protest – everyone now, it seemed, was protesting. And so we simply luxuriated in it all, like kids on a picnic. No beatings for three whole days … three days … three days …

We never stopped talking. We were on a high.

“Did I ever tell you that my da was a film star, Sam?” Joe said, out of the blue.

“Catch yourself on! Even I’m taking a reddner for you with that one, Joe.”

“I’m serious! Do ye want to hear it or not?”

“Do I have a choice?” I asked.

“No. Put the hairy blanket on your shoulders and get to the window.”

“You’re crazy, standing at the window on a night like this. It’s ball-freezing,” said my cellmate, who lay on his skinny, urine-soaked mattress in the foetal position, shivering with the cold.

He was right. It was the coldest night ever recorded. White puffs of frosted air escaped from my mouth each time I spoke, and the wind hurt my face, slicing it like a razor, making me wince. Outside, light as fluid as water seamed its way down the watchtower’s façade, illuminating it in an effulgent cascade of ocular rhinestones.

“Go ahead, Joe,” I said, braving it.

“Did ye ever see that film, The Vikings, with Kirk Douglas?”

“And Tony Curtis!” shouted Cowboy from his mattress, eavesdropping as usual.

“That’s the one, Cowboy! My da and brother Hugo were in Wales doin’ a bit of steel-erecting. Along comes this American, askin’ if anyone wants to earn a few extra quid. Naturally enough, everyone jumps at the chance for a few quid, coupled with the chance of bein’ in a movie with Kirk Douglas.”

“And Tony Curtis!” shouted Cowboy.

“Fuck Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis!” someone shouted. “We’ve a fuckin’ wing-shift in a couple of days and with that screw buried, we’ll all be fuckin’ dead Vikings!”

Like all of us, the owner of the voice was on his nerves wondering what the screws had in store. We all knew it wouldn’t be too pleasant.

“Whaddya mean fuck Kirk Douglas?” asked an indignant Cowboy.

Just as the conversation began to decompose, a shooting star lined the iron-blue night like a silver papilla chalking the sky. I wondered if it was an omen, or simply the blinking of my eye causing a brilliance, gone forever?

“Make a wish,” someone shouted, proving it wasn’t imaginary.

“It’ll all be over tomorrow!” shouted Goose.

“Some snout!” shouted Teapot.

“A woman!” All in unison.

“Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness forced to go through a wing-shift before they could squeaky-boot, the wanking bastards!” Everyone laughing.

Quietness came, and this icy wind would take no prisoners. Snow was falling in thick corollas, swirling tightly in a rage before pyramiding in tiny conics at the base of the wire. White rust clung to the wire, as if invaded by legions of sick frogs scaling for battle, while into our windowless cells came the wind, like a drunken banshee laced with evil. Her mocking howls reminded us just how lonely and isolated we had become.

“We’re movin’!” screamed a voice from the top of the wing, and a few of us laughed at that, too. The screws never moved at night. Security. Not enough screws on. Besides, they had yet to clean the wing opposite for us to move into.

It took us all by surprise. A first. Bodies that only minutes ago had started to relax for sleep were now rigid with nerves. Our minds and stomachs raced with cathartic jerks as we paced, wondering, why a nocturnal manoeuvre?

Normally, the intervals between the opening of cell doors lasted no more than thirty to sixty seconds: time enough for a prisoner to be moved to the ablutions area, searched, beaten and then moved to a clean wing.

Not this time, however. Three to four minutes were elapsing before each door was opened.

In the distance we could hear the sound of tables being dragged across the Circle floor. Muffled screams and shouts carried back, making us pace faster, our stomachs churning with acid.

My cellmate and I just stared at each other like zombies. Each of us wanted to take a shit, bad.

Control your breathing. Don’t let the fuckers see your fear. Steady … easy …

Getting closer. Two cells away. More screams. The freezing cold was irrelevant now. Fear was supreme. It knows no walls.

They’re next door!

God, I’m gonna shit my pants, except I don’t have any pants to shit.

The moon never looked colder or fuller. Not a cloud to diminish its supremacy, while speckles of stars winked Morse code warnings all too late. Suddenly, the key was being placed in my cell door. It made me jump, a little. The door opened. No words exchanged. My cellmate went first. He preferred to get it over with.

I had done this so many times that my mind went into automatic denial mode as I left the cell: I’m walking in the park … at home watching Top of the Pops … It’s Thursday and I feel great ’cause I just got paid …

The tableau of horror before my eyes quickly slapped me back to reality. Instead of the wash area, the search was being conducted in the Circle. A naked prisoner was being held upside down by his ankles by four screws. Six other screws surrounded them, plus a notorious “white shirt” called Paddy Joe, screaming obscenities at the naked, inverted man. One of the screws was probing the prisoner’s anus, while two others pulled his buttocks as wide as possible.

The park is packed … a group of children play cowboys and Indians … my brothers Joe and Danny are waving at me, along with Dad. Don’t let the bastards beat ye, kid, they are all shouting. You’re better than them.

The prisoner in front of me was thrown on top of the table, the one the screws were using. It was covered in shit and blood. They grabbed his hair and smashed his face against the table’s top. His nose broke easy; blood was everywhere.

My brothers are still waving at me, except it isn’t them, it’s the screws in front indicating for me to move.

It was then that I made my decision. Run! Run for all you’re worth, ye bare-arsed bastard!

The screws were immobilised with disbelief as I ran, moving so fast I had to prevent myself from slamming into a wall. It was Peter Kelly’s again. Me running like fuck and Dad timing the event. The urine-covered floor was slick as oil on ice, but my feet held well as I precariously raced for home, pursued by a couple of greyhound screws who were within arm’s length of catching me.

One of the screws kicked out at my feet, narrowly missing. Instead, he lost his balance, slipped and slid, propelling himself onto the urine-covered floor. As I ran into the cell, a look of horror came over my cellmate’s bloodied face. He had heard the commotion and thought they were coming to do him again. His relief was short-lived when he saw it was just me.

“Brace yourself,” I told him. “They are coming again!”

The screws were soaked in urine and sweat as they stood at the door, panting and heaving like carnivorous hounds finally trapping their quarry.

I could only wait.

The first thing they tried was pulling me out of the cell so they could get a better go at me. But I held onto the pipes with a death grip, thanking God that the screws had turned the pipes off in winter, otherwise I would have had nothing to hold.

Deep down, I think my cellmate wanted to chop my fingers off – anything, just to get the screws out of the cell. But he held my head and neck tightly – a bit too tightly, I thought later – forcing the screws to give up their tug-of-war with my legs and settle for giving me a kicking instead.

It was all over in a matter of minutes.

“Did ye see the bastard run?” said the urine-covered screw, walking like John Wayne up the wing. “Ha-ha! Think his arse was on fire! Ha-ha!”

“All that fuckin’ runnin’,” replied the other. “I could go for a nice pint now.”

Couldn’t we all? I thought, as their voices began to fade.

In less than an hour it was all over. Inventory revealed broken noses, cracked ribs, teeth knocked out. Almost everyone had a black eye. I was lucky. I escaped with a few forget-me-not bruises and a nail ripped clean from my toe after the chase. My ears and mouth were bleeding badly, but I’d survive. No one mentioned the anal search afterwards. We were too mortified. My cellmate refused to look at me. He knew what I saw and blamed himself somehow for what the screws did on that table of horror. We were suddenly living a parallel insanity between violent reality and an even more violent psychological madness.

It was fast approaching midnight, and our soggy mattresses and blankets had yet to be thrown into the excrement-covered cells. To try and keep warm we jumped up and down, but the futility of this quickly became evident, as the water and urine on the floor became ice, making our feet adhere to it. The joints in our bodies succumbed first, as the drills of ice burrowed into the knees, then elbows, forcing us to kneel in mock adoration, then stand, anything to ease the pain of cold.

“How much longer do ye reckon before we get a blanket?” asked my cellmate through chattering teeth, bloody nose now frozen.

I didn’t want to talk. Every pathetic part of me was shivering.

“Have ye gone deaf?” he asked.

“How the fuck would I know! I’m not a screw, am I?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it, but I didn’t apologise.

Like an invisible wrestler, the cold forced both of us on to the floor. Slowly, painfully.

The sound of wind was all we could hear. Tiny birds flew in our heads, telling our brains that, yes, we could feel the cold and the pain and no amount of bluffing by us would change that. Offer it up to God, the Angel of Death was whispering. Remember, I told you: Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

If only we had him now, that bastard of a priest, naked with his shit kicked in. See how much he believes in God and cleanliness.

I smelt Colditz even before he came to the window. The sweet, sickly smell of marijuana had become his trademark, and it could be smelt through the stench of shit and piss.

“Fine mess this is, wot, Millar? You people are a glutton for fackin’ punishment.”

I strained to stand, thinking my knees would snap at any moment.

Colditz had his overcoat pulled up, covering most of his face. His cap was pulled down. Only his nose and shadowed eyes were visible, as was the joint of marijuana in his mouth.

“Fackin’ freezin’, aint it?” he laughed, blowing out dove-grey smoke.

“When are we getting the blankets back?” I asked. “It’s been almost two hours. Men are freezing to death.”

“Don’t be tryin’ that thick paddy act with me, Millar. Of course you’re freezin’ to fackin’ death. That’s the whole fackin’ idea, ain’t it! I mean, you go and stiff one of their mates and expect kid-glove treatment? C’mon the fack! They’re hopin’ one or two of you facks will be as dead as their mate come mornin’.”

Even after all those years, Colditz still reminded me of Clint Eastwood, as he had when I first saw him as I descended from the van that night in the yard. He always referred to the other screws as “they” rather than “we”, deliberately distancing himself from them. The home-bred screws hated him almost as much as they hated us. Being English, they regarded him as a bounty hunter, moving in on their territory and with dubious loyalties. They needn’t have worried on that score. ‘I won’t give you the Queen and Country speech,’ he would say. ‘I don’t believe in it. I’m here for the money. Pure and simple.’

Before I could ask another question, he was gone, deep into the night.

The truculent wind was now gathering momentum. Small slivers of ice steadily crystallised the dampness of the walls, preventing us from leaning on it for support.

At 3am, a screw clicked the key in the time guard. It is repeated every hour on the hour. Still no hairy blanket or skinny mattress.

Echoes. Childhood echoes. Dig deep. Find them. Allow them to sustain you, balancing the madness with a perfect pinch of shaky sanity. You can do it. You know you can do it.

How the fuck can Kojak do that?

Do what, for fuck’s sake?

You know. That thing with the match. The way he lights it with a flick of his thumb. How the fuck does he do it?

Are Sooty and Sweep real? Who is Doctor Who? How do Jacobs get the figs into fig rolls? Are the Hulk’s balls green? Are the Thing’s orange?

4am. Click! Still no blanket.

Now you know how meat feels in the deep freeze! Serves youse fuckin’ well! Gluttons for punishment …

Gud lads, gud lads, those boys in the Kesh! said The Fisherman.

Give me another Black Bush, Goldilocks, me bucko! said He Who Must Be Obeyed. Let’s have a nice warm drink fer them gud lads on a terrible night like this, agrees The Poison Dwarf.

Gud lads, Gud lads. Another whiskey for Mother Ireland. These gud lads will get us into Stormont one day, the stupid fuckers, says Tom-Tom The Graveyard Man. We’ll all live in grand houses – except them, of course, the fucking eejits. Gud lads.

5am. Click!

“God is dead: of His pity for man hath God died,” whispered Nietzsche, into my ear.

6am. Click!

Fuck Mother Ireland, the Whore, and all who sail on her, She with her knickers exposed green, white and fucking orange, her suckling tits filled with blood. Fuck the priests, the paedophile bastards, fucking altar boys at every given chance. Fuck all politicians, fucking us more than anyone else. Fuck them all. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

7am. Click!

“If I’d my way, ye fuckers would get nothin’!” Ape Face said, throwing two damp blankets into the cell. His flaming red hair looked like it was about to burst into flame, such was his anger.

“Fuckers!” he reiterated as he slammed the cell door.

The blanket is absolutely useless now. We are beyond that stage. Too cold. A flamethrower, perhaps, could help and knowing Ape Face, he would be more than willing to use it. But despite it all, we knew we had beaten the Beast and everything it could vomit out at us.

“Can … can … can, ye believe we … we … we … survived that?” my cellmate grinned through chattering smashed teeth and busted nose, sounding like Marlon Brando. “I think we’ve all become infuckingvincible! Yes! Yesssss!”

His eyes were glazed. There was no doubt that he was slowly losing it. I simply looked on in horror, the soles of my feet glued to the frozen floor.

7.20am. “We’re movin’!”

Moving? A sick joke? No. We were moving. Again. This time we weren’t just moving to another wing. The vans coming into the yard told us it was another Block, and this adventure would probably be as ghastly as the previous.

8.05am. We arrived in the Block. A welcoming committee of screws greeted us with the customary kicks and punches, which were impotent after last night’s baptism of fire. The cells were wet with paint, such was their rush to move us. It wasn’t long before the fumes caused torturous headaches.

3pm. Our blankets and mattresses were thrown in after seventeen hours of terror in record-breaking freezing weather.

We have prevailed, yet again, despite the screws’ proficiency to brutalise.

We have won. Unconquerable. Just like the fucking Spartans! We will never be defeated. Never.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A Word in your Ear, Much Later in Time

No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’.

Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald

Excerpts from Michael Ferguson, ex-POW and Blanket Man, being interviewed on “Ancient Circles”, USA:

“As the beatings continued, the screws systematically beat every prisoner the whole way down the wing. I remember the screws coming up my side of the cell. I was at the third cell from the bottom, and there was a man next-door to me called Sammy Millar – funny enough, he’s a man I’ve never seen, though I would know his voice anywhere. I remember the screws opening his door, dragging him out and down the wing, kicking and beating him as they bounced him off the other cell doors. And when the screws were throwing him back into the other cell, I swear to this day, he must have bounced off the walls, because they hadn’t even had his cell door closed when he was up at the window of his cell, screaming my name out, ‘Massey! Massey!’ at the top of his voice – Massey was a nickname the prisoners gave me, after Massey Ferguson tractors.

“So, he’s screaming out his window and I’m standing at my cell door, and I can’t even speak at this stage because of the anxiety and the fear, I can’t even swallow because I’ve no saliva left! Just as the screws open my door, Sammy’s screaming my name out at the top of his voice, ‘Massey! Massey!’ And all of a sudden, all the fear and anxiety just swelled out of me, and I screamed, ‘What the hell do ye want!’ [laughter from the interviewer and Massey] And I heard his voice come back to me saying, ‘If you find an ear up there, will ye bring it back – it’s mine!’ [more laughter] They’ve taken me out of my cell, booting and kicking me, and I’m laughing the whole way, I’m laughing the whole time the screws are doing this, and I’m not laughing because I think what the screws are doing to me is funny, I’m laughing at the sheer relief of it all because this man – just an ordinary guy, like myself, in the next cell to me – had managed to rise above all the fear and all the terror, and so I knew, when, after Sammy had said that on that day, the screws would not be able to break me, and I would be able to endure what was happening to me, and for every other prisoner coming after me in that wing, they too would be able to survive what was happening to them on that day, because on this occasion one of the prisoners had risen above the terror of it all and helped the rest of us to survive.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Angel of Death Comes A-Strutting Minus Strutts

JUNE 1980

Hell is paved with the skulls of priests.

Saint John Chrysostom

I said “a line will take us hours maybe Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”

Yeats, Adam’s Curse

“Cowboy?” whispered the raspy voice of Seamus.

“What? Whaddya want, Seamus?” Cowboy’s voice sounded forlorn, apathetic, as if preparing for sleep. He didn’t want to be bothered. He knew Seamus didn’t have a visit for at least three more weeks. Besides, he wasn’t bringing back any snout, anyway, now that the screws had more or less effectively shut down all means of obtaining snout on the visits.

Those who smoked found the lack of tobacco agonising, and resorted to extreme measures. Some rolled the fluff they managed to pluck from their hairy blanket into bible pages and smoked these “holy smokers”, only to throw up an hour or two later. Others tried their hand at the skins sometimes left on baked potatoes with their jackets on. When the screws discovered this little trick, they quickly put an end to baked potatoes. One man even claimed to be smoking the dried excrement as it flaked from the wall. Two days later he squeaky-booted, leaving us to ponder if the special cigarettes had influenced his decision and causing Finbar to comment, wryly, that the squeaky-booter was either smoking shit or talking it.

“Cowboy. I can see a ‘strutt’, just a couple of –”

“Where, Seamus?” Quick as a flash, Cowboy was at the door, his voice animated with newborn enthusiasm. “My God, where, Seamus?” He sounded like a hunter stalking his prey.

Strutt was the slang given to a cigarette butt, sometimes – albeit rarely – discarded accidentally by a screw. A good-sized strutt could make at least two, possibly three, Blanket cigarettes. To the smokers, it was worth its weight in gold.

Cowboy, like the rest of the smokers, hadn’t had tobacco in at least three months, and was now looking upon the arrival of this strutt as nothing short of a miracle, a godsend, manna from Heaven.

“Down a foot from yer door, Cowboy. Just where the joints meet.”

“Give me one minute to set up the apparatus, Seamus, mate.”

The apparatus being a long, slender piece of toilet paper, curved at the end in the shape of a hook, or more accurately, a question mark. It was always questionable whether it would bring home the bacon.

“Okay, mate. Go ahead,” Cowboy said, sounding sixteen years old.

“A little to your left, Cowboy. Up a bit. More. To your right …” Seamus sounded like someone doing the Golden Shot, as he now had the unenviable task of guiding Cowboy, whose vision was blocked, to capture the strutt.

“Can you push it out a wee bit more, Cowboy?” Seamus asked nervously. Twenty minutes had elapsed, with no sign of success. We could all hear Cowboy strain to control his temper. He was known for having little patience when he had the nicotine pangs.

“Screw on the air!” Goose shouted from the top of the wing.

“Fuck!” Cowboy hissed, frustration beginning to emerge.

The screw clicked the time-guard and proceeded back up the wing, only to stop, outside Cowboy’s cell, to tie his lace.

We could all picture Cowboy now, beads of sweat on his upper lip, praying to God not to let the screw see the strutt.

A few seconds later, the screw moved on.

“Seamus? Did the fucker take it?” Cowboy said, his lower lip practically bitten off with nerves.

“No. It’s still there.”

We all breathed a sigh of relief, not wanting to listen to Cowboy’s death moan. It was like sitting on a bomb, waiting for it to be defused.

For the next two hours, no one dared breathe a word, as The Cowboy and Seamus Show continued unabated, with no success.

“Cowboy, ye keep touching it but ye’re not pullin’ it in.”

“Seamus …” Cowboy’s voice quivered as he fought to control the emotion that threatened to erupt at any moment. “Ye’re the one guidin’ me. Not vice fuckin’ versa, mate.” He spat the last word out like an apple piece stuck in his throat.

Then it happened.

“Cowboy! Ye’ve got it! Take it easy. Slow … slow … bring it in. Slow … slow. Slowwwwwwwwww …”

So much sweat was running down Cowboy’s face he was having difficulty seeing clearly. He had double vision and could feel hot pain eat his chest. A heart attack? What a way to go, all for a strutt.

“Easy … that’s right … almost there, Cowboy. Just a tiny bit more … got it!”

The ordeal was over. We cheered with relief as he trailed the captured strutt to his door. We could talk again, without feeling the wrath of Cowboy.

“Seamus! Ye stupid bastard! That was no strutt! It was only a piece of fuckin’ paper! Ye need a pair of fuckin’ glasses!”

Before Cowboy could verbally abuse Seamus further, someone saved his skin by announcing the arrival of the Angel of Death, coming up the yard.

The Angel of Death wrapped the collar of his coat tightly around his neck. He had the ’flu, and the cold air nipped at any exposed skin.

“Angel of Death at this time of night? Ye know it’s bad news,” Finbar said, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

“Maybe he’s comin’ in with pockets full of snout for us. Make up for all the years he’s let us rot without as much as a butt,” Cowboy said, not hiding his sarcasm and disdain.

No. We all knew it was to tell someone a family member had died. What else could it be?

As Death walked down the wing chatting friendly with the screw, we waited, holding our breaths, wondering.

“Millar. Priest here to see ye,” Ape Face snarled.

“Thank you, officer,” Angel of Death said, the look of contempt visible on his face as he entered my shit-covered cell.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness …

“Sam, I’ve some bad news for you,” he said with his tepid voice. I knew it was Dad he had come to tell me about. “Your mother died, two days ago, in Dublin.”

My mother …? I was shocked. I thought she had died a long time ago, when I was eleven, when she no longer wanted to know my math results.

“Did you say my mother?”

“Yes. Two days ago. I’m terribly sorry.”

I bet you are.

For the next minute or so nothing was said. He glanced about the cell, with a mixture of fear and loathing. He couldn’t wait to get out, back to the real world of a nice cosy home, a blazing fire and a large glass of brandy to chase away his ’flu and my stench.

“If there’s anything I can do …” he was saying as he walked towards the door to leave.

“Do you have any snout on you?” I asked, not letting him escape.

“Snout? What’s that?”

“Tobacco.” As if you don’t fucking know, you scumbag.

“Oh. No, I don’t … you know we can’t bring anything like that in.” A watery grin appeared on his face. I wanted to slap it right back to where it had originated, right back to fucking hell.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

“Do what?” he responded, turning to face me, wanting to leave.

“Live with your conscience. Doesn’t the Church teach that conscience is the ultimate guide?”

“It also teaches that your conscience should always be clear, in all matters, as mine is now.” He was warming to this.

“All these years you have watched as we’ve been tortured, degraded and humiliated. Not once have you tried to prevent it, and you’re supposed to be a man of god.”

He waved his hands in the air, a magician performing a trick. “You don’t have to live like this. None of you do. The onus is on you, not me or the Church, which people such as you conveniently use as a whipping boy.” He blew his watery nose. “Do you know how often my non-Catholic friends ask me what in heaven’s name is wrong with you people, forcing me to defend the indefensible?”

I didn’t give a flying fuck what he, his friends or the Church thought, and told him so in no uncertain terms.

“Others have left the protest without any problems, why can’t you?” he persisted.

“Many are called, but few are chosen,” I replied.

His smile was pure evil as he shook his head. He sneezed, bringing the conversation to an end.

As soon as Death left, Cowboy asked if a miracle had been performed.

“Did that cunt of a bastarding whore bring any snout, Sam?”

“No, mate. Just word that my mother is dead.”

He was silent for a few seconds, then, “Ach, Sam … sorry for that big mouth of mine, mate. Didn’t mean …”

“Don’t worry ’bout it.” My mother’s death was inconsequential. I had more pressing matters on my mind, like my own survival. Tomorrow we had a wing-shift to look forward to.

I would survive this wing-shift. And the next. And the next …

Fuck you, Angel of Death.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Tony Blackburn and Pan’s People

WINTER 1980

A local thing called Christianity.

Thomas Hardy

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Rumours. A parched forest engulfed with flames of amber and copper. Copious.

An unverified report circulated that a hunger strike was coming. No one – especially the prisoners – wanted it, but it was coming just the same.

Outside my cell, snowflakes the size of thumbs fell to the ground.

“I’m afraid of no man,” boomed the voice, which I knew to be that of the screw known as The Preacher. During wing-shifts, he carried a large, heavy bible, from which he would quote scripture. After each quote he would hit the naked prisoner’s head with such force it caused vertigo.

“Lord, cleanse the sins …” Whack! Whack! Whack! “… of this sinner.” Whack! Whack! Whack! “Let him see how much we love him. That we are …” Whack! Whack! Whack! “… doin’ this from love, to save his soul.” Whack! Whack! Whack!

Sometimes the blood would ooze from your ear or nose, but that wouldn’t stop the evil, sectarian beast. “Oh, thank you, Lord, for this great sign of cleansing blood.” The Preacher would be soaked in perspiration as his eyes rolled in his head.

“What a bore,” Finbar said, loudly enough for The Preacher to hear.

“Even though I walk in the valley of death …” The Preacher was pacing the yard, allowing the snow to soak right through to his skin.

“Ignore the bastard,” JCB said. “All he wants is an audience.”

The Preacher laughed. “What I want is for one of youse brave men to come visit me when – if – ye ever get out of here. Ye see, I’ve just bought myself a beautiful Magnum .357, and I would just love to test it on one of yer heads. Not with whips, but with the tails of scorpions will I cleanse ye!”

An hour went by and he still rambled on, singing loudly for all to hear.

“Shall we gather at the river –”

“Why don’t you pack it in and stop behavin’ like a tosser, for fack sake?” It was Colditz. We hadn’t seen him in weeks, and thought he had either been transferred or had left.

“Why don’t ye mind yer own business and go back to England? No one wants yer sort over here, takin’ our jobs away from – aarrrgghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Colditz kneed The Preacher in the balls, forcing him to drop before keeling over. Colditz then picked him up like a rag doll, placed the cap back on his head and marched him by the scruff of the neck into the Circle.

We learned later, from Charley the orderly, that after Colditz had thrown The Preacher into the Circle he offered to fight any screw in the Block. His offer was declined, which didn’t surprise us at all, knowing the screws’ aversion to one-on-one combat.

The hunger strike, started the month before, had reached a crucial stage by December, with the health of the men quickly deteriorating. Chief among them was Sean McKenna, who had been diagnosed as having only two days to live.

Those of us not on hunger strike were impotent in any action, having been ordered to keep a cool head at all costs – any sign of frustration on our side would only be beneficial to the British Government and screws. This was probably the hardest of all orders to obey, knowing what our friends and comrades were enduring. Some of us were confident, though, that even at this late stage something could be worked out without lost of life. Even the screws must have felt we might have the edge, as some of them started to curry favour with us.

“I hope youse get all yer demands,” lied the Human Wart, as convincing as a Nazi at a bar mitzvah. “We’ve all been put through tryin’ times, but hopefully we’re all the better for it and learn to tolerate each other.”

I wanted to puke at his toadying. On the other hand, if he was frightened that we might be victorious, then perhaps the screws had heard something that we hadn’t.

“Is it Christmas ‘Top of the Pops’, or what, Sam?” laughed Finbar as the Human Wart walked despondently away, leaving his liquorice footprints in the snow.

“I’d even listen to fucking queen Lizabitch’s Christmas message, mate!” I replied. Pan’s People floated in my head. I wondered if they had changed much? They were probably called Pan’s Pensioners now, and needed zimmer frames to move – not that it would make any difference to me.

Outside the cells, the white quietness brought an artificial calm with it. Small birds made tiny indentations in the snow, while the fat, diaphanous flakes threatened to cover them like tents.

“Governor on the air!” shouted a voice from the top of the wing.

A governor? At this time of night? What the hell was going on? Had the Human Wart heard something, after all?

Not a word was said, either by the governor or the gang of screws accompanying him, as each door was opened, then slammed, and a document thrown in, haphazardly.

It was an agreement to end the hunger strike!

I scanned the pages as quickly as my frayed nerves permitted, and I swear I heard Tony Blackburn introduce Christmas “Top of the Pops”. He was surrounded by scantily-dressed Pan’s People: “This week’s number one is that fine bunch of rebels, the Blanket Men.”

I read the document as meticulously as possible, not wanting to miss anything of importance in its forty-eight pages. As it turned out, it contained very little substance. It was a masterpiece of detrimental ambiguity, full of scope for alternative interpretations, managing to give with one hand while taking with the other. A spider’s web of ambiguous semantics of maybe, perhaps, and time-will-tell. There was no way we could settle for this. All the years of torture and torment flushed down the shitter for an inimical agreement that wasn’t even worth the paper it was printed on?

Tony Blackburn quickly faded to black. As did Pan’s People. I thought I could smell remnants of their perfume and it made me want to cry.

Maybe next Christmas …

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Hope

SPRING 1981

As a child I was very aware of being an inferior class. As an adult, I certainly was in a situation where I could easily have picked up a gun … I grew up with guys who went on hunger strike and they experienced some things in Belfast that drove them to starve their bodies for seventy days.

Liam Neeson

Dear Holy Father,

I hope this small note finds you in good health. Please excuse the paper it is written on. I am writing this note not to tell you about our conditions but to beg you to save the lives of my comrades who have been forced to hunger-strike by the British Government. The Irish people have suffered too long for their political and religious belief … Irish history is filled with the blood that Irish men and women have spilled for the nation and the Catholic Church, and now that the Irish nation need the Church we hear naught but a deadly silence. Why? What must the Irish do for the Church to help? By the time you get this, it may be too late to save my comrades. You must speak out now, loudly; behind closed doors is no use.

My comrades will die if you don’t.

Sam Millar

(Letter sent to the Pope by yours truly while on the Blanket, and published in Richard English’s epic, Armed Struggle: A History of The IRA. It was one of over two thousand letters I penned in the hope of gathering support for the Hunger Strikers.)

We knew we had lost the impetus generated by the first hunger strike as the second one commenced in March. This time the strategy would be different: volunteers would join the hunger strike periodically, instead of en masse as in the previous one. We meanwhile acquiesced to the ending of the no-wash part of our protest, in the hope of maximising attention on the plight of the men on hunger strike.

In all honesty, it was a great relief to us all to be able to wash again. Our hair, which hadn’t been washed or cut in years, stretched down our backs, greasy and tangled like oily dock ropes; our teeth, which had last seen a toothbrush many years ago were, amazingly, for the most part unaffected, largely thanks to the screws’ refusal to give us sugar, as part of their punishment towards us. Had they done so, they would no doubt have inflicted far greater pain via toothaches.

Our first shower in years! God, was it sweet! I will never forget the first hot sprays hitting me with the propulsive ferocity of porcupine quills; the intoxicating aroma of shampoo and soap making my nostrils flare with snobbish delight; the sheer decadence of it all, as I felt years of dirt fall from my –

“For fuck’s sake, will ye hurry the fuck up! Ye’re gonna waste the hot water. The rest of us haven’t had a shower in years either,” complained the voice behind me.

He was smallish and dark-skinned, his body covered in scars from gunshot wounds. I didn’t recognise him, but he knew me.

“We’ve been next door to each other four years and ye don’t even know me?” he said.

All these years never knowing what he looked like, only a voice and an image in my head, Cowboy was nothing I had envisaged – and it showed on my face.

“And ye don’t look like anythin’ I imagined either!” he laughed, reading my mind.

The rumours of him having guns tattooed to his sides were, I was sorry to see, unfounded.

One of the screws watching us laughed an artificial laugh, hoping to join in the conversation.

“What’s so funny?” Cowboy said in an icy tone, freezing the screw to the spot.

“Nothin’ …” The screw’s face turned crimson, then pale, as Cowboy’s upper lip curled in distaste.

“Then why don’t ye do more nothin’ and fuck away off?”

“Look … I know how ye must hate us … but … but we were only doin’ our duty.”

“Duty? Ye wouldn’t know the meanin’ of the word,” Cowboy said.

The screws were nervous, now that we were out of the cells. And with good reason. Payback was a bastard and could come at any second, and they knew it. In their feeble minds, we were madmen, lions waiting to pounce, or insuperable Gothic creatures devoid of all things human. The Creature they had created in their own minds, their own propaganda, was now on the loose, and we would not discourage that mindset.

Cleaning our teeth was the next ordeal, as the rough toothbrushes made unfamiliar strokes in our mouths. Blood turned the sinks crimson from our raw gums, transforming us into feasting vampires.

After the shower, I sat in a chair as the barber hacked at my waist-length hair, making my head feel lighter with each touch. And even though it was a great relief to feel the cold air on my neck again, a sudden wave of nostalgia swept over me as I watched the years of hair being brushed away. An old friend was gone.

But there was more to come. I could no longer put off the inevitable, which I had been dreading. The barber had clipped my facial hair as close as possible, leaving me to remove the stubborn shadow with an inept plastic razor. Small nails of hair gave way, leaving my exposed skin screaming with pain as I constantly sliced my face, shaving blind.

It had been more than four years since I last saw myself in a mirror. My vanity refused to allow me a look in that mirror, knowing it would be a stranger staring back, an old battered stranger who would question the sanity of it all.

All the while, the hunger strike continued.

You are perpetually conscious, as you sit in the “comfort” and darkness of your cell, of the man a few feet from you who is slowly and painfully dying. You have prayed so hard that the blue of your mind becomes an accusing leather screen of condign sulphur, questioning your very existence: why aren’t you on hunger strike, suffering with the rest?

And the more you scream for it to leave you alone, the more it torments, until you finally tell it you lack the courage, that you could not go without food for a few days, let alone weeks; that you have read books on the suffering the body and mind must endure, as the skin shrinks to fit the perfect skeleton, its bones as brittle as baked chalk; that you shudder at the thoughts of migraines so violent they bite through your skull, piercing your eyes. Then come the blackouts, blindness and coma. Finally, death.

I shuddered in the darkness, a coward hiding from myself, as each day brought the hunger strikers closer to death. The shrill voice of Thatcher squealed like fingernails clawing a blackboard.

The screws, for their part, placed great plates full of Irish stew and other delights outside the cell of each hunger striker, in a sick and feeble attempt to torture them into eating. The aroma filled each cell in an appetising mist, competing against the natural groans of an empty stomach. The mist was fanned into the cell, just to make sure each hunger striker got the message. This would be followed with a screw’s loud voice: “Good man! That’s the way! Get tucked in. There’s more where that came from.”

The fact that each hunger striker refused even to acknowledge these pathetic and sadistic manoeuvres sent the screws into a rage. They carried empty lockers ghoulishly by them, saying, it won’t be long before we’re burying you in this. Despite this provocation, we remained disciplined. The psychology was reversed, as the screws were let know that they would be the next to go should any of the men die.

Then the strangest of things happened. Something so perfectly timed, it made you wonder about fate, and about whether perhaps – just perhaps – there might be a God, after all.

When Frank Maguire, MP for Fermanagh/Tyrone, died, it came as a great shock to all the POWs. We had lost not just a friend, but also a voice that had consistently highlighted the ill-treatment meted out to us by the British Government and the screws. His death brought our morale down another notch. It was the lowest we had ever reached.

Then, just as in life, Frank once again helped us out.

“Bobby should run for Frank’s vacated seat,” suggested someone, whose arse was obviously out the window. A ludicrous suggestion. Hadn’t we discouraged our own people from participating in any elections run by the British? And how could we compete against the well-oiled propaganda machine of the British State? Plus, there was always the trap-fall that if Bobby did stand and received a low number of votes, it would hand the British Government a big stick to beat us with. They would proclaim that the low vote proved the prisoners had no support.

Despite all of this, there was no alternative but to try.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Tragedy

TUESDAY, 5 MAY 1981

Our torments also may in length of time Become our elements.

Milton, Paradise Lost

Cast your mind on other days That we in coming days may be Still the indomitable Irishry.

Yeats, “Under Ben Bulben”

The days prior to the election became soul-destroying. The British tried desperately to have Bobby’s name removed from the ballet paper. The Catholic Church, through their slavish priests, informed us that: ‘No one would vote for Bobby Sands.’ It was truly comforting to know that the British Government and Catholic Church were not only singing from the same hymn book, but soiling the same pair of pants.

If we could only get a respectable portion of the votes cast, that in itself would be a significant victory for us.

Quietness enveloped the Blocks as we waited on the result from our clandestine radio. The OC forewarned us that under no circumstance were we to give any impression of knowing the result, for fear of losing the radio, a lifeline that he kept for news bulletins. His orders were clear: irrespective of the outcome, bite your tongue.

And we probably would have, if not for the fact that not only did Bobby do well, he topped the poll, becoming the new MP for Fermanagh/Tyrone.

We screamed, we cried, we banged the doors until we could bang no more. We had won. We were floating, and nothing on this Earth could bring us down. It was all over bar the shouting. We hugged each other. No one would have to die. We could live like human beings again.

The Human Wart looked suicidal. The Preacher was speechless. The Volunteer could barely conceal his grin. Everything was falling into place.

“The light is at the end of the tunnel, Finbar. Can you believe it after all these years?” said JCB, ecstatic and giggling like a school kid. “I could be home this time next year.”

“Light at the end of the tunnel, JCB?” said Finbar sarcastically. “The tunnel hasn’t even been built yet for any light to emerge.”

“It’s over, Finbar. Admit it, mate,” I said, coming to JCB’s defence. “Even fucking Thatcher isn’t devious or stupid enough to allow an elected MP to die. So lighten up. Don’t put a damper on it.”

He was silent for a moment, then asked: “How long’ve ye been on the Blanket, Sam?”

“You know the answer to that,” I said. “Same as yourself. Over four years. Why?”

“Oh, just thought the way ye were talkin’, it was only four days. Ye know the Brits as well as I do, what they’re capable of.”

I can’t let him get to me. He’s simply winding me up …

“Okay, Finbar. Whatever you say. You win.”

The tragedy being, of course, that he was right.

The British Government contemptuously dismissed the result, claiming it didn’t change a thing. So much for democracy! And in a last ditch effort to save face – its own, of course – the Church sent in a confederacy of dunces to “negotiate” an end to the hunger strikes. They explained what we might get, what we probably could get, but never what we would get. All they produced was a rehash of the document that ended the first hunger strike in such acrimonious ambiguity. They were not the slightest bit embarrassed by their mendacity. Perhaps, had they advanced such concern years ago, we would not have been in such dire straits now. It was all too little too late.

It was early Tuesday morning, the fifth of May, when a small tapping sound could be heard coming down the pipe. It sounded like a heartbeat. We were not unprepared for what it meant, but it still came as a shock when the news of Bobby’s death filtered through.

* * *

‘When I was sixteen … IRA hunger strikers died, including Bobby Sands … these were kids who were about my age who were literally dying for a political cause that they believed in. I was looking around me, and we had some kids who were trying to lose weight to make the wrestling team and others who were focused on the homecoming stuff. That was the time I thought beyond the walls of my high school and the culture that gets drilled into you.’

Tom Morello, guitarist, Rage Against The Machine

Over 100,000 people attended Bobby’s funeral. The last words in his prison diary spoke for us all: Ní bhrisfidh siad mé mar tá an fonn saoirse, agus saoirse mhuintir na hÉireann i mo chroí. Tiocfaidh lá eigin nuair a bheidh an fonn saoirse seo le taispeáint ag daoine go léir na hÉireann ansin tchífidh muid éirí na gealaí. (They won’t break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.)

Nine more men would follow Bobby, each enduring a horrific death by starvation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Catch 22

WINTER 1982

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast of that?

Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, Or is it something worse?

Bruce Springsteen, “The River”

“It’s difficult getting used to wearing shoes again after all these years, isn’t it, Sam?” said Finbar, answering his own question.

We were walking at a steady pace around the yard, trying to break in our shoes, which felt like planks of wood, or clogs with tiny nails in them. Our feet seemed to balloon the further we walked.

Months had now slipped by since the ending of the hunger strike, which had taken the lives of the ten prisoners. The Brits had conceded some basic rights to us: we wore our own clothes instead of prison garb; we had access to newspapers, books and writing materials; and we could now take an hour of exercise walking the yard. But the crux – not doing prison work – still remained unresolved.

Overhead, clouds rolled in, releasing small gumdrops that tasted like new leather on my tongue. An addictive percussion after all these years of drought. Men ran for shelter, but I could only stare at my cell from a distance and picture my face, a silent scream, squeezed between the bars, year after year. It was horrible to assimilate, but it burned in my head, branding forever the enduring chill of an unassailable belief in a moment that time could not conquer.

Rumours. Chassis without foundation. Prisoners thrive on them. We heard so many over the years, you’d think we’d be immune to them. But no, not us. Our first response was always: Is that genuine? That’d be brilliant. Are ye sure, now? No fuckin’ about?

We always fell for it, even when we knew how impossible it sounded, just like me telling everyone it would all be over by Christmas all those years ago. So this latest one was no exception, plus it was feasible.

After the hunger strike ended, one of the concessions made to us was the implementation of lost remission. It all sounded good in theory, except that, like all British agreements, it had a Catch 22. To be granted the remission we would have to do prison work. After three months of towing the line, lost remission would be restored. In my own case, for example, if I were to work for three months, I would be released at the end of that three months, instead of serving the two-and-a-half years that remained on my illegal sentence.

It was tempting, of course, and the Brits knew this. It was the old divide-and-conquer trick. But if I had not come on the Blanket in the first place, I would have been home almost three years ago. No welcoming committee in the reception; no nakedness, degradation, humiliation; no strip searching, anal-probing mirror searches; no wing-shifts, forced washing or horrendous beatings.

Fuck it, I thought. Two-and-a-half to go. No problem.

More days, weeks, months and years of wing-shifts, of beatings. Deep in my heart, I knew I would be free some day. I dreamed constantly of it, night and day, like an adventure game, clutching it in my fists, burning it into my consciousness for all time.

Little did I know then, what an adventure I was in for when, years later, freedom did eventually come.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Real Great Escape, Minus Steve McQueen

AUTUMN 1983

Chance and uncertainty are two of the most common and most important elements in warfare.

Clausewitz, On War

A week before the date of the escape there were still six men protesting and who refused to end it. They were all serving long sentences and saw the protest as the only way of expressing themselves effectively. It was a big step for them to end it.

Derek Dunne, Out of the Maze

“Why the hell are the six of youse continuing with this protest?”

The question the screws, the Brits and the Church had asked all these years was now being asked by an unlikely source: The OC of the H-Blocks. Veins protruded from his forehead as his face alternated from crimson to purple.

“Ye’re gonna have a heart attack if you don’t calm down,” said Blute, his enormous bulk dwarfing the moaning chair he sat on.

Months had passed since the official protest had ended, leaving myself and five others on a de facto protest of our own.

“The Movement should be priority in your actions,” continued the OC, ignoring Blute’s advice. “Not some emotional – no matter how well intended – protest that can only help fuel dissension, when what we need most is to be able to move as one.” He sucked in his breath, then released it slowly. His speech wasn’t having the effect he had hoped for. “This has been a traumatic protest for us all. Everyone has suffered. The lads who died were all friends of ours. But we’ve got to build on that – and quickly. We need complete unity on this, and I’m askin’ youse to reconsider and do what’s best. Even if humble pie has to be swallowed …”

No one was listening any longer. We had heard it all before, weekly at first, now daily. Our minds were made up. Our volition was solid. We weren’t for turning. No matter what.

The OC gazed out the window, shook his head in bewilderment, then sat down wearily. He was drained, as if arguing with us had become too much.

“Okay,” he said, more to himself than us. “Only two people in the Block know what I’m about to tell youse, and God help any of youse if ye open yer mouths.” He leaned forward from the chair, and whispered so low I could barely hear.

The greatest escape in Irish history was coming, like an unstoppable train of steel and courage. No one could stop its determination or its destination. No one. Not the British, not the screws.

It was then the six of us made the decision: we would be more than proud to facilitate it.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Unfinished Business

25 SEPTEMBER 1983

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways – I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.

Socrates, quoted in Plato’s Apology

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!

Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending

Our day had finally come. The Circle was a scene of organised chaos. Prisoners – those going on the escape – ran in all directions. Some wore the uniforms of screws, who were now tied up and bundled in one room. Outside the control room, the body of a screw lay like a beached whale, blood oozing from a head wound. He had refused to hand over the keys when asked to do so by a volunteer. His brave or foolish action earned him the predictable bullet to the head.

A group of prisoners surrounded the wounded man, offering words of encouragement that he wasn’t going to die, as they attempted to curtail the flow of blood.

I was angry that they would be concerned about any screw after what we had been through. But my initial thoughts changed as I reflected that it could be the Volunteer, or some other screw who had helped us in the past.

As I edged closer, the remorse in me quickly changed to euphoria. It was none other than the Human Wart.

The eidetic images of his hangman’s noose tied to the penis, then pulled; his grubby sausage-like fingers probing rectums of naked men; his urinating into the mouths of sleeping prisoners; these would haunt me forever. No, I decided, if there truly was a God, then the Human Wart should survive. But only as a vegetable, locked in his cocoon of perversity. No man had it coming to him like the Human Wart. Quid pro quo had been a long time coming, but now that it had arrived I would savour it for as long as possible. Not since Fletcher Christian beat the fuck out of Captain Bligh with the cat o’ nine tails had justice been so sweet.

Everything seemed to be going like clockwork. All the main goals in the Block had been achieved. All that remained was the arrival of the Happy Wagon. It wouldn’t be long …

“It’s comin’! The Happy Wagon’s comin’!” shouted a volunteer.

“Get this mess cleaned!” ordered the OC. “Youse two? Help the MO move the Wart. The rest of ye men go about yer business as screws. Don’t fuck up.”

The last three words were a command as well as a plea. Everything was riding on normality, or the semblance of it.

The driver of the Happy Wagon nodded to the screw – a disguised prisoner – at the gate as it opened, allowing him access. Nothing was out of place. Perfect. Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.

“How’re things?” asked the driver, but the answer he received wasn’t the one he was expecting.

“See what happens to heroes?” said the prisoner to the driver, suddenly producing a gun and placing it to the driver’s head.

The driver had walked into the nightmare that all screws dread: prisoners taking over, holding hostages. This was worse than a nightmare, because it was real. And the fact that a fellow guard was dying or dead on the floor made it all the more tangible.

The driver simply nodded like a zombie. He felt faint. He needed to go to the toilet. Had he ever verbally abused these men? Would they blame him for the crap that lousy cook called food? He was only the driver, surely they understood that? I always did my best to make sure the crap was warm. That bastard of a cook! He’s the one who should be here, not me. It isn’t fair! Why did it have to be me, dear God?

“Ye’re gonna drive us through each gate, nice and calm. Do ye understand?”

The driver nodded. His tongue had disappeared. He needed to take a shit.

“We have a hand grenade, as well as guns. Every man here is a lifer, and has sweet fuck all to lose. Try anythin’ stupid, and we all go up together. Understand?”

Oh, God! A fuckin’ hand grenade! I’m dead. These are maniacs, these fuckin’ Blanket Men. Everyone knows that. I’m dead. That fuckin’ cook bastard!

“Okay, okay! Ye can stop noddin’ yer head,” said the prisoner with the gun. “We get the picture.”

The driver couldn’t stop nodding, and who could blame the poor bastard? I probably would have nodded just as vigorously, under the same circumstances. Perhaps even more so. But everything now hinged on fear being the spur. Had enough of it been put into him, or would he try at the last minute to be another Human Wart?

It was all academic now, as prisoners – including Blute and Goose – piled into the Happy Wagon. As it disappeared slowly down the yard with its precious cargo on board, I wondered if the Happy Wagon would finally live up to its name.

The propulsion of events, coupled with the fact that at any minute screws and armed British soldiers could come storming through the doors, was a great incentive to complete as quickly as possible our scorched-earth policy. Every single thing possible was burned: photos, files, cell cards. Anything to cause confusion.

I couldn’t resist the urge to look in at the screws, tied and stripped to their underwear, all huddled together, fearful for their lives.

Our fear had lasted years. Theirs only minutes. I felt cheated, that their punishment should be so light, and wanted to rectify it. I could so easily have set fire to the room and let God deal with it. The innocent would survive, while the guilty perished.

Small petals of smoke rose from the smouldering documents, as the Human Wart’s blood congealed into a wine-coloured stain, shaped like a question mark. All I wondered was how far the lads in the Happy Wagon had reached, and what must be going through their heads as they stopped at each gate? How on Earth could they get through one gate, let alone sixteen?

About an hour later, our clandestine radio supplied the answer.

“And just to repeat our earlier headline. News of a massive attempted escape from the Maze [Long Kesh] is coming in. Details are still sketchy, but a number of men have been caught …”

I was devastated. All captured. I felt sick. I cursed God. Could He not at the very least grant us one break – a prison break – after all these years? What kind of a God would continue to torment us, after all we had endured?

“… a significant number still at large …”

God forgive me! I knew You were really on our side!

It was instantaneous. The entire Block exploded into one volcanic our-time-has-come-at-fucking-last scream of jubilation. Doors rattled like thunder, furniture banged off walls. The hair on my head stood up, fired with electricity, and I swear my feet floated from the ground.

I stared out the window, watching my smile reflect back at me. We had done the impossible – escaped from the unassailable fortress so loved by Thatcher, boasted of as escape-proof. This was the best revenge. There would be a lot of sick people tonight.

Then they came, converging like insects, covering the entire yard. Screws and the notorious RUC, angry but fearful. Prisoners had guns. Must be careful. They were mad enough without guns, these crazy Blanket Men bastards.

I was amazed at my own calmness. I wanted them to come and see what could never be defeated; to see the faces of the Blanket Men – unfuckingconquered.

The governor was reeling, staggering like a drunken skunk as he entered the Circle, gun in hand. He could not comprehend the anarchy that greeted him – his men tied and stripped to their knickers; a wounded screw; documents turned to ash and congeries.

“Bastards! Someone will pay for this!” he screamed, a wounded dog howling at the moon.

“What do ye reckon, Sam? The news says a couple of screws have been shot,” said Pat.

“We can only hope it’s true, mate,” I replied.

Doors began to open. A governor, accompanied by a PO, a screw and two RUC men, was doing a quick head-count, desperately trying to find out who was gone, who remained. Our little bonfires had done the trick. It would take the enraged governor a while to determine the names of the escapees. The longer the better.

“Are ye fuckin’ deaf, Millar? I said move it!” screamed the screw into my face.

I eased myself slowly off the bed, and as casually as possible walked towards the Circle, now a shadowy vignette of smoke and blood, screws and cops. They all stood sombrely, like Orangemen on the Twelfth.

“Take off yer shoes!” snarled a screw.

“You take them off!” I snarled back.

With the help of a few screws, he did. Next came my jeans, my shirt, my underwear. Other prisoners were going through the same routine. Eventually, we were frogmarched out the door and down the yard, naked. The tiny stones cutting my feet made me think of Bangor beach. But instead of crying gulls, I could hear barking in the distance.

As I entered the gate of the other Block, I could see the dogs, lined in a perfect flank, straining angrily on their handlers’ chains. We were forced to walk through, dogs snapping at our skin. The cold numbed the first nip, but the second and third started to hit home. Then came the bites, making me scream, hating myself for it.

The dogs were now in an uncontrollable frenzy. They bit, snapped and ripped the skin with impunity.

“Bastard! Kicked the dog!” Someone had committed sacrilege. The horror of it.

“Kicking a defenceless creature,” screamed the screws and cops, as they kicked the shit out of the naked man. “That’ll teach ’im, the fucker!”

“An utterly fearless man,” said Melville in Moby Dick, “is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.” I could only agree with his sentiment as the prisoner continued to ward off the dogs and screws with impotent, barefooted kicks. Each time he went down he came straight back up.

No one escaped the dogs …

* * *

The next day, reports filtered in of how many men had made it to freedom, how many had been captured. In the end, nineteen of our men got clean away. The prison came to a standstill, as the Brits conducted an investigation into how the impossible became possible. Things would never be the same. We knew it. The screws knew it.

Ironically and justifiably, the escape had brought us all the added benefit of no-work being the norm. We could no longer be punished for refusing what was no longer on offer, and within a couple of months I found myself in a van heading to the Reception, heading home. It was déjà vu in reverse. It had been a long and arduous journey, faith genuinely tested but still unconquerable.

“Sign this,” the governor said, holding a piece of paper in his extended hand.

“What is it?” I asked, not touching it, my arms folded defiantly.

“To say you’ll never have guns or explosives in your possession. Sign it if you want to go home.”

“No. I’m signing fuck all.”

His face went as red as a baboon’s arse. The four screws flanking him couldn’t believe their ears.

“You better sign it, Millar,” one of the screws advised.

“Or?”

The screw looked at the governor for guidance.

“Or … or … we’ll keep you here until eight o’clock tonight!” spluttered the governor, smirking with delight. “We have the legal right.”

I almost pissed myself laughing. “You’ll keep me here until eight o’clock tonight?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve kept me here for over eight long fucking years. Do you think I really give a flying fuck about another few hours?”

His face looked ready to explode.

“Put him back in the cubicle! Keep him until tonight! A few more hours should take the rebel out of him!”

Hurriedly, I was forced back into the cubicle, and the door slammed on my back. I could hear the governor and screws walk away, leaving me in total silence. Suddenly all the memories came rushing back, of all those long years ago, battered and naked, waiting to be taken to the Blocks to begin my nightmarish journey. So much suffering; so much death and torture. How the fuck had I – we, the Blanket Men – survived it all?

“Right, Millar. Outside. There’s a van waiting to take ye to the front gate,” said a screw, less than an hour later, opening the door. “The governor’s showing leniency with ye.”

Unbeknown to me, a large gathering of friends, family and neighbours – led by Dad – had gathered outside the prison gates, demanding my immediate release, or there would be trouble.

Just what the governor didn’t need.

Dad and Danny greeted me at the gate. It had been years since I last saw either one of them. Dad said nothing, simply shook my hand and smiled proudly. He left the words for Danny.

“Welcome home, kid.”

* * *

That night, I attended a welcome home party in a local republican club, surrounded by family, friends and neighbours, most of whom I hadn’t seen in years. On my way home from the club, I witnessed a teenager being harassed by the notorious Ulster Defence Regiment. A loyalist paramilitary force used by the British to try and terrorise nationalists into submission, most of the UDR were recruited from the farming community. They were involved in many murders in the North, including the infamous Miami Showband Massacre. Despite the many Catholics they slaughtered, only a handful of UDR members were ever convicted of murder.

The ten heavily armed thugs had set up a roadblock on the Antrim Road, to stop and search nationalists going about their daily routine. Alongside the UDR, their mates in the RUC (now known as the PSNI) hid in the shadows, machine guns pointing menacingly towards nationalists’ homes.

“Why don’t you leave the wee girl alone, and let her head home?” I said, approaching the motley crew. One of the UDR men turned his attention on me. He had longish, unkempt hair, sticking out from beneath a scruffy cap, and hadn’t shaved in weeks.

“Fuck off and mind yer business, ye Fenian bastard,” he said, attempting a threatening snarl. His thick, Ballymena farmer’s accent made the threat laughable, but the rifle he cradled lovingly in his arms prevented me from laughing.

“Fuck away off yourself.” Not a drop of drink in me, righteous anger was making my blood boil uncontrollably. Before either of us could get into a verbal war, one of the cops came over and eyeballed me. He had his thumbs hooked into either side of his bulletproof vest, cap down over the eyes, in a would-be Clint Eastwood style.

“Apologise to the corporal,” the cop said.

“Not a hope.”

He came right up to my face, and hissed: “You think you’re dealing with one of these country lads, hard man?” He indicated with his head towards the UDR milling about the roadblock. “I’ll give you one more chance. Apologise or I’ll arrest you for assault.”

I stood there eyeballing him, not saying a word.

“Right! That’s it,” he said.

And with those words, I was shoved into an armoured Land Rover, taken to Tennent Street Police Station and formally charged with assault. I had been out of a cell less than ten hours, and here I was, inside another one.

A few hours later, Dad arrived on the scene. Even from my cell, I could hear his great voice booming all over the place, tearing into the cops. Finally released, I went home and waited to see what the cops would do next, having been forewarned I would be appearing in court in the next week or so.

Four days later, events took a strange turn. A phalanx of armed cops surrounded my home. I opened the door, and there stood a sergeant, paper in hand. I took it for granted this was a warrant for my arrest, but to my surprise it was the opposite. The charge had been dropped against me, the police wishing to show “leniency”. The truth was, they had come under scrutiny by local media and prisoners’ rights groups, and decided their fabricated nonsense wasn’t worth the hassle of a court case.

While the group of peelers stood there, holding their breaths for my thanks, I could see an arm coming towards me, clutching a letter. It was Martin, our postman, slicing his way through the throng of cops.

“Sam! Letter from the States, mate!” shouted Martin.

He handed me the letter, and I thanked him, before slamming the door on the cops’ faces. I quickly opened the letter, and was amazed at its contents. A cheque for one thousand dollars! It was more money than I had seen in my entire life. The letter was from a group of mates working in New York, telling me to get my arse over to America, pronto. They had a job lined up for me, working in a casino, of all places. Dad looked happier than me – this was my chance to get out, and make a new life for myself.

“You deserve it, son. Forget about this place.”

“I can’t, Dad. There’s no way I’d leave Belfast to live in America, not while the war’s still going on.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done more than your fair share?”

“That’s not the point. I’ve lost too many friends. I can’t turn my back on their memory.”

Dad shook his head. “I’m sure your dead comrades would want you to go. Let someone else do the fighting, for a change.”

“No, my mind’s made up. I can’t do it.”

“At least go for a week’s holiday. Eh? Give your head some peace. You’ll love New York, just like I did when I called into port. Please, son. For me?”

“I can’t, Dad …”

“Please?”

“I … can’t …”

PART TWO

BEAUTIFUL NEW YORK

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book – and does.

Groucho Marx

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.

Johnny Carson

My favorite thing about New York is the people, because I think they’re misunderstood. I don’t think people realize how kind New York people are.

Bill Murray

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Casino

JULY 1984

All who have been famous for their genius … have been inclined to insanity.

Aristotle

Life is a gamble at terrible odds – if it was a bet, you wouldn’t take it.

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I was now living in Queens, New York. With me was my girlfriend Bernadette, who had been introduced to me by Dad, in the hope that such a quiet and lovely person would help keep me out of trouble. With over 100 ethnic groups settled there, Queens is the most ethnically diverse, as well as the largest, of the five boroughs that make up New York.

I had finally taken Dad’s advice and gone for a short holiday, telling him I’d see him in a week. Little did I know, but it would be well over a decade before we saw each other again.

In Manhattan, I was training to be a croupier at a local casino. I had come in early, just to get some extra training done, when I decided to take a ten-minute break on the second floor. Cobalt smoke drifted upwards, spiralling before dissipating into the high-rise ceiling. Below me, people clustered around the tables, trying to match luck against skill, skill against luck. Thousands of dollars exchanged hands in the blink of an eye.

I watched, fascinated by the dealers’ prowess, boxer-speed coupled with arithmetical perfection. In Belfast, we called it twenty-one, or pontoon. Here, they called it blackjack.

The card tables were half-moon shaped, covered with lush green and large enough to seat seven customers. There were ten tables, all going full tilt. Behind the seated customers stood more customers, waiting for a seat or jockey-betting – placing their bets alongside those in the seats.

“Where da foick is Nicky!” screamed Bronx Tommy, one of the managers. Money was leaking from the casino at a terrible rate. Nicky was the casino’s best dealer, with a knack for rescuing, but from the way the customers were winning, I thought it more appropriate to call on the help of Saint Jude.

“Where da foick is he?” Bronx Tommy repeated, his one good eye scanning the entire floor. I was sure he was looking straight at me, so I quickly stepped back, out of sight, just in case he was thinking of getting me involved.

Except for the oohs and ahhs of victory and defeat, blackjack is a quiet and unnerving game, most of the communication done by slight movements of the finger or hand. A finger motion asks for another card, while a slicing motion means the customer will stay with what he or she has. These rules are strictly adhered to. Once the dealer has released a card from the ‘shoe’ – a long Perspex housing unit – it can’t be returned. Therefore, a customer must be wary of getting an itch at the wrong time or waving to a fellow player – an unwanted card can be the punishment.

The casinos were known as after-hours joints in New York City. They were mainly large houses, converted and styled to resemble Atlantic City casinos, albeit on a much smaller scale. What they lacked in size, though, they more than made up for in their cosiness and chic, although that was only part of the reason for their popularity.

The chief reason was taxes. In New York City, the casinos don’t tax winnings. This is not due to some charitable benevolence, but is because all casinos in New York are illegal. One major concern overrides all others: visits from officers of the Public Morals Squad (PMS), a gung-ho group of sledgehammer- carrying cops whose job it is to shut down the ones refusing to give them a cut. These cops always intensified their raids whenever elections were due, to make themselves look good for the local politicians. They would disguise themselves as business people, out-of-towners, or use any camouflage that would blend in, before raiding the clubs, usually between the hours of 8.00 and 1.00 pm, and would leave their calling card in the form of smashed tables and destroyed wall fixtures. What they were really after was quite simple: the same as ourselves – the money.

“Tell us where it’s located and there’ll be no smashing, just confiscating.” His name was Murphy, and he looked every part of it. He was in charge of his PMS, and thrived on the vandalism of it.

The owner of the casino hated the PMS, and his policy towards them was simple: not a cent. Even if they demolish the place, not a red cent.

When Murphy was told that we hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, he would work himself into a frenzy, turning into a modern-day Thor, his sledgehammer knocking out walls, splitting card tables in half. But no matter how much damage the PMS caused, they could never find the money. All that was left to gratify their anger was to arrest us and place us in the local lock-up for a night or two. Then a judge would fine us – usually a couple of hundred dollars each – and admonish us not to break the law again.

The casinos operated seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Food and liquor were provided free to customers, as was transportation for those who wanted it. The card dealers came from all walks of life, and from various countries, such as Korea, Puerto Rico and Canada. When I started, only a couple were from Ireland. But that would change considerably in the months ahead.

* * *

The owner of the casino was an Irish-American by the name of Johnny Mac, a self-made millionaire whose family came from Tyrone. He had done time in prison for killing a man, and was a one-time boss of the Irish Mob that controlled the Bronx and lower Manhattan. An unassuming and soft-spoken man, he was rarely seen in the casino, except at Christmas when he would thank all the dealers generously by handing them envelopes containing significant monetary gifts.

Mac’s overseer was a man named Ronnie Gibbons, an exboxer from Liverpool who fancied himself with his fists and brain. A copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations was never out of his reach, and he was forever quoting the Stoic philosopher. Ronnie had bumped into Mac at a prestigious health joint in Manhattan, the New York Athletic Club, where he did a regular workout on the punch bag and ropes. Mac was apparently impressed by what he saw.

“I could use someone like you for my club,” he said, handing Ronnie a business card. “Give me a call.”

Normally, Ronnie would have torn the card up. He was self-employed and loathed the thought of working for someone – as a slave, he called it. But something told him to pocket the card, as he was well aware of whom he spoke to.

Ronnie regarded himself as the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, a modern-day Robin Hood who believed you should take from the rich and give to the poor. Sometimes that philosophy became a bit muddled and he found it hard to distinguish the poor from himself.

When he first started in the casino he worked not only as bouncer – which was what Mac had wanted him for in the first place – but also as a jack-of-all-trades. If a bathroom needed cleaning and the janitor hadn’t shown up, Ronnie would quickly get to work on it, leaving it spotless. A dead bulb needed replacing? Ronnie was there, stepladder in hand. If a customer called for a drink while the regular barman was busy? Hey presto, Ronnie with a tray full of drinks! There he was again, helping a customer on with her coat. What a guy.

At least that’s what Mac would think, as Ronnie worked his omnipresence to perfection, fooling everyone except Barney Jameson, Mac’s overseer at the time.

“There’s somethin’ not right ’bout that guy,” complained Jameson to Mac’s father, John, as they sat counting the winnings from the four-to-twelve-o’clock shift. “And that phoney English accent of his drives me nuts.”

“He doesn’t drink,” John said, beating down his second large whiskey of the day. “Never trusted a man who didn’t drink. Like the Pope havin’ sex. Just not right.”

“Listen, both of ya. Ronnie’s here to stay,” Mac said, double-checking his father’s figures on the payout cards. “He’s got lots of potential – especially with his fists. He could become a good asset for the House.”

The two words Jameson didn’t want to hear: potential and asset.

“Still, I wouldn’t trust a man who doesn’t drink,” Mac’s father mumbled again.

A few months later, fate dealt Ronnie a winning hand, in the form of an attempted robbery. The robber, a young man in his teens, was knocked unconscious by Ronnie’s quick reflexes and thinking.

“Can I pick a winner or not?” Mac said, upon hearing the news.

A week later, despite the protest of Jameson, Ronnie was elevated to the position of manager. He quickly made his presence felt. His first task was to overhaul security to prevent a reoccurrence of walk-in robbers. After that, he set his sights on the finances of the casino, checking and then double-checking expenses, so that every dollar was accounted for.

This caused the animosity to grow between him and Jameson.

“We’ve been paying out too much for liquor,” Ronnie said at a meeting of managers. “The House doesn’t consume half of what we’re being charged.”

Ronnie spread the receipts on the small oval table in front of Mac.

Jameson’s brother-in-law supplied the liquor, and Jameson quickly rushed to his defence.

“The House gets a good deal from the supplier. And anyway, what’s all this we business? Anyone would think you owned the place instead of Mac.”

It made Jameson sound defensive and he realised it, too late.

“I’m talking collectively,” explained Ronnie in a calm voice. “The profit and longevity of the House should – must – come first, above everything else.”

Mac watched, amused. A wise owl, knowing that sooner or later it would come down to this: two roosters fighting for their share of the farmyard.

“What is your association with Mike Bloom?” Ronnie said. He moved closer to Jameson.

“Whaddya mean, association? He’s my brother-in-law, as Mac knows and everyone knows. Whaddya tryin’ ta say, son?” hissed Jameson.

“I’m saying perhaps your in-law is faulty with his figures. It can happen. He probably didn’t mean anything by it – just carelessness, perhaps. I’m sure he’d like to rectify his mistakes, given the chance.”

“Just whaddya talkin’ ’bout? Whaddya tryin’ ta say?”

“I estimate his mistakes have cost the House about five grand over the last year alone, and I haven’t even checked the receipts for the year before. Who knows what the final tally will be?”

“Mac?” Jameson said, incredulously. “Can ya believe this punk? Insultin’ my brother-in-law who is more than good to the House with his prices.”

Mac said nothing, only watched, fascinated by the silence in the room. Each manager present – eight in all – probably wished he or she were someplace else. Not because of the humiliation of Jameson, but because each wondered if they were next to be scrutinised. Each was running over past deeds in their heads, and not liking what they remembered.

Before Jameson could say another word, Ronnie hit him full force in the face, knocking him out.

“Tiny! Come up here, please,” Ronnie said.

“Yea?” said Tiny, the enormous bouncer, entering the room.

“Throw this piece of shit in the dumpster outside. From here on in, he’s persona non grata.”

“Huh?”

“He’s not allowed near the casino – ever. Okay?”

With Jameson gone, it was left to Mac’s father to sum it all up while shaking Ronnie’s hand. “Never trusted that man Jameson from the day I met him, Ronnie. Drank too much for my liking. Never trust a man who drinks too much.”

Ronnie simply smiled. Mac senior would be well worth the watching.

* * *

“Where da foick is Nicky, that damn com-u-nest!” continued Bronx Tommy, as he grabbed another tray of chips from the office. “We’re bein’ moidered by those Chinks and Jews, and that little boistard is still missin’!”

Nicky was the best dealer the casino had. He had lightning-fast fingers, and a mind to match. A great entertainer, he was from Romania and always carried a small pistol beneath his armpit. He was the only one the customers never got angry with, for obvious reasons.

Bronx Tommy’s anger was a different matter. His violent life began as his mother’s ended – during parturition. An angry, ugly baby, quipped the nurse, who would rather have seen baby die over mother. By the age of eighteen, Tommy had seen the inside of Attica, Sing Sing and Green Haven. He tried his hand as a heavy for the Irish Mob in Boston, where he was shot twice in the face, losing an eye in the process: “Really annoyin’. Like havin’ a golf ball for an Adam’s apple.” Spotted by Mac as a diamond-in-the-rough, he was hired as bouncer/doorman, bringing with him the acumen of a street survivor with an indispensable loyalty that bordered on fanaticism. If Doc, another one of the pit bosses, was suspicious of foreigners, Tommy was suspicious of everyone – including Doc, whom he suspected of pocketing more than wages and tips.

“Take it easy, Tommy,” advised Susan, the assistant manager. “You’ll have a heart attack. Nicky’ll be here ASAP.”

“Don’t talk shit, woman! We’re almost out of black chips. It’s N-R-Key out there! Foickin’ little com-u-nest.”

“Here, honey,” said Maria, the Puerto Rican barmaid, holding a glass of Johnny Walker Black out to Tommy as he walked closer to the bar.

Tommy hesitated, weighing the consequences of more whiskey in such a volatile situation, and then quickly disposed of it down his throat. He hated seeing good whiskey go to waste. He hated seeing good whiskey go anywhere except down his throat.

“That hit the spot, Maria. But no more. This damn ulcer of mine is killin’ me.”

“I told you to stop feeding him drink,” Doc hissed to Maria, as Tommy returned to the fray in the centre of the room.

“Su mama traga sobo,” Maria replied. (Your mother eats cum.)

“What’d you say?” Doc asked suspiciously.

“I said Tommy’s the boss. No? I do as he says. Not you,” Maria said, dismissing the glaring Doc with a toss of her hair.

“Maria?” interjected Susan, hoping to calm the situation. “Go and serve a customer.”

“Te huele la pepa hedionda, yuiebra pichas,” Maria said to Susan. (Your pussy stinks, skinny whore.)

“I know my pussy stinks, Maria. But please try and refrain from calling me skinny,” Susan replied, smiling ruthlessly back. Then turning to Doc, she said, “You’ve got to stop letting her aggravate you. Just ignore her.”

“All these spic dealers and waitresses Mac hired aren’t doing much good,” Doc replied. “They’re getting paid twice as much as the other dealers, and for what? So they can give the chips away twice as fast! If I had my way …”

“Well ya doint, do ya?” said Tommy, standing menacingly behind Doc. “It’s Mac’s call, and he’ll hire and fire anyone he wants.”

Despite Doc being a pit-boss, Tommy was Mac’s right-hand man and the de facto boss. Rarely did they work the same shift, but when they did it was Gunpowder and Spark, with the inevitable explosion.

“I’m telling you, those spics are detrimental to the House. It’s madness having them here,” Doc continued.

Tommy’s good eye glared. “End of discussion. Understand? If ya doint like it, git another job. That can be arranged.”

To my absolute horror, Tommy suddenly spotted me and waved for me to come down from the second floor and take Table Four.

As I walked to my doom, the exit sign was beaming, making me hesitate. This was my last chance to escape. I’d been dreading this moment. My initiation into the world of blackjack was about to begin.

We had been taught at the dealer school over in New Jersey that we were mere robots, card-dealing machines. Show no emotion. It’s not your money. Don’t take victory or defeat personal. When a customer wins you congratulate; when they lose you commiserate. Our one cardinal rule is fraternising. Do not do it. Caught fraternising with a customer and you are out – no questions asked, no excuse accepted.

I took a deep breath as I walked to the table. No more school. This was the real, ball-crushing event.

Jim O’Neill, from my own area in Belfast’s New Lodge Road, gave me a friendly pat on the back. “Don’t worry, Sam. It isn’t as bad as a wing-shift in the Blocks.” He smiled.

Like me, Jim had spent years on the Blanket protest. With that horror now behind him, he had come to America to make a decent life for himself. He was doing pretty well, having worked his way up the managerial tree of promotion – a tree I desperately wanted to join him on. I only hoped that by the time I reached the top of the tree, Jim would have left a few apples for me!

“I’ll spot ya,” winked Tommy with his good eye, while whispering, “We’re down eighteen G. I’ve a feelin’ ye’re gonna be one of our lucky dealers, kid.”

Just what I didn’t want to hear. There is a myth amongst pit-bosses of “hot” and “cold” dealers; of dealers who carry some special talisman with them. It’s nonsense, but unfortunately for me, Tommy was a firm believer in it. It was going to take more than having a lucky shamrock shoved up my arse to save this Titanic disaster of a table, and the thought of being down eighteen thousand dollars was not going to help.

I felt all eyes on me as I tried to shuffle the cards just as I was taught at the croupier school. But the cards felt like rounds of bread in my clumsy fingers. I dropped some on the floor, much to the delight of the customers, who started laughing and hurling abuse at me.

I began to perspire.

“Don’t let dem bother ya, kid,” encouraged Tommy. “We’ll wipe those doirty grins off der gubs in a wee while.”

Every few minutes, Tommy would force his dentures out on to the edge of his tongue, scrutinising them. It was a disgusting habit.

To my right sat my spotter, Victor, an old hand from Atlantic City. He had told me the spotter is the most important person at the table.

“A good spotter will nick any potential problems in the bud before they get out of hand. He must be assertive at all times. An honest mistake can make a dealer or customer look bad, so the onus is on the spotter to defuse the situation as quickly and diplomatically as possible without anyone losing face or being called a cheat. Also, watch out for distractions. Dames with their tits hangin’ out all over the place; coffee bein’ spilled on the table – even pricks fakin’ heart attacks. They’ll try every trick in the book, these people. But just keep your eyes on the table. Nice and simple, and you’ll do just fine.”

It was like having an older brother watching my back.

Ten to twelve decks of cards are used in each game. At the croupier school, they teach you how to shuffle with the quietness and perfection of a butterfly’s wings. I was making a complete mockery of all I had been taught. Once shuffled, you hold the decks in one hand, stretched towards the customer. Your other hand holds a “cut card” – a clear piece of card-shaped plastic – which you then offer for the customer to cut the block of cards with. The entire block is then placed in the “shoe”, snugly, until the dealer removes them, one at a time, at the speed of light.

Unfortunately for me, my light had yet to get up to speed.

“Oh, a virgin? So nervous, little boy. We not hurt.” She was a Korean woman, as were the others at my table. They were all dressed identically, in dark suits and red polo sweaters. They chain-smoked, blowing what they inhaled into my face, stinging my eyes. “You bring us luck, we tip big,” she smiled. Not friendly, just business.

“I’ll try,” I croaked, my voice rusted with fear.

“Bad luck, we cut off balls,” said the smallest of the coterie. They thought that was great, all laughing in unison.

“Ignore ’em, Sam,” advised Victor. “They’re only tryin’ to fuck with your head.”

I had been warned about Korean gamblers. They are very passionate about gambling, almost religious. If they smelled weakness in a dealer, they would have no qualms about going in for the kill.

The cards refused to come out of the shoe. I had packed them in too tight.

Victor leaned over, flicking the cards with his thumb nail, loosening them. “Nice and easy does it, Sam. Take your time.”

“C’mon! C’mon! You too fuckin’ slooowwwwwww!” All the Korean women were screaming.

Slowly but surely, I began. As each game progressed, my confidence became stronger. After four games, some of the chips began to accumulate back in the tray.

“He no good! Get new dealer,” they shouted. “He deal like old man – fuckin’ sloooooooooooow!”

I’d been on the table for almost an hour, and was finding it invigorating. I was getting a buzz.

“Would ya like some refreshments, Samuel, me bucko?” asked Bronx Tommy, all smiles, elevating me from “kid” to first-name terms.

Eventually, all the chips were back in the tray. The customers now had to buy them back if they wanted to continue. The Korean women quickly removed $100 bills from their expensive handbags and placed them in front of me. I quickly fan-tailed the money in front of Tommy and Victor to verify the amount, before signing my name on the drop-card, then showed it to both men before pushing the bills down into the cash box attached to the table, with the aid of a narrow plunger.

At any given time, the manager can look at the drop-card and know exactly how much each cash box contains. Normally, when it reaches a couple of thousand dollars, the manager removes the box and replaces it with an empty one. This is done to deter would-be robbers and to prevent the cops getting any of it during a raid. The money is then counted in the safety of the office and in the presence of Mac or his father, just in case someone should have sticky fingers. After that, if the money isn’t “sent home”, it’s hidden in an intricate labyrinth of hide-holes and false props, placed strategically throughout the club. Something as innocuous as a Maxwell House jar could contain thousands of dollars.

Bronx Tommy had become mesmerised by the reversal of fortune. His glass eye stared at the ceiling, and I swear I saw a tear.

“Enough! We move,” the Korean boss-lady said. The troupe of women suddenly pushed themselves away from the table.

“Well done, Samuel me bucko. Take a long break. Ya deserve it,” Tommy said, carrying the filled-to-the-brim money box to the office.

“Not as bad as you thought?” Victor said, as he lit a foulsmelling cigar.

“No. To be honest, I was enjoying myself. I hated seeing them quit.”

“Card adrenaline. Ha! Enjoy it while you can. Cards are as fickle as women and cats. No loyalty, Sam. They’ll bite the first chance they get.”

As I left the table for refreshment, Doc the pit-boss followed me.

“I’ve been watching you, Sam,” said Doc. With the equanimity of an undertaker, he was perpetually attired in dark, three-piece suits that perfectly reflected his sombre mood. We stood at the bar, Doc towering over me like a vulture studying carrion.

“Watching me? Why?”

“You’re becoming involved with the clientele. Feeling for them. In any other profession, that would be admirable. Here, it could mean the kiss of death. Don’t think for one minute that they feel sorry for us when they win – they don’t. That’s the mutual understanding we have. Understand?”

Before I could answer, or explain that I hardly knew any customer, Maria, tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Can I get you somethin’, honey, from the bar?”

“Let me have a Coke, please, Maria,” I answered.

“Bottle or powder?” she laughed, opening the fridge.

Maria was a beautiful, sybaritic woman, whose addiction to gold was clearly displayed across a good portion of her exposed skin. People she liked, she called “honey”. Those she didn’t, she said: You. What can I get you? Which is exactly what she said to Doc as she poured my Coke.

“Water,” Doc replied, not hiding his xenophobic disdain. He was suspicious of all foreigners – including Maria and myself – and was fluent in racist epithets. Everyone was a “chink”, a “nigger” or a “spic”. Behind my back, he called me a “mick” or a “donkey”, which didn’t bother me in the least. I’d been called worse in Belfast.

Doc had once seen Maria reading a copy of Jorge Castaneda’s Companero, the classic on the life and death of Che Guevara, and had gone ballistic, calling her a “commie bitch”. The beautiful woman only smiled, incensing him further.

Maria poured the water for Doc into a tiny whiskey glass – minus ice – and left it perched perilously at the edge of the counter, asking, “Porque no se va a lavar el culo?” (Why don’t you go wash your ass hole?)

“Huh?” Doc said.

“I said, enjoy your drink,” Maria replied, never missing a beat, while smiling broadly. “Me cago en su madre.” (I take a shit on your mother.)

“As I was saying, Sam. Feelings in this business can kill you quicker than a card shark with a photographic memory.” He glanced dubiously at the water, as if suspecting Maria of spiking it. “Physiognomy. Know what that means?”

Haven’t a clue, I thought, but was no doubt about to find out, as he gave me what resembled a smile, hurting his face in the process.

“It means ‘facial appearance as a reflection of inner character’.” He paused for effect, but received only a loud fart from a drunken customer on his way to the toilet. It didn’t help that the customer was a Russian immigrant.

Doc glared, shaking his head.

“One look at your face and I can read it like a book. So can they.” He gestured towards the tables. “Especially the chinks, who’ll prey on any sympathy you show towards them. They perceive it as weakness.” He stopped grinning. “As do I.”

“Some more Coke, honey?” Maria said.

“No thanks, Maria,” I replied, and away she went, back to Days of Our Lives, ignoring Doc, who was becoming agitated at the interruptions.

“I wish Mac would get rid of her. All she does is watch soaps, all day long. A waste of the House’s money,” grumbled Doc, pushing the untouched glass away. “Yes, the chinks and the rest of the scum can lose the business that took their parents twenty years to build. So what? That’s not our problem. We don’t put a gun to their heads. Do we? No. We don’t. So remember that when you go home tonight.”

I nodded. He walked away.

“Don’t let him bother you, honey,” advised Maria. “He thinks he’s better than the rest of us, that his shit don’t stink, that his mother – if he ever had one – didn’t fuck to have him. Huh!” She leaned on the counter and whispered. “C’mere. Let me tell you somethin’ ’bout him.”

I leaned closer. Brandy and chocolate, mixed with expensive Chanel perfume, rose from her beautiful cleavage.

“All the time I bin here, he niver make a pass at me. Know why, honey?”

“No, Maria. Why?”

“He’s a mama pingas,” she hissed through white and gold teeth, her gleaming eyes filling with mischief.

“A what?”

“A cock sucker, honey. A guineo. A fuckin’ faggot. Know? A first class cock-sucking queen, honey. Know?”

“No.”

“Yes, honey! With George the wrestler.”

“George…? The bouncer who works the midnight? That’s a strange combination, Maria. Are you sure?”

“Am I sure, he asks! Sure I’m sure, honey. You think all I watch are soaps all day? I know. Just don’t drop any chips in front of him, honey!” she laughed, all the way back to Days of Our Lives.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

A Meeting of Minds and Minders

SEPTEMBER 1984

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Anonymous

This is adding insult to injuries.

Edward Moore, The Foundling

I had now been full-time with the casino for about two months. The pay was great, and I looked forward to each day, to meeting all the different characters. This particular day was chilly, even with the sun creating long shadows, as I approached the casino down 18th Street. I couldn’t help but notice the large limo parked outside, chauffeured by a very beautiful black woman.

As I walked on, one of the windows slowly opened.

“Ello, mate. Jump in.” Ronnie was grinning.

“Where’d you steal this from?” I asked.

“Don’t be a twat. I bought it, yesterday, from an up-and-comin’ young black singer in New Jersey, called Whitney Houston. She’s goin’ to be very big in the music world,” he assured me. “Listen, I’ve some serious business I need to discuss with you and the other Irish lads. I’m takin’ you all out for some grub tonight, over to Milano’s. Tell the rest of ’em I’ll pick ’em up ’bout eight tonight.”

“What’s it about?”

“Next month we’ll be openin’ another casino, and I want you to be a manager.”

There had been talk of Mac opening another casino, this time on the West Side.

“What kind of nonsense are you talking?” I asked. “I’m just about able to deal. How the hell could I become a manager?”

“Well, if things work out the way I believe they will, you’ll be one of the main people in charge of ’em. But don’t say a fuckin’ word yet. Understand?”

I thought he was full of shit, but nodded. “No problem. See you tonight, then.”

That night, we arrived at the restaurant, well known for its outrageous prices and celebrity customers.

“Don’t be put off by those prices,” insisted Ronnie, as if reading all our minds. “The House is footin’ the bill, so just get tucked in.”

We did, knowing we’d never be in a place like this again.

Afterwards, waiting for dessert, he said, “Right. Down to brass tacks.” He was pulling out a notepad and pen. “You’re all as ambitious as me, and in about four weeks you’ll all be given the opportunity to realise those ambitions. Everyone here will be given managerial positions as soon as the new casino opens. I want you all to get stuck in, be assertive in everything you do.”

We were all smiling. This was music to our ears.

“The casino at 18th is not doin’ half as well as it should and could. Too many old-timers as managers, and all bloody foreigners and illegal immigrants.”

We laughed at that one, being all bloody foreigners and illegal immigrants ourselves.

“But that’s all goin’ to change,” continued Ronnie. “Everyone here will help implement the new policy. I want to open a chain of casinos, just like MacDonald’s.”

“Will we be selling Happy Meals as well?” I asked.

“If that’s what it takes to fill the casino, we’ll do it. I’ve carte blanche from Mac, but we’ve got to be careful how we handle the wops. Personally, I don’t give a toss ’bout ’em, but Mac’s the boss, and he doesn’t want to step on too many toes at once.”

“But what about the present managers? Aren’t they gonna be pissed off about all this, us takin’ their jobs?” asked one of the men.

“That’s where you lot come in, isn’t it? Let them know who the boss is. If they don’t comply, break a leg.”

One or two laughed, thinking he was joking. They didn’t know him well enough yet.

It was obvious he was using us for his own ends. I wondered if he thought we were just dumb micks who could be climbed on as he built his empire, his Napoleonic dreams?

As the evening progressed, the sombre talk of business lightened. Everyone was filled with thoughts of “running the show”, how they would be the best managers Mac had ever seen. I wondered how long it would last – how many bridges we had left, not to cross, but to burn before it all came tumbling down.

“Right. Be back in a sec,” said Ronnie, leaving the table to make a phone call. “Order some more of that expensive dessert, then we’ll be on our way.”

It was five minutes later when we all heard the tapping at the outside window. There, his pugilist nose squeezed tight against the windowpane, was Ronnie. His half-moon grin and joker eyes told us the worst: he had done a bunk, blew without paying the bill, leaving us in the lurch. A miniature stampede quickly ensued as we fled for the door, leaving the bill fluttering in the waiter’s hand.

By the time we caught up to him in the limo, tears of laughter were rolling down his face. He thought it all great stuff, getting one over on the restaurant and on us.

“The looks on your gobs!” he repeated, over and over again.

And this was the man who was planning on building an empire?

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Brothers and Sisters, Thicker than …

JANUARY 1985

The only thing that can destroy a family business is the family.

Bronx Tommy

While lasting joys the man attend Who has a faithful female friend.

Cornelius Whur, The Female Friend

The clouds, in dark battleship grey, began to disperse, revealing a curtain of gorgeous indigo sky. Overhead, the Roosevelt Island cable car moved effortlessly, following me back to Manhattan. Inside the cable car, a little girl waved. I waved back and she slapped the window with her mittens, laughing.

A year had now gone by, and things were going fairly well. Ronnie’s plan to ease out all the old-timers had almost been completed. Most of the Irish dealers were now managers or pit bosses and Mac had faded into the background, spending more time away from the casinos.

Ronnie had asked me to meet him outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the Upper East Side. We would take a taxi down to the proposed location of the new casino, appropriately enough, behind the Empire State Building. It would be opened with a bit more flair than usual. I felt that such a high-profile location was obviously going to cause problems, but Ronnie believed otherwise.

“This is how it should be,” he said. “Bang-smack in the middle of Midtown, with all those Jap tourists with big bucks and big buck teeth.”

He was now wearing Brooks Brothers clothing, but he was still the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist. He handed a homeless man a couple of dollars, but not before “enlightening” him with a few quotes from Marcus Aurelius. I could see that the unfortunate man was wondering if it was worth listening to all this ranting and raving for two bucks.

Soon we were standing outside what we hoped would be our next casino, a large house whose large floors could easily be converted. Out of nowhere, a young woman joined us.

“Sam. This is my little sister Rita. She’s goin’ to get stuck in with the rest of us.”

Ronnie had recently started to introduce his own family members to the trade. It made little difference if they knew nothing about the casinos or the meaning of blackjack. To Ronnie, blood was thicker than water, and they now had a job, irrespective of what the consequences might be.

“Hello, Sam. Heard a lot of good things ’bout you,” Rita said. She had a pixie face, short hair and tomboy demeanour. Her eyes were sharp, weighing you up as soon as they tasted you.

“Hello, Rita. Didn’t even know Ronnie had a sister.”

“You know Ronnie by now, Sam. Business first; family last.”

If only that had been true, perhaps things would have been different, later on …

“Chit-chat over. Let’s head in,” Ronnie said, opening the door of the large brownstone. “Think about it. Three floors of blackjack. It’ll be the biggest in the city, mate.”

It was impressive, I had to admit. Each floor was the size of a miniature ballroom. I already had it peopled in my head.

“How long before it’ll be ready?” Rita asked, trying to give the impression that she didn’t know, as if Ronnie wouldn’t confide in her.

She’s well worth the watching, I thought.

“Soon. I’m negotiating with the landlord to get the price down.” Ronnie slapped the paint dust from his hands. He hated getting his hands dirty. Something I should have remembered later, but didn’t, until it was too late. “Anyway, I’ve a new position for you, Sam.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” And what’s that smell? Fish? A rat?

“Box manager.” He watched to see my reaction.

“You’re busting my balls, right?”

“No. It’s yours if you want it.”

“But what about Mac’s father? That’s his job. You can’t fire him. That’s crazy.”

“I can fire anyone. But I’m not goin’ to fire ’im. Just give ’im a job where he can’t be tempted by money.”

Money had been going missing from the House. It could only have been one of three people – Mac, his father or Ronnie. Obviously, is wasn’t Mac. I doubted very much whether it was the father either.

Being the box manager meant I would have access to all of the money coming in and out of the casinos. Only Ronnie and Mac would have the same access. But with Mac taking a back seat, it actually meant only Ronnie and myself.

That’s when the thought came into my mind: What if it isn’t Mac’s father stealing the money? What if it’s Ronnie? What if he’s setting me up for a fall?

“I’ll have to think about it,” was all I said, surprising him.

“Okay. But I need to know soon. This’ll be lucrative for you, so don’t let it slip through your hands.”

We went back outside, to the chill emerging from the East River.

“I’m famished,” Ronnie said. “Let’s get somethin’ to eat.”

“No thanks. I haven’t forgotten the last time we went for a meal.”

He laughed. “Okay. See you in the mornin’.”

“Goodbye, Sam. See you soon,” Rita said, a crocodile in preparation.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Have You Ever Ridden a Harley D? Me Neither!

JUNE 1985

Millar’s sense of humour was darkened by eight years in the notorious H-Blocks, and he had the air of one who felt he had given all that the Cause could require.

New York Daily News

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

“Can you ride a motorbike?” Ronnie asked, a grin on his face.

“Yes. Why?” I said.

“I’ve got one for you.”

I didn’t believe him, and he knew it.

“No, seriously. I’ve got it outside. All the money we’ll save on cab fares, getting you to and from the clubs, will pay for it in no time.” His beeper sounded. “C’mon. Let’s go outside, see if you can handle it.”

A motorbike! I tried to remain calm, but the thought of riding up and down Manhattan on a big Harley D was just too much. I was almost pissing myself with kid-like excitement. I was going to be the next Peter Fonda, straddled on all that silver chrome and hot leather. My own hog. My own –

“What the fuck is that?” Reality kicked me firmly in the balls as I saw what awaited me.

“Your ’bike, mate. Like it?”

It was a scooter. A moped. One of those little things ridden by dwarfs in the circus. It was depressing just to look at.

“Is this a fucking joke, or what?” I asked.

“This’ll be marvellous for zippin’ in and out of the traffic, mate. You’ll be the envy of all who spot you,” Ronnie enthused.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. No more hassle about parking meters. You’ll be able to bring it right into the club, for safe keeping.”

“No! N fucking O! You can stick that midget bike right up your Liverpool arse. I don’t care if you give me more money, the answer is still the same. No. No. No.” I had my principles …

* * *

It was terrifying, riding in and out of traffic on the ’bike, especially near maniacal cabs. The cabs were yellow sharks, missing me by inches, laughing. Still, I had to admit, it saved searching for a cab when I needed to pick up money from one of the casinos, plus I was able to zip in and out of traffic with ease. The extra dollars in my daily wage helped as well.

No sooner had I arrived at 32nd, than a call from 80th came in, telling me they had too much money in the place. The Iranian was losing everything but the oil rigs.

“I can’t believe he’s still here,” I said to Chris, the day manager, as I emptied two cash boxes.

“Four days non-stop. Doesn’t even go to the bathroom. One minute he’s down sixty G, the next he’s Lazarus. Go figure,” she replied.

A commotion at the front door made me turn just in time to see Rocky, our bouncer/doorman stagger in, his face covered in blood.

“Nobody move!” screamed a Puerto Rican, sawn-off shotgun in hand. “Everybody hit the back wall – now!”

Behind him came two more robbers, both armed and disguised as pizza-delivery men. Everything went silent, except for Rocky, who was groaning and holding his bloody nose.

Their faces weren’t masked. This either meant that they didn’t care, or that they knew no one was going to live to identify them. Another ominous sign came next.

“Who is the box-boss? We know he’s here. We even know his name is Sam.”

I could feel the blood drain from my face.

“Which of you is Sam?” he repeated, oh so calmly.

I thought of the part in Spartacus when the Romans have him and his men captured, and they offer a deal: Give us Spartacus and we’ll send you back to the salt mines. Kirk is about to stand and admit who he is, when suddenly one of his men stands up, proclaiming, “I’m fucking Spartacus, you Roman bastard!” Then the next man stands, and the next, all claiming to be Spartacus. It brought tears to my eyes, that part, but as I looked about the casino, I realised there was little chance of any of my co-workers standing, shouting, ‘I’m Sam, you bastards! You’ll get no money here!’ Instead, the opposite would probably happen: ‘He’s Sam, the mick bastard, over there beside the fridge. Kill ’im!’

To my surprise, no one said a word. But I knew we all feared the worst.

“Okay. Play tough,” one of the gunmen said. “Everyone! On the floor! Now!”

It was a race to see who could hit the floor first. I think I won by a good few seconds.

“Take off your pants! Bitches, you included.”

We did as ordered.

I debated with myself about handing over the keys. If I did, what was to stop them shooting us anyway? Could I stall for time, hoping someone had seen something and was alerting the cops?

In all honesty, I knew I would never hand over the keys. The Belfast stubbornness – the curse I had been born with – started to boil in me, and if it meant everyone in the room being shot – myself included – well, fuck it. No keys.

“Don’t make us angry. Okay? We get the money, we leave. Simple. We don’t? Then someone has to die.” He aimed his weapon towards the ceiling and fired. Blam! Blam!

The blast brought some of the ceiling down, snowing us with plaster. Each of us jerked our legs involuntarily, wondering what the hell was coming next.

Inadvertently, those two shots saved all our lives. Someone, hearing that sound, called the cops, and within minutes they had arrived, screaming through a bullhorn for everyone to come out, and quickly.

During the confusion, the would-be robbers escaped out the back grille, using a key that was known to only a few.

We all walked out, minus our pants, into the beautiful Sunday morning sun. It felt great. We were alive. And even when the cops lined us up instead of the robbers, and allowed a local photographer to take our photo, no one complained. We were just glad it was over without anyone being seriously hurt.

The front pages of the next day’s New York tabloids carried photos of us lined up outside the casino. One headline said it all: Dealers Caught With Their Pants Down …

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Titanic: Built by a Thousand Irishmen. Sunk by One Englishman

We’re drinking my friend, To the end of a brief episode.

Johnny Mercer, “One For My Baby”

Lucky is he who has been able to understand the cause of things.

Virgil, Georgics

“What the hell happened?” Ronnie asked.

“We got hit. That’s what fucking happened!”

“Calm down, mate. Calm down.”

“Someone could’ve been fucking killed. They knew my name, and the secret way out. So don’t tell me to calm fucking down. You tell me how they knew everything?”

“I don’t know, mate, but we’ll soon find out. Three spics? Right? Okay. I’ll sort it out.”

“You couldn’t sort out a box of Liquorice Allsorts. Everything’s crumbling all about you, and you don’t even see it.”

“It’s only a robbery. Nobody got hurt.”

“Someone could’ve been killed. Don’t you understand? It’s not just the robbery, but a million wee things starting to accumulate. And your family is part of the problem.”

“My family? What do you mean?” His voice was soft, as if he had just been shot in the back.

“First your sister and brother are brought into the casino. Then your bloody uncles and cousins. I’m waiting to hear your granny’ll be next.”

“If you can’t take care of family –”

I cut him off. “Listen, Ronnie. Rita installed those Joker Poker machines. She gets all the profit. Nothing goes to the casino. Same as the cig machines. Then there’s her girlfriend. She hires her as manager. Manager of what? The only time she shows up is at the end of a shift, to collect her and Rita’s wages! She’s walking on everyone’s toes, making enemies. I even heard a couple threaten to kick her in the dick.” It felt good, getting all this off my chest. Like confession on a wet Saturday afternoon.

“Kick her in the dick?” He was mortified. “She hasn’t got a so-called girlfriend. At least not in the way you’re implying.”

“There’s more,” I said, placing my hand inside my coat pocket and pulling out an envelope.

“What’s the problem now?” he asked fearfully.

“The master drop-cards. They’re out of sequence. Major problem.”

“What? How the …” He picked up the cards and checked. Then double-checked.

“Only four people have access to these,” I said. “Myself, Mac, you … and Rita.”

“I think I’m going to have a heart attack, mate.” He wasn’t joking. “Between kicks in the dick, then this.” He tapped the cards with his fingers.

“If Mac found out about this …” I left him with that kind thought as I walked out.

* * *

The very next day we went for coffee. He had a plan. Another one. He always had a plan.

“First. The Joker Poker and cig machines now belong to the casino. Okay?”

I nodded.

“All my cousins are out. Okay?”

I said nothing.

“Rita’s, er, friend is no longer on the payroll.”

“And Rita?” I asked. “And the two missing drop-cards?”

“We don’t know that it was Rita. It could have been an honest mistake on someone’s part.”

“You don’t believe that. Neither do I. You’re thinking with your heart, not your head. What would happen if Mac found out? Bet your balls it never happened when he was running the show.”

“What can I do? She’s my kid sister …”

“Who’s probably screwing us. Get rid of her, or at least demote her, to where she won’t be able to do it again.”

“That’s a tough order, mate. Let me talk to her.”

“For all our sakes, do more than talk about it.”

I suspected he wouldn’t even talk to her. For Ronnie, blood was thicker than water, even if the blood was contaminated. I knew it was only a matter of time before we were all out of a job. What he said next was ominous.

“Look, a bit of good news for you. The new casino is almost ready. I’m thinkin’ of naming it Titanic.”

“Haven’t you heard what happened to the Titanic?”

“Stop being such a pessimist. This one is gonna take us further than our wildest dreams. Just you wait and see.”

Wait and see? Wasn’t that what the captain of the Titanic did? As we got up to leave, I swore I saw an iceberg straight ahead of us.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Dodgy Drilling Dentist Devouring Danish

JULY 1986

The almighty dollar is the only object of worship.

Anonymous

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

The new casino opened with a flourish. The best food, wine and entertainment were provided. Exotic flowers and plants swamped the place. A new dress code was introduced for all dealers. Gone were the coloured shirts and ties beloved of the Hispanic dealers. In their place came the conservative white shirt and black bow tie. No more drinking while on duty. And no more loitering on the premises after work.

Outside 32nd Street, our bouncer, Mike, said hello as he let me in. Mike had replaced Tiny, who had died a week earlier from a massive heart attack brought on by an overdose of cocaine. Bob Seger’s “Main Street” was playing as I entered.

Our clientele came from all walks of life. High rollers and low lifers, judges and crooks, or crooks and crooks, as Victor would say. There were actors and hookers (the best tippers); brokers from Wall Street (the cheapest tippers); Arabs and Hasidic rabbis from Brooklyn; a famous ballerina, Raging Bull and a Norman Rockwell grandmother called Anne.

Customers who gambled a significant amount of money had access to our “blue book”, granting them credit of up to $5,000 dollars. Anne was in the blue book, but was having trouble paying back what she owed.

I was given the unenviable task of getting it back, and hated the thought.

I waited until she had finished her daily ritual at our buffet table: black, sweet coffee, a Danish thick with figs and a glass of brandy to wash down the aftertaste of the coffee.

“Good morning, Anne. How are you this morning?” I asked, pouring myself a coffee, praying Stanley the Dentist didn’t spy me.

“Top o’ the morning, Sam,” she smiled, a fake Irish lilt in her voice. “These Danish are lovely and fresh. Where do you get them? I’ve tried searching for them, but I can’t find them anywhere.”

“A little café on the corner of 18th.”

“Oh, lovely. What’s it called?”

“A Little Café on the Corner …” I smiled, and then got back to business. “Could I talk to you, Anne, for a minute, in the office?”

Reluctantly, she entered the room, her famous straw basket in her hand.

“What’s this about?” she said, sitting down.

“I really hate to bring this to your attention, Anne, but we’re trying to curtail expenses and recover some of the outstanding debt owed to us. Unfortunately, you’re near the top of the list. You’ve gone way over your credit limit.”

“How much do I owe?”

I showed her the blue book, with $6,200 beside her name.

She looked slightly embarrassed. “I know, Sam. Usually I’m good at paying my bills, but the last month has been tough, with my husband passing away.” She rested her coffee on the table and brushed crumbs on her calico dress with its print of tiny birds in flight.

I hated myself. “I’m sorry, Anne. I didn’t know about your husband. You should’ve told us. We’d have tried to help you out.”

“Pride, Sam. When you get to my age, you try to maintain as much dignity as possible. I’m sorry about all this, but I promise you on my dead husband’s grave that I will have cleared all my debt by the weekend.” Her lipstick left a half-moon on the coffee cup.

“You don’t have to clear it all right away.”

She held up her hand. “This weekend. The club’s been more than good to me. Oh! I almost forgot.” She reached down into her straw basket. “This is for your daughter. It’s her birthday tomorrow, right?”

“Anne, you’ve really got to stop buying gifts for everyone. You’d have cleared your debt by now.”

She always knew whose birthday it was, and always bought them something.

It was sad watching her leave. A lonely old lady, whose only enjoyment in life was this casino. I cursed Ronnie for putting me on the spot, and vowed that from now on, he could do his own dirty work. That was when Stanley the Dentist spotted me, holding Anne’s half-eaten Danish and half-finished coffee.

“I’ve told you about that coffee, Sam. May as well paint your teeth with tar – oh, no. tell me that’s not a Danish?”

There were plenty of perks to be had in the casino, provided you knew how to go about getting them. I thought I’d landed on a gold filling mine when Stanley offered to do my dental work free of charge. Little did I realise that I was substituting a pain in the mouth for an even bigger pain in the arse. He was the worst tipper and the most boring blackjack player in the world.

“May as well just go out there and suck on one of those jackhammers on Fifth Avenue,” Stanley continued. “That’s how beneficial those Danish are to your teeth …”

He went on and on. Just like one of his drills. He finally came to a halt when I threw the Danish and coffee in the bin.

* * *

“So, she fucked us then?” Ronnie said, a week later at the casino, after Anne had become a no-show. “You fell for all that shit from her, didn’t you?”

“What did you want me to do? Get Mike to work her over a bit? Make her hand over her wedding ring? She just buried her husband, for fuck sake. She’ll be back to pay what she owes. I’m a good judge of character.”

It was then that the news on Channel Two came on. A seventy- year-old woman was arrested at an upstate retirement home earlier this evening. She had tried to kidnap her husband – at gunpoint – from the grounds of the home. Police said the woman tried to abduct her husband, who suffers from Alzheimer’s …

“I don’t believe this,” said Ronnie, staring incredulously at images of Anne being placed in a cop car, handcuffed.

This was our grandmother? Our bearer of gifts? She of the $6,200 debt?

As the story unfolded, we learned that Anne’s husband was not dead, but had, in fact, been convalescing at the private retirement home. Anne, fearful that her in-laws were trying to get their hands on her husband’s insurance money, kidnapped him pre-emptively, before the in-laws could.

It was sad to witness the anguish on her face, as she was led away in handcuffs. But her look of anguish wasn’t half as bad as Ronnie’s.

“I told you not to trust anyone, Sam. Now do you understand? That old bastard could’ve held us up at gunpoint. We’d never have lived it down. Who’s next on the list?” he asked, checking the blue book. “I hope it isn’t her sister. She’s probably got a machine gun concealed in her knickers.”

* * *

The casino was packed, and I was kept busy emptying cash boxes. The Russian gamblers were screaming and obnoxious as usual. The Koreans were unusually subdued, as their luck was going belly-up. Only Stanley the Dentist seemed to be winning, as black chips piled up like an oily pyramid in front of his grinning face.

“Sam!” he shouted, winking at me before pointing at his tower of chips.

I did a thumbs-up. “Good man, Stanley! Win a million!” You cheap fucking prick.

“Great, mate, eh?” Ronnie said, scanning the tables. “Full to the brim. Just like a nice cup of Twinings tea.”

“Yes. Brilliant,” I replied. “Who knows, if this keeps up, I might just get an increase in my wage?”

Ronnie didn’t like to hear that sort of talk, so he left to mingle with the customers, bowing like an idiot at the Korean table. He’d been watching too many kung fu movies. Still, he was happy as a lark. Everything was going well for him. September would see another casino opening.

Unfortunately, it all soon started to go terribly wrong. Having started with a bang in January, the casinos collapsed financially by August. Their strength, paradoxically, was their downfall. Ronnie had become complacent, believing they could run themselves. The nepotism he had promised to eradicate still prevailed, eating away under the surface like rust. He had tried to turn the casinos into a family business, forgetting that the one thing that can destroy a family business is the family.

The final nail in the coffin came when one of the unused casinos – where we stored back-up blackjack tables – was burgled. The thieves made do with a few thousand dollars, along with the small cache of guns kept hidden beneath floorboards in case of outside interference in the business.

That was bad enough. Unfortunately, Rita and girlfriend – who stayed there rent-free – were also discovered by the intruders. They were forced to strip nude, before being tied up together in a sexual pose of lovers kissing.

Some people believed Rita had stepped on the wrong toes, and got what she deserved. I told her to look on the bright side: neither of them had been hurt. And wasn’t it fortunate that Ronnie and myself had discovered them, and not Bronx Tommy or Doc?

Just like Queen Victoria, she was not amused.

When the casino eventually did collapse, it came as no surprise to anyone except Ronnie. Even so, he remained philosophical about it: easy come, easy go. Besides, he told me, another plan was in the making. Someone bigger than Johnny Mac was going to bankroll his next project – a new, bigger and better casino. He had learned from his mistakes – no more family. He would watch over every transaction, dotting and crossing. He would live in the new casino, so that if a problem arose, he would be on it like a fly on shit. In the meantime, would I mind if he stayed with me for a while? Just until he got the okay from this new, bigger-than-Mac partner of his?

“I haven’t a bean, mate,” he said. “But as soon as this big deal is finalised, I’ll pay you back …”

I wanted to say yes, but couldn’t. Should have said no, but wouldn’t. Let me see, was all I could promise. I’d let him know in a day or two. I wanted to ask him, where was the family blood now? Why had none of them offered to shelter him? And all his so-called friends? Not one of them had offered him help …

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Beers, Hotdogs and Money. Lots of Money. Did I Mention Money? Lots of it?

AUGUST 1986

Be careful what you wish for …

Chinese proverb

Trust one who has gone through it. Virgil, Aeneid

This summer, as in all previous summers, I went upstate New York, to the town of Rochester. It was always good to get out of the city for a while.

Much of my time was spent meeting old friends and going to the many picnics – gatherings dedicated to beer-drinking.

“How’s everything going down there?” asked Tom, a retired cop and friend.

“Could be better …”

“What’s the problem? You don’t seem yourself.”

An idea had been germinating in my head for the last few months, an idea so audacious I knew I would have to tread very carefully.

“I’ve been having problems in the casino.”

“What kind of problems?”

Tom looked upon me as a son. When I first arrived in America, he helped me get a place to stay. If I was short of money, he was the one I asked.

“Those Italian pricks down in New York are trying to put the squeeze on me,” I lied. “They keep looking for more protection money.” That lie couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact was that the Italians never fucked with the Irish. They knew better.

“I don’t like you being down there. They’re all crazy. I wish I could get you a job with me, working as a security guard at Brinks.”

I started laughing. “That would solve all my problems. I’d rob the fucking place and open my own casino!”

Tom looked at me strangely, and I knew I had insulted him. As a New York cop, he was highly respected, both by colleagues and by the community he served. He was an ah-shucks-Jimmy-Stewart kind of a guy, who did everything by the book.

“It’s just the beer, Tom,” I assured him, none too convincingly.

I had already visited the Brinks depot – Tom had taken me over for a tour when the other guards were gone for the day. I had been amazed at the lack of serious security in the place, and this was highlighted by stories of how a pizza deliveryman had simply walked straight into the place one day without being stopped. He had found the security door wide open and, to his amazement, piles of money sat unguarded in corners, waiting to be placed in the massive vaults – when the guards found time, after the baseball game! But the most glaring lapse happened whenever a guard ran out to one of the local stores, leaving the doors ajar, held with nothing sturdier than a pencil! Millions, guarded by a pencil! Their laziness had turned this transgression habitual. There was no doubt in my mind, all this money was there for the taking.

Tom’s reaction had told me what I had wanted to know: there was no way he would go along with my mad idea. And so I quickly put it out of my head.

For now …

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Opening Doors

There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest. For I did dream of money-bags to-night.

Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

General Harry Vaughan

Upon my return, I started searching for a job. Anything would do, and I finally ending up as a doorman on affluent Park Avenue, opening doors for the rich and famous.

Four months later and Ronnie was still in my apartment, driving my wife crazy with his daily recitals of Marcus Aurelius. I knew it was time for him to go when he borrowed the complete works of Socrates from the local library. Enough was enough.

“Look, mate, you’re gonna have to find some place to live. I hate having to say this, but you’re driving us all nuts.”

He only laughed, annoying me further.

“Don’t worry, mate. I’m meeting that new partner of mine tomorrow night. You’ll be able to tell those rich wankers in Park Avenue to stick their job.”

Two weeks later he was still sleeping on the floor of our apartment. Socrates was replaced by Homer, and my wife was threatening to go back to Belfast if I didn’t get Ronnie out of there.

“Sorry, mate,” I said, helping him into the elevator with his sole suitcase.

“Don’t worry, mate. I’m seeing that new partner –”

I watched as the elevator door closed over, drowning out his self-deluding words.

No sooner had I waved a joyful goodbye, than the phone rang. Something told me it was Ronnie, probably in the telephone box across the street, begging for one last week.

Don’t answer it. Let it ring.

But it wasn’t Ronnie. It was Marco, a former bouncer at the casino. He had served time in the US Army, and was a veteran from the Gulf war.

“Listen. About that other thing …” he cryptically began.

“Yes?”

“No problem.”

“Can we meet next week?” I said.

“No problem.”

* * *

When I met him later in the week, he was smiling, his hand outstretched as if greeting me for the first time in years.

“Don’t say a word in the car,” I said, a plastic grin still on my face. “It’s bugged.”

We drove down Lake Avenue towards the beach in silence.

When we reached the beach, I parked the car, removing a few Buds from the back seat. As soon as we were far enough away from the car, I came straight to the point.

“How’d you like to make some serious money?”

It was late evening, but the heat was still horrendous. Mosquitoes bit my ears as I watched calmness come to splintered waves.

“How serious?” he asked, taking a slug of Bud.

“Maybe a million.”

The Bud hit the back of his throat, making him cough.

“Are you shittin’ me?” he asked.

I knelt on the sand and, with my finger, started to draw. Before long, I had sketched the rough layout of a bird’s-eye view of a building, a collage of rectangles and squares.

I didn’t speak. Even when the waves slowly crept in, erasing my work, I said nothing, waiting for it to disappear.

“Let’s go,” I said eventually, brushing the sand from my jeans.

We walked along the beach, whispering in each others’ ears, like lovers on a first date. An old lady walked by, exercising her dog. Shaking her head with disgust, she watched us disappear behind sand dunes, as if for some sort of illicit sexual encounter.

As it turned out, I was shitting him. It was more than a million. A hell of a lot more …

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Whale Hunter

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

Call me Ishmael.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

It was hot and sticky when I returned to Manhattan on Sunday afternoon. Stained shirts and biting underwear. Ninety in the shade and rising. A record was in the making. They say this muggy, claustrophobic weather makes New Yorkers strange. Sometimes it makes them do strange things.

I was feeling isolated for the first time since my arrival in the city, all those years ago. Most, if not all, the Belfast lads had returned home. The casino had been their source of income, so most had decided to get out while they still had a few bucks in their pockets. I couldn’t blame them. I would probably have followed them had it not been for the schizophrenic thoughts of breaking into the Brinks. I couldn’t help wondering if I could really get away with something so audacious, so dangerous, and live to tell the tale.

Above me, the sun floated in a ghostly haze as I entered the narrow street, containing a conglomerate of amorphous homeless people covered in liquid shadows, their slim belongings nipping at their feet. An old, dilapidated church was now their home.

“Yer axin’ fer trouble, pal,” a deli worker said, watching me walk towards the homeless. “Moiderin’ moither foickers, dem. Tha woist.”

He pointed accusingly at them as he denuded a tiny runway of Juicy Fruit and popped it in his mouth. His jawbones ballooned nervously as he chewed, like Norman Bates in Psycho.

I nodded, but otherwise ignored him. As one who had traversed the streets of Belfast, New York and its people held little, if any, fear for me.

The abysmal conditions of the homeless, in this the richest city in the world, never fails to shock. Their accretion is emphasised by an obscene dichotomy in which, a few streets away on Park Avenue, the affluent feed and pamper their pets sumptuously. Worlds overlapping, but rarely if ever touching.

At one time, these homeless people were the salt of the Earth, pillars of society. Now they were the dregs, witnessed but unseen, screaming apocalyptic profanities in splenetic asperity.

One man, his left leg truncated at the knee, was ensconced in a dilapidated wheelchair. Older than his years, his face sagged, as if the dogs of poverty and depression had stolen every bone from it, highlighting tiny dark webs etching his eyes.

Near the end of the street, a bulging garbage bag lay gutted, a desiccated sanitary towel protruding from it like a bloody tongue panting in the heat. The stench oozing from the bag was stomach-churning to people walking past. Not me. I had encountered worse. The Blanket Protest. The abattoir.

As I sidestepped the bag, a man covered in a Paisley-print shroud bumped me, mumbling: “Dirty my skin with bruises, punk? Ya betta kill me cuz I’m cumin’ fer ya! See? See? Whaddya hear, whaddya sssayyyyy?” He stuck out his tongue. It was carpeted in baked-bean sauce and sores.

“Leave the man alone, Jo Jo,” said the man in the wheelchair. “He done you no harm, no way.”

Jo Jo glared at me, then his friend, before stalking off backwards into the shadows.

“He don’t mean no harm, really. Just suspicious of folk.”

I didn’t know if I should say my thank yous and get out of the street as quickly as possible. Instead, I opted to put my hand in my pocket for some change.

“Don’t do that. Don’t insult us,” said the man.

My face reddened.

“Sorry …”

“No need for that either. Your face already done apologised.” He laughed, galvanising his entire body into coughs and shakes. “Don’t laugh enough. Out of practice.”

“You don’t sound like a New Yorker,” I said.

“Neither do you, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

The coughing didn’t come this time, only a smile.

“Ah come from Tennessee, if a man can say he comes from some place. Ah write, mostly, but do can-gatherin’ to survive. You?”

“I’m from Belfast. I used to work in a casino – when it wasn’t being shut down by the cops, that is.”

“Well, ah learned somethin’ today. I didn’t ever know that New York had casinos. Must put that in my writin’.”

“They’re illegal,” I explained.

“Nothin’ wrong with that. Hell, being homeless in this city is illegal, if you were dumb enough to listen to the Mayor!” He pulled the wheelchair up to me. In his lap rested a bag of empty cans. “Belfast? That’s a tough ol’ place. All that killin’. Sheer crazy.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. There are more people killed in New York on a weekend than there are in a year in Belfast. It seems everyone creates bigger monsters so as to diminish their own.

“Must be tough,” he repeated, wondering.

“Not as tough as trying to survive in a wheelchair in New York,” I said.

“Could be worse. Wheels could be gone.” He smiled, not meaning it. “Ah’m not a regular at this can-gatherin’, you know, but it’s part of a strange adventure Ah fell into since comin’ to New York City from Tennessee this last Christmas time.”

He searched his pockets for something, found it and lit it up before inhaling it, deep down into his lungs.

“Ah did have a better Saturday myself, on account of the eight bucks plus Ah got for the cans, and an idea came to me that same mornin’.”

He blew a small amount of smoke into the air, as if not wanting to waste any. “Usually Ah get just enough cans for cigarettes and coffee, so Ah can set awhile inside and look over the ideas and writin’ that Ah’ve been workin’ on for going on eleven years now. In all that time, Ah’ve travelled all over America, truck-ridin’. Ah rode all across the edge of Canada on freight-trains and went painting on a ship out of Montreal that took me to Hamburg in Germany. That was when I lost my legs, on board a rusted old whaler. A message from God not to hunt His creatures without feeling His wrath.”

I thought he was going to tell me he had lost his legs in Vietnam, and in a perverse way I thought the truth more fascinating, almost romantic. I was late now, but I no longer cared. Along the avenue, people were waving down air-conditioned cabs to avoid the oppressive air. The cabs’ skin shimmered nervously, like stranded salmon, all silvery and scaly.

“Ah spent almost eight years in Dublin City in Ireland,” he continued, “and travelled all up and down over there, lookin’ into the folk-music traditions that together with the blues and baptist gospel singin’ was the roots of our country and rock’n’roll music. Then, living as hard and rough as I mostly did got me interested in the people at the bottom of society, and in all the strange, wanderin’ homeless ones who live on the streets of cities and out in the hobo-jungles. Living with these people and watching them has taught me many ways to survive, and a whole heck of a lot besides about society. Then my grandpappy, who half-raised me, is a reading man. He got thousands of books, all kinds, bought out of the moonshine he makes and sells. He planted some seeds got given to him by a biker club from Philadelphia. They come down every year on their ’cycles to collect the weed and bring him a two-pound sack of speed from the crack-capital.”

Jo Jo mumbled, somewhere in the shadows. I wondered if he was searching for a knife.

“He’s a readin’ man, my grandpappy, so Ah also have a deep interest in mechanics, electronics, science, inventions and technological innovations. He’s all but disowned me now, because of the way Ah’ve been livin’ and my areas of inquiry. He and Ah’ve had a feud goin’ on, because he never did tell me who my daddy was or how he came by me for certain. He tells me versions until Ah don’t know who to believe.”

He inhaled once more on the butt, and it disappeared between his finger and thumb. There was a smell of skin burning in the air. It reminded me of an incident in Belfast.

“Ah got a draft version of my book just about hammered together, usin’ a lot of songs Ah’d written, when it all got burned in a fire in west Philadelphia, October last. This, along with every other thing in the world Ah had and carried. Guitar, too. A beat-up and beautiful old guitar. That almost broke my old darn heart. Ah did go back to Tennessee then, but Ah could not stay and listen to Grandpappy tellin’ me ‘Told you so! Temptin’ fate.’ He’s retirin’, and wants me to stay there and learn ‘the mixture’ – moonshine – and tend him ’cause he’s old. Hell Ah will if he’ll last, but Ah gotta burnin’ to do my own work. Besides, he could buy himself a nice old lady nurse if he really wanted.”

He spun the wheelchair in a semi-circle, faced the sun, then said, “Say, Ah’m sorry. Ah guess Ah just had to open up to someone. Ah can tolerate hunger; but silence has always been a mean torture for me.”

I said nothing, fearing I would ruin the stillness of time. Even the old church seemed to be swelling in the heat, listening, casting shadows further down the street. Long gone were its begging tongues and burning candles, but somehow it still infused the imagination with vitalised, agonising angels with alibi faces, all majestically attuned to a vivid tapestry.

“Ah know you gotta go, but Ah may as well finish what Ah started. Ah decided to take my own final challenge of this journey – to come to New York City with no money or nothin’, and see if Ah could make it through the winter and find the people that live so hard all the time, and learn their way and see what songs and ideas this gave me. Ah’ve done this now, and it was pure hell mostly, because of the attitudes of so-called normal folk and because of the hopelessness felt on the streets. Now Ah’ve emotional scars and a bunch of new songs and ideas, but Ah’ve gotta get above this condition to get a little distance, if Ah’m to write about it or try to help these people. And Ah hope then to find a business manager so Ah can sell some of the material.”

The silence of the street became eerily beautiful. Like a symphony performed by ghosts of fallen warriors. You could fall right into it and be carried away, forever and ever and ever.

He had talked for an hour, but it seemed barely a minute. An hour ago I had been wrapped in self-pity; now it was gone. He was telling me, a stranger, his life story of family intrigue and dirty dealing, of the rusted hopes of life’s oppressive deepness and the unassailable belief that acuity of hindsight conquers all the dark guilt that clings stubbornly to our souls.

I wanted to tell him of a life I once knew, of madness, brutality and death, where auricular whispers recruit the emotions, destroying them forever. I wanted to tell him what it’s like to hurt until you feel so empty that the only possible release is death, making you afraid of your own emotions.

But before I could answer, an allegoric rain was upon us, stinging. Potholes became pregnant with it, gurgling as they choked on it. A troop of yellow cabs navigated the slick, aqueous streets, while the homeless squeezed their backs tight against the church walls, preventing most of their belongings becoming waterlogged. The cabs drenched me with their indifference for I, also, had become invisible, a nothing.

Overhead, a tribe of starlings flew for shelter, screaming like their cousins in Long Kesh.

I turned to say goodbye, but he was gone – they all were.

“Hey!” shouted the deli worker, wiping his massive hands on a powdered apron. “Ya really shouldn’t be down here on yer own. Dem scum moither foickers wud cut yer throat and think nothin’ of it. Go on, now! I’ll watch yer back.”

For respite, I quickly entered the Strand Bookstore on Broadway, and began browsing through its army of new and used books.

No sooner had I touched a book titled Silver’s Goldmine, than latent memories flooded back to me. Memories as potent as perfume on a lover’s skin. I thought of JCB, his head banging off a cave, pounded by cavemen with clubs. It was selfish, I know, but I was glad I was here – no longer there.

The deli worker was still at the back door, shaking his head in disbelief, obviously thinking how lucky I was to have got out of there with my life. In a way, I was lucky. Lucky to have met a man whose name was unknown, but who put things, for me, in their proper perspective. Suddenly my isolation in the great city was no longer complete. I was free again, and I knew exactly what I would do if – when – the time came to enter a heavily armed building without first knocking for permission to come in.

It was all a matter of time. And timing.

CHAPTER FORTY

A Telling of Truth

DECEMBER 1987

A coward turns away but a brave man’s choice is danger.

Euripides

To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him – two.

Norman Douglas, Almanac

Things progressed slowly. I took whatever jobs I could find, while Ronnie opened a tiny store in Soho, selling silk scarves and ties. The rent was $8,000 a month, but he wasn’t paying a penny. The landlord had fallen for his golden gab, just like scores before him. So there he was, in the glass showroom, sandwiched between art dealers and high-priced restaurants, his tiny stock of fake designer labels resting on cardboard boxes.

And as for Marco? All he could think about was all that money. It was driving him mad. But there was nothing either of us could do, until we found a suitable and willing third man – if ever.

I was beginning to doubt if another person could be found, and in desperation I put forward the only name open to me.

“We need a van,” I told him as I fingered some of his wares. “One that can be hidden until everything is ironed out.” I already had a car hidden away, but was finding it impossible to get my hands on a van.

I told Ronnie as little as possible, allowing him only the faintest whiff of potential. The less he knew, the better. I hadn’t yet said it was an armoured-car depot. I didn’t think he was ready for that just yet.

“No problem, mate. Know just the place where I can get one.”

Just the place was a car showroom on the West Side.

We went straight up the stairs to where new vans were on display.

“I hope you’re not thinking of stealing one of those?” I said, hoping he wasn’t, knowing he was.

Before he could answer, a young black salesman approached us.

“Hello, my good man,” said Ronnie, hamming it, his broad Liverpool accent completely gone, replaced by the Don of Oxford. “I’m looking for a new van. Would you be so kind as to show me what is available?” He looked the part, with his three-piece suit and gold-rimmed glasses, an empty leather briefcase tucked under his arm.

“Certainly, sir. Our latest models are on the second floor. If you’d just follow me …”

For the next hour, the salesman did a tour of the best they had in stock. I kept in the background while Ronnie opened up the engine, pretending to have a clue how it worked. Each time the salesman opened his mouth, Ronnie would reply, “Now, that is really lovely. I’m very impressed, my good man.”

Before we left, he shook the demented man’s hands, telling him that he certainly would be visiting again, and what an asset the man was to the company. Oh, and have you ever read Marcus Aurelius? No? You really must …

“That was a waste of fucking time,” I said when we reached the corner of the street. “What was all that nonsense about, pretending to buy a van? Surely you know someone up in Harlem who could get one for us?” Ronnie’s estranged wife lived in Harlem, and he knew a couple of second-hand car dealers there.

He just smiled and winked. “What’s this then, mate?”

He tapped a key to my nose. I could still smell the newness of the metal.

“What is that?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“While you were hidin’, I was watchin’. I couldn’t believe they just left the keys dangling on a hook, askin’ to be pinched. Probably an insurance scam. Bet that’s what it is. Be back in a tick.”

Without hesitation, away he went, back to the showroom.

Less than ten minutes later he pulled up alongside me, his face beaming like the red paint on the new van. “What are you waiting for, twat? Hop in.”

The confidence he had shown in obtaining the van strengthened my belief in him. But had he the “bottle” for it – as he liked to say? We would soon find out.

We walked over to Washington Square and hid the van. Dark clouds appeared from nowhere as we stood in the doorway of Edgar Allan Poe’s old lodgings.

“Bet this place could tell a story or two,” Ronnie said, peering in the window. “A lot of nutcases hang out here at night, hoping to see Poe’s ghost. Probably the reason there is so much killin’ in this city.”

Before he became too morbid, I decided it was time to tell him what exactly was in store should he decide to come onboard.

It was then that the rain came down in great buckets, making us run for the shelter of a small café. I should have seen the rain as an omen, but I wasn’t seeing too clearly.

“You’ll probably have to smack one or two of the guards with that knock-out punch you have,” I said, sipping a cup of coffee, watching for his reaction.

He was wearing a grin on his face, but his eyes contradicted it.

“Yeah,” he said, eventually. “We got to do what we got to do. The old one-two should do the trick.”

Suddenly, he stood up from the table and, with everyone in the café watching, he started doing the Ali shuffle, complete with upper cuts and left and right jabs aimed at an invisible opponent. Everyone in the place was in stitches, except me.

“Will you sit the fuck down?” I hissed.

He eventually did, but not before the grand finale of a Michael Jackson Moon Walk.

“Shouldn’t really be any problems, though,” I said, blowing gently on the hot coffee.

“Wee buns.”

“No problem,” he agreed. “Wee buns.”

It was then, just as the richness of the coffee flooded my mouth, that I knew we had problems. Big-as-a-house problems.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Wrong Turn? Wrong Person?

No coward soul is mine.

Emily Brontë, No Coward Soul is Mine

When I see a spade, I call it a spade.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

We left for Rochester two days later, early in the morning, when darkness still held the upper hand. We had an eight-hour drive in front of us, so the sooner we started, the better. I drove in front, in the car, and Ronnie followed in the van. A large fall of snow was forecast, and we knew we’d have to make good time or risk being stranded somewhere upstate.

We headed out of Manhattan via the snowy expanse of Park Avenue, punctuated along its entirety by soldier-like Christmas trees. Each tree was heavily garnished with fairy lights, glowing eerily like mermaids and iridescent insects in the dark. My eyes flickered to the trees outside each building. Their cambric branches of lighting streaks were heavy with snow and looked precariously close to snapping and falling on people below.

The wind was starting up again, swirling scuffs of white snow into tumbleweeds with flakes the size of butterflies, all the while skidding off the frozen East River, wickedly hunting down victims. Cars, debilitated, were caked in ice like displays in a fishmonger’s. Bing Crosby was on the radio and Santa was everywhere, yo-ho-hoing.

We kept strictly within the speed limit, despite the teasing vastness of the New York thruway, just crying out to be tested. I hoped fervently that Ronnie wouldn’t give in to its challenge, knowing that New York State troopers would be all over us in seconds.

Everything was going fine until halfway through the journey, when I happened to glance in my mirror just in time to see Ronnie exit the thruway. He had taken the wrong exit.

Fuck! I couldn’t get off the thruway until the next exit, about thirty miles away.

I banged the steering wheel with my fist, calling him all the stupid bastards under the sun. All he had to do was follow me, but as usual he couldn’t do something simple, everything had to be complicated in his book. By the time I got off the thruway and backtracked the thirty-odd miles, he was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t realise it then, but that’s what he intended.

With no other choice, the plan was immediately cancelled. I returned to New York with barely enough money to pay for the petrol and toll booths, seething with rage, angry with myself for putting my trust in Ronnie when I should have known better.

A few days later I went to meet him, to tell him what I thought of him. On the subway in, I couldn’t take my eyes off the doe-eyed waif from a poster advertising Les Miserables on Broadway. A local wit had scrawled: Do I look miserable? Answer: More or less.

My sentiments exactly, I thought, as I stepped from the train and headed towards his shop.

“You’re one gutless bastard,” I said, entering the shop, loud enough for two customers to hear me. I wanted to wreck the place, to throw his dubious wares out into the street, followed by him.

“Calm down, mate,” he replied, quickly easing the two customers out the door, telling them I was a great kidder. Ha! Ha! Ha!

“Calm down? You gutless bastard. That’s all you are. A typical fucking gutless Brit.”

He took exception to being called a Brit, and requested that I withdraw the offensive term.

“I’m an Englishman, a Liverpudlian to be precise.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck if you’re one of the Beatles.”

“I know how it must look, mate. But the truth is, I got confused with the length of time on the road and all that snow. It was blinding me. I thought I saw your car pull off at that exit, and followed you. As God is my witness, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t you. Finally, I got back on the thruway, and managed to make my way up to Rochester. But you weren’t there, mate.”

The last sentence was an accusation, and his face bore the anguish of a betrayed dog deserted by its callous owner.

Had he gone to Rochester? Obviously, there was no way of clarifying this, or his indecisiveness. Was that what he was betting on?

“It’s all academic now, anyway,” I said. “It’s finished. The opportunity will never come again. We fucked it up.”

“Don’t say that, mate. We’ll think it out better the next time. We rushed it. It would have been a disaster if we’d –”

“Don’t. Okay? Don’t say another fucking word. Understand?”

He didn’t, and I left, never looking back at him, the moth who simply wanted to boast of touching the flame without being burned; to be guilty by association.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Showtime!

5 JANUARY 1993

Meredith, we’re in!

Fred Kitchen, The Bailiff

Hollywood couldn’t have done it better.

New York’s Irish Voice

370 South Avenue is a red-cement block building housed in a desolate industrial area close to Interstate Highway 490. It was the sort of building you would never give a second glance to. No one could imagine this one-storey, prosaic building to be an Aladdin’s cave, the Brinks Incorporated armoured-car cash repository.

That was the whole point.

Brinks Incorporated, established in 1859, is the oldest and largest secure transportation company in the world, with 160 branch operations in the US and forty in Canada, and affiliates in fifty countries around the globe. It has a nice neat history, and I was planning to become part of that history. I had hoped we would get it done before Christmas. Instead, it was now 5 January 1993, five days before my birthday. The time was shortly after 4pm. By 7pm it would turn out to be the happiest or saddest birthday I ever had.

The plans had changed drastically. No more excuses. Deep down, I knew it was total madness, but it had become a monkey on my back – no, a fucking great big hairy ape, a Siren, calling me, teasing me with untold wealth. Whatever happened from here on in, there would be no turning back, for either Marco or myself. Oh, there was one thing I had yet to mention to him. I had brought replica guns.

“What the fuck are these? Are you yanking my chain? This wasn’t part of the fucking deal?”

“It’s essential that no one gets hurt. And they won’t, provided you have faith in me. We don’t need the real thing,” I said, trying to calm him with my logic. “The guards in there will shit their fucking pants when they see these shoved quickly into their faces.”

We stood in the freezing snow and wind, staring at each other. He kept shaking his head in disbelief.

“No wonder that friend of yours got cold feet,” he eventually said, breaking the terrible silence. “You’re fucking nuts.”

“Trust me. We can do this without anyone being hurt. In an hour or so, you’ve won the lotto. What do you say?”

“Fucking mad Irish bastard!” was what he said.

The first thing we needed to do was find a parking spot, as near to the building as possible without being in the eye of any cameras in the area. I was becoming frantic. What little space there was had been allocated to the few homes in the area, leaving one side of a tiny street available. The problem with this was that the van would have to be moved before the designated time, when the local alternate-side-of-the-street parking law came into effect. We could not afford to get a parking ticket, which might come back to seriously haunt me later. With no other choice, I parked the van in the company of the trees that lined the street, and prayed no one would be looking out their window on a freezing night like this.

Most of the money would be coming down from the Federal Reserve Bank in Buffalo, to be distributed locally in cash machines. The last armoured car from Buffalo had just made its stop at Brinks. I watched it pull in as I walked briskly towards the building.

The freezing, wet weather was perfect for our hooded jackets and balaclavas, allowing us to blend in with the few people heading home. We were all duplicates, as if we had purchased our clothes from the same Army ’n’ Navy store in Brooklyn.

The approaching dark brought tiny bats of trepidation scurrying about in my stomach as the chalky headlights of 490’s traffic lit up the Brinks depot. A voice in my head tried to reason with me, asking what the hell I was doing here. But I already had the answer to that. I had a million of them.

Reaching the car park of Brinks, Marco quickly slid into Tom’s tiny car, parked between two elephantine armoured cars. I had spotted Tom’s car from the highway, and smiled. Tom kept it in the same spot every working day. I was banking on another of his habits. He also normally left the doors to his car unlocked, as did most people living upstate.

Marco squeezed himself into the back of it, hiding in its shadows, while I watched from a safe distance, communicating with a walky-talky. I knew when the last truck would leave, but more importantly I knew that the guards always sent someone out, just to make sure the grounds were clear, before they commenced the work of placing money in the vaults. When I spotted the guard coming out, I would radio to Marco to take him just as he was about to re-enter the building.

Timing was crucial. We both had to instil confidence in each other. He depended on me to get it right at the correct moment, and I depended on him to carry it out to the letter. One slip-up, and we were both finished and penniless, with only prison as our reward. Get it right, and we would both be laughing all the way to the bank, or in this case, all the way to the Brinks.

“The last truck is leaving,” I whispered into the walky-talky.

Marco didn’t answer, so I whispered it again. “The truck is pulling out.”

Then came his sarcastic whispery reply. “Damn it, I know. I’m right beside it.”

The truck moved out slowly. Within the next few minutes, a guard would appear.

“Someone’s coming out,” I whispered into the walky-talky. The icy wind was cutting the face off me, and I was finding it difficult to hear Marco’s reply. “Can you hear me? Someone’s out, looking about.”

The guard went to the side of the building, then, to my horror, walked gingerly towards Tom’s car. From my distance, I couldn’t make out what he was up to. His hand seemed to go to his hip. Had he seen something? Heard my voice from Marco’s walky-talky and gone to investigate? Was his hand going for a gun on his hip?

For a heart-stopping moment, the guard stopped beside Tom’s car. I wondered had Marco heard my instructions? I couldn’t communicate, fearing the guard would hear the muffled static.

I was conscious of only two sounds as I stood in the dark with the wind whistling up my arse: my heartbeat, and a clock in my head warning that time was ticking away. I had to move the van in twenty minutes, or risk getting a parking ticket. Worse, it might be towed. Now that would be fun.

Nothing was moving at the Brinks. The guard seemed to be peering into the car. It was then that I made the reckless decision to walk towards the Brinks, and take the guard before he captured Marco.

I walked calmly, but briskly. The guard still hadn’t moved. His back was to me. Ten seconds and I would have him.

Marco was moving slowly, easing himself from the car. He hadn’t needed my help.

“Don’t raise yer hands, pal,” he softly commanded, pointing his replica gun at the shocked guard. “Keep them in your pocket. No heroics. Understand?”

The guard nodded.

“Now, turn around, nice and slow, pal. We’re all going to visit the rest of your pals in there, like one big, happy family. Behave, and all this will be over before you even know it. Understand?”

“Sure,” said the guard, turning to face me. “Just don’t hurt any of us.”

Fuck! It was Tom. I felt like shit, because I knew he was frightened. I could do nothing to reassure him, so I said nothing, wondering if he suspected that it was me?

A few seconds later, we were in like Flynn, entering through the door, which was now ajar. Somewhere in the dark, voices spoke as if from a great distance, thinning themselves out into hums.

I glanced at my watch. We had less than eight minutes to secure the building and disarm the rest of the guards, and for me to return to the van and drive it in, all nice and casual.

I placed my finger to my mouth. Someone was approaching. A door opened. In my mind, I could picture the guard staring down into the dark where we stood, smelling something wrong, his hand on his gun. Would he fire first, ask questions later? Was this the one who was trigger-happy, as reported laughingly by Tom one night, over a couple of beers? The one who boasted of hoping some motherfucker would be stupid enough to rob the place while he was on duty? “Ha! I’d shoot that mother in the balls first, watch him scream in agony. Then – kabbam! Right in the fuckin’ head.”

My hand went unconsciously from my balls to my face. I tried not to think about it, fearing it would cloud my judgement. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t erase the picture of my face, a bloody pulp, splattered all over the walls.

The footsteps echoed back from whence they came. I exhaled through my mouth and arse as Marco tapped on my shoulder, indicating it was time to move.

Two minutes gone, and Tom was secure. We placed him in the back, away from the rest, before making the perilous journey up the stairs.

One flight of stairs later, and the light from the room stung our eyes. We’d made it to the most sensitive part of the plan: ‘The Trap’.

The Trap was the command centre where all the cameras festooned throughout the building were monitored. One of the many locked cabinets in The Trap housed video recorders, recording all activity in and around the vaults where the cash is handled: cash-counting machines, offices and garage.

On their own TV monitors, I sat and watched as the guards went about their duty, guns on their hips. One was in a vault. I could just about make him out. Another was stacking money bags.

I scanned the room with the remote, a voyeur, zooming in and out, familiarising myself as best I could with the little time left. An empty Coke can lay squashed beneath a counting table; a newspaper sat on top like table-covering, as if they were expecting someone for supper.

Mustn’t disappoint, I thought.

Then my eyes caught the open cupboard with its family of evil-looking shotguns lurking inside, waiting and hoping.

Bastards. Bet you’d love to shoot the arse off me.

The guns stared back. Helpless. For now …

I could even see the irregular sepia rings from the guards’ coffee cups staining yesterday’s newspapers. I had suddenly become an editor. This time tomorrow they would all be reading about themselves. We all would. Hopefully.

Marco leaned over my shoulder, pointing at the guard in the vault. “I’ll take him,” I whispered. I knew in my heart it was dodgy, because it would be Trigger Happy. Just my luck, I thought, knowing that any noise would trigger the alarms.

For a second, the dread of the automatic door shutting, trapping me, entered my mind. Worse, old Trigger Happy getting the draw on me, shooting me in the balls, laughing his own off, shouting: “Motherfucker! Got ya! Kafuckinbam!”

I shivered, then quickly pulled the balaclava over my face. It was Showtime. Or shit time, depending on the outcome.

Within seconds, I was behind the guard in the vault. I had been so slyly successful, it was necessary for me to cough, just to make my presence felt. Initially, he turned to me smiling, believing it a prank, then staggered back in disbelief as I pointed my replica gun at him. His hand hovered menacingly over his own, real gun.

I covered my heavy Belfast accent with the worst Russian one ever heard. “Don’t even think about it, comrade,” I hissed, my nerves racing.

But he was thinking about it. All those fucking John Wayne and Gary Cooper movies raced around old Trigger Happy’s head. We’d all be dead in a minute because of the Duke and High Noon.

A single bead of sweat rested on his left eyebrow, like a rabbit’s head peering nervously over a hedge, searching for the hound. Slowly it trickled down his face, leaving a transparent trail behind.

He was going to do it. The crazy bastard was going to go out in a blaze of fucking glory, taking me and everyone else with him.

I pulled the trigger back on my own shitty replica gun, and it sounded like someone opening a rusted can of beer. I expected the plastic trigger to fall off and land at my feet. But it was that sound that snapped Trigger Happy back to the real world; a sound I’d be eternally grateful to.

“Get fucking down!” I screamed, seeing him waver.

He did, and I quickly removed his gun and frisked him, in case he was the type who concealed a gun between his cheeks. With the plastic ’cuffs used by cops for crowd control, I secured his wrists.

Marco’s guard had more sense, dropping his gun and belt to the floor immediately. Everyone – the other guards included, it seemed – was relieved when Trigger Happy was secure. It wasn’t his money, anyway. Brinks Inc. paid these men the minimum wage, expecting them to lay down their lives to safeguard their stock. What a fucking joke.

Three minutes. That’s all it took. It was frightening, the ease of it. As I left the building to bring the van in, a feeling crept over me. I was disappointed. It was all so anti-climactic. Three years in the planning, and it was all over in three minutes. For some reason, I was the one who felt robbed.

Now, with adrenaline coursing through us, we became supermen. Mountains of money disappeared in front of our eyes, as we heaved it into sacks. Every now and then we stopped and grinned at each other. I was so happy I wanted to hug myself, give myself a big kiss.

It would transpire that we had lifted almost 1,200lbs of paper weight in less than fifteen minutes. An Olympic record. Each 100lb of paper represented, roughly, $1,000,000. I don’t care what anyone says, there’s a hell of a lot to be said for a solid monetary incentive.

Just as things were going so well, the sound of someone banging on the front door made us freeze. We both stopped breathing. Perhaps it had just been the winter wind playing havoc with our nerves, winding us up? When it banged again we both knew the truth.

I placed my finger to my mouth and quickly, but quietly, took the stairs to the security room two by two. In a second, I had the cameras scanning the exterior of the building.

I couldn’t believe it. Outside, a lone black man stood, banging on the steel door. Every now and then, he seemed to glance over his shoulder at someone, waiting in the dark. Had someone seen something suspicious? What if more than one was out there, waiting to rush us? Could it be an off-duty cop, coming to check? Could it be fucking robbers, coming to rob us? The irony of that! All was possible in that moment of madness.

Whatever was racing through our minds, we knew we would have to go down and find out what he wanted. The longer we stalled, the more suspicious he – they? – would become.

As Marco walked slowly to the door, I stood in the shadows, directly behind, a guard’s automatic shotgun ready in my hands.

Marco took a deep breath before speaking through the security vent. “What’s the problem, pal?”

The man seemed as nervous as us. “I’m very sorry … but we’re lost. We’re trying to get back on the highway …”

It turned out to be nothing more sinister than a black man lost in a strange town. His wife and kids sat in a car at the side of the road, terror on their faces, probably thinking about some KKK nutcase coming along in the dead of night.

As the man’s car disappeared down 490, we sat down against the wall, not saying a word, both knowing each other’s thoughts. I laughed. So did he. We couldn’t stop, giggling and biting our lips, tears rolling down our guilty faces.

With the van now packed to capacity, I jumped in, started the engine. Thunderbirds are go! It sputtered, sending dark smoke into the air, then shook like a spacecraft ready for takeoff.

It shook and it shook, but it refused to move. We had put too much money in. The engine was burning up and the building was black with smoke. Everyone was coughing.

That’s when the van conked out.

Marco was upstairs, removing the videotapes, to hinder the cops as much as possible.

I tried the ignition key again. Nothing. Just as I was about to get out, Marco jumped in beside me, not wanting to say a word, in case that word caused panic. A phone call could come in at any minute. Perhaps someone had seen all the smoke, or something else suspicious.

He was first to move, opening up the engine, checking if it could be fixed.

Something told me it couldn’t.

“Get some of the bags out,” he hissed.

In less than a minute, we removed about one third of the bags. The adrenaline was fading fast, and my muscles began to ache.

“Try it again.”

I wanted to remove the mask. The sweat and smoke were stinging my eyes, making it difficult to see. Instead, I tried the engine, pumping the gas pedal, praying to God, knowing He wouldn’t approve of this.

The van sounded a splutter of relief, coughed, then roared.

I was drained and sagging with exhaustion. If it stalled now, that would be the end.

The massive doors of the garage slowly – too slowly – opened, introducing the night sky. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. It made little difference that we were forced to remove $3,000,000, and leave the stack with the rest of the millions still in the vault. I was simply glad to be out of there, taking in that cold night air. The mask was off and I was breathing again.

In the back of the van lay $5,500,000 in twenties and the rest in mixed bills, bringing the grand total to almost $8,000,000 dollars. Not bad for an hour’s work for a kid from Belfast. Unfortunately for Tom, he was sitting on top of the bags. Marco had insisted on taking him with us, to encourage the rest of the guards not to do anything stupid. I felt bad. He lay there like a piece of meat at the abattoir. I justified all of it by telling myself that I would take care of him later, financially. He would no longer have to work for Brinks. Besides, we would drop him off in an hour, none the worse for wear.

Less than twenty minutes later, the van – minus Tom – pulled into the garage of a prominent New York State lawyer, a cousin of Marco. Quickly and quietly, we unloaded the sacks, placing them behind a false wall that blended perfectly with props scattered about.

The temptation to keep just a little of my cut for the journey home was overwhelming, but thankfully the cooler head of Marco prevailed.

“Don’t be stupid, Sam. What if you’re stopped by cops?”

Before departing into the night’s darkness, I glanced at the lit-up dining room, where the lawyer was entertaining some friends. I swear he winked at me, raising his glass in a toast, with a smile so innocent it was believable.

Marco departed in a car – his cousin’s, presumably – and I took command of the van. We would meet in about a month, all going well. And as I drove the eight-hour journey back to New York, a billboard greeted me, asking if I had enjoyed my stay in Rochester and would I be coming back? I smiled at the woman and winked. Hell, you betcha I enjoyed it, but don’t be offended if ya don’t all see me again.

It had all gone according to plan. Beautiful in its simplicity. A pity the van had been so small, but that’s the way it goes. Couldn’t complain. No one hurt. No one caught. Perfect.

Perfect, my arse! Twenty minutes later I turned on the radio, and soon I realised the perfect crime had been perfect only for about twenty minutes. One of the guards had managed to wriggle free and raise the alarm. Police helicopters were now in the air, searching. The radio mentioned a van. They even knew the colour! Fuck!

Had it not been raining, perhaps I wouldn’t have left the tyre mark behind that stuck out like a black, sore thumbprint on the pale floor of the Brinks depot. But that was all in hindsight. Spilt milk. As the New York State thruway started to congest with police cars, something in my stomach told me I wouldn’t be making it home after all. The thruway would be cordoned off at each exit, guarded by trigger-happy police, only too willing to burn the barrel off their guns as they used me for target practice.

Each time the headlights of a car came up behind me, my stomach heaved. I tried to listen to the news and for the helicopters overhead, all at the same time, all the while trying to keep my speed at exactly 55mph. A couple of times I thought I heard someone in the back of the van.

The robbery was now headlines on every radio station I tuned to. A van, grey in colour, was the culprit. Two, possibly three men inside. All armed. All extremely dangerous. Proceed with extreme caution. Repeat: all armed and extremely dangerous.

The fuckers were setting me up to be shot dead. I could picture the steroid-bloated cops, grinning, lurking behind their cars, lights and sirens all turned off, smelling me coming a mile away. “Fox News” or even “Hard Copy” would interview them all afterwards, each claiming to have fired the fatal shots that left half my brains scattered across the New York State Line. They’d be heroes, and get a few spoken lines on “Cops”. They had it made.

Twice I had to stop at a filling station for petrol, and each time I knew this was where it would end. Would I burst into flames, or would they wait until I was about to re-enter the van? No. It would be the flames. Give me a taste of what was waiting for me at the end of the Big Journey.

Seven hours later, as I slowly came to a halt at the tollbooth, ticket in my hand, I knew that here was definitely where it would all end. The bastards probably wouldn’t even give me a chance to surrender.

“You have a nice day,” said the smiling lady at the booth, as she handed me change from a twenty.

It was then – looking at her beautiful but dead smile – that I knew everything was going to be just fine. “Thank you. I’ll do my best,” I replied as the van lurched forward, towards the early morning sun just coming into view over Manhattan.

With a bit of luck, I’ll be home in twenty minutes. Perfect.

You simply can’t beat the perfect plan. It works every time. Until you discover it wasn’t so perfect, after all …

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Room for Heroes

JUNE 1993

An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books.

James Thomson, Scottish poet

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

I had noticed the store with its “For Rent or Sale” sign on a couple of occasions as I drove by, dropping my kids off at school. It was a perfect location for what I had in mind, situated in an idyllic middle-class neighbourhood of Greeks, Italians and Irish, a community of hard-working people who had tremendous pride in where they lived.

However, some negative points could be drawn from the exterior of the store: it looked quite small and had enormous rusted locks – four in number, each the size of a coconut – studded to its metallic skin. I wondered if this was a gauge of crime in the area, or simply an over-cautious owner? A swathe of dry vegetation led straight up the building’s side, like a five o’clock shadow.

“I’ve seen you a couple of times, looking at the store. Are you interested in it?” The man asking the question was of slim build, tall with red hair. There was no doubt about the Irish in his freckled face, dotted like rusty nail-heads.

I was caught off-guard by his sudden appearance. “I’m just looking, at the minute. I’m thinking about opening a store in the neighbourhood, but –”

Before I could finish, he had my elbow and was fumbling for his keys. Within a minute, the locks fell to the ground and the shutters clanged open. I was quickly ushered inside.

“Terry McLaughlin.” He put out his hand and I shook it. “Has every little thing you would need. Bathroom in the back, plenty of storage in the next room – and there’s a great restaurant down the street.”

“Yes, but –”

“What kind of store are you opening? You can even see the Empire State Building lit up at night, all red, white and blue. It’s great to look at.”

“Yes, I know. I see it every night from my own apartment,” I said, deflating his swelling pride-filled face.

“Oh …”

It all sounded rather cosy, but the truth was being stretched, slightly. It was a bare, skeletal box, devoid of even a single redeeming factor, wounded from a sad history of abuse and neglect. Odds and ends, snarled in a confused state of disarray, were scattered haphazardly across the floor. It looked completely uninviting. Granny paint was wrinkling, and wires hung nervously from exposed lights turned gangrene-yellow from the layers of rotting insect carcasses attached to them. The dust looked menacing. It reeked of strangled cigarettes. I thought about my allergies and asthma. The air conditioning wasn’t functioning properly either.

Terry read the reluctance on my face perfectly. The store’s ten months of emptiness had started to eat at him – and at his bank balance. There was no way he could countenance further reductions brought about by this ugly duckling. Outside, vast slabs of trees circled the back of the shop, suffocating in their closeness.

“We could chop them down,” said Terry, worried, watching my body language. “It would bring in better light, expose – reveal – the store’s hidden vastness. To be totally honest, I was just saying to my wife, the other day, that those trees seem to –”

“No, I think they’re great.”

“… do wonders for the store,” he smiled, not missing a beat.

“My father had a tree, just like that one, in his back garden.” I pointed to the tree in question, its bark splintered by squirrel teeth. “He was great at stuff like that. Won prizes and got himself on the front page of The Irish News – our local newspaper in Belfast.” I was blabbering like a fool. “But they made him leave his trees and garden behind when we moved. Said they wanted to build a ring-road …”

I thought I witnessed a tear in Terry’s eye. Probably from all the dust-covered cobwebs dangling from the ceiling.

“Shameful,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t understand people. Some of these trees have been here hundreds of years. They were here before us, and will be here after us.”

He sounded like a page from National Geographic, or Thoreau. I didn’t want to remind him that half a minute ago he wanted to coat them all in concrete. I didn’t tell him how much I hated the trees in Dad’s garden; how he made me stand guard, after school, on top of a coal heap in the garden, fearful that neighbourhood kids would steal the apples before he had the chance to sell them to the Greengrocer from Hell. The first thieving head that popped up over that wall, I was to let them have it with all those lumps of coal at my feet.

“Coffee?” asked Terry, breaking my thoughts. “Rossalina’s restaurant makes the best coffee on the planet, and as for their Italian food …” His eyes went to heaven, indicating an altitude above adjectives. “They do deliveries also, seven days a week.”

“You don’t happen to own it as well?” I smiled.

“No, but we’ve been friends for years. They’re great people. Did I tell you they do a special each Tuesday and Thursday?”

“White with one sugar, Terry, please …”

He returned in five minutes, and we stood outside, drinking the coffee and listening to a neighbour’s barely perceptible sprinkler spit on a lawn covered with wilted daisies and bored weeds. Sparrows and magpies swooped and darted between scattered bushes, while a fountain of pigeons squirted skywards, destroying the beauty of perfect blue. I watched as they transformed themselves into dragonflies, before disappearing into dots the size of rice beads.

“There’s a lot of work here, Terry,” I said. “I don’t really know if I want to spend the money and time involved.”

He nodded. “Of course there is, but you see the potential in it, don’t you?” He was grinning. He thought he had won.

He had. Almost.

“Well, I’ve two other premises to look at. One tomorrow, the other on –”

“Look no further. Two months free rent, plus I personally will take care of all the electrical work and odds and ends.” He put out his hand for the gentleman’s agreement.

“Three months? Sounds very generous, Terry.”

His hand was twitching slightly as it moved towards mine, reluctantly, in slow motion. He shook it – a bit too tightly – and, for the first time since our meeting, asked my name.

“Patrick.”

“Beautiful name,” said Terry, not wanting to know the rest of it.

That’s the way all deals should be done, I thought, as we reached the outside of the shop, wishing each other a good day in the balmy heat. A handshake, no questions asked, no implications for either party should things turn dark and nasty.

I quickly committed the day to memory, hoarding every single word and touch for a time when life would no longer seem so wonderful and calm. A moment for perpetual nostalgia, never spoiled by its disastrous conclusion.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Once Again, The Hulk

… the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Every one lives by selling something.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the Plains

I commenced work eagerly on the store, the very next day, scrubbing it from top to bottom. Buckets of white paint set patiently in the yard, ready for their call to battle.

While Jai Park – a Korean sign maker and old customer from the casino – outlined his plans for the store’s exterior, my mind set about furnishing the interior. I vowed to myself that this would be no ordinary comic store.

If you build it, they will come …

People would come, from miles away; kids would torture their parents or guardians to bring them. Once I had the little kid, I would capture the bigger kid – the father, the dweller in retro – mesmerising him with the toys and comics of his childhood, winking at him as he pretended to browse: For the kid, actually. I’m just looking.

No need for embarrassment, I would assure him. Look at me, the biggest kid on the block. And how about that Spiderman Number 1, eh? As close as near-mint condition as you’ll ever see. Bet you’ve never seen a copy as clean as that? I would say, easing it from the wall, gently, as if it were an Old Master.

He would tell me that, in fact, he had seen a copy as clean and bright as this one. That was the day he tried to coax his old man for ten cents, begging, pleading for one more cent, because he’s just got to have this copy to keep his collection fluent.

I wanted to be the Hulk, I’d confide in him, unlocking a key in my head that a good psychiatrist would kill to obtain. The father would smile with relief at our shared dark secret.

I would not tell him that I wanted to be the Hulk so as to kill my father, smashing a building over his head as he screamed at me, blaming me for my mother walking out the door, all those years ago.

No, I would not want to scare my very first customer away, so I’d smile right back, watching his eyes, ready to pop, anticipating, the tongue licking. Just at that point it would be time to introduce him to the Mylar experience. Wait until I show him my Fantastic Four Number I. He’ll shit his pants, then die of a heart attack.

The comics – the expensive ones – are secured in an archival storage Mylar, keeping all those grubby fingers from destroying the irreplaceable. It gives the comic a false liquid gleam, as if it has just left the printing press. Normal plastics, vinyl, and other storage materials gradually oxidise, releasing harmful acids, which slowly eat paper alive. Mylar is a storage material specifically developed for the long-term storage of historically important documents. It is the archival material in which the Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta are stored. Used by leading museums worldwide, it is considered completely impregnable for up to 400 years. I doubt if I’ll be about to contradict that claim.

Once he sees the Mylar, he knows we’re speaking serious money. A mortgage may have to be gambled on; the kids’ college days look doomed. Fuck, he may have to rob a Brinks armoured car … suddenly, he is transported back to his first meeting with Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, et al., because the moment he touches the comic, he is mine, everlastingly trapped in Spiderman’s web.

My love of and addiction to American comics can be blamed squarely on Dad. It was he, after all, who started me on this shaky road, introducing me to the wonders of Marvel and DC at the early age of seven, bringing back bundles of them from his trips to New York as a merchant seaman. The writers and artists had a profound impact on my youth, employing a dazzling range of storytelling devices. I learned more about the world of words from Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko and Steve Ditko – the unchallenged masters – than I ever did from the long roll-call of teachers with angry leather straps and angrier leather faces. Graphic artists such as Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman filled an even greater need in me, later.

“The name? You’re sure?” asked Jai, clicking his fingers in my face, rousing me from my childhood trance. “No going back.”

I had pondered over the name for the store for days. The obvious came to mind. Heroes and Villains? I’d be asking for trouble with that one. Dragon Slayer? Would that scare people away? Hulk’s Kingdom? No, Marvel would have me in court quicker than Clark Kent removing his shirt in a telephone booth. Finally, I opted for the more cryptic KAC Comics. The initials stood for each of my kids: Kelly, Ashley and Corey.

Tomorrow would be the big day. I was nervous and excited. What if it’s a complete flop? What if no one comes? What if …

But I believed, deep in my heart, that they would come. I would soon be watching kids’ faces lighting up, as their imaginations travelled to vast, unexplored realms, to places where words are irrelevant. I remembered my own tiny face in the wee shop on Duncairn Gardens, as I pleaded with the woman to hold on to X-Men Number 14 for me, promising her I would have her three pence in a week, and producing my bus fare and school dinner money as a down-payment and commitment of trust. I tell her she can even hold on to the comic until I come up with the goods. Does she not realise that comics are the only thing keeping me sane in a house gone mad? All I ask is that she puts the comic away under the counter, away from greedy prying eyes, away from predators who would have the audacity to take what is destined to be mine.

She is amazed by my passion, and tells me she will hold the comic for three days. I’m devastated – I know I will never get my hands on that sort of money in the time allocated. And then it becomes so clear it frightens me. I will be able to get it! Why didn’t I think of this before? Tomorrow is the day I bring the rent for the house up to the Antrim Road, to be paid at the wee corner business. It’s simple. I’ll sign the wee orange book. I can master Dad’s signature on it perfectly. Dad will never know, and I’ll have enough money to buy as many comics as I can carry. Fuck! Why didn’t I think of this foolproof scheme before? It’s perfect, and the great thing about it is that I will be able to do it every week, for the rest of my life. I’m gonna be rich …

Terry popped in on his way home, to wish me all the best for tomorrow. “I’ll be honest, Patrick. When you told me you were opening a comic book store, I thought, bang goes my rent. But now … I’m not so sure. It almost makes me wish I was a kid again.”

His glance travelled from wall to wall. Not an inch of space was to be seen, as comics covered every spot.

“God, you must have hundreds of ’em, Patrick.” Then he spotted the price on some of them. “You’re kiddin’. Right?”

“No,” I smiled. “And believe it or not, those are great prices.”

“Three hundred bucks for a Batman comic?”

“That’s cheap. Look behind you, at the one in the glass case.”

He read the price out loud, and then whispered it to himself, like a Gregorian chant. “I don’t believe this. And people actually pay that sort of money?”

“Gladly.”

He was captured by the beauty of it all. He remembered his Green Lantern comics and, regretfully, asked me how much they would fetch if he still had them. When I told him, he became quite despondent.

“Don’t worry, Terry, you’re not the only one who destroyed or lost his collection. If no one lost their comics, they wouldn’t be as valuable and as sought-after as they are. The Wall Street Journal said it – what all enthusiasts already knew: that golden- and silver-age comics appreciate in value quicker than real estate.” He didn’t want to hear that. “Perhaps you should come into partnership with me? Sell me the store?” I smiled.

He left, no longer wanting to hear about it. He mumbled something about Green Lantern, that he could still have a couple of copies in the loft, or perhaps in the basement.

The door chime alerted me to someone entering the store. I turned to see my first customers come through the door. They were not what I expected.

“How’s it going?” I asked, nervously. My stomach froze. Not because they were my first real customers, but because of their uniforms. New York’s Finest, all blue, different shades.

The cops said nothing, and I knew that in a moment I was going to be arrested for the Brinks.

“Long you open, pal?” asked the smaller of the two giants, who’s at least six-foot-two from his knees.

“Tomorrow’ll be the first day. You’re my first customers,” I smiled, even though I knew how scary it must look, like the Joker.

“Nice place. Great collection,” said Giant Number One, while Giant Number Two appeared to be looking down the hallway, suspiciously.

“Got a bathroom down there? Too much coffee.” He smiled, as I searched desperately for a way to say no. Above the cupboard in the toilet is a grip-bag containing single dollar bills. Over 20,000 of them! From the Brinks. I should have burnt them while I had the chance, but I couldn’t stomach good money going to waste. I was about to pay for my greed.

“It’s … a bit small. I doubt if you’d be able to squeeze through those mountains of boxes down there, with all the comics in them.” My smile started to fade. It looked very suspicious, my smile, and I hated it for trying to sabotage me.

“Ha! Don’t worry. I’ve been in tighter spots,” he said, manoeuvring his bulk nimbly for such a giant.

So have I, pal, I thought, as he sucked in his breath, winking at me, his frame slowly edging victoriously through the barrier of boxes.

“Don’t forget and wash your hands, Jimmy,” shouted Giant Number Two, then turned to me. “So, where ya from? Just moved into Queens?”

Think very carefully. “No, I used to live up at Jackson Heights for years.”

He nodded. “Gettin’ dangerous, that place. Lots of drug dealers. It’s the cocaine capital of America.”

What he conveniently left out is that it is also the most ethnically diverse neighbourhood in New York. It is home to approximately 100,000 people, and famous residents at one time included members of the big swing bands that dominated the music scene in the thirties and early forties, including Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, and Glenn Miller – no relation, sorry to say.

Giant Number One seemed to be taking an awfully long time. I peered down the corridor.

“Where you from? Ireland?” he asked, knowing the answer. What he wants me to tell him is exactly whereabouts in Ireland.

“Yes. But I’ve been here a good ten years,” I said, trying to keep the head and avoid the trap.

“Still got the brogue, though,” he continued.

“That’s right. Proud of it.” Careful, I thought. Don’t get too defensive. He’s only being friendly. Or is he? Where the fuck is that other big bastard? Fallen through to the East River?

“Jimmy’s people are from Ireland. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?” he says to Giant Number One, who thankfully reappears, a bit thinner than when he went on his excursion.

“Cork. Great people. The best county in Ireland, I believe.”

“I’m from Antrim. The real best one.” Had he spotted the bag? Did he open it? Don’t be stupid. You’d be handcuffed by now.

“Jimmy Coogan.” He put out his hand and I shook it, wondered had he washed it. “This is Tommy Johnson, my partner,” said Jimmy. I shook Tommy’s hand also.

“I’ve a lot of friends who collect comics, over at Rikers Island.”

“Rikers Island Penitentiary?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Don’t worry. They’re guards – not prisoners.” They both laughed. So did I, but nervously.

Rikers Island Penitentiary is New York’s largest and most violent prison, with ten jails sprawled across an area half the size of Central Park. I’ve seen it from a safe distance. Hopefully, it’ll stay that way.

“That’s great. I’m sure I could work out a special deal for them,” I replied, hating the thought, but thinking ahead. One never knows …

“That’s nice of you, pal. I’ll let them know. Anyway, we’ve got to run, but don’t you be worryin’ about this store. We’ll be passin’ every now and then. Let the bad guys know we’re here.” He smiled, and his teeth were scary-white.

I closed the door, wondering what I had let myself in for as I turned off the main lights, leaving the neon superheroes flashing in the darkness. I doubted if I would sleep tonight, and promised myself I’d get up very early in the morning, to make sure every tiny detail was perfect.

Pinprick stars dusted the sky above me and the darkness felt vast and heavy, as the bottle-green ford parked conveniently beside an umbrella of trees. Faint headlights danced with the darkness, guiding moths to the ugly bug ball.

I was sure it was the same one I had noticed the preceding evening, but when the old man emerged from it, bent and grey, I laughed at myself for such foolishness.

“Drive carefully,” he said to the driver, as the car slowly edged away.

He looked straight at me but through me. Suddenly, my skin began to tingle, just like Spiderman’s.

You’ve got to get out a bit more, I advised myself. A lot more …

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The Rat

JULY 1993

It appears to be one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history.

New York Times, front page

We are offering $300,000 reward for information leading to the suspects.

Brinks Incorporated

Gentlemen, in this business, you’re only as good as your rats.

US Law Enforcement Academy

“FBI Agent Fuentes speaking. How may I help?”

A few moments of silence seeped in, making the pause seem longer. It was as if the person at the other end of the phone was having second thoughts, weighting up action he might, in time, come to regret.

Every inch the professional, Fuentes detected the hesitancy and quickly moved. “Would you prefer to speak to one of our female agents?” He didn’t know if the person at the other end was male or female, but this option might help to gain their confidence.

“I need to …” A cough, a clearing of the throat, not the conscience.

Again the silence, but at least he now knew it was a male.

“Yes, sir. Just take your time. I’m sitting right here.” Easy. Don’t rush him. Something in the FBI man’s stomach told him that this could be the call they’d all been waiting on. They knew he was out there. The local rumours had mentioned a grudge. This could be him.

“I need to speak to Agent Stith … the one in charge of the Brinks case.” The voice still held the tell-tale Belfast twang, though covered by years in America.

“Agent Stith isn’t available at this moment, sir. But I can put you through –”

“No! No one else. I’ll try and call at the same time tomorrow … perhaps.”

“Sir, if you would just –” Damn! Hung up!

Fuentes cursed himself, wondering if he had frightened him away. He wondered what Stith would say. They were all under pressure. Damn! Almost …

The FBI man needn’t have worried. The caller would be back. Back with a vengeance.

***

“There’s danger in wearing a wire. There’s nothing cool about it, the way Hollywood would have you believe. I don’t wish to scare you off … just preparing you in case …”

The man sitting opposite the FBI agent nodded. He was determined to go along with this, despite the burning in his heart, pumping at an alarming rate.

“I’ve thought long and hard about it,” he replied, softly, almost in a whisper. “What they did to my brother …”

The FBI man knew all about the man’s brother. He had read the file more than once. A robbery gone wrong, said the report. Off the record said: revenge, a love triangle turned sour. Whatever the motivation, it had produced their only solid lead. With all the pressure they were under, the agent was almost grateful it had happened, in a perverse sort of way, of course.

“Okay, then. Your first stop will be Molly Malone’s on Tuesday night. Our sources tell us there is a good possibility he will be there, probably with his girlfriend.”

“That’s no problem. I used to be a regular there.”

“Don’t get complacent, please. This guy is dangerous as well as smart. We believe he has killed at least two other persons, apart from your brother. Don’t take any chances. He already knows you hate him, and will certainly feel wary if you try to have a conversation with him.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that. Believe me. But I’m hoping the Jenny Light beer will make him a bit more cocky than usual, especially when we’re taking a piss together, just like old buddies.”

The man tried a smile, but his mouth had gone dry and tight.

“Don’t forget,” the agent reassured. “We’ll only be a few yards away at most. Don’t get macho. Understand?”

The man nodded, before standing to go.

“We appreciate all you’re doing for us,” said the agent, opening the door.

“Let’s hope it works and we get this bastard. That’s all I want.”

My sentiments exactly, thought the agent, closing the door. Tuesday night would tell …

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Money? Don’t Mention that Word to Me

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

Francis Bacon

We are now offering $500,000 for information to help solve the robbery.

Brinks Incorporated

Money, money everywhere, and not a drop to spend. I couldn’t touch it with a barge pole, and it was killing me. In the weeks after the robbery, every time I went to the garage to check the money, I realised how a conformed alcoholic must feel each time he comes close to a bar. The smell of the money was making me sick. It was laughing at me, all those hundreds, fifties and twenties. George Washington’s false teeth almost came flying out, he was laughing so much.

Things couldn’t get worse, I thought, answering my mobile phone. I called it the “bad news phone” because only three people knew the number, and they knew only to use it in the event of something dire happening.

“Hello?”

“I’m gonna ask ya a question, then call ya back in two minutes. What did Danny G’s father own? Think about it. When I call ya back, don’t say the answer. Understand?”

Before I could reply, he hung up.

My mind raced. Who the fuck was Danny G, never mind his father, and what did he own? The more I tried to figure it out, the more my brain froze. Less than a minute and he’d be calling me back. I hadn’t a clue. Then it hit me. Danny G was an old friend of the caller. We had met only a couple of times. He had fancied himself as a bit of a singer, but until the big day arrived, he’d have to content himself with working in his father’s tyre depot. But what did that have to do with me?

The phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Do you remember?”

“Yes … at least I think so.”

“Good. Get rid of ’em immediately, but prudently. The vultures are on to you.”

The phone went dead. Its click made my stomach churn. I looked out the window of my comic-book store, glancing up and down the street. I felt like closing the store and making a run for the Mexican border. They were on to me! Fuckers! How? I didn’t want to believe it, but my source had a proven track record.

I should’ve got rid of the van at the very beginning. No, I should never have used it in the first place. Being so cocky was now going to be my downfall. I was going to be de-cocked!

In keeping the van, I was trying to make things look as normal as possible. Still driving the same old piece of shit wouldn’t bring undue attention to myself, I had reasoned. Now it was coming back to haunt me. The fucker. I began to pluck at straws. It was only tyres he had hinted at, not the van. Perhaps I still had a chance.

They could be anywhere, the Feds. Every tree hid one. The old lady with the limp, coming towards me, was probably one. I wanted to knock her flying, test the fake cane that balanced her, watch her comrades come rushing to her aid, guns blazing.

I closed the store and brought the van to a Greek friend who owned a filling station. He didn’t ask why I would want to replace practically new tyres. He simply replaced them, putting the old ones in the back of the van.

I drove for miles, trying to think where I could dump them, watching my mirror, waiting for the sirens. Eventually, I stopped at a MacDonald’s, and after a cup of coffee I felt better, calmer, despite the caffeine.

The calmness lasted until I picked up a newspaper from a bunch on the counter. That morning’s New York Times carried an article about the robbery, claiming the Feds had a new lead.

I left the restaurant, more depressed than ever. My stomach told me something was going to happen, probably today, something beyond my control.

As I was about to start the van, I noticed the dumpster. I couldn’t believe my luck. It sat with its jaws wide open, in an adjacent car park. A group of trees camouflaged it, and it was filled with all sorts of crap. But more than enough room for the tyres. Perfect.

As I drove away, I took a last glance back, just to make sure. Nothing. I admonished myself for becoming paranoid, for giving the Feds too much credit. They hadn’t a clue. Would never have a clue. For the first time in hours I relaxed, smiling to myself.

Had I looked back, just one more teeny-weeny time, I would have crapped my pants to see the two grinning FBI agents place the tyres in the back of their own van.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Fly Men

A man’s mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.

Anthony Trollope, Ayala’s Angel

We must always hold the possibility of disaster in mind.

Seneca

Marco and I had agreed to meet at La Guardia airport, near to where the planes took off. This would drown out any potential listening devices, or so we hoped. We set the date through a code we had developed prior to the robbery. Of course the Feds had long deciphered our code, and knew every move we made. They had placed their agents in and around the airport days prior to the arranged rendezvous. Little did we know it, but we were walking straight into a trap. The Feds, who had been biting their nails to nab us, now would have the irrefutable evidence they had so patiently waited for: the two of us together for a photo opportunity.

That morning, as I drove to the spot, I heard the sound of an explosion. It was near noon and I could see ribbons of smoke snaking into the air.

A gas explosion, I thought, turning the radio on. The Stones were singing You can’t always get what you want.

I made a left, towards Astoria Boulevard. The airport was in sight. I’d be there in a couple of minutes, into the open arms of the FBI.

The music was interrupted by a voice saying that unconfirmed reports were coming in of a massive explosion at the World Trade Centre, of people being killed and injured.

People were stopping their cars, in shock and disbelief, not fathoming such an act of terrorism on American soil. I stopped the car too, and got out. The smoke in the distance was becoming thicker, more menacing. The entire scene made me think of Belfast. I shuddered, thinking of my friends living in Manhattan, of all the card dealers and customers I had come to know over the years. I said a silent prayer that none of them were hurt, or worse, killed.

The irony of the horrendous explosion was that it had saved our necks – albeit temporarily – as every agent on the east coast was pulled off their designated case, and ordered to make the explosion their number-one priority, trying to find the terrorists behind this murderous outrage.

As I pulled into the airport, the New York Feds were pulling out, cursing their terrible luck.

Little did we all know at the time, but the explosion was a dry run for what would become the biggest terrorist atrocity in American history: 9/11.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Money Money Money, in a Rich Man’s World

I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.

Anthony Trollope, The Three Clerks

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

George Bernard Shaw, Mrs Warren’s Profession

As days turned to weeks and no arrests, my confidence grew. I had only one problem, a problem I never believed I would ever have: Money. Too much of it.

All this money, and no place to hide it. I kept my entire cut in the back of the van, big bags of it, shrouded by a few oily blankets, ignored each day by the numerous residents who came to pick up their own cars or trucks from the private underground car park. Each morning I awoke, wondering if the van’s contents remained intact, grateful that the van looked like shit, low on the list for thieves.

But enough was enough. Sooner or later, someone would come across it, probably by accident, and either steal it or call in the Feds. It was time for me to come in from the cold. Someone would have to be told, someone whose discretion I could trust. After much deliberation, one name came to the fore: Father Pat.

I first met Pat when a friend of mine asked me to drop him off at his home, in the lower East Side of Manhattan. His brother-in-law had gone missing, and he wanted to know if Pat could help. I was extremely cold towards him initially, as my experience of priests in Long Kesh had made me very cynical and gave rise to a nasty taste in my mouth every time I met one. Pat, I later discovered, slept in an old cupboard and was constantly answering the phone and door to people needing help.

At first, I thought it was a con he was pulling, but as I got to know him, I began to have a grudging respect. His lifestyle was austere, to say the least, in sharp contrast to the lifestyles of priests I had known in Ireland.

I would drop in occasionally with material I picked up from work at Park Avenue: paint, cement, furniture and household goods. Whatever the rich threw out, he knew a hundred people who could use it. His motto was simple: Pray for the dead; but fight like hell for the living! Eventually, we became friends.

I approached him, not knowing if he would refuse, or simply condemn me and tell me never to blacken his door again.

“If someone had a good bit of money, and wanted it kept safe, what would be the best way of going about it?” I asked, matter-of-factly.

He was having a light lunch in his living room, as was his norm. I was sipping tea.

“Oh, there are hundreds of ways, I suppose,” he said, uninterested. He had just got off the phone, and the call seemed to have bothered him.

“It’s just the money I’m making in the casino. I’d hate to be arrested by the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), and have them confiscate it.”

“I don’t think they have the power to confiscate your money, even if you are here illegally.”

“Oh …”

He picked at some tired lettuce, before pushing the plate away. “I have to go out. I shouldn’t be long. Want to wait?”

“No, I’ve got to be going myself,” I said, knowing Pat’s “shouldn’t be long” could turn into hours. Besides, my money was parked outside his door, and this wasn’t the best of neighbourhoods. Even a shitty van full of oily rags could disappear if you didn’t keep an eye on it.

“I’ll try to find out some more about the INS,” he said, seeing the look on my face as the black homeless man glanced in the back of my van.

“Get the hell away from that van!” I shouted at the bewildered man, regretting it instantly.

Pat was a well-known advocate for the homeless, and he wasn’t one bit amused at my attitude.

“I’ve been on edge lately,” I mumbled by way of apology, as he got into his car, disappearing out of sight.

I thought about giving the homeless man a few bucks, but he had disappeared.

It’s funny how you remember the important things when it’s too late.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

There’s nothing of so infinite vexation As man’s own thoughts.

John Webster, The White Devil

Nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Over the next few days, I agonised over finding a safe haven for the money. Pat was still top of the list, but if I couldn’t persuade him – and soon – I’d be in trouble. I’d give him one more try. If his answer was no, then an old friend would have to be brought in. This might cause problems later, but I needed a fix – short-term or permanent was irrelevant. I needed it now.

Pat was relentless in his quest to alleviate the suffering of the destitute roaming the streets of the lower East Side. I knew if he had one weakness, it was the poor and their impoverished existence. I began to play on it.

“If a person had the right sort of money, he could do an awful lot of good for the homeless in this place, couldn’t he?” I hinted.

Pat had three old suits in his hands, which he quickly stuffed into a bag. Two shirts, a scattering of ties, a pair of boots that had seen better days and an old brown suit quickly followed suit. They would be a welcome gift for someone in Alphabet City or Hell’s Kitchen. He continued packing clothes away, ignoring me.

I wanted to scream it out, hit him on the head with a big bag of money. Instead I simply said, “Pat, I need your help.”

He stopped packing, straightened his back and planted himself in the chair at the window. He could see my van across the street and said, “You better be careful. They’ll be giving out tickets in twenty minutes.”

A parking ticket was the least of my concerns.

“I’ve got some … money. I need a safe place to keep it – maybe for quite a while.”

He gazed back over at the van, and I wondered if he knew already.

“The casino?” he asked.

For a second, I didn’t realise what he meant. Then it came to me. Pat still thought I worked in the casino, transporting money across the city for Johnny Mac. “Well … I wouldn’t say it was the casino –”

He cut me off with a wave of his hand. He didn’t want to know my business.

“How much needs to be looked after?”

“I don’t really know just yet.”

“Give me a figure. A few hundred? A thousand?”

“I really don’t know. I haven’t counted it yet.”

He laughed at that. “Haven’t counted it? It sounds like a fairly large sum. Why haven’t you counted it?”

“I’ve been … busy,” I mumbled. “But I need your help. Desperately.”

He scratched his beard, then said: “Let’s have some tea.”

“I think you better come outside first.”

Outside, I opened the back door of the van. It was the first time I had ever known Pat to be speechless.

“Where … where in God’s name did you get this? Is this all casino money?”

He was looking into the bags beneath the oily rags. The quiver in his voice told me he might be on the verge of a heart attack. What a headline: Dead priest found on stolen loot.

“I can’t tell you where it came from – not yet, maybe later, maybe never. But you’ve got to give me your word that you’ll never breathe a word about this, no matter what you decide.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he quickly covered up the money, his face full of panic. “We’ve got to get this out of sight. Have you been driving it around all this time? Never mind. No time for questions. Hurry up!”

A few minutes later, the van was parked in a secure garage. As the steel shutters closed, for the first time in days, I felt my body tumble into relaxation.

“Where did it come from?” asked Pat as we sat down to tea, alone in his study. A small, cheeky mouse ran across the floor, stopping at my feet and staring up, as if it also needed an answer.

“I can’t tell you. It’s for your own safety, Pat. Best you don’t know.”

Minutes elapsed in semi-silence, with only the squeak of a hungry mouse being heard. I wondered what was going through Pat’s mind – whether he was thinking of turning his back on me while the going was good. The silence was terrible, heavy.

“All right. It’s safe at the minute, but we’ll have to come up with something more permanent. Give me a day or two. Okay?”

Take a year. I’m sick of it. “That’d be great, Pat, but when you call me, don’t say anything on the phone. It could be bugged.”

He raised an eyebrow, but remained silent as he walked me to the door, watching me stroll toward First Avenue for a taxi.

It wasn’t until later – when it was all too late – that he mentioned the black man following me up the street. He was sure he had seen him some place before, but just like me, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it at the time.

By the time we figured it all out, there was no longer any time to figure.

CHAPTER FIFTY

A Room With a View

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Memory is man’s greatest friend and worst enemy.

Gilbert Parker, Romany of the Snows

Eventually, Pat came up with an apartment to store the money in. It was 330 First Avenue, apartment 10D. The impression he gave me was that a friend who was no longer in the country had rented out the apartment to him.

It was a rent-controlled apartment, a real gold mine in space-poor New York. It had the tired, dusty look of the uninhabited. A few posters lined the walls; families of dried-out plants sat withering in each room, mingling with random heaps of records and books. Lots of books. All I needed was the music from The Odd Couple to be playing. It was obvious the place hadn’t been lived in for some time.

We went outside to bring in the bags of money. As I turned in the corridor, a man was waiting at the elevator door, as if waiting for it to open. He was a black man. That was unexpected, as the apartment complex was exclusively white. As I walked towards the lift, he opened the door, smiling.

“Which floor?” he asked, holding the door.

Suddenly, my Belfast wariness kicked in. He was dressed rough, almost like a homeless man, but the manicured fingernails gleamed like mother-of-pearl, contradicting. Also, no black man in New York would open the door for a white man, inviting him to enter first. It would be tantamount to being an Uncle Tom. My suspicion heightened. I had seen this man before, but couldn’t put my finger on where.

“No thanks,” I said, hoping my face didn’t say too much. “I’ve some stuff I need to bring in. You go on ahead.”

It dawned on me as the lift door closed, sending him on a solo journey: he was the same black man I had caught looking into the back of the van. Perhaps he had spotted the contents, and was waiting for an opportunity to get the bags? What if his gang was here, waiting? I watched as the lift button lit up, stopping at floor six.

Pat entered the corridor and I told him to wait, keep an eye on the bags, something wasn’t right.

“Where’re you going? What’s wrong?”

But I was gone, running up the stairs like a madman, taking them two at a time, the adrenaline giving me super powers. I was going to find out, once and for all, who this bastard was, what he was up to.

What if he has a gun? A knife? the voice of common sense asked, as I reached the sixth floor, panting like a dog. But I didn’t want to hear that, just get him, grab him by the throat and give a good tight squeeze. He’d soon tell me all that I wanted to know.

But he wasn’t there. The corridor was deserted, except for the sound of my breathing.

“Bastard,” I said, loud enough for him to hear. I knew he was there, somewhere. It wasn’t my imagination or nerves, as Pat argued after we entered the apartment, bolting it shut.

“It could simply be stress,” he reasoned. “Probably a janitor. Something innocent. That’s usually how it is.”

But my gut told me he was wrong.

I told Pat he would receive at least ten percent of whatever amount was final. Before he could protest at not wanting a penny, I said, “Think of what you could do for the homeless with that.” His mind began to calculate.

“They’ll be safe here. I’ve something more permanent in mind, but this will do for now,” Pat assured me, as we dropped a couple of US Army duffle bags on the bare floor, making a dead-thud sound.

“We need a money-counter,” I said, after we’d brought all the money into the room. “I still haven’t a clue how much there is.”

I doubted if he believed me.

“I’ll have one, probably by tomorrow. Tuesday at the latest,” he said.

We left the apartment, agreeing to meet in the morning, knowing the laborious task of counting piles of money lay ahead. I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, and wondered how long it would take to count it, get it out of my sight. The smell of used paper was making me physically sick, making my head swim.

Unknown to us, from the safety of a café door, New York City detective Garry Beekman watched as we stepped out into the sunshine.

“They’re leaving,” he whispered into a small mouthpiece to his commander.

No sooner had we left the apartment than ten FBI agents – part of the 100-strong team sent to capture us – alighted on the building, while others tailed us home.

They worked like ants, the remaining Feds, placing surveillance cameras in and around the tenth-floor common area. In the “EXIT” sign, directly facing the apartment, they placed a “pin head” camera, smack in the middle of the “X”. Within twenty minutes, they had locked in to their command centre at One Police Plaza, and were quickly given the go-ahead for Candid Camera to proceed.

“Perfect,” came the static reply. “Just perfect.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Caught by the Balls. Again

AUGUST 1993

Whatever befalls you was prepared for you beforehand from eternity …

Marcus Aurelius

Our offer now stands at $750,000 for information.

Brinks Incorporated, offering a record highest amount ever offered for information on a robbery in US history

The money-counter made a soft hum, like an insect’s wings. So soft, yet I thought it might still be heard above the skull-penetrating noise of New York traffic, screaming from outside the windows. Pat said he couldn’t hear the hum, and I put it down to my growing paranoia, as I watched dollar bills blur at the speed of light, consumed by the greedy mouth of the counter.

Later on, one person would agree with what I had just said. A female FBI agent, right outside the apartment door, her ear glued to it, giving the thumbs-up to the “X” in the “EXIT” sign. An enormous grin on her face said, “We’ve got them!”

We continued blabbering away, while Key Hole Kate strained her neck, grinning.

“We have a bit of a problem,” said Pat, as we stopped for a well-earned cup of tea. “That Englishman, Ronnie, has been about my place. He wanted to know if I had seen you lately, and if I knew where you were living now.”

My face remained expressionless, but my stomach knotted. I knew it was only a matter of time before he came sniffing.

“What did you say?”

“Told him the truth. That I hadn’t seen you.” He smiled. “It’s never a sin to tell a lie to an Englishman. But I’m worried. That sneaky grin of his told me that he knows something.”

Although Pat tolerated Ronnie, he neither liked nor trusted him. Ronnie’s Irish blood meant nothing to Pat, and he often referred to him, witheringly, as “the Englishman”.

The whirring whisper of the counting machine continued unabated, highlighting the silence. Pat wanted to ask where Ronnie fitted in, but for the moment he allowed the silence to torture me. Finally, I said, “He’s trying to get rich on another man’s balls. Forgive the expression, Pat, but he’s a coward, a dog returning to its own vomit to see what it can find.” I was shaking with anger.

“I never did trust him, you know,” replied Pat, wrapping an elastic band around a brick of $100 bills. “Never trust an Englishman. Trust the Devil first.” Pat sipped his tea while I wondered.

Then Key Hole Fucking Kate almost came crashing through the door. She had slipped against it, just a little bit too eager.

I spilt the tea. “What the hell was that?” I said, in a stage whisper, as I walked to the door, dreading that it might be Ronnie. Could he have followed Pat? Worse: the black man with a gang, all waiting to charge in, guns in their hands.

I peeped through the spy-hole before pulling the door. Nothing. The crash of someone throwing crap down the garbage disposal echoed up from the basement, making me laugh a nervous laugh.

“What was it?” asked Pat, edging on his chair.

“Garbage.”

I closed the door, bolting it to keep monsters out, while Key Hole Kate – two doors away on the landing – released the air from her lungs, making a sorry face at the “X”. Shit! The boss will have something to say about this.

“What should we do about Ronnie?” asked Pat, returning to the subject I was trying to avoid.

“Nothing for now. He can’t do any damage at the minute.”

Still, I thought, sitting back on the chair, when all was said and done, Ronnie had been good to me. Despite being a pain in the arse, he had treated me more than fairly in the casino. If only he had seen it through to the end, he’d be laughing now, the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, handing out money to the poor.

I was grinning now, picturing him squeezing his face against the restaurant window, laughing as we rushed for the door; grabbing boxes full of rotten bananas, thinking he had it made; stealing a brand new van, as a bewildered Pakistani chased after him down Tenth Avenue. Far too many good memories to try to erase.

I knew there was only one way to stop him sniffing any further, and to stop the tiny pang of guilt I felt: Money. He’d get a cut, even though he didn’t deserve it.

“I’m going to have to give him something, Pat. It’s the only way. Otherwise we’ll never get rid of him. Gather one of those bags, and stick a few stacks in it.”

“You can’t be serious? He’ll think he’s got you running scared. Better that he thinks you’ve left the country, because no matter how much you give him, he’ll want more.”

“No, he doesn’t think like that. I know him.”

“You thought you knew him well enough at the start, and look how he turned out. I’d advise against it. He’s only bluffing.”

I was already packing the money. It was done. It made little impression on the piles in front of us.

“An awful lot of money …” said Pat.

$100,000 is a lot of money now, but it wasn’t then. I was simply glad to see it go. The smell of it was getting worse, as were my headaches, caused by the talc-like stench of paper.

“Okay,” said Pat, resigned to the inevitable. “I’ll see that he gets it.”

“Soon,” I advised. “He’ll be over the moon with that. Get him out of the picture.”

We left the apartment to the plants and piles of money and made our way down, taking the elevator. As we descended, a coterie of Feds ascended, taking the steps two at a time. They had at last been granted a “sneak and peek” search warrant from a federal judge. By the time I was placing the ignition key in my truck, the agents were inserting their master key in the door of the apartment, video recorders in hand, ready to film the mess we had left behind: suitcases and duffle bags resting on the floor, their contents spilling out like paper vomit; the money-counter sitting grinning at them; scraps of paper with the so-far money calculated.

We hadn’t even bothered to close the living room window. The fire escape, neatly attached outside, was just begging for someone to come in and rob us. That would have been funny, said one agent to the other, as he checked his list of serial numbers against some of the piles stacked naked on the bed.

They all held their breath, waiting, as one of their comrades slowly checked the numbers on his notepad against the numbers on the money. If they didn’t match, the Feds were in trouble and they knew it. From the piles of money, they searched out the $100 bills, hoping to find some of the $200,000 with known serial numbers.

Each agent in the room froze as the black man spoke, in barely a whisper: “Series 1990; Mint: Richmond, Virginia; serialized E07510010A to E07510061A. Gentlemen, there is a god.” A grin spread across his entire face. “We have a match.”

They slapped each other on the back, grinning like Halloween lanterns. This meant big promotions. Yes, sir! Fucking big! The black man quickly eased all the agents out, nice and quiet, not wanting to disturb the sleeping money. In a couple of days, hopefully, it would be time to close down shop, make the arrests, alert the media, go home and have a nice hot bath.

Eight weeks he had been dressed like a homeless man, and he was beginning to smell like one. He would appreciate a good long soak. After that, well, he would want to have a word with me …

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Arrest and Diesel Therapy

NOVEMBER 1993

Federal agents have suddenly netted a veritable Sean O’Casey farce of circumstance and suspects. Bags of money scattered in a dim tenement apartment; Millar, an Irish revolutionary hiding out in America as a comic book dealer in Queens, New York; O’Connor, an Irish American cop and “Father Pat”, a classically ascetic Irish priest.

Francis X Clines, New York Times

Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.

Pancho Villa’s last words to his supporters

Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said nothing.

My words to supporters upon being arrested by the FBI

It was Friday, two weeks later. Everything was going well. Pat had just returned with me from the leafy suburbs of Westchester County, where I planned to buy a $300,000 home. He told the estate agent not to worry about the money, as the Church was funding the payments. We both thought that funny.

Of course, we wouldn’t have found it so funny had we known that every spoken word had been recorded by the four FBI agents sitting only a couple of feet away, eating lunch at the next table.

One of them, a devote Catholic, boiled with anger at the remark.

After dropping Pat at his home, I entered the main post office in Jackson Heights, a fist-full of money orders in my pocket. “Loose change”, to the tune of $30,000, rested in the inside of my coat. It was the down payment for a Fredrick Remington statue that I had my eyes on.

The sky overhead was threatening, giving this Friday afternoon a nasty Monday flavour. As I walked towards my truck, I failed to notice how unusually taciturn the normally boisterous streets had become. Usually, the Chinese merchants would be screaming their heads off at potential customers, telling them not to miss this once-in-a-lifetime deal, holding up decapitated ducks, and tiny pigs still wet with blood. Tiny drops of rain began to fall, making me quicken my pace.

No sooner had I reached for my keys than I went flying, hard, against the truck. It felt like being hit by a rhino; the first thought in my head was that I was being mugged. My arms were shoved as far up my back as they would go without breaking, while voices screamed, “Where’s your fuckin’ gun?”

I was dazed, and for a moment I thought I was dead, as I floated somewhere out to sea.

“Sam? Sam? Can you hear me? Do you have a gun?”

Why, yes. Of course I do. It’s in the back of the truck, along with the machine guns and flame-thrower. “No,” I managed to say, as they handcuffed my wrists and thumbs, before lifting me up and bundling me into the back of a car, one of six that had cordoned off the top and bottom of the street, stopping all traffic.

“You know who we are?” asked the same voice, this time much calmer.

The rain came in force. It banged against the car, making it sound like a hollow tin, summoning up images of the dole, Sundays in Belfast, the RUC, Celtic beaten by Rangers, and a million other horrors that only rain can conjure up.

The repetitive voice went on and on: DO DO DO YOU YOU YOU KNOW KNOW KNOW WHO WHO WHO WE WE WE ARE ARE ARE…?

The normal forty-five-to-sixty-minute drive into Manhattan took less than twenty minutes, as the convoy of cars, sirens blaring, sliced through the buttery traffic like a hot knife.

At One Police Plaza, my hand- and thumb-cuffs were removed, and the bad-cop/good-cop routine was insultingly begun.

“We’re givin’ ya the chance to ‘get down first’, Sam, because ya’ve gotta wife ’n’ kids,” said Good Cop, a beefy Fed attired in a college blazer, shirt and tie.

At that very moment, while he was displaying this touching concern for my family, his associates were smashing in the door of our home with a battering ram, pointing their guns at the head of my nine-year-old daughter, and screaming at her, “Where’s all your father’s money! If you don’t tell us we will take you away, and you will never see your mother or father again!”

“Getting down first” is an American euphemism for informing on one’s associates. The FBI has a ninety percent success rate for convictions, mainly due to people turning informer against each other. It can all be summed up in the words of a spokesperson at the US Treasury Law Enforcement Academy, inducting new recruits: “Gentlemen, in this business, you’re only as good as your rats.”

“Don’t be a fall-guy for the rest of ’em,” advised Good Cop. “We’ve already got Maloney, O’Connor and McCormack. They’ll spill their guts out if you refuse our one-time offer.” He got up from the chair and opened the door. “Listen.”

From next-door, I could hear Pat talking away, like a parrot. It sounded all dark and whispery. But he wasn’t trying to get down first. Far from it. He was simply maintaining his innocence, stating the facts that he had never heard of this man O’Connor or Simmy Mullar, as a Bostonian-twanged FBI man had pronounced my name.

What was really baffling was the McCormack. Who the hell was he?

“Maloney’s begging us to let him get down first, but you’re married – just like me – and I don’t want to see you go to the penitentiary for the rest of your life. Understand? Do you?” He was so concerned about my welfare, it was touching. The RUC would have a field day with these guys, I thought, as Bad Cop entered the room. If I wasn’t too careful, he’d force me to listen to country-and-western music or blow smoke into my eyes, something really terrible.

While the Feds were telling me that Pat was spilling out his guts, and vice versa, in Rochester, the Feds were telling Tom he was ‘on a sinking ship. Your two friends down in New York have said you were the mastermind.’

“Listen, you dumb mick,” said Bad Cop, an inch from my face. “Where you’re goin’ to be spendin’ the rest of your life is in the arms of a big fuckin’ nigger, fuckin’ you in the ass, night and day – and three times between meals. He’ll make you floss with his dick. Do you understand that?”

I recognised that line from a movie, but couldn’t for the life of me remember which one. I wondered if Bad Cop would tell me if I asked? All the Feds seemed to have Irish-sounding names, with large ‘O’s shoe-horned in the middle of them.

The interrogation went on for about an hour, at the end of which Bad Cop and Good Cop left, mystified at not having their offer jumped at by either Pat or myself or the mysterious McCormack. As a last resort, one of the Feds showed me a note they had taken from Pat, throwing it down on the table, contemptuously.

“Is that what a priest carries with him, in his pocket? You should be ashamed of him, not protecting him.”

I glanced at the note, but quickly erased it from my thoughts. I would talk to Pat, later, about it. Right now, I wasn’t playing their game.

The mirror in front of me, presumably, was one-way, with a handful of Feds standing behind it, analysing my expression.

I remained alone for about fifteen minutes, when in walked the black man who had shadowed me for so long, munching a Hero sandwich. He didn’t speak for some time, content simply to munch, licking his lips with delight – at the sandwich or my capture, it was hard to tell. He studied me for a minute, oblivious to the mayonnaise falling on his shirt.

“My name is Louis Stith, Special Agent and leading investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

He waited for my reaction. When none was forthcoming, he continued. “Between you and me, off the record, when did you start to suspect I was following you?” His voice was very low as he continued the self-conversation. “I think I screwed up at the elevator, that day. Remember? You refused to get in with me? Was that it? Did you suspect I was FBI at that time?” He smiled.

The only thing I wanted to tell him was how the other Feds referred to him as “that boy”. That, plus he had some lettuce trapped in his teeth. I stared at the one-way mirror, checking my own teeth.

“You realise that you’ll not survive our penitentiary system, don’t you? It’s not like those pussy British prisons that you came from, everyone answerable to some Human Rights group.”

I wondered what propaganda brochure he had found that one in, but quickly realised he was simply goading me for an answer – any answer – to break my silence, to prove that all his years of training, his law degree, his belief in himself, could bring home the bacon. I hated to disappoint him, but he wasn’t frying tonight – or any night.

For the next twenty or thirty minutes, I had to endure his soliloquy. Then, resigned and shaking his head, he got up, mumbling, “You’re a mystery. I’ll see you in court.”

What really was a mystery, I realised shortly afterwards, was what had happened to the $30,000 that had occupied my pocket for such a short period? It was a mystery never to be solved, at least not by me.

Shortly after our one-way discussion, I was removed from One Police Plaza, and taken to the court. In the elevator, Pat was placed beside me. We didn’t speak. The elevator stopped at another floor, and a young man stepped in. Just like Pat and myself, he was handcuffed. I presumed he was simply another prisoner about to be charged in the court, same as us, and was surprised when he sat beside us at the table. Was he an undercover fed, still trying his luck to obtain some information? I slowly eased away from him, as if he were a leper.

I was even more surprised when this young man, whom I had never seen before, was charged along with us. I glanced at Pat, with a what-the-fuck’s-going-on look on my face, but he simply ignored me. Correct behaviour under the circumstances. A few minutes later, the mystery was cleared up, if only a little bit.

The young man’s name was Charlie McCormack. A school-teacher, he was the resident of the apartment, not Pat. He had been out of the country, visiting family, and had asked Pat to keep an eye on the place for him. Fuck! I almost pissed myself laughing at the irony of that.

Sure, I’ll keep a good eye on it for you, and you don’t mind, do you, if I leave a few million scattered about while you’re gone?

Shortly after the hearing, Pat was granted bail. Charlie had the charges withdrawn after Pat stated that Charlie knew nothing about the money. As for myself, I was quickly introduced to what is fearfully known amongst American Federal prisoners as “diesel therapy”.

Diesel therapy is a form of mental and physical torture of prisoners whom the government is desperate to break, in the hope of securing a confession or obtaining some vital information to be used in court at a later stage. This punitive travail consists of moving the prisoner from penitentiary to penitentiary – as much as three times a day – disorientating and isolating him in the process, in the hope of breaking down all resistance.

I was shackled, hands and feet, with only a jump suit to help stave off the elements of winter. After a seven-hour journey in the back of a converted pick-up truck, ball-freezing, I arrived at a penitentiary, somewhere, at about two or three in the morning, gratefully receiving a bed pack, just wanting to sleep. No sooner did I have my bed made, than a guard shouted for me to get dressed; I was being moved again. This time I was hoisted aboard a bus that had been stripped of all its comforts, legs chained to the floor along with fifteen to twenty other prisoners, and told in no uncertain terms by the shotgun-hugging guard what would happen if even the word escape entered our tiny brains.

The bus drove us all the way back to Manhattan, past all the hookers on Tenth Avenue, who waved and shouted at the zombies inside. Zombies. That’s what we had all been relegated to. Something from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The diet of spam sandwiches and watered milk, twice a day, didn’t help. I didn’t care. All I wanted was sleep. But the lights from the tiny spotlights above our heads in the bus, combined with the blaring canned C-and-W music, made sleep impossible. I promised myself never again to listen to Jim Reeves.

When we reached the penitentiary, a bed-pack was once again handed to me. I went through the routine, making the bed, picturing what it might be like to be between the sheets, waking up in my house, realising that this had all been some sort of terrible nightmare.

But enough of that. It was time, once again, shouted the guard, for my scenic trip to Upstate New York, to wonder at the beauty of snow-capped mountains and shivering trees, naked of leaves. And when the two armed guards stopped at McDonald’s for Big Macs, hot fries and coffee, leaving me shivering in the back of the pick-up without shoes or socks, I thought I had earned, at least, a Happy Meal for my endurance.

I watched as they came back, squeezing their massive bulks into the seats, checking that I was still there. I could hear them turn on the heat full blast, knowing the glass panel prevented me from benefiting from it.

“How do you like your coffee, Sam?” asked the smaller giant, a smirk on his face.

I wanted to give him a smart answer, but my teeth refused to stop chattering.

“Here. You’re gonna have to drink ’cuffed and in motion. If it burns your balls off, you can’t sue us, or MacDonald’s. Understand?”

They were both laughing now, unwrapping the fiendish spam sandwich and watered milk. My stomach was turning at the thought of one more pink and white.

“Here.” He opened the glass panel, and even though the heat blasted in I couldn’t feel a thing; not even the hot, beautiful coffee that burned my greedy lips, or the salty taste of fries in my mouth.

They left the panel open for the remainder of the journey, thawing me out as night trucks skimmed past us, their headlights colouring us.

I was all roasty-toasty now, and my eyelids became heavier and heavier. Fatigue slowly seeped through me while the two guards talked in a whisper, as if not wanting to disturb me. We could easily have been three buddies venturing out on a hunting trip, except that they had already captured their quarry.

Tiny spikes of insomnia interrupted my flow of sleep, but these were mercifully few. These were the bad weeks of diesel therapy, a testing taste of things to come. I slept – if that’s what it could be called – for the first time in over three weeks with the taste of salt and coffee in my mouth.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Making Headlines Again for All the Wrong Reasons

It’s an odd job, making decent people laugh.

Molière, La Critique de Pecole des Femmes

World is crazier and more of it than we think …

Louis MacNeice, Snow

New York Times:

Officials Detail Two Lives of Brinks Robbery Suspect

In his Jackson Heights neighborhood, the man who called himself Andre Singleton or Patrick was known as the owner of a bustling comic-book shop, a religious family man, a responsible tenant who lived quietly with his wife and three children.

In another life in Ireland, it had been a different story. The trim, neatly dressed man was Samuel Ignatius Millar, a young rebel from Belfast who had spent at least eight years in prison, first for belonging to a “proscribed group”, then on weapons and explosives charges. In 1984, at age 29, he made his way to the United States under an assumed name. He worked as a street vendor, seeking to start anew.

The authorities now claim that while he discarded his old identity when he came to this country, Mr. Millar did not leave behind his “criminal” ways. Last week, Mr. Millar became one in an odd trio of suspects, including a Melkite priest and a former police detective, accused of helping to steal $7.4 million from the Brinks armored car service in Rochester – one of the biggest armed robberies in United States history.

Looking for Clues

Law-enforcement officials said yesterday that they still did not know who actually robbed the Brinks depot last January. Nor do they know what became of all the money or whether the robbery was linked to the struggles in Northern Ireland.

But they have begun investigating the suspects’ pasts, examining evidence found in their apartments, looking for clues to the robbery and where the money went. None of the three has been accused of direct participation in the robbery, but officials said further charges might be made in the case.

“We don’t know who did it,” said Special Agent Paul M. Moscal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Buffalo. “And we still don’t know what the motive was. I don’t think anyone knows at this point.”

While lawyers for the men have denied connections to the outlawed Irish Republican Army or other Northern Irish causes, both the priest under arrest, the Rev. Patrick Moloney, and Mr. Millar have histories of involvement in Ireland’s conflict, the authorities said.

Father Moloney, 61, who is known for running a shelter for homeless teen-agers on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was arrested in 1982 for trying to smuggle weapons into Ireland for the I.R.A. with his brother, John, officials said. The brother was convicted, but “Father Pat” was released.

Thomas O’Connor, the retired police detective who was working as a security guard at the Brinks depot when it was robbed, also had connections to Ireland. In 1983, on a tour of his parents’ native land, Mr. O’Connor met Mr. Millar, who was fresh out of prison, according to a court affidavit.

Creating a New Identity

The next year, after Mr. Millar was refused an American visa because of his political background, Mr. O’Connor helped smuggle the young Irishman into this country, the affidavit said.

With Father Moloney’s help, Mr. Millar became “Andre Singleton,” prosecutors said. The real Mr. Singleton, who had been in a drug-rehabilitation program run by the priest, had died several years before, so his Social Security number and driver’s license number were quietly slipped to the young Irishman. He would later also use the name Frank Saunders, court records show.

To support his family, who had arrived on a temporary visa, Mr. Millar worked first as a street vendor, then as a comic-book salesman. Selling first out of his apartment at 35-30 80th Street, he moved earlier this year to 77-07 24th Avenue and rented a storefront nearby, opening a shop called KAC Comics & Collectibles, which did a brisk business.

“He was very nice, never a problem,” said Terry McLaughlin, 48, who rented the store to Mr. Millar for $700 a month and who saw the Millar family at the nearby Catholic church nearly every Sunday. “He took his three kids to school every day. He could have been father of the year. A real gentleman. God, you’d die to have such great tenants.”

A woman who gave her name as Mrs. Tam, who said she owned the Millars’ apartment, said that she, too, was surprised with his arrest. “They were a very nice couple,” she said. “They went to bed early. I saw the husband taking the kids to school, McDonald’s and the movies. They had a very good family life. Really good and courteous people.”

And Liliana Morales, 32, who lived next door, said she had found them very low-key, tidy neighbors. Nice and polite. But Ms. Morales said that in recent months, she had begun to notice something amiss – something that seemed to escape Mr. Millar.

“We always used to see a lot of cops on the corner with binoculars,” she said. “We saw them at the comic-book store too. Everybody in the neighborhood saw the police. But Andrew (Millar) never seemed to notice.”

Suitcases of Cash

Indeed, only weeks after the January robbery, detectives had matched a tire track found outside the Rochester depot to those on a 1984 Plymouth Voyager minivan owned by Mr. Millar’s wife, Bernadette Fennell.

And in the months that followed, the F.B.I. and the police carefully watched Mr. Millar as he came and left his shop, his apartment, his church. They also watched as he made several trips carrying duffel bags to and from an apartment on First Avenue in Manhattan, where a raid by investigators on Thursday uncovered an electronic money counter and duffel bags and suitcases full of cash.

The authorities finally arrested Mr. Millar on Nov. 12 outside a post office near his home.’

Fuck sake! How the hell did I not spot all those cops with binoculars? Ah, well …

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

A Lawyer. A Very Expensive One

JANUARY 1994

Now I lay me down to sleep …

Anonymous

Free me, I pray, to go in search of joy …

James Merrill, The Thousand and Second Night

The diesel therapy continued, unabated, for three more months. I was shipped out to numerous notoriously bad-ass penitentiaries until my lawyer, Anthony F Leonardo, was finally able to put a stop to it, getting a court order to have me housed in the Monroe County Prison, affectionately known as the House of Pain, where I stayed for the next two years, awaiting trial.

The billboard as I entered Rochester said welcome and we hope you enjoy your stay. This time she winked at me: I just knew ya’d be back …

Tony was a high-profile lawyer, who loved the burn from publicity and dressed impeccably for it. An imposing a six-foot-four and more than 200 pounds, he looked every bit the Hollywood lawyer. His father, Anthony F Leonardo Snr, was a police detective, with a reputation for being street savvy and as tough as they come. He was a legend in the police, with the nickname “Captain Fearless”.

From 1985–86, Tony junior had won five straight homicide acquittals, and in 1991 he had been asked to represent John Gotti, the reputed Mafia boss. David Bowie asked Tony to represent him when accused of possessing marijuana. Those charges were eventually dropped.

“How long am I looking at?” was the first question I put to him, knowing it was probably thirty to forty years.

He quickly and tersely said, “Don’t ever ask that again. We’re beating this. That’s all you need to keep in your head. Now, tell me about this priest …”

He sat there as I relayed all I knew about Pat, explaining all the work he had done for the poor, and how he had nothing to do with the robbery.

“Bullshit,” said Tony. “Did you put a gun to his head?”

“No. Of course not, but –”

“What was he doing with almost two hundred grand hid in his bedroom?”

This was the first I had heard about money in Pat’s bedroom, and it showed.

“I gave it to him … to pay someone off.”

“Then why was your face shocked when I asked you?”

Because Pat had told me he had given the money to Ronnie. And that was only 100,000. Where had the rest come from?

“That’s none of your business,” I replied.

Tony eased himself from the chair and stood over me. “Look, let me make this as clear as possible. Everything to do with this case is my business – my reputation, and your freedom. Now, I don’t know how they do things in Ireland, but over here you play by my rules. I’ve destroyed the Feds so many times in court, they hate my guts. They even tried to set me up, but that’s another story. If you want me to represent you, then you better think long and hard, because once I take a case, it becomes personal. I want to beat these people almost as much as you. Now, I know you’re tired after all that travelling, so I’m going to let you sleep on it for a while. I’ll see you on Tuesday.”

He put out his hand and I shook it, not knowing if I really wanted him after all.

Before he left, his nostrils took in the smell of dinner.

“Meatloaf.” He made a face. “Only in here could they make it smell like shit.”

I slept that night. For the first night in almost three months, I was undisturbed, for sixteen hours, free from the monster of diesel therapy. It was the greatest sleep of my life.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Hey! What the Hell are You Doing with all those Bags of Money?

SPRING 1994

Always suspect everybody.

Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects

As the weeks turned to months, Tony began to accumulate small amounts of the prosecution’s “discovery” – or evidence – against me. Each visit was like waiting for an executioner, as he explained all the pieces of the enormous jigsaw puzzle that the prosecution had sitting in their office, slowly building up a picture of what fitted where. They needed that picture to show the jury. The clearer the picture, the easier the chances of securing a conviction.

“There are a few other, tiny, but not unimportant, bits of the puzzle sitting in their lap,” he stated, sitting down at the table and placing his briefcase on top. “They’ve traced your job in Park Avenue as a doorman. They claim that you were absent on the night of the robbery.”

Before I could open my mouth, he delivered a knockout punch. “They’ve got tyre marks from the van that was used on the night of the robbery. Just like fingerprints.”

“Fuck …” was all I managed to say.

“And, they claim to have the tyres.”

He watched my reaction, as my mind flashed back to a McDonald’s and grinning cops not believing their luck.

My stomach felt heavy. I had known all along it was hopeless. Now Tony had confirmed it.

I started hating his visits. He was worse than the Angel of Death in Long Kesh.

“Do you ever bring good news to your clients?” I asked.

“Analysis has revealed that there are similar characteristics between the tyres and the photographs taken of tyre marks at Brinks. Similar, but not identical. That’s a very big plus for us.” He smiled. “I haven’t even begun to fight back yet, and those cock-suckers know it. They’re frightened of me – and for good reason. Right now, at this very minute, they’re sitting over in their warm office, wondering if all these pieces will fit nice and snugly for them. Their jobs are on the line. Their careers. They see this case as a ladder to further themselves – maybe in politics, perhaps with some big Wall Street firm. Between you and me, Sam, I’m going to do my best to ensure that their dreams never materialise.”

He then started to outline how much effort the Feds had put into the case.

“Officially, forty FBI agents were on the case, watching all of you at all times, totalling 20,000 man hours. Another sixty were brought in intermittently, when needed. The FBI has more than 100 alleged witnesses, some from as far away as California and Florida. This isn’t counting the dozens of FBI and New York detectives.”

Why was he filling me with this death-row talk? Was he secretly a sadist, laughing at the look of defeat on my face?

“I know,” he continued, as if reading my mind, “that this may all seem overwhelming, disconcerting to you, but you must believe me when I say we have a chance of beating this. Initially, there was a lot of infighting between the New York Feds and the Upstate ones. Everyone wanted the glory of the case, because of the high publicity surrounding it. An FBI agent has already admitted this to me.” He smiled, a Christopher Lee-type smile. “Would you believe, the Feds from New York called the Feds up here ‘rednecks and hillbillies’ when the decision was made to allow them to take the case? I can assure you that that didn’t go down too well.”

Tony knew, by reputation, the prosecuting attorneys, Christopher Buscaglia and Christopher Taffe.

“They are both hardworking and meticulous to detail, but they are under a lot of pressure from their boss, Patrick NeMoyer, US attorney for the Western District of New York, to come up with a conviction. A lot is at stake here. Not just your freedom, but also the reputation of the FBI – especially the local branches. If they fail, then the Big City Feds will have been vindicated.

He brought some other pieces of news with him. “The Feds have rearrested the teacher, McCormack. These pricks know the poor guy is totally innocent, but they want to ironclad their conspiracy theory for the jury. The more people charged, the better it looks for them. But it also tells us that they are not one hundred percent confident. This can help us in the long run. I mean, I feel for the poor guy, but it shows how desperate they have become, with the pressure mounting on them.”

Charlie’s fingerprint had allegedly been found on a piece of cardboard. The simple reason for this was that he lived in the apartment – his fingerprints would have been everywhere, including on an old piece of cardboard that we had taken from beneath the sink to do some scribbling on. The Feds, of course, knew this – knew, in all probability, that Charlie was totally innocent. That was something their conscience could overlook if it meant convictions for the rest of us, along with Charlie.

“I thought we were the ones under pressure?”

He ignored this remark. “One of the witnesses for the Feds, Louis Niger, apparently jumped to his death, last night, in very suspicious circumstances. He was the barman who called the ambulance for O’Connor the night he was abducted, and helped him to a bar stool after a stiff shot of Southern Comfort.”

“Will it help or hinder us?” I asked callously, without a thought for the unfortunate man.

“Time will tell. Now, if all the prosecution’s witnesses were to follow the same path …” He grinned, and once again Christopher Lee came to mind. “O’Connor invoked the Fifth Amendment when placed in front of the Federal Grand Jury. He also declined a polygraph test. Anyway, in a few minutes you’ll be taking a walk with me over to the Kenneth B Keating Building. That’s where the trial will be held. I want you to study the video tapes the Feds have of you and your buddy Maloney.”

“Video tapes?”

“Oh. I thought I’d told you about them? They’ve hundreds of hours of tape, allegedly of you and Maloney leaving and entering the apartment.”

I must have turned white, because he laughed and said, “Don’t worry. It doesn’t prove too much against you. But I’m sure Maloney will have some explaining to do …”

An hour later, over at the courthouse, I sat down in a tiny room while Tony rolled out a massive TV and VCR.

“Sorry, Sam. No popcorn, I’m afraid,” he said, laughing just a wee bit too much for my liking.

The screen came to life and there I was, with my Belfast dander, walking in and out of the apartment, not a fucking care in the world. I felt myself go red. Sweat was trickling down my back. What a dick, not even knowing they had been watching me. I wanted Tony to turn it off.

“Wait. It only gets better,” he assured me, grinning.

Turn the TV off, and that fucking grin also, please.

Now it was Pat’s turn, walking up to the apartment door, disappearing inside. Suddenly, Tony fast-forwarded one of the tapes. “Watch this.”

The tape was dated four days after we had first entered the apartment. Pat could be seen coming into the corridor, looking about.

I thought nothing of it, until the two black men appeared beside him, carrying empty bags under their arms.

“What the fuck is going on?” I said out loud, baffled by the presence of the two men. I hadn’t known Pat had told anyone about the apartment. What was he playing at?

Tony froze the picture and flicked on the light. “I take it they weren’t part of the plan?” he asked. “Do you recognise them?”

“No,” I said, livid.

“Okay. Let’s get it over with,” he replied, turning the lights back off.

It was the same day on the tape, about an hour later. I could see the door open and Pat’s head popping out slowly. Then came his two friends, carrying bags – full-to-the-brim bags. Like a nice hot cup o’ tea.

“I don’t fucking believe this!” I wanted to put my foot through the screen.

“The scene repeats itself, Sam, over the next two days of taping. In with empty bags, out with full ones. Would you like to see them?”

I sat in silence for a few moments, then said, “No … I’ve seen enough …”

As Tony cleared away the TV, he explained that this would all be shown at the trial, for the benefit of the jury. “It makes the Feds look professional, shows people where all their tax money goes. The jury will be watching your reaction, so it’s imperative that you remain calm, expressionless.”

It really didn’t matter any more. I didn’t care. It was bad enough that Pat hadn’t given Ronnie the money; now he had this to explain.

“We have to be careful how we handle this guy Maloney,” advised Tony, reading my thoughts. “We don’t want to alienate him at this crucial moment, lest he does something stupid. His hairs were all over the place, as were his fingerprints. The ink used to write down the money totals was quickly traced to pens he kept in the church. An Empire safe located in his bedroom contained thousands of dollars. The list is endless.”

It was all becoming clear now. For months, Pat had kept writing to me, asking – telling – me to drop Tony as my lawyer. He didn’t trust him, he said. He had heard a few things about him. If I dropped him, Pat would get me another lawyer, one who would work hard to get us all free. Not like this “shyster” who was only after fame and money.

I had almost believed him.

He had even asked that we petition the court for a change of venue, to move it back to New York City, where we had been arrested. He claimed his health was suffering from having to make the eight-hour journey up to Rochester each time he had to appear in court. But more importantly, a trial down in liberal New York would grant us a far better chance of beating the whole thing than the redneck cop town of Rochester.

God! I had almost succumbed! A few weeks ago, I had contemplated dropping Tony, just to please Pat, to keep us united for the trial.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Tony; he simply feared him. He knew, by now, that Tony would leave no stone unturned to get me off. He must also have known how angry I would be upon seeing the tapes.

“Look on the bright side, Sam,” said Tony, as I prepared to return to the jail. “You’re only on the video twice, and with nothing in your hands. Maloney is the one who will have to explain to the jury what was in all those stuffed bags. My guess is he won’t take the stand, for fear of incriminating himself. Want to bet?”

“I would, except you and the Feds have taken every dollar I have.”

He laughed. I almost cried.

“Confidence, Sam. Have confidence. Oh, did I tell you that some guy from Buffalo is suing Brinks? He claims he squealed on O’Connor, but never received a cent from the reward money. What a scumbag! If there’s one thing I hate, it’s rats – the human kind. I suppose I’m a bit like Indiana Jones.” He smiled, and I waited for him to produce a whip. “Anyway, remember the key word: confidence.”

Confidence? Why was I not filled with any, I wondered, as I was escorted back to my cell? The guard kept reminding me I had the best lawyer in upstate New York, and that I should be grateful he was willing to take me as a client.

How did this guard know that Tony was the best lawyer in upstate New York? Simple: he had been one of Tony’s clients, also.

“Some niggers claimed me and six other cops in town violated their civil rights by slappin’ them about a bit. Can ya fuckin’ believe these people? Aim a shotgun at your face, and we’re the violators?”

I remained silent. I was having a rough enough time. I didn’t want to make things worse by expressing my liberal views and disgust at his racist words.

“So you beat the rap?” I asked, trying to keep out of my cell for as long as possible. It was like stealing time from the Feds.

He grinned. “We all beat the rap and the niggers. Ya’ll do well by Tony. He’s the best fuckin’ lawyer in the world.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

A Judge. A Real Good Honest To Goodness Judge

Naked … for years on end in a freezing cell … beatings … whatever … Millar went through it all.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Sherman, Esquire magazine

Is there no way out of the mind?

Sylvia Plath, Apprehensions

The weeks and months following the TV screening saw dents appearing in the “united front” Pat and I had initially established. We barely spoke a word to each other. I began to receive hate mail from some of his supporters, accusing me of duping him into the mess he was now in. Nonsense, of course, but he did little to dispel such notions. It suited him perfectly, the role of gullible martyr. It was beginning to gall me. I had done my best to give him a plausible excuse for getting involved, giving my gambling history to his lawyers in the hope it might secure his release, despite the fact that Tony went ballistic when he heard what I was doing.

But once he started to claim he knew nothing about where the money came from – or, as some of his starry-eyed supporters claimed, that perhaps the money was “going to Ireland” and that he had been duped – then it was time for me to defend myself. If they thought he had been duped, then why did he go with me to purchase a $300,000 house? He claimed the money found in his bedroom – almost $200,000 – came from illegal aliens! Surveillance notes had recorded Pat giving out money like Santa – $3000 here, $5000 there. Eight thousand dollars went to Jason, a young man he had adopted. He had attempted to deposit $21,000 in cash at a bank in Florida, but thought better of it when told by the bank official that he would have to fill in a Currency Transaction Report. Names kept popping up at an alarming rate, all given large amounts of money.

One of the many letters I received was from a nun, who told me that: “You’ll be going to Hell very soon, unless you repent your terrible sin against Father Pat.” I wrote back that I had already been to Hell, and it wasn’t such a bad place actually, thank you very much. Hate mail poured in, displaying various levels of nastiness.

It was crystal clear now why Pat had wanted me to drop Tony in favour of a lawyer of his choosing. But it was all too late. The chickens were coming home to roost.

* * *

“Have you heard of William Sherman?” asked Tony one morning, as we sorted through mountains of legal papers in a tiny office in the county jail.

“The name sounds familiar.”

“He’s a famous writer. He won the Pulitzer, along with a load of other awards. Anyway, he has asked me to allow you to collaborate on an article for Esquire magazine. He says it will be sympathetic to you, put a human face on you for his readers. What do you think?”

“I kind of like the face I already have. I don’t know about doing interviews. Isn’t there always the possibility of saying the wrong thing?”

“You’ve echoed my thoughts exactly,” said Tony. But I thought I detected a slight disappointment in his voice. Did he see his smiling face on the cover of Esquire? “It would be a blunder. That’s why I’ve recommended to the priest’s attorney that his client refuse also, say nothing that may jeopardize everyone. Why are you grinning?”

“You don’t know Pat. He’ll love all this, the publicity. There’s not a hope of him saying no.” Perhaps Tony didn’t want either of Pat’s lawyers on the cover either.

“Well, I think you’re wrong. I’ve convinced his lawyer on the folly of it. I was pretty adamant. I doubt if it will go ahead.”

* * *

The article in Esquire appeared two months later, titled “Blood Money”. Almost every page carried a picture of a grinning Father Pat.

“I can’t fucking believe this guy!” shouted Tony, throwing the magazine on the table in the prison room. “He’s trying to get us all hung. The Feds love this sort of shit. What a fucking asshole! Can no one speak to this guy, ask him to shut his mouth?”

No, not Pat. He loved it; even if it damaged our case, he would continue talking to reporters.

And the Feds did love it. Sooner or later, he would say something incriminating.

“We’ll weather this one, Sam. I’ll personally go down to New York and speak to Maloney.”

He needn’t have bothered. There was more to come. Pat was now on the TV, giving interviews with all the well-known celebrities, radio stations and newspapers. There’s no stopping him now, I thought, as I watched him holding a child in his arms for the cameras. He could have been a senator running for office, a fire-fighter saving a child from a burning building. Even the “Late Night Show” wanted him. And when I phoned him on one rare occasion, asking him to tone it all down, he simply told me not to worry, Hollywood would pay for everything.

I put it all down to a nervous breakdown, to the strain, the pressure. Tony was less diplomatic. “He is full of shit. He thinks the more people hear him, the more they’ll believe him. Our only concern is what twelve people think. Not David fucking Letterman.”

It was then that Tony hit me with a devastating piece of bad news.

“The Feds have arrested Bernie.”

He spoke so softly I could barely hear what he had said.

“What’d you say?”

“Look, there’s no easy way to tell you. The Feds ordered your wife to appear at the Grand Jury this morning to give evidence against you, to give an account of anything she allegedly knows about the robbery. She refused to testify, citing the spousal-testimonial privilege, which excuses spouses from offering adverse testimony against their partners.”

Bernadette’s first marriage had lasted only months. It had been annulled by the Catholic Church, after a long battle by us. She had been my common-law wife of ten years, as we were still having problems with the Church in the North over divorce proceedings. Had we been rich while living in the North, we would have had no problem getting the annulment, of course.

“What the fuck happened? Why has she been arrested?” I was frantic, trying to remain calm.

“New York does not recognise common-law marriages, but exceptions are made for those that began elsewhere, in a place where common-law unions are legally recognised. Judge Larimer said, after researching the law, he did not believe such relationships are recognised in the North of Ireland.”

“What the fuck would he know about the North of Ireland!”

“He told Bernie he didn’t relish this proceeding, but he had to hold her in contempt if she still refused to testify. She refused and was led away.”

“No. I can’t allow this. We have three kids. What will happen to them? No way will I go along with this.”

“You can’t allow the Feds to get to you,” said Tony, trying to inject some fight into my misery. “This is how they work. You are stronger than they are. They couldn’t break you. Now they think they can get to you through Bernie. They know she knows nothing, just like McCormack. But they are desperate, Sam. Believe me, you don’t know just how desperate.”

At that moment, I was at rock bottom. Tony knew in my state of mind, I was no longer thinking rationally. He didn’t want to leave the room.

“Listen. Bernie has an excellent lawyer, Robert Napier. He’s a fighter, just like me. Neither of us will sleep until we overturn this. You have my word on that. But I need your word that you will stay strong. Deal?”

I muttered an agreement that he could live with. Lucky for him, I had yet to see a copy of the evening’s newspaper. Bernie was on the front page, handcuffed, being led away by federal agents.

“Under no circumstances will Bernadette agree to answer questions about Sam. They are in all ways, spiritually and emotionally, married people. She will not violate that relationship in any way,” said Robert Napier sombrely, to the assembled reporters. “A jail-house wedding ceremony appears to be the best option for her early release.”

* * *

It made little difference that Tony repeated to me each day: “We think we have something … this could work. I told you this guy was good …” I knew he was simply stalling me, trying to keep me focused. “I’ve got to tell you this, and it’s no bullshit. But the Feds have a grudging respect for you. They’re hitting you with every single thing they can, and you are still standing. I’ve talked to a few of them, and they are totally baffled by your actions. They know if you had been an American, you would have collapsed a long time ago. They think you’re one cool guy.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“In a backhanded way, yes.”

“Well, the next time you’re talking to your great Fed buddies, tell them I said to stick their compliments up their hairy holes. Okay?”

He left before I could deteriorate any further. His remedy was having the opposite of the effect desired.

* * *

Eventually, a month later, proof of our relationship in Ireland, in the form of a divorce decree, was presented to the court and studied by Judge Larimer. Bernie’s lawyer asked the judge to vacate the contempt order, so that she could apply for a marriage licence at Rochester City Hall.

“Four kids and ten years together speaks for itself in my mind,” argued Napier, studying the judge’s expressionless face.

“This puts me in a Cupid-like position,” Judge Larimer said, studying the documents. “But I approve it, and I wish the couple happiness on their wedding day.”

Only in America could a judge speak with such compassion.

“Didn’t I tell you he was a fair judge?” Tony said later that day, all smiles.

I said nothing, but savoured the moment. A great weight had been lifted. I no longer gave a fuck about prison.

“A fair judge,” reiterated Tony, not knowing that he and the judge would soon be at each others’ throats, and making all the headlines.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Our Strategy

OCTOBER 1994

The investigation has run over $1,000,000 so far – and that’s not counting the trial.

Dean Anderson, spokesman for the FBI

It’s a funny old world – a man’s lucky if he gets out of it alive.

Walter de Lean and Paul M Jones, You’re Telling Me

Before the trial began, a process of jury selection was undergone.

“Are you kidding me? We get to select the jury?” I asked Tony, as we all sat in a tiny room, over in the Kenneth B Keating Building, mapping out the best strategy to beat the charges.

“More or less. The prosecution gets to pick some; we get some. They get a couple of chances to bar the ones whom they believe to be biased in our favour, and vice versa. It’s all very democratic. Not like back where you came from, with all that non-jury bullshit. We have democracy in America.”

We all sat in the room, fiddling with notepads and lawyers. Pat had both his lawyers; Charlie had his, as did Tom.

Tony began outlining his ideal profile of potential jurors. He believed the personalities, backgrounds and opinions of the jurors could be crucial at the end of the day.

“No blacks on the jury,” Tony said. “They’re out to prove they’re tough on crime, because they’re frightened of being stereotyped as criminals themselves. I’d put twelve blacks on the jury if I thought they’d be sympathetic, but I can tell you now, they’d be a disaster.”

The other lawyers wrote something down, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Everything would be ironed out later. Someone suggested that, this being a cop town, perhaps getting relatives of law-enforcement people on the jury might be a plus for Tom.

There was laughter at this. “No,” advised Tony. “They’d be like the blacks, out to prove that not all cops – and I’m not implying anything by this, Tom – are corrupt.”

Tom just smiled his Gary Cooper smile.

“Also,” continued Tony, “I recommend that we try to get all females on the jury. We have four good-looking guys here; no all-female jury will convict.”

More laughter.

“That’s not going to happen. The Feds would see right through it,” said an unconvinced lawyer, staring at Tony over half-moon glasses. “In addition, there’s no proof that it will work. The whole case could explode in our faces. Besides, women can be more prosecutorial than men. Picking all women – and I doubt if we can do it – might just backfire on us. It’s a big risk, and could be an unmitigated disaster.”

Tony laughed. “Are you kidding? You’re telling me, put twelve women in a room, for maybe two months, and they’re still friends? By the end of this trial, they’ll be killing each other. The least we can expect is a hung jury.”

“Or hung clients.” Very tiny laughter at that one.

“It can’t work. The Feds will not allow it to happen,” said Felix, Tom’s lawyer.

“It’s up to us to make it happen,” Tony replied calmly. “And I’m going to give it my best shot. What about the rest of you?”

They moved on to other matters.

“I think our biggest problem is Buscaglia. There’s nothing flashy about him, but he keeps coming at you like a glacier,” said Felix.

John Speranza, Charlie’s attorney, summed his own feelings up. “The conspiracy statute gives considerable leeway to prosecutors in linking defendants in a conspiracy. It takes into account the whales and the minnows. The net is a fine net, and it’s very broad.”

The debate went on for two hours, each lawyer voicing his concerns, each trying to map out a strategy beneficial to all, yet keeping their own client’s acquittal at the top of the list. It would be a thin tightrope to be walked, and I doubted very much if any person in that room believed we would all stick to one selected path. We could only wait and see, as jury selection began in earnest.

I wanted to talk to Tom, to apologise for the mess I had placed him in, but Tony advised against it. “The less you communicate with the other defendants, the better it will be in the long run. O’Connor is a big boy. He’ll understand.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Jury Selection

The court is obliged to submit the case fairly, but let the jury do the deciding.

Chekhov

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Each potential juror was brought in individually. They were asked to sit in front of us, while our lawyers fired questioned at them. Most looked, to me, to be nervous, dreading the interrogation, but Tony told me not to be fooled by appearances.

“Oh, they want desperately to be on this trial. Make no mistake about that. This is probably the most exciting thing to happen to them in all their lives, something to tell their grandchildren about.”

The first hopeful walked in, spoke his name, sat down. He was covered in gold, from head to toe. Tony quickly ran a line through his name on the list. “Maybe he was the one who robbed the Brinks!” whispered Tony, trying not to laugh.

Another was a toolmaker. He was quickly disposed of, for fear of knowing too much about the Brinks security. One had a sheriff for a cousin. Everyone quickly shook their head. Get him out of here!

Another potential juror’s father had worked for Brinks, and had been a “model employee”.

Goodbye.

The prosecution asked a female if, with her Catholic religion, she could convict a priest if she thought he was guilty. She looked straight at Pat for a few moments, studying his face. Pat returned her gaze, his back stiff, fingers slowly rubbing his “worry beads”.

“Yes. I could. If he were guilty …”

Pat sagged and his lawyers moved quickly to have the woman’s name removed.

“Don’t be too hasty,” whispered Tony to the other lawyers. “I think she could be fair. Something tells me the evidence would have to be overwhelming for her to convict. We may not have much of a choice, as the list gets smaller. Think about it.”

After a few minutes of consultation between themselves and Pat, they decided to allow her to stay on the list.

One woman on, eleven to go …

Another potential male juror sat and, without a blush, told us he hadn’t heard about the Brinks case. “Can you believe this guy?” whispered Tony, quickly scribbling Mister Never Heard from the list. “I know some of them are desperate to get on the jury for their sixty seconds of fame, but you’d think they’d come up with something credible.”

One woman, immaculately dressed, sat down where Never Heard’s arse had just warmed. Her expression gave little away, and the routine questions directed at her were answered thoughtfully, yet almost indifferently. She would be next on the list. I had no doubt about that.

Then came the shocker.

“You have a nephew in the police force. Is that true?” asked Felix.

There was complete silence. The woman’s face wasn’t moving.

“Is that true?” asked Felix again. He balanced a pencil between two fingers, and a tiny smile appeared on his face.

“Yes. That’s true,” the woman said, breaking the silence.

“And your husband? He’s a retired police officer?”

“Yes.” There was a hint of pride in her voice at this.

“In all honesty, you would not look too kindly on policemen who allegedly broke the law, would you?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “No, sir. I would not.”

“Thank you for your candour, Mrs _. Your honour, I move to have her name removed from the list.”

The prosecution tried to retain the woman, for obvious reasons, but to no avail. The judge ruled in Felix’s favour.

The day progressed slowly; a name dropped from the list, one added. The novelty was wearing off and everyone – judge included – was getting a bad dose of itchy arse. We wiggled in our seats, trying to stay focused.

“How much longer?” I asked Tony.

“As long as it takes to get what we want. All week, if necessary. Any problems, seeing as how we are doing this for you?” Christopher Lee was back with an acerbic tongue.

“No. Of course not. I appreciate it, really.”

Eventually, all the men were out. I couldn’t – and nor could anyone else – believe the prosecution team were letting us get away with it. Maybe they had the same plan, believing that women would be more sympathetic to them. Whatever the reason, when the twelve women were finally selected, the newspapers give the fact their undivided attention, making the Feds look foolish.

They had walked into the trap set by Tony and the other lawyers.

Trying to regain some lost ground, the prosecutors quickly asked the judge to review the choices the lawyers had made in selecting an all-female jury – had men been discriminated against? After a closed-door session, Judge Larimer said he had extensively reviewed the selection, and found no basis for the Feds’ concern. The all-female jury would be sworn in the next day, and the trial, almost two years in the preparation, would commence.

A last meeting with Tony prior to the trial brought me some big news. “Ten is the max you can get. But you will more than likely be given about eight years, if you’re found guilty. Now this is the last time we discuss this. I’m going in there to win – so are you. I don’t want to hear any more about doing time. Agreed?”

Eight years? I doubted if he was telling the truth. I could handle eight years, but I knew it would be more in the region of sixty. I tried not to think about dying in an American prison, but I had to be realistic. I put my smiling mask back on, and shook his hand.

“I appreciate all that you’ve done, Tony, irrespective of what happens.”

“Get a good night’s sleep. I want you to be looking your best for tomorrow.”

He smiled, and I wondered what was behind it. Did he know, deep down, what I was truly heading for? Soon it would all be over.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

The Trial Begins

11 OCTOBER 1994

If it takes 100 witnesses to prove your case, you don’t have one.

Lawrence Andolina, New York Lawyer, commenting on the trial

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Mark Twain, A Curious Dream

There wasn’t a seat to be had. The courthouse was packed. The Press were allocated a certain number, and our families and friends all tried to squeeze into a few more. The remainder went to that breed of morbid people who have nothing in their lives except the expectation of someone else’s demise, the perverse voyeuristic high gained from observing the fallen. You would have found these same people during the French Revolution, sitting with their knitting needles at the guillotine.

FBI agents were trooped in, conveyor belt-style, non-stop, by the prosecution. Impeccably dressed, they strutted down the centre aisle with the confidence of actors receiving Oscars. They read carefully from notebooks, in which they had logged our movements over a ten-month period.

I tried to keep my thoughts elsewhere, knowing what the future inevitably held. I wasn’t going to sit there in self-mutilation, humiliated by all the mistakes I had made. Instead, I had gone fishing in the Waterworks in Belfast. I think my father was there, eating a big, thick strawberry-jam sandwich, giving me the thumbs-up. ‘Chin up, son. Don’t let them get you down.’ I returned the thumbs-up, smiling.

Tony nudged me. “You’ve got to pay attention,” he hissed. “And stop sitting there with that silly grin on your face. The jury might think you’re not taking this seriously – or that you’re laughing at them.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Where are we at?”

“They’re testifying about McCormack. About the sheet with all those amounts of money on it, allegedly in his handwriting.”

The sheet contained figures from an essay Charlie had written years ago in Fairfield University, for an accountancy class. In a strange twist of fate, the figures he had written all those years ago were almost identical to the amount of money taken from Brinks. This was enough to have him arrested by the Feds on a conspiracy charge. It didn’t help that the essay was titled “For the love of money”, and jokingly signed “Jesus Christ Millionaire”.

Of all the people at the table, Charlie was the one I felt sorry for. He didn’t know what was happening to him. Every now and then, his parents would glare over at Pat, ice in their eyes. Who could blame them? Not me. They probably felt the same way towards me also. I would, if it he were my son.

“I would like to call special agent …” The prosecution had an embarrassment of riches in the form of federal witnesses. They weren’t just regular FBI either; these were the elite, “special” agents. The unfuckingtouchables. They knew what they were up against, and must have sent only the best to capture us.

The jury was becoming hypnotised by repetition of the word “special”.

Special agent this, special agent that. You could see some of the women blush each time a special agent glanced in their direction. Suddenly, the prosecution wasn’t looking so daft after all. They could beat us at our own game, with new, special rules being brought in by the special bucket load.

It was then, just as the tide was turning in the prosecution’s favour, that Tony decided to burst all our bubbles.

“Special Agent Stith, you claim in your testimony that my client refused to enter the elevator after you were so kind as to open the door for him. Is that true?”

“Yes, sir.”

The questioning of Stith lasted for about forty minutes. Just as he was about to leave the stand, Tony asked, “All agents of the FBI are titled ‘special’, regardless of rank or experience. Isn’t that true?”

Stith frowned at the question, but nodded.

“Is that a yes or a no, special Agent Stith?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. No further questions for this witness … for now.”

* * *

As the days turned to weeks, speculation began to mount on which, if any, defendant would take the stand. Tom was already committed to testifying in his defence, as was Charlie. Only Pat and myself remained undecided, neither one of us allowing the other to peep over the fence to see if we had any aces up our sleeves.

“It never looks good if you refuse to take the stand,” said one of the lawyers during a much-needed lull in the proceedings. “Don’t pay any heed to what you see on ‘Matlock’, that you’re presumed innocent until proven guilty. A lot of bull. Each one of those twelve people is thinking the same: If he’s truly innocent, why the hell isn’t he up there telling us his side of the story? And you’ve got to admit, they do have a point.” He smiled, just as the trial recommenced. Danny Calemine, a New York City detective, took the stand and testified to having seen Pat and myself coming from a bar, drunk, and staggering up the street!

I couldn’t restrain myself. “That’s a lie,” I said to Tony, a bit too loud. Everyone knew Pat never touched a drop of alcohol, let alone staggered down the street, drunk. He had probably never been to a bar in his entire life, and certainly not with me.

“Just let me do the questioning,” Tony whispered. “Another outburst like that and the judge’ll have you removed.”

“But the bastard’s lying through his teeth. He’s making it all up. You can’t let him get away with this.”

Tony began his questioning of Calemine routinely enough, asking the usual mundane and predictable stuff, nothing dramatic. How many years had he served in the force? Any medals for bravery? Did he have any problems with his eyesight? And was he certain he had seen Pat and myself doing an Irish jig, drunk as two skunks, on a Saturday night?

It was about this moment when the judge intervened, pointing his finger at Tony and saying, “You know better, Mister Leonardo – you’re testifying.”

“Don’t point your finger at me!” exploded Tony, spinning on one heel, glaring as he walked towards the judge.

Mouths dropped open. No one said a word. Everyone in the court – lawyers, prosecution, jury and public – looked on in shock and amazement.

“You’re a better lawyer than that,” said the judge, red spreading across his face.

“Judge, I would think you would be a better judge than to interrupt me. I’m going to protect my client’s rights,” responded Tony.

“You’ll be held in contempt of court for being flagrantly abusive to this court. We’ll take a short recess,” said the judge, obviously shaken, scowling from the bench. “Mister Leonardo? I want to see you in my chamber.”

“Get a cell next to yours ready for me,” Tony whispered. “I might be over there tonight.”

Tony was already in trouble from a previous case. He had accepted $75,000 from a client without advising him to seek independent legal advice on the transaction.

“No court or jury should have to endure such rude, disrespectful conduct. It infects the integrity of the entire judicial process,” Judge Larimer said to Tony in his chambers. “When I admonished you … you exploded and engaged in a lengthy tirade against the court. You violated the state Code of Professional Responsibility, and federal rules. The reason I do not intend to hold you in contempt immediately is the possibility of your client not getting a fair trial. But your conduct was so unprofessional and offensive that some action must be taken at a later stage.”

Tony smiled as he emerged from the meeting, relieved, but still defiant. He would now have to await a response from the Appellate Division – he could be suspended from practising law, or worse, disbarred.

“You’ve got to calm down, Tony,” I advised as he sat beside me. “I don’t want to lose you at this late stage of the game.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Still think he’s a fair judge?” I asked, smiling, packing up to go back to the jailhouse.

“Hell, yes. He’s just doing his job. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

* * *

The next day’s proceedings began with Tom’s lawyer questioning a representative from Brinks Incorporated. This man stated that between $40 million and $50 million dollars was sometimes kept in Brinks on a Wednesday. If this had been an inside job – as the prosecution charged – wouldn’t it have been more sensible to raid the place on that night, rather than the one in question?

Of course, I knew the answer to that better than the Brinks representative. I had known about the vast amounts of money held on a Wednesday, but what would I have done with it? We could barely take the almost eight. How on Earth could we have managed forty or fifty? Opting for the more conservative Tuesday was the most realistic option available to us.

The questioning of witnesses continued relentlessly for days. The judge, at the end of his patience with the constant repetitive evidence, finally demanded the prosecution speed up the process by eliminating all witnesses except those with new or vital evidence.

“Enough is enough, if we are to conclude this trial some time this year.”

“Yes, your honour,” mumbled the prosecution lawyer sheepishly, quickly leaving the room to inform the small army of agents, to their dismay, that they might not all get to testify.

* * *

The next day, shortly before noon, mixed news came for Pat’s attorneys. George Thompson, a private investigator for Pat’s team, informed them that he had been able to track down two people in New York who had worked at the casino, but that the INS had threatened one of them with checking if his Green Card was in order.

He quickly disappeared from the scene.

As for the other one, he would be willing to testify about the gambling, provided he received word from me via Tony that it would not harm my defence.

Tony was adamant. “No. We can’t allow this guy to testify. The jury will see it as a pattern. I’m trying to make you out as this poor guy whose only sin was to believe the American dream, and in walks this guy saying you were running illegal casinos in New York. Think about it, Sam. Maloney’s team has to get him out of this mess, but not at your expense.”

But I was just as adamant. Despite his underhanded ways, and doing nothing to discourage innuendo against me, I still wanted to see Pat get out of this.

“Who is the witness?” I asked, curious.

“Patrick Farrelly.”

The prosecutors were taken totally by surprise. Typically, both sides share documents before a witness testifies. This gives each side the chance to do its homework, to prepare to cross-examine the witness. This time it did not happen, and the prosecution let their frustration be known.

“Your honour, we have had no notes on this witness given to us.”

Over objections from the prosecutors, and outside the presence of the jury, Pat’s lawyers asked the judge to allow them to present evidence about my work in the casinos.

“We believe that our client thought any money that might have originated from Mr Millar may have come from the casinos, your honour.”

“Your honour, lawyers for the defendants can not present evidence about one defendant’s action to try to establish another defendant’s state of mind. It’s nonsense,” replied Buscaglia.

Larimer nodded, as if in agreement, but said, “The court has to be very mindful to allow him to put in his full defence. I’ll allow the witness.”

When Patrick took the stand, it was obvious he was anything but comfortable. He took a long drink of water, and waited for Pat’s attorney to commence the questioning.

“What is your occupation, Mr Farrelly?”

“I’m a reporter for the Village Voice.” Patrick would later become producer of Michael Moore’s Emmy award-winning NBC/BBC2 series “TV Nation”, and later Bravo/Channel 4 co-production “Awful Truth”. He was the founding editor of the New York-based weekly newspaper Irish Voice, and had also been features editor of the New York Post. He also worked for HBO, Discovery, PBS and Irish broadcasters RTÉ and TG4.

“Do you recognise any of the men sitting at that table, Mister Farrelly?”

Patrick looked at me, and then quickly glanced away before nodding.

“I’m sorry, Mr Farrelly, but you can’t nod. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will do.”

“Yes. Mr Millar.”

“And where do you know Mister Millar from?”

“I was a journalist covering a story about illegal casinos in the Irish community in New York. I managed to get a job in one of the casinos by way of a friend. I hoped my experience of working there would add authenticity to my article.”

“Could you please tell the court what role Mr Millar had in the running of this casino?”

Patrick looked at my impassive face before answering.

“He held the highest responsibility.”

“And what was that responsibility, Mister Farrelly?”

“He was the box manager.”

“The box manager? Could you explain to the court exactly what that means?”

“He had sole access to all the money that was dropped into the boxes. He was the only one with the key to open the boxes.”

“How much money would be in these boxes at any given time?”

“Thousands of dollars.”

“And what did Mr Millar do with all of this money?”

“Normally he would count it, along with the owner. Then it would be transferred out of the building by him, to prevent the police from confiscating it in raids.”

“Did you personally see Mr Millar counting the money?”

“Yes. On numerous occasions. Sometimes he’d send for a Coke or a coffee. I worked as a barman in the casino, and brought it to him quite a few times. He was always there with the owner. If the casino was having a tough night, losing a lot of money, he was the one to see. It could be noon or three in the morning, didn’t make any difference. He was the one that was sent to bring or take money. No one else.”

* * *

“That wasn’t the total disaster I thought it might turn into,” Tony said as we prepared to leave the courtroom.

“Could’ve been worse,” I agreed, standing up.

“We’re not going anywhere just yet. Clauss and Feldman are going to put a motion to the court.”

“What kind of motion?”

“To have all the charges dropped.”

I laughed. “You’re not serious, of course.”

“Just wait and see.”

It was almost 3pm when William Clauss and Jonathan Feldman, Pat’s lawyers, dropped the bombshell.

“Your honour. We move to have all charges against the defendants dropped.”

The prosecution seemed bemused.

“On what grounds?” asked the judge.

“There is no proof that money was moved in interstate commerce. The prosecution has not offered a shred of evidence to support this, your honour.”

“Mister Buscaglia?”

“Your honour, I believe we have brought more than enough evidence in to the court to support and justify the charges. It would seem to me that this motion is a waste of the court’s time. Why was it not brought at the initial stage of the trial, instead of now? I would strongly question the motive behind this motion.”

Judge Larimer fingered through some papers, peering intently at them.

“Well, it’s a bit late in the day to make a ruling, gentlemen. I’ll take these documents home with me, and hopefully I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow.”

“This isn’t going to work,” I said to Tony, before being escorted down the stairs. “So what’s the point?”

“Wait and see,” replied Tony, smiling. “You heard the judge. Hopefully, he’ll have an answer in the morning. Hopefully, it’ll be the one we want.”

That night, I tortured myself, hoping against hope that perhaps the judge would suffer a fit of madness, and drop the charges. It was almost farcical, the motion. But this was America, not the North of Ireland. Who the hell knows what could happen over here? You read about it in the newspapers all the time. Why couldn’t it happen for us?

I’ll not sleep tonight.

CHAPTER SIXTY

A Horseshoe up my Arse? An Entire Stable!

Life is bare, gloom and misery everywhere, Stormy weather, Just can’t get my poor self together, I’m weary all the time, So weary all the time, Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky, Stormy weather, Keeps rainin’ all the time …

Billie Holiday, “Stormy Weather”

… one must have the courage to dare.

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Did you sleep last night?” asked a grinning Tony as we sat down at the table. The courtroom was full, mostly with media, all wondering what the judge would rule. The noise was intolerable. I was irritable through lack of sleep.

“Like a baby,” I replied, sarcastically.

As the judge entered, the noise died and everyone rose in a Mexican wave.

“I have looked carefully at the motion forwarded by the defence. After long hours and careful study of the Constitution, I rule in favour of the defence. The prosecution failed to prove that defendants O’Connor, Millar or Maloney possessed stolen money that moved in interstate commerce. Furthermore, prosecutors failed to prove that the defendants possessed stolen money in the Western District of New York. The money had been found in New York City, the Southern District. The right to be tried in the venue where a crime allegedly occurred is cited twice in the Constitution. Charges 2 and 3 are dismissed.”

The ruling was a disaster for the prosecution, and it showed clearly on their faces. In the belief that it would be easier to secure a conviction upstate, the prosecution had cut its own throat by removing us from New York City, violating our rights in the process.

Pat, Charlie and myself now faced the lone charge of conspiracy. Tom’s charge of actually committing the robbery remained.

I was thankful that Pat had not succeeded in having the trial held in New York for his own convenience. Had he succeeded, not one charge would have been dropped. I couldn’t help but rub it in a wee bit. “I hope you’re happy you didn’t get your wish,” I said. He could only look at me sheepishly, relieved a major hurdle had been cleared.

Back in my cell, I hovered from the ground, reading the front page of the local newspaper’s late edition:

Prosecution’s Case Fading in Brinks Trial

Earlier today, prosecutors took a major blow when possession charges against Millar and Maloney were dropped in U.S. District Court for lack of evidence.

By all accounts, The Brinks Inc. depot robbery case was one federal prosecutors here wanted.

Armed with a mountain of evidence, they lined up more than 100 witnesses, several flown in from as far away as Florida and California, not to mention the dozens of New York City FBI agents and detectives brought here to testify.

But there was a tug-of-war between the New York Feds and the local Feds … everyone wanted the glory … the prospect for glory, however, appears to be fading.

But there was still life left in the prosecution.

In his final summing up, the next day, Buscaglia urged the jury to, “Use the common sense that you have developed over your lifetime. Bring it into this courtroom.”

He seemed frail, as if the trial had taken its toll on him. He occasionally stopped for a tiny sip of water, giving the impression of someone deep in thought. His career was probably on the line, and he desperately needed this speech to sway any juror who might still harbour doubts as to our guilt or innocence.

“Does your parish priest have suitcases filled with money? Is this what your parish priest does? Is this man the pious priest we have been told about?” He glared at Pat. “Does Mr Millar look like a poor immigrant whose only crime – according to his lawyer – was to seek the American Dream?” A cynical smile appeared on his face. “And remember Mr McCormack’s so-called spoof essay? Was it just a coincidence, the amount he claims he wrote in college just happens to be close to the amount stolen from the Brinks? Can you really believe he was just an innocent bystander? And what about O’Connor? He refused a polygraph.”

He shook his head, and for a moment, I thought he would laugh out loud, like a madman barking at the moon. “Can you buy his story that he had a paper bag placed over his head by the kidnappers, who were kind enough to drop him outside his favourite bar? Picture that, folks. A guy sitting in the front passenger seat with a bag over his head. Does that have a ring of truth to it? I urge you all to use your common sense …”

With these final words, the prosecutors rested their case. Everyone’s fate was now in the hands of the jury. All we could do was wait.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

The Verdict

29 NOVEMBER 1994

No praying, it spoils the business.

Thomas Otway

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

The jury deliberated over the next three days, for a total of twenty hours, occasionally requesting some or other piece of evidence to be shown to them. We were, for the most part, relaxed. But sometimes the atmosphere became one of frayed nerves soothed by gallows humour. The look of anxiety on all our faces – defendants, prosecution, FBI and lawyers – was equal, each for a different reason.

Pat and myself were polite, but wary of each other. A fat sandwich of silence sat between us for most of the deliberation. Each of us had cut just a little too deep with our knives to pretend.

Sometimes I lost myself going over the litany of mistakes I had made, marking the miscalculations and questioning my judgments of trust. It was impossible to fathom retrospectively, but at the time, necessity dictated, clouding my judgment.

Charlie lay sprawled out on the evidence table, like a corpse waiting to be dissected. Occasionally, he would smile to himself, then frown as if just coming to terms with the nightmare thrust upon him by Pat and me. Pat massaged his worry beads, occasionally placing them on the table, only to scoop them back up again to the safety of his hands. When our gazes met, they were those of strangers.

Tom? Well, Tom just being being Tom, nodding and smiling at anyone who glanced his way – including the FBI agents and prosecution. The smiles were not returned. His blasé, laid-back style infuriated them. A good kicking wouldn’t go amiss, said the expressions on their faces.

Reporters entered and left the courtroom, looking about, hoping for news. The prosecution and defence lawyers milled around each other, laughing softly, like old buddies reunited at the embarrassing wake of some person they had long forgotten.

* * *

On the third day, the announcement that the jury had reached a decision sent everyone scuttling back to their original seating positions. Gone were the smiles and jokes, replaced quickly by cool professionalism, leather briefcases in position, suits smoothed, ties firmly knotted, just like our stomachs.

We waited as the jury streamed in through the door, their expressionless faces impossible to read. Soon it would all be over. The denouement was at hand.

All of the tiny noises, which had accumulated into an annoying hum, suddenly filtered out of the room, leaving a profound silence in all our ears.

“Do you have a verdict?”

“Yes. We do.”

“What is that verdict?”

I slowly stilled my breathing and felt my skin tighten with tension. I knew what was coming next, and like a freight train in the night, there was little I could do about it.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Thoughts From a Court – A Gathering

“Justice is only as good as the case that can be made, and in the case of the Brinks trial that ended Monday, the case wasn’t very good. No doubt prosecutors did their best with what they had, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t provide the key convictions and it didn’t provide the answers.

“Important questions remain about the January 1993 robbery. Not least of them is the whereabouts of the money – at least the remaining $5 million. Then there are the mysterious gunmen who took $7.4 million from the Brinks depot, along with Thomas P. O’Connor as hostage.

“The F.B.I. plans to continue pursuing answers in the Brinks case. That’s reassuring. But unless there is new and substantially stronger evidence, the culprits, whoever they are, might just get away with this one.”

Democrat and Chronicle, editorial

“There are at least two gunmen still at large who robbed the Brinks depot in January 1993.”

Times-Union, front page, after the verdict

“We felt bad about McCormack. He could have been out of there for Thanksgiving. But I have a question for Maloney: Do you think God dropped the money in to your suitcase?”

Juror, after the verdict

“We always liked him. He was a hardworking guy, straight and narrow.”

Donald Bruce, squad commander of the Rochester Police Force, speaking about Tom

“To me, the police officer who was taken as a hostage shouldn’t even have gone to trial.”

Bernice Cook, owner of $4.99 Cookery

“I’m just really stressed out. It’s been nine weeks, and I really don’t want to talk about it right now. Maybe I’ll want to talk about it another time.”

Dawn Holman, juror, after the verdict

“I felt there was sufficient evidence to get this case before a jury. That’s my duty.”

Christopher Buscaglia, federal prosecutor

“I wouldn’t characterise it as anything going wrong. It’s the nature of the system. It doesn’t mean the prosecutors did a poor job.”

Paul Moskai, FBI spokesman

“When you take on the United States government, it’s mind-boggling … to see the FBI just trooped in one after the other. It’s always nice to beat the government. In this case, more than any other, it was a close call.”

Felix Lapine, Tom’s defence lawyer, after the verdict

“Millar’s gambling arrests – brought up by Maloney’s lawyers – will be taken into account.”

Prosecutors, speaking ominously after the trial

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Execution (The Millar’s Song)

23 FEBRUARY 1995

No man can lose what he never had.

Izaak Walton

Maybe one day it will be cheering to remember even these things.

Virgil, Aeneid bk. 1, 1.187

Judge Larimer waited until only the sound of his power could be heard, taking control of the courtroom. I stood beside Tony, as he and Buscaglia glanced over the papers in their hands. He had assured me that I would receive no more than five years, but I still doubted him.

“It is a fact that you, you know, you were up to your eyeballs in this case, and I have no doubt of that.” The judge stared at me for a second before continuing. “The evidence here, in my view, was strong and certainly justified … Your attorney worked hard … this court and the prosecutor worked hard to make sure this trial was done to proper procedure, in, I suspect, a trial that looked quite different to those trials you faced over in Northern Ireland.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Therefore, it is the judgment of this court that you receive the maximum allowed under the law, sixty months …”

Sixty months. I was relieved. I couldn’t complain about that sentence. How easily it could have been sixty years. But, of course, it wasn’t over yet. They still had two more years, before the Statute of Limitations ran out, to find another piece of the puzzle. Or a snitch willing to wear a wire.

Pat received a few months less than the sixty, and threatened to go on hunger strike. I felt bad for him, but advised him it was senseless even talking that way. Fortunately, after cooling down and talking to his family, he decided against the notion. As for Charlie and Tom, both were found not guilty. Charlie went back to New York, hoping to return to teaching; Tom returned to work, though not, it should be mentioned, at Brinks.

Two more years. I had no choice other than to wait, and hope my luck would hold out. Two more years.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Millar’s Crossing

JUNE 1996

You heard it here first. Sammy Millar, the stone-faced former IRA man whom the FBI believe was the mastermind in the 1992 Brinks robbery in upstate Rochester, New York, has been told he can return to his native Ireland, in spite of the fact that about $5 million of the $7.2 million is still missing.

Editorial in New York’s Irish Echo

I, for one, know of no sweeter sight for a man’s eyes than his own country …

Homer, The Odyssey

It was sixteen months after the verdict. I was still counting down the days, hoping the federal five-year limitation would run out. The FBI continued relentlessly and actively to pursue any leads. The robbery was still high on their priority list, though new information was scarce. Every now and again, the prosecution would make a request, through my lawyer, hoping I was still open to some sort of deal. Their offers were politely refused.

“Kill someone in this god-awful country, and it’s forgotten about in weeks – if not days. But steal the government’s money and they’ll hunt you down until every drop of blood, sweat and tears is removed from your body.” The jailhouse sage giving me this uplifting insight was a lawyer – at least he used to be, until he was caught laundering money for some shady people in New Jersey. His stomach was quite large, from having sheltered so much good food and wine, though it had to be said, he was seeing very little of that here. He was doing fifty years, because he had refused to “get down first”. His former partner had had no such qualms.

“I pray to God each day that the cock-sucker gets cancer in the face. But first his wife and kids …”

As one can imagine, he was bitter at having received such a harsh sentence for a “white collar” – non-violent – crime.

He was not the sort of person you wanted to have a conversation with if you were feeling down, as it always eventually turned to the subject of his ex-partner. “That mother-fucker, telling me each day how we were going to beat this, provided we stayed united; all the time he’s rattin’ to the Feds. The mother-fucker.”

He spat something from his mouth, shaking his head like one of those little dogs in the back of a car, before continuing the conversation. “I know what you’re thinkin’, Sam. This guy’s a lawyer, he should have known better – and it’s true. But we’d been friends for thirty years. Can you imagine? Thirty fuckin’ years, and he sticks it to me. If his mother was still livin’ on this Earth, I’d pray to God to give her cancer, before his wife and kids …”

The only reason I was listening to him was because of the baseball game in progress, between the prison inmates and visitors from a nearby prison. It had been a good game, both teams fairly even, and a few home runs had been hit across the electric fence. Each time a ball went sailing into the air, past the watchtowers and over the wire, sending the Canadian geese squawking for their lives, a massive cheer would erupt. It was as if the ball were one of us, escaping like an angel in leather.

“Yes. You take those fuckin’ cock-suckers’ money and they will hunt you down like a dog,” reiterated the lawyer, just in case I hadn’t heard him the first ten times. “You should have killed somebody instead. I know I should’ve, starting with that cock-sucker, then his wife and kids … maybe his mother …”

I needed to get away from Mister Depression as quickly – and diplomatically – as possible. No point in offending someone who might be able to help with some sticky part of the law at a future date.

I was saved by my cellmate, a Derry man, who was waving frantically from the top of the hill.

“Got to go, Peter. Mickey wants me. I’ll see ye later.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll hold your place, Sam. There’s plenty of time left in the game.”

“That’s great. See you in a wee while,” I lied, racing up the hill as if being chased by a gang of Orangemen.

“You’ve made legal history,” Mickey said, as I reached the top. “You’re on the front page of the Irish News.”

“Are you ballsing about?”

“Read for yourself. You’re on the way home.”

He handed me the newspaper and I read it. Re-read it. Then studied it again, wanting to believe, but doubting every word the ink had formed:

Exclusive: US Jail Move of Belfast Man Marks Legal History

A Belfast man, Samuel Millar, is to be the first person transferred from an American prison to serve the rest of his time in a prison in the North …

The story went on to give the facts behind the case, and how members of the SDLP – but principally Martin Morgan, the local councillor in my area of North Belfast – had worked behind the scenes to persuade the American Justice Department to assent to my transfer back to the North of Ireland.

… Mr Millar will be home by October.

And pigs will fly, I thought, handing the newspaper back to Mickey. I didn’t believe a word of it, wouldn’t until I smelled the inside of an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic.

Even though I knew other people were working to try and secure my release – including Paul D McGuigan, a lawyer from Fife, Washington, who had been relentless in his “harassment” of the Justice Department, bombarding them with legal questions and papers on my behalf, never taking a penny for his services – all reasoning questioned the probability of it.

I was staying here for the remainder of my time, and no amount of pressure would change that. I was simply torturing myself. I had to be realistic, and reality said I was odds-on for more charges. The hourglass was running out for the prosecution. They were in the sadistic habit of waiting to the very last hour the limitations allowed, before hitting you with a new charge. Even if they had little or no proof, it would be worth it – from their point of view – to see you remanded for a few more years in some county jail – not forgetting a steady diet of diesel therapy.

Two days later, I was summoned to the governor’s office. I expected to see some smiling face from the prosecutor’s office, hitting me with new charges. Instead, the phone was handed to me by the uncomfortable-looking governor.

I reluctantly took the phone, and a mysterious woman’s voice at the other end informed me that President Bill Clinton was sending me home, irrespective of protestations from the FBI.

I knew it was an elaborate trick, hoping to spook or break me, setting me up for a fall.

“Thank you,” I replied. “And you have a nice day too.” I placed the phone down gently on its cradle and walked calmly from the office, feeling acid burn my stomach. It would only be a matter of time before the diesel therapy began again. Probably this week.

I shuddered at the thought, dreading what lay ahead, tasting the diesel in my throat, along with the spam sandwiches.

* * *

Later that same week, a reporter from the Washington Post asked for an interview. He was doing an article about an upcoming trial concerning an armoured car robbery, and wondered would I be willing to give him an “insider’s” view. The questions would range from the mundane: what makes a person want to rob such a place, knowing the risks? (Answer: The money, stupid); to the more sinister: how long did it take for you to load all the money into the van, on the night of the robbery?

The request, coming at such a late stage in the game, coupled with the tone of the questions, only helped to confirm my suspicions that the Feds were setting me up. I declined the interview, and waited for the diesel therapy to commence.

The next day’s newspaper confirmed my suspicions.

‘Brinks Case Reopened,’ claimed the headline.

‘Nobody, obviously, thinks that it’s totally solved,’ said Dale Anderson, supervisor of the FBI. ‘We certainly would be interested in talking to anybody who would have information about it.’

* * *

Two days later, at about four in the morning, it happened.

“Pack up, Millar. You’re being moved to MCC [Manhattan Correctional Centre]. What fits in the bag goes; what doesn’t, stays.”

Memories of the bad old days in Fed pick-up trucks came flooding back, laughing at me, singing, We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when … I could almost smell the fumes dancing in my nostrils, see the faces of the Feds with their told-you-so grins, taste the dreaded spam sandwiches lounging in my throat, waiting to be thrown up.

Six hours later, I occupied a cell at the reception in MCC. Outside, I could see the yellow cabs zipping in and out of the New York traffic, and it broke my heart. It had been years since I last saw the Great City, and all the memories – good and bad – were still there, like a painted shadow that had never fully dried.

If I were on the roof, I would have been able to see the street where we had the first casino, operating 24/7; Queens was just across the East River, and I would have seen my apartment, the store I once owned, a few neighbours …

“Are ye goin’ to give us any trouble on the plane, Millar?” asked a voice from behind the closed door, breaking my daydream.

The voice was rough Ulster, mixed with mellowed disdain. It was familiar, but I failed to put a face to it.

“Ye don’t want to answer? Maybe ye want to stay here? Is that it?”

The door opened and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Had the Pope been standing there in the nude I wouldn’t have been as shocked.

He was surrounded by six American guards and three other screws from the Kesh. He had aged terribly – which lifted my spirits a bit – but the old nastiness was no longer as keen. It was as if, like the rest of us, he had become a bit wiser with time. The white shirt of promotion he was wearing probably helped.

“I’ve told these boys there’ll be no trouble from ye. Behave yerself and ye’ll be treated correctly,” he said, believing he was John Wayne.

“Not like on the Blanket, eh?” I answered, the cockiness returning.

Ape Face flushed, but he bit his lip. “We’ll be back tomorrow mornin’ to get ye. Try not to be goin’ anywhere.” He laughed, but no one else did.

The Americans couldn’t understand a word he said. One of them asked me later, “Was that Gaelic, you guys were speaking?”

I couldn’t sleep that night, so I just paced and paced. I was still wondering if it was a trick, or perhaps, the diesel therapy was causing me to hallucinate? Had Ape Face really been there?

Outside the cell, the night hummed with traffic and people going to cafés and bars; the smell of coffee filtered in to me, and I swear I could taste it in my mouth. I thought I heard Bronx Tommy telling me, “Watch it kid, these cock-suckers will try anything.”

Then the darkness slowly melted, revealing the most beautiful rising sun I had ever seen. It warmed my face, and my stomach felt calm for the first time in a long time. Something told me that everything was going to be just fine.

Au revoir et prendre soin

And so, a final farewell and thank you to all those people and non-people for helping to make my life a lot brighter and more meaningful, especially in the dark days of fucked-up adolescence.

DC comics for showing me how to escape, and Marvel comics on how to escape better. Neal Adams, the undisputed master of tormented and psychotic superheroes; Stan Lee, a teller of tales taller that his tremendous talent; Steve Ditko, the hypnotically co-creator of Spiderman; John Romita, for having the courage to make Spidey his own; Jim Steranko’s erotic and hallucinogenic Zap Art surrealism on Nick Fury, et al; and never forgetting the legendary Jack “King” Kirby, the major innovator and most influential creator in the comic-book medium for his cosmic purview and bigger-than-life rendering of the Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and the rest of the out-of-this-world gang. A special nod goes to Superman’s nemesis, the mischievous and totally irrelevant Mr. Mxyzptlk (try saying that backwards with a few pints of Guinness in you!).

The Daleks, for scaring the shit out of me each dreary and rain-soaked Saturday afternoon; “Star Trek” for boldly going; Gary Conway and his heroic crew on board the sub-orbital transport spaceship, Spindrift, in “Land of The Giants”. The anarchic “Donkey” movie house on the Duncairn Gardens (Strap your balls on and fight for your life, boys! We’re not getting out of here alive!) for allowing Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to subliminally fill me with nightmares of Frankenstein and Dracula tapping at my bedroom window on stormy nights.

Belfast’s own William Millar (a.k.a. Stephen Boyd) for that most famous of chariot races with Charlton Heston, and for being so unforgivably handsome and generous. Pans People, Phil Lynott & Thin Lizzy, Slade, Suzi Quatro, Van “The Man” Morrison, Dusty Springfield, Rod Stewart, Rory Gallagher, Patsy Cline, the great Otis Redding and everything Motown and Philly.

The Trinity of Sporting Kings: George Best, Alex “Hurricane” Higgins and Muhammad Ali.

Ben Sherman shirts, Levi jeans and rainy Sundays in the Tin Hut Snooker Hall, where I learned to play bad snooker, but brilliant poker – and win!

Belfast Central Library for mountains of knowledge and the musky, comforting smell of old books. Never forgetting Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin and Enid Blyton’s dysfunctional and totally wacky Noddy in Toyland; Ireland’s greatest storyteller, Walter Macken, for his classic and brilliant trilogy and everything in between; Thomas Wolfe’s powerful works, especially You Can’t Go Home Again; Cormac McCarthy for making modern-day westerns cool and dark again in No Country for Old Men (God, I feel so old now in this country I dwell in); The Bible (Holy haberdashery, Batman!), for enduring persecution and manipulation by scoundrels for centuries and still here to tell a terrific story of fiction or fact. You have to give the old book credit for stamina and longevity (a bit like the Blanketmen), whether you believe its message or not; Robert Tressell’s (Robert Noonan) classic and glorious masterpiece The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, for helping me see the pigs at the trough, and Orwell’s prophetically brilliant Animal Farm for helping me to discover the true identity of the pigs (and I’m not talking about Snowball and Napoleon!).

For the old Smithfield Market – the soul of Belfast – bombed to the ground by book-burning barbarians filled with sectarian hatred and ignorance. Lancaster Street, the greatest street in Ireland – if not the entire world.

Kojak (who loves ya, baby?), and I still haven’t figured out how he does that with the match! Columbo, for one more thing; “Rockford Files”, for inspiring me to write the Karl Kane novels (thanks Jim!); “Hill Street Blues” for chasing the blues away. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, for teaching me that crime always pays – but only in book form. The tough guys: William Holden, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Jack Palance, Clint Eastwood, and my dad, the toughest of them all.

To Dominic West for his silent tribute to the Hunger Strikers in HBO’s totally brilliant “The Wire”. Film director Steve McQueen for Hunger, a rare gem of a film able to touch upon the never-ending nightmare of the Blanket Protest and Hunger Strikes. No other film has come close. It took a young, black Englishman to make the greatest movie ever made about Irish political prisoners and man’s inhumanity to man.

The Laughter Squad: Tommy Cooper, Dave Alan, Ronnie Barker, Lucille Ball, Phil “Sergeant Ernie Bilko” Silvers and Spike “Prince Charles is a grovelling little bastard” Milligan.

To my mates, all dead in their teens when life looked so full of promise.

For the timeless Harry Enright, who showed us what teachers ought to be, and Mister Gleason, my English teacher who tried his best to show me what I could be if I’d simply stop being the class joker. If only I’d listened instead of clowning around.

Volunteer Big Finbar McKenna for making us laugh during the Blanket Protest when we though all laughter was dead, and darkness was all we had to share. The courageous and unconquerable James Connolly, the greatest Scotsman ever to have been Irish, shamefully and criminally neglected by Irish so-called historians with their brain-dead, censorship mentality.

Henry Joy McCracken, the Ulsterman, standing head and shoulders over the rest of us Ulstermen.

To the Presbyterian blood pumping in all directions and at all times towards my Catholic and sometimes agnostic heart.

The Blanketmen. The Bold. The Brave. The Best.

Lastly, to the Ten Lads: never forgotten. Betrayed by duplicitous and morally bankrupt politicians in tailor-made Armani rags and scraggy beards, lead by invertebrates and eunuchs in the guise of the duplicitous and cowardly Committee of Six. If only we had paid more attention to Animal Farm, or Virgil’s dire warning in The Aeneid: “Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even though they bring gifts.” The truth will out, one day.

That’s a promise.

Sam Millar, Belfast, Ireland

OTHER TITLES BY SAM MILLAR

Novels:

Dark Souls

The Redemption Factory: finalist, Grand Prix De Littérature Policière

Darkness of Bones: finalist, Le Prix du Meilleur Polar

Bloodstorm: A Karl Kane Novel

The Dark Place: A Karl Kane Novel

Dead of Winter: A Karl Kane Novel

Stage:

Brothers In Arms

Radio:

Rain, performed by the BBC

Anthologies:

Requiems for the Departed, a Karl Kane story, Winner of Spinetingler magazine award for Best Anthology, USA

Breaking the Skin: 21st Century Irish Writing – Volume 1: Short Stories

Emerald Eye: The Best Irish Imaginative Fiction

Belfast Noir, a Karl Kane story, USA

Awards:

Aisling Award for Art and Culture

Martin Healy Short Story Award

Brian Moore Award for Short Stories

Cork Literary Review Writer’s Competition

Golden Balais d’or, France, for Best Crime Book

Le Monde’s Top Twenty Thrillers 2013 for On The Brinks

Website: www.millarcrime.com

Email: karlkanepi@hotmail.com

Copyright

This eBook edition first published 2014 by Brandon

An imprint of The O’Brien Press Ltd

12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar,

Dublin 6, Ireland.

Originally published 2003 by Wynkin deWorde Ltd., Galway.

This edition first published 2014 by Brandon

Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777

E-mail: books@obrien.ie.

Website: www.obrien.ie

eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–656–1

Text © copyright Sam Millar 2012

Copyright for typesetting, layout, editing, design

© The O’Brien Press

Cover image: Getty Images

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Other books by Sam Millar from Brandon

Karl Kane is a private investigator with a dark past, his mother murdered when he was a child. Years later, Karl has a chance to avenge his mother’s murder, but allows the opportunity to slip through his hands. When two young girls are sexually molested and then brutally murdered, Karl holds himself responsible.

Young homeless women and drug addicts are being abducted before being brutally mutilated and murdered, and a city is held in the grip of unspeakable terror. By abducting Katie, the young daughter of private investigator Karl Kane, the killer has just made his first mistake, which could well turn out to be his last.

Private Investigator Karl Kane returns to the streets of Belfast investigating the discovery of a severed hand. Karl believes it’s the work of an elusive serial killer, but the police are claiming a simple vendetta between local criminals. Karl embarks on a nightmarish journey as he attempts to solve the mystery and soon he’s suspecting Mark Wilson, his detested ex brother-in-law. But as the winter days become darker, Karl discovers that Wilson is more than a match for him when it comes to dirty dealing and even dirtier fighting, as he battles to keep from becoming the next victim.

A tense tale of murder, betrayal, sexual abuse and revenge, and the corruption at the heart of the respectable establishment.

In a wood at night, a young woman witnesses the murder of a whistleblower by a corrupt businessman, owner of an abattoir. Paul Goodman, a would-be snooker champion who works at the abattoir, has never known his father and believes that he deserted him when young. But he is befriended by the one man who holds the key to the mystery of his disappearance, the man responsible for his death.

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‘I was born in a united Ireland, I want to die in a united Ireland.’

Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has been an IRA man motivated by this ambition all his life. Here Cahill gives his full and frank story.

The full story of how weapons from the KGB, Gadaffi’s Libya and US gun shops got to Ireland: and how the smuggling rings were finally broken.

Also available in paperback.

‘a very fine piece of work’ The Irish Times

An explosive exposé of how British military intelligence really works, from the inside. The stories of two undercover agents -- Brian Nelson, who worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), aiding loyalist terrorists and murderers in their bloody work; and the man known as Stakeknife, deputy head of the IRA’s infamous ‘Nutting Squad’, the internal security force which tortured and killed suspected informers.