Dark Dawn (3 page)

‘Here. Have a smoke and dry your eyes.’

Petesy took the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. His cheeks hollowed as he took a draw. One of his cousins had taught him how to smoke when he was eleven but he could never blow smoke-rings like Marty.

Marty looked at his new top. ‘That Cara’s definitely going to let me ride her when she sees this.’

‘Wise up to yourself. You’ve no chance.’

‘That not what your ma said.’

Petesy went quiet. He’d lived with his granny for three years since his mother moved to Derry with a guy she’d met one Saturday night at the GAA club in Andy Town. He was about to hand the fag back but hesitated and took another long drag. Marty received the butt, his voice going up an octave.

‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?’

Petesy smiled, pleased to get his own back. Marty took the last drag and flicked the butt off the wall. A shower of red ash cascaded to the wet ground.

Petesy remembered him doing the same thing to Brendy McIlroy. ‘Mackers’, everyone called him. He was two years older than them and had three big brothers. He had been picking on Petesy, slagging him off, saying his ma had run off with the first bit of dick she got her hands on. After a minute of ignoring him, Petesy told him to go fuck himself. It was what Mackers wanted. He announced, John Wayne-style, he was going to finish his can of Harp, then come over and beat the fuck out of Petesy. Marty sat there, not saying anything. Then he took the final drag from his cigarette and flicked it in Mackers’ face. They went for each other and Petesy piled on. Some old boy pulled them apart, threatening to call the peelers. That was Marty though. He didn’t give a fuck.

Hiding in the entry of High Street, Marty stroked his new top and thought about Cara. She was a wee ride. He was going to take her somewhere with the money they’d made from dealing the week before.

‘Has your cousin come through with more gear yet?’ he asked.

‘He said to come up to the Ardoyne and see him tomorrow.’

‘Nice one,’ Marty said.

Joe Lynch sat on the black leather sofa and waited.

The receptionist was slim, early thirties. She had looked at him over the top of her glasses, saying Dr Burton would be right with him. Lynch asked how long the appointment was. She told him half an hour.

Nothing about the plush reception suggested a psychologist’s office. Lynch had imagined
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Formica floors, sudden outbursts, occasional drooling. Instead it was burgundy carpets, dark mahogany and abstract painting.

He chided himself. This was a mistake. This was what you got for going to the doctor’s – an appointment with a shrink. All he’d wanted were a few pills, just to help him sleep. He didn’t need his head examined. A few nights’ kip, he’d be right as rain. Instead he got a week’s worth of tablets and an appointment with Sigmund Freud here.

Lynch was fine, when he’d just come out of prison. He’d gone to London. Needed to get away from Belfast. All the old contacts, the familiar faces, the knowing looks. He’d stayed almost two years, trying to make a life for himself, working in bars, doing shift-work in kitchens. One day, he just woke up and realized, enough was enough. He couldn’t do it any more. The constant lying, making things up, taking shit from middle managers, baby Hitlers he could have dropped in half a second. There was nothing else to do. He had to go back.

It was coming home when the sleep problem started. Lynch tried to laugh it off at first, joking about the Northern Irish air – too frigging fresh. He told himself to harden up. He’d done interrogations, solitary confinement, twenty-four-hour lock-down. He could do a few all-nighters. After three months he realized why they used sleep deprivation as a torture technique. He felt like a ghost, as if he only partially existed. Dr MacSorley had suggested the psychologist. It might help to talk. Lynch didn’t think so, but made a deal. It seemed to be all the rage these days: negotiation, compromise, agreements. He’d see the psychologist, in return for a prescription. MacSorley was in his sixties, an old-school doctor. He gave him a week’s worth of tablets.

‘Come back after the appointment and I’ll give you next week’s.’ He smiled. ‘Just to keep you honest Joe.’

MacSorley had been around the block a few times and it was only this that made Lynch agree to the deal.

Dr Burton’s office was on the fifteenth floor of a glass tower-block on Bedford Street. Out the window Lynch saw the green copper dome of Belfast City Hall. After ninety years, the shining white limestone had faded to grey. Daily life had taken its toll and the architect’s allusions to civic virtue were now no more than a vague memory. In the gardens, the Belfast wheel arced upwards, lifting spectators above the roofline of the City Hall. From its height, tourists gazed out at the hills that surrounded Belfast. The mountains themselves, looking down on the city, like disapproving adults on their recalcitrant offspring. Lynch looked towards the waters of Belfast Lough and the dark green slopes of the Cavehill in the distance. The colours were muted, depressed by the dark grey sky and the low January light.

As he waited, Lynch reminded himself he wasn’t a fruitcake. It was simple. He just couldn’t sleep.

A door opened and Dr Burton walked into reception. He wore a brown suit and had a swarthy complexion. He was in his fifties and spoke in a low, confident voice.

‘Joe Lynch? Come on in.’

The room continued the theme of comfortable opulence that had begun in the reception area. A wide oak desk and a high-backed chair sat in front of a row of large windows. Along the wall a beige sofa and two chairs huddled round a rectangular coffee-table. Burton motioned to the chairs.

‘So. What have you come to see me about?’

‘I’m not sleeping.’

‘Why aren’t you sleeping?’

Joe paused. He hadn’t thought they’d get right into it. He’d imagined some chit-chat. A warm-up or something. He looked round the room, raising his eyebrows.

‘Must be some money in this psychology business.’

‘I do all right.’

‘How come you aren’t in a hospital?’

‘Private clients.’

‘What does a man charge for that these days?’

‘One hundred pounds an hour.’

Lynch hadn’t thought Burton would tell him.

‘I must be in the wrong line of work.’

‘What line of work
are
you in, Joe?’

Silence.

Fifteen floors up. The traffic was quiet on the road below. Cars hummed past, providing a low background music. Joe knew what was going on. The short, staccato answers. They were to encourage him to speak. Make the patient do the running.

‘Why can’t you sleep, Joe?’

‘You tell me, Doc.’

‘That’s not how it works.’

Silence.

Burton stopped speaking. He wasn’t going to chase Lynch. If someone wouldn’t meet you halfway, he knew there was no point.

The silence hung in the air for ten seconds, then twenty. It was a stand-off, neither man wishing to blink. After a minute Lynch spoke.

‘So what do you know about me, Doc?’

‘Nothing.’

‘MacSorley must have sent a file.’

‘No.’

‘How come?’

‘Works better this way.’

‘So you’re telling me you have nothing?’

‘Joe Lynch. Monday. Eleven o’clock.’

For a moment Lynch imagined himself as a blank page. No marks. No scars. Free to be whatever he wanted. Free to . . .

In the Maze they had tried to use psychologists. Rumour had it the room was bugged and there was someone from Special Branch taking notes next door.

Burton continued. ‘Why are you here, Joe?’

‘MacSorley made me come.’

‘Made
you come? What are you, six years old?’

‘I’m not sleeping.’

‘You’re not sleeping.’

‘I wanted a prescription. It came with strings.’

‘You could have gotten sleeping pills from anywhere. They’re not exactly hard to come by.’

Lynch looked at the dark wooden bookcase along the wall.
The Effect of Trauma. The Invisible Injury. The Psychology of Conflict.

‘I haven’t suffered a trauma.’

‘I never said you had.’

‘That’s what you do though. Isn’t it?’

‘Among other things.’

‘Do you see peelers?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Soldiers?’

Silence.

‘Not much of a talker, Doc. I thought that is what this was all about. Talking. Feelings.’

Burton turned it back on him.

‘How
do
you feel, Joe?’

Lynch paused, turning his gaze inwards. He groped around, trying to get hold of something. He rummaged in the dark. He was tired. No, exhausted. More than that though, he had no idea how he felt. There was a kind of emptiness. A hunger. It was as if he had lost something, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

Burton waited, watching Lynch’s eyes search the empty space in front of him.

Lynch snapped back to the room, remembering where he was. He stood up and walked to the window, looking down on the street. A woman rushed through the rain. A couple huddled under an umbrella. A homeless man sheltered in the doorway of the Ulster Hall. The fifteenth floor was high. It gave a sense of perspective, made things seem smaller, less difficult somehow. Lynch looked out over Belfast, as it sprawled into the distance.

‘Why are you—’

‘Where do you live, Doc?’

Burton raised his eyebrows.

‘OK then. What car do you drive?’

‘Audi.’

‘That’s my point.’

‘That’s your point,’ Burton repeated sarcastically.

‘The car. The house. The suburbs. Stranmillis. Dunmurray. The leafy streets, the grammar schools, the university degrees. You took the tests, passed the exams. Dinner parties, drinks with friends. The wife. The kids.’ Lynch was gathering momentum. ‘The books, the office, the view. My point is: what the fuck could you possibly know about me? About where I come from. About what I’ve seen. About what I’ve done.’

Lynch took a breath, letting his words hang in the air between them.

‘A hundred pounds an hour. Listening to a bunch of rich pricks. Their colleagues don’t respect them, their kids won’t talk to them, their wives won’t fuck them. And when you get bored with that, you go for a bit of Troubles tourism, a wee holiday in someone else’s misery. A bit of gritty realism, like reading a book about it. And all from the safety of the fifteenth floor. It’s cosy cushions and pretentious paintings by cunts that can’t draw to save themselves.’

Lynch stared at Burton. The doctor held his gaze, allowing the silence to hang between them. Burton waited. He wasn’t intimidated.

‘Impressive, Joe.’ His voice was calm, almost monotone. Lynch had become more animated the more he tried to dismiss Burton and everything he stood for.

‘Were you practising that on the way over? The self-righteous indignation. Gives you an edge, I’ll bet. A bit of purchase. I’ve known you for twenty minutes and you’re right. What the fuck could I possibly know? About you. About where you’ve been. What you’ve seen. What you’ve done.’

The doctor paused.

‘I’ll tell you what though, Joe. It still doesn’t answer the question: why can’t you sleep?’

Lynch paused, knowing he hadn’t thrown Burton off and that they were back where they started.

‘Thousands of people don’t sleep.’

‘We’re not talking about thousands. We’re talking about you.’

Joe glanced at the clock on the wall. 11.25. Burton saw the look and knew they were coming to the end of the session.

‘OK. Since you don’t want to tell me anything, Joe, I’ll try to tell you something. What could I know? What could I possibly know about you? About your world? Let me give it a shot.’

Lynch held the psychologist’s eyes.

‘You’re a Catholic. Working-class. Did well at school. Didn’t get on with the teachers though. Authority, you see. Bit too much to say for himself, our Joe. Left school early. Tried to get work. Late seventies. Not a lot of that going. Even less for a Catholic in Belfast. The dice were stacked. The courts. The police. Housing. Jobs. It pissed you off. But you could take it. Discipline, you see. Not easily got to. Sure there was the harassment, the taunting, the abuse. The stop and search. Where you from? Where you going? The Brits. The RUC. Not a bother. Sure, they’re cunts. But you’re Joe Lynch. It doesn’t go away though. Day after day, week after week, month after month. Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . Then it happens. Or rather
something
happens. You take a hiding. The police kick your door in. They intern your brother. Your da. Your uncle maybe. Some off-duty soldiers have a go, want to fuck up a Fenian. They put you against a wall, put a gun in your mouth . . . ’

Lynch’s gaze sharpened and began boring into Burton.

‘ . . . was that it, Joe? They put you against a wall? Put a gun in your mouth?’

Burton paused, letting the memory come washing back up from wherever Lynch had buried it.

‘You can probably feel it now – as if it was yesterday. The metal against your teeth. The oily taste in your mouth. Your palms are sweating, just thinking about it.’

Lynch’s heart thundered in his chest. His hand was still though. It had always been that way. He stared at the man opposite.

‘You’ve read the books, Joe. Religion, history, politics. All the talk. All the theories. Theories are all well and good, until they kick in your front door one night. Until they put you up against a wall. Going to blow your fucking Fenian head off. None of the theories mention the taste though, right? That cold steel. The metal. The oil.’

Burton stopped and took a breath.

‘They backed you into a corner. What were you going to do? Sit there and take it? No, not you. Not our Joe. People round here have been sitting taking it for years. Look where that’s got them.’

Lynch stared at Burton, wondering where he was going to go next. Burton stopped talking, letting the atmosphere cool for a few seconds. He looked away, breaking eye-contact, defusing the tension. Slowly, Lynch’s pulse began to calm.

‘That was then, Joe. This is now. Things have changed – or so they tell us. Agreements have been signed. The war is over. Decommissioning? Decommission a gun, sure. But how do you decommission someone’s head? You see, you’re out there, Joe. You’re still out there. You want to know if it’s possible to get back. You’re not even sure what getting back would look like.’