Astray

One

As he dove from the belfry- dove mind you, no half measures here, this was it, plummeting head first towards the ground to meet the tarmac face first- O'Donhal had the most wonderful and completely unexpected of sensations: his chest swelled and his mouth, that dour, downcast mouth, split into the most unadulterated of gleeful smiles. A cackling tirade of maniacal laughter burst forth from chapped and foaming lips.
For as long as he could remember he had struggled in life. He had struggled for motivation, for wakefulness, for enough energy to get through the day. Most of all he had struggled to find within himself any semblance of peace; such comfort could not be found so easily in his troubled mind. He had suckled upon the bilious teat of life and had choked and spat out it's milk for want of sweetness.
But now-
Ah! He need only wait a few seconds, a few infinitesimally short moments in which the ground grew larger and larger, looming with its oppressive strength and promising him the sweet release of- sweet Jesus Christ! The end was beautifully nigh.
He was going to savour this moment, so short yet with so much promise bound up within; he would live and find enjoyment more in the last few seconds in which his heart beat out its final concentrically shrinking rhythm than he had done in the whole of his long, oh! so long, lifetime.
The pavement rose to meet him and he grinned to meet it. A rictus of ecstatic preparation plastered its way across his face as he sailed downwards. His arms spread outwards, akimbo, and flapped against the current of whooshing air like the wings of a dove.
Why a dove? Peace, Goddamit. He was shooting towards peace.
But the nearer he came to the ground, the less he began to shoot, or so it seemed to him. He slowed as if the nice thin air about his person had thickened and his weight wasn't enough to cut through it, until it could legitimately be argued that he shot not at all. He glided, then floated, light, light as his new found peace of mind.
What what what! What was this? he asked himself. Some new trick of the mind perhaps, heretofore unfounded and untasted and untapped.
But but but!
Surely he had tried it all. Every trick, every delusion and hallucination, every reality and all the absurdly bizarre unrealities had come his way, surely. That was what had brought him to this spot, surely. Too much substance going in, too much hallucination coming out.
Were there not, had there not always been, enough pharmacological aids pumping around his brain and his body, trying to keep his heart beating to a rhythm appropriate? Had he not experienced it all? For God's sake: that was part of the madness that this current exercise was an endeavour to obliterate.
But apparently Death, that wily and underhand creature, had one last parting gift.
Death said to him: you've not got much time left on this plane, and you think you've tried it all, that you're ready to go. No? Ah ha! So I give you this to show you how false you are, baby. So wrong, with your suppositions so out of line, with your preconceptions so skewed my friend. You've but scratched the surface of this lifetime; you need five six seven more lifetimes to get it all in, to cram and cram, until you can say you've been there.
But, Death says, not so, sir. I'll take you now and leave you with the promise of what may have been had our meeting been delayed some, had we met at our time proper.
But this was different.
If his mind was slowing things down then surely the crowd that had gathered beneath him, taking up the spot of tarmac which was meant to be his final resting place with their pornographically interested mouths hung slack and their polished patent shoes soiling his patch, surely they too would have been switched to slow-mo?
But if anything they seemed to have been speeded up; it was as if the remote control for a television set had got confused and sped, slowed, sped, with complete disregard and disinterest for consistency of plot and narrative.
And now he was upright, waggling his fingers and flap-flapping his arms. He was swimming a backstroke in this rich buttery air, rising back up towards the belfry, and what was this growing between his shoulder blades? Definitely a new sensation there:
Wings! Somewhere a bell must be ringing its brassy toll because this baby had gotten his wings. Long and strong and white feathered, there they were.
Like a dove, like an angel; he was standing atop the tower of angels, arms akimbo, eyes wild with new sensation, legs astride two worlds, old and new. His right foot, so solid and dependable, planted itself firmly in life. His left foot, that ruined appendage, was equally as firm in its plantation within the ether void, within unknown death.
He was hovering in mid air on beating white wings with a crowd of gawking spectators drawn below him to bear witness to his transformation. He addressed them:
'Ha ha! To defeat the Angel of Death first you must greet him and call him Brother.'

Eight years previously

O'Donhal had picked this one up just after midnight.
He'd seen her touting herself just after midnight on one of those countless cross sections that are to be found in any number of large city sprawls the world over. She was prowling the corner with several of her licentious co-workers when he picked her out.
O'Donhal had been roaming the streets for a half hour or so in his Jag, unwinding from his days work: he was heading an investigation into a murder case. A kid, a young Pakistani, had been found two nights ago with three stab wounds to his body, one of which was arterial, and he had been covered with bright orange blood. He'd bled out in the ambulance and was pronounced DOA at the hospital.
O'Donhal had spent the whole of the day interviewing various friends and family and he was now thoroughly exhausted by it.
They all lived within the same few streets in a largely Pakistani community in the east of the city, so he hadn't had to travel much. However, this meant that he had had no time alone in his car to re-group; he was bandied about the community as he asked the same tired questions of a series of blank, grieving faces.
The smart money was on a gang related racial attack. The kids he ran around with had at one time or another been pulled in over the last few months in association with the murder of an Israeli teenager who had lived half a mile away, and so this recent attack was in all probability the latest in a long line of assaults that had occurred between the two communities since.
It had been a long and tiring day; none of the interviews had been pleasant, and were arduous when stacked next to one another. However, it had been the last interview which had really done his head in.
An uncle of the victim, one Abdul Ghaffar Khalili, was an Imam who lived with his family in a small, three room council flat in a tower block a few hundred yards from the scene of the assault.
O'Donhal had been admitted into the flat by the Imam's wife, whose face was almost entirely obscured by a blue veil of decorative silk. Although it was cramped and cheaply furnished the flat had been immaculately clean and tidy; it had been scrubbed and polished until it gleamed.
He had been directed into the living room while the the Imam's wife went into the small kitchen to fix some coffee. He had tried to refuse, he always did, but she wouldn't have any of it and in the end he had had to acquiesce.
In the living room had sat the aged Imam. Abdul Khalili wore a snowy white beard that came halfway down his chest and a small and brightly coloured cap on his head. O'Donhal noticed that the merry glint in his eyes hadn't quite been extinguished by the family's recent bereavement, and a tragically fatalistic smile curved his features.
'Please sir, do take a seat,' said the Imam, turning his rich, deep eyes onto O'Donhal. As his gaze met O'Donhal's he gasped and sat forward, a puzzled knot twisting together his long eyebrows.
'Well, well, sir, and what is this, may I ask?' He had risen to his feet and was staring intently at a point a few inches above O'Donhal's left shoulder.
'I'm sorry but I don't know-'
'Shush shush, sir, I don't expect you to, not yet, but nevertheless-' The Imam started to edge cautiously towards O'Donhal, his eyes grave now and focused above O'Donhal's shoulder.
'Oh my, oh my.' He started chanting under his breath in Arabic; his voice was deep and rich as guttural intonations rumbled from behind his long beard to tumble forth into O'Donhal's ears. O'Donhal began to sway where he stood, lulled and mesmerized by this old man's soothing voice.
'My poor, poor man,' he said as he centred his eyes back onto O'Donhal's, 'my dear sir, what an affliction with which you have had to live.'
'Mr. Khalili, I don't know what you're talking about, but please, if we could-'
'Shush sir!' He pointed one long, skinny finger over O'Donhal's left shoulder. 'It is about this little blight upon your soul, this Djinn sat upon your shoulder.
'I see him now, sir, sitting upon your shoulder. He is gibbering into your ear, feeding your soul thoughts from his wicked mind.'
'I've nothing on my shoulder. I don't know what-' he looked around for the wife, shaking his head to clear it of the sound of the Imam's voice; she was still in the kitchen. What was wrong with this bloke? He would get a statement as quickly as possible and then leave.
'Now, if we could-'
'But sir, concentrate and you will hear. He is sat, glaring at me sir; well, would he not? Djinn and Imam! Not a mixture to be tolerated.
'But when you came in, sir,' he was close to O'Donhal now, his face only a few inches away, 'he was grinning, smiling as he spread his wickedness into you. Allah be praised, this wickedness cannot continue.
'The Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, said “beware of the devil, for the safety of your religion. He has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things.” Sit, you would be wise to head his words.'
O'Donhal backed away from these mystical ravings, putting a couple of feet between himself and the Imam. He tripped on a low footstool, thrust out his arm and steadied himself against the far wall. The Imam moved to help him, but O'Donhal pushed him back.
'Ah,' the Imam sighed, understanding writing itself upon his features as he seemed to see something afresh. 'And so, the match is made. Upon your head, mister, there sits your Djinn's partner. Begone, Shaitan!'
He started to wave his hands at O'Donhal's head as if shooing away a stray cat.
'There sits a Shaitan, scooping out your good thoughts, and into your ear this little Djinn feeds new, evil thoughts. To and fro is their way, to and fro with your mind. My dear man, I'm afraid you are gravely sick.'
'But not to worry,' he took O'Donhal's hand in both of his. 'Allah's people will be your people, and we shall welcome you with open arms as we pray together for your salvation. Come home, my dear man, and submit to the will of Allah.'
He dropped O'Donhal's hand and placed both of his own upon O'Donhal's shoulders. A tear glistened in one of his deep eyes as he gazed into O'Donhal's.
'Come with me now, sir. We shall go to prayer.' So saying, he led O'Donhal into the hallway, plucked a coat from its peg and bustled them both out of his flat and down the onto the landing outside. In the kitchen stood his family, his wife and three sons, staring with bemusement at the Imam.
It was a cold evening, and the contrast between the Imam's comfortably heated flat and the chill of the night wind caused the breath to catch in O'Donhal's throat. He watched as his exhalations rose before him in vaporous plumes of steaming condensation, floating away on the night time breeze. Shivering, he gathered his coat about him as the Imam beckoned him forward.
O'Donhal followed him down the stairwell and into the side alley that led to this part of the building. Graffiti lined the grey cement walls, depicting various nefarious slogans and pornographic images, and in the middle of all of this painting stood the solemn Imam. He was weeping silently now as he regarded O'Donhal, and he looked with a mixture of longing and fear over O'Donhal's left shoulder, where sat what O'Donhal assumed to be his spectral imaginations.
The Imam came up close to O'Donhal; his breath smelled of strong coffee and stale tobacco, and O'Donhal pushed him back; he'd had enough. O'Donhal drew back a fist to smash into this old man's jaw, paused and thought better of it. He turned up his collar and strode off into the cold night. The Imam was soon swallowed by the electric lighting of street lamps in the mist.
Mad fucking religionists, he thought. His own father had been the same; Jesus bless who he, and blessed be he who, Hail Mary, the virgin be praised, Hallelujah! Amen.
He got into his car, shutting out the hoar of the twilit cold as he put on the air conditioning and sped away.
He was now in desperate need of comfort in the most carnal of ways in which it could be found and so he drove to a low part of the town in which he knew such comfort could easily be bought if you knew where to look. He found this girl fairly quickly.
Despite the cold she wore a sleeveless fake fur jerkin undone to show the bra that covered her flat chest and withered, xylophone ribcage and a short leather skirt. On her feet were white stiletto shoes with three inch heels which he guessed would bring her nose to nose with him. When he pulled up next to her she strutted over to his unwound window and prepared to unleash her charm.
How old was this one: seventeen? Maybe younger; he hoped so. It suited him fine. He wondered how many times she'd been forced to have sex that night, with how many men and who those men were. The thick perfume she wore in no way covered the scent of her nights work; the cheap odour served only to make her seem lonelier and more desperately isolated from the world. Perfect, he thought.
'Hey baby, you-?
'Get in.'
'Steady now, baby, you-'
'Get in the car.'
'And how you payin', darling?'
What was that accent? Eastern European of some sort, probably trafficked over here to work her trade on these more profitable streets. Her breath smelled of alcohol.
He took out his wallet and flashed his badge. 'Get in the car.'
'Pig,' she spat, 'pig-shit!'
She looked around, frantic now, worried lest her pimp should see her talking to a policeman. She shouldn't worry; all his partners came this way, and the custom of them all was welcomed by most.
He opened the passenger door. 'In.'
As he sat next to her at such close proximity he almost choked on that overwhelming perfume. He cracked the window a little bit to blow some of the scent away. The cold air slapped him in the face as he drove, waking him from his days work.
He took her to a cheap hotel nearby where patrons paid by the hour and where police stayed for free. In return they would cast a blind eye on the place and would respect the establishment policy of appreciating discretion.
The front of the building was a shabby brown-yellow, with peeling cracked paint which was decades old; it blended perfectly with the run-down red brick warehouses and disused factories to which that part of the city played host. A flickering sign displayed The Royal Hotel and the rate of the joint, but nobody ever took notice; the types of people who used this place knew about it far in advance.
As O'Donhal pulled up across the street he saw a group of city lads stumbling out of the hotels double doors, laughing and swearing and graphically depicting with obscene gestures what they had been doing to various working ladies just minutes before; they were rich kids trying to slum it, pretending they were still at college for the night.
O'Donhal would have loved to have taken them in; they could be done for possession at the least, and solicitation if he could get a couple of witnesses, but that just wasn't done here. The law stopped working when you drove up this street, and only started again when you drove out. In the middle was the grey no man's land in which O'Donhal's consorts flourished.
Besides which, the firms which employed these kids, and in all probability had financed this evening as a team building exercise, paid a lot to hush any and all of the indiscretions which came with the habitual city-boy lifestyle. Punishments were swift on those members of the constabulary who forgot this, and O'Donhal had no wish to be demoted just for the sake of giving these kids a bed for the night.
Across the street from the hotel stood a shady and haggard looking man. Stanley was the dealer for this block and as O'Donhal pulled up and got out of his car they nodded their heads in salutation to one another before Stan sauntered off in the opposite direction. Discretion was appreciated here, and O'Donhal couldn't be seen talking to a known dealer as if they were old acquaintances.
Besides, they had no need to speak. O'Donhal's stash would last him a week or so more before needing replenishment, and anything he may have needed before then could easily be confiscated from some of the lesser dealers with a flash of his badge.
The girl got out the car and he grabbed her by the elbow and marched her into the hotel.
Tony was on reception. A foetid little man in a faded grey t-shirt, he looked up from a cheap tabloid full of nipples and news, gave a dirty chuckle and threw a set of keys to O'Donhal.
'Six is free mate. She's a tidy one, alright. Do yourself well, don'tcha fella?'
'Piss off Tony.'
'Just saying.'
'Try not to.'
'Oi, love, let me know if he don't cut the stuff, darling, maybe I'll have a go.' He made made the same obscene gesture with his arm that the city boys had been making moments before as he let loose a dirty wheeze. He chuckled as he returned to his paper.
'Prick.'
The corridor down which O'Donhal led the girl was claustrophobically slim; the high ceiling disappeared from view amidst smudged brown wallpaper and cold electric lighting, and the walls pressed in upon the two as they walked to their room. He opened the door to number six and pushed her in.
They found themselves in a grimy little room with a cheap flowery 1980's border running at waist height around the tobacco- and what looked like piss- stained walls. The carpet may once have been green and floral patterned but now was a uniform scummy brown, discoloured and tainted by all of its long years of debauched and degenerate usage.
The bed, such as it was, had seen too much usage and was notched and chipped all along its flat pack MDF frame. It had a dark green bedspread with patches of darker green discolouring it in places. A mildewed cream blanket had been thrown over for the sake of appearances; no one ever slept here, but discretion was... etc.
O'Donhal threw the girl into the middle of the room. She stumbled in her 3 inch heels and landed on the bed.
'Take your clothes off.'
He unzipped, brought a hip flask out of his jacket, stroked and sipped, stoked and sipped, watching her. He had turned fifty a few weeks before and it took him a while these days, but he began to harden as he watched this skinny young girl take off her clothes.
To get himself going he tapped out a measure of coke onto a small dressing table, cut a couple of lines and snorted. Spikes of light shot through his left eye as his heart rate soared; he'd have to watch out for that, maybe cut down some. As his cock throbbed he forgot this and snorted another line. His heart began to race as his face reddened.
He turned and watched her as she unclasped her bra. She was pale, white as snow, white as blow! ha ha, almost translucently so. She had prominent ribs and flat tits and a bruise on one hip. Her face paint had smudged; the garish lipstick she had smeared over her mouth wasn't quite enough to draw attention away from her hollow cheeks; the mascara on one eye had run into a rivulet which cut its way down to her jaw.
He crossed the room to her in a couple of strides. He was properly hard now and he dropped his trousers and started cupping her bony arse with one hand as, with the other, he unrolled a Johnny onto himself. Her perfume caught in his throat and choked him.
He bends her over, enters and takes it out, in and out, over again.He smiles as his cock threatens to burst; it's been such a long day, all that tension!
Slap! He cracks his palm over her buttocks. She groans and then he groans. He starts to chuckle to himself; a wheezy and dissolute sound rattles itself from his throat. Her back is trembling. He leans over her and cups her puffy nipples; he squeezes them, hard. She sobs and he slaps her bony arse and she sobs again.
O'Donhal heard a commotion in the hallway outside. He could hear voices being raised behind the door, before falling silent as money changed hands. He looked at the door as it opened.
A camera flash blinded him as it recorded various tableaux: his saggy buttocks, her withered buttocks, both pasty as they rocked into one another: their faces peering over their shoulders, shocked, then outraged: her crashing into the bed as O'Donhal untangled himself from her and began to stride towards the door through which an Italian looking woman fled with her camera and a triumphant laugh.
O'Donhal was too slow to catch her. He swore, strode back into the room and pinned the girl down; he hardened again, quickly this time, and finished off inside her.
'Shit.'
Shaking, she took a tissue from her clutch handbag and began to clean herself, wiping the last few minutes from her body. He ripped the Johnny from his now limp cock and threw it into the bin.
She picked up her clothes, held them in front of herself and backed to the far corner. He sat on the bed, lit a cigarette and watched as she dressed.
She fumbled with her bra, managed to get the catch done up, pulled her knickers up and began to feel bold again.
'You done, pig?'
He sucked in a cloud of acrid smoke, exhaled.
She pulled up her skirt, tugged her jerkin over herself and strode up to him. She struck a pose with one hand on her hip and the other out, palm up.
'You going to pay me now, pig-shit?'
He regarded her: if she went back to her pimp after having worked for nearly an hour and without any pay then she would be raped and beaten, possibly worse, probably worse.
He took another pull on his cigarette and stood up, stretching his arms above his head as he did so.
'Fuck off,' he rasped as he strode from the room.
When he reached the lobby he crossed over to Tony and slapped him in the jaw. As Tony hit the floor his eyes glazed and his body sagged in on itself, crumpled. O'Donhal booted him in the ribs once, twice, and bent over him; he fished out the twenty that the Italian-looking woman had given him, pocketed it and brought his heel down sharply on Tony's nose.
As he left the hotel he rang his sergeant. They could get a CCTV picture of that woman and a number plate with which to identify her if she had driven. He would call in on her as soon as they had; he would get those pictures and teach her a lesson.
'Hey, pig! Pig-shit, you owe me money!' She came bustling down the hotels front steps as he held up his badge. He threatened to arrest her and have her deported. She burst into furious tears and fled.
If you couldn't utilize the services for which you arrest such dissolute people then what was the point in being a Detective Inspector, formerly or otherwise?
He drove home and passed out next to his wife, sated.

*

'Gov. We've got a positive on that suspect from last night. The Corsa she parked outside the Royal belongs to one Sandra Vespucci, a registered private investigator. Shall I get the boys to pick her up?'
'Don't worry about that, I'll drop in on her. She's a witness is all,' he lied, 'she might know something about that Hussein case. Cheers Franco.'
He knew he could rely on Frank Johnson, his D.S., to find the bitch.
A private investigator then? Must be his wife, getting wise to his infidelities; he would get rid of this private investigator, stay faithful for a month or so until his wife calmed down. It shouldn't be too hard.
 

Two

O'Donhal's father- or, at least, his biological father- was one of the first wave of liberators of Nazi-led Hungary who, as a common foot soldier, had played his part in ousting the Third Reich for the era of the Soviet Machine. He had been born a few miles outside of Moscow and had lied his way into the Red Army at the age of fifteen.
O'Donhal's father's father was an abusive drunkard who was descended from a long line of peasant labourers. So ashamed was he of this very un-proletariat lineage that a more ruthlessly aggressive Communist supporter could not be found. He would spend ten hours a day working in a munitions factory, five hours downing cheap vodka in one of the many drinking establishments which surrounded the factory, and at least an hour verbally and physically abusing his wife and two sons.
As soon as his sons could arrange an escape they did so. They both signed up to the Red Army, got shipped to the Eastern Front and spent their pay on women.
Over the following two years O'Donhal's father had earned distinction among his commanding officers for his legendary bravery, and had earned distinction among his comrades for his legendary appetites. In 1945 he had been part of the force that had marched its was through German territory and had finally bombarded its way into Berlin; if the stories are to be believed then it can safely be said that he did most of his marching through the bordellos of eastern Germany.
And so it was that O'Donhal's father found himself fornicating his way across national boundaries until his unit found themselves bedding down in Budapest as part of the liberating force who helped Hungary oust the Nazi for the Communist, who traded the Konzentrationslager for the Gulag, and who culled the fascist pig in favour of the worker's ox.
In order to gather from history a clear understanding of the begetting of O'Donhal it must first be respected that his father played a purely biological part in the act, as he did in the cases of so many infants born in that place, in that time and right up until his death in 1955.
But what do we call O'Donhal's mother at this time?
Girl perhaps? Woman? Lady? She certainly grew into the latter over the coming years. She would become beloved in the neighbourhood that was to adopt her; she would strike a majestic figure which would tantalize the lusty; she would become known for the benevolence with which she would view those in need of her generosity of spirit; she would, above all, respond with great love to all and any who showed her kindness.
However, at this point in the narrative she could be found on the cusp of womanhood. In the February of 1955 she wasn't quite a girl; her hips and bust had bloomed since her 14th birthday the previous December and she had menstruated regularly for several months. Nevertheless, she had not yet discovered the easy grace which would be imparted unto her by the full womanhood of later years.
It was one evening during this transitional period in February 1955 that she conceived her first and last child. A few hours before the conception she had been in attendance at the regular Pioneer group to which she and all of her friends belonged. That evening they had been painting slogans for a Communist Party rally the following month. It was to be in vain; the Party was to fall the next year, by which time O'Donhal's mother and her family would have long turned their backs on Hungary.
They had stayed later than usual in order to finish the posters in time, and she and some friends of hers were just hanging one up to dry:

Comrade, shoulder your pick axe firmly,
The husky workers' brigade is on its way!

Another pioneer, a boy who was just beginning to grow into a handsome young man, so the story runs, approached her and began to say hello when he coloured, bright red, and clammed up tight. O'Donhal's mother reached out to him, laid her cooling palm against his cheek, and took his hand and led him from the meeting hall.
In spite of the freezing temperature they risked a secluded walk home through the local park. Hand in hand they snatched tender kisses; they were tentative at first, less so as they grew more comfortable with one another.
Halfway through the park they were spotted by the boy's father. He worked at the local barracks nearby and had stayed late that night to drink Cognac and play cards, and then had commenced to wind his way home through the park in which these two blossoming children were sharing their kisses.
He was a stern man, used to a life in the military, and when he saw these two he sobered, pulled them apart and started to lecture them on immorality. When he ran out of steam he told O'Donhal's mother to go home quickly, it was too cold to be out, and marched his own son home.
Therefore, on this bitingly cold evening, rather later than she would usually have been walking home, she could be seen, wrapped up tightly and with her head down, buried deep in her scarf, fighting for each footstep as she struggled alone against the bitter north wind.
She was maybe three streets away from the home in which could be found her parents; her father would be rattling his newspaper and muttering about the tardiness of youth, her mother would be anxiously twitching aside the curtain every few minutes.
Anxious to limit the grief of her parents at her lateness of arrival during such a bitter night, and to limit the transposition of such grief onto her person, she cut down an alleyway that bisected the remaining roads between herself and her house and ran alongside the barracks from which the boy's father had just left.
The barracks were not empty, and she did not walk unobserved.
Nor was she unobserved as she arrived home some fifteen minutes later with blood caking under her fingernails, dripping from her mouth and nose, and slowly staining the ripped crotch of the grey woollen stockings her grandmother had knitted her the previous November. She presented herself at her doorstep, shivers racking her body in a way for which way no amount of bitter north wind can account, and collapsed into the arms of her father.
The next morning was found the body of O'Donhal's biological father in an alleyway three streets away. He was a twenty-six year old war hero with the end of his limp cock frozen to the outside of his trousers and his head caved in on one side by the blood soaked brick that was found at the end of the alleyway, dropped in haste by his final conquest.
The following morning one of his semen met an egg deep inside her body, and the spark of life was lit.
The following morning the police arrived at O'Donhal's mother's house with an arrest warrant for murder. They found an empty house and a neighbour's story of the retreating back of that family's van as they fled the inevitable.
They would not resurface for over a year. In 1957 the family arrived in the city which was to become the lifelong haunt of O'Donhal and settled in a fairly rundown suburb. They told their new neighbours that O'Donhal's mother was nineteen and had been married to a decorated war hero who had died in action shortly before the birth of his son; nobody ever suspected that the child was illegitimate.

*

Three years after they had settled down in this city O'Donhal's mother met the man who would raise him as his own. He was a widower in his late thirties, 29 years older than her, who ran the local butcher shop. His wife had died giving birth to their son six years previously and he grieved for her every day until the he met O'Donhal's mother and fell in love again.
He got her parents' permission and they married in the summer of 1960. They both adopted one another's children, and raised two boys as if they were their own for ten happy years.
During this time O'Donhal's father's shop prospered and the family went on holidays to the coast and held dinner parties at the weekends. O'Donhal's mother was loved by all, and sat contentedly at the centre of all of their friends and family. Her parents' funerals followed one another during this time, and each was well attended, and flowers were abundant as gifts from loving friends and neighbours.
However, sometimes history would bleed into her life and she would remember the pain and suffering through which she and her family had been put. At these times she would lock herself in the bathroom at night and weep; the rape which had begotten O'Donhal in pain and rage and fury and which had caused a whole family to cross countries and seas to a new life was not easily forgotten. It stalked them throughout the long nights on the road, following them just out of sight, and came to rest wherever they settled. It was the all too real wolf baring its fangs at their door; its aggression tainted the actions of a whole family, and its taint ran deep within their blood. History is a fickle mistress who swallows lives whole and never lets times grievances be forgotten.
Ten years after O'Donhal's mother's wedding she was found floating in a bath of cold water and blood by her fourteen year old son. Both of her wrists were open, a sharpened razor blade floated next to her chin, and through her wounds her blood had escaped her mortal body and her life had flowed away in its search for peace.
 

Three

He paused, exhausted, by the topmost window in the long and winding staircase. Along the way crooked corridors shot off from either side of the stairway, meandering their long routes through this ancient and tumbledown castle.
His famished body, for all its height and lean strength, wasn't as fit as it once had been. The warm breeze which blew steadily through the open window wasn't enough to pacify his stiff and aching joints. Instead, the balmy moisture of the humid afternoon clung to his mouth as he tried desperately to suck in great gulps of air.
However, the exhaustion he felt now would pass, and would be replaced by the pleasant satisfaction that always accompanied him on his visits to the Tower; he had always liked this part of the House. The rest of the castle was all open windows gazing into the heavens, and he constantly found himself suffering a dizzying sense of vertiginous agoraphobia as he sat in the spaciously vaulted rooms playing chess and other such games with his brothers. The Tower, by contrast, with its slim, winding staircase and its tiny and infrequent windows, was dark and shadowy and completely to his taste.
He wondered if the meeting had started yet. Probably; his brothers were nothing if not punctual, and the Old Lady had held them at bay for long enough. Too long, they all thought; they should have descended aeons ago, while the world was still young and fresh and the slaughter would have been easy. Nowadays there were getting to be too many with whom to cope, and their Coming was urgently expected.
He looked out of the window as he caught his breath, and saw down into the distant garden where the Old Lady kept her files. Sure enough, he could see his brothers settling around her table, preparing their many arguments, and preparing also for them to be rebuffed by the old harridan. He wondered what her excuse for delay would be this time.
Breathing steadily now, he began the long descent from the Tower. He always worked this way; before a meeting when he most needed time to think he would ascend these steps and channel his thoughts, generally managing to have fully marshalled his arguments by the time he reached the upper story. However, in recent years he had begun to have fewer and fewer arguments to channel; the simple fact was that he and his brothers needed to descend upon the world and the Old Lady stubbornly refused to let them. He had long ago learned the futility of arguing with her.
He reached the bottom and was immediately dazzled by the light. The windows in the corridor down which he now walked were dusty and covered with countless years worth of grime, but so bright was the sunshine and so vast were the windows that they nevertheless admitted what was, to him, an obscenely ostentatious amount of light. He quickened his pace, shielding his eyes with one hand as he did so, and set out to join his brothers in conference with the Old Lady.
They were in a glass atrium through whose dusty windows could be viewed vast white clouds stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. A small garden surrounded the atrium, with collections of botanical marvels popping through the neatly trimmed borders of the flower beds. Red brick walls enclosed this space, forming a square around the small world of garden and atrium.
The atrium itself was home to piles of dusty cardboard boxes, containing files as old and as outdated as the four beings sat upon spindly chintz covered chairs around the small scrubbed wooden table. Bookcases obscured the sweeping windows of this glass chamber, and on their shelves were housed faded parchment scrolls of varied age and size, interspersed here and there with ledgers and booklets of more modern, yet definitely aged, paper documents.
Upon the small table were set the stubs of candles, their wax having long since welded them to the tabletop. They were there to illuminate at night the sheaves of paper which piled around the centre of the table, bearing names and dates and addresses and diagnoses and other such records. Cobwebs clung to the sides of these piles, catching generations of dust motes in their lattices.
At the head of this table sat a woman so ancient and crooked, however, that the musty interior of this glass chamber seemed fresh and young. The Old Lady of fables old, she wheezed and croaked through the millennia.
It was a warm day, made warmer by the magnifying influences of the atrium's glass walls, yet this woman was almost completely hidden by swathes of thick fur robes. All that was visible through this tangle of fur was her face.
Sunken by years of cataloguing and filing, her bloodshot, milky eyes stared out bleary, almost blind, from great hoods of folded skin. Her skin was as waxen as the candle stubs which lay on the table in front of her, and had been yellowed and jaundiced by her great lifespan. Her thin grey hair was scraped back from her temples to fall, lank and limp, behind her ears and down to her shoulders. Her prominent nose proceeded her face like the great beak of a bird of prey, scenting her next feast of carrion on the wind.
Around the table, listening intently to this old woman's words, were sat three tall men. All were dressed in business suits, and all looked as different from the next as if they had been made by different hands, none of which knowing exactly how a man should look.
On the head of the first man sat a white crown, and at his side rested a bow. His hair was gleaming white, his skin pale and translucent and his eyes were grey beads which sat closely together. His nostrils were constantly flared as though he too had caught the scent of carrion.
The second man's head was bare, and crimson hair fell about his shoulders. His skin was ruddy and his eyes seemed to glow with their own internal fire. Upon his lap rested a great, bejewelled sword, and the hand that clasped the hilt was stained red at the finger tips.
The third man was gaunt and angular; his cheeks were hollow and pinched, his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. His dark hair was thin and his bony hands shook in his lap. In front of him rested a small pair of scales, and it was to these that his eyes continually flitted.
His brothers all looked up as he entered, and greeted him politely. His attention, however, was fixed solely on the Old Lady. He stared mournfully down at her ruined form, shattered by age and twisted by duty, and knew that, once again, they were to be put off.
'What is it this time, Lady?' he asked.
She sat back heavily in her chair as a small frown creased her already folded forehead.
'Me,' she sighed, her voice cracked and uneven.
He removed from his chair a pile of quills and parchments and settled himself down.
'How do you mean, Lady?'
'I'm getting too old for this job, I haven't the strength I once had.'
His second brother, with gleaming red sword in hand, roared to his feet. 'You should have let us proceed earlier, you old fool! We've been saying for centuries now that the time has long passed, and now you tell us that you are unable to see it through?'
His first brother, with polished white crown, sagaciously nodded his head in agreement. 'Lady, my brother speaks the truth. You are old, yes, and frail. But you can only decline further. The more we delay, the harder it shall be on you, so I say strike now while we still can.'
The Old Lady looked worried by this; her eyebrows knotted in querulous concern as she tried to think her way out.
'Just a little more time,' she begged. 'It's such a large job to do this all at once. So many souls. Let me at least have time to train others.'
'And how do you propose to do this?' asked his third brother, looking up from his scales just long enough to glare his hatred at the Old Lady.
'When you were but children of my sister's womb, I gave each of you your tasks. She fell from the heavens, yet you stayed here with me. You showed me goodwill, and belief in my judgement. I ask you to show this trust once more.
'As I gave each of you your tasks, so will I appoint others to theirs. I shall go back to the beginning and harvest to my side those who will become my disciples. Together we shall sweep the heavens, with you as my champions.
'I shall set forth now, and I advise that you all return to your rest. In the coming days your strength will be needed in its entirety.'
So saying she heaved herself to her feet and hobbled over to the French windows. She put her shoulder against the glass pane of one door and struggled against it until creaked open. The last they saw of her stooped figure was as she limped down her garden path and through the tall wrought iron gates which led from this place to the other.
That evening, as they sat around the dining room table in the great hall, he and his brothers argued.
They had been discussing the plan, as they had done at every evening meal for time uncountable. However, whereas before it had seemed an abstraction, an element of the future that belonged just there, in the future, one day to happen, it resided in a now tangible moment.
There was an electricity to the excited atmosphere of dinner that evening, and his three brothers were positively frothing at their mouths in anticipation. The crystal chandelier which hung above their heads hummed with the vibrations of their gloriously anticipatory predictions of what would come: who would claim what, who would fight who, etc. and so on.
This atmosphere built layer upon layer of ecstatic expectancy throughout the meal until, just after pudding but before the fine port and cheese, his second brother leapt to his feet, brandishing his sword, and roared that the time was nigh. They needn't wait for that old biddy to return with her newly found, newly trained disciples to harvest the dead. Who was she compared to they? They should ride out that evening with trumpets blaring and wrest the lands from the tentative grips of their serfs. They should ride out amidst blood and glory and claim what was to be theirs by right of birth.
It was all well and good, said he to his second brother, but who was to mop up afterwards?
Thus had the row started, and it had lasted deep into the night.
And throughout its duration it was very clear that his brothers three were all in favour of riding out in haste, contrary to the Old Lady's commands. They called him sissy, scared-of-his-own-shadow, a weakling at heart who knew not what powers were his to command. They called him many names, and each time they argued he answered simply that it was contrary to their strict instructions.
His second brother threw his sword at him. His third brother tried to cut out his heart to be weighed on his scales. His first brother sardonically bowed to him, took off his crown and tried to throttle him with it. But each time he rebuffed them, claiming simply that they were acting contrary to their strict instructions.
His brothers ran to the stables. His first brother’s horse, white and proud, was chewing at the bit to leave for battle. His second brother's steed, a mighty chestnut warhorse, was methodically kicking his way through the stable door. His third brother's small and ragged black mount was hissing and snarling its frustration. All three horses were anxious to be ridden to war.
His horse, however, pale grey silvering in the moonlight, stood placidly awaiting the coming destruction at its proper time.
All three of his brothers leapt to their mounts, drew their weapons and let loose their battle cries. They rounded on him and demanded that he take up arms with them. Instead, he simply climbed onto his horse and rode away from them, away from battle and into the vast labyrinth of the castle in which they had been interred for so long.
He rode back to his tower, up the winding staircase and down one of the many passageways which led from the main castle to lands distant and untapped. His brothers lost sight of him, and without him the quaternity was broken.

*

Present Day

'Come in,' he mutters.
The door squeaks open and through it glides an incredibly straight backed man in what must be his late forties.
Although his physique is in itself something remarkable, with his broad shoulders, thick chest and predatory bearing, what strikes O'Donhal immediately is the hideously bright white suit which burns in the line of his bleary hungover gaze and makes this man look like a 1960s casino junkie.
His hair is also too white and there isn't a natural amount of colour in his face. In fact, O'Donhal thinks, the man standing in front of his desk looks like he has been thoroughly bleached out of any normal colour spectrum. He is so obtusely free from colour, shade, tint or hue from head to foot that O'Donhal begins to grow dizzy.
'Good afternoon, Mr. O'Donhal.'
'Is it?'
'Just a pleasantry, I assure you Mr. O'Donhal.'
He has cold grey eyes which seem to flicker with a light of their own as they stare down at O'Donhal.
'Can I help you?' O'Donhal asks.
'I shall assume that I have been invited to sit, Mr. O'Donhal.'
He folds together his austerely athletic physique and perches nonchalantly on the edge of one of the tattered chairs that face O'Donhal's desk. Leaning forward, he steeples his fingers, rests his chin on them and fixes O'Donhal with a laconic eye.
'Can I help you?' O'Donhal repeats.
'I certainly hope so, Mr. O'Donhal. I hear you are not an altogether unaccomplished private investigator.'
'Hm.'
'Well then, let us get down to business.'
O'Donhal has been writing on a piece of paper: a follow up to a case he has been working. This man now reaches over, takes the piece of paper between tapered thumb and forefinger, and tears it down the middle once, twice.
'I was given your name by a contact of mine who assures me of your impeccable success rate. I expect the case with which I am about to present you to impede this success rate in no way.
'I need a man to be found: one Mr. Pestilens. He and I have urgent business to conclude with other contacts of mine, yet it would appear that he is not to be found. It is imperative that you locate him by next Monday. Money, I can assure you, is not a problem. I am sure that this case will receive your sole concentration.'
He stretches out his slender hand and lays a blank cheque on O'Donhal's desk.
'Fine. What information can you give me in this Pestilens, Mr...'
'My name is irrelevant, and you will employ the utmost discretion from now onwards.
'Mr. Pestilens worked for many years as a consultant both for the Ministry of Defence and for the Department of Health. We have worked together before. You will find no documented evidence for our business transactions.
I will meet with him next Monday, and you will make this possible.'
'Fine,' O'Donhal says, 'can I get a physical description and last known address?'
'I don't have that information, nor do I have a recent physical description. It is to you that I am entrusting this endeavour, in the hope that you can get hold of this information where I couldn't.'
'How about date of birth, marriage, anything that might help me start?'
'Again, this evidence is not to be found in any existing records. You have his name, and seven days. I trust you will not let me down. Good day to you, Mr. O'Donhal.'
He unfolds himself and glides out of the room.
'Cunt,' O'Donhal curses as he reaches under his desk for a bottle.
That cheque will come in handy though, he thinks. Kingsbridge, his damned arsehole of a landlord, has been threatening to throw him out of his tiny rented office if he hasn't covered his arrears by the end of the month. He has debts to pay, and not enough income to tender them.
He pours a generous measure from his bottle, drinks, and continues to pour.
 

Four

Several Years Previously

He was sat at a bar. He didn't know when. The year, the day, the time, the point in his own personal narrative: such subtleties are lost to a man who has started in the polar reaches of sobriety and has jumped aboard an express train and travelled so many miles south of sober as to be equatorially hammered. Or so O'Donhal says to himself; at this point, it's as reasonable as anything that can be expected to be drudged from the outer reaches of his mind’s peculiar reality.
Yes, we get it; he's a drunk, he thought of himself. But oh no! Not this one. Mere drunkenness is not this man's problem. It's his escape, and the lengths to which he will travel in his endeavour to escape are truly without bounds. Such is true of a lot of people he had met in his time on this planet. He giggled to himself; it's a sound he found pleasing to himself as he ordered another drink.
He was at a funeral; he wasn't sure whose it was, but he knew that somebody in his wife's family had died a week or so ago, so he assumed quite safely that it was at their wake that he now stood downing cheap whiskey with an old guy with a hearing aid and milk bottle glasses.
Young children in cheap short sleeved shirts were flitting about behind him as milk-bottle eyes chewed his ear off about something or other; they were high on ice cream and the sense of the occasion; few of them could remember ever having been gathered together all at once like this and they were loving it. Death brings the young together to mourn the passage of the old, O'Donhal reflected to himself as he knocks back another glass of the cheap stuff.
He must have been in his late forties at the time, though he felt older; he had always felt older.
'You ever had a heart attack?' milk-bottle eyes asked him. He replied that he hadn't, no.
'Me neither. Had a bypass. Years ago. You ever see a bypass?
'I saw my brother with the tube down his throat. That's all I fucking need, I said to myself. All I fucking need. Scared me shit-less, I though never me. Then a couple of years later, I started getting chest pains. Angina, doctor said. So, I had to have a fucking bypass of my own.'
O'Donhal mumbled something conciliatory as he ordered more drinks. He started to sip at his whiskey, then downed it as milk-bottle eyes rambled on.
'You check yourself? I lost two neighbours to prostate cancer, and both in the last three years. You check yourself? I do; feel for lumps every morning in the shower, and get the test every six months since I heard about my neighbours. You get the test?'
'I get it,' O'Donhal lied. Of course he didn't get it. Stupid prick, he thought.
'How often?'
'Every couple of years.'
'What? Are you fucking serious? That's nowhere near enough. You need it every six months, young bloke like you.' O'Donhal laughed hollowly to himself; he hadn't felt like a young bloke in years.
He looked around for his wife. She was chatting to some family on the other side of the bar. He caught her eye and she moved over to where he sat. He put his arm around her waist and squeezed her arse; he was pissed getting horny.
Milk-bottle's eyes nearly popped out when he saw O'Donhal's wife; she looked her age, but that was about twenty years younger than this bloke.
Milk-bottle eyes asked if they had any kids. Fran said no they hadn't.
They had tried for children when they were both younger, but couldn't conceive together.
'I used to have a boy,' milk-bottle eyes said. 'Jack. He'd be thirty two now, if he'd lived.'

 

Five

1997

He was on holiday with his wife. In a one room caravan. In the West Country.
This warranted a long stiff drink.
Fran was out playing her luck at the caravan site Bingo hall. She had left him happily by himself, and so he had a couple of hours of blessed relief alone with his bottle of scotch and a bag of powder.
He put on the radio: time for a party, he thought. That fucking ridiculous Mank band was on, nasally whining down the airwaves at him about who-gives-a-fuck what? He swivelled the dial around and tuned into a decent station. The Stones came on, oh blessed relief:
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.
He cut himself a couple of lines on the kitchen counter, stooped over them and sucked it all into his mind. With a loud whoop! he let go, really let go, yeah
but what's troubling you is the nature of my game
The neighbouring caravan's dog was barking its head off again. If only he was an American cop, he thought, get down baby, pleased to meet you and he would have been issued with a gun; he would be a proper, respected and powerful law enforcer, tooled up and ready for action and he could take out that damned mutt.
He shot another line, sucked it up; his heart felt that one. Boom, boom, chika-boom, it beat faster and faster and faster and
but what's confusing you is
Boom, boom, chika-boom. He made a gun with his left thumb and index finger, aimed it at the next caravan, where Motherdearest was busy scrubbing dishes clean in the kitchen sink
just the nature of my game
Boom, boom, chika-boom oh yeah baby...
He drank some more scotch, did another line, cranked the volume, high, higher than the sky, way fucking higher, up up up, just as every cop is a criminal
'Ha!'
and all the sinners saints
'That's me baby!'
I'm in need of some restraint,
He unzipped his trousers, watching Mummy cleaning dishes,
so if you meet me have some courtesy
He was getting
have some sympathy
properly hard now
and some taste
as he warmed to the occasion with his heart beating chika-boom, boom.
Another drink, stroke, sip, gulp. Another drink.
Through the open window he shouted along 'use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste, oh pleased to meeeeet you! Hey baby, where's Daddy tonight? He left you alone baby?' He screeched at mummy, let her know he was there.
He finished, leaving but a few solitary gobbets of semen running down side of the cutlery drawer.
Mummy ignored him, carried on cleaning dishes; the bitch.

*

When Fran got in from Bingo that evening she found exactly what she had learned was to be expected: a policeman with his head in a pool of coke, spittle and cigarette ash, slumped over the little dining table.
Expected as this sight may have been, Fran never quite got used to the nagging depression in the pit of her stomach that she felt more and more often when she looked at her husband of late. She should, she thought, but could not, have got used to it by now; it happened enough for her to have.
She went to bed alone that night after eating a solitary meal. She was well fed on pleasant food but was left undernourished, empty. She lay in a warm bed that did nothing to allay the cold as she heard her husband stumble out of the caravan a few hours later.
She resolved for another countless time not to ask him where he had been, or with whom he had been there.
As she lay there she recalled to her mind the private investigator, Samuel something, or something Samuels, to whom she had been introduced by a journalist friend of hers at a party some months before.
Her husband had denounced him as a hack, a 'prick of an amateur who didn't have a hard enough hard on to make it as a real detective.' This level of disapproval from him, as far as Fran cared, was enough to qualify anybody. She would phone him when they arrived home the next weekend.

*

He has a hold of the back of a man's head. He grips through the hair as he smashes the man's jaw into the concrete curb, loosing teeth amongst blood and spittle.
'Steady, O'Donhal,' says a man from a few feet away, an assistant or a partner or somebody. He stands watch for O'Donhal, alert and with his badge at the ready should any plods wonder at the noise in this alleyway at this time in the morning.
O'Donhal lets go and stands up. As the man roles over and staggers to his feet O'Donhal lets go a kick and catches the man in the midriff, splintering a few ribs with a low crack.
He lands on his arse and flops over onto his side.
He is dressed only in jeans. The rest of his clothes are in a pile on the floor despite the early morning low temperature.
'Who the fuck are you?' O'Donhal demands. He already knows: this is Tommy Samuels, a private detective. He is a professional who runs his business like an amateur.
'Fuck you.'
O'Donhal kicks a few more teeth out. Tommy lies back, gurgling.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
'Why are you following me, you little piece of shit?'
Stomp.
'What makes you think you can follow me?'
Stomp.
Samuels sits up using his arms to lever himself. He is wheezing and bleeding and can obviously hardly see straight. He looks up to where O'Donhal's face is spinning, squints to focus and seems to sway on the spot.
'Your wife knows what you are, pig. She wanted evidence that you were fucking around with tarts.'
'What have you told her?'
'Piss off.'
O'Donhal kicks him in the stomach. He rolls to one side and vomits. There is blood in the vomit and blood running down his face.
'What have you told her?'
Samuels gags, spits blood and looks up at him. His face is crisscrossed with large angry welts and two gashes and a lot more blood.
'I had no evidence until tonight, when I saw you and your partner... down that alleyway... and I...'
He vomits again and passes out.
O'Donhal unzips his trousers and urinates over him. Samuels wakes up gagging on O'Donhal's piss.
'Where are the pictures?'
He staggers to his feet and falls to his knees. He fumbles inside the jacket pocket in the small pile at his feet and produces a digital camera with an expensive zoom.
O'Donhal takes it from him and smacks it into his face, then throws it to the ground and stamps on it.
Samuels is on the floor, half dead, maybe more than half.
O'Donhal and his partner throw Samuels into the back of his car, pour cheap whiskey into his cuts and bruises and slash his tires.
O'Donhal's partner drops him home and he climbs into bed and fucks his wife. That evening had got his blood flowing.
 

Six

Present

After a rather fruitless afternoon of searching O'Donhal retreated from his office to one of the many drinking establishments that the city had to offer.
The Lion's Head was a rundown pub in a backstreet in who-knows-where?
It was caught between a disused bookmaker on one side and a dirty smelling kebab shop on the other. The glass in the windows had been absent for as long as anybody could remember; they had been smashed and replaced with chip board, upon which many profanities and graphic cartoons had been spray painted.
Pretty much all of the patrons inside the bowels of the pub today had been there since the landlord had opened at eleven, giving him very slow but very steady business throughout the day.
This pub was referred to locally as 'the last stop': the landlord lost a fair quota of his regular customers to either suicide or liver disease each month. However, there was no shortage of patronage as there were always new customers arriving to the Lion's Head. The size of the unemployed had soared to record highs in this area; the cream of recession is to be tasted in the City Proper, not in these shabby outskirts, and many workers had been laid off with nowhere to turn but here.
The landlord at the Lion's Head was well aware of the afflictions suffered by his best customers. Whether sick in the head or the heart, he opened the doors of this hospice to anyone and offered medicine without prescription.
As O'Donhal walked in he was greeted by an overwhelming and dizzying miasma of stale beer, stale cigarettes and stale vomit, along with the sight of half a dozen regulars either staring glass eyed at the wall ahead or else bowed down over long flat pints of cheap beer.
Old Pat was swaying where he stood, halfway to the toilet and with piss still warm on his trousers. He cursed, mumbling under his breath in a voice so sodden in strong drink that its thick syllables oozed incoherently over chapped lips to disappear into the permeating ozone of the bars interior.
O'Donhal walked to the bar, slightly cowed by the proximity of so many nearly-dead drunkards, and settled himself on a stool next to a nasty smelling old drunk whom he had seen in here a few times.
'Pint, Tom, when you're ready.'
'Right-choo-are Mick.'
Tom always called him Mick; an Irish joke, ha ha. He had not an ounce of Irish blood in him, but with a name like his? Ha ha, all you can do is laugh.
The old drunkard next to him moaned pitifully.
'And one for my friend here.' What the hell; company was company, after all.
'Well, thank you Brother,' the drunkard rasped, surfacing from wherever he had been for long enough to shoot a toothless grin at O'Donhal, before returning to the netherworld. O'Donhal put him at about ten years older than himself, poor sap.
As he sipped at his pint O'Donhal reflected upon his life. After due consideration he decided that he'd fucked it all up, very much; a few years ago and he had had a wife, of whom he was fond, a Jag, of which he was very fond, and a house with a warm bed for which he yearned as he contemplated going home tonight to his studio flat and mouldy bed.
More than anything he missed his old job. He had been a fantastic police detective; he had been well respected, he had a good arrest record and he had had a certain amount of weight in the community.
Now? Now he was a dried up, booze soaked private investigator who spent his days gathering evidence of unfaithful husbands for embittered housewives to take to divorce courts.
Oh, the irony, ha ha.
After much abuse- aimed at, in no particular order, the various patrons in the Lion’s Head pub, the various staff in the Lion’s Head pub, and God- who if He wasn’t in the Lion’s Head pub then where the fuck was he? Omnipotence my arse, it was all well and good until it was His round, then where the fuck was He?- the scraggy bundle of odour that was sat next to him got up, went to the bathroom for a piss and nearly made it.
While he was gone O'Donhal ordered another pint for each of them with accompanying whiskey chasers. He chased both whiskeys himself, downed one pint and started in on the second.
His vision started to blur and his heart started to warm.
'Brother, did you steal my drink?' The old drunk was back, swaying as he stood.
'Yeah, but I bought it in the first place so get fucked.'
'Well now Brother, that's not fair on old Sweeney, is it?'
'Sweeney? Fucking Sweeney? Are you serious? Jesus, make sure you stay away from my throat now.' Tom let loose an appreciative chuckle.
'No Brother, much older than that one.'
'Fucking head case.' He downed the last of his pint, nodded to Tom for another and started in on it.
'Me the head case, Brother? O ho!' he giggled, a high pitched and delirious wheeze squealing with delight. 'That's rich Brother! That's delicious!' He held up one hand and counted on his fingers, 'pot calling the kettle black, one of! Ha ha ha!' He sat down next to O'Donhal and carried on swaying.
Thinking that it is always better to take a good look at a man with whom you are about to fight, O'Donhal rose from the stool that had been his refuge up until that point and stared down at this Sweeney. He cracked his knuckles (menacingly? maybe) and squinted into his face.
His black hair was swept back from a rather severe widow’s peak; it hung lank, straggly and streaked through with grey, behind his ears and down his neck. He had a prominent chin whose jowls were pebble dashed with blue and black stubble and over which a large nose beaked its way forwards.
He pulled his arm back to punch him.
'Brother, really?' Sweeney looked up laconically, raised an eyebrow and sneered. 'Let's not do this now, huh? How about you sit down?'
O'Donhal found himself seated as Sweeney ordered them a couple of beers.
'Thank you, Brother.'
They drank in silence for a while.
O'Donhal was usually comfortable ignoring the feelings of others. His work had suffered from this in recent years: who needs an unobservant detective? However, he found himself overly susceptible to a bouncing, vibrant energy which rolled from Sweeney in waves; the sullen old drunkard he had been just minutes before had been replaced by the giggling effervescence of an enraptured child.
Sweeney started to hum to himself, pom pom pom.
'Nobody's called me brother in years.'
'Maybe you like it, Brother?'
'Maybe I'd like another drink.'
'Sure Brother, if you behave yourself now, darling.'
There was something of the vulture about this man. Were those eyes too close together? Maybe, but there was more. The prominent hooked nose helped with the illusion, and his hair resembled a ragged plumage, but more than this was his bearing; he was completely wired and ready to pounce when prey was sighted. His nostrils seemed to twitch and swell in search of the illusive scent of carrion yet to be tasted.
Yes, definitely vulpine: and those arms, those spindly little arms! This bloke had appeared fairly tall at first; his skeletal physique had made him look longer, more defined, but now O'Donhal realized that he was almost unnaturally short.
He looked a lot like an aged, ragged version of that bloke in that band, what was his name? They sang about common people, about weeds. That was all of them alright, they were all common weeds.
'Ah Brother, is that a nice thing to say about old Sweeney?'
Sweeney had a ragged brown jacket with holes in the elbows through which were growing an even more ragged plumage of-
'Feathers?'
'Yes Brother.'
'Bollocks. I haven't got a brother. Who the fuck are you?'
'Sweeney, they call me.' An impish grin.
'You already said that.'
'Then why ask?'
'Fine, then what are you? Why are you?’ What, why, who?
'Sweeney, just good old Sweeney.'
'Fuck sake.'
O'Donhal signaled Tom for more drinks and they drank in silence for a while longer. O'Donhal was definitely drunk now; the room was whirling around him like a child's spinning top, lurching and bucking in front of his eyes as he felt his mood drop. His heart sank and he wanted his bed.
He got up and walked outside, breathing fresh night air and trying to stop his dizzy head from distorting the cityscape before him.
He stared ahead; he tried to focus, to get his vision straight. When it didn't work he sighed and reached for a fag; his lighter didn't work. Cheap foreign shit, he thought.
'Mate, you got a light?' to a bloke just passing.
'Sure Brother, anything,' Sweeney replied, striking a match. He had on a tweed skirt and a cagoule and was pulling the type of shopping trolley for which old women were notorious.
O'Donhal accepted the light, swore, aimed a punch at Sweeney and missed. He barked a coarse laugh and strode off in the opposite direction.
The light from the streetlamps vaguely penetrated the evening drizzle and illuminated his way home. He twisted unsteadily through the city streets, noticing how uneven his tread was on the slick rain washed paving slabs.
Halfway home a bum walked up to him with a dog on a leash.
'I've no change,' O'Donhal said as he closed one eye in a vain attempt to focus on his footsteps: one two, one two, one two.
'Brother, keep your money,' said the bum with a toothless grin.
O'Donhal barged passed Sweeney and quickened his irregular pace.
He turned a corner and found his block of flats. There was a short staircase which led up to his front door. Teenagers hung out at the base of the stairs, smoking dope and hassling passers-by. They laughed at him as he fumbled to get his keys in the lock and they giggled and all called him Brother.
He ran through the hallway and crashed into his grubby flat, slamming the door behind him. Upon his bed sat Sweeney in boxer shorts and a string vest, showing off the plumage that ran along his forearms and triceps. He was cleaning his teeth and spitting the toothpaste into a mug.
'And what time do you call this, Brother?'
'Who the fuck are you?'
'I am Sweeney, Brother. I am and was and always will be exactly who and what you need me to be.'
O'Donhal grabbed a bottle, held it like a club and started to walk toward Sweeney. He raised it above is head, ready to bring it crashing down.
'And what do I need? What the fuck do I need?'
'This, Brother.' Sweeney leaped to his feet and swooped down upon O'Donhal, catching his testicles in one gnarly fist and squeezing, squeezing, so hard!
A squeal, a grunt, an empty bottle rolled across the floor and all was quiet.

*

A bird... what kind of bird?
A crow, most appropriately, carves its passage through the night skies, hopping its way from briar to bramble before finally landing next to a gurgling brook at which to slate its thirst.

*

He knew he had work to do.
Pestilens wouldn't find himself and he only had until Monday; today was Tuesday and he didn't want to work through the weekend. That gave him four days in which to wrap up this case, yet he had only a name on which to base his investigation.
He had a lot of work to do.
He stood and-
'OhmyGod!'
He fell sideways back onto his bed. His testicles!
They were swollen to the size of a cricket ball and were about as hard. All well and good, he thought: hey babe, how's it going darling, look at the size of, look how big my, check out my gargantuan- but purple! A more violent shade of puce cannot surely be found.
He could barely sit up properly as the dull ache around his manhood became a sharp stabbing pain, right in the jolly old-
He started to swear at length.
Staggering... no, that won't work. Crawling across-
'Oh Jesus fucking, Oh God almighty-'
'Language Brother, Sweeney cares not for blasphemy of any kind.'
Sweeney was perched demurely on the edge of the only chair in O'Donhal's flat, a rickety wooden dining chair which served mostly as a clothes horse. Sweeney, however, had summarily dumped the dirty socks, shirts, pants, trousers onto the floor and was now using the chair for its original purpose.
Remembering the events of the previous evening, and realizing that they were real, fact, had happened and he couldn't argue with them, O'Donhal began to swear afresh: 'Sweeney fucking cares not for, fucking old piece of, etc.'
'Please Brother, watch the potty mouth for Sweeney cares not for the baser vocabulary for which our fair language can be known, as I believe I just mentioned.'
'Pass me a fucking bottle before I rip out your-'
Sweeney's eyes grew protuberant as he started squawking and flapping his hands; he placed one long finger over his mouth and emitted a long, low shush, Brother. With one finger over his lips he passed a deeply glowering O'Donhal a half empty bottle.
'Fucks sake.'

*

A pint or so of liquid bruncheon and a skillfully placed bottle of cold beer ensured that the swelling around O'Donhal's testes dissipated, leaving only the gross nagging ache as a reminder of their previously engorged and sensitive state.
As soon as he could walk unassisted O'Donhal limped to the liquor cabinet which stood firmly in the corner of the room and fixed himself a real drink with ice and slice and etc and so on.
It was as he was enjoying the deliriously intoxicating delights of this real drink that O'Donhal realized that the state of Sweeney's attire had deteriorated rapidly in the mere space of a night. He now seemed to have on nothing more than a few feathery rags which matched the plumage running up his arms.
O'Donhal shook his head and realized for the first time that he was stark raving mad; he was off his head with no hope of reprisal: men didn't sprout feathers.

*

She had long dark hair, that much was remembered. Her's was a sweet, if slightly tuneless, voice with which she would sing to lull her child to sleep at night.
But what was her name?
She had died so long ago that history had more or less swallowed her up. Ah! It was useless; maybe another drink would bring it back.
'Brother, you know that won't help.'
Clink slosh gulp. 'Sweeney, Brother, I can tell you that it does.'
He still didn't remember her name, but the guilt was lessened.
He crawled into his bed, curled his warm and musty blanket around himself and inhaled deeply; he was almost comforted by the animal smell of home.
And so he had felt more and more of late. It was not so much an inability to breathe the air of the outside world, but rather a reluctance to leave the sanctuary of his studio.
Whatever was outside was outside and couldn't breach these four walls; nothing could hurt him, or even get close, as he lay swaddled in these blankets and sheets which hadn't been changed in weeks. While he was in this warm pit over which he and only he had control no trouble could find him. This theory had been proven wrong only a few times.
As he dug himself deeper into his mattress he felt his body warming the duvet. He pulled the tattered quilting over his head as he fell asleep, safe.
 

Seven

Methushael had been living in this city since his birth nineteen years before. His had been a happy life of modesty and love.
His father worked in one of the many walled gardens of which this city boasted; first he was an apprentice, then a gardener with an apprentice of his own, until he worked his way up to the lofty position of head gardener.
The gardens in this city were all financed by the elderly monarch for the enjoyment of his subjects; this city was a pillar in the midst of a desert mountain range and was blasted all day long by the arid heat of the sun and the sand, and so in the cool of the evening these gardens would provide a sensual relief for young couples and a paradisiacal haven for families and the city's aged.
Methushael was the only son of his father's first and most beloved wife and so reserved a special affection in the twinkle of his father's eye.
When he turned fourteen he had been invited by his father to come to work in the park. He accepted without hesitation; by unspoken agreement it was widely anticipated that he would tread the same path as his father and he was only too keen to fulfil both familial and neighbourly expectation in this regard.
He had struck up a very cordial relationship with the rest of his team of gardeners as he came to realise that they all held his father in the utmost respect. From dawn until dusk each day they laboured for his father, alongside his father, tending the garden and keeping it lush and green and bountiful for the gratification of the citizenry.
This particular garden was around 300 acres in all, maybe more, maybe less, but it was almost unanimously regarded as the largest, lushest and most beautiful park in the city; it was reputed that it was the king's favourite, and frequently his palanquin could be seen gliding along atop the shoulders of its bearers through the jasmine and rose beds.
Once or twice the king had halted his bearers and a small and delicately be-ringed hand had emerged from between the silken blue and purple curtains of his palanquin to beckon Methushael's father. At times like this his father would race forth to consult with the beloved monarch; he would listen to and giving advice on what was to be plated in time for the following spring, or else could be heard answering questions on the botanical source of a new scent that had been detected by the royal nostrils.
The white walls which enclosed the four sides of this great park were high and gleamed in the baking sunlight of the city. Vines crept their winding ways up the walls and overflowed to the outside, delivering plump and juicy black grapes to passers-by on their daily business. The city's beggars could quite often be seen filling makeshift baskets of folded linen with these black grapes; it was commonly recognized for miles around in any direction that the poor of this city were better fed than the richest of nobles and merchants in the arid lands to the east.
One particular gardener, Lehabim, had taken a special liking to Methushael. He was one of his father's best workers; a lifetime of work in the baking sun had given him a worn and leathery appearance, which was nonetheless bursting with vibrant energy. Like all of his colleagues Lehabim respected Methushael's father, and he soon found himself beginning to love Methushael like a son. Thus it was that in his fifteenth year Methushael was married to Lehabim's daughter, Anna, in the grand veranda of his father's park.
At midday, each and every day, the sweltering city fell silent as its occupants halted what they were doing as they fled to the cool shade of indoors for a few hours. At this time of the day Methushael would wander around the sleeping city.
He loved to walk and smell and feel his way through this city that was so embedded in his heart. He felt a as though the city was rather like a brother or a favourite cousin, a sentient being with love and lust and anger; they were two people and in his midday walks he was catching up with his old friend. The searing heat didn't bother him; he rather welcomed it as the slightly fiery side of this otherwise tranquil personage.
One particular day his midday wanderings had taken him to a district in the city which he rarely had cause to visit; here company could be bought for a few coins, and solace could be found at the bosoms of the working women.
Methushael remained ambivalent towards this district where his fellows judged harshly; for him this district represented the heated part in all of us which gets the blood flowing after dark, which is risen in the heat of the moment to overspill into our emotions until we feel nothing but the love-making of long summer nights.
Here too could also be found male company for a similar price. Not to Methushael's tastes: he preferred the tenderness of a woman to the roughness of men's passion. However, here again he judged less hastily than his fellows; lovemaking between men may not be to his taste but who was he? He was but one cell in this omnipresent city, and if this city found necessary the provision of such a district then so be it.
A few offers were called out to him from the balconies of these houses of lust, but business was so slow and the temperature was so hot at this time of day that the workers were all too sleepy to pursue custom with any real zeal. Methushael waved off these advance with a cheery shrug and continued onwards.
It was along a path up the low mountain at whose feet the city was built that Methushael soon found himself striding. He was perspiring heavily as he rose out of the blasted heat of the city but he soon cooled as he met the thin mountain air.
It was upon a vantage point a mile or so along this road that Methushael turned and watched the clouds darken and the fire begin to fall.

*

This world was a second Eden.
This world is a world turned to fire and burned embers.
Two fellows are walking side by side along a wide and sweeping promenade. On either side of the central road white stone walls shake and crack, blistering in the intense heat which now pervades the air in this world of red skies and black dust.
People are running in the opposite direction from the path they tread, screaming, screaming.
Up ahead is a mountain of fire, ejaculating its fiery mess over the city. The smog and burning heat roll outwards from this fire and engulf four cities.
In these cities live homosexuals and prostitutes; this is not why they are here.
In these cities can be found houses of vice and of strong drink in abundance; this is not why they are here.
They speed up their walking pace.
Hosts of their fellows descend upon the other cities, but this is their ground.
Infants wail in the heat.
Comets are raining down around them, crushing and burning men, women, children, old, young, rich, poor of the city, and each soul lost to this apocalyptic nightmare strengthens these two and they quicken their pace.
A wall of flame sweeps the city like a velvet curtain in the closing act of a play. These two stride through it even as those around are buffeted before it and turned into ash.
They follow their chosen path into a piazza; in one corner is a burning temple. Opposite this are the remains of the city's largest market out of which pour fat and sweaty merchants; they are fleeing as fast as the beggars over whom they trod this morning.
Orange flame is eating whatever stands in its path, a tempestuous leviathan which thrashes its way through the avenues and terraces of this city; it leaves nothing in its wake but char and smoke. Its sulphurous smell permeates the air, starving people of the oxygen they so desperately need as they flee from this beast.
Nearby, a group fall choking in a cloud of sparkling ash and smoke. As the death rattles sound these two observers grow stronger and taller and their strides lengthen until they are climbing the ejaculating mountain.
A family is running along a ridge, swaddled in wet rags against the heat and pressure of the inferno below. Determinedly they look forward, forgetting their neighbours as they force themselves onwards and away from the city of their birth.
The woman, mother sister wife daughter, looks back as a searing piece of rock flies towards them. The others fling themselves to the ground, but she stands petrified in its trajectory until it strikes her thock! upon the temple. She freezes, covered in salt and ash as one of the companions takes her hand and frees her from her body. They both grow stronger with it.
They reach the top of the mountain, the point from which lava spews and runs, and turn their backs to it, ignoring its heat. Below is a wasteland of red hot corpses and molten households.
They spread their arms wide, growing as they do so, until their shadows fall across the whole city. For miles around their brothers and sisters are doing the same to their own cities.
In this embrace thousands fall and never again breath the sweet breath of life. The two shrink back, smaller and better nourished.
 

Eight

'Where's my car?'
'Where the fuck is my car?
'WHERE THE FUCK IS MY CAR?'
Angry, belligerent and deeply hung over, O'Donhal swayed where he stood at the bottom of the steps to his flat. He squinted into the failing midday light as he tried to remember where he had parked his car.
He was sure it had been here.
Granted that possessions around here were fairly transitory, but still...
Just as he was giving up he heard the tell-tale rumbling splutter with which his old Skoda customarily announced itself. It came staggering round the corner, bumping over a couple of sleeping policemen, skirting the curb, with the front windows unwound and some kind of classical music pumping out from the stereo.
'A fine day Brother, don't you think?' Sweeney, leaning out of the driver's seat window, looked more bedraggled than ever. His eyes were sunk deeply into their sockets and where they sat, enfolded in papery skin, they beadily took in the surrounding world.
'I hope you don't mind Brother, I took your keys.' Sweeney parked the car in front of a now seething O'Donhal.
'How're the gents?' he asked, nodding towards O'Donhal's crotch with a nasty wink.
His grey hair was straggly and scraped back behind his ears, from where it hung in strands down to his shoulders, and the hands that clutched the steering wheel were knobbly talons. The rictus grin that stretched across his skeletal face showed several missing teeth and the skin around it was so taught that it looked like it might crack. However, his voice was full of such playfully musical bonhomie that it was as though the lost voice of youth were speaking through his lips.
'Get the fuck out of my car you stupid little bastard.'
'Charmant, Brother.' He gracefully unwound himself from the driver's seat and flowed out of the car. Standing to one side, and with a florid bow, he held the door open and ushered O'Donhal into the driver's seat.
'Maybe I'll see you later, Brother.'
'Fuck you,' O'Donhal retorted and sped off to his office, lighting a fag as he drove away. The wind billowed through the open windows and buffeted the cigarette smoke back into his face. Choking, he wound the window up, all the while vehemently cursing Sweeney between his splutters.
He arrived outside his office a few minutes later. It was a dingy room in a dingy building in a dingy backstreet and was the cheapest he could find.
The answer machine was showing one new message when he arrived. He settled down behind his desk, poured himself a whiskey and soda and played the recording back.
'I have observed that you are not in your office today, Mr. O'Donhal. Either that means that you are currently locating Mr. Pestilens, that you have already located Mr. Pestilens, or that, contrary to the information I was passed prior to our meeting, you are the indolent amateur which I perceived you to be during our initial encounter.
'You will arrange for me to meet Mr. Pestilens on Monday. Today is Wednesday. Failure will be very unfortunate and rather painful on your account. Good day to you, Mr. O'Donhal.'
At which point O'Donhal took the blank cheque he had been given from his desk drawer, wrote £700 and poured himself another drink. He added an extra nought to the end of the figure and left to deposit it with his bank.

*

O'Donhal returns to his office that afternoon to find the locked door open with no signs of forced entry. In his chair is sitting the largest man he has ever seen; he has his feet up on his desk and is whistling tunelessly to himself.
This man is wearing a crimson three piece suit with golden trim and matching snakeskin boots. His hair is bright orange and his hands are toying with an ostentatious red fedora, rising out of the black band of which a peacock feather can be seen.
'Good afternoon, Mr. O'Donhal, please take a seat,' he says. He waves one golden ringed hand to the seat in front of O'Donhal's desk.
O'Donhal walks over to the filing cabinet in the corner of his office, opens the middle drawer and pulls out nothing.
'Are you looking for this, Mr. O'Donhal?'
The man behind his desk is almost negligently pointing O'Donhal's revolver straight at his chest. He stands up, revealing a height of epic proportions. A sardonically cruel smile curves its way onto his face, and the point of his crimson tongue licks around his lips as he bares several sharpened teeth.
His biceps are visible through the fabric of his crimson suit; the jacket is close fitting and is strained taut around his body.
His physical strength is very much in evidence as he grabs a hold of O'Donhal by the throat and throws him to the floor. A snakeskin boot is forcibly planted into O'Donhal's stomach one, twice. It finds its way to his esophagus and presses down lightly.
'My associate, who was so kind as to leave you a message to which you may listen at your leisure, informs me that you have been rather lax in your pursuit of Mr. Pestilens.' The red suited man's voice is a baleful growl which issues forth from deep within his throat.
He removes the snakeskin boot from O'Donhal's gullet and aims the handgun at his head. He moves the snakeskin boot back to O'Donhal's stomach, and hovers above him in excited anticipation.
'This'
Stomp.
'Is'
Stomp.
'Not'
Stomp.
'Good'
Stomp. Stomp.
'You will have made an appreciable amount of progress by the end of the day. Goodbye, Mr. O'Donhal.'
The door slams shut and O'Donhal is left to gasp as he climbs to his knees. He winces with the pain in his ribs as he vomits onto the floor. Claggy sputum drips down his chin and between the cracks in the bare wooden floorboards as he struggles to calm his ragged breathing.
The bastard had taken his gun.
'Brother, that looked painful.'

*

Throughout his career in the police force many men had bartered, begged and bought O'Donhal's silence.
Throughout his career in the police force O'Donhal had bartered, begged and bought many men's silence.
As a result of these various silences O'Donhal now had a fair amount of information in various circles of power throughout the city upon which to call as the need arose.
It hadn't been easy with Sweeney twittering away in the corner Brother Brother Brother Brother-
but, after many hours of work in which he pooled the various resources lent to him by his long memory and lengthy phone book O'Donhal had managed to find a couple of leads.
He called a man he knew who worked for the Inland Revenue. Michael Johnson was usually his first port of call whenever he needed someone finding; his access to people's tax records meant that he could be relied of to come up with an address for anybody who had worked in the country at any time in the last twenty or so years.
'Hello?'
'It's O'Donhal. I need a favour.'
'Sure, what's the name?'
'Pestilens.'
'First name?'
'I don't know.'
'Current employer?'
'I can't say.'
'Fuck sake, O'Donhal. I'm going to need more; there could be any number of people with that name.'
'I know he used to work for the Ministry of Defence, and for the Department of Health. He sounds like he was a high ranking executive type. Check six and seven figure salary listings over the last ten years.'
'This is going to cost more than normal. My boss is already getting suspicious.'
'Just get me a fucking address and you'll get your money. Twice the usual rate.'
'Fine.'
'Call me back when you're done.'
While he waited for the call back from Mike he went into the small bathroom adjoining his office. He could see the beginnings of bruising around his eyes. He swilled and gargled some water from the tap, spat it out and saw that it was thick and red. He did it again, and again, rinsing out the blood.
Around three o'clock Mike phoned him back.
'Meet me at the William on Elm Street in twenty minutes.'
'Fine.'
He grabbed his coat, left his office and drove to Elm Street. He was sore from the beating, and his head was light from the drink he had had over lunch time, so the car swerved as he sped along the city streets.
The King William IV was a large pub with a hideous orange paint job on its outside walls, a concrete covered beer garden and a car park in the rear. He parked his car and wandered inside to meet Mike, who was sat at a small table in the corner.
'Get me a double whiskey, O'Donhal,' he said, 'I need it.'
O'Donhal ordered to large whiskies from the barmaid; he noticed she had large breasts and a low neckline, and he smiled to himself.
'Cheers darling, and one for yourself.'
'No thanks.'
'Suit yourself.'
He carried them over to Mike, who swigged his back and finished in one gulp.
'I only found one man who met your description, and I had to go back fifteen years to get it.'
'Anything more recent?'
'I'm afraid not. Fifteen years ago it seems he was paid for the use of a patent he had registered in his name.'
'So why the stress?'
'He had deleted records, which generally means MI5 or some shit like that. I'm telling you now; don't get tangled up with that.'
'Too late; it's more dangerous to refuse my current clients.'
Mike cast his eyes over O'Donhal's recent bruising, and nodded.
'Fair enough, but be fucking careful you don't get my name mixed up in this.'
'Stop shitting yourself. If you were going to get yourself caught it would have happened a long time ago.'
'Just be fucking careful.'
'Fine. So what else have you got? What's this patent he has?'
'I don't know, but like I said the payments started showing up fifteen years ago, and went out to him every month for the next three years. After that is when his records stop, like he just disappeared.'
O'Donhal took out a notebook and started writing notes.
'And who was paying him for the patent?'
'A subcontractor for the Ministry of Defence, which is how I found him. But after the first few months he started receiving another payment, one day after the MOD payments each and every month, from a company which worked for the NHS.'
'How much?'
'Thousands each month. It varied from about £30000 to £80000 each payment.'
'So he makes weapons and medicine, is that what you're saying?'
'I don't know what the fuck he makes, probably software or something, some new kind of computer program. Either that or the MOD needed medicine for the Army; I don't know. But it's just one thing, and both the NHS and the MOD were using it.'
'Did you get a name for the product?'
'We don't get information like that. I just know he was getting massive royalty checks, which means he holds the rights to something big.'
'Did you get an address?'
'No, but the records stop twelve years ago so he probably isn't in the same place.'
'Cheers Mike,' he downed is whiskey, 'I'll send you a check in the post.'
'Fuck that, I want cash, and I don't want to hear from you any time soon.'
'I can get you the cash, but I'll need you again. I'll leave you alone when I'm done on this case, but until then you’re going to keep helping me out if you don't want your boss finding out about your little sideline.'
'You wouldn't.'
'Try me.'
'Cunt.'
'I thought not. I'll call you again in a day or so.'
He left to see a lawyer that he knew would be able to tell him what he needed to know. In a tall old Victorian building two miles from O'Donhal's flat were housed the offices of W. Woodrow & Associates. One of their Associates was one Philippa Andrews, and it was to her that O'Donhal now drove.
He parked outside and walked into the spacious entrance hallway. Dark oak panelling lined every wall of the long corridor, at the end of which sat a large mahogany desk. The firm's receptionist was fielding calls and gestured for O'Donhal to wait a minute. That was fine by him; she was a nice looking little thing with mousy hair and a cute mouth. He imagined that mouth doing-
'How can I help you, sir?'
She had interrupted his reverie. 'I'm here to see Philippa Andrews.'
'Have you got an appointment?'
'No.'
'Well I'm afraid I can only let you in with an appointment; she's a very busy woman. I'll just check when she's free.' She looked at the large computer monitor on her desk and started clicking with her mouse.
'Could you let her know that O'Donhal's here.'
'Sir?'
'O'Donhal. Here to see her. She'll let me through.'
'Of course I can let her know, but I very much doubt-'
'She'll see me.'
'If you're sure.'
'I am.'
The secretary stood up and walked to one of the adjoining doorways which lined the hall. She knocked, entered and came out again a few seconds later.
'She says she'll see you now, if you could...' She gestured for him to go into the adjoining room.
Philippa Andrew's office was decorated very much the same as the rest of the old building; dark brown wooden panels ran from the floor to chest height around the room and dusty plants sat in pots on every surface. It was dimly lit so that most corners were in shadows and the walls seemed to loom in on O'Donhal.
'O'Donhal, what the bloody hell do you think you're doing here?'
Philippa was sat in front of windows over which hung Venetian blinds. She had thin, straight blonde hair which hung about a haughtily pretty face. She must have been in her mid-thirties by now. A wide desk separated her from O'Donhal.
'I need you to look into something for me.'
'Absolutely not. Get out.'
He chuckled under his breath as he sat on one of the comfy chairs which faced her desk. He picked up a photo of a handsome man in a pale grey suit who was stood behind two young boys and a girl, upon whose shoulders the older man had laid his hands.
'Your family?'
'Yes. What do you think you're playing at?'
'I told you, I need your help.'
'And I told you no.'
'You have very beautiful children, Philippa.'
'I know. Would you please leave now, O'Donhal?'
'I wonder if your children know how their mother paid her way through University?'
'You bastard, how-'
'I thought not. I need a favour Philippa.'
She had gone completely white. Her eyes had shrunk to tiny beads and her mouth was sneering at him. He could hear her breathing; she could barely contain her anger at him.
'Do you know what I could do to you, O'Donhal? Blackmail and slander. I could close down your little business, if that's what you are still insisting on calling it.'
'You could, of course you could. But one word from me and your family will know exactly what their mother is. How many men were you entertaining when I arrested you? Six, wasn't it?'
'You didn't press charges.'
'A favour for a desperate citizen in need of help. And now I need help, Philippa.'
'What do you need?'
'That solicitors firm you trained under dealt with patents, didn't they?'
'One of the partners did.'
'Good: phone him. I need details of a patent belonging to a man named Pestilens. It will have been filed before 1986.'
'You could probably get that in a library.'
'This way is quicker. Besides, it's more than likely a military contract that won't be found in any database I can access.'
'Shit, what are you involved in?'
'Nothing that concerns you. Just get me the information, OK?'
'Fine. Are you on the same number?'
'Yes.'
'I'll call you when I have it. Now piss off, O'Donhal.'
She phoned the information through that evening: a couple of patents turned up in Pestilens' name; various formulae for narcotics and weaponised chemicals had been filed on his behalf by a company called SEALs Ltd. between October 1968 and April 1969. After this nothing had been filed for him, or at least nothing that appeared in written record.
He ran a search for SEALs Ltd. and found the address for a warehouse belonging to the company a few miles outside the city. So, with nothing else to go on but this address, he grabbed his coat at 8:45 and went to check out the premises.

*

It was a sick looking evening. A prevailing drizzle blurred the outline of anything further away than six feet, and the ground beneath his car tyres was a haze of misty shadow.
He turned off the motorway at the right junction and drove on for perhaps another two miles. In a shallow valley just off the A road he could see a small industrial complex which he assumed to be what he was looking for. Sure enough, as he pulled up to the gate he saw a large yellow sign which read 'SEALs Ltd.'
As he pulled through the gate into the entrance of the car park O'Donhal was stopped by a tired looking security guard. Rain was still falling all around, flattening the greenery which bordered the estate and surrounding the guard with a shimmering cowl under which he was bowed.
'Can I ask you your business here sir?'
'It's a rather important matter I need to discuss with your-'
'Have you got any identification?'
Shit, if only he had thought to bring his old badge. It was out of date, but he had modified it to look passable and it had helped him out a few times since he had been thrown out of the force. He reached into his wallet, pulled out his driver’s licence and wrapped it in a couple of twenty pound notes.
The guard nodded and pocketed the cash.
'Very well sir. If you need me I'll just be taking my coffee break now; I should be about a quarter of an hour.' He left his station and went to take shelter in a nearby porta-cabin, out of sight of the main complex.
O'Donhal drove passed the guard's kiosk, through a large gate along a small lane until he turned into the main car park. He saw a large warehouse on the other side of the car park which seemed to be the centre of the complex. Large double doors stood facing him, closed, and above them a dim electric light was flickering against the rain.
He cut the engine and coasted to a standstill, silently watching for signs of activity. Hopefully it was deserted and he would be able to make his way inside.
O'Donhal pulled his binoculars from his glove compartment and focused them on the doorway; he could just make out three men huddled under a large golf umbrella. One of them was smoking a thin cigarette while the other two carried on a very heated conversation.
They all appeared well dressed in expensive suits which caused O'Donhal to curse under his breath; none of these men would bother to accept any bribe that he could afford. Maybe they would leave soon and he would be able to take a look inside.
If not then he would have to come back in the morning; he still had a couple of forged search warrants in a drawer in his desk, one of which should be able to get him a look inside.
O'Donhal opened his car door as quietly as possible and made ready to try to circle round the edge of the car park.
Just as he was making his way into the undergrowth which bordered the premises, there to be better concealed as he made his way towards the main building, he saw one of the men pointing at his car.
Shit! How could they possibly see in this light?
The number plate and tax disk were in his name and registered to his address; if they were so inclined then they could track him down in a couple of hours.
They started to make their way towards his car, still huddled under the umbrella against the prevailing rain. However, about halfway across the car park they were interrupted by a fourth person.
O'Donhal trained his binoculars towards this figure. He saw a hunched old man, much smaller than the other three men and bent over with a noticeable stoop. He was dressed in a much worn and patched ex-military great coat, tattered jeans and mismatched trainers. The straggly grey hair that slid its way down his back was covered on top by an American baseball cap.
He had his hands stretched out imploringly towards the three men in suits, as if begging for small change. Irritated, one of the men strode towards him with his fist raised, and then everything went dark.
O'Donhal thought it must be the scope on his binoculars. He lowered them from his face only to be confronted by an oppressive blackness that choked the world surrounding him of all light. He felt like he was suffocating as he fell backwards.
He tripped, landed on his arse and cursed. As he started splashing around on the wet asphalt he began to feel the rising gorge of panic.
And then, miracle of miracles! A light appeared up ahead; a blazing, glorious beacon was shining in the middle of the three men in suits, and what a scene it illuminated:
The beggar, with a shout of 'Oh Brother, O Brother!' tore off his cap to reveal vulpine features cast into stark relief by the blazing light.
'Sweeney got you good, Oh Brother!' He tore off his overcoat, threw it to the ground and

His body convulsed,
He staggered to one side,
He rose up like a bird in the night air
As great feathered wings unfurled from his back
And the melodious sound of a woman's laughter rumbled from his throat

And this winged being rose above the three suited men like an avenging angel, casting its shadow over them all.
The firsts' suit began to bubble and run like molten wax. His skin ran from his temples as all colour drained from his person, leaving a stark white man in its place.
The seconds seemed to heat and swell, growing redder and larger, redder and larger, until a great crimson behemoth in a black feathered fedora stood in awe of this tattered beggar.
The third had no transformation. The black of his suit remained, as did the expensive shine on his shoes. His cigarette still smouldered in the rain. His face remained pinched and sunken with emaciated flesh clinging to a skull which held the darkest of eyes. His lips bore a sardonic smile, but all else was expressionless and dead.
The third said: 'the worst of what you have done to me has come to pass. I hunger and remain starved; you can hurt me no more.' And with that the blazing aura faded, distributing its light back to the misty twilit car park.
The three men were in countenance and appearance as they had been before, and the lowly beggar had disappeared.
O'Donhal returned to his car and sped home, shaking as he cruised down the motorway. As he entered the flat he collapsed onto his mattress, broken.
'Brother, take you money back, Sweeney has no use for this.' He pressed the two twenty pound notes back into O'Donhal's imploring hand.
 

Nine

He was still shaking when he got up that morning. A queasy knot had tied itself in the pit of his stomach.
He climbed out of bed and crossed to his dressing table.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror. His paunched stomach sat in the middle of an otherwise skinny torso. His legs stood like spindly twigs and his back was stooped over and crooked. He looked like a man staring into the cold face of defeat.
He was sure the assault yesterday had splintered a couple of his ribs.
He lifted his left arm and delicately probed that side of his ribcage with his other hand. He winced as he pressed his fingertips into bruised flesh. An angry purple contusion spread outwards under his armpit from where the man in the red suit had planted his boot, and jagged lines of darker bruising ran down his side and marked where broken skin met rib bone.
His right shoulder ached as well; he couldn't fully rotate it and it hurt when he tried. He bowed his head and flexed his neck. Red welts lined his collar bone and he was pretty sure he had had some minor ligament damage done when he was being throttled. He couldn't breathe deeply without his breath becoming ragged in his chest; his throat was sore and also bore marking from the man in red's boot print.
As he moved closer to his mirror he squinted at his reflection's face. A dark blue and red bruise rested below his right eyelid, spread over his stubbled cheekbone and ran up the scar which bisected his eyebrow up to his hairline.
He let loose a sigh as he limped over to his bed. He lifted his shirt and eased it painfully over his left arm, slotted his right arm through and buttoned it up. He tucked it in one handed, hissing in pain at the effort it cost him.
He took a long draught from the bottle on his bedside table, rolled his shoulders out and cracked his knuckles.
My goodness I feel old, he thought.
He flattered himself that ten years ago he might have been able to hold his own against that bastard. He could have given a fair fight, and he wouldn't have let such a beating slow him down as much as it was doing now. But nowadays his body was slow to recover, slow to repair itself from damage done.
Nowadays his bones creaked stiffly in their joints and his hips ached as he walked. A constant hot pain stabbed at the small of his back and his movements, each and every, seemed to take ages as if performed in slow motion.
He hobbled over to the door and fetched his battered old shoes. They were old and the once smooth leather had been cracked and worn by too many years of usage. He made a mental note to replace them soon but knew that he wouldn't bother.
He tried to bend down to tie the laces but couldn't reach. God! His legs were stiff today. He slumped backwards, lay there panting for a minute or so, and then tried again to do up his laces. Flat on his back he managed it.
He crossed to his mirror to do up his tie; he was now ready for the day ahead.
Again he looked at the old scar running up his forehead and remembered.
After his mother's death his father had been left a grief stricken widower for the second time in his life. His hair, always raven black and sleek with a few grey hairs, turned pure white within a few days. Within the week he was hunched over and frail. He grew visibly older with each passing day and the glint that had so graced his cheerful eyes had darkened and clouded.
In his grief O'Donhal's father had become a shell of the man he once was. He would turn up late to the butcher shop, forget to place orders for meat and invariably stop working several hours before closing; he would meander away from the shop and return home later smelling of strong drink and bearing tokens of affection for his step-son: a new football, a new single by any one of the many pop sensations of the late 1960s, any number of trivialities hose meagre weight nevertheless piled up to rest upon the shoulders of the small family.
To his mind there was only one remnant of that beautiful soul to which he had given his heart, and that remnant lay within his wife's biological son. He turned to the young O'Donhal for comfort and solace.
At his mother's wake O'Donhal's father introduced him to the priest who had conducted the service. His father was a devout man who attended church regularly but O'Donhal's mother never could bring herself to worship, nor would she allow her son to go.
The priest, a kindly old man with white hair growing on his head an out of his nostrils, placed his hand on O'Donhal's shoulder and reassured him that while God was in his heart he would never walk alone. O'Donhal minded his manners and thanked him and walked away with nobody by his side.
O'Donhal's elder step-brother was seventeen at the time of his stepmother's death; young and foolish and it was the summer of love across the world.
However, while his friends raced motorbikes, smoked dope and listened to endless repeats of The White Album and Sergeant Pepper, O'Donhal's older brother had had the ground beneath his feet shaken once more by the death of the woman who held his father's heart; first her path crossed with theirs and their lives were changed irrevocably, and now her death had halted his father's life in its tracks.
As O'Donhal's brother witnessed the old man's steady and rather rapid decline he knew that he had to drop out of college and take on more and more responsibility. He became home maker to the younger brother he never particularly wanted and the manager of the shop that his father's father had opened. He managed to stop it from falling into ruin under the lacklustre care of its current proprietor.
He would get up at three a.m. each morning and drive to the meat market to pick up the days fresh produce. He would load his van with carcasses, drive them to the back room in his father's shop and spend the next few hours chopping, slicing, pounding, sewing joints of meat to make them saleable to the morning's custom.
Around midday his father would amble in, morose and inefficient in his grief. He would spend a few hours chatting to old customers and listening to their stories, announce that he was tired- such an old man, such an old old man, son- and would wander off, sometimes to a pub, sometimes to a racetrack.
O'Donhal's brother would spend a few more hours in the shop. He would close at five, leave just after six, go home and throw O'Donhal a packet of chips for his tea and then would collapse into bed.
This particular day was just too much for him.
O'Donhal, knowing that the house would be empty for a couple of hours, had brought home a girl from his class at school. Tentatively, longing, nervous, the two fifteen year olds had walked home hand in hand through the local park and had arrived home to this seclusion.
O'Donhal put on a record that his father had bought him, the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet. He had longed for this album since it had come out a couple of years before and so his father had come home drunk with it, a token of affection for the child of his love.
Sat on the sofa, with Mick Jagger serenading them, O'Donhal had unhooked the girl's bra and was feeling the first breast he had felt since he had suckled at his mother's tit as an infant. He tenderly squeezed, found a nipple as she found his young penis.
His brother had had to pop home for a couple of minutes; it isn't known why, and whatever reason it was is as irrelevant as it is unfortunate.
As he opened the front he door he heard his O'Donhal's music playing through his father's amplifier.
Please allow me to introduce myself
Little shit, given presents bought by his father with his money
I'm a man of wealth and taste
He walked into the living room and saw the two adolescents in the first stages of undress, performing upon one another
I've been around for a long, long year
Now the little prick was getting more action from him as well
Stole many a man's soul and faith
Something snapped deep within him. The girl screamed, the boy looked horrified and the man was furious. The girl picked up her satchel and fled, hooking up her bra as she did so
And I was round when Jesus Christ
He strode over to O'Donhal and grabbed him by the throat, squeezed hard and threw him against the wall. All of those long hours spent chopping and pounding meat had given him strength, had given him the knowledge of how and where and when to cut
Had his moment of doubt and pain
He kicked O'Donhal in the gut, the ribs, the back, winding the scrawny little boy. He began stomping up and down on O'Donhal. He was pummelling, stomping, chopping chopping chopping
Made damn sure that Pilate
Little O'Donhal was crying now, stop, please stop, no, I'm sorry, and his brother slapped him across the jaw. A loud crack resounded and O'Donhal's eyes glazed over.
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
O'Donhal's eyes rolled upwards, blank and white, and he collapsed. He was battered and bleeding from gashes all over his body.
His brother had only the vaguest recollection of what had happened and was surprised to see this little heap of bloodied rags on the floor in front of him. He lifted O'Donhal, laid him on the sofa and called for an ambulance. He said that he had been beaten on the way home. He told them that he hadn't known the attacker. As far as he was concerned he had never before seen the brute which had almost killed O'Donhal.
Pleased to meet you,
Hope you guess my name.

*

He had had to stay in hospital for several weeks after the attack.
He spent his sixteenth birthday in intensive care, alone and attached to a drip. He had suffered severe internal bleeding, a collapsed lung, a broken nose, four broken ribs, severe bruising around his kidneys, three hairline fractures on his left arm and a deep gash than ran from above his right eye and up to his scalp.
These wounds kept him more or less stationary for two weeks, during which time he began slowly to recover physically as his body began to bind and fix itself back to health.
Periodically a nurse or a doctor would stand by his bedside, ask him questions, monitor his vitals and poke and probe his injuries. When they left each time they left him alone.

*

His father was grief stricken by the attack.
He never believed that his youngest son was attacked at random on his way home. He had found blood stains on the skirting boards in his house and had found his eldest son to be as shattered and broken in his own way as his youngest son. Even his tired and foggy mind could work out what had happened.
As O'Donhal's brother left for the market one day a week or so after the attack he found his father foetal and shaking in the freezing mud of their front garden. He was semi-conscious with drink and weeping with grief where he had fallen.
O'Donhal's brother called an ambulance and sat with his father on the way to the hospital. His father's core temperature had sunk so low that he had severe hypothermia.
He died two nights later, his heart too cold to carry on beating.

*

Upon his discharge from hospital O'Donhal was met by a cab which took him to his father's graveside. He stood over the freshly filled in grave which now contained the remains of both of his parents and wept like he hadn't since his mother's death, and like he never would again.
His father's solicitor presented him with a modest cheque for the sum bequeathed to him, and with instructions that the house and business be passed to his older brother who, having just turned eighteen, would be able to keep it going and serve as O'Donhal's guardian.
O'Donhal took a cheap room in a local bedsit, lost his virginity to the owner's wife and enrolled in college. He would never return home and would never again see his brother, except in his dreams.
 

Ten

Violently shaking, O'Donhal leant over the toilet in his flat and vomited copiously. Having managed to dress himself he had tried to force down some eggs, only to find he couldn't take it. After the shock last night he had been left queasy and anxious, and as soon as the eggs hit the bottom of his stomach his body launched into furiously spasmodic over-activity. Vicious palpitations and gut wrenching constrictions had emptied him of all food and fluid.
Still shaking, he rose to his feet. He stumbled, caught hold of the edge of the sink and steadied himself. He was incredibly light headed. He took a few deep breaths and began to feel better. He was sure that by now his stomach must have been empty enough to stop pouring forth its acidic bile.
He poured himself a glass of water from the bathroom sink and sipped at it, hoping that it would stay down. He slumped onto the edge of the bath, bent over, placed the glass on the floor and took his face in his hands. They were shaking as badly as the rest of him, but after a few more deep breaths he managed to command a modicum of control over his body.
He needed a plan, that much was clear. His world had been shaken in a profound and monumental way; whatever had happened last night he could by no means be sure of: had it happened? Had he got it straight in his head? Who knew? He didn't, and felt completely ill at ease because of it.
Still, he tried to tell himself, these were strange times and odd things had been happening all week; was this any stranger? What he needed to know was whether or not he was in any immediate danger. When dealing with an unknown entity an insurance policy was always the path of wisdom, or so he told himself.
He needed a gun. His last gun had been taken from him, but he knew of a place at which to get another. That would be the first port of call he would make that day. He picked up his glass, finished his water and prepared to face the world.
His car choked into life as he revved the engine ten minutes later and he eased it the couple of miles to Stu's Pawnbroker. Stu's was a place he knew of from his days on the force.

*

'What the fuck happened to you?' Stu demanded when he saw O'Donhal. O'Donhal deigned not to answer.
Stuart Graves was a large man with a small business, or so it seemed to the outside world. His pawnbroker shop was a small rented space in a long line of small rented spaces, and the display of fake jewellery in the double glazed front window was completely underwhelming. The once bright yellow exterior paint was faded and had cracked in places. The front door could usually found to be bolted shut behind an iron grate for more than half the day. If his main income had come from pawning peoples possessions then he would half been a poor man indeed.
However, his pawn shop was merely a front for a far more lucrative business in firearms trading. Stuart's family had settled in this city two generations ago, emigrating from Jamaica to make their fortune. His father's family had comprised one of the largest drug running syndicates in the area, and his father had specialised in the smuggling and dealership of firearms.
When his father's business had grown too large to run from his mother's kitchen he rented this pawn shop, built up a legitimate looking exterior and paid a couple of high ranking local policemen to keep that pretence from being questioned. Stuart had inherited the business a couple of years after O'Donhal had joined the force, and O'Donhal had kept a couple of side arms ever since.
As he entered today Stu looked up and greeted him with an incredulous look.
'Seriously man, what the fuck has happened to you? You look like shit.'
'Never mind. I need a gun.'
'What happened to the last one I gave you?'
'It was nicked.'
'What the fuck? Who by?'
'Nobody that concerns you.'
'Bullshit, man! If they trace it back here...' He started to pace nervously behind the counter. Cheap watches and women's jewellery winked up at O'Donhal from the glass display which served as Stu's counter.
'Then the police bitches you've paid off at the station will cover it up for you, like we always did.'
'Fuck man, you need to leave.'
'I need a gun.'
'I don't have anything.'
'Fuck you, Stu, that's bollocks. I need a handgun. I can pay you now.'
Stu paused, looked worriedly at O'Donhal, then strode over to the front door. He slammed the metal grate down outside, closed and locked the door and walked to the back of the shop. He took out a small key, unlocked the back door and went into the little storeroom. He came back out a minute or so later with a large brown envelope, bulky with its contents.
'Take that and get the fuck out. Bring me the money next week.'
'Cheers Stu, I'll get it to you on Wednesday.'
As he left with the package he felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. In the car he opened it up; a small revolver with a dozen rounds was inside.
He started his car and drove to his office, shaking less than he had done all morning.

*

A dead and withered voice says:
'Maybe, sir, you have been drinking too much lately.'
The man in the black suit lets his eyes roam over the clutter on O'Donhal's desk; they find amongst the stationary and ashtrays a half empty bottle of scotch. They find themselves busy appraising the amber liquid for its apparent appeal to this little man.
'Or maybe, sir, the problem is that you may need another?' At which point he lifts the bottle and pours a generous amount of the cheap scotch into a dusty and slightly grimy tumbler. He presses this glass into O'Donhal's trembling hands.
O'Donhal lifts the glass to his lip, then hesitates.
'Don't worry, it won't hurt you sir. It is, after all, from your own bottle.' A malicious smile has crept over this man's taut mouth.
He regards O'Donhal through watery eyes. He sees before him a man whose face is wrinkled more than his years might suggest, and whose slightly bulbous nose is a swollen mess of broken veins. His hair is thin and greased back from his forehead. It is streaked through with grey, and the parting was rather a lot wider than it had been in previous years. This man can scent death rolling from O'Donhal, awaiting its chance to spring him upon his mortal body.
O'Donhal takes a deep breath and with one hand lifts the glass to his lips and drinks deeply. With the other he makes sure that the safety catch on his new handgun is switched firmly off.
'You must admit, sir, that yours' is rather a tall story.'
When he had come into work that morning, after having bought this new gun, O'Donhal had locked and firmly barricaded the door to his small office.
Twenty minutes later this man had wandered casually in, taken a seat and, upon the onset of the gibbering incoherence now suffered by O'Donhal, had poured O'Donhal a drink.
O'Donhal had recognised this man as the only one from last night with whom he had still been unacquainted. He started babbling accusations of harassment, intimidation and occult powers of darkness as soon as he had seen him, in rather broken order.
Haltingly, and over much time, he had related the events of last night to to this dark suited and cadaverous man before asking him to get the fuck out of his fucking office before he fucking- etc. and so on.
At which point the man in front of O'Donhal had accused him of drunkenness and had proceeded to pour him this large scotch: no soda, no rocks.
O'Donhal now finishes his drink, aims the gun at this man's head and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens.
'I find this all very hostile sir, I must say.'
O'Donhal forces himself to calm down and look, really look at this bloke.
What he sees before him is a tall man who might once have been robust but has since shrunk to a cadaverous shell who has bleached white skin stretched over a prominent skull. The only healthy looking part of him is the jet black hair which is parted down the middle so severely that it is seemingly done with a ruler.
This dark hair and cadaverous appearance combine with his black suit, tie and patent leather shoes to give the appearance of a man who would look and feel very much at home in a funeral parlour.
'We will not fight,' at which point O'Donhal sags back into his chair, all fight leaving him instantaneously.
'You will give me your gun,' and O'Donhal does so, handing it over without a moments thought.
'I have come regarding a mere a matter of business, Mr. O'Donhal. It seems that my associates have taken steps towards the location of one Mr. Pestilens. This is good.
'He is both a relative of mine and, more importantly, a close and vital business acquaintance of mine. He needs to be found, and I have it on rather good authority that you are arranging a meeting between him and my associates for Monday. This is also good, and I hope to be present.
'However, more pressing is the issue of your trespassing on our property last night. Whatever you think you saw is of no interest to me: the delusions of a drunkard a rather tiresome to me, and I have had quite of from you today to see me through until the termination of our association.
'What is of interest to me is that you do not dare interfere with either our business or our property again. My associates have assured me that you have been briefed that discretion is vital, and I find it puzzling that you have taken it upon yourself to absent this piece of information from the terms of agreement.
'Such will not happen again. Mr. O'Donhal.'
He leans back and regards the now open mouthed and goggle eyed O'Donhal.
'If I am given nothing else,' splutters O'Donhal, 'then I have to follow any lines of enquiry that an investigation into a name and nothing else might throw up.
'In this case it led me to that warehouse, where I happened to see the three of you. If you don't want me to start from the bottom, which apparently involves an investigation into the three of you, then I'll need more information on this Pestilens.'
The two stare at one another for a few seconds. O'Donhal finches, looks away and pours himself another drink.
'Very well. I have a piece of information of which I doubt either of my associates have knowledge.
He has an ex-wife whom I know through my association with him as a family member rather than as a businessman. Here is the last known address that I have for her.'
He scribbles on a piece of paper and passes it to O'Donhal.
He stands and glares down at O'Donhal.
'If I see you again at any other time than of my own volition then I shall kill you, Mr. O'Donhal.
'If you decide to take any night time drives and encounter anyone whose discretion I value you then I shall here about it and I shall kill you, Mr. O'Donhal.
'If I see your pet bird Sweeney again in my lifetime then I shall destroy it, I will find you, and I shall kill you, Mr. O'Donhal.
'Good day to you, sir.'
He leaves and the door snaps closed behind him.
The bastard has taken his gun.
 

Eleven

1992

'Keep your wrist straight- that's it! If you have it bent over like that you'll tear a ligament or something. See that?' O'Donhal held up is forearm and showed Jonesy the small scar that ran a couple of inches up his arm from his wrist.
'That's from where I snapped a ligament when I was young. I punched a heavy bag with no support on and it pinged up my arm. It snapped off the wrist and shot all the way up to my elbow. The doctors had to slice my forearm open to pull it back down again. Took years to get back to strength, so-' he braced his shoulder against the bag, '-hit it with your inside two knuckles, twist your forearm at the last minute and keep your wrist straight.'
Jonesy lashed out at the bag. He shot three quick jabs out and then put a power shot in with the cross.
'Loosen your shoulder off and swing your hips into it, bring the power from the back foot-
'Yeah! Jesus, we'll make a fucking man out of you yet, Jonesy.'
'Your wife already made a man out of me, dick head! Twice last night, she kept begging for-'
'Yeah, yeah, just shut the fuck up and throw some punches, you little prick.'
Jonesy laughed and started jabbing away at the bag again.
He was about eight years younger than O'Donhal, a scrawny kid just out of school. Apparently he had studied hard his whole life and had got decent grades. His family had wanted him to go to university, but he had always wanted to be a copper so he joined up at nineteen. Six years on and he was made sergeant under O'Donhal.
O'Donhal had taken a shine to him. Jonesy was one of those smart kids that didn't flash it around. Give him a tough case and he was all over it, but he wasn't one of these poncey tossers you get who quote Latin at you and think their opinion is higher than its worth.
There was just one problem with him: he had never learned to box. For O'Donhal that was simply unconscionable; he was now nearly thirty and yet he hadn't done so much as an hour of boxing in his life.
They were in a pretty decent gym just up the road from their station. It was a fairly modern building with separate gym, swimming pool and bag room. Upon discovering that his sergeant had never before done any form of boxing training O'Donhal had insisted that they both join up and train together. He was determined to teach this young man how to fight properly.
As Jonesy was slugging away at the bag O'Donhal remembered when he had learned to box as a youngster. Not long after he had joined the force- he must have been around twenty- his sergeant had invited him to the crappy old gym that they all used back then.
He had learned a little at school, and his step-dad had shown him a thing or two before he injured his wrist, but because of his injury he had never stuck with it for any length of time. He gave it up a few years after starting with his sergeant; too much work and habitual cocaine usage had got in his way and his once broad shoulders had shrunk as his frame became scrawny.
When he started training with his sergeant and a couple of others, however, he had been completely taken with it.
His sergeant, Rowland, was a large, bluff man who barked rather than spoke, and in his own way he kept the young team together. He had a slight pot belly from too much lager, but his shoulders were broad and his arms were like tree trunks.
They all trained early in the mornings before shifts, or late at night after shifts, and at any one time O'Donhal had had at least two or three guys with whom to go to the gym. They came together like a pack and urged one another on to train harder.
Rowland used to bark at them, drilling them like they were a group of new recruit squaddies who had been slacking off P.T.:
'Come on you stupid little prick, punch me like I'm fucking your mother, punch me like I'm fucking your wife!
'For God's sake man, punch me like I am your fucking wife!
'That's the ticket mate, come on, keep it coming, left right, left right, one two one two one two!'
He would roar and cheer and get their blood pumping. They would punch and pound at the heavy leather bags until their knuckles blistered inside their gloves. They would hit set after set of push ups until they could hardly breathe. They would spar with one another, bruising and gouging and laughing until they couldn't stand straight.
Then he would stride over to them, clap them on their backs and proclaim that they weren't the bunch of mother-loving poofs he thought they were going to be. They would shower off and then go to the pub, sinking pint after pint until their sore muscles began to ease.
O'Donhal worked harder than any of them under the stern gaze of his sergeant, and soon gained a reputation as a scrapper; he wasn't a large man but he knew how to fight. He could hold his own against any bastard he came up against in the ring.
One particular time he had been training with a young Irishman named Mullen. Mullen had been a giant of a man. He topped six feet in height and must have weighed a good couple of stone more than O'Donhal. He had joined the force a couple of months before and had started training with them soon after.
They had had a hard session working the bag and had started messing around in the ring, sparring with gentle taps and slaps, pushing each other around as they bantered good naturedly.
Understandably it wasn't long until O'Donhal was up against the ropes. He was the more skilled of the two fighters, but he was outweighed and overpowered. Every time he tagged Mullen the larger man laughed it off. Every time Mullen tagged him he was pushed back a couple of inches until he was backed into the corner.
Once O'Donhal was in the corner Mullen didn't let up. He didn't hit O'Donhal hard, just kept lightly tagging him each time, but he kept a solid rhythm of soft pads pumping down on O'Donhal's head and shoulders.
'Hey hey, big man, that's me done.'
'Ah, don't be so soft,' Mullen panted, and started jabbing. Too tired now raise his guard and block, O'Donhal took each on the side of his head. Mullen began to pad a quick tattoo against his cheek and temple.
Blind-sided by this quick succession of rapid punches, O'Donhal started to panic. His heart rate rose, and the muscles in his calves tautened like springs ready to launch themselves. Panic soon turned to anger: how dare this fucking Mick take the piss like this? He had him in the corner and was just toying with him, like a cat throwing around a mouse it had caught for its dinner.
'Fucksake!' O'Donhal yelled, lunging into Mullen. The full force of his accelerating body transferred into his outstretched fist and connected with Mullen's jaw.
He let loose a couple of one twos, jabbing Mullen in the nose before throwing his stronger right arm in with a cross. He felt bone crunch under the hammer blow of his right hook and watched Mullen drop like a sack of shit.
Panting, O'Donhal stood over Mullen. He was the victor. He was as tall and strong as a mountain. He looked down at his battered friend and realised with no slight satisfaction what he had done.
He looked down at his battered friend and began to feel shame for what he had done.
A hushed silence pervaded the gym. Every man there knew what had happened, knew that an unspoken taboo had been broken, and every man there glared at O'Donhal. All except one.
Rowland had finished his shift and come straight over to the gym to work off his days stresses. He stood now in his grey tracksuit and string vest, with his leather gloves strung around his neck, arms folded across his chest. He stared inscrutably at O'Donhal, sizing him up. Then, with an almost imperceptible movement, he nodded to O'Donhal, turned on his heel and strode to the end of the room to warm up.
O'Donhal was elated. He was vindicated. He had committed what he thought was an injustice, yet the man to whom he looked for guidance, whose opinion was paramount in the forging of this young man's being, had said yes, son, that's how we do it.
O'Donhal wasn't the mother-loving poof Rowland thought he might have been.
Now O'Donhal in turn was yelling at his sergeant to punch harder, keep his guard up, keep his elbows in, keep his chin tucked in, harder, punch harder punch fucking harder you mother-loving poof what the fuck is this? Yes! That's what I like to see. Keep it going man, keep it coming, keep it fucking coming.
The grey stitching along the seam of the leather was twitching in time with the rhythm of Jonesy's dancing hands as, fist over fist, they embedded the raw power of his emotion into the soft sand interior of the punch bag.
O'Donhal looked into Jonesy's face.
He was a lean man, tall and pale with freckled cheekbones and a mop of auburn hair plastered back with sweat. His eyes were focused on the bag. O'Donhal knew that look, that tunnel vision, that look in which there is nothing in the world but you and the person you are punching, you and the bag, you and only you. He was completely enthralled by the shallow ditches his fists left in the bag each time he struck out.
He was heavy on his feet. O'Donhal shouted at him to pick them up, to move into the punches, put his hips into each punch. Jonesy did so, started swinging his pelvis into the swing of his punches, and the shallow ditches his fists left behind grew deeper. O'Donhal had to put more weight behind the bag to stop himself from being pushed back as he held it in place.
Jonesy's breath was coming to him raggedly now. He started to pale and sway. O'Donhal left the bag and grabbed hold of Jonesy's shoulders. He turned Jonesy to face him and they both started laughing. A gleeful, delighted sound whose every syllable reverberated with pure, joyfully unadulterated adrenaline.
They climbed the apron and leapt into the ring. They were both exhausted: their muscles were slow, their gloves felt heavy and they were staggering and lurching on their feet. O'Donhal looked at his raised hands, arms parallel to defend his body, and saw that they shook from the wearisome repetition of shock impact against the bag.
Jonesy took a swing at him, a wide left which travelled a fraction too slowly, and he shrugged into it. Jonesy's glove hit O'Donhal's shoulder and O'Donhal barged forwards, taking Jonesy off balance. As Jonesy stumbled backwards O'Donhal let loose a series of vast week left jabs which rained into the side of his head before bringing the right hook into his nose.
Jonesy fell against the ropes and clung to them for support. O'Donhal let his guard fall down. He walked over to Jonesy, opened his arms to help Jonesy get out of the ring. Jonesy took his chance and volleyed three hefty punches, left right left, into O'Donhal's temple.
As if in slow motion O'Donhal saw the floor of the ring approaching him. It loomed ever closer as the light dimmed from his eyes. His ears were filled with a deep roaring and he slumped onto the ground as consciousness fled.
 

Twelve

He was at a petrol station filling his tank up. He was travelling to Pestilens' ex-wife's address; she lived in a fairly affluent area, which he supposed meant that she must have got a fairly good settlement from her divorce.
'Or maybe she makes her own money, Brother?'
The young woman in the beanie hat, baggy jeans and hoody looked up from where she swept the garage forecourt and revealed the sunken face of an old man; vulpine nose and furrowed brow enclosed those unmistakable eyes.
'A possibility, no, Brother?'
'What the fuck are you doing here?
'Sweeney's got to make his dough, Brother, why not do it cleaning up after people? Keep things in order, keep things clean, sweep sweep sweep, Brother.'
'You're the fucking cleaner? Fuck off,' he rasped as he went to the little window to pay.
'Maybe I own this little joint, Brother,' said the old man behind the cash register.
O'Donhal reached for his hip flask, took a long drag and felt his mind numbing quite beautifully. He wiped his mouth and walked away.
'I'm not paying you, prick.'
He got into his car and drove off. He slowed only to stick a finger up at a woman in a Volvo who cut him up. Sweeney stuck a finger straight back up from the Volvo driver's window.
'Prick.' He revved the engine, changed up a gear and sped off.
It was a truly damnable place into which he found himself driving; tall trees and well-manicured rose bushes decorated the deep set gardens. Tall privet hedges blocked the noise of the traffic and kept the outside world away from their convoluted comings and goings in their right kind of society.
His satellite navigation guided O'Donhal through this complex maze of long roads and proper households. He twisted his car through the endless quiet streets and eventually came to the address he was after. It was on the top of a long, steep hill, at the bottom of which could be seen a children's playground. Smaller streets shot away from this main one like lesser arteries carrying precious blood to neighbouring residences. From this vantage point could be seen the long green lawn of suburban civilization, surrounding the city in a well-tended choke hold.
He parked his car opposite Pestilens' ex-wife's house and clambered unsteadily out of the car; his joints had stiffened once again from the long drive. He could feel the ligaments running down the backs of his legs tighten like bowstrings.
He noticed a man in the front garden of a house a hundred yards or so down the road. He was watering his grass with a precision which wouldn't have looked out of place in an operating theatre, or so O'Donhal thought. The man was dressed in beige slacks and expensive white trainers. He had looked up as O'Donhal pulled up and cut his engine, and was now glaring at him. O'Donhal was an intruder into the evenness of life behind the privet fence, and was clearly not welcome for it.
Fucking beige, O'Donhal thought.
He crossed the street, ignoring the beige man, walked up the pathway and rang the doorbell.
A man in a striped polo shirt and beige slacks answered.
Fucking beige.
He looked O'Donhal up and down and his lip curled into a holy sneer. O'Donhal was wearing a faded blue shirt under a tattered grey suit. He wasn't wearing beige, and must inevitably suffer for it.
'Can I help you?'
'I'm looking for Michelle.'
'And what do you want with Michelle?'
'It's to do with her husband.'
'I'm her husband. Can I help you?'
'Her ex-husband. Pestilens.'
'She doesn't talk to that bastard anymore; she hasn't seen him in years.’
‘Can I still speak with her?’
‘She isn't in.'
There were two cars in the driveway; they both had baby seats in the back and matching paint jobs.
O'Donhal asked the husband why Michelle had gone out without her car. O'Donhal then asked the husband what the fuck he thought he was doing by assuming he was an idiot.
…
'Now may I speak to your wife?'
'I'll get her.' Reluctantly the prick closed the door to go and fetch his wife. O'Donhal heard the latch click down and lock on the other side.
The door opened again a few minutes later to reveal a tall, willowy woman with sharp eyes. She stared at O'Donhal, straight into his eyes.
'What?'
'Sorry to trouble you, madam, but I have a few questions to ask you regarding your ex-husband.'
'Who are you?'
'My name is Detective Inspector Jenkins, madam,' he lied as he produced the fake badge he kept on him for such occasions. This woman was shrewd, and such people felt reassured when they were safely in the knowledge that they were dealing with the proper hierarchies of procedure.
'We have reason to believe that your ex-husband is in danger, madam. We are having trouble locating him, as I'm sure you can appreciate, and we are having to keep our investigations discreet, owing to the nature of your husband's work.'
'Oh my goodness, yes, yes... of course, my gosh, is he... but no, no, of course not, but-'
'Madam, please.' His badge had done its work; she was comfortable in the knowledge that this was an official investigation, and wouldn't once question through what power or by whom the investigation was officiated. She was, as far as he needed, broken.
'Madam, if you could just answer my questions.'
'Oh, of course, gosh, yes...'
'Madam, do you have any idea where your husband may be at present?'
'Well, no, he- well he's always kept...
'I'm afraid I don't know where he is; he keeps information like that quiet, because of his work, you see? The last I heard he was overseeing a couple of projects for the Department of Health; I was an analyst there, it's how I met him, and I kept a look out for him through old colleagues, you see?
'He was taking care of a couple of projects between the Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence; they're his specialities.
'But then he ran of with her, and since we ended I've not seen him. His solicitors arranged or separation; I saw them of course, a lot, but never him.'
'Can I ask who he ran off with?'
'I can't see why you would need to know that kind-'
'Who did he run off with, madam?'
'Well, if you need- but I don't see why-'
'Please madam, any and every detail could help our enquiry.'
'Oh, well, of course it does, naturally, naturally-
'Well, um, her name was Sarah, Sarah Billings. Dr. Billings. They were working together on some kind of bio-chemical weapon, high spec stuff, and they-' her eyes began to well with tears, reflecting the afternoon sunlight.
'Have you an address for her, madam?'
'No, I'm afraid not. In their industry they have to keep their private lives very secret... a, um, it's to do with national security. I don't know the details, but I think that what they were working on was very controversial, so they needed to be fairly clandestine.'
'Of course, madam. I don't wish to inconvenience you any longer, but I don't suppose you have a photograph of your ex-husband? For identification purposes.'
'Oh, oh, um well...' she looked back into her house; her husband was obviously distracted because she retrieved a handbag from behind the door, rummaged around inside and produced a small passport picture of an incredibly gaunt man with sallow, pallid features and cold prominent eyes.
'Please look after it, won't you? I don't have too many pictures of him left.'
'Of course madam, thank you very much for your help. If I have any more questions then I trust that I'll find you very co-operative.'
Back in his office a couple of hours later O'Donhal once more phoned Michael Johnson at the Inland Revenue. He gave him the details he had for this new contact, Dr. Sarah Billings; she should be traceable by their pay cheques..
He promised to send cash by post, hung up and poured himself a drink.
That evening Michael phoned him; he had a current address for Dr. Billings.
 

Thirteen

Dr Billings, BSc, MSc, Ph.D., lived just outside a sleepy little village a few hours drive from the city. As O'Donhal pulled up outside he felt very out of place; for a man raised in the sprawling, smoke stained city this felt even more like the arse end of nowhere than the suburbs had.
Her cottage was one of those red brick and thatch jobs that were built and lived in by farmers, renovated by savvy real estate traders and sold to rich professionals for large six figure sums. Ivy grew up the outside and a cute little rose garden decorated the front. The whole building was surrounded by a low, tumble down stone wall.
He crossed the lane, walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. A low jangle came from inside, but after the third time he rang the bell still no one had answered. He cursed, crossed back to his car and sampled his hip flask as he settled into the driver's seat to wait.
'Hello Brother.'
'Jesus, not now.'
'Not Jesus Brother, Sweeney's a whole different matter.'
He had, what? Materialised? Bullshit.
'And what are we doing today, Brother?'
'I'm not your Brother.'
'If you like, Brother, but I can't say that doesn't hurt.'
O'Donhal took a deep pull from his hip flask and exhaled.
'So, Brother, what are we doing?'
'I need to ask this woman a few questions.'
'What woman, Brother?'
'This woman,' he replied, nodding to the woman who had just pulled up outside the cottage. As she got out the car he noticed that she had a pretty decent arse for a scientist. Blonde hair framed a rather horsey face upon which sat think framed spectacles.
He gave her a few minutes once she had got inside, then crossed again to her cottage and rang the doorbell.
'Hello?' Her voice was nasal as it floated through the crack in the door; here was a woman who was both incredibly protective of her household and happily accustomed to being on her own in laboratories.
'Good afternoon Dr Billings. My name is Jenkins, may I come in?' He flashed his fake police badge.
He registered her surprise that a such an obvious drunk who had bruising along one side of his face could be a police officer. He almost got offended but hey, it had been a long and heavy couple of days and he hadn't slept sober for a week or more.
'Mmm, oh, well, let me just,' she unlatched the chain on her door and let him in.
He found himself ushered into a small and chintzy living room whose walls were hung with various paintings; Van Gough's Café Terrace at Night hung above the small sofa onto which he was told to sit and a poster of Che Guevara stared at him from above the television set. Knick-knacks covered every surface.
'Can I get you a tea or coffee then? Or maybe something stronger?' Her voice had a touch of sarcasm as she looked down into his bloodshot eyes; she could tell he had been drinking lately. She was stood before him with her arms crossed over her chest.
'No thank you, madam. Please take a seat; I won't be long.'
He placed the small photograph of Pestilens onto a coffee table which separated the sofa from the armchair on which she perched. When she slid it over to her she stiffened like a predator who had sensed a larger, more vicious beast nearby.
'Do you recognise this man?'
'May I ask you with what this is in connection?'
'No madam, I'm afraid that information is on a strictly need to know basis; do you know this man?'
'For which branch of the police do you work?'
'Madam, I will ask you one more time: do you know this man?'
'Well, no... yes, I mean, no, this man's identity is highly classified, the police shouldn't-'
'Do you know the current location of this man?'
'I... no, I haven't seen him since...'
'Since when, madam?'
'I can't tell you that; the work we did was confidential. We were surrounded by the strictest of security measures.'
'That doesn't interest me, madam; I'm trying to locate this man as a matter of urgency.'
'Well, I don't know if I can help you. I'm sorry, but I've already told you more than I should have.' She stood and started to pace the room, biting her nails.
'I can assure you that I will treat any information you give me with the utmost discretion. I need no information about his work; my superiors know enough to be able to adequately protect his name, but in order to protect his person we will need a location.'
This had got her; she stopped and looked down at him. 'He's in trouble?' This woman really cared about him. A faraway look crept into her eyes as she gazed back through the avenues of her memories towards her once passionate relationship with the elusive Mr. Pestilens.
'If we can get to him soon then we can make him safe. I can't tell you about his current employment; I'm sure you can respect the delicacy with which his work must be treated,' he was really winging it now, but he was on to something. 'All I can tell you is that he must be found.'
'Well, I'm sorry to hear that, truly, but... no.' She seemed to come to her senses.
'No, I really can't give you any information on him. We signed a secrecy act on employment, and I can't contradict that. No, I must ask you to leave now.' She was stood squarely in front of him now, arms folded once more.
'Fine,' he said. There was more than one way to do this. 'If you change your mind, or think of anything you might be able to tell me, give me a call on this number.' He handed her a card with his mobile number written on it.
'I'll bear that in mind, but I really don't think I'll be able to help you.'
By the time he left Sweeney had disappeared, for which he was profoundly grateful. He sped back to his office to prepare his next trick.
Later that afternoon he had exactly what he needed.
When he was in the police a journalist associate of his had paid him to keep quiet about certain business practices. One of these was the business of obtaining information through the hacking into of a target's phone line. The journalist associate had, at O'Donhal's request, shown him how to do it.
He had cracked a couple of cases back then using such tactics, and now they were proving just as useful to his work.
He played back the small tape recorder that he had wired into Billing's phone line:
'Hello?'
'Hello Muriel, it's Sarah.'
'Sarah dear, my goodness, how are you?'
'Very well thanks Muriel, yourself?'
'Oh, I can't complain dear. My hip's still sore, and Dr. Havergall says I may need a hip operation in a year or so's time, and my cataracts are coming back, but other than that really I'm just-'
'Muriel, have you heard from George recently?'
'Oh dear, I thought you might ask me that. I'm terribly sorry for what happened between you two, but-'
'It's not for me. Somebody came to my house today asking about him. He was a policeman and said that George might be in danger.'
Quiet for a few seconds.
'Well, Sarah dear, he asked me not to let anybody know...'
'That's fine, I just need to know that he's safe.'
'Well yes, I had tea with him just the other day and he seemed the same as ever: overworked and tired but otherwise fine, just fine.'
A sigh of relief, presumably from Billings.
'Thank you Muriel. Will you let him know that people are asking questions?'
'Of course I will dear, though I dare say he already knows.'
'More than likely, but I just want to be sure.'
'Of course dear. Now, promise me that you'll take care of yourself. I know how hard you have always worked, and I always say that it's not healthy for a young woman like yourself to push herself so hard.'
'I know, Muriel, look after myself. Goodbye now, and take care too.'
'I will dear, goodbye.'
And the line went dead.
O'Donhal sat back in his chair, triumphant. He now had Pestilens' first name, George. More importantly, however, he now knew of someone in direct recent contact with him. Thanks to Dr. Billings he could trace this Muriel's home telephone number, which was revealed as belonging to an address in the west of the city.
Grabbing his coat, he ran out to his car to pay Muriel a visit.

*

Muriel's was a small, semi-detached house in the suburbs. Although not as affluent an area as Pestilens' ex-wife’s had been, this post code was obviously a desirable one. The council kept the local parks in good order, all the houses were neat and tidy and new cars were parked along every curb.
He went through the narrow gate into her front garden, crossed quite a wide lawn and knocked on the front door. Through an elaborate stained glass pane in the door he saw a small shape bustle its way up the hallway a few minutes later.
'Hello?'
She was indeed small; she came up to O'Donhal's chest and was almost painfully thin. She had a thin nose and small, beady eyes. She must have been about ten years older than he, somewhere in her late sixties, and fluffy white hair curled in tufts upon her head.
'Good evening, madam. I'm sorry to trouble you but I'm investigating a case involving one Mr. George Pestilens, and I was wondering if you could help me.' He held up his fake police badge again.
'Oh, I was expecting you. You had better come in then.' She led him down the hallway and into a rather stuffy living room. Doilies covered every surface, and squashy armchairs sat in every corner. A large coffee table dominated the room.
'I was just having some tea, would you like a cup?'
'That would be lovely, thank you.'
She fetched an extra cup from a sideboard and poured him some tea from a little pot which sat on the large coffee table. She seated herself opposite him in one of the squashy armchairs.
'So, how can I help you?'
'Well, Madam, I'm trying to locate Mr. Pestilens as a matter of great urgency. I was tipped off that you might know of his current whereabouts. Any help you can give me will, of course, be treated with strict confidence.'
'Oh yes, and why would you need to locate George?'
'We have reason to suspect that he, may be in danger.'
'Oh yes? And from what, may I ask?'
'I'm afraid I-'
'Or is it more a case of from whom?'
'Again, madam, I'm afraid that I can't divulge that information at this time.'
'And why not?'
'The work that Mr. Pestilens is involved with is highly classified, and-'
'Now, you listen to me young man,' she leaned forward, glaring at him, 'I don't know what you have said to Sarah, nor what you want with my nephew, but I damn sure know that you're not the police. Now who are you?'
'Madam, I-'
She leapt to her feet.
'Do not “madam” me, young man!'
He lashed out with his left foot, hissing with the pain in his ribs. He caught her ankle and swept her off her feet.
He pulled himself up out of the sofa as she started to get up again, wincing from moving his sore body as he did so. As he got to his feet he planted his foot on her chest; he forced her back down and increased the pressure until she was gasping.
He raised a little footstool above his head and smashed it down a few inches from her face. He could see the outline of her breasts now through the thin cotton blouse she was wearing; they were rising and falling under harshly laboured breaths.
'Madam, I need an address.'
'Who are you, what do you want, who do you think, please please, okay! Okay! I'll tell you, just don't you dare, no!'
He unzipped his trousers and let near enough his full weight rest on her chest.
'Now, madam, you're going to give me an address before I do what I have to do.'
'Oh really?' A deep, sonorous voice bubbled from the back of Muriel's throat as she glared up at him.
As O'Donhal watched her nose seemed to elongate and grow crooked, her skin shrank about her face and her white hair darkened and fell greasily behind her head.
'Hello Brother,' Sweeney rasped from under his foot. 'Call my bluff will you? Tsk tsk.'
He grabbed O'Donhal's ankle and effortlessly threw him against the wall. He jumped to his feet, still dressed in his cotton blouse and plaid skirt, and booted O'Donhal in his already beaten ribs. O'Donhal hit the wall again and slid down, winded and only half conscious. His vision started to swim, and small speckles of light attacked the tops of his eyes. His ears were filled with a desperate rushing.
'Brother, you're getting old; too old to trade blows with little Sweeney, no?'
As he lay on the floor clasping his now twice beaten ribs a strange sight presented itself to O'Donhal. Sweeney, the hunched old man with vulpine features, began to change. He flung his arms wide and cried, sang, sang out to the world in a clear tenor.
His clothes burst from his emaciated frame as his skinny hips widened into curves and fleshy breasts began to swell from his chest. His tight skin loosened and grew slack and wrinkled. His small, beady eyes softened and grew deep and wild; that dark mane of hair lengthened and grew lustrous and thick; his craggy, prominent features softened and moulded themselves into the fair face of an indescribably old woman.
But most of all! And would you believe it? From between his, or now her, shoulders had sprouted two great white wings, which enveloped her fleshy body.
O'Donhal staggered towards her, arms outstretched, and grabbed her by the throat, squeezing hard.
The being that had been Sweeney fell to her knees and brought him with her. She then gently pried his fingers from her throat, kissed them lightly, and enfolded his sore old body in her strong, soft arms.
'Oh Brother no! Not to the Old Lady you don't,' she sang, and her tuneless voice soothed him as she did so, until his eyes began to droop. She gathered him in her arms and stood, carrying him like a virginal bride on her wedding night; as she walked from the room with him in her arms his eyelids closed and he knew peace.
In front of him expanded a fathomless brightness; it was a blank canvas whose brightness was all encompassing, pervading and consuming where it shone. Such was its purity that all thought was cleared from his mind.
And there, in the midst, loomed a young man in military dress reciting in, what was that? Polish? No, Russian.
The young soldier looked straight at O'Donhal and, still reciting, swiped a bloody gouge from his face. Blood seeped from the raw wound, poured down his shirt front and pooled on a floor, which had sprung from?
At his feet, in the puddle of his blood, he saw a young woman, an old woman, what was and could have been. She floated on her back as blood streamed from gashes in her wrists.
This dying woman had a song so sweet that he wept and his throaty sobs reverberated around the blank whiteness and forced the young soldier back.
The song ended and the young lady reached out; Sweeney took her hand and together these women walked naked into the distance.
He was surrounded on all sides by tall granite walls and on the walls were graffitied slogans and pornography and declarations of love. Underfoot was still blood and it rippled as he walked, sending waves cascading in front of his strides.
A large shadow loomed behind him and caused larger ripples which ate his own as they flowed through them, smothering his own strides.
And the large shadow, with its horned and bull-like head, chased him forwards and down; always forward, always down, never left, never back.
And-
fucking scrounger how dare you! Your father brother works hard all day, hard graft, and you, you little, you son of a, you dare insult! No way, brother, little shit, cunt, shit. OUT!-
it chased him to the middle of this place
and he took up a sword and smote the shadow
and the shadow's head tumbled forwards and fell at his feet and the ripples ended.
O'Donhal found a rope on the ground. It was thick and dark and knotted but it let him, hand over hand, through the labyrinth and out to freedom.
It led him to a gleaming white shore with copses of palm trees and fragrant flowers.
It was attached to a young maiden who splashed in the foam of the incoming tide; it was the young maidens hair, it was the young maiden. The maiden turned and she had a beautiful face, slightly vulpine yet lovely to behold.
Hello Brother, Oh my glorious Brother.
Sweeney stabbed him thrice through the heart.
You'll be just fine, Brother; I could use you yet.

*

He is standing atop a hill, watching in the searing heat.
A high walled city imposes itself upon the horizon, nestling in the nook of a magnificent and sweeping river. It looms out of the surrounding palm coppices and dessert springs with its soaring thick bastioned ramparts, from which the city's archers are unleashing volleys of bronze tipped arrows into the ranks of the oncoming hoard.
Two armies face one another.
One is inside the city, cowering behind tall walls. The other one is the outside, well out of range, yelling coarse insults as it marches across the great river towards impending battle.
Both armies stand cut off from one another by the walls.
His companion is roaming through the marching army. His companion sharpens blades and weakens shields, tips the arrows with poison and loosens the links in armour, preparing the feast that will come.

*

He is standing atop a hill, watching in the searing heat.
The high walled city is still standing. Over the last few hours its high walls have been chipped in places by falling rocks and arrows. Behind them shattered masonry and other debris lines the city streets. However, still they stand, remaining strong and undaunted.
His companion is inside the city, spreading dissidence and unrest. His companion is unlatching the doors and windows of houses, poisoning the wells that are now their only water supplies.
His companion has been feeding information to the spies who had sneaked into the city, so that they might better open up the city for its slaughter.

*

He is standing atop a hill, watching in the searing heat.
His companion is once more in the besiegers camp, whispering into the ears of their holy men. They now trail around the city, just out of bow shot, chanting prayers to their God. For six days they circle the city; for six days they chant their prayers.
He is getting impatient, hungry.

*

On the seventh day the holy men circle the city, chanting as they do so. They raise rams' horns to their lips and sound the call to arms.
The besiegers roar and charge and as they do so the walls of the great city crumble unto dust, revealing a city that has stood for too long.
The besiegers swarm through the defenceless city and cut down men women children. For long hours the screams of the dying and the roars of the burning flames bellow and reverberate, and blood runs deep into the majestic river to be swept away.
He sweeps down from his hill and joins his companion. They reap their ways through the battle, glutting their ravenous appetites as they are finally sated.
 

Fourteen

1981

A screaming hoard of
coloured bastards
swept the street. Grown men and infants were rushing towards the police line
man man fucking spade
screeching war cries in the hideous tongue of the dispossessed. The call to arms of the underdogs' marching band was heard as it let loose its piping and beat its drum.

*

Smoke billowed out of a nearby electrical store. It was thick and slick with the grease of black oil and was rank with the stench of burning plastic. O'Donhal choked on the polluted air as he and his colleagues proceeded down the street. His feet slapped the pavement in tune with those of the officers all around him.
This wasn't his beat. He and his colleagues and all of those units in surrounding areas had been brought in to deal with what was referred to at the station as the 'coloured problem'. Crime had been rife and flagrant in this area for decades now, ever since those black bastards had started coming in off the boat, O'Donhal thought. This area was full to brimming with immigrants whose families weren't from here and whose children didn't belong here. O'Donhal thought, fuck them, just build a big bloody wall around the whole area, throw the immigrants in and forget them.
They were all work shy, he thought, that was the problem. They all spent their days smoking drugs and getting up late and bitching about how they didn't have jobs. No wonder they didn't have jobs; who would employ a fucking reefer smoking darky when they could get decent, hard working white boys?
There had been a family like that who had lived at the end of O'Donhal's street when he was growing up. They had a boy about his own age, Jeremy, with whom O'Donhal used to hang out.
Jeremy's dad was a mechanic who worked at a local garage, and together the two of them would visit him after school each evening and watch him repair old Capris and Cortinas. What he didn't know about cars wasn't worth knowing, and he was patient with the two young boys. He taught them a lot about cars and engines.
During one summer when O'Donhal was eight Jeremy's father built them a kite out of old parachute silk. It was green with white ribbons attached to the long twine from which it was held.
The two of them spent whole days chasing the kite around the heath, watching it swirl in the sky as it was buffeted backwards and forwards and side to side. The string would tauten when the wind blew strong and they would feel their little eight year old bodies being lifted up on to tip-toe.
When O'Donhal's dad got wind of this friendship, however, he went ballistic.
O'Donhal had just met Jeremy on the street corner when he realised that he had forgotten the picture of the new Ford Galaxie that his brother had let him have. He had been desperate to show it to Jeremy, and so as soon as he saw him he rushed over and grabbed him by the hand, dragging him back to his house where it lay on the kitchen table.
He walked through the front door with Jeremy, down the narrow hallway and into the kitchen at the rear of the house. His mother was peeling carrots at the sink.
'Hello my darling, did you-'
She stopped as she looked down at the two boys. Her eyes widened with shock at the darkness of Jeremy's skin, at his presence in her household.
'Darling, what is this?'
'He's Jeremy, he lives down the road. Mum, have you seen my picture of-'
'But what are you thinking of?'
'My picture of the Galaxie, it was on here when I left this-'
'You,' his mother pointed at Jeremy, 'how dare you? Get out of my house!'
'But mum-'
'Be quiet!' she shrieked. 'Get out of my house and don't talk to my son again!'
Jeremy started to cry as she bustled him back along the hallway. O'Donhal heared the dorr slam.
'But mum, I don't-'
'Wait 'til your father hears what you have been doing. What are you think, eh? Crazy boy, go up to your room and don't come down again.'
'Mum, I-'
'Now!'
He fled upstairs and stayed there all day playing with his wooden train set.
There was shouting at six o'clock when his father got in from the shop. He heard his mother's voice trying to soothe, to placate and erase O'Donhal's indiscretion, but minutes later his father's footsteps pounded up the stairs and his bedroom door flew open. His father strode in.
'What do you think you're playing at? Eh? Bringing a damned coloured heathen into the house that I work bloody hard to run. How dare you?'
His father locked O'Donhal in his bedroom and screamed at him through the door that no son of his would associate with such people. O'Donhal later asked his mother what his father had meant by 'such people'. She told him that coloureds didn't work and spent all day sleeping and smoking drugs and who knew what else and weren't to be tolerated around decent people. When O'Donhal answered that Jeremy's dad did work, that he was a mechanic, he got a slap across the thigh and didn't mention the subject again.
The next night when he was walking home Jeremy ran over to him to show him a new underwear magazine he had stolen from his sister's room. O'Donhal crossed to the other side of the street and hurried on home. He didn't once look back.
And now, nearly twenty years later, the coloureds were stirring up trouble for O'Donhal once more. According to his colleagues who worked around here you couldn't even walk down these streets any more without a black or a Paki pulling a knife on you and demanding money. Just that evening a young black guy had been stabbed, and it was the result of the crowd's indignation over this that had brought O'Donhal to these streets on his Friday night off.
Allegedly the police had stopped the black kid as he fled and had tried to question him before offering medical assistance of any kind. Surely, O'Donhal thought, the pricks who had stabbed him should be caught and brought to trial, and for this to happen the kid would need to be questioned? He was probably a drug dealer or gang member or something like that to be caught up in that kind of shit in the first place.
However, the public had tried blaming the police for keeping the kid from getting medical help. Bollocks, O'Donhal thought, like we haven't got enough to deal with without coloureds and spade-loving liberals whipping up trouble in the streets.
News of what had happened to this kid had travelled around the neighbourhood, creating anger and dissent wherever the rumours landed. Young men were running through the streets, looting electrical goods and setting fire to buildings. Wherever they ran the bastards caused trouble, O'Donhal thought, and it was up to the law to make sure they were punished.
O'Donhal lined up with a dozen of his fellow officers, blocking off a corner street in an attempt to contain the crowd.. A tide of men and women was racing towards them along a wide boulevard upon which sat smoking and shattered store fronts. Bricks were being hurled along with the raised voices of protest, and O'Donhal ducked his head down and put up an arm with which to protect himself.
A large yellow skip sat on a street corner, containing the waste from a nearby construction site. O'Donhal and a couple of others grabbed wooden poles from the pile of waste contained in there, along with dustbin lids for protection. The riot gear they had been promised hadn't been sent, and they were unarmed against a mob.
Six mans rushed close to them, one holding a cricket bat, one wielding a shovel, the rest unarmed. Three officers jumped on the one holding the cricket bat. He swung at them, caught one in the temple, opening a bloody gash, and tried to smack another square in the face. He was caught from behind, dragged down and handcuffed. As he lay there the man with the bleeding temple stomped into his stomach and the three dragged him away.
Meanwhile, O'Donhal and another officer had run over to one of the unarmed men. O'Donhal raised his club, kept his dustbin lid in front of him, and charged like a Knights Templar into a horde of Turks. He swept his pole down in an arc, clubbing it into the top of the young man's skull. With a solid crack the man dropped to the floor and was dragged into a nearby police van. The other unarmed men spat at the police and fled.
The one with the shovel was swinging about him. His eyes started out of their sockets, showing the whites all around the irises, and spittle ran down from his mouth. O'Donhal and another officer grabbed the shovel. As O'Donhal watched another officer came from behind the young man and clubbed him over the head with an iron rod. The man's wide eyes glazed over and he slumped into O'Donhal's arms. O'Donhal dropped him on the floor for another to drag into a waiting van.
Up and down the street, amidst the chaotic smoke and screams and pious calls for equality, could be similar scenes: policemen being battered by flying debris and improvised weapons, police fighting back and viciously maiming the crowds before dragging people away, both sides snapping together like the jaw of an interminably wild beast.
The civilian crowd would surge forward, take some ground, and then be beaten into retreat. At this point the police line would surge back towards them, lashing about at any poor soul trapped in their way. This hit and run skirmish lasted for hours; well over a hundred people were injured in small conflicts as the two tides struggled against one another. The night was loud with the sirens of frantic ambulances and Black Marias.
The cells were full that night with the men whose desperation had brought them to the streets in rage and violence. O'Donhal's station played host to two young black men and a black woman. She was the girlfriend of one, the sister of the other. They had all been arrested together by O'Donhal and a few others, and had been brought here in the police vans.
O'Donhal was sat in at his desk writing out a report and joking about the nights violence with Eddy and Pete. They were both lean men with whom he trained at the gym most days.
'Inspector says we're to do go visit one of those mans, get him ready for interrogation tomorrow, you wanna join in?' Pete asked.
'Yeah, could be a laugh mate,' said Eddy.
O'Donhal had always enjoyed interrogations, and he had received a black eye today on one of those coloureds' elbows. He looked forward to a bit of payback and relished the thought of putting the fear of God into one of the black bastards.
'Fucking right I wanna join in, just let us finish this report and I'll be with you.'
He wrote a couple more lines and, unable to wait, left it for the morning. He swilled back the last of his mug of tea and followed the two constables to the cells.
Inside the cell they found a young man of about twenty one sitting on the thin bunk. His hair was braided and his skin was pale brown.
The three policemen filed into the cell and shut the door behind them.
The young man looked up at them, apprehension marring his features. 'What do you want?' he asked.
'What do we want? We want you and yours to learn your fucking place, that's what we want,' snarled Eddy.
'What do you mean our place? Under the thumbs of shit like you?' the young man retorted, anger blazing in his eyes.
'Fucking spade,' Pete spat. He grabbed the man by the lapels of his jacket, brought him to his feet and sank a knee into his groin. With a groan the man fell to the floor, where he lay clutching his stomach. Pete kicked him in the ribs and spat on him.
Eddy bent down, hauled the man up onto the bed and sat him there.
'Now, let's try that again, shall we? Maybe you can mind your manners this time.'
'Who instigated the riot?' O'Donhal asked.
'Instigated it?' the young man gasped, releasing his stomach and looking O'Donhal in the eyes, 'pigs like you instigated it.'
'Break his teeth in,' Pete sneered at O'Donhal.
O'Donhal was reluctant to; dismiss this boy's kind though he might, he could never hit a man who was up against three, especially not unprovoked. He wanted to spook this boy, not assault him.
'Go on, O'Donhal, get your baton and beat the colour out of him!' Eddy was laughing now, an excited gleam lighting his eyes.
'No, not when he's...'
Eddy barged past him, turned his back and looked down at the young man.
'Hey man, guess who's in the next cell? We got your sister,' he looked at Pete, 'hey Pete, ever wonder what black cunt tastes like? Maybe we should have a go?'
With a roar the young man leaped at Eddy, hands outstretched. Eddy stepped back and brought his truncheon down on the top of the boy's head. He stood over him laughing. Pete walked over and stood shoulder to shoulder with Eddy, both of them with their backs to O'Donhal.
'Attacking a police officer? Tut tut, there's a hefty fucking punishment for that,' Pete said. 'Maybe we could take it out on your sister? Eddy, I can think of much better places to put your truncheon. How about it?' They both burst out in a fresh bout of laughter.
They picked the boy up off the floor again and sat him on the bed. He stared ahead, unfocused and swaying from the knock on the head. O'Donhal tried to intervene-
'Leave off now, lads, this is all-'
Pete stepped back and Eddy punched the young man in the jaw. A resounding crack echoed around the room as the man keeled over onto his side on the bed.
Eddy pulled him up, took his arms behind his back and held them in place as Pete started punching him in the stomach. Blood seeped from the man's mouth and dribbled down his chin. His head swayed, hanging from his limp neck as he fought to remain conscious.
After a minute even Eddy, who boxed regularly, was getting tired.
'O'Donhal, I'm shattered mate. You want a go? He's nice and soft now.'
'Seriously, he looks like shit. We should get him to-'
'What's the trouble in here, boys?'
Rowland, their sergeant, had poked his head around the corner of the cell door. Shit, O'Donhal thought, as he envisaged himself thrown out of the force because of Eddy and Pete's abuse.
Rowland appraised the scene, noting the half conscious form of the inmate and the three officers standing around him. He smiled.
'Teaching our coloured brothers not to step out of line? Needs to be done fellas, nice one.'
'But gov.-'
'Quiet O'Donhal. What are you, a fucking woman? These cunts need putting in their place, otherwise what happened today will happen more and more. It's our job to stamp this shit out.'
'I told him he could beat the colour out with his truncheon, gov.' Eddy laughed.
'Good man. O'Donhal, take your truncheon and beat the colour off this coloured bastard's face. Do it!'
'Do it, do it!' they all started chanting.
O'Donhal felt the bruising around his eye, thought of the violence he had seen that day, and he took up his truncheon, raised it above his head and brought it down on the young black man's shoulder. He fell to his knees, clasping his shoulder with his other hand in pain, and O'Donhal struck again. Over and over he rained down his attacks, getting a good rhythm.
After what can only have been a minute or so Eddy pulled him off.
'Don't go too far mate, we don't want to kill the spade.'
They picked the young man up, placed him on the bed and left the cell.
'Right lads, let’s go and celebrate. It's been a long fucking day,' Rowland said, and led them upstairs.

Later that evening, after sinking half a dozen pints each, the four policemen found themselves entering a shabby brothel in high spirits.
They had sat in the pub across the road from the police station for just over an hour, and when the barman rang the bell for closing they had stumbled out to Rowland's car. He suggested that they visit a brothel that he had closed an eye to a few months previously and claim the favour that was owed to him. He drove them, weaving down the skinny back streets as he tried to stay in control of himself in his drunken state, to this discreet house.
Arm in arm the four rang on the doorbell, pounded on the door and yelled their heads off in an attempt to get in. The madam, a short and busty woman with an elaborate perm in her late forties, came to the door to tell them where to go, but upon seeing Rowland and his men she reluctantly let them inside.
It was an old Victorian house with slim passageways, high ceilings and a large sitting room. It was into this sitting room that she led them. They were seated on a small settee and offered cheap gin to drink. They sat, sipping at the heady liquor, and waited as the madam left the room to round up her working ladies.
She led four scantily dressed women into the room. They lined up in front of the four policemen and struck what can be assumed to have meant to have been erotic poses. Rowland invited them to sit on the various armchairs which littered the room.
As the madam bustled off to prepare the ladies' rooms Rowland pulled a small packet of white powder. O'Donhal asked what it was and Rowland told him it was cocaine. He offered it around but O'Donhal refused.
'Really, I should be getting back to-'
'Nonsense mate,' Rowland exclaimed.
'But I really shouldn't be here with-' he gestured to the hookers, who all laughed at him as they took Rowland's bag and started tapping out lines.
'It's alright mate,' Eddy said, 'everybody sleeps with hookers, and the coke just makes it better! Try it mate, you won't get as good a kick anywhere else.'
Reluctantly O'Donhal bent over a coffee table on which a line of coke glimmered. He took the fiver that Eddy had rolled up, put it to his nose and inhaled as he swept the end of the roll over the coke. He could feel the powder lodge itself in the back of his throat, and felt heat spreading out from behind his nose.
His eyes shot open as his heart began to pump faster and faster within his chest. A dull pounding began to beat in his ears and a massive grin stretched across his face and he chatted to the prostitute who was sat on his left about himself about his wife about her how was she doing what was her name, your name, my name?
And then time jumped forwards and he was in a bedroom taking another line of Rowland's coke.
After another second a minute however long later he was naked. His hooker was stripping, stripping down, stripping bare, and kneeling in front of him.
Behind her was a mirror leaning against a wall and he watched her slim back as her head moved backward and forwards like a pigeon's beak and she had him in her mouth, backwards and forwards, up and down
and he took her from behind and she screamed faster and he screamed faster and he finished and he went into Rowland's room and he found Rowland was naked with two women
and Rowland tapped out another couple of lines and O'Donhal inhaled one
and time was running quickly now, he could see the rosy fingers of dawn through the window as his own fingers probed a woman's
and she, another woman, was on her back and he was over her and she was moaning at him and he thought his heart would burst and he thought he would burst and he ejaculated again and again and again and then
he was on his back with sweat dripping from his body, soaking the bed sheets upon which he lay and then all was black and he slept for hours.
When he awoke much later on he had felt like his head had an invisible seam which was trying to split apart. He walked downstairs, furtively placing a hand in front of his eyes to block out the light, and found Eddy, Pete and Rowland sipping cups of tea in the lounge.
They left and Rowland drove them to a greasy spoon. Over Formica tabletops they lapped up beans and fried eggs and bacon, before going their separate ways to crash out at home. They all told their wives that they had had to work late.
The young black man was just waking up to a cup of cold tea. In the mirror he could see his dark face darkened by the abusive beatings of the night before, and blood ran warm in his mouth.
 

Fifteen

Eight years previously

O'Donhal had had the electrical supply to the small office out of which Vespucci conducted her business cut, so the systems were down.
He ducked into the alleyway and made his way into the small and barren yard behind the two storey building. A young couple lived above the office but he had had them hauled in for the night on false charges, so the the building was empty.
It was a terrace, but the occupants of the adjoining rooms should have been able to have smelled the burning well before they were in danger, and so would probably be able to get out in time.
He placed a thick towel over the window pane in the back door and elbowed through the glass. He reached in, unlocked the door and stepped into the back room.
The back room was full of stationary. He took a package of envelopes and scattered them around, then took ledgers full of documents and did the same, making sure that there was enough fuel to get a decent fire started.
There was a wooden door through which he barged his way into the main office. He strode through, pouring petrol from a small canister as he did so.
He walked back into the storeroom, poured the last of the petrol over a crate of copier paper. He struck a match, threw it down onto the pile of sodden paper and watched the blaze take before he left.
As he ducked out of the alleyway at the end of the street he saw that orange flames were visible through the windows of the blazing office.
He heard a whoosh as the trail of petrol which ran through the main office took light; the heat from the building was palpable and caused the glass shop front to cascade outwards.
He angled a digital camera at the blaze, took a couple of pictures and walked back to his car.

*

He was standing outside a detached house in a fairly affluent suburb. He opened the gate at the side of the house and walked through to the garden.
It was shady here, and a cloudy night meant that he was practically invisible as he strode to the back of the garden. As he did so he cut the power cord to the outside lighting to make sure of this.
He walked to the back of the garden, squatted down in a bush and got his camera out. He angled it on the back of the house and began to take pictures. Vespucci wouldn't fail to recognise his sister's house, and would appreciate the ease with which he had broken into her garden.
But wait! What was this?
He could see movement in the rear bedroom window. A light came on; the curtains were open and all was visible.
A tall woman, her Italian heritage obvious from the colouring of her skin, stood naked in the middle of a bedroom. A balding man of the same height was standing beside her; she reached down between his legs as they came together and started kissing.
This is almost too good, O'Donhal thought as he started to take more pictures.
They collapsed onto the bed and nearly out of sight as O'Donhal played voyeur, taking picture after picture.

*

He had parked outside a primary school a few hours later. Kids were at play as others were just starting to arrive with their parents.
For a second he regretted not having had his own kids, but it passed quickly as he took a long draught from his hip flask.
He took a couple of pictures; he didn't know which brats belonged to Vespucci, but the point will be made nonetheless. His omnipotence will be shown.

*

He had phoned his secretary that morning.
'Tracey love, I just heard about that fire. I'm in the area so I'll take this one on my way in.'
'OK gov., I'll let them know you're on your way.'
He was now walking up Vespucci's driveway, yawning from his nights work. He rang the doorbell and a blonde man, maybe in his early thirties, answered.
'Mr. Vespucci? I'm Detective Inspector O'Donhal; may I come in?'
Mr. Vespucci showed him into a fairly large living room with two squashy sofas and a toy box in one corner.
He asked him if he would like a cup of coffee and then bustled off to get it ready; he heard him shout out to his wife that the police had arrived and then footsteps clattered down the stairs.
Mrs. Vespucci was a tall woman with sallow skin and dark hair; her eyes were fairly wild as he rushed in to the living room, which O'Donhal attributed to the attack on her office the night before.
She looked shocked rigid to see O'Donhal sat there, lounging comfortably on one of his cream armchairs and calmly awaiting a cup of coffee from her husband.
'Are you OK, Mrs. Vespucci?'
'Absolutely fine, I just...'
'Recognize my face? No doubt you would. But it's probably my arse you're most familiar with. It was you that burst into my hotel room the other night, wasn't it?'
'What do you want?'
'I'm just a friendly neighbourhood police officer, calling in to take statements and offer my condolences for last night’s fire.'
Mrs. Vespucci sat on the sofa opposite him and leaned forward.
'How dare you-'
'Fuck you, Mrs. Vespucci. Where are the photos you took?'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Fair enough- ah! Thank you, mate,' Mr. Vespucci had just come in and handed him his coffee. He sat on the arm of the sofa next to his wife.
He pulled out a gun and pointed it at Mr. Vespucci as he calmly sipped his coffee. They both dropped their cups, splashing scalding liquid over their thighs.
'What's your husband's name, Mrs. Vespucci?
…
He cocked the gun.
'David.'
'Good. David, mate, thank you for this coffee.' He was staring at O'Donhal blankly, terror and confusion etched into his face.
'Now, David, your wife is going to stand up because she knows that if she doesn't then I will squeeze this trigger and shoot you in the face.'
Mrs. Vespucci collapsed onto the sofa next to her husband.
'Jesus Christ, who are, what are, why? Oh my God, oh my God,' David was ranting.
'I won't ask again. Stand up Mrs. Vespucci.'
'Good, now come here.' She shuffled over to him with tears welling in her eyes. He handed her an envelope.
'Open this, Mrs. Vespucci.'
She stumbled over to Mr. Vespucci, dropped the envelope into his lap and they both burst out crying. Mr. Vespucci wrapped an arm around her as she opened the envelope. Her eyes darkened as she saw the photos: her blazing shop, the implicit threat of her children's school, and then registered with disgust the photos of her naked sister making love.
'You bastard, how dare-'
'Shut up, Mrs. Vespucci. This is a trade; I've given you the pictures that I took and in return you will give me all the copies of the pictures you took of me, along with any other evidence you have on me.'
'I can't give you them.' Her voice cracked.
O'Donhal pointed the gun at her. 'Mrs. Vespucci, stand up again.
'STAND UP!'
'Good honey, now walk over here. Unzip your jeans.'
'Jesus Christ Sandra, don't do it-'
'Shut up Mr. Vespucci. Sandra, is it? Sandra, unzip your jeans and step out of them. Good.'
She stood in front of him, shaking. She wasn't wearing any underwear and now she stood naked from the waist down, covering her thin strands of curled hair with her hands. Tears streamed down her face.
'Now, Mrs. Vespucci, I want those pictures.'
'I told you I can't give you them; I don't have them! They were in my office, they would have burned last night. Leave us alone!'
'Did you have any other copies?'
She didn't answer, just bowed her head and stared at the ground, weeping and shaking her shoulders.
'Take your shirt off.'
'But, you monster! How dare-'
He strode over to the gibbering David Vespucci and brought the butt of his gun crashing down into his nose, shutting him up as he slid to the floor.
He turned to face Sandra, walked around her to put her between himself and her husband. He picked up her jeans and inhaled deeply, smelling the crotch and grinning at her.
'Take off your top, Mrs. Vespucci.'
He walked closer to her and placed the gun against her stomach. She tugged her jumper off and he reached around and unclasped her bra. Her heavy breasts fell down and she tried to cover herself with her hands.
He stepped back and watched Mr. Vespucci rising from the floor while blood poured from behind the fingers which covered his nose.
He aimed the gun back at his head.
'Where are the pictures, Mrs. Vespucci?'
'I sent them to your wife on the way to my office this morning. I'm so, so sorry, please don't-'
O'Donhal lunged forwards and booted her in the stomach, sending her sprawling against the wall. Fully naked and unable to cover herself while she dealt with the pain, she sank to the floor and wept.
O'Donhal picked up a glass ashtray and smashed it into the side of Mr. Vespucci's head. He tumbled down next to his wife and they clung to one another, sobbing.
'If you leave this city today then your office fire will be an act of malicious arson and your insurance company will fully compensate you. If you don't, or if you contact the police about me, then I will personally make sure that your alibis don't stand up. You will be arrested and convicted for arson, insurance fraud and criminal negligence. You will go to prison and will receive no insurance pay out.
He thought he could make good on that threat; he had a couple of local judges in his pocket. They were too reliant on the blow he passed them from various dealers to argue with him too much.
He walked, got in his car and drove home to pack his things.
Tomorrow his wife would confront him with the pictures and demand a divorce. Three days later he would be forced to resign from the police force. He had made one threat too many, slept with one hooker too many, and Sandra Vespucci had brought his little empire crashing about him.
 

Sixteen

Present Day

He came to.
He could smell the acrid stench of stale piss.
Where am I?
Home.
He opened his eyes and peered through the gloom of his flat. He tried to replay the last few moments before he had blacked out; where had he been?
Billings, Sarah Billings, the old girlfriend; that's right. He had visited her, and afterwards found that old woman.
What had happened?
Sweeney! She was Sweeney, Sweeney was her; they had fought and he had passed out and dreamed- such vivid dreams, such extraordinary dreams! He couldn't remember the last time that he had dreamed.
He eased himself out of his bed and felt the stinging of bedsores down his back and the backs of his legs. He had pissed himself, but that was obviously some time ago.
What day was it? He had no idea.
He was fully dressed in clammily damp clothes. He unclasped his belt and peeled off his stiff trousers. He loosened his tie and unstuck his shirt from his back, then hobbled into the bathroom and stood under the shower; the warm water soothed his aching back and his sore skin.
He felt like he had been trampled upon; the two fights he had had in the last few days, both of which he had come away from considerably worse off than either opponent, had taken their toll on his body: he could hardly move.
As he stepped out of the shower he reached for a towel and collapsed onto the toilet seat; his legs were shaking so badly that they couldn't support him properly.
He began to rub himself down, hissing in pain as his aching joints slowly came to life.
He stood up straight and saw that the light in the main room had been switched on.
He walked in naked and grunted as he registered Sweeney sitting on the bed.
He was still a she, and she sat naked with her long nose wrinkled against the pungent aroma which was emanating from his bed. She was old, incredibly so; folds of wrinkled flesh billowed out from a stooped and shrunken frame, and her breath wheezed from her lungs. Long strands of grey hair hung from her scalp. Her eyes, however, shone with maternal care and her face shone beatifically.
'Good morning Brother, I thought I would look in and see how you were doing.'
'What the fuck are you?'
'I'm the Old Lady, Brother, but some call me Sweeney; I am, and always will be, whatever you need me to be.'
O'Donhal was surprised to find that he wasn't at all self conscious as he stood nakedly face to face with this decrepit woman.
She stood, her heavy breasts and wide hips swaying as she moved. He stood in front of her, withered and debile, but it seemed natural somehow; she existed in such a state of natural being, not worrying, neither judging nor being judged. Her expectancy for the rest of the world to respect this state of being was infectious, and put all within her gaze at their ease. It was a feeling he hadn't known since he was last in the arms of his mother.
As she watched him with her steady, rich gaze, he began to dress, pulling on clean clothes over his shrunken body. As he was tucking in his shirt she walked up to him, hips still swaying voluptuously, and took him in her arms. The smell of her skin intoxicated and lulled him; he felt the strength drain from him as he sagged into her warm bosom.
'Sometimes killing with kindness is the only way, Brother.' She held him away from her body and looked him up and down; satisfied with what she saw she planted a light kiss upon her forehead.
'I know that this case has really got your goat, Brother,' her voice was rich and musical. 'So, here's a name and address. It's the woman whom Pestilens truly loves and if he can be found then it will be through her.'
She handed him a piece of paper, dropped her hands to her fleshy abdomen, cocked her head to the side and smiled sadly to herself.
He watched her back as she turned and walk towards the door; she seemed to be walking further away than ever she had, as though she were striding through time itself into a different world.
As the door swung shut behind her O'Donhal felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and worry. It was as though the door to his home, his real home, wherever that might be, had been shut to him forever.
He shambled over to his dressing table, pulled out a nearly empty bottle of scotch and poured himself a glass. He got some bacon and eggs going on the stove in the corner of the room, tapped out some coke and forgot the food as his heart rate soared and his appetite vanished.
He didn't know what day it was, so he didn't know how long he had until the meeting he was supposed to be arranging on Monday. He guessed not long.
He thought that he had better look this woman up today. He checked his watch; it was only half six in the morning.
Good; he could get going in a couple of hours and in the meantime could have a drink or two. He read the paper that Sweeney had given him; one Emily Waller who lived on the west side of the city.

*

The roads were fairly empty; he figured it must be the weekend. Shit! He had lost more time than he had thought.
He furiously revved his engine at the traffic lights, his heartbeat pulsing far too quickly to stay still.
He noticed the sun; it was a gloriously sunny day and shafts of sunlight lanced through his windscreen, illuminating floating motes of dust as they meandered their ways through-
A sharp horn blared behind him; the traffic lights had changed without him noticing. He jammed his foot down over the pedal and shot away from the sunlight as he headed west across the city.
A shaft of light caught him in the eye; sunlight was glinting from puddles across the street; the front windows of shops reflected light all around him as he drove; a golden miasma shimmered in the air to illuminate the morning.
Another home; he had cut someone up at a junction. A rictus grin gurned its way across his mouth as he revved and stomped and sped away.
He turned left, carried
in a caravan and it must have been 1997 because the government had changed and the force had finally been freed from the last vestiges of their patron Lady. His wife was out at bingo for the evening and he was drinking and he was snorting and listening to the radio and in the next caravan he saw a mother washing dishes and he began to
and he was in his governor's office, tapping a tattoo against the floor with one foot while his heart nearly burst and his brain flashed with white light and the gov was frowning at him. O'Donhal, he said, you've gone too far this
making love to his wife, it was the mid eighties and it was their anniversary and he looked into her eyes and said I love you and she looked into his eyes and said I love you and they climaxed together
and he was in his car and a golden light sped him on his way and he grinned and he laughed, gurning and racing the surrounding traffic
and a girl in a bikini saw him watching her and blushed, she was maybe fifteen and it was a new experience for her and he unzipped his trousers and he tapped out a line and started masturbating, watching the girl's mother as she washed dishes
and his governor was saying O'Donhal look at me, give me your badge, give me your God damned badge and count yourself lucky, your resignation will be
Are you serious?
We're not fucking around here O'Donhal, she was fifteen years old do you even care, man? A fifteen year old hooker and my D.I. Caught with his
And I'm the first?
Sit down, you think we don't know about Duke Street? Arson for fucks, what is your, you worthless,
and his wife was crying, and she said she had always known, now she had proof, he would get nothing, be left with, get the FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE and don't look back,
and he skipped a red light but it was still early and nobody was around, and he checked his map and saw that he was close to Waller's house, not long now, and he put his foot down and a speed camera winked at him and he yelled faster baby faster
and a hooker yelled at him to go faster baby faster, yeah honey you know how to, she had a smart mouth and knew well how to use it and she used it
and he watched the girl's mother scrub the dishes until they had no dirt left on them and he came and gobbets of semen sprinkled over the counter. He wiped off the semen with his shirt cuff and tapped out another line, put on the radio and a whiny northern prick whined at him until he found the rolling stones and it was that song
that fucking song
and he'd guessed his name and his name was
and another hooker was with him now and he was in his uniform with Eddy and Pete and it was the early eighties and they said it would be ok everybody slept with hookers and there were hookers with him and they all tapped out some coke and he took his first sniff and Rowland
fucking man fucking bastard, fuck, fuck. Eddy was holding this black guy down, he had been part of a riot and a lot of blood had been spilled and a lot of blood ran down the black guy's face as they held him down
and Pete was punching this black guy in the stomach in the cells and he got tired and the black guy was bleeding and his eyes were swollen closed and he vomited
and he parked in front of a nice house opposite a church into which a stream of worshippers filed, two by two by two, ha ha
and they told him to take his truncheon and hit the kid, beat the colour out, and he said no no it's wrong they should leave off, he was
and a higher ranking officer came into the cell and told him to take his truncheon and hit the kid, beat the
he left the caravan, weaved his way to the car and sped off
and he took his truncheon and he beat the
and he was handing over his badge, promising a letter of resignation to be put in his gov.'s pigeon hole and left and found a pub and got drunk and drove to a cheap hotel and
took a picture of his wife and screamed obscenities at it and masturbated over it and cleaned it and fell asleep holding it
and he got out of his car
and he watched the promenade of filigreed pageanteers entering a church across the street; happy families with rich fathers, attractive mothers and over-achieving, white children who smiled and knew no happiness. They were all dressed in their Sunday best and-
Jesus! It was Sunday!
He had passed out on Friday and missed an entire day.
He now had only a day left in which to find Pestilens otherwise God knew what would happen to him; he was rather inclined to take his client's threats seriously, and he most certainly didn't want to fall foul of their displeasure.
He started to shake; he was nervous, panicky.
He tapped out a couple of lines of coke onto the back of his hand, letting it rest in the groove of his thumb ligament, and snorted.
Lights stabbed the tops of his left eye as his pupils flew open. His swirling vision took in the technicolour of this vivid world and he felt his heart bursting, pumping and pounding to the music of his racing thoughts.
His limbs had been loosened by drink and now they started twitching, jumping with his palpitating heart, and he limped a little easier as he crossed to the address he had written down: number 22 on this street. A car horn blared as he stepped into the street, and brakes screeched as it swerved to avoid him.
He hobbled a little, shaking and jittery, up the garden path of number 22, knocked, rapped, pummelled. If he couldn't get an address today then, my God, he couldn't, didn't want, no no no. He struck a tattoo on the front door; his heart was near to bursting with hype and fear.
She opened the door, a tall woman with dark red hair, and he barged his way inside:
'Hey-'
'Pestilens,' he gasped, tripping and almost falling. He braced himself against the wall. 'Where is he? Please-' he groped at her, grabbed her throat and pressed her against the back of the door. She pushed him and he stumbled backwards, crashed through a low phone table and pulled himself up using the stair banister.
'George! George, he's here!'
O'Donhal's head snapped around as he heard soft footsteps at the top of the staircase.
A tall man stood there; his presence filled the house although he looked raw-boned and emaciated. It looked as though he had been withered by sustained sickness; his face was pinched and sunken, his limbs were long and his hair was thin.
Pestilens reached out his left hand and O'Donhal felt his stomach churn. As Pestilens splayed his left fingers an expression of righteous fury etched itself in every line and angle of his features.
'No more,' he whispered, and once more O'Donhal's left eye was attacked by jagged white light.
His body wilted underneath him, his desperate expression melted into indifference on his face, his mouth turned down on one side as his left arm went numb.
He sagged onto the floor as a hideous rushing filled his ears. He tried to speak but only a few inaudible hoots escaped from between his lips before silence exploded in his ears and he knew nothing as his eyes closed, unconscious.

*

It is a warm evening and he is strolling at his leisure through lush parkland, walking in companionable silence with the being at his side.
There used to be many such as they, but their duties had worn them out; their morale had been whittled away until they were no longer substantial enough and it was just the two of them, his companion and he.
The garden through which they are walking is well carpeted with thick turf and the flower beds are flowing in abundance with jasmine and orchids; the area surrounding them is rich with their delicate aromas.
More abundant than these are the wild olive trees which customarily bless the ground with their fruit and give this garden its name.
Up ahead are a group of Jewish men dressed in long robes. They are clustered around a taller man with straggly curled hair and dark skin. It is he for whom they have come, and around him lingers the unmistakable scent of death.
He makes to stride over to this man but his companion throws out an arm, presses a finger to quiet lips and shakes a bowed head from side to side.
'Not yet; this man is not yet for our taking, my Brother.'
Approaching from the east is another man, dressed similarly to the group of men. The group of men turn to meet him with jeers and smiling eyes.
This man has tears in his eyes and seems to see nobody but the tall man with the dark curls. He ignores the open arms of the other men as he paces towards them.
The man with curly hair and the scent of death rises to meet the newcomer with a sombre look in his eyes and embraces him as a brother.
The weeping man now kisses him, once on each cheek, and the scent of death becomes more pungent.
Two groups of men in leather armour and plumed helmets approach the group from the east and the west and their commander approached the dark skinned Jew. He places Him in shackles and bids him to follow.
He does so willingly as a single tear runs into his beard.
'Brother, we must wait a while yet.'
 

Seventeen

He had borrowed the sermon from an old paper he had written at University and the rest of the sermon was fairly formulaic; on the whole Father Paul decided that the Christening had been a success.
The families of the new Brides-of-God had seemed to have been pleased and the congregation hadn't wafted too much disapproval his way; if the congregation made the effort to hide their inherent disapproval then he could generally consider them to be as contented with his service as they could allow themselves.
The congregation had come together for a barbecue, along with many friends and family members, in the field behind the church. Now, served gourmet sausages in pitta bread with pickled cucumber relish along with a small glass of expensive cloudy lemonade, Father Paul almost let himself relax.
Small children were running around, trailed by either only a token of authoritative support from their overly liberal parents
oh but we don't want to crush his spirit Harry is such a creative child so sensitive so bright and
or else pursued wherever they roamed by the iron fisted beratings of deeply authoritarian parents
well sir let me tell you this it's character building yes character building I say national service and etc.
Adolescents clustered in groups of their own gender, casting furtive glances towards their sexual counterparts, geeing each other up to talk to___, to take a glass of something over to ___.
However, it was the adult members of the congregation whom Father Paul was finding a trial; forty days in the dessert, bring it on; one afternoon with Misters Pike, Lloyd-Parker and Johnston and he was ready to run and hide.
The conversation:

Pike: ...got to keep a sharp eye on the FTSE these days, my shares are just all over the...
LP: ...and so my surgery's booming; you see Mrs ___'s figure? All my work...
Johnston: ...and of course me and the wife just don't know what to do! It's so hard; do we get a place in the Seychelles? Or do we invest in gold shares, which would undoubtedly be the long term cert...
Father P: …
Pike: ...and as for last weeks crash, down 29 from 34, hit us hard, and right in them middle of...
LP: ...and her daughter's scheduled for breast implants, a present from her mother for her sixteenth; I naturally gave a discount, did the Christian neighbourly thing, you'll be pleased to...
Johnston: ...so really, I'd have to lay off several members of staff to do both, regrettable of course... lamentable, but... feasible nonetheless...
Father P: …
Pike: ...but several members will be hit hard; still, at least we're all professionals, no labourers or plumbers or carpenters here, thankfully...
LP: ...happy to schedule in any member of the congregation, I don't suppose you would ever consider a...
Pike: ...still, you have to be ruthless to prosper. Talking of prosperity, how would you...
Father P: …

And so, surrounded on all sides by this maelstrom of cut throat bravado Father Paul found himself painfully reminded of the masculine Rugger types with whom he had shared dormitories at school.
Before his death his father, a very successful lawyer in his time, had made provision for an outstanding education for O'Donhal. At the age of eleven Paul was taken from his home and driven out of the city to one of the best boarding schools in the country.
Three large red brick buildings dominated the main quad of Ashburton Lodge and surrounded a lush lawn courtyard, in the centre of which gurgled a squat fountain which was the pride and joy of the head grounds keeper.
Skirting the edges of the vast estates of Ashburton Lodge was a high, wrought iron fence. A tall granite gatehouse was the only entrance and opened onto a wide and sweeping gravel driveway.
Amidst this very masculine beauty several peacocks roamed the estates and lent glamour enough to offset the grandeur of the main buildings. Upon the still waters of the artificial lake which was bled from a nearby river glided the elegant forms of a few dozen swans, complementing the slightly camp filigree of the peacocks.
In the distance could be seen the vast playing field and numerous tennis courts, both rubber and grass, upon which the older students were fully utilizing the sporting talent for which they were so beloved by the school.
It was these sights that were awaiting Paul upon his arrival, these sights which overwhelmed and conquered his senses.
As a young student Paul would, in his time at Ashburton, prove himself an able student of Classics and of History, of Maths and of Physics; he would prove himself adept as a member of the debating society and would win awards for his artwork and his ability as a player of backgammon.
However at Ashburton Lodge the teachers gave only the most cursory of praise for achievements as lowly and inconsequential as these; a perfunctory handshake would meet his successes, and then class would resume. To the rugby players and Queensbury champions, the county rowers and tennis players, went the meaningful praise and the students, both those in and those out of such sporting favour, were acutely aware of this emphasis.
It was to those students whose favour with the teachers of Ashburton Lodge had been won in the endeavour and achievement of sporting success that Father Paul's thoughts now fled, on this breezy summer afternoon and in the company of his flock, as they so frequently couldn't help but do.
He was so often overlooked that he became used to it, if not quite immune to its effects.
For four afternoons each week he would find himself trampled under the feet of his more talented, more robust and far more brutally aggressive fellows. For four afternoons each week he would be funnelled into the communal changing rooms, there to peel his sodden jersey from his skinny frame, and there to endure the endless banter and towel whippings that his fellows found so earth shakingly amusing.
And nowhere was a friendly face to be found. The staff either wilfully believed that the many injuries from the frequent punches, slaps, kicks, he received on and off the pitch were legitimate sporting wounds, in which pride was to be taken, or else that if he didn't want such beatings then he should strike back and bally well defend himself. Harrumph.
One time he had conceded a penalty in a game of football in which he had been stuck in goal. For a whole minute the coach had turned his back to the field of play, had turned deaf ears upon the warriors chants of 21 adolescent boys as they vented their pent up aggression the sexual frustration inherent in an all boys' boarding school upon the thirteen year old Paul.
He was deemed afterwards by the matron to have been the victim of a foul tackle, nothing worse, as his blood dripped from several gashes about a body purpled and stiffened from almost universal bruising.
In his fourth year at Ashburton Lodge it was noticed that a friendship was blossoming between Paul and the school chaplain; to all intents and purposes the chaplain was viewed by Paul as an amalgamation of surrogate parental figure, friend, and shelter from the fists and feet of the fellows of Ashburton Lodge.
The chaplain allowed his friendship with Paul to flourish, innocent in its own way, in recognition of a kindred spirit and of a great potential for the seminary.
The chaplain, One Dr. Franklin Marlowe, had been a university lecturer, ordained priest and incredibly well respected contributor to both the philosophical and theological communities up until his retirement several years ago at the age of sixty.
He was unable to accept the stilted pace of unemployment; he had been very persuadable when the Lodge's master, an old friend of his from public school, set about trying to recruit him onto his academic staff. He now taught theology and classics, as well as school Chaplain and sometime shoulder upon which to cry for some of the less reserved students.
He had first noted Paul for his clear tenor and bright appearance in the third year choir, and commenced to lean on him to partake an ever increasing role in the chapel; as time passed he sang a greater amount of solos in the more complex ecclesiastical pieces and read a greater amount of passages from the Bible at Sunday mass as the two became close friends.
Of course there were jokes, rumours bandied about the school dormitories, but they were never substantiated. Although light hearted at first, and almost witty in some instances, these jokes soon escalated from the comical to the threatening, and then to the outright sinister.
One night, after a particularly virulent defeat in rugger by another house, Paul had escaped the common room early, unable to tolerate the rampant scapegoatism any longer, and had read himself to sleep. Several hours later, or was it mere seconds, it was hard to tell, he was jarred out of sleep by the three fellows with whom he shared his dormitory. They were pounding cricket bats into his shins.
Screaming, he sat bolt upright and was caught from behind. One of the older boys, a real rugger lad, had his arms wrapped around Paul's chest like iron bands, squeezing, constricting, while another older lad started slapping and punching the side of his head. He felt teeth loosen and blood run down into his eyes, and he saw the three boys from his dormitory drop their bats and run out of the room.
The first boy, the one with his arms clasped tightly around Paul's body, started whispering profanities, the most sinful of words, about his relationship with the chaplain. While he was doing this the other boy jumped onto his bed and started pounding his large bony fists into Paul's hollow, skinny stomach.
The second boy stood, jumped off the bed and unzipped his trousers. The first threw Paul onto the floor and unzipped too.
A kick, maybe more than one, and then Paul was having his clothes ripped from his body. Skinny, naked, curled over, Paul wept as strong hands forced him belly down, face down, and
strong fingers probe between his buttocks.
Laughter can be heard, breathing heavily, and then a spit covered penis hovers erect over his exposed sphincter.
A door crashes open and a prefect of the school rushes in. He pulls one of the boys away and punches him in the stomach. He drops as the other leaps up and backs against the wall.
Paul vomits and passes out; he greets the welcome embrace of darkness like a long lost friend. He snuggles into its comforting bosom and sleeps a while.

*

The two boys were expelled, as were the three with whom Paul had shared a dormitory for so long. Sums of money were relinquished from the five boys' families, out of court. Paul's mother used this money to make provision for a prosperous and comfortable life for Paul. She could never quite bring herself to look at him in the same way as she always had.
Paul graduated with exemplary grades, inherited his money at the age of eighteen and went on to study theology at University; a few after his graduation he was ordained as a Catholic priest and was welcomed into his first congregation.
St. Mary's was a poor community in the south of the city in which Paul was very happy for nearly twelve years.
He remembered one incident at St. Mary’s, in which he had been delivering a sermon on Christ’s ascension, drawing a parallel between the Holy Father’s embracing of his tormented Son and the acceptance that we must show our human beings.
In reality, Father Paul knew that this particular sermon was a cliche delivered with much grandiose and little substance. Indeed, several of the congregation had raised cynical eyebrows toward the end, but nevertheless the point was made, and at the tea and cake sale afterwards his back was patted aplenty.
Not long after this service he received a phone call from one Dr. Metcalf, a psychotherapist of some such or another. It seemed that a certain member of Father Paul’s congregation had been suicidal with depression and anxiety for months following the death of his mother and his subsequent estrangement from his brother. According to the good doctor, two days after Father Paul’s ascension sermon this motherless depressive had walked into Dr. Metcalf’s office for their regular fortnightly session with the first real smile on his face that he had worn in seven months; he had repaired his relationship with his brother and was expected at his brother’s house that evening for a fish supper with the wife and kids.
For the next forty Sundays the sermon’s Father Paul delivered had been so full of gusto, and so lacking in substance, that he became a sort of local legend faith healer (a very English version- no Holy Father set me free brother! could be found, but rather an abundance of toasted tea-cakes and gruff handshakes) who had never before been so popular with the congregation of St. Mary’s.
He was said, amongst local law experts, to be able bring drunkards away from the vices of hard drink and onto the soft comforts of communal wine, able to speed the recovery off the sick and able to bring much required comfort to the poor and needy. His mandate, such as it was, had been filled.
However, so legendary had he become within the papal community that on the eighth week St Mary’s was visited by a couple of priests, who, strictly under cover, scouted him out to be upgraded to a rather wealthy parish in the suburbs. They needed to know he had the goods to go along with the extensive research they had gathered on him; so they watched his sermon, and saw that it was good.
Within the year St Mary’s had been given over to the patronage of one Father Anthony, a fresh faced priest whose warbly, tenor voice may or may not have broken, but given the apparent validity of certain rumours floating about town his plumbing worked regardless, and Father Paul had been risen to the dizzy heights of the affluent community of the Church of St Michael the Confessor on the west side of the city.
However, it was here that writers’ block began to cloud Father Paul’s brain on all matters ecclesiastical, and he rather lost his way.

*

Two days after having moved into his new house- a faux cottage, built in the early nineties to look Tudor, or Edwardian, or an appropriation of an amalgamation thereof- the priest got a baptism of such fiery, malicious affability that he felt sure that he could smell sulfurous brimstone for many weeks afterwards.
And it went thus: Father Paul, a newly converted botanical enthusiast, was just working out how to use the new sprinkler he’d bought from a garish hardware shop especially for his new front lawn (his place in the south west having had paving stones both front and back, which required an unsurprisingly small amount of turf management) when a brittle voice tried its best to float, and ended up crackling, upon the breeze towards him.
If you need any help, said this voice, our eldest, Jonathon, is very handy with things like that. He runs a gardening supply company, big business, etc and so on.
Looking up from his unfruitful labour Father Paul saw a reedy looking mass made of two people, one seeming to begin where the folds of the others shriveled skin ended, with the result that an oddly reptilian and bi-headed creature seemed to be waddling up the driveway towards him. For the life of him, Father Paul couldn’t discern which of these heads had spoken.
Oh Yes, he’s very good.
Which head was that?
Just let us know and we’ll have him send a man around. He employs so many men! Big business, etc and so on.
No idea; does it matter?
Well, um… that’s very kind of you, um… maybe; I’ll see how it goes. I don’t think I’ve had the er, the pleasure..? Of, um…? And he extended one tentative hand to one of the reptile’s four claws.
My good lady wife here, said the face on the left, is Gladys, and I’m Michael. Michael Palmer-Tomkins. QC. Retired. From number 35.
…nice to meet you Father…
Paul.
Nice to meet you Father Paul, said the face on the right.
…and how are you settling in? From the left?
Well, um… To a point in the middle and slightly above both heads, well, I think, well. A bit nervous about this Sunday, new congregation etc and so on.
Oh no, don’t worry, there’s no need for that, is there? Surely that was both heads? We’ve been involved in that Church for over 40 years, and the previous Father, Father Jeremy, a personal friend for the full 30 years he was there. Amazing sermons he gave etc and so on.
Four beady eyes angled on Father Paul.
Really thought provoking, but all, all, in-keeping with the feeling of the congregation. All appropriate. I’m sure, I hope, I, we, expect nothing less, if you need me, we, us etc, don’t hesitate, I can look over, peruse, study, change, alter etc, your next sermon. Only if you like, no wish to intrude.
Those eyes, from shrunken, vulpine faces, bored into him, searching for something about which to disapprove, dissolve, dismiss, to judge and find wanting.
Um… no, that’s quite un-… unnecessary… not that I don’t um, appreciate and, er, um, thank you for etc, and so on.
Well, if you’re sure. (Sigh: so much disapproval packed into a sigh!) Don’t forget, we’re here to help. (Concern and a hint of impatience.) We do like to do what we can to make sure all relevant parties meet the standards that most members, all members, of the congregation are used to enjoying. Well, if you’re sure, remember… number 35, don’t hesitate…
That evening, the writers’ block began to unfold like an impenetrable mist, and no matter what he tried, he couldn’t lift it.
Damned vultures had gotten into his head, and he’d had to work for any and every single scrap of approval over the subsequent weeks, had to work so hard that he was scared to leave his house lest he pt a foot wrong and earn their all-too-easily given scorn.
And now he was stood listening to Mr. Peabody telling him of a near crash that he’d had pulling up to the church:
‘He was some kind of madman or tramp by the looks of him: maybe I should’ve hit him and made the world a little brighter Father!’ ha ha, ha.
No use telling him of the theological or social wrongness of his statement- he genuinely believed, as did all of his other parishioners, that the poor were a drain on resources, that the mentally ill were animalistic and not to be tolerated, and that anybody who didn’t golf mow his lawn play rugby with his kids make lots of money sleep with his neighbour wasn’t a real man and so should be shunned.
‘Wait a minute; I think this is the same man now. See, should’ve hit him when I had the ruddy chance!’ General applause, ha ha, ha.
Father Paul looked where Mr. Peabody was pointing and saw a singularly deranged looking man staggering towards them over the lawn, foaming and gibbering and dragging one leg as he limped onwards.
 

Eighteen

O'Donhal awoke dazed and confused for the second time that day, and oh! so incredibly stiff jointed; he could barely move. He scrabbled at, what was this?- tarmac! He was scrabbling at tarmac, hot in the midday sun.
Midday sun? Christ! he, thought, it must be. For how long had he been unconscious? It must have been a couple of hours at the very least.
He struggled up into a seated position, using one arm to propel his midriff together; the muscles in his stomach and legs were far too weak to operate without such assistance. He clung on to a nearby wall and gingerly pulled himself up, gasping with the effort. The entire left side of his body was numb; his left knee wouldn't bend, he couldn't feel his foot and he could hardly move his fingers.
Where was, why was, what was? And then it all came back.
The nervous tension that had been sleeping deep within the pit of his stomach reared it ugly head and began once again to roar inside him. He was pervaded with a deep rooted fear about what would happen to him when his clients caught up with him.
He started to shake visibly. His stomach knotted in trepidation and he lurched over the wall onto which he clung as if he was going to be sick. Bile and spit slid from his mouth in long strands as he retched.
No, no, he thought.
Maybe he could see Jenkins again and-
Behind him was her house, number 22; it was boarded up, the gate swung ineffectually from one hinge and the previously well-tended garden was now a scrubby wasteland of weeds and dirt. This house had obviously not been used in, but then how, and who had?
He shrugged his shoulders fatalistically, a painful gesture for his week and aching frame. He began to limp towards his car, desperately dragging his useless left foot behind him. He could gather his things, empty his account and drive far and fast until they caught up with him.
A shaft of sunlight struck him as he crossed the road; he was blinded by its radiance and dizzily lurched to one side, fell painfully as his dead left foot failed to support him, and rolled over on to his back.
As he looked upwards he saw the church; it was illuminated from behind by that blasted sun. Some of his fear evaporated, and the tense knot in his stomach relaxed slightly.
He had never had much truck with God; he remembered the handful of occasions on which his mother had allowed his father to take him to Sunday mass when he was a boy: even then he had thought it was a waste of time. If there was an omnipotent, omniscient being, then surely He or She wouldn't appreciate the strangled tuneless wailing of millions of His or Her flock as they sang out their praise to him on a Sunday morning.
Later in life he had become much more ambivalent; was He or She real, tangible, listening? Then he just stopped caring.
But now! Well, now he remembered the priest at his mother's funeral telling him that no matter how many turned their backs on him God would never let him walk alone, and that His flock would always welcome him as a brother.
He crawled at first, and then managed somehow to raise to his feet.
He found the church empty but could hear voices from behind it. He hobbled around the building, his left foot still numb and awkward and his left arm swinging impotently, and found a field full of God's smiling flock.
Children were playing in the sunshine, husbands and wives were laughing, and friends were arm in arm on this glorious day: such love as this O'Donhal couldn't remember, and the knot in his stomach fully left his withered body; it was replaced by a sick and desperate longing.
He sighted a man dressed in black and sporting the the white collar of a man of God. He dragged his left foot and sped as fast as he could, lurching towards this man with his one good arm stretched out in front towards the salvation, liberation and comfort of God's unconditional love.

*

As Father Paul approached this man he was swamped by a miasma of stale sweat and alcohol. He could see in this man's eyes a desperate and frenzied gleam; he looked almost hungry.
'C-can I help you sir?' he stammered as he reached out to clasp this man's outstretched arm. He saw in him a soul in torment, shot to pieces by a hard life; here was somebody in dire need of God's heavenly graces.
A rattling sound issued forth from the man's throat. He gurgled and started moaning and hooting, incoherently declaiming whatever tragedies had brought him to this point.
Who was he? He asked and received in reply more garbled hoots.
Father Paul knew that there was a psychiatric hospital not too far away; could this man have escaped from there? But no, this man looked far too poorly looked after to have been an inmate there.
'I'm sorry sir, but I didn't quite-'. Again, hat gurgling sound escaped this man's lips. He drooped against Father Paul, and Father Paul noticed the limp left leg, the dangling arm and the collapsed half of this man's face.
'My goodness, oh dear me, where's Clive? Clive! I think that this man has had a stroke, come here quickly! Come on!' But Clive, Dr. Clive Koberg, GP, wouldn't come near this unclean specimen; his patients were all well nourished, well presented and well cleaned locals, not at all like this scummy riff-raff.
Father Paul whirled around, holding this man up and asking anybody, anybody, to help him with this poor man.
He was met by a ring of God's noblest flock backing away with pinched noses and disgusted looks upon their glorious faces. Arms were flung back to keep the young and meek from approaching this man, and sneers were volubly cast towards Father Paul for daring to entertain this being, this creature, in their beloved congregation.
'Father,' Mr. Peabody had come forward, 'leave this madman. Sara's calling the police, and until they get here let's just back off, leave him to it, eh? Father!
'This man is not part of this congregation,' he barked. 'You have no right to do this. Leave him, now!'
Father Paul looked around at the disapproving faces whose goodwill he had so craved, which should have been implicit but was so sorely won that he still craved it now. He let go of this man's arm and turned his back to him, saying 'I'm truly sorry, but I think it's best you leave.'
This man was wheezing; he was clutching his chest with a grimace of pain animating the side of his face that still had access to muscular motility. He sagged to the floor half dead, but his clothes were ragged and his odour was rank.
'Come now, Father, there's a good man. Come come, that's it, the police will be here soon and they will deal with him; he's no doubt wanted or something, he's not your responsibility... come now,' Mr Peabody placed his arm on Paul's shoulder as they walked away, and the congregation closed ranks and turned their backs as one.

*

This world is not meant for such as me, O'Donhal found himself thinking. He watched with horror, collapsing to his knees, as this Priest, this man of God, this comforter of the sick and bringer of absolution turned his back and walked away; he cast out this sick leper so as to drink ginger beer with the spiritually clean.
This world is not meant for such as me, O'Donhal repeated to himself as he gathered his strength. Awkwardly he climbed to his feet and and turned his back on his last chance of salvation, or so he had come to think of it.
This world, he said again as he came to the side of the church and began to climb an iron fire escape.
Is not meant, as he hauled himself up each step and shrugged his shoulders against the outraged cries of those below.
For such, he was mumbling as he reached the top, gasping for air and bowed double with the exhaustion of climbing.
As me, he was weeping and he had come to the edge of a stone Gothic belfry, from which he could see for mile around the world which had been such a poor home for him, and which he had treated with scorn and contempt for so many years in return.
As he dove from the belfry- dove mind you, no half measures here, this was it! Plummeting head first towards the ground to meet the tarmac face first- O'Donhal had the most wonderful and completely unexpected sensation: his chest swelled and his mouth, that dour, downcast mouth, split into the most unadulterated of gleeful smiles.
For as long as he could remember he had struggled in life. He had struggled for motivation, for wakefulness, for enough energy to get through the day. Most of all he had struggled to find within himself any semblance of peace; such comfort could not be found so easily in his troubled mind.
But now!
Ah! He need only wait a few seconds, a few infinitesimally short moments in which the ground grew larger and larger, looming with its oppressive strength and promising him the sweet release of- my goodness! He was going to savour this moment, so short yet with so much promise bound up within; he would live and find enjoyment more in the last few seconds in which his heart beat than he had done in the whole of his long, oh! So long, lifetime.
The pavement rose to meet him and he grinned to meet it. A rictus of ecstatic preparation was plastered across his face as he sailed downwards, arms akimbo, flapping like the wings of a dove.
Why a dove? Peace, Goddamit! He was shooting towards peace.

*

Father Paul watched in horror from the ground as the poor soul flung himself from the rooftop of God's house and knew that he could have prevented it if only he had stayed strong against his imploring flock.
Sickened by himself and those around, him he began to walk towards this falling man, hands clasped in prayer as if prayer alone were enough to save him.
He pushed through the crowd that had gathered around to watch, pornographically, the death of this man for which they were all responsible and for which all, secretly and in their darkest depths, wished.
He watched as this man tumbled head over feet through the air, speeding towards the ground.
He watched as a cloud passed overhead and released a single shaft of sunlight which struck the man as he fell, and which made time stand still.
He thought, but no, that couldn't, could it? He had thought he had seen the man laughing, ecstatic, as two white feathered wings sprouted between his shoulder blade and he began to ascend to-
And then another cloud passed and obscured the sunlight. The man was falling, and now he lay in a crumpled heap on asphalt. Blood and offal and shattered bones and the stench of death lay before them all, and Paul fell to his knees and wept for this lost soul.
In the corner of his eyes a vulpine old tramp hummed tunelessly to himself, and then a beautiful woman stood where he had been and sang high and clear.
She smiled to herself as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, and then she was lost in the hysteria of fleeing parishioners and crying children and wailing sirens.
 

Nineteen

O'Donhal, strong now, his left side fully functioning, his limbs loose and limber and his heart rate steady, walked through the most beautiful graveyard that he had ever seen.
Cypress trees grew wild, and here a gardener was tending a flowerbed, and there a gardener was carrying buckets of water with which to nourish the earth. A third was wiping moss from the boulders that sealed the tombs of the rich and the powerful.
However, these were the only signs of activity; the rest of the garden enjoyed a calmly contented breeze which blew away all motion and disruption.
This sweet and gentle breeze ruffled the lush grass of this cemetery garden, and carried upon it the calls of distant songbirds which warmed the ears of the gardeners as they worked.
Up ahead was a tomb similar, if fresher looking, to those low hillocks which were all around; a low hill, a mere undulation in this serene landscape upon whose side were growing the healthiest and thickest thickets in the garden.
A large boulder, hewn from a nearby mountainside, was guarding its entrance. Outside it sat a young woman who lounged in the grass at her leisure and watched with mild interest a couple of doves who seemed to be either wrestling or mating atop the boulder.
'Good morning Brother,' she said.
'Good morning Sister,' said O'Donhal to his companion.
'I heard no tinkling bells, Clarence, but you damn sure are here, so I'm assuming that you got your wings!' With an ecstatic cry Sweeney leaped to her feet, ran forwards and embraced O'Donhal.
'Yes Sister, but where is here?'
Neither one, so haggard before, showed any signs of age or weakness; both looked fresh and well and moved with the fluidity of youth as they sat down together in front of the boulder.
'Here is where you need to be, and where I will one day need you, but for now you have a little time left. This,' she nodded towards the boulder, 'is an ongoing project that I started last night, but it won't come to fruition until tomorrow, when I will most definitely need your help.'
'And so, truly you are Sweeney? The same drunken bum who harassed me in bars and made my life hell?'
She let loose a low chuckle which lit her radiant face.
'Yes, that old fraud! I told you once that I was whatever you needed to be; this is me, myself,; and she raised her arms above her head, relishing her true form in the cooling breeze. 'What you needed was a friend with whom to bicker and fight, and let's be frank now, with whom to letch.
'Imagine the great detective, O'Donhal, friends with a lady! Unthinkable, truly. You would have tried to sleep with me, I would have spurned you, and then you would have turned violent. Then where would we have been, I ask you? No, an old drunk to walk through the final days of another old drunkard's life seemed much more appropriate.
'All will become clear with time, Brother, but for now we should start at the beginning. Walk with me, Brother.'
They bounded to their feet and walked with easy grace through the garden.

*

O'Donhal found himself walking next to the newly young Old Lady, hand in hand, through a steamy and fertile jungle. They climbed a steep hill and looked to the east.
Two tribes charged one another, raising fists and rocks. Some had about their necks and wrists and ankles decorative teeth and bones, but for the most part the people's dark skin was naked.
They were people and they were not people.
They stood on two legs, yet they stooped and grazed their hands upon the floor. They spoke, but it was a language such as no human had ever heard; grunts and squeals were emitted and laughter was still there as they clawed at one another.
All were covered in dark fur, corkscrewed and long.
The fighting was in earnest now; they punched and slapped and strangled, and as O'Donhal watched one caved in another's head with a rock.
'Where are we, Sister?'
'At the beginning, Brother.'
'Why?'
'We are to here to watch for the one who will become Eve.'
As she said this one tribeswoman, her knuckles less close to the ground and her language more coherent, raised a stout wooden staff and struck about her, left and right; she maimed and killed until the tribe that was not hers fled, and all praised her.
'When this place was first made life was encouraged; I nurtured the ground and bade the plants grow, die and return to offer further nourishment for future seedlings.
Then came the animals, growing from the creatures of the oceans, and I made provision for them, and when they died they too nourished the earth.
'This one grew consciousness, and I nourished it, developed it, and the spark took. From her the spark will spread, igniting the flame of consciousness within all of her kind, until one day the human mind will become a powerful tool.
'However, such fire cannot be taken into the earth; it offers no nourishment and burns where it spreads. I will begin to gather around me disciples to dampen this fire as Eve's kind die.
'We shall do so by appearing to them in their moment of death and taking their hands; we shall comfort their dying consciousness and return them to the ether, to dine at my table as angels and archangels.
'In life you sowed misery wherever you walked. In death you shall make amends and bring comfort to those who need it the most. I am the Old Lady, Mother of Life and Angel of Death, and you are the first of my disciples; together we shall harvest the dead, and I name you Abaddon, my Brother.'