“Right.”
“He’s the boy, right?”
“Right.”
“Then McGinty says to me about Michael, that you was the last one seen him.” Caffola’s eyes darkened. “And that Lithuanian cunt. I gave him a proper going-over, like. And all the time he says he knows nothing. Even when I was showing him his own teeth, he says he knows nothing.”
Fegan tried to step away from the wall, to slip by Caffola. The big man pushed him back against the tiles.
“You see my problem, Gerry?”
Fegan looked over Caffola’s shoulder. The bathroom was empty now, except for the eleven shadows taking form around them. Two separated from the others, hands raised. Could he do it here? No, there’d be no way out.
“You say you’d nothing to do with it, I believe you. That’s what I told McGinty. I stood up for you, Gerry, so don’t make a cunt of me. Right? You talk to McGinty tomorrow.” Caffola’s finger stabbed at Fegan’s chest. “You talk to him and do what he wants, right?”
“Right,” Fegan said, remembering a time when Caffola was afraid of him. Yes, he could do it here, do it now. He could get out before anyone knew what had happened. Get out and run. Leave everything and run. Caffola’s throat looked so tender, his Adam’s apple bobbing over the collar of his shirt.
The door burst open, tearing Fegan’s attention away from the other man’s neck. “There’s trouble brewing,” Patsy Toner said, his little face shining with glee. “There’s peelers all over the place and kids making a barricade. There’s going to be a row. A proper kicking match.”
Caffola looked from Toner to Fegan, beaming. “Fucking class,” he said.
“How the fuck did this start?” Caffola asked, incredulous. He indicated a burning mound of mattresses, wooden pallets and rubbish in the middle of the Springfield Road, just a few feet from the corner where McKenna’s bar stood. A mob of thirty or so youths, children mostly, surrounded it, chanting.
Half a dozen PSNI Land Rovers idled thirty yards down the street. They looked less intimidating these days, painted white with colorful stripes instead of the battleship grey of the past. The peelers milling about weren’t in riot gear yet, but it was only a matter of time before suitably dressed reinforcements would arrive.
Fegan felt a strange stirring inside, a quickening of the spirit, as he watched them. The followers had left him; their shadows receded. He stayed on the footpath, close to the wall, as Caffola and Toner paced.
“Kids,” Toner said. “There’s more patrols about because of the funeral tomorrow. Some of the kids took exception to it and started chucking stuff. The peelers lifted a couple of them, so some more started throwing stuff, then a couple more got lifted and so on and so on.”
A grin cracked Caffola’s face. “Jesus, we haven’t had a proper ruck in ages. I wonder if we can get some petrol bombs rustled up quick.”
“There’s hardly time,” Toner said. “We might get a few, like, but not a proper stock. Nobody’s prepared for it these days.”
Caffola sighed. “Aye, I suppose that’s a good thing, really.”
“Aye,” Toner said. “We can still get the bigger kids to fill some wheelie bins with bricks and stuff. Tom’s got a big bin full of bottles in the alley behind the bar. Some of the kids could steal that, maybe.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Caffola said. The adrenalin seemed to have sobered him. “Somebody better let McGinty know. Do you want to ring him?”
“All right,” Toner said, fishing a mobile from his jacket pocket.
Caffola turned to Fegan, rubbing his hands together, a smile lighting up his face in the growing darkness. “What about it, Gerry?” he asked. “You up for it?”
“I’ll hang about,” Fegan said. “See what happens.”
“Good man.” Caffola patted his shoulder.
Young men and older boys swelled the mob. Fegan knew the cops would hold back, hoping the drama would fizzle out. Most times it would, leaving nothing more than a blackened mess for the road sweepers to clean up in the morning. Not tonight, though. Fegan could feel it like thunder in the air. The atmosphere crackled with it.
He looked up at the sky. Things had developed too quickly to get a helicopter in the air. In the old days, the Brits would have scrambled two or three of them from their bases in Holywood or Lisburn, and would’ve had the area covered in minutes. They’d be out for the funeral tomorrow, hovering high above the crowds, but the sky stayed clear this evening.
A boy, red-haired and wiry, twelve at most, pulled a lump of burning wood from the mound. He half ran, half hopped six paces and hurled the blackened timber with every bit of his strength. It clattered to the ground, throwing up red sparks, midway between the smoldering mound and the waiting policemen. The other boys gave a triumphant cheer.
“For fuck’s sake,” Caffola said. “Hey!”
He waited a moment then shouted again. “Hey! You!”
The red-haired boy turned.
“Yeah, you,” Caffola called. “C’mere!”
The boy approached slowly.
“What are you at?” Caffola asked. “Are you stupid?”
“No,” the boy said.
“Well, for fuck’s sake quit acting like it. Cover your face with something so the cameras don’t get you.”
“Okay,” the boy said. He pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket and returned to his comrades at the burning mound, tying the square of soiled material into a mask over his nose and mouth.
“Kids know nothing these days.” Caffola shook his head. “When we were kids we’d have had this place wrecked by now. Petrol bombs, concrete slabs, catapults with ball-bearings.” He grinned and pointed down the street to the Land Rovers. “And them cunts, they’d have been firing plastic bullets at us. Changed times, Gerry.”
“Yeah,” Fegan said. “Changed times.”
These streets had seen more riots than just about anywhere in the world. From the civil rights protests of the late Sixties, when Fegan was too small to know what it meant, to the groundswell of anger at internment in the early Seventies, when young men were imprisoned without trial. Journalists gave kids five-pound notes to throw stones and bottles at the Brits, hoping to set off another battle for the cameras. Then the anguish of the hunger strikes in the early Eighties when ten men starved themselves to death in the Maze, fanning the embers on the streets. No payment was needed then; rage seethed in the city, and anything could ignite the flames. Mob violence, children as weapons: those were the tactics of the time. A photograph of a bleeding child, no matter how they got injured, packed more power than a dozen bombs. Political animals like Paul McGinty learned that early on and acted accordingly. Fegan had seen it so many times before, this wasteful anger bubbling over into violence. It tired and excited him all at once.
More men wandered out of the bar and onto the street. Some remained inside, preferring to drink in peace rather than get involved.
Patsy Toner snapped his phone closed.
“Well?” Caffola asked.
“He says go ahead,” Toner said. “Just don’t let it get out of hand. Don’t touch any property. Don’t fight anyone but the peelers. There’s lots of press about for the funeral so they’ll all come over here once it gets going. McGinty’s going to turn up in an hour or so. Make sure everyone knows to settle down then so the press sees he calmed the situation.”
“He always was the smart one,” Caffola said. He slapped his palms together and smiled. “Right, let’s go.”
10
A riot is like a fire. It has a life of its own, and does as it will. But it can be fanned or quelled. Fegan knew that as well as anybody. The police and the kids were the kindling, paper and dry wood. Men like Caffola were the naked flame, ready to set them alight. Others, like Father Coulter, were water to douse the burning. But Father Coulter wasn’t here this evening, so Caffola sparked and blazed unabated. Morbidly fascinated, Fegan watched him work.
Caffola moved between groups of boys and young men, slapping backs and issuing commands. They obeyed without question.
Within minutes older boys were off fetching ammunition. They returned quickly, wheeling it in plastic bins. Their missiles were gathered from the nearby derelict houses and patches of waste ground. Bricks, bottles, concrete fragments, scrap metal. Everything they needed. Two boys in their mid-teens appeared at the corner pushing the bar’s bottle bin, its innards clanging and clattering as the wheels juddered across the tarmac. They stopped out of view of the cops.
The peelers huddled and passed orders back and forth. Their stance changed. They knew this one wasn’t blowing over. Some strapped body armor across their torsos and donned helmets.
Within ten minutes Caffola got a phone call telling him there were six containers of petrol in a back alley two streets away. He instructed the boys to wheel the bottle bin over there. “And grab whatever you can off washing lines for rags,” he said. He pulled a ten-pound note from his pocket and pressed it into one of the boys’ hands. “And here, get some sugar. Remember to mix it in the petrol so it’ll stick, right? And get some crates off Tom for carrying the bottles back.”
“Right,” the boy said. He and his friend wheeled the jangling bin back around the corner.
Soon masonry began to fly. Sporadically at first, but the bombardment gathered pace. The peelers stayed behind their Land Rovers for now, content to let things simmer until they had enough officers to deal with the situation.
The first news crew pulled up in a van behind the police line. Word had started to spread. The mob around the growing pile of burning debris swelled. Caffola stood with his hands on his hips, watching it all unfold, his nose tilted up as if he were sniffing violence on the air.
Fegan’s nostrils flared too, the old scent waking memories in him. “How bad?” he asked.
“Not too bad,” Caffola said. “Just a bit of a scrap. Nobody’ll get killed.”
Fegan looked to Caffola’s throat. “You sure?”
“Aye. It’s not the Eighties any more. Fuck, it’s not even the Nineties. A few stitches, that’ll be the height of it.” Caffola’s belly jerked with a sudden laugh. He pointed towards the row of Land Rovers. “You see her?”
Fegan followed the line of Caffola’s finger. He saw a young policewoman hunkered down, her back to them, as she talked to her colleagues. Blonde hair crept out from under her cap, and the image of Marie McKenna flashed in Fegan’s mind. He shook it away.
Caffola nudged him. “At the back of the Land Rover. You see her?”
Fegan almost said yes, he saw her, but he caught himself, hoping Caffola would pick another target if he kept quiet. No such luck.
“Watch.” Caffola lifted an empty bottle from the bar’s windowsill. He ran a few steps, the bottle suspended over his right shoulder. He threw his body forward and released the missile.
It rose in a slow arc, then descended towards the policewoman. Fegan willed it to miss, to splash impotently at her feet.
Miss, miss, miss
, he thought. He closed his eyes until he heard it crash on the tarmac.
He opened them to see the cops scatter, taking shelter behind the Land Rovers.
“Fuck,” Caffola said. He winked at Fegan. “Close, though.”
Fegan breathed deep. He knew this was Vincent Francis Caffola’s last night on earth.
With that thought, his temples sparked and a cold wave rippled through him. The setting sun cast long shadows. Shapes emerged from them, solidified, and drew near. The two UDR men flanked Caffola, their arms raised, their fingers aiming. The rest circled Fegan. The woman, her baby restless in her arms, smiled at him.
Engines roared and brakes squealed at the police line. Men in full riot gear streamed out of six more Land Rovers. They wore helmets with clear visors, fireproof balaclavas masking their faces, and thick body armor. Their gloved hands held riot shields and batons.
They were ready. The mob was ready. Fegan was ready.
Caffola turned to him once more, grinning. “Fucking class,” he said.
At first, the police maintained their line. As lumps of masonry came in waves they simply raised their shields to deflect each missile. A senior officer, distinguishable only by his gait, paced behind their ranks, barking orders. Fegan couldn’t hear them from this distance, but he knew what they were just the same.
Steady. Hold your line.
Things changed when the first petrol bombs arrived. One of the kids came half running, half staggering, struggling with a crate loaded with petrol-filled bottles. He remained out of sight of the police line, signalling Caffola from the side street, his back against the wall. They had selected the larger bottles, filled them with a mixture of fuel and sugar, and plugged the tops with petrol-soaked rags.
Fegan clenched and unclenched his fists, fighting the adrenalin already coursing through him. The followers circled, watching.
