The Life Business Read online

  My name was one of the first bits of information they'd got out of me. I knew from the war comics I never read that it was standard practice to give out your name, rank and serial number when captured by the enemy, so I assumed it was okay to give them just the name.

  I shook my head. No, we'd better not waken them. If we did, some of them might see my Rupert Bear flashlight, sitting on the ground between me and Billy. I could try to pretend it was Billy's, but no one would believe me.

  "Be like poking a wasps' nest," observed Lar from behind me.

  "Which we don't do," agreed Billy, "for fear we might get our bottoms stung."

  Lar laughed.

  Billy took another glug from his flask. It seemed to be bottomless. I was sure he'd already drunk its contents three times over.

  "Which leaves us," said Billy, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, "with the small problem of what we're going to do about you, eh, Petey boy?"

  From somewhere I found the courage – or perhaps it was just that I didn't want to think about any of the possible answers to that question – to ask a question of my own.

  I pointed at the body behind Billy. The man was fat, just like Lar had been complaining.

  "Who's that?"

  Billy half turned his head, as if he needed to check.

  "That, Petey, is Dennis McLeary. Dennis has been a bad boy, and has had to be spanked."

  "His wife is—" began Lar.

  "His wife is neither here nor there, Lar, no matter how much her smiling face might fill many a man's dreams."

  "I wasn't thinking of her—"

  "Enough, Lar." Where just a moment before Billy's voice had been mellow and slightly slurred, now there was an edge of steel to it. "That's enough. Now, where was I?" His shoulders relaxed again. "Ah, yes, I was telling our young friend about Dennis McLeary. You, see, Petey boy, until quite recently I could have sworn that Dennis McLeary was a friend of mine too, just the same way as you are yourself. Only then there was evidence came to light that he wasn't a friend to me at all, that he was blabbing away about all the things I'd thought were secrets between us, babbling to people who're definitely not my friends. Do you understand how much that discovery pained my trusting heart, Petey boy?"

  I shrugged, and shuddered. Maybe the blood around Dennis's mouth hadn't come from just his teeth being extracted.

  "He's put me in a position that I can only describe as being one of great embarrassment," Billy was continuing. "If it hadn't been for the fact that I have ears of my own in the places where Dennis was doing his whispering, I might never have known what was going on until I was looking at the world through a barred window, if you'll be understanding my meaning."

  A police informer. That was what Billy was telling me Dennis McLeary was – or had been. Which meant Billy was some kind of a criminal. There'd been talk that the resentment between Ulster's two communities, Catholic and Protestant, was beginning to boil up again, but there'd not been enough trouble for the school to think twice about sending three score of its precious pupils here to Magilligan Point. And clearly the Army hadn't been worried either – aside from a corporal who'd said a few words of hello to the masters on our arrival and then driven away in a jeep, we'd seen not a sign of a regular soldier.

  It occurred to me I hadn't the faintest idea if Billy was a Catholic or a Protestant militant, or even a militant at all. Maybe this had nothing to do with the sectarian unrest and he was just someone who'd been handling hot tellies.

  I didn't really think that, though.

  There was something in his eyes, glinting in the torchlight, that told me Billy was being driven by a cause.

  "Do you know why there aren't any snakes in Ireland, Petey boy?" said Billy, seemingly apropos of nothing.

  "Saint Patrick," I said. "He's supposed to have driven them all out of the island, with God at his shoulder to help him do it."

  "They teach you better than I'd have thought they would, in that fancy mainland school of yours. Well, I'm a bit like Saint Patrick, you see, Petey. I'm driving a snake out of Ireland. A big fat snake with a big fat mouth – a big fat snake called Dennis McLeary. Are you taking my meaning?"

  I ignored the question. "Except," I said, "the trouble with the story about Saint Patrick and the snakes is that it's complete bollocks."

  Billy's eyes narrowed. "What'd be making you think that?"

  "There's no way you can ever get rid of the snakes entirely from somewhere, not once they're fully in occupation. The only way you can drive out all the snakes is if there weren't any snakes there to begin with."

  "And is that the gospel truth?"

  I nodded.

  "You're a scientist, are you?"

  "I've got an O-level in Biology," I answered weakly.

  Lar shifted on his feet behind me, becoming impatient.

  "Someone's going to start wondering where I am," I said, my voice sounding frail in the cold dark air.

  "I don't hear any sound of upheaval, do you, Lar? No din of people being turned out of their beds to form a search party."

  Even though I couldn't see him and wasn't about to turn my head to look, I could sense Lar pantomiming, raising a cupped hand to his ear. "Just the waves lapping gently against the shore, Billy. And the moonlight caressing the—"

  Billy giggled, a surprisingly girlish sound. "Quite the poet, aren't we, Lar, my boy? Quite the poet."

  Lar nudged my rear end with the side of his foot. "We can't stay here for ever, Billy. We need to decide—"

  "I know, I know." Billy raised his hand as if beating back a fusillade of questions. "But we owe it to him not to rush the judgement too much."

  "And there's Dennis as well."

  "There truly is." Once more Billy turned to look at the big carcase. Dennis hadn't moved since they'd dumped him down and Lar had pulled me from my concealment. I was pretty sure Dennis was dead. Although it was difficult to tell in the uncertain light, there seemed to be no rising and falling of his chest. I'd never seen a dead body before, not even at Gran's funeral. I felt I was lacking in expertise. I also felt that, if through some miracle I managed to survive this night, I'd have changed from a boy into a grown man just because of having seen a dead body.

  God had never listened to me before, and especially He hadn't listened when I'd explained to him how good it would be if He could do something about the way things were worsening between Mum and Dad, but now I sent Him up an urgent little bullet of pleading anyway.

  "Do you know what this is, Petey boy?"

  My attention had wandered. Billy's words drew it back again. From somewhere he'd produced a gun, and now he was holding it out, flat on his open palm, in my general direction.

  "If you were about to say 'water pistol', Petey, that's the wrong answer," said Lar from above me.

  Curiously, it was Lar more than Billy I was frightened of, out there in the night. I'd met his kind before – big boys who seemed affable and jovial until the very moment something made them decide they needed to beat the shit out of you. And, all the while they were punching and kicking you, you could see through the haze of your blood and your tears and your pain that they were still smiling that same cheerful, appealing smile. Billy was at least pretending to think of a way they could leave me alive while still protecting their own backs. If Lar had been the one in charge I'd have been dead already. And he might have enjoyed himself a bit while making me that way.

  I tried not to think of what could be in store for Dennis McLeary's widow, when Lar came to call on her. And it would be Lar who came to call on her, not Billy, whatever either of them might think now.

  "It's a gun," I said, making as if to push his hand away. "Of course I know that. What do you think we've been lugging around on our parades all week long?"

  Billy had a sudden thought. "They loaded, those guns of yours?"

  "You mean, do we have ammunition for them? Yes. Obviously we do."

  "What kind of guns are they?"

  "Three-o-three
s, mainly. A scattering of two-twos."

  He smiled slowly. "Ancient rubbish."

  "Ancient rubbish," I agreed. "But they're guns, still."

  I could see he'd been wondering if our armoury was worth raiding, and had now decided it wasn't.

  "Are you going to shoot me?"

  "I'm hoping not, Petey boy."

  "You know, there must be a million people called Billy in Ireland."

  "True."

  "And plenty of people called Lar."

  "Likewise true. And who's to say those are even our real names?"

  Silence lay between us. All three of us knew that particular notion of his wasn't going anywhere. I'd heard them use the names before they'd known I was listening.

  "But" – Billy broke the quiet, shaking his head sorrowfully – "there aren't a million people in the whole wide world who're called Dennis McLeary, now are there? And who'll be being looked for high and low come tomorrow? Whichever way I look at these matters, Petey boy, there just seems to be no way we can let you go, free to sing like a lark."

  "What are you going to do to him?" I said, stalling for time.

  "To Dennis? Oh, Dennis is going for a long, long swim at the bottom of the lough, is where he's going. Which reminds me – Lar, could you go and be gathering us some rocks and stones? We need to fill the fat man's pockets so he'll not be floating out to sea. Petey will be safe enough here with me to look after him."

  Lar lumbered off, leaving the two of us on our own.

  "But what if Mr McLeary's not dead yet?" I said.

  "What does that matter?"

  It was a cold answer.

  "You need to be thinking a bit less about McLeary's fate, Petey boy, and a bit more about your own."

  Was this going to be it? A bullet in the brain and then an eternity bobbing alongside fat Dennis in the darkness at the bottom of Lough Foyle?

  I sent off another package of requests for mercy in the general direction of God, not that I expected Him to notice. The fault was my own. I'd never been entirely convinced of His existence and the events of tonight, rather than causing me to cling to the hope of Him as a drowning man to a straw, the way all the clichés say should happen, had made me increasingly of the mind that he was just a myth.

  A nasty, dangerous myth, if Billy and Lar here were two of His foot-soldiers.

  And if there wasn't a God then there almost certainly wasn't a life after death, either. To be honest, I'd always relied even less on the possibility of the afterlife than I had upon that of God, but it was nice to feel everything interlocking so neatly.

  Either I was thinking more logically, more dispassionately than ever before or I was in a complete blind funk and filling my head with rubbish thoughts so I wouldn't have to face the immediate future.

  Or lack thereof.

  Because if there wasn't an afterlife, if there was no judgement awaiting me, then death didn't seem so very frightening after all. Assuming it was a painless death. In this context it was reassuring that Billy had a gun – he wouldn't have to rely on Lar pounding my skull to mush with a rock. Death itself could surely be no worse than having to watch powerless as the pillars of my existence were being pulled apart and tumbled down in wreckage, of knowing that the only part anyone wanted me to play in the unfolding tragedy was to stay out of the way as much as much as possible – to be out of sight, out of mind, so that any tears I shed weren't seen and therefore didn't exist.

  I decided to make one final attempt at the life business, just for the sake of appearances if nothing else. I'd go into oblivion more fulfilled if I knew that at least at the last I'd given it my best shot.

  "I could promise I'd never tell anyone," I said.

  "You could, could you? And what makes you think I'd believe in your promise?"

  "I'd give you my word."

  "And what would that be worth?"

  "Plenty. I'm good at keeping secrets. I have to do it a lot."

  "What kind of secrets?"

  I started to speak, then bit back the words. I wasn't going to start telling him the things about Mum I didn't tell Dad or the things about Dad I didn't tell Mum.

  Or the things about me I didn't tell either of them.

  "They'd not be secrets if I told you," I said at last. "We've only just met."

  Billy laughed aloud and slapped my knee with his free hand, the hand that wasn't still holding the pistol. "I like you, Petey. Oh, I do surely like you. But—"

  "Even if I broke my word, and I wouldn't, what would I have to tell anyone? They're going to be pretty certain Mr McLeary's dead when no one can find him, aren't they? And I'll bet they'll have a fairly clear idea who did it. If he's been grassing on you" – I liked the professional way I used the term "grassing on you", so I repeated it – "If he's been grassing on you, you're the first person they're going to be looking for. And Lar? Well, he's not so very difficult to notice, is he? So tomorrow everyone's going to be hunting for you and Lar anyway, and the most I'd be able to tell them – even if I broke my promise, which I wouldn't – is what you've done with the body. Which piece of information wouldn't be of much use to anyone because how're they going to find him at the bottom of Lough Foyle?"

  "But what about tonight? What's to stop you running back to your barracks as fast as your legs will carry you and rousting out those three-score fierce wee warriors of yours?"

  I'd been right. He didn't want to kill me if he could help it. He was looking around for some excuse not to have to.

  "You could tie me up, gag me," I said, pressing home what I was beginning to hope was my advantage. "By the time anyone found me in the morning the two of you would be long gone. And Dennis McLeary too."

  "Uhuh, uhuh." Billy took the gun in his other hand and began slapping it gently on the palm where it had lain. "You're not daft, are you, Petey boy?"

  "And I'd even have a reason to keep my mouth shut."

  He raised an eyebrow. "And what would that be?"

  Very deliberately I answered him. "I'll help you fill up Dennis McLeary's pockets with rocks and stones. I'll make myself an accessory. That way I'll have as much cause as you and Lar to keep quiet."

  "I'm not sure that exactly makes sense," said Billy after a long pause, "but I'll give you credit for making a good argument. And I'll not say no to the offer of helping load up our Dennis with rocks. Afterwards? Well, afterwards we'll see."

  I forced myself not to say anything more, not to risk ruining the good work I'd done. Billy was already halfway convinced there was a way out of this that didn't involve killing me, and by the time we'd finished giving poor Dennis his ballast the other half would have taken care of itself, I was certain. Then my thoughts sobered. There was always Lar to consider. Maybe Lar would change Billy's mind, once he got back here...

  Which he did, right then, bearing an armload of big, water-rounded boulders. It was a good thing he was such a giant. I don't think I could have carried all of those even if you'd put them in a rucksack for my back.

  Lar let the rocks crash to the ground beside Dennis McLeary's feet. One of them bounced with a crack off the rest and landed with a soft, sickening thump smack in the middle of McLeary's groin.

  There wasn't any reaction from the fat man.

  Billy snickered. "I'd say that answers your question, Petey boy, as to whether Dennis is dead or not."

  My stomach tried to rebel, but I refused to let it.

  "Shall we set to work?" I said.

  ~

  Once we'd got started, once I'd learnt to stop thinking about Dennis McLeary as a human being from whom the life had fled – from whom it had been expelled – and started just treating his carcase like an inanimate, irksomely unwieldy object that we had to drag between us down to the water's edge where we located, bobbing in the shallows, a little rowing boat some confederates of Billy's had left there earlier...

  Once Dennis McLeary's corpse was just a fucking nuisance, then I found it all very much easier. He was a side of beef, or a slaughtered p
ig in the butcher's window.

  Billy and I did the hauling. Lar had been told – you stupid gobshite! – to pick up the stones from where he'd dropped them and carry them down to the shore alongside us. We'd load up Dennis McLeary with the stones once we were out on the water, not before.

  I lost my Rupert Bear flashlight at some stage while we were heaving the dead weight of McLeary into the boat.

  I couldn't see how we were going to get the three of us – and the stones – in beside it, but we managed.

  One foot planted firmly on McLeary's chest, the other between Billy and me where we sat on the boat's second seat, Lar rowed us out from the shore until we could see nothing at all of the land. We might have been floating in some distant limbo, with the stars and the reluctant moon above and a restless obscurity below.

  "Here'll do," said Billy.

  "Will I be rowing back two of us or three?" said Lar pointedly.

  "I've still not decided."

  "Ah."

  I knew, I knew – surely it was definitely a matter of my knowing, not just of my hoping – I knew that Billy had already decided all three of us were returning to shore once the object called Dennis McLeary had been disposed of.

  "I was just asking, like," said Lar cheerfully. He winked at me. "Nothing personal."

  "Here's far enough," said Billy, ignoring Lar's remark.

  As soon as we'd got to the water's edge, Billy had pocketed his own torch. He hadn't needed to tell me why. There was no gain in sending reflections dancing across the water all the way to Donegal, or back behind us to anyone who might have wakened at Magilligan. In the gloomy moonlight I couldn't know what it was Billy was doing except that he was making a great rustling about it.

  He must have sensed my incomprehension.

  "Plastic carrier bags," he said. "Fat Dennis has only got so many pockets. The bigger stones we'll put into the bags and tie them on to him. It takes longer than a dozen lifetimes for plastic to rot. By the time it does, he'll be just bones – and so will we."

  "Ah," I said, as if I'd already known all this.

  Ten or twenty minutes later, at grave risk of capsizing the boat, we managed to roll the uncooperative mass over the edge. I'd have liked to think that the dead eyes of Dennis McLeary gave the sky one last nostalgic glance before the water covered them, but that wasn't so. He – he and the anchors we'd tied around his wrists and ankles and neck – sank beneath the surface instantly, leaving hardly a ripple on the lough's face.