Without asking, he climbed into the driver’s seat and sparked the engine. McSorley didn’t take his eyes off Campbell as he hoisted himself into the passenger seat.
They drove in silence, McSorley giving the Scot sideways glances, while Campbell thought of the hole in Michael McKenna’s head, and the killer whose own life was surely forfeit.
8
Michael McKenna’s big house in the suburbs didn’t sit well with the party’s socialist manifesto, so Fegan wasn’t surprised his wake was held elsewhere. Instead, people paid their respects to McKenna at his mother’s terraced house on Fallswater Parade, a small red-brick two-up-two-down. It stood in a row of identical houses just off the lower end of the Falls Road, the jugular vein of the Republican movement in Belfast. Back in the bad times, people had compared this part of the city to Beirut. Fegan had always thought of it as the road home, leading as it did to the apex between the Springfield Road and the Falls, where his mother’s old house stood.
As Fegan approached he tried to count the men crowding the tiny walled garden. They spilled onto the street, smoking, laughing and swapping stories. He gave up when the number passed twenty. He edged through them, returning the respectful nods and mumbled greetings. He knew most of these men, hard lads all, and liked none of them. They came from all over Belfast: Andersonstown, Poleglass, Turf Lodge, and some from the Republican enclaves in the north of the city and the Lower Ormeau. Fegan recognised a few faces from outside Belfast, places like Derry and South Armagh. A few wore shirts and ties to mark the solemnity of the occasion, more wore leather blazers, and the remainder dressed as casually as they did on any afternoon.
Fegan caught a young man glaring at him from the living-room window of the house next door. He probably owned the Volvo estate whose bonnet some of the boys rested on. Not that he would complain. He realised he’d been noticed and dropped the curtain in front of the window. Fegan imagined many of the street’s newer residents would eye this gathering with apprehension. The property boom had driven the young middle classes into parts of the city they’d never contemplated before. Pensioners who’d never seen money in their lives suddenly found themselves with hundred-grand nest eggs to cushion their dotage.
Fegan went inside. The narrow hallway was shoulder-to-shoulder with mourners, and he had to fight a sense of drowning as he dived deeper into the house.
“Gerry!” A small, elderly lady waved from a dense forest of black leather and green-striped Celtic shirts.
Fegan squeezed through the mass of bodies until he reached her. “Mrs. McKenna, I’m sorry for your trouble.”
She stretched up to embrace him. “Och, my boy’s gone, Gerry. Some bastard went and shot him. Here’s him fighting for peace and they shot him.” Her eyes were damp and angry as she looked up at him. “May God forgive them, for I won’t.”
“Where is he?” Fegan asked.
“Up the stairs, in his old bedroom. Sure, you know where it is, love. You spent plenty of time up there when you were kids. It’s a closed coffin.” Her voice cracked and her lip trembled. “I couldn’t look at him like that, not my handsome boy.”
“I’ll go up and see him,” Fegan said before giving McKenna’s mother one more hug.
He fought his way to the foot of the stairs and slowly made his way up, one step at a time. The smell of body odor rose with the heat and thickened as he climbed.
McKenna’s old room was at the front of the house, overlooking the street. A respectful quiet lay between the four walls, and Fegan was grateful for the relative peace. The few mourners in here whispered amongst themselves, and Fegan’s sweat cooled on him. He could think of worse places to be than in a room with Michael McKenna’s coffin.
Fegan made the Sign of the Cross as he approached the casket. This was a modest box, far beneath what a man of McKenna’s wealth might expect to rot in, but the humility of its grain, molding and fittings was not an accident. Tomorrow it would lead a procession along the Falls Road draped in an Irish Tricolor and Fegan would walk behind it, possibly even carry it some of the way. He was not a man of words, but he knew what hypocrisy meant. Still, hypocrisy was not rare among his old comrades, or in the party. He could live with it.
He first met Michael McKenna on a hard bench outside the principal’s office in the Christian Brothers School. They both awaited a caning on a warm June afternoon, just a week or so from the end of term. Fegan couldn’t remember what his caning was for, but McKenna’s was for fighting. McKenna was a year older than Fegan, and as stocky as Fegan was skinny. He had blood on his knuckles. They sat in silence until Brother Doran called them in.
Fegan took his strokes without making a sound. The corners of his eyes twitched as the WHAP! of bamboo on palm ricocheted off the office walls. He focused on the picture of the Virgin that hung above Brother Doran’s desk and set the pain aside.
“You’re a stubborn little bastard, aren’t you, Fegan?” he said.
The cane swished as it cut the air. It caught the joint hard. Fegan’s hand dropped away and he shifted his feet to center his balance. A small sun burned in his hand, but again, he set the pain aside. He raised it for more as a blood blister formed beneath the skin.
Brother Doran stared into his eyes as his jowls trembled. “Stand in the corner, you impudent little shite.”
Tears lined Michael McKenna’s cheeks by his third stroke. The fourth was half-hearted as Brother Doran seemed to tire. He dismissed the two boys with an angry flourish.
As Fegan walked along the corridor outside, McKenna called, “You tell anyone I cried and I’ll beat your head in.”
Fegan stopped and turned. “Go fuck yourself,” he said.
McKenna blustered up to him, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “What did you say?”
“Fuck off,” Fegan said. He turned and resumed walking.
Two balled fists slammed into his back, and he staggered forward. He regained his balance and spun to face
