1974

I stood staring at the draining water, drying my hand on my trousers, a dark shape forming beneath the shitty brown water.

I stuck both hands under my armpits and screwed up my eyes.

There was a blue leather Slazenger sports bag in the bottom of the bath.

It was zipped up and on its side.

Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.

Mouth dry, I crouched down and flicked the bag upright.

The bag felt heavy.

The last of the water ran down the plughole, leaving just a shit-stained sludge, a nail brush, and the blue leather Slazenger bag.

Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.

I used the bandaged hand to steady the bag and began to unzip it with my left.

The zip jammed.

Fuck it.

It jammed again.

Leave it.

The fresh stench of shit.

You don’t want to know.

Fur, I could see fur.

A fat dead tabby cat.

A twisted spine and an open mouth.

A blue collar and a name tag I wouldn’t touch.

Memories of pet funerals, Archie and Socks buried back in the Wesley Street garden.

Fuck it, leave it, but you bloody asked.

Out on the landing, two more doors.

The bigger bedroom, the one on the left with the two twin beds, stank of piss and old smoke. The mattresses had been pulled off and the clothes piled on them. There were scorch marks up the wall.

Again sprayed in red, Wogs Out, Fuck the Proves.

I walked across the landing to another cheap plastic plate that said, Michael’s Room.

Michael John Myshkin’s room was no bigger than a cell.

The single bed had been tipped on its side, the curtains pulled from their rail, the window cracked by the falling ward robe. Posters torn from the walls, having taken strips of the magnolia wallpaper with them as they went, lay on a floor strewn with American and English comics, sketch pads and crayons.

I picked up a copy of The Hulk. The pages were wet and reeked of piss. I let it fall and used my foot to sift through the piles of comics and pieces of paper.

Beneath a book about Kung-Fu, a sketch book looked intact. I bent down and nicked it open.

A full page cover of a comic stared back up at me. It had been hand-drawn in felt-tip pen and crayon:

Rat Man, Prince or Pest?

By Michael J. Myshkin.

In a childish hand, a giant rat with human hands and feet was sitting on a throne in a crown, surrounded by hundreds of smaller rats.

Rat Man was grinning, saying, “Men are not our judges. We judge men!”

Above the Rat Man logo, in biro, was written:

Issue 4, 5p, MJM Comics.

I turned to the first page.

In six panels, the Rat People asked Rat Man, their Prince, to go above ground and save the earth from the humans.

On page two, Rat Man was above ground being chased by soldiers.

By page three, Rat Man had escaped.

He’d sprouted wings.

Fucking swan’s wings.

I stuffed the sketch pad comic inside my jacket and closed the door on Michael’s Room.

I walked down the stairs, banging and children’s voices coming from the front door.

A ten-year-old boy in a green sweater with three yellow stars was stood on a dining room chair, balanced on the front step, hammering a nail into the frame above the door.

His three friends were egging him on, one of them holding a washing-line noose in his dirty little hands.

“What you doing?” said one of the boys as I came down the stairs.

“Yeah, who are you?” said another.

I looked pissed off and official and said, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” said the boy with the hammer, jumping from the chair.

The boy with the noose said, “You police?”

“No.”

“We can do what we want then,” said the boy with the hammer.

I took out some coins and said, “Where’s his family?”

“Pissed off,” said one.

“Not coming back and all, if they know what’s good for them,” said the boy with the hammer.

I shook the coins and said, “Father’s a cripple?”

“Yeah,” they laughed, making spastic wheezing noises.

“What about his Mam?”

“She’s a fucking evil witch, she is,” said the boy with the washing-line.

“She work?”

“She’s a cleaner at school.”

“Which one?”

“Fitz Junior on main road.”

I moved the chair out of the doorway and walked down the path, looking at the dark quiet terraces on either side.

“You going to give us some brass?” the youngest boy shouted after me.

“No.”

The boy with the hammer put the chair back, took the line from his friend, stood on the chair, and hung the noose from the nail.

“What’s that for?” I asked, unlocking the Viva.

“Perverts,” shouted one of the boys.

“Here,” laughed the boy with the hammer, standing on the chair. “You best not be one.”

“There’s a dead cat upstairs in the bath,” I said as I got into the car.

“We know,” giggled the youngest boy. “We fucking killed it, didn’t we?”

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all good children go to heaven.

I sat in my car across the road from Fitzwilliam Junior and Infants.

It was going up to five and the school lights were still on, illuminating walls of Christmas drawings and paintings inside.

There were children playing soccer in the dark playground, chasing after a cheap orange ball in a pack of baggy trousers and dark wool sweaters with those big yellow stars.

I sat freezing in the Viva, my bandages stuffed up into my armpit, thinking of the Holocaust and wondering if Michael John Myshkin had gone to this school.

After ten minutes or so, some of the lights went out and three fat white women came out of the building with a thin man in blue overalls. The women waved goodbye to the man as he walked over to the children and tried to take their ball from them. The women were laughing as they left the school gates.

I got out of the car and jogged across the road after the women.