I could now see them both in the shadows. Kelly had her back to me as he dragged her toward me with a weapon stuck in her shoulder area. He pushed the glass door open with his foot and came out into the light of the corridor.
As I saw him my heart dropped from beating in quick time to a slow thud. I felt as if a ten-ton weight had just been dropped on my head. It was Morgan McGear.
He was dressed very smartly in a dark-blue two-piece suit and a crisp, clean white shirt; even his shoes looked expensive. It was a far cry from the Falls Road uniform of jeans, bomber jacket, and running shoes. I couldn't see what sort of weapon he was carrying; it looked like some sort of semiautomatic.
He was watching me, checking me out. What was I doing here with a small child? He knew he had control, knew there wasn't shit I was going to do. He now had his left hand wrapped around her hair--what a pity I hadn't cut more off in the motel room--and he had the weapon stuck into her neck. This was not a meaningless gesture; he was capable of killing her.
She looked hysterical, poor kid; she was panicking big-time.
He called out, 'Walk toward me slowly. Walk now.
C'mon, don't fuck with me, you shite.'
Every noise in the corridor seemed to be amplified ten fold; McGear shouting with spit flying out of his mouth, Kelly screaming. It seemed to reverberate around the whole building. I did as he said. As I got nearer I looked at her and tried to get eye-to-eye; I wanted to comfort her, but it didn't work.
Her eyes were swollen with tears, her face was soaking wet and red. Her jeans weren't even zipped up yet.
He had me within about ten feet of him, and now I looked into his eyes and I could see that he knew he was in a position of power, but sweating a bit. His voice might have sounded confident, but his eyes gave it away. If his job was to kill us, now was his moment. With my eyes I said to him. Just get it over and done with. There are times when after using plans A, B, and C you must accept you're in deep shit or shite, as this boy would say.
He snapped, 'Stop!' and the echo seemed to reinforce the threat.
I looked at Kelly, still trying to get that eye-to-eye contact to say: Everything's all right, everything's OK, you asked me to help you and I'm here.
McGear told me to turn around. Now I knew it was really time to sweat.
He said, 'On your knees, you fucker.'
Facing away from him, I went down so I was sitting back on my heels; if I had the chance to react, at least from here I had some sort of springboard.
'Up!' he shouted.
'Get up, get your ass up!' He knew what I was doing; this boy was good.
'Kneel upright. More, more. Stay there, fuck you, think you're some fucking hard guy.. ' He moved behind me, dragging Kelly with him. I could still hear her cries, but there was another noise now. Some thing else was moving; it wasn't just Kelly's moans. I didn't know what it was. I just knew that something unhealthy was going to happen. All I could do was close my eyes, grit my teeth, and wait for it.
He took a couple of labored steps toward me. I could hear Kelly getting nearer, obviously still in tow.
'Keep looking straight ahead,' he said, 'or I will be hurting the wee one. Do what I say or ' Either he didn't finish his sentence or I didn't hear it. The bang on the top of my shoulders and head sent me straight down like a bag of shit.
I went into a semiconscious state. I was awake, but I knew I was fucked, like a boxer who goes down and is trying to get up to show the referee that he's all right, but he's not, he's all over the place.
I felt nailed to the floor; I looked up, but couldn't see what had done the damage. It hadn't been a pistol. It takes a decent weight to knock a person over. Whatever it was, it took me down but good.
The strange thing about the next bit was that I knew what was happening but couldn't do anything about it. I was aware ofMcGear pulling me over onto my back and jumping astride me, and I felt cold metal being pushed into my face and finally into my mouth. Slowly, slowly, it dawned on me that it was the pistol, and the jumble of words he was screaming be came clearer and clearer: 'Don't fuck with me! Don't fuck with me! Don't fuck with me!' He sounded out of control.
I could smell the nicker. He'd been drinking; there was alcohol on his breath. He reeked of aftershave and cigarettes.
He was sitting astride me with his knees on my shoulders and the pistol stuck in my mouth. He still had his left hand around Kelly's hair and had pulled her onto the floor; he was tugging her from side to side like a rag doll, either for the sheer hell of it or perhaps just to keep her screaming and make me more compliant.
All I could hear was scream, scream, scream; 'Don't fuck with me!'; scream, scream, scream; 'Don't fuck with me!
Don't fuck with me! Think you're a fucking hard guy, do you, think you're a fucking tough guy, huh?'
Not good. I knew what they did to 'hard guys.' McGear once got an informer into a room for questioning; his kneecaps were drilled with a Black & Decker; he was burned by an electric fire and electrocuted in the bath. He managed to jump out a window naked but broke his back. They then dragged him into the elevator and shot him.
I felt as if I were drunk. I was aware of what was happening but it was taking too long for the message to reach my brain.
Then the software started to kick in. I tried to see if the hammer was back on the pistol, but all I could still see were bubbles of red light in front of my eyes, and star bursts of white. All I could make out was all this screaming and ranting from him.
'You bastard! I'm gonna fuck you up!
Who are you?' and the screaming from Kelly. It was total confusion.
I tried again to focus my eyes, and this time it worked I could see the position of the hammer.
The hammer was back. It was a 9mm. But what about the safety catch? It was off.
There was nothing I could do. He'd got his finger on the trigger; if I struggled, I was dead, whether he intended it or not.
He said, 'You think you're fucking hard? Do you? Do you?
We'll soon see who is the hard man.' Then he jumped his weight up and down to crush my chest, forcing the pistol harder into my mouth.
To add to the confusion, Kelly was still screaming with terror and pain. I didn't have a clue what was expected of me;
all I knew was that I had a pistol stuck in my mouth and this guy was in charge.
He started to regain his composure. The pistol was still shoved hard into my mouth, but he was beginning to ease himself to his feet. He did it by putting weight on the pistol and then against my face; as the pistol turned in my mouth, it twisted painfully up against my cheek and teeth, scraping them with the sight. And all the time he kept a grip on Kelly's hair, pulling her around all over the place.
He moved back, the pistol now aimed at my chest.
'Get back up on your knees!'
'All right, mate, OK. You got me, OK.'
As I moved I saw what had taken me down. The fire extinguisher had split open the skin at the back of my head. There was blood oozing out everywhere and matting down my hair.
There was nothing I could do; you just can't stop capillary bleeding.
I got back on my knees, my ass up in the air again so I wasn't resting on the heels of my feet, and I was looking at him, trying to sort myself out. He started to walk backward toward the office, keeping the weapon pointed at me.
'Come on, hard man, on your knees.'
I got the hint, he wanted me to follow him.
By now Kelly was a mess. There was a small trail of my blood being wiped along the floor. Kelly must have been kneeling in it before she was moved. She had her hands on his wrist, trying to support herself. She kept on tripping up, walking on her knees, trying to pick herself up, as if she were getting dragged behind a horse. All he was interested in was moving backward with the weapon pointing at me.
He said, 'Stay where the fuck you are!' and then shuffled backward past the door to the large office.
