Contents ( 48)
- PAST LIFE
- David Mark
- PART ONE
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- PART TWO
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- PART THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
McAvoy pulls his phone from his pocket. Calls up the photographs of his housemate’s confidential files. Finds the image of the girl he once knew.
He hadn’t doubted it, not really – not deep down – but now he knows for sure. Knows it’s Roisin Teague.
McAvoy runs his hand through his hair, chewing his lip. Stares into the screen, and feels the images blur and shift as his focus moves to his own reflection. He sees himself, big and clumsy and ridiculous, frightened of his own shadow and terrified of making a mistake. Sees the man he briefly was, too; sees the creature who emerged when he witnessed the horrors being inflicted upon the girl who’d stood at her daddy’s side and peered at his notebook and asked him if he was one of the good coppers, or the same as all the others. He closes his eyes. Different emotions rise up like warring tides, and he feels dizzy as they throw him from side to side. He doesn’t know what to do. He thinks his instinct is to contact the murder squad and tell them everything he knows about the person they’re seeking, but there’s another voice, another impulse, that tells him he is hostage to a different kind of duty. They are connected, he and the girl. He divides his life up into two distinct sections and the events of their brief meeting serve as a dividing line. Everything he thought he knew about himself was dismantled that day. Everything he feared, and believed, and shied away from examining too closely – it all evaporated in a single moment of rage and blood: the absolute clarity that came from stopping something horrific, and dispensing justice in the name of the wronged.
He looks again at the screen. It’s a straightener; a grudge match between the best men of two clans. Padraig Teague is serving as ‘fair play’ man: there to make sure nobody bites or kicks or puts the boot in. The video was uploaded a few weeks back and has been watched 36,000 times. He scans the comments. Reads the ill-typed, pointless missives from armchair experts across the globe.
Two wee lassies throwing handbags …
Pikey scumbags, can’t throw a decent punch between them
They both got into shape for this one. It’s not a human shape, but it’s definitely a shape …
Papa Teague as fair play man? Jesus, that’s like asking a fox to look after the chickens …
McAvoy bites his lip. Looks down again at Roisin’s picture, as if asking for help.
He reads the little argument that has broken out on the message board: those with a soft spot for Papa Teague defending his honour by calling his detractor a lying cunt and offering to stab him in the eyes. Third parties leap in quickly, asking one another if they’ve got a copy of the legendary fight between Pa Teague and Micky Helden. Ah, that was a fight. Three and a half hours it lasted. Teague fought half of it with one of Helden’s incisors stuck in his knuckle. Helden, in turn, got his thumb in one of Teague’s cuts, and dragged with all he had, leaving him with a flap of skin hanging over his eye like a heavy fringe.