I don’t know how long it went on for. I can’t remember. Maybe I passed out, and then came round again. One of the last things I remember is another kick in the side and the hissed words, ‘You’d better get the fuck out now. I wouldn’t waste a bullet on you.’ Hands untied my gag. Then the sound of feet moving away, and someone whistling.

I lay there. I couldn’t move. Blood was still leaking from my open mouth. Blood was clogging my nose, but the smell of my own urine and the garbage from the bins was filtering through it. An empty Tayto crisp packet fluttered near my eyes. I thought pointlessly ‘Here’s me.’ That’s what wee kids say, happily announcing themselves to a room full of smiling adults. But here’s me, a broken thing now, choking on loose bits of myself, trapped face-down in the gritty dirt. If I tried to stand up, I didn’t know which pieces would come with me, and which would stay behind. I didn’t even want to find out. Here’s me.

12

At first, I was mildly elated just to have survived. Elated and heavily sedated. I had lost quite a bit of blood, they told me, before the ambulance came. I still don’t know who called it. They gave me a lot of painkillers in the hospital, and I spent much of the time only half asleep, and the rest only half awake. The nurses brought me cups of tea, and I could listen to the radio. I jumbled up the voices on the radio with ones in my sleep. Together they made a soothing babble, a flowing river of sound.

They were going to keep me in for a while, they said. Stitches and a brain scan and a few broken ribs and a dislocated jaw, they said. Black eyes. Antibiotics to fight infection. Tetanus shots. All fine, I nodded, load me up with everything you’ve got, test me to destruction. They said I’d got off lightly, all told, compared to many other cases they’d seen. Maybe out there on the waste ground I’d inherited a slim line of credit from Big Jacky after all.

Phyllis came to see me. She said her nerves had gone to pieces since what happened, and the doctor had given her sleeping pills. I said not to worry, it would all be fine. I wasn’t worried about anything much now. The worst thing was over.

Murdie came to see me too. He looked sad, and said that he had told me not to stay at home that night. I know you did, I said. It was a bit like a dream, with all the faces from the past appearing one by one at the side of the bed, looking mournful and wagging their heads and waving.