I shrug. ‘Don’t mind.’
‘Come on, you’ll play a game of football with the rest of the lads, surely?’ He smiles at me and then the master points to the table where the boys are wrestling over the shirts.
‘Join in, Donal,’ he says in that posh voice he has. I do as I’m told, because I don’t want to feel the switch on my backside again.
The boys run about like hooligans – there’s no sense to it at all. I try to reach the ball when it comes near me, but I’m immediately swamped by the mass of boys.
‘Stick in, lads,’ shouts the master.
It’s cold and the field is wet. The grass is far too long for sports of any kind but especially for the football. It’s an old leather ball and it becomes waterlogged and so heavy that it hurts your foot when you kick it. Some of the boys hold back and try to avoid the ball, but the master tells them to get stuck in and not be afraid of the ball.
I see the man with the black car watching the boys. He’s still smoking, putting the little filter tip to his thin mouth and blowing white streams of smoke into the cold air. He looks at me now and again, and there’s a smile on his face for me, but I don’t smile back. After a while he stops smiling altogether and looks away when I stare at him.
There’s a goal. That’s the fifth, or is it the sixth? I can’t tell. I can hardly tell what boys are on my team with all the running around and the shouting. Some of the bigger boys get cocksure, and the master has to shout about putting them in the sin bin. I don’t pay too much attention though, until it’s too late.
‘Donal . . . Donal . . . can you hear me?’ The voice sounds strange, like he’s talking through a musical instrument – a tuba or something.
‘Donal . . . that was a hell of a knock you took.’
I feel like I’m underwater; my head hurts and my eye socket feels numb, and then I taste the blood in my mouth.
‘Right, back on the pitch, lads.’ I can tell it’s the master shouting. He leans over me and points to the big house, his hands waving and chopping the air.
‘That’s you for today, Donal. You can have a rest in the kitchen.’
He blows his whistle and runs on to the park again. The boys follow him. I’m left with the man with the black car who takes off his coat – it’s sheepskin – and puts it over my shoulders.
‘Are you OK to walk, son?’
‘I am.’
I still feel like I’m underwater, but my head and my eye don’t hurt any more – they’re only numb.
In the kitchen the man sets me down on the green rug next to the range. He tells me to get a heat in my bones as he lights a cigarette from the hot coals.
I wait for the man to go back to the football game, to the master and the other boys, but he stays by the range, smoking his cigarette. He asks me do I want a puff, but I think he’s trying to catch me out, and I don’t want the switch again so I say no.
‘I’m your friend, you know,’ he says, kneeling down beside me.
I can smell the burning tobacco as he takes the coat off my shoulders and folds it over. ‘Go on, lie down on that,’ he says.
I’m staring into the grate where the hot coals are burning, and I see the orange sparks flying as he flicks his cigarette into the grate.
I hear the slapping noise of leather, the rattle of a brass buckle and the quick swish of my shorts being yanked down. I try to turn round, but I have a heavy hand pressed into my shoulders, forcing me into the green rug.
I can’t move my top half; my legs go all over the place and my hips wriggle free of the rug, but suddenly I stop still and scream out. I’ve never felt pain like it. I look up at the burning coals and wonder has one of them just shot into me? It hurts more if I move at all, so I hold still, trying not to stray one inch.
The pain is all I know of agony for a few more seconds and then it’s over. There’s a new pain now, and it feels like a burning and jabbing in my belly.
I’m sobbing into the green rug. The sheepskin coat is torn away from me as the man goes to the door. He walks with his heels thumping on the hard hall floor, another door closes and then I hear the sound of an engine starting, and I know the man has gone back to the black car.
25
DI Bob Valentine watched Garry Keirns being led from the police saloon car in the parking bay. He was cuffed, as instructed, but didn’t seem to be at all intimidated, striding forcefully beside the officers on his way into King Street station. A little while earlier, Freddie Gowan had been led in through the same doors; Jim Prentice would be taking Gowan’s details right now, under instruction to go slow. So far, at least, Valentine’s instructions were going to plan.
The knock on the glass door was timid and certainly didn’t match CS Martin’s usual style of arrival.
‘Got a minute, Bob?’ she said, peering beyond the jamb.
‘Yes, of course. Come in.’
The CS closed the door behind her and walked towards Valentine at the window.