The Cold Cold Ground

It's been my experience that only children never learn when to keep their fucking traps shut. An older brother would have beat that out of you.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.

We drank our whiskeys. It was the good stuff and it tasted of salt, sea, rain, wind and the Old Testament.

The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife. And all this through a lens of oleaginous Belfast rain.

A black Mercedes Benz 450 SL pulled up. It was your classic hood auto beloved of terrorists, pimps and African dictators.

He was one of those characters who felt that a weak handshake could somehow damage his authority, which meant that every handshake had to bloody hurt.

Johnnie Walker in the tea, Jim Beam in the coffee

But this was Northern Ireland in 1981 which was slightly less conservative than, say, Salem in 1692

You painted it pink?' Price asked with a grin. 'That’s lavender, you colour-blind eejit,' I said. McCallister saw that Price clearly hadn’t got the message yet. 'Hey lads, you know why Price nearly failed the police entrance exam? He thought a polygon was a dead parrot.' The lads chuckled dutifully and somebody punched Price on the shoulder.

Keeping pigeons without a licence is illegal as well, but we can’t have people going round shooting pigeon-keepers, can we? It is the job of the RUC to enforce the law in Northern Ireland, not paramilitary groups, not vigilantes, not ‘concerned citizens’, it’s our responsibility and ours alone,” McCallister said which made me proud of him. Not quite tears-in-eyes but maybe warm-glow-in-tummy.

The problem with Double Fantasy was the arrangement whereby they alternated John Lennon tracks with Yoko Ono tracks. You couldn’t escape Yoko for more than four minutes at a time.

A cocked .38 doesn't feel the same as an unprimed revolver. The frame tightens differently, the trigger is on a hair and this tension is communicated to you and the people around you.

How do you feel about homosexuals, Mr. Scavanni?' I asked. 'I think they're great. More women for the rest of us,' he said sarcastically.

With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they'd be cooking chips at this hour was anyone's guess.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It’s part of our DNA. That’s why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.

The minutes ticked past. This is why peelers need a book. A wee paperback to stick in your pocket.

Who do you think's after you, Shane, my lad? Or is it just the dark you're afeared of?

None taken, son. I'd love to see things from your point of view but I can't get my head that far up my arse.

Don't go there, Sean. Not on a Sunday. There's no point making waves,” Crabbie said. He was as impatient as I was but maybe he was right. We drove back to the station. I poured myself a Johnnie Walker which was the general libation used to liven up the office tea. Johnnie Walker in the tea, Jim Beam in the coffee.

more guilt, guilt, guilt. That's the Irish condition.

This place was not like the Victorian Prisons of England with their imposing red-brick and neo-gothic architecture that was supposed to impress inmates with the power of the state;no, this place looked cobbled together, shoddy and temporary and the only thing it impressed upon you was how current British policy on Ireland was dominated by short-term thinking.

Jesus, what a nightmare. This was a city crucified under its own blitz. This was a city poisoning its own wells, salting its own fields, digging its own grave…