III: summer

There being no Family Guy to be found on any of the ninety-four channels available, Cass and I watch a documentary recreation of the latest scandal from the Middle East, which is the assassination of a carload of suspected terrorists by an air-to-ground missile fired from an unmanned drone airplane. An operator, sitting deep in the bowels of a destroyer, controls the drone and launches the rocket.

‘That’s complete crap,’ Cassie says. ‘Everyone knows those fuckers are sitting in a bunker in Idaho.’

Either way, this represents a remarkable feat of engineering. This latest requires the identification, targeting and assassination of a carload of human beings from a position hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles beyond the boundaries of the state in which the car motors along. This is trial, conviction and execution by remote control. At least Bin Laden got the human touch.

This is Philip K. Dick on a bad hair day. This is George Orwell suffering from migraine. This is Stanislaw Lem with a boil on his anal rim. The holiday cruise of the future involves safaris conducted from offshore destroyers, targeting carloads of suspected Muslim terrorists.

I like to imagine the operator as he sits deep in the bowels of the destroyer twiddling the buttons of his controller. This is the logic of breeding a generation of couch-bound warriors. Some day presidential candidates will be required to clear all twenty levels of ‘Apocalypse Hence III’, in one sitting and without resorting to cheats, in order to establish their credentials.

When the programme ends we flick over to the news, to see what Jean Byrne is almost wearing tonight while reading the weather report. A PR flunky for Bord Fáilte regales us with a good-vibes story about soaring tourist numbers in the wake of visits by Queen Elizabeth II and President Barack Obama.

I say, ‘Hey, how about this. We stick all the scumbags on an island, say Inishbofin, all the paedophiles and bankers and Real IRA fuckers.’

‘Bertie Ahern,’ Cass murmurs, handing across the spliff.

‘Nice. So then we sell charter cruises to tourists, who sail around the island all day lobbing rockets at them. Plus, we don’t give them any food, so they’re eating one another. The scumbags, like, not the tourists.’

‘We could film it,’ Cass says, ‘sell the broadcast rights.’

In the end we decide we want Bertie shot with bullets of his own shite, then left on a hospital trolley to rot.

Sadly, Jean Byrne is a no-show for the weather report. Maybe she turned up naked tonight.

 

 

The hospital has replaced the Ouroborous. Tendrils of rising hope and imminent annihilation mesh and interweave, colonising each floor like so much invisible poison ivy. The files I have posted spread the mutually dependent diseases of doubt and fear throughout the hospital’s catchment area.

But still they come.

They limp, hobble and shuffle, dragging their wasted limbs. They arrive leaking vital fluids, poisoned, corrupted and rotting inside. Hunched and broken, on stretchers, in wheelchairs; blind, unconscious, clinically dead.

I imagine Christ being airlifted onto the helipad, to be lowered into the hospital through a hole in the roof, thinking wistfully about nails, vinegar and the simplicity of agony. I imagine Him wearily anticipating the physical cost of performing yet another round of miracles. I see him placed with great care and tenderness on a trolley in a corridor.

But still they come.

The hospital is a vast, humid Petri-dish in which infection, disease and despair run rampant, cross-pollinating with a gleeful disregard for rules, protocols, hygiene and molecular structure. The antiseptic smell pumped through the air-conditioning is intended as a reassuring placebo. I am not reassured.

I request a meeting with my supervisor, Joe. I request, yet again, that I be allowed wear a facemask whilst going about my duties. This request is denied, on the unspoken and not unreasonable basis that it would cause the patients, their visitors and most of the staff to ask awkward questions.

‘Joe, this place is an asylum for microbes. A hospital is where airborne infections come for a little tropical R-‘n’-R. I have it on good authority that the alumni of the German measles eradication programme are planning their ten-year reunion on the fourth floor next month.’

But he’s not listening.

‘Karlsson, you know as well as I do that studies have shown a hospital to be one of the safest environments in which to work. If you want, I can print you up summaries of those reports. If that’s what it’ll take to set your mind at rest, then I’ll do it.’

I can tell by his tone that he does not expect me to agree to his proposal, that he anticipates I will accept his word as law.

‘That’d help a lot, Joe. I’d appreciate that. Would you mind? Maybe just a summary.’

He grits his teeth behind an artificially whitened smile. ‘Not in the slightest. That’s my job, to keep you happy.’

This is PC bullshit run amok. Back in the day I would have received precisely one boot in the hole followed by a warning to never darken his door again, on pain of immediate unemployment and the poverty and starvation that would inevitably ensue. But people like Joe have created the culture of political correctness, equal opportunities and affirmative action, so that people like Joe can wear ironically thick spectacles and not be hurled over the edge of a cliff into a rocky gorge.

Thus, this: he has made his bed, and so he must sleep in it.

He is my princess. I am his pea.

 

 

The old man grows frailer by the day. He says the tests are taking it out of him. This is not entirely true. He has surrendered. Instead of being bolstered by the pristine pillows, he has sunk into their depths. In the quiet hum and occasional beep of his private room he has accepted the inevitable. In a civilised society this would represent a state of grace arrived at courtesy of hard-earned wisdom.

We, however, live in an over-civilised society that celebrates above all else the illusion of perfection. It is inconvenient that old people should die and in their dying remind us of the necessity of accepting the inevitable. Thus we keep old men alive and conduct tests to allow us discover how best to prolong their torture.

The old man sucks on his Dairy Milk, a crafty gleam in his faded blue eyes.

‘Whatever happened about that old woman?’ he says. ‘Y’know, her that died, the one there was all the fuss over.’

‘There was an investigation. It proved inconclusive.’

‘Is that a fact?’ He peers at me over the rim of his blue-veined fist as he sucks on his chocolate. ‘And what exactly were they investigating?’

‘I’m not too sure. I think they thought there was something odd about the way she died.’

‘And why would they think that, now?’

‘As far as I remember there was no obvious reason why she should have died. They weren’t expecting it.’ I shrug. ‘Maybe they were just pissed off that she died before they were ready to let her go.’

He appreciates this. ‘When it’s your time, it’s your time.’

‘I don’t believe in fate.’

‘I’m not talking about fate, son. When the engine claps out, it claps out.’ He licks at his chocolate. ‘Tell me this and tell me no more. Why did they have this investigation?’

‘I got the feeling they thought someone helped her to die.’

The crafty gleam flickers again. ‘I’ve heard about that class of a thing. What’s this they call it again?’

‘Euthanasia.’

‘Aye, euthanasia.’ His chest rumbles. He meets my eye. ‘That’s a big word for a small enough thing.’

‘Not everyone thinks it’s a small thing. Some people think it’s one of the biggest things going.’

‘They’re just looking at it from the wrong angle, son. When you’re old you’re looking at the whole world through the wrong end of the telescope. Things that used to be huge, you can’t hardly see them anymore. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not old enough to have earned an opinion.’

‘I’m talking about this euthanasia caper.’

‘Oh.’ I consider. ‘I suppose it depends. Some people think it’s a civic duty, that the world would be a healthier place if everyone in it was pulling their weight. But it’s a tough one to call.’

He has finished his chocolate. He sucks his fingers one by one. ‘How would it depend?’

‘Well, some people get into so much pain they’d do anything to get out of it. But when you’re in agony, it can be hard to care about anything else.’

He nods and hands me the tub of peach yoghurt. I unpeel the lid and hand it back. He digs in and slurps down a spoonful. ‘Son, I used to care. Nowadays I couldn’t give a tinker’s damn. And I’m not in pain.’

My line for today is the inscription on the tomb of the Cretan writer, Nikos Kazantstakis: I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

 

•

 

‘How come we’re prolonging the old guy’s agony?’ Billy says.

‘He isn’t in agony. He just said, he isn’t even in pain.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Forget the old guy, Billy. What’s happening with the hospital?’

‘It’s all in hand. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘so far all I’ve heard is a load of bullshit about Herostratus and blueprints being art. And I need to know that––’

‘I know what you need. I heard you the first time.’ He shakes his head. ‘Why is this such an issue for you? How come you have such a problem delegating?’

‘It’s not that. It’s about the plausibility.’

‘Trust me,’ he says, ‘it works. Okay?’

‘That’s not good enough.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because everything’s different now.’

‘Different how?’

‘You don’t see it?’

‘See what?’

‘It’s too big. Blowing up a hospital, like.’

‘Too big for what?’

‘To allow Karlsson to just walk away at the end. Once he’s done here, he’s done. No sequel, no series.’

‘I don’t follow,’ he says.

I take a deep breath. ‘In the first draft, okay, Karlsson might or might not have been guilty of euthanasia. And he might have killed Cassie, it was never fully decided either way. But this time? He’s blowing up a whole hospital and making a big deal about it, like he’s some kind of Robin Hood.’

‘And?’

‘There’s a pay-off expected, Billy. Like the femme fatales in film noir. They get all the best lines, get to look all sexy and shit, but they need to go out in a blaze of glory at the end. It’s natural justice.’

‘Bullshit it’s natural justice. It’s you fucking around and bending the story out of shape.’

‘Into shape.’

‘Because that’s what people expect.’

‘That’s the game, Billy. Giving people what they want.’

Here follows a heated exchange about the pros and cons of writing a conventionally conservative crime novel that adheres to the paradigm of three-act classical tragedy.

‘Whoa,’ Billy says. ‘You never told me it was a crime novel.’

‘We’re blowing up a hospital, Billy.’

‘So you’ll kill off Karlsson just because some assholes can’t handle the truth.’

‘You don’t see it? It’s Karlsson who’ll kill off Karlsson. The guy believes he’s doing everyone a favour by blowing up the building, right? Except his disease is logic, and by his own logic he sees himself as the incarnation of everything the hospital stands for. So he has to go down with it, the captain with his ship. Jimmy Cagney, top o’ the world.’

‘So what happens to me?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘If Karlsson goes, where’s that leave me?’

‘I don’t know. Where are you now?’

‘I’m here with you,’ he says, ‘planning to blow up a hospital. But where’ll I be when the hospital’s gone?’

‘Don’t lay this trip on me, Billy. You’re the one came up with the big idea, and you’re the one who decided he wanted to write it all by himself. It’s not my bag to worry about what happens after it comes off. If it comes off.’

‘It’ll work, don’t you worry about that.’

‘Great. All I need to know is that it’s actually going to happen, and that it’ll be plausible when it does.’

‘Don’t sweat it,’ he says. ‘You’ll get your pound of flesh.’

‘Fuck you, Billy. I told you from the start that this had to be a commercial prospect. You knew that. And if it’s going to be commercial, we’re going to need justice and redemption and all the rest of that horseshit. Crime and fucking punishment, Billy.’

He stares. ‘You just don’t give a shit, do you?’

‘You want to know who I give a shit about? Debs and Rosie, that’s who. Except every second I spend on you and your story is a second I’ll never get back with them. So if I’m going to do this, you can be damn sure I’m going to make it worth their while in the long run. That’s my pound of flesh. You don’t like it? Then take a fucking hike. I’ve better books I could be writing.’

He snickers. ‘Do you, though?’

‘Between you and me, Billy, I’ve written better than you out of my system to get at a story.’

‘Except I’m still here,’ he says. ‘I’m still here.’

 

•

 

In our favour is the sheer size of the hospital. The smug arrogance inherent in its vast scale. Pride comes before a fall, etc. ‘The bigger they are, the harder they fall’ is entirely appropriate when applied to a large building.

A hospital is not a leaning tower in Pisa. A hospital cannot function at an angle. The weight of all that massed concrete means one thing: once it starts to go, it’s gone.

We need to think positive, people. We cannot despair when we look upon the hospital’s monolith. We cannot allow ourselves to be blinded by the sunset blazing upon its windows. We cannot be dazzled by its chrome and steel, its buffed and shining floors.

Achilles had his heel, Troy its wooden horse. The terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Centre knew their Homer. Ozymandias still drifts to the four corners of the compass, reduced now to dust, sand and fragments of memory. Could Victoria have ever imagined that the blood-reddened map of the world might be reduced to Gibraltar’s apes and the ghettoes of East Belfast? Even the most paranoid pharaoh could not have dreamt the living nightmare of a tourist economy.

It is the sheer size of an empire that allows cracks to form and germs to fester.

Thus, this: it is the vast volume capacity of the hospital that will prove its undoing. We need to start thinking inside the box. We need to start thinking small. We need to start thinking molecular.

A question: what is it that exists on every floor of every hospital, in every last nook and cranny, that must by necessity exist in the lungs, heart and bloodstream of each and every living human being?

My line for today is, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! (Percy Shelley, ‘Ozymandias’)

 

 

Cassie discovers my folder of notes, which includes the work-in-progress magnum opus, Sermo Vulgus. She stumbled across the manuscript, she says, while dusting the spare bedroom I use as a study-cum-office.

‘You were dusting inside the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet?’

But she’s not listening. Incandescent with rage, she waves the manuscript in my face. ‘How dare you put in that sex crap?’

‘What sex crap?’

She refers to the pages in her trembling hand. ‘“Give me handjobs, blowjobs and anal sex. Offer me your armpits, you wanton fuckers. Let us lacerate the sides of virgins with gaping—”’

‘Right, yeah. Well,’ I say, ‘it’s supposed to be an honest document of how––’

‘Who the fuck gave you the right to be honest about me?’

This is a valid question. All the truly valid questions are unanswerable.

While I am not answering, I think about how she does not ask why someone might want to blow up a hospital. If Cass sincerely believes that Sermo Vulgus represents the febrile outworkings of my diseased imagination, why then does she not query the possibility of my assistance in suspected cases of euthanasia detailed in the accompanying notes?

My theory is that Cassie’s reaction is symptomatic of the narcissism that plagues modern civilisation. Today a Dutch masterpiece is reduced to the status of a chin being stroked in a fogged shaving mirror: ‘Mmm, yes, but what does it say to me?’

The Sistine Chapel has been re-veneered with reflective tiles. The Louvre has become a fairground Hall of Mirrors. The world is a looking-glass, and we Alice.

This is a regression that will ultimately lead to the narcissism of the infant. The baby is so self-aware – and so only self-aware – that it has no need of a mirror, and no conception of what a reflection might be.

‘This is the last fucking straw, K. That’s it. I’ve fucking had enough.’

She throws the manuscript in my face, not neglecting to include a contemptuous wristy flourish. She flounces out of the room. She soon flounces back.

‘Don’t think I’m even worried about that crap being published,’ she says. This represents the second negative critique of my work, one courtesy of an ex-mechanic, the other from a practicing physiotherapist. It would appear I am missing my target audience. ‘It’s the fucking betrayal that kills me,’ she says. ‘Do you have the slightest fucking idea of what I’m talking about?’

In the prevailing spirit of honesty I am compelled to say no, I don’t.

She shakes her head. Her mouth drops open. For a moment she threatens speechlessness. Then she falls back on her old reliable. ‘Who gave you the right to be honest about me?’

‘I dunno. The same guy who gave you the right to be dishonest with all the rest of the seven billion liars?’

This buys me a goodly portion of furious, albeit wordless, disbelief. Then she drops to her knees, hauls a sports bag out from under the bed and marches off to pack.

I go into the kitchen and check the calendar.

Yep, it’s Tuesday.

 

 

I let her cool down for a week before ringing her mobile.

‘What do you want to do about this wedding?’ I say.

‘K, you’re a fucking space cadet. No kidding. If there was a hotline for nutbags, I’d be on it dobbing you in.’

‘You’ll be miserable on your own at a wedding.’

‘I’ll be miserable if you’re there.’

‘So either way you’ll be miserable. My way, you get to take it out on me. And don’t shoot the messenger, okay, but if you turn up on your tod they’ll just reckon you can’t pull a bloke.’

There is quiet. There is shallow breathing. ‘K, seriously – what’s going on with that manuscript? You can’t be serious about that shit.’

‘It’s not supposed to be a fucking novel or anything, Cass. I’m the one who should be pissed off here. That was my fucking diary you were reading.’ I find that Cassie responds well to the hint of repressed emotion suggested by the judicious use of expletives. ‘You’ve some fucking cheek,’ I say, ‘rummaging through my drawers.’

More silence and shallow breathing. Then a stilted giggle. ‘You should be so lucky,’ she says.

I snort sarcastically. Then I breathe out. There will be some grovelling to be improvised when next we meet, but the worst of the crisis is over. We are no longer in breach. We are Code Blue. We are stood down, at ease, waiting for the other to speak first.

‘Give me a buzz,’ I say, ‘if you change your mind about the wedding.’

‘K?’

‘What?’

‘Did you ever think we’d get married?’

‘No.’

 

 

Cassie rings. I am permitted to accompany her to the wedding. I am not allowed to pick her up beforehand. Instead I am ordered to meet her at the church. Afterwards, at the reception, she ignores me and mingles with the friends and family of the bride. She has had a hard time of it recently, so I make it known that I’m cutting her some slack and spend what amounts to a working day propped at the bar alone. Not long after midnight, she weaves unsteadily through the throng, a sheepish-looking guy in tow wearing an exquisitely tailored suit.

She says, ‘K, meet Tony. Tony, K.’

‘Alright, K?’

‘Tony?’ I say. ‘The Tony? Ex-Tony?’

Cassie nods. ‘We’ve had a good chat upstairs,’ she says, ‘and we’ve decided we’re giving it another go.’

‘Go?’

‘We’re getting back together. Just so you know.’

‘Cass,’ I say, ‘that’s a hell of a lot of slack.’

 

 

The point of the exercise is not to demolish a hospital. It is to demonstrate how it can be done and to highlight the vulnerability of hospitals.

Unfortunately, in the process we may have to actually bring down a hospital.

The destruction of a hospital should not be news. Hospitals are bombed and torched every day. We do not hear about this because these hospitals house brown people, people with slanted eyes, and people who may or may not wash as often as creamy-pink people with rounded eyes who have access to an excess of running water.

For this we have our old friend Perfidious Albion to thank. During the Boer War (1899-1902), the British army targeted the civilian population as a means of bringing the elusive guerrillas to heel. One result of this policy was the concentration camp. Another was the legitimisation of the civilian as target. Despite the best efforts of the Black-and-Tans during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), this policy did not really catch on until WWII (1939-1945). Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and subsequently Palestine, Cambodia, East Timor, Chechnya, Northern Ireland, the Balkans and the Twin Towers, et al, bear witness to this policy.

Perversely, it was the British nurse Florence Nightingale who invented the concept of the modern hospital during the Crimean War (1854-1856).

Back then, the hospital was regarded as an innovative step on the path to universal compassion. Today, in many parts of the world, it is a means of housing the non-contributors in a place where they can be exterminated with a single payload.

Often these non-contributors are in a hospital because they have stepped on a land mine. This is because the land mine was not designed to kill. It was designed to wound and maim, to create cripples and amputees who are useless in terms of the war effort, but still need to be fed, drugged and cared for.

There are nations who fear hospitals the way cattle fear the slaughterhouse. There are men and women whose role is to poison the food, water and minds of non-participating civilians. There are men and women whose role and perhaps vocation it is to blow up hospitals.

What may or may not provoke outrage is the destruction from within of a hospital tending to creamy-pink persons, with said destruction instigated by a creamy-pink person.

Look for the enemy within. From ’flu germs to Quislings to the planet’s molten core, the enemy is always within.

Mankind nurtures the seeds of its own destruction. ‘Mankind’ was an oxymoron long before it was coined. ‘Mankind’ is the unkindest cut of all. Hospitals are mere Band-Aids on the gushing artery of de-oxygenated poison that is the human condition.

 

•

 

‘Okay,’ I say. I put the sheets of paper to one side, start building a smoke. ‘I like all this, you know that.’

‘But?’

‘But we’re still not getting any practical intel on how you’re going to blow the hospital.’

‘Change the fucking record, man. You’re stuck in a groove.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? How long have we been doing this now?’

He shrugs. ‘A month?’

‘Nearly five weeks. Five weeks, Billy, we’ve been dancing around blowing up this hospital, and you still haven’t worked it out.’

‘I have, you know. I just haven’t told you.’

‘I’m not talking about the technical details. I’m talking about what the hospital represents.’

A frown. ‘But we know all that. It’s civilisation at its best, except it’s undermining society by keeping the sick and weak alive, yadda-ya, especially at a time when we can’t afford hospitals anymore. So we––’

‘That’s just the McGuffin, Billy. The bullshit to keep the intellectuals on board. But it’s not what the hospital is really about.’

‘So what is it about?’

‘Well . . . I don’t know if you remember me saying, but when I wrote that first draft I was, y’know . . .’

‘Depressed, yeah. Getting shit out of your system. So what?’

‘I was sick, Billy. Depression’s a disease.’

‘I’m not saying it’s not, but . . .’ He comes up short, the Newman-blue eye ablaze. ‘Fuck.’

‘What?’

‘The hospital,’ he says. ‘It’s you. All that wank about sick-building syndrome, it’s all about you being sick.’

‘Not exactly. It’s more about me getting cured.’

‘So Karlsson . . .’

‘The old people he killed off, they were the fucked-up thoughts I was having, y’know, self-harm, overdose, all this. So I sent Karlsson into the hospital to eradicate them, wipe them out. Except a lot of other dark stuff came up. The pervy stuff, the Hitler thing, the Spartans, sharks . . .’

‘That’s why you let him get away with it,’ he says. ‘Why you gave him a free pass at the end.’

‘Maybe, I don’t know. But the point is, as bad as it got, as extreme as Karlsson was, it never occurred to him to actually blow up the hospital.’

‘You’re saying you were depressed but not so badly you wanted to end it.’

‘If I’d been that badly off,’ I say, ‘I wouldn’t have been able to write the story, would I?’

‘I don’t suppose so.’

‘What got me thinking,’ I say, ‘was when you asked me about the old guy, why we just didn’t get rid of him. Put him out of his pain.’

‘But he isn’t in pain this time.’

‘And maybe that’s the whole point. I’m past all that shit now. I don’t need to purge.’

He cocks his head, scratches his nose. Then he makes a production number of rolling a smoke, lighting up. All done without breaking eye contact. He exhales and says, ‘You don’t want to blow the hospital.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘I’m afraid it is,’ he says. A bitter undertone. ‘You can’t be a little bit pregnant, can you? We either blow it or we don’t.’

‘Look, I understand where you’re coming from. You need the hospital to blow to make the story big enough to be worth publishing. Except I need a happy ending, for myself, because the whole process of redrafting has made me realise how far I’ve come in the last five years. Y’know, Debs and Rosie, finally getting a book published . . .’ I shrug. ‘I’d be lying to myself, and to anyone who read it, if I made it out to be this dark bullshit just for the sake of it.’

‘You’re a fucking sap,’ he says.

‘Try having a kid, man, see what it does to you.’ The words are out before I realise what I’m saying. He flinches. ‘Anyway, that’s why I need to know what you’re doing with the hospital. How you’re going about it.’

‘So you can bend an exploding hospital into a happy ending.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it, yeah.’

‘Houston,’ he says, ‘we have a problem.’

‘Not necessarily. We could––’

He holds up a hand. ‘The problem,’ he says, ‘is too many fucking metaphors. I mean, the hospital’s 9/11, okay, I get that. And it’s a totem for a dangerously compassionate society, sure, and a symbol for the building boom that bankrupted the country . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘Seriously,’ he says, ‘it’s a wonder the thing hasn’t collapsed already under the weight of all these fucking metaphors. Except now you’re tossing another one onto the pile, the hospital’s you on top of everything else? I mean, give us a break.’

‘Back off, Billy. The hospital’s my idea, okay? I built it. You’re like some toddler in crèche, he sees a tower of blocks, his one big idea is to knock it down.’

‘You built fuck-all,’ he says. ‘The hospital was already there. You just started throwing all these metaphors at it, hoping some of the shit would stick.’

‘So build your own hospital, blow that one up.’

‘No, I like your hospital,’ he says. ‘All I’m saying is, you’ve wrapped it in too much horseshit.’

‘You’re telling me to pick a metaphor.’

‘I’m saying, no metaphors.’ A wicked grin. ‘Absolute fucking zero, man. I say we blow it for real.’

 

•

 

Frankie rings. He sounds anxious. We hook up in a half-empty pub with blackened beams and exposed brickwork, rough wooden floors and rickety tables. This pub required six months’ work to recreate a look nobody wanted when there was no choice in the matter.

Frankie is halfway down his pint when I arrive. It is not his first. In his eyes swirls a toxic cocktail of fear, rage and weary cunning. A fox, skulking in some low culvert as the hounds spill howling down the slope. I slide up onto the barstool next to him and give the barman the V-for-victory sign, which here translates as ‘Two stout, please’. Frankie’s thick forefinger tappity-taps the counter. ‘Did you hear?’ he says.

‘Hear what?’

‘Some fuckers got their hands on hospital files. Word is, they’re suing big time.’

‘Jesus.’ I give a low whistle. ‘How’d they get them?’

‘Fucked if I know. They’ve called an internal inquiry.’

‘What’s that to do with you?’

‘They were supposed to be torched. Shredded first, then torched.’

‘So?’

‘K, man, the fucking incinerator’s in the basement.’

‘I know, I’m down there all the time.’

‘Yeah, but what I’m saying is, the basement was on my watch the day the files were supposed to be torched. And I didn’t see a thing.’

‘How could you? I mean, if they weren’t torched, how were you supposed to see it happen?’

‘You’re not getting it.’ He slurps down some of his fresh pint. ‘The way it is now, I can’t say for definite if they were torched or not.’

‘That’s not your problem, Frankie. The problem there is that your crew doesn’t have anyone manning the security cameras all the time, like they’re supposed to.’

‘That’s just it, though. The company put that policy in place on the basis of my report. At the time they were delighted, it cut costs, it was kudos for Frankie. But now they’re blaming me for the cameras being unmanned.’

‘Whoa. That’s bang out of order.’

‘Yeah, but that’s how it is.’

‘Fuck. That’s heavy fucking shit, man.’

This won’t look good on Frankie’s CV. His plans for setting up his own security firm are going up in smoke for the want of a batch of torched files. He slurps down the rest of his pint, signals for two more.

‘What can I do?’ I say.

‘One of your boys, the porters, was supposed to torch the files. I need to find out who it was.’

‘One of our boys stole them?’

‘I’m not saying anyone stole them. Who the fuck’d want a load of old hospital files, for fuck’s sakes?’ He makes to spit, then realises he is indoors and swallows instead. ‘I’m saying some fucker didn’t do his job and left them lying around, instead of torching them when I could see him do it.’

‘Relax, man. This isn’t your problem. What you need to do is get your union rep on the case, turn it around.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘The problem isn’t at the point of incineration, it’s at the point of instigation. If the assholes with the scalpels did their job properly, there’d be no need to burn any files in the first place. Am I right?’

Frankie nods gloomily.

‘Don’t take this lying down,’ I urge. ‘Don’t let them shit all over you. You’re the victim here.’

‘Y’think?’

‘Screw the rep. If I was you, I’d get myself a good brief, tell him everything. And I’d do it now, before the shit hits the fan. Get your retaliation in first.’

Frankie likes the sound of this. He orders a brace of Jameson to go with the pints. Our conversation moves in circles, developing its own gravity as it orbits disaster. It gains momentum as it plots a course around a black hole of despair.

‘Frankie, man, always assume everyone else is an idiot. Actually, no – always assume everyone else is an idiot engaged in dragging you back down to their level.’ I am slightly drunk and on a roll. ‘Always assume that everyone is such an idiot that they don’t realise the effort of dragging you backwards takes the same effort as moving forward to engage on your terms.’

Frankie considers this. ‘So if they call me in, what should I say?’

‘Not a word. That’s what you’re paying your brief for. Why should you have to worry about thinking when you’re paying a guy good money to do it for you?’

‘Fair point.’ He stands up.

‘Staying for another?’

‘Yeah. Nice one.’

He goes to the bathroom, squeezing my shoulder as he passes. This is my cue to feel guilty. I deliberately fluff my line. I am cotton-mouthed under the spotlight, thinking about Tommo and dear departed Austin. I am blinded by the footlights, thinking about the hospital authorities fire-fighting on two fronts, external and internal.

A hospital in dispute with its security staff is akin to the human body battling the AIDS virus. I look into the future and picture airborne seeds of fear, confusion, dissent and revolt wafting down corridors and up elevator shafts. I see unmanned security desks, careless spot-checks and laissez faire attitudes to the implementation of basic security requirements.

I believe I might swoon, although that may well be the effects of the whiskey.

 

 

The latest is that Frankie gets suspended on full pay pending an inquiry. The union calls a meeting. This is akin to cocking the hammer of a gun. The click is an audible threat.

The hospital board does not put its hands up and pee its collective pants.

The union squeezes the trigger. One out, all out. This is democracy in action.

The theory of democracy holds that the most wretched is rightfully equal in status to the most powerful.

This is history.

This is bunk.

Democracy is political theory reaching back 5,000 years to the pyramids for inspiration, an apex dependent on a broad foundation for its very existence. It is the few bearing down on the millions, and the millions feeling proud that they have provided an unparalleled view of the universe for the few. Democracy is a blizzard of options so thick it obscures the fact that there is no choice.

The cradles of democracy, London and Philadelphia, deployed genocide as a means of social engineering, in Australia and North America respectively, a full two hundred years before Hitler and Stalin began their pissing contest in Poland.

It is no coincidence that democracy evolved in tandem with the Industrial Revolution. Democracy and capitalism are symbiotic parasites. Democracy’s truth is not one man, one vote; it is one man, one dollar. Democracy’s truth is the abrogation of the individual’s rights in favour of collective procrastination, while those running the show exercise censorious control on behalf of the nervous disposition of the collective will.

Democracy’s truth is Frankie suspended on half pay pending an inquiry.

Democracy has replaced religion as the opiate du jour. Democracy is the ostrich with its head in the sand and its ass in the air, begging to be taken in traditional pirate fashion. It is the subjugation of the people, by the people, for the people. It is the inalienable right to purchase your personalised interpretation of liberalised slavery. It is the right to sell your soul to the highest bidder. It is the right to pay for the privilege of being alive.

In Ireland, for historical reasons, democracy’s truth is one man, one mortgage. It is also one woman, one mortgage. Most often, given the size of the mortgage, it is one woman and man, one mortgage.

For some reason most dictators fail to realise that the trick to democracy is to have the slaves buy and sell themselves. The trick is to incentivise slaves to invest in their slavery, to pay for their own prisons, shackle themselves to brick and mortar.

The trick to democracy is in ensuring the slaves’ capacity for self-regulation is not taken for granted. The trick is to maintain the healthy tension between democracy and capitalism, so that one does not undermine or overshadow the other. The trick is to ensure that the slaves’ investment retains the illusion of value. Failure to do so will result in the slaves questioning the worth of their dollar and/or vote. The answer to this question is delivered in blood.

Masters of the Universe, do not say you weren’t warned.

Frankie, the half-pay sop notwithstanding, is a man paralysed by the conflicting impulses of rage and terror as he contemplates a future boiled down to an uncertain tomorrow. Charged with adrenaline, at the very limit of his chain, he is braced for fight or flight. But this unnatural condition cannot hold. Rage and terror will cancel one another out, leaving a vacuum that nature abhors and an empty vessel full of noise.

What sound will emerge? What fury?

Frankie, my friend, my pawn, my hero: now is the time to signify. Now is the time to reset the dial. Now is the time for absolute zero, to raze the pyramids to the sand and start all over again.

My line for today comes courtesy of Miguel de Unamuno: A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.

 

•

 

‘So just to clarify,’ I say. ‘You’re making a martyr of Frankie. Sending him in to do your dirty work.’

‘Let’s just say I’m keeping my options open.’

‘Bullshit. Frankie’s this guy you were talking about, the one we’re all on board with. Except now he’s going to start doing stuff we don’t like.’

‘Frankie dug his own grave,’ Billy says, ‘when he accepted the promotion after Tommo and Austin got fired.’

‘Strictly speaking, you’re the one who screwed Tommo and Austin. That was one of your sections, if memory serves.’

‘You’d love it if that were true, wouldn’t you? That people do exactly what you expect, just because you put them in a certain scenario.’ He shakes his head. ‘All I did was put temptation in Frankie’s way. It was up to him to decide which way to jump.’

‘Horseshit. You wrote it, and now you’re putting it all on Frankie because you’re hoping to slide out when he blows up the hospital. What’s the plan, send him in wearing a dynamite waistcoat?’

‘Too crude,’ he says. ‘Anyway, you think Frankie’s got a death wish? That he’s some kind of mental defective we can just wrap in explosive and point him at the A&E? No chance. The whole point to Frankie is he likes what he has, and all he wants is to keep it that way. That’s why Frankie’s dangerous.’

He takes a bite from his blueberry muffin, talking while he chews, stray crumbs mortaring the pages on the table. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘you obviously don’t have a clue as to who Frankie is. If I was to suggest to Frankie that he strap on a bomb, he’d take my head clean off.’

‘So you’re not doing it directly. You’re just building a maze, and Frankie’s your rat.’

‘You’re the one claiming you built the hospital,’ he says. ‘You’re the one put Frankie in it. All I’m doing is giving him some options.’

‘Just so long as all of those options further your agenda.’

‘Our agenda,’ he says, and his chiding tone rankles.

‘Just one thing,’ I say.

‘What’s that?’

‘This absolute zero you keep talking about. I don’t think you know what it means.’

He shrugs. ‘I’ve a pretty fair idea.’

‘No, you don’t. You’re confusing it with Ground Zero, except you think it’s some kind of less than zero, some ultimate zero where everything’s burned down so it can start all over again. Except absolute zero is a measurement of temperature, Billy. It’s the coldest of the cold, where everything gets frozen, I mean energy itself freezes, so nothing works and nothing changes.’

He nods. ‘Feel better now?’ he says. ‘Feel all warm and fuzzy and superior?’

I do, as it happens. ‘The kicker,’ I say, leaning back in my chair, ‘is absolute zero is a theory. No one’s ever achieved it. So maybe, if you’re planning on blowing the hospital for real like you say, you might want to find another snappy catch-phrase.’

He pops home the last of the blueberry muffin, savouring it as he chews. Then he leans forward, brushes the crumbs from his pages. ‘My house,’ he says, ‘my rules.’

 

•

 

My instinct is to tell Frankie to relax. Some vestigial trace of compassion prompts me to reassure Frankie he’ll be okay. Some perverse urging encourages me to tell him that any and all internal inquiries will be consigned to the back burner when the hospital keels over in crippled conflagration.

But I don’t want to make any promises I cannot keep. I am not certain that my plan will work. Bringing down a large hospital is no mean feat. My theory is not flawless. The margin of error is wide, and the process will be attempted while it is still at the experimental stage.

It may well be that the effort will suffice. It may well be, as the modern Olympians suggest, that it is not the winning but the taking part that matters. But I cannot depend on this. A bungled attempt to incinerate a hospital could be easily covered up. If a roomful of monkeys at typewriters will eventually emerge with a facsimile of ‘Hamlet’, a health board executive will eventually devise a plausible excuse for the presence of copious quantities of silane gas in the basement of a hospital.

This excuse will not, presumably, include a footnote on the manipulation of requisition invoices by a person or persons unknown bent on ordering canisters of silane gas for a hospital, for fear that pertinent questions will be asked about the chain of command, accountability, and the cavalier waste of valuable resources.

Silane, a man-made gas, does not occur naturally in hospital basements. It was first produced in 1857 by F. Wohler and H. Buff by reacting HCl(aq) with Al-Si alloy, or Mn2Si. Silane, SiH4, is also called silicon tetrahydride, silicane and monosilicane. It is a colourless flammable gas with a repulsive odour. Its physical properties are: molecular mass 32.1179 g/mol; melting point -185ºC; boiling point -111.8ºC. It is insoluble in water and most organic solvents. Its density is 1.3128 g/L at 25ºC and 1 atm, which is 11 percent denser than air.

Silane is used to produce ultra-pure silicon for use in semiconductor applications. More importantly, for our purpose at least, is the fact that silane is a pyrophoric gas. This means that silane ignites upon contact with air.

In theory, if enough silane gas is packed into a large enough space – a vacuum-sealed underground chamber, say – it will represent a time-bomb just waiting for a breath of fresh air to set it off. If said underground chamber backs onto a support column of the building in which it is housed, then the combusting gas may or may not expend sufficient energy to impact negatively on said support column, thus causing the building to keel over at an unsustainable angle. Meanwhile, said silane gas will be ripping through the tilting edifice, igniting wherever it finds oxygen, which will be everywhere, including the internal organs of human beings.

The means of introducing the silane into the underground chamber involves drilling a hole into the chamber, plugging the hole with a large rubber cork and evacuating the air inside, then filtering the silane from its canister through the cork via airtight tubing welded around the large syringe piercing the cork.

This process is time intensive, although it is no less consuming than jogging, collecting stamps or building ships in bottles.

My line for today is, Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. (Matthew 24:2)

 

 

Sermo Vulgus: A Novel (Excerpt)

 

Cassie, hope is but a piker’s bet until such time as hopelessness has first been admitted. Do not believe everything you read: there were atheists in the trenches.

Cassie, I am rent for the want of an intimate touch. Bring on the barnyard animals: let roosters crow and donkeys bray, let us couple beyond endurance in the shit-spattered straw where swine have rooted in their own filth. Let us wallow naked in honesty’s squalor, shroud ourselves in failure’s stench, cake our assholes with the waste that comes of giving without need.

Only the future can judge us now. Close your eyes and imagine what you will: censor nothing. Pucker your full, perfect lips and breathe life again into the tortured lungs of Prometheus. Let us steal fire all over again, for fire stutters and never becomes whole.

This is my greed and this is my shame, that I long to be always incomplete. I wouldn’t change it now, he said, not with the fire in me now.

Let us be ash and blind butterflies on the wing, Cassie. Let us be black snow settling soundless on the cusp of always.

Cassie, you said irony is a sharp tool but a paper-thin shield.

 

•

 

‘I thought we were dumping the Cassie novel,’ I say.

Billy shrugs. ‘Now that she’s gone, it’s starting to make sense.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, not sense, exactly. I mean, the excerpts are still rubbish. I’m saying it makes sense to maintain Cassie’s presence, even if it’s just, y’know, by lamenting her absence or some shit.’

‘Fair enough.’ I light a cigarette, toss the Zippo down. ‘So what d’you think, will she dob you in to the cops this time?’

‘Hard to say,’ he says. ‘We were getting on a lot better this time around, until the miscarriage anyway. And she’s got Tony, so it’s not like she’s a woman scorned or anything.’

‘How’re you making out?’

‘Good days, bad days. You know how it goes.’

‘Put a tune to it and I’ll sing along. Listen,’ I say, ‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘What’s that?’

‘About Cassie, and the, y’know.’

‘Miscarriage,’ he says. ‘It’s okay to say it out loud.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, and don’t take this the wrong way . . .’

‘Spit it out, man.’

‘Well, I was thinking you could channel all that energy, the loss and the pain, make it a creative thing. It sounds a bit crass, I know, but––’

‘No,’ he says. ‘That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. It’s like Cyril Connolly said, the pram in the hall is the death of art. So,’ he shrugs, not meeting my eye, ‘I’m thinking that maybe no pram means I can really push this. For now, anyway.’

‘Fair play,’ I say. ‘That takes balls, man. If I was where you are right now, I wouldn’t be able to––’

‘It’s why I want to blow the hospital for real,’ he says. ‘No prams, pre-natal classes or delivery ward, no incubators, no nothing.’

‘No physiotherapists,’ I say.

‘You think this is about Cassie?’ he says.

‘Isn’t it?’

He shakes his head. ‘It’s about being honest,’ he says. ‘Being true to the spirit of it. I mean, what are we doing wasting our fucking time writing about this shit when we could be doing it?’

‘You’ve lost the plot, Billy. I mean, you’ve literally gone and lost the fucking plot.’

‘You’re the one,’ he says, ‘whinging about having to write comedy crime fiction when the country’s going down the tubes. All I’m saying is, stop writing it and just do it.’ He shrugs. ‘If you’re worried about being implicated,’ he says, ‘I can always say it was loosely based on an original story. Like, those guys who flew into the Twin Towers, that shit was in a Stephen King book years before.’

‘You’re insane,’ I say. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’re not entertaining, but you’re Section Eight. And you need to think about seeing someone, I don’t know, maybe a grief counsellor. There’s some serious issues you need to work out.’

‘As opposed to you,’ he says, fiddling with the Zippo, ‘sitting here only fantasising about blowing up a hospital.’ He flicks the lid of the Zippo, cranks the wheel. A faint pop as the flame blossoms.

‘Boom,’ he says.

 

•

 

‘Your health is your wealth, son,’ the old man says. He does not meet my eye saying this.

‘So they say.’

A hospital is the last bastion of unnecessary kindness. This is not necessarily a good thing. Kindness is chocolate, a sweet treat that is debilitating when indulged to excess. In the novel Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk had his Space Monkeys undermine America’s unhealthy obsession with excessive personal wealth by vaporising financial institutions. Thus it is logical that we should vaporise health institutions in order to undermine our unhealthy obsession with excessive health.

But I understand that the ex-mechanic, this shrivelled expression of humanity, is having second thoughts. I appreciate that he is contemplating one last overhaul in a desperate attempt to jump-start his engine. This is his choice and privilege. He is entitled to renege on the unspoken agreement he has with Death, to welch on their non-verbal contract.

‘The young fella came to see me yesterday,’ he says.

‘About time.’

He nods, sucking on his chocolate. ‘Brought the nippers with him. Three of them, they were bouncing on the bed, pillow-fights, the works. I wasn’t in the bed at the time, but still.’

‘That must have been nice.’

‘It was. I was dreading them coming, but then when they got here . . .’

‘Nothing like a few kids to brighten up a place.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, son. Those wee shites, they’d have bounced on the bed whether I was in it or not. The young fella’s breeding savages out there.’ A twinkle in the faded blue eyes I haven’t seen for some time. ‘But it’s not the nippers I’m talking about.’

‘No?’

‘It’s just, when you’re on your own, and thinking, you’d be thinking things you wouldn’t if there was people around.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Ridiculous things,’ he says.

‘Sure, but if you can’t be daft in the privacy of your own mind . . .’

‘It’s not like that, son. I mean, maybe the Pope changed his mind on this one too, but there was a time when thinking something was a sin in itself. Going ahead and acting on it, that was just taking the piss.’

‘I couldn’t say for certain,’ I say, ‘but I don’t think he’s changed his mind on that one. But for what’s it worth, I think that’s all a bunch of bullshit. The whole point of having free will is you get to make decisions. You can’t tell your mind what to think, it’s your mind that tells you what to think. But you can tell your body what to do, or what it shouldn’t do.’

He laughs. Phlegm rumbles in his chest like faint thunder breaking. ‘You can try, son. You get to a certain age, you can try and tell your body what to do.’ A wan smile. Perhaps even now his mind is allowing the memories to spool, those glory days when his body obeyed instructions. This may or may not be a good sign. This may or may not represent the final run-through, the slow-motion passage of his life before his eyes, the settling of accounts, the last balancing of the books in which acts are allotted their contexts, reasons and justifications. The subconscious dialogue of confession and absolution, which may or may not represent the longing for more than enough that is the defining characteristic of humanity.

This may or may not be a jump-started engine growling a throaty roar.

‘Any word back from those tests yet?’ I say.

‘There’s loads of words alright,’ he says. ‘Some of them I even understand.’ He rubs his fingers together, collecting melted chocolate in a little ball, which he then wipes on the sheet. ‘Not giving a damn, son – that’s a tough one to keep up. The young fella, he was near crying when he left yesterday.’

‘No son wants to see his father in hospital.’

He snorts. ‘What’s wrong with him is, if I go, he has to go too. Not straightaway, but sometime.’

‘I hear you.’

‘What I never realised, starting out, was how you never stop looking after them.’

I hand him the opened carton of peach yoghurt. He looks up, the faded blue eyes crackling fiercely. ‘Are you with me, son?’

I nod. ‘You’re the boss,’ I say.

 

 

Joe, my prematurely grey supervisor, calls me into his office.

‘This is strictly routine, Karlsson. I don’t want you to think you’re under suspicion or anything.’ He gestures at the pile of buff-coloured manila folders on his desk. ‘It’s just that I have orders to interview everyone.’

‘About what?’

‘I’m sure you’ve heard about the files that went missing, that they fell into the wrong hands.’

‘Loose lips sink ships.’

‘Exactly. So what have you heard?’

‘That files went missing and now some people are trying to sue the hospital.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, that’s about the height of it. No one ever tells the porters anything.’

‘It was one of the porters who was supposed to shred and then burn those files.’

‘So I hear. To me, that’s a dereliction of duty.’

He thinks about this. ‘And none of the lads have been acting weird lately?’

‘They’re hospital porters, Joe. They live at the bottom of the shit-pile, barrowing loads of shit around, all day, every day. Removing the occasional corpse to relieve the boredom. I mean, define weird.’

‘Well, has anyone been acting strangely? Suspiciously?’

‘Everything’s relative, Joe. Some people might say that not shredding and burning files is a normal, unsuspicious activity.’

He lolls back in his leather chair, studying me shrewdly through his ironically thick spectacles. ‘I’m not asking you to snitch on anyone,’ he says. ‘But are you trying to tell me something?’

‘Nope.’

‘We both know that it only takes one bad apple to ruin the barrel.’

Right now I am suffering from cliché overload. I am being invisibly electrocuted by twee aphorisms.

‘Joe, with all due respect, shouldn’t you already know who was responsible for shredding those files? Shouldn’t there be a paper trail?’

He shifts uncomfortably in the orthopaedic chair. ‘Let’s just say that the system they had in place lacked cohesion, and that steps have been taken to implement a new system that has in-built accountability.’

‘Well, that’s something at least. I’d hate to lose my job because the suits upstairs haven’t the wit to keep an eye on sensitive material.’

‘How do you know the files contained sensitive material?’

‘No one sues because the spuds were too hard, Joe.’

He thinks this over. ‘Karlsson, I’m getting the impression here – and maybe I’m wrong – but I’m getting the impression that you have something you want to tell me. And I’ve told you already, whatever is said between these four walls remains confidential.’

‘Wouldn’t that make for a pretty pointless investigation? I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, but where’s the point in saying what I have to say if you can’t guarantee me it’ll be heard by the right people?’

His prematurely grey eyes glitter. ‘What I mean is, all information will be treated as if it was received anonymously.’

‘Well, that’s different.’

He leans forward, joining his hands and resting them on the desk. ‘So – do you have something you want to tell me?’

‘What do you know about the Polynesians?’

He blinks. ‘What?’

‘The Polynesians.’

He purses his prematurely grey lips. ‘Not much. They came from the Pacific. They had rafts, they sailed them from island to island.’

‘That’s them. Those guys, they started moving east from New Guinea about four thousand years ago. Sailed out into the Pacific as far as Fiji, Samoa. The rafts carried themselves, their livestock, their portable agricultural systems. They learned to navigate by the stars, by ocean swells, by the flight paths of seabirds. Joe, forget your Phoenicians – these guys were the best sailors of all time, bar none. In relative terms, these guys not only aimed for the moon, they overshot and wound up in a whole new galaxy.’ Joe makes to speak. I hold up a hand. ‘Here’s the thing, Joe. The Polynesians made it to Easter Island around 70 AD. The west coast of South America is as far from Easter Island as Easter Island is from the Polynesian Islands. That’s a distance of five thousand miles with only Easter Island in between, and they didn’t even know Easter Island was there. Bear in mind, Joe, that these guys were toting livestock and portable agricultural systems on Stone Age rafts. I mean, where did they think they were going?’

He spots his opportunity. ‘Karlsson, I don’t think––’

‘Here’s the thing. When those guys hit Easter Island, it was covered in forest. It was a paradise. Seabirds, fish, food aplenty. Arable land. More fruit trees than you could shake a banana at. And they cut them all down to transport those huge statues. A couple of tribes got into a competition to see who could build the biggest statue, and the bigger the statue, the more trees were needed to transport it. Things were going well, they were living in a paradise, they could afford the time and energy.’

‘Karlsson––’

‘Hold on, Joe. Now these Polynesians, the one thing they needed above all was trees to make rafts with. And they cut down every last fucking tree on the island. Easter Island isn’t Australia or even Madagascar. The guy who cut down the last tree, he knew he was cutting down the last tree. But he cut it down anyway.’

By now Joe’s eyes are glazing over. ‘What’s your point, Karlsson?’

‘The point is, not only did they destroy their source of food and shelter, they also eradicated their only means of escape from self-imposed genocide.’

He thinks about this. He says, dully, ‘And what has that to do with the missing files?’

‘Oh. We’re still talking about the files?’

His jaw clenches. ‘That’s right. We’re still talking about the missing files.’

‘Well, in that case, I suppose the moral of the story is that sometimes, even with a barrel full of good apples, things still get ruined.’

He stands up and walks to the window and stares out across the car park with his hands in his pockets. His shoulders have tensed into a straight line. ‘Karlsson, between you and me, I’ve been fairly relaxed for the last while. I happen to believe that adults should be treated like adults. For your own sake, don’t give me a reason to get on your case. I’ll come down like a ton of bricks.’

I stand up too. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Joe.’

He turns. ‘Oh, I’ll keep them alright. Never you fear.’

‘What do you want to do, take it outside? You want to go mano-a-mano because I don’t know who took the dodgy files?’

He holds up his hand with the thumb and forefinger pressed together. ‘Karlsson, you’re this close to an official warning.’

‘Joe, the history of conflict suggests that it’s not what you’re prepared to do that defines the outcome, it’s what you’re not prepared to lose.’

He nods. His jaw is set. ‘Okay, you’ve just bought yourself an official warning.’

‘See, now I’m curious. Seriously – what are you not prepared to lose?’

‘One more word and you’re suspended.’

I dig in my pocket and take out the Zippo, clink-chunk the lid. ‘Joe, one more word and your daughter receives precisely one face-full of lighter fluid.’ He frowns. I say, ‘Your address is 27, The Paddock, Springview Crescent. Her school is St Bernadette’s Primary. Violin lessons every Thursday afternoon, swimming class on Saturday morning.’

He stares. His jaw now hangs slackly. His eyes are the premature grey of an imminent blizzard. ‘Joe,’ I say, ‘just out of curiosity – what are you not prepared to lose?’

‘Get out,’ he says hoarsely. ‘Get out of my fucking office.’

‘You’re the boss.’ I turn at the door. ‘If I hear anything more about the missing files, I’ll be sure to let you know.’

My line for today is, I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away. (Cormac McCarthy, Outer Dark)

 

 

My name is Jennifer. I am eleven years old and I live in Dublin. I would like to own a pony but my mother says I am too young to take care of it properly.

My favourite stars are Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry. My favourite colour is pink but I tell people it is violet. My friends at school are Melinda, Sinead and Barbara, although Sinead is my best friend because she told me last Christmas that I am her best friend.

My chat-room friends are Tara, Joanne, Yasmin, Siobhan and Kylie. We like ponies, boys, and shopping for clothes on Saturday afternoons. Yasmin says she buys a new top every Saturday, but I don’t believe her.

I have a very strong suspicion that Yasmin might be a liar.

Tonight Yasmin says she is going to meet Shane from Westlife when he comes home to Sligo for the big concert at Lissadell. She says Shane is her favourite because she likes the way she feels inside when he sings. She asks if I have ever been to a Westlife concert. I say yes, I have, but I’d like to go again. I tell her my mother won’t take me, she says once is enough.

Yasmin says I can go with her to meet Shane if I really want to. She says her mother works with Shane’s sister, so if I want Yasmin to bring me along, she will. But I have to keep it a three-times secret. Otherwise everyone will want to meet Shane.

I say I don’t know. Dublin is a long way away from Sligo.

Yasmin says it’s easy to take the train. She says once you get on the train, it takes you all the way to Sligo. She says she will meet me at the station with her mother.

I say I don’t know. I say I’ll have to think about it. I say I wouldn’t be able to stay out all night, because if my mother found out I’d be grounded for a whole year.

Yasmin says there is a train that will take me home afterwards. She says that her mother will bring me back to the station afterwards and put me on the train.

I say I’ll think about it. Yasmin asks if I’m a chicken. I say no. She says, well then.

I say I’ll let her know soon. I ask how much the train ticket will cost. Yasmin says not to worry about it, she’ll pay.

Yasmin has no fucking idea, etc.

 

 

The brain is the laziest organ in the body. It is never more content than when allowing ideas to circulate along established orbits. It is a creature of habit that loves grooves, ruts and well-worn furrows, and excels at conjuring up the cheap tricks and delusions that reduce the necessity for forging new paths through the trackless universe of the imagination.

Thus, this: love.

Thus, this: the mental recoil and revolt when the theory of blowing up a hospital is mooted.

Thus, this: the brain’s counter-mooting of familiar concepts such as judgement, punishment and eternal damnation.

But the brain is both slave and master. It needs to be chained, whipped and brought to heel, by itself. If the brain discovers itself to be a weak master, it will not respect itself in the morning. The brain craves discipline, authority and decisive decision making.

I am, therefore I think. I decide, therefore I am. I act, therefore I will be.

Herostratus, can you hear me now?

My line for today is, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/ I took the one less travelled by (Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’)