Collusion

87

The Traveller dreamed of dismembered children, bodies stacked upon bodies, blank little eyes staring to heaven. He dreamed of crackling pyres and burning meat. He dreamed of the boy who’d come at him with an AK47 in one hand, a newspaper in the other, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old.

Three short bursts of his MP5 cut the boy dead. In his dream, the boy floated to the floor like a sheet of fabric, the AK47 falling to one side, the newspaper to the other. But a draught caught the newspaper and spun it in a slow circle, before carrying it to the Traveller’s feet.

He looked down at the ragged paper. There, his own face staring up at him, the letters forming shapes that said ‘soldier’ and ‘killed’ in the headline, the words beneath the picture coming into focus, a name becoming clearer until—

Wake up.

—the letters formed into words, words he could understand if he really wanted to, for the first time since they’d taken the Kevlar from his head, if he had the will to face—

Come on, wake up.

—them, but he could not face them, yet he could not turn away from them, they burned—

‘For fuck’s sake, wake up, you lazy gyppo bast—’

Before he even knew he was awake, the Traveller was up from the bed, on his feet, the stocky man’s windpipe pinched between his fingers. The man croaked and his eyes bulged. His face turned red then purple.

‘What did you call me?’ the Traveller asked as he blinked the sleep away.

O’Driscoll grabbed his wrist, tried to loosen his grip.

‘What did you call me, you fat cunt?’

O’Driscoll gagged as his mouth opened and closed. He tried to dig his fingers in between the Traveller’s. Strong and hard as they were, they found no purchase. As sleep fell away from the Traveller, the room around him closed in from the edges of his vision. The hospital bed he had lain down on what seemed like an age ago, the clean functional furnishings, the tiled floor. He released O’Driscoll’s throat.

O’Driscoll fell to the floor, gasping and clutching at his neck.

‘Breathe,’ the Traveller said. ‘Slow and deep. Come on, breathe.’

O’Driscoll hauled air in and coughed it out again. He rolled to his side, moaned, and spat on the tile.

‘Dirty fucker,’ the Traveller said.

O’Driscoll’s colour crept back to his normal pasty white and his breathing settled. ‘What’d you do that for?’ he said between mouthfuls of air.

‘I don’t like people sneaking up on me,’ the Traveller said.

‘I was only waking you up,’ O’Driscoll said, hoisting himself into a seated position. ‘They told me to come and tell you when that Fegan fella arrived.’

The Traveller’s heart fluttered with something that might have been joy, or fear, or both. ‘He’s here?’

‘Downstairs,’ O’Driscoll said. ‘The Bull wants you beside him when he’s brought up.’

The Traveller hauled O’Driscoll up by his lapels. ‘Jesus, why the fuck didn’t you say so?’

O’Driscoll could only blink back at him, his mouth sagging open. The Traveller let go of the jacket and was out of the room before O’Driscoll landed in a heap on the floor. For a moment, as he marched down the corridor, an image of a boy with an AK47 and a newspaper in his hands flickered in the Traveller’s mind, a stuttering snapshot of something he couldn’t quite place.