Lynch didn’t bother locking the car doors and the four men walked purposefully down the road, Lynch and O’Riordan in front, the Quinn brothers following closely behind. A woman in a cheap cloth coat walked by pushing two crying babies in a buggy. Two boys with dirty faces and scabby knees sat on the kerb with their feet in the gutter and turned to watch the men go past. Lynch wasn’t worried about witnesses, he was on Catholic territory.
The house they were looking for was in the middle of a brick terrace, one of hundreds of near-identical homes, distinguished only by the colour of the peeling paint on the woodwork. Lynch pressed the doorbell and O’Riordan motioned for the Quinn brothers to stand to the side, out of sight. They heard footsteps, then the door was opened by an overweight grey-haired woman in a flowered print dress and a baggy green cardigan. Before she could speak, Lynch pushed her back into the hallway and pulled out his Beretta. The woman began to shiver and opened her mouth to scream. Lynch glared at her. ‘Be quiet,’ he hissed and clamped his hand over her mouth. O’Riordan slipped by and stood at the foot of the stairs. ‘Where’s the boy?’ whispered Lynch. The woman’s eyes gave her away, flicking towards the stairs. Davie Quinn closed the front door and locked it. From the kitchen Lynch could hear the tinny sound of a transistor radio. ‘Anyone else in the house?’
The woman tried to speak and Lynch moved his hand away from her mouth. ‘My daughter,’ she said. ‘She’s only twelve.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Please don’t hurt us, son. We’re good Catholics. The boy wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘Where is she?’ Lynch repeated, holding the gun in front of her face.
‘The kitchen. There’s been a mistake, son, you can’t. .’
Lynch motioned to Paulie and the teenager used his hand to silence the woman. Paulie and Davie both had their guns out. Paulie was sweating but Davie seemed calm. They were both looking at Lynch, waiting for instructions.
‘Take her through into the front room,’ Lynch whispered to Paulie. As Paulie bundled the woman into the room, Lynch went along the hall to the kitchen with Davie. A young girl with mousy hair tied back in a ponytail was sitting at a small table reading a magazine. She looked over her shoulder as Lynch walked up behind her and her eyes widened in horror.
‘You’re here for Ger, aren’t you?’ she asked, her voice trembling like a frightened rabbit. ‘I told him. I told him you’d come for him one day. I fecking told him, so I did.’
Lynch ignored the question. He picked up a tea towel and tossed it at Davie, then grabbed the girl by the shirt collar and pulled her to her feet. He half-dragged, half-carried her down the hallway to the front room.
The woman was sitting hunched on a threadbare sofa, playing with a rosary. Lynch dropped the girl down next to her mother. ‘Please, son, don’t hurt my boy,’ whined the woman. She put an arm around the girl and pulled her close.
‘Your boy’s been selling drugs to kids,’ said Lynch flatly.
‘Oh no, son, you’re wrong. My Ger’s a good boy. A bit wild, maybe, but he’s a good heart. .’ She began to cry softly.
On the wall above the woman’s head hung a portrait of the Pope, and next to it a black-framed photograph of John F. Kennedy. The woman looked up and stared at the pictures, as if pleading for their support. Lynch felt no sympathy for her. He knew that she’d already been warned about her son’s drug-dealing. If she wasn’t prepared to keep her family in order, the organisation was. By whatever means it took.
‘Keep them here,’ he said to Paulie. He knelt down in front of the woman and put a hand on the rosary. ‘We’re not going to kill your boy, but if you tell anyone, anyone at all, we’ll come back. Do you understand?’
‘Don’t hurt him,’ she sniffed. ‘Please don’t hurt him.’
‘Do you understand?’ Lynch repeated. ‘Say anything and we’ll be back. And it won’t just be for the boy.’
The woman nodded. She averted her eyes and began to mumble the Lord’s Prayer as she fingered the polished amber beads of the rosary. Lynch straightened up and motioned with his head for Davie to follow him. They joined O’Riordan at the foot of the stairs. O’Riordan had taken his sawn-off shotgun from under his coat. He nodded at Lynch and they moved silently up the stairs, Davie bringing up the rear.
There were four doors leading off the top landing. Only two were closed. Lynch put his ear to one of the doors but heard nothing. He eased it open. It was the bathroom, a cheap yellow bathroom suite and a green knitted cover on the toilet seat, with a matching cover on a spare toilet roll. He closed the door.
Davie was breathing like a train, his nostrils flaring. He had the tea towel in his left hand, the Browning in the other, and Lynch was pleased to see he had the safety off and the barrel pointing straight up. His finger was outside the trigger guard, just as he’d been told. Davie swallowed nervously as Lynch brushed by him and stood by the second door. Lynch seized the handle, nodded at O’Riordan, and thrust open the door.
The boy was standing in the middle of the bedroom, his back to them. He was listening to a Sony Walkman through headphones and playing air guitar, whipping his long red hair backwards and forwards in time to the music. The three men filed into the room and Davie closed the door behind them. It was a typical teenager’s room: rock ’n’ roll posters on the wall, a pile of dirty laundry in one corner, a cheap veneered bookcase filled with paperbacks, and a single bed with the bedclothes in disarray. It smelt of old socks and sweat and was almost as unsavoury as the stable where O’Riordan kept his arms cache.
The boy whirled around then froze as he saw his visitors. His mouth fell open, then he was suddenly galvanised into action, throwing himself across the bed and clutching for the window. O’Riordan dropped the carrier bag on the floor, stepped forward and grabbed one of the boy’s legs, pulling him hard and throwing him onto his stomach. The boy began to scream as O’Riordan sat across the base of his spine, pinning him to the bed. The boy lashed out with his arms but O’Riordan wriggled up his back and used his knees to hold him down. ‘Fuck off, yez bastards!’ the boy screamed, bucking and twisting even under O’Riordan’s weight.
‘Davie, come on lad,’ urged O’Riordan. ‘Get on with it.’
Davie rushed forward and used the tea towel to gag the struggling boy, then moved around to the foot of the bed and grabbed the boy’s ankles. O’Riordan put his head down close to the boy’s face. The towel muffled his screams. His cheeks were pockmarked with old acne scars and his red hair was unkempt and dirty, flecked with dandruff. O’Riordan grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head back. ‘Listen to me, Ger. This is going to happen whether you struggle or not, do you hear me?’ The boy said nothing but continued to try to get up. O’Riordan thrust the barrel of the shotgun against the boy’s temple and tapped it, hard enough to hurt. ‘If you cooperate, they’ll be able to patch you up and you’ll be on your feet in a few months. Carry on fucking with us and you’ll never walk again. It’s up to you. Am I getting through to you, Ger?’ The boy suddenly went still. ‘That’s better,’ said O’Riordan. ‘Now take your punishment like a man and we can all get on our way.’ He sat up, keeping his weight pressed down on the boy’s shoulderblades.
Lynch reached around to the front of the boy’s waist, unclipped his leather belt and pulled his jeans down to his ankles. ‘Sit on his calves, it’ll stop him kicking out,’ Lynch told Davie and the young man obeyed. The boy began to cry, his tears staining the pillow.
Lynch was a veteran of more than a dozen kneecappings and he knew how important it was to seize control from the outset and to give the victim no opportunity to resist. Kneecapping was a particularly brutal form of punishment, but it worked, serving as a permanent reminder both to the victim and to others. No matter how good the surgeons — and the surgeons in Belfast were the best in the world at repairing and replacing shattered joints — the knee would never be as good as new. Even after the ceasefire, the IRA used kneecapping to punish drug dealers, rapists and joyriders, and men like Lynch had become experts at the technique. O’Riordan hadn’t lied when he’d told the boy it could be done easily or painfully. Depending on how the gun or drill was used, the kneecap could be merely damaged or the leg destroyed. Drilling from the side was painful enough, but drilling from the back of the knee would shatter the kneecap into dozens of splinters.