Crackdown Read Online Free PDF Page B

decorate a flat to reflect McIllvanney’s character then I would have given him an East Belfast bar with sawdust scattered on the floor, King Billy strutting on the walls, and blood splattered across its tobacco-stained ceiling.
    “Why don’t you just go on through, Nick,” Donna invited me, “and I’ll bring you and Matt your drinkies.”
    I went on through, sliding the heavy plate glass aside to walk on to the humid porch where a morose looking McIllvanney slouched in a cane chair and stared through the insect screens at the darkening sea. “It’s you,” he greeted me without delight and as though he had been expecting someone else.
    “You wanted to see me,” I pointed out. Spending time with McIllvanney was not my idea of relaxation, and I didn’t much take to his lack of enthusiasm.
    “Sit down,” he said grudgingly, “your Holiness.” Calling me ‘your Holiness’ was McIllvanney’s joke. It was not because I was particularly pious, but rather because my namesake, Nicholas Breakspear, had been the only Englishman who had ever become Pope. He had taken the name Adrian IV and had ruled the church in the twelfth century, a fact that very few people other than myself knew, but a fact I had been foolish enough to tell McIllvanney whose hatred of ‘taigs’, Catholics, ensured he would never forget my papal connection. In truth there was no connection, for my original family name was Sillitoe, but, long before I was born, my father had adopted Breakspear as his stage name and I had really known no other.
    “Did that focker Bellybutton bring Starkisser back?” McIllvanney suddenly demanded of me in his sour Belfast accent.
    “In one piece, even.”
    “He’s getting too big for his focking black boots, that feller is.” The complaint was a ritual, not to be taken seriously, a mere habitual statement made solely to impress on me how tough McIllvanney was. If he had to choose between me and Bellybutton, or between Bellybutton and his own mother, he would have chosen Bellybutton any day. They were two of a kind.
    McIllvanney was a tall, harshly scarred and surprisingly handsome man, with a hard knowing face and a deceptively thin body. It was deceptive for he was brutally strong. He could also be excellent company, with a fund of stories that he told with an exquisite sense of timing, though such good moments were rare for he preferred to brood savagely over life’s injustices; the chief of which was the inexplicable existence of Roman Catholics.
    “Are you a Catholic?” he asked Donna as she brought out the drinks. I suspected the question was meant for my amusement rather than for his own enlightenment.
    “Gracious, no! In our family we’re all Episcopalians.” She gave him a big smile. “From Philadelphia,” she added for my benefit and with yet another winning smile. Donna was one of life’s cheerleaders; her teeth were a triumph of the orthodontic trade, her hair was a confection of gel, spray and heat, and her body was a tribute to wholesome American food and exercise. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she said to me, as though settling herself in for a long cosy chat.
    “So now fock away off and forget him,” McIllvanney snapped at her.
    “It’s just been so nice visiting with you, Nick!” Donna gave me a last dazzling smile, then, apparently impervious to McIllvanney’s evil-tempered scorn, clicked away on her ridiculously high heels.
    I waited till Donna was safely out of earshot. “Is she your newest?” Pretty girls moved through McIllvanney’s life at an astonishing rate, though the last, who had endured a record six months, had left just a few weeks before.
    He shook his head. “She’s one of the girls, so she is. She’ll cost you two thousand US a day, Nick, plus air-fare, food and a present. I had to bring her over from Miami today because the stupid cow won’t fly. Can you believe that? She’s frightened of airplanes, so she is! So I had to fetch her in