Smyth, a sergeant in the RUC, was married with three children-a boy and two girls. One Saturday afternoon in January at the start of the 1990s, when the sky was a grey lid that threatened to squash the whole town, the policeman's son, improbably named Paolo (he had been conceived in Italy when his parents were on holiday) attended a match at his grammar school. The match was a draw. This was some feat, given the opposition were an infinitely superior team from Belfast.
There was a bar in the town where underage drinkers, under certain circumstances, were able to drink. Paolo and some spectators and a couple of players entered the Pheasant Inn by the back door in the late afternoon. They sat in the room where the pool table stood. The room smelt of stale beer and geranium. They drank like mature adults, a pint apiece. This was pleasant but no way to get blocked.
The Pheasant had an off-license. They sidled in here and bought cider and Clan Dew. Then they went to the leisure centre on the edge of town. They sat on damp benches at picnic tables and drank. A man walking his dog later reported hearing the youths singing "You're The One That I Want," from the musical Grease.
It began to drizzle. The teenage drinkers scattered. Paolo staggered through town to the estate where he lived. He didn't want to meet the folks. His intention was to come through the back door (it was usually open at this hour on a Saturday) slink upstairs and get under his duvet. After an hour he would sober up.
Unfortunately, for Paolo, coming into the kitchen he met his father polishing his shoes at the breakfast counter. The policeman saw his son was drunk. It seemed to the policeman that his son had been drunk a lot lately. This latest incident was particularly annoying, as Paolo had agreed to look after his younger sisters while his parents went out later. The policeman threw his boot polish tin. It hit the kitchen window. The greasy polish splattered everywhere. Paolo's mother came in and she attempted to calm her husband. He would not be pacified. He told his son he was a useless wastrel.
A couple of hours later the policeman and his wife did indeed go out. Paolo was sober enough, his mother thought. She also thought, quite reasonably, it would be best if her husband was out of the house for a while.
Not long after the parents left, Paolo's sisters, watching television in the lounge, reported hearing a bang and a thud in the bathroom upstairs. Paolo had killed himself with his father's service revolver. In the local paper the incident was a small item at the bottom of page eight. It was headlined "A family tragedy."
The item was read and digested by a 35-year-old local IRA quartermaster. Perhaps, he thought, as he read the piece, in the Pheasant of all places, there was an opening here. The quartermaster put out feelers. The information he got back confirmed what he had instinctively suspected. Paolo's father blamed himself for his son's death. One, because of what he had said and two, because he had not locked his gun away. His superiors in the police, knowing he was distraught, feared suicide. In order to forestall this eventually, they took away his gun and gave him indefinite compassionate leave.
Four months later, a Citro?n van was hijacked on the ring road. It belonged to Super Aerials. While the driver was held in a safe house, the quartermaster and a volunteer drove to Paolo's old home. The men got out. They rang the doorbell. Paolo's father looked through the peephole in the door. He wasn't expecting Super Aerials. Conversation went back and forth. Paolo's father eventually opened the door. He was immediately shot twice in the head. He died on his doorstep. The Citro?n was found, burnt out, in an old quarry outside town.
These events were described the following week. The article was headed, "Tragedy Strikes Again." Later, the inquest was reported. Later still, on the anniversary of their deaths, Paolo and his father would be listed in the In Memoriam column. Each year's entries bore the same quotation-"Time may pass but in our memory you live on."
Meantime, the quartermaster retired from active service and bought a shop. For ten years he was happy. Then, one afternoon, while his wife was at afternoon mass with the children, he got up from the local paper, open at the offending In Memoriam column. Prominent in the list was Paolo's name. He went to his garage. He taped the garden hose to his exhaust and sat in his car with the engine running. A neighbour, hearing the engine noise, grew suspicious. He climbed over the garden wall and saw the grey exhaust squeezing from under the bottom of the garage door.
An account, headlined "A tragedy" appeared the following week, in the same place on page eight where Paolo's had been all those years before.
