Malice: a short story.
"This is how the rumour mill starts: A young man known by the cognomen, "Beaker", is beaten to death less than ten yards from my front door, turning the spot, just by a lamp-post, into a permanent floral shrine. His mother, father, his brothers and one baby sister all gather around this spot and read aloud the messages left with the floral condolences. Messages asking why, how, and when would it all stop. Another victim of the cycle of violence and hatred between the divided communities of you know where. Already, before the blood dries on the tarmac, he's canonised, he has the status of "victim", he is a candidate for beatitude. What was supposed to be a "punishment beating" for some disloyalty to the Loyalist cause turned into the manslaughter of Barry William Smith, twenty-one, the gawky, bare-forked offspring of Colin and Roberta Smith. A cycle of whispered canard and humming gossip is set off that sees half-believed stories bruited by workmates and school children, a rash of heated words which connote more than they denote transmitted through the pubs and playgrounds, the two most famous vectors for such derangement. Somehow, a series of rumours that were otherwise impossible to credit are hi-jacked by some malicious, calculating soul and transmuted into common coinage. I, it is said, am in part responsible for the boy's death.
