The second book in the Michael Forsythe series, 2006

My sweet enemy was, little by little, giving over her

great wariness… But Death had his grudge against me

and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a

pike in his hand.

– J. M. Synge, Poems and Translations from Petrarch (1906)

Dawn over the turquoise shore of Africa and here, under the fractured light of a streetlamp, brought to earth like some hurricaned palm, I woke before the supine ocean amidst a sea of glass and upturned bus stands and the wreck of cars and looted stores.

The streets of Playa de las Americas were flowing with beer and black sewage and blood. Smoke hung above the seashore and the smell was of desolation, decay, the burning of tires and fuel oil. The noise of birds, diesel engines, a dirge-like siren, a helicopter, voices in Spanish over a loudspeaker- all of it more than enough hint of the breakdown in the fragile rules of the social contract.

I was sitting up and adjusting to the light and the growing heat when a kid hustled me under cover and the riot began again.

Five hundred British football hooligans, three hundred and fifty Irish fans, all of them on this island at the same time for a “friendly” match between Dublin’s Shamrock Rovers and London’s Millwall.

A riot.

I wouldn’t say I’d been expecting that but I wouldn’t say I was that goddamn surprised either.

Some people go through their lives like a mouse moving through a wheat field. They’re good citizens, they pay their taxes, they contribute to society, they have kids and the kids turn them into responsible adults. They create no stir, cause no fuss, leave no trace. When they’re gone people speak well of them, sigh, shrug their shoulders, and shed a tear. They avoid chaos and it avoids them.