by Brady, John
Kelly realized that he’d been staring at the man’s ruddy face.
“He’s gone off to find a phone box anyway.”
“A phone box. What phone box?”
The postman waited a moment.
“‘I don’t want to scare him banging on the door,’ says he. ‘A bit delicate this morning.’ He says for you to put your phone back on the hook, or plug it back into the wall.”
Kelly squeezed the door handle tighter. The postman was still eyeing him.
“Well maybe you better go back and sleep it off then,” said the postman. “Celebrations and all the rest of it? . . . Declan, is it?”
“Yes.”
The postman’s smile crept back, but it was cautious now.
“You look like shite, if you don’t mind me saying so, Declan. But she’ll sort you out, I’m thinking.”
“I don’t get this.”
“Ah come on now – you’re joining the fold. Your brother-in-law gave it away. The accent? Marrying a Dublin girl is a great move, that’s all I’m saying.”
He winked.
“Eimear,” he said. “Eimear Walsh? Did I get her name right?”
He shrugged and he grinned, and he walked away whistling.
Kelly closed the door, and made his way down the hall. The radio from the next-door flat seemed to have gotten louder. He couldn’t think. Eimear, they knew her name. Or had he said her name sometime before? No, and not her second name, ever.
The coldness seemed to rain down inside, falling from his chest, and it left him weak and empty. He stared at the transistor radio by the fridge. Now he thought about Australia, what he’d been reading in that National Geographic at the dentist. They’d never find you in Australia. Wasn’t it Australia where Kevin Heaney had gone to work in a bank?
His eyes drifted back to the phone. He had wrapped the cord around it and put it under the hall table. He hobbled over and eased himself down onto the lino there, his leg pointed back to the kitchen. He plugged in the connector.
He could not remember later what he had done, or thought, in the time he sat there. It might even have been hours. Later he saw that it had only been minutes until the phone rang. He let it ring twice.
“You know who this is. You don’t need to say anything.”
Kelly concentrated on the brown nick in the lino where someone had dropped a cigarette. The voice was quiet, and the Dublin accent almost friendly.
“I said I’d be in touch. I keep me promises. So here we are.”
He wondered where Rynn was. Maybe he had stayed up all night.
“None of us wants to go through something like that again. Right?”
Kelly listened to the faint rasp in Rynn’s breathing. He said nothing.
“Look,” said Rynn finally. “I’m sure you’ve been thinking the same thing as me in that line. Nobody would wish that on anyone. No sane person.”
He heard the inhalation of breath again, the soft pop of a cigarette being pulled from between Rynn’s lips.
“You’re on your own there now,” Rynn went on. “I’m not in a phone box, so don’t go looking. I had someone pass on a message, that’s all. Look. I hope you haven’t done anything stupid now. Have you?”
Kelly kept up his scrutiny of the dings on the hall door, the black marks where he and others had closed it a hundred times with their foot. He wondered if Rynn had someone outside here all night, watching.
“I know you’re listening. Have you told anyone, I asked you?”
He could put down the phone. He saw himself walking out to the car, the door open in his wake, getting in, driving to the bank to pick up Eimear, going out the Naas Road, away, away to the far end of Kerry or Cork or somewhere nobody went. Just to think, to know what was best to do.
“You’re tying the knot soon enough. A grand girl, I’m sure. A lady.”
Kelly felt the weariness as a new kind of gravity pressing him flatter against the wall and into the floor.
“Now of course every little bit helps when you’re starting out, we all know that. And I was thinking about you a long time last night. Does that sound peculiar to you?”
He should have gotten a tape recorder.
“I don’t know,” he managed to say.
“Or you don’t want to know . . .? Well I’ll tell you anyway. You’re a decent fella. That’s what I decided. I can tell, you know. Actually even before I decided – it’s funny – that’s what I was telling you-know-who last night. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Remember what he wanted to do?”
Kelly counted to five.
“Yes. I do, yes.”
“Are you wondering why I keep on yapping here? Why I’m not worrying about who else is listening in? I’ll tell you why. It’s like I said: you’re not stupid. And your heart’s in the right place. You don’t want anyone getting hurt. Right? After all, no-one told you to go down there after them, did they? To see if they were all right? No. It was your instinct. You were well reared, I mean. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
He wondered if Rynn was sitting in the hall in his own home too.
“Look, I want to know if you can hear me. That you’re not asleep there. Okay?”
“I hear you.”
“Well Christ! You got your voice back . . . ! Is that all you’re going to say?”
He began to imagine Guards bashing down the door behind Rynn, letting him have it with batons.
“I’m not asking you for anything,” said Rynn. “Not a thing. That’s always been my philosophy: if you’re not involved, you’re not involved. Circumstances, is all. Are you with me on this?”
Kelly remained silent.
“I’m a bit concerned here now that maybe you’re not picking up on this. I’m telling you that so far as I’m concerned the matter is settled. You hear me? Do you?”
“I do.”
Kelly stared at the skin on his instep where it met with the braid edging on his slipper. There were two big veins. He wondered how long a twisted ankle took to mend.
“I’m not saying what happened was right,” said Rynn. “No. But I’m telling you that I’m taking a chance here, like I did yesterday. This is a big risk for me, you understand? I need you to hear that, and tell me you got it.”
Kelly listened to the breathing as Rynn waited.
“I’ve made arrangements, see? For whatever happens. Do you know what that means? Yes, or no?”
“I do.”
“Well good. I’m a family man. And I’m not half as thick as I look. So when I say I’ve covered both sides, you can take that as gospel. You think about that. Think long and hard, before you get ideas.”
Kelly heard a lighter being thumbed a few times.
“Okay then,” said Rynn. “It’s like a train, see – you think ‘Oh it’s nice and calm in here, like we’re hardly moving, I can just go and step off.’ Right? But you can’t just walk out, ’cause everything else is going fast – you mightn’t be, but everything else is? Do you get it?”
Kelly said he did.
“I’m glad,” said Rynn. “Now you don’t know this ’cause you’re new, or newish, maybe. I can do lots of things. If there are times when you want something done, well then you just tell me. Or tell someone, and they’ll tell me. I don’t owe you anything, mind. But what’s done is done. There’s no going back. That’s lesson number one in life. You see?”
October 24, 1983
The week before Hallowe’en, Kelly started his longed-for month of day shifts. They kept him with O’Keefe. O’Keefe was a terror for the snacks still. You could depend on him going into a shop twice or more just to get a bag of crisps, or a bar of chocolate or something. There was never an apple, or milk even.
Kelly kept the engine running outside the newsagent. He adjusted the volume on the radio and surveyed the leaves scudding in under the parked cars. The pearly light that strained through the low clouds over Dublin would hardly give them bright spells today, any more than it had let even a few minutes o
f sunshine down in the past few days.
The days had gone short all right. It had been dark when he’d gotten out of bed this morning, and it surprised him that he had not noticed until now. A red-headed man with a flushed face eyed him from outside a bookie’s. The radio chatter between patrol cars and Dispatch about the big traffic accident near South Circular Road went on still.
O’Keefe was out quick enough, with his fags and his KitKat and his Coke. He also had a newspaper under his arm. He sat in and opened the newspaper. Kelly glanced down at the headline as he turned to begin reversing out. Another factory closing?
“Well, there’s my brother heading for the boat,” said O’Keefe. “Or the plane, or whatever it is.”
“How do you mean?”
“That factory was where he worked.”
“Was he long in it?”
“Eleven years. He thought he was safe. But what can you do?”
They half-listened then to an assistance call to a printing shop. The staff had just come in and the place had been burglarized. A Finglas car took the call. Kelly sped up again and was soon turning into the industrial estate and beginning to coast down by the warehouses.
O’Keefe finished his KitKat. He sighed, and started up a cigarette. He rolled down the window a little after the first pull.
“He might try the States,” he said. “The brother. But it won’t be on a visa, I can tell you.”
“There’s work if you’re willing, I hear,” was all Kelly could muster.
O’Keefe took a long, meditative drag on the cigarette and he opened the paper again.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Some you win – or we do, I should say.”
“The hurling, is it?”
“No, no. A different sport entirely. Things take care of themselves sometimes, is what I’m saying. But we shouldn’t be clapping in public now, should we.”
Kelly looked over.
“What are you talking about?”
“There are scumbags getting what was coming to them. A rare enough event in this kip.”
“Something in the paper?”
O’Keefe folded the newspaper again and flattened it more on his knee.
“You’re a muck savage,” he said. “Don’t you read the papers at all? Look, I’ll read it out to you. But before I do, maybe I should tell you a bit about this fella, or his family. You probably heard of them, but a fella in the know in CDU was telling us some of their shenanigans.”
“Who, or what are you on about?”
“Ah you know them, come on. Everyone does, every Guard – the Rynns.”
Kelly felt surges moving up and down his arms, and his back locking up.
“I heard it on the radio this morning. What’s the name of the crowd in The Godfather there, that film? Car– Corleones, that’s it. The son was a maniac, I heard. Jimmy Rynn. Junior they call him. Surely to God you’ve heard of him, or his oul fella?”
Kelly nodded.
“The son was off the wall,” he said. “Breaking legs, kneecapping, God knows what else. So he must have done it once too often. Here is it, listen: ‘Garda sources have confirmed that the body found in a field near Blessington was that of James Rynn Junior. Preliminary reports suggest that Mr. Rynn died of gunshot wounds. He was on bail awaiting an appeal of a conviction for theft and several related charges. And blah-dee-blah more, suspects sought dah dee dah . . .’”
O’Keefe reached down for his Coke and pulled off the tab.
“I’ll drink to that,” he said. “God forgive me.”
Kelly had the feeling that the patrol car was driving itself, and that the hands on the steering wheel worked independently of their owner.
O’Keefe stifled a soft belch.
“Plenty more where he came from,” he said “But we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I suppose.”
Kelly smelled O’Keefe’s sugary breath wafting across to him. The flashes from the laneway that night, and the shouts ran through his mind again. He took his foot off the accelerator and stared at a van parked up on the curb.
“What’s wrong? What do you see?”
Kelly shook his head. Everything had a strange light to it now, even a glare off the lorry coming his way. He saw then that a shaft of sunlight had somehow broken through the cloud.
“So, you heard of them,” said O’Keefe. “The Rynns?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Tit-for-tat, I’ll bet you. Maybe the father’ll be next. Hope springs infernal?”
O’Keefe looked over for a reply, but Kelly said nothing.
“The father’s not a thick by any manner or means though,” O’Keefe went on. “No sir. He’s a ‘businessman.’ You’ve seen The Godfather, haven’t you?”
Kelly sped up. He swerved just in time to avoid a deep fissure that connected several potholes spanning the width of the road.
“Jesus, Dec, relax! You nearly spilled me thing! What’s around here to rob?”
Kelly concentrated on Eimear now, and what had happened last night after they got home. He’d heard that tone in her voice earlier on in the pub, and she had that sort of lingering look when their eyes met. They had barely closed the door when she came at him. He was still not over the surprise that she could ask for it – just like that – or that she could come at him with her hands.
“Did you know that?”
It was O’Keefe.
“Did I know what?”
“Did you know that you’re on the planet?”
“Sorry, I was thinking.”
O’Keefe shifted in his seat.
“True as God,” he muttered. “You’re a candidate for NASA there, sure you’re halfway to the moon already these days.”
“What were you saying?”
“Well, what I was saying was it was Rynn or one of his crowd did insurance fires here. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Serious? You should keep your ear working, there, Dec. You’d pick up a lot. The Rynns, they have a go at anything. Rob the crown of thorns off the head of Our Saviour. Ever hear that one before?”
“I think I did.”
O’Keefe tilted the can up to drain it.
“Christ, what a system we have here,” he said then. “It’s a joke. They get hired to burn down a factory. Insurance pays up – and I swear some of them must be in on it too – and guess who pays in the end?”
“Okay,” said Kelly. “I get it.”
O’Keefe was looking at him.
“Are you all right, Dec?”
“I’m grand.”
“Have you got a cold or something? The flu?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You don’t look so hot, I’m telling you.”
“Better than you though.”
“You’d better not puke on me.”
“Don’t be worrying.”
“Get more sleep. If you know what I mean.”
“Ha ha. You’re funny.”
They went by the picket at the gates of the cardboard factory, and got a slow, half-derisory wave from two of the picketers.
“Yobs,” said O’Keefe. “No wonder there’s, what is it, twenty percent unemployed. Or is it more now? I swear to God. Ah, what’s the use.”
O’Keefe took up a Dispatch request to go to a disturbance near a betting office on Glenore Road.
Kelly turned the car around.
“A bit of a barney,” O’Keefe said. “Is there anything else they do around here these days?”
Dispatch came back with an Immediate on it. O’Keefe gave him a rueful look before he reached for the siren.
Kelly was glad of the excuse to drive like hell. He and O’Keefe had a routine down pat for these kinds of things. O’Keefe used his size to do the opening act and put the hard look on them, but the trick was that he delivered it all in a friendly way. He had one of those faces that made you laugh, or expect to hear something funny.
Declan Kelly’s job was to watch the reaction, to eye
who tried to leave or, rarely enough, have a go at them. O’Keefe still laughed at a bang from August. They attended on a closing-time row that soon went wild, with squad cars piling in and batons flying. One of the less drunk ones had made a run at O’Keefe almost right away. Kelly had put his foot out and watched as the man took a nosedive into a parking meter. Broken teeth and a concussion were the least of it.
O’Keefe was humming now. It was his worst, most annoying habit. It also meant he was content and even looking forward to the call. Kelly replayed in his head again the advice that Clune, the duty sergeant, liked to repeat: Don’t talk too long, just give ’em the state of play, and a warning to disperse. Kelly’s father’s counsel repeated often too on the visits home was darker, for all its resemblance to a coach advising tactics for a hurling match: Stay a step back so you can see their hands – all those Dublin gutties carry knives, every man jack of them.
Kelly drove even faster. He didn’t ignore the glow of satisfaction that was beginning to spread through him. There was no way in the world he should feel guilty either. He hoped that it had been a long and painful death for Junior Rynn. For several moments he imagined Rynn pleading for his life, on his knees, after a good hiding too. So be it, if he had been slaughtered like a pig.
“Jesus, Dec,” O’Keefe said. “Slow down, man. Starsky and Hutch we ain’t.”
He braked for a delivery van that didn’t move aside. The van reminded him of a big biscuit tin on wheels, and his mind went to the tin where he had put the money, and the patch of grass that covered it next to the end of the clothesline in the back garden. The envelope with the thousand quid had been delivered to the house, and left right on the kitchen table. There had been no signs of a forced entry. The doors had been locked all the time, and so had the windows.
Whoever had done it also knew that he’d be home before Eimear. Kelly had searched over and over again for a note or some sign from Rynn, but there had been none. He had wrapped the money inside two plastic bags, and then slipped it into a tin that he buried at the end of the garden. It was the day they’d officially moved in.
More days passed now when he didn’t think about that buried tin, but many he did still. Often before sleep he had imagined, or felt, that some part of him was on a slow, meandering escalator that led somewhere he wasn’t sure, like a path into the woods in some children’s storybook. He had dreams that he held the tin under his arm, and someone was waiting for him to answer a question, but one he hadn’t heard and couldn’t know. It was a month ago when he had woken up crying. He had managed to let Eimear sleep, however.
