The Going Rate

by John Brady

  Kilmartin nodded.

  “No warning?”

  Kilmartin shook his head.

  “It has to do with the other business,” he murmured. “You know.”

  Minogue waited.

  “I get these, well…,” Kilmartin went on, his voice dropping even more, “…images, I suppose you’d call them. Sometimes I get them in dreams.”

  He looked up suddenly at Minogue and smiled bleakly.

  “‘The Half-Three Devils,’ I call them,” he said. “They kind of crowd in all of a sudden. And you don’t know whether you’re awake, or whether you’re asleep. Ever have them, back when, you know, the, em, episode?”

  The bombing he meant, Minogue knew.

  “I suppose I did,” he heard himself reply.

  This seemed to release Kilmartin from something. His voice took on its customary assurance again, and he sat back.

  “Funerals,” he said. “Churches. Graveyards even. It keeps coming back, that I could be going to Maura’s. Sort of a flash-forward, not a flashback. You see?”

  Minogue nodded. Somehow, his patience had returned.

  “I remember you talking to me years ago about your little lad,” said Kilmartin. “Éamonn. How you’d see him at different times. And you couldn’t go into the bedroom for fear you might see him again, and you knew you couldn’t get to him in time.”

  The waving new growth on the banks all about suddenly faded for Minogue.

  “Am I out of order in bringing it up?” Kilmartin asked. Minogue shook his head.

  “For me, it comes down to this,” Kilmartin went on. “With Maura, I couldn’t protect her, I couldn’t save her. And that’s the crux of the matter. Where the shite hit the fan for me. Simple enough to say, but…”

  The seconds ticked by. Minogue listened to the wind hissing around the car, trying to see if there was a melody in it. “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” skittered through his mind, his father’s favourite tune. Or was it “The Pigeon on the Gate”?

  “So what’s that word again,” Kilmartin was saying. “Lugubrious, is it?”

  “Listen to you,” Minogue said. “You and your Half-Three Divils.”

  “You can laugh. Hey, you’re allergic to churches, as I recall.”

  “I don’t be leaping out of cars when I get near one, do I.”

  “Each to his own, but.”

  Kilmartin let out a long breath through pursed lips. Then he held up the page he had grabbed on the laneway.

  “Well, here’s one of your bits of paper,” he said. “Makes no sense to me.”

  “It’s Polish.”

  “Good. I thought I was after having a stroke or something.”

  “Half the County Wicklow will think the same thing, when they read it.”

  Kilmartin reached inside his jacket and took out another sheet.

  “Well this belongs to you too then.”

  “Any more you’re hiding on me?”

  “As if I would. But what’re you doing with scene photos? You’re not in the game anymore, remember?”

  Minogue gave him the eye.

  “What,” Kilmartin said. “I’m only making conversation.”

  His gaze returned to the muddy tire tracks in the yard alongside.

  Minogue jammed the remaining pages between his seat and the console. He recalled Kilmartin’s talk about being powerless to protect his wife, and the panic attacks he got. Maybe Kilmartin had really gone over the edge that night, and there would be no coming back – at least to his job as a Garda.

  Someday he’d ask him if he had really believed that Rynn or one of his gunmen had been out there in the garden that night, coming to kill him and Maura. Things you remember, but things the mind decides to hide under the bed. But the body remembers things. At times, Minogue himself could feel the broken china and glass under his elbows that night in the Kilmartins’ shattered kitchen, scrabbling and grappling for Kilmartin’s arm – or rather the police-issued automatic at the end of that arm – then the blinding floodlights, and the shouting.

  Betrayed was an odd word. It had an old-fashioned sound to it. It was plain that Kilmartin loved his wife. Minogue knew that because he had sat with Kilmartin for two nights at the hospital after Maura Kilmartin had overdosed. It had been exactly one week after the fiasco at their home. The whole thing had been his fault, not hers, Kilmartin had said several times. After all, what kind of a detective was he, that he’d miss something right under his nose for years?

  Wind buffeted the car once, twice.

  “I’m going in,” Minogue said finally. “Come on in yourself, sure.”

  Kilmartin pretended to think about it.

  Chapter 9

  “JACKO’S A PSYCHO,” Murph said. “Only you here, I’d tell him what’s what.” Murph had insisted that Fanning give him the two fifties. He would do the business with Jacko. His role, he had called it. Fanning eyed three more men arriving from the parking area. With their darker, wind-burned faces and their country accents plain in the sparing words, he was sure they were tinkers.

  “Extortion is what it is,” said Murph. “I’ll sort him out later. Come on.”

  Fanning watched Murph hand over the money.

  “Behave yourselves,” Jacko said. “And bet lots.”

  Murph pulled the handle on the galvanized door, and Fanning followed him into the dimness beyond. A short passageway led to a room the size of a school gymnasium, a storey-and-a-half high. Small groups stood around, men all of them, and they talked in low voices under small, slow clouds of cigarette smoke. There was some kind of half-disassembled industrial shelving at one end of the room, and discarded pieces of engine parts in a heap to the side.

  Fanning’s first thought when he saw the chain-link was that it was a mistake. A chainlink cage simply belonged outdoors, not indoors. The strangeness of it continued to rub at his mind until the astringent smells pressed in sharply on him, cleaning fluids and fresh sawdust scattered in the enclosure. The chain link had to be six feet high, at least. A yard brush leaned against the outside of the cage, and beside it a shovel. The bright blue heads of masonry nails stood out from the bases of the sockets that anchored posts to the cement floor.

  Fanning stood next to Murph, and avoided any eye contact with the groups of men. He studied the walls instead, the windows that had been filled in, the two painted-over skylights. One man from a group had detached himself and had begun strolling toward the far end of the room, slowly rubbing his face up and down like a comedian pulling faces while talking on his mobile.

  “How come he gets to keep his phone?” he whispered to Murph.

  “None of our business.”

  A squat, bearded man walked smartly in from the hallway. His beard had the same blue-black tinge as his hair. The groups of men had noticed him, and they shuffled and turned to face him.

  “I’ll take bets before,” he called out.

  He had the same torn and gravelly voice as one of the Dubliners, the folk group that Fanning’s father had liked, and whose LPs he had later regretted discarding after the funeral. The bearded man coughed, and rubbed his hands.

  “No bets during. For those of you here the–.”

  He held up his arm then, and he fumbled in the pocket of his wind-cheater. He turned away then and spoke into his phone.

  “We’ll see the talent in a minute,” Murph murmured to Fanning. “No rush.”

  The smell of disinfectant was stinging Fanning’s nose now. He noticed darker patches on the cement floor next to the wire. The bearded man closed his phone, and whistled.

  “A squad car taking its sweet time out on the Ballygall Road,” he said.

  The shuffling stopped, and most of the men looked away. Low talk resumed. The man with the beard strolled toward where Murph and Fanning sat.

  “Do I know you,” he said to Fanning.

  “No way,” said Murph, smiling. “A mate of mine. Sound, so he is.”

  “Is he not able to talk?”

  Murp
h’s laugh was forced.

  “Ah no, he’s not. He’s a dummy. Aren’t you?”

  Fanning said nothing.

  “There’s a pair of you then,” the bearded man said. “If and he’s in your line of caper, Murph.”

  “Comedy club we’re in here, is it.”

  “I’m not trying to make a joke.”

  He turned back to Fanning, who concentrated on putting on his most neutral, attentive expression.

  “Been here before?”

  Fanning shook his head.

  “He’s just trying it out,” said Murph. “See if he can make a few bob. I got the okay from Jacko.”

  The bearded man’s eyes drifted slowly away from Fanning’s.

  “You have him gambling for his fix, do you,” he said to Murph.

  “Christ,” said Murph, and shook his head. “What a thing to say.”

  “Why’s that? Business these days. Oh. Tell him if he pukes he’ll be cleaning it up himself.”

  His eyes darted back to Fanning.

  “No hard feelings there, head-the-ball.”

  “Ah no,” said Fanning. “You’re grand.”

  Something that was almost a smile came to the man’s face, but his stare remained flat and empty.

  “He says I’m grand. Did you hear that. ‘You’re grand’ says he.”

  “He only means he gets it,” said Murph. “He understands, like. Not as thick as he looks.”

  The bearded man’s attention went to the hallway then, and he turned away. Murph elbowed Fanning. “What did I tell you? Didn’t I tell you to keep your trap shut? Didn’t I?”

  “He asked me a question.”

  “No he didn’t. He gave you notice, that’s what he done.”

  “Notice, what notice.”

  “You’re on his radar, is what. Don’t be telling people ‘You’re grand.’ Especially him. He runs the thing.”

  “I know who he is, you know.”

  “It doesn’t matter who he is. This is just something he does. On his own.”

  Fanning stretched slowly, to put distance between himself and Murph’s breath. Turning, he saw the bearded man in profile. He was talking quietly to a man with a deeply furrowed forehead and bloodshot eyes.

  “He’s one of the Delaneys,” Fanning said, unwinding his stretch.

  Murph gave him a scathing look.

  “Their pictures are in the papers,” Fanning said. “Newspapers, that is.”

  Murph spoke in a low voice, barely moving his lips.

  “Christ’s sake. We have serious talking to do after this, I’m telling you.”

  Goading Murph had given Fanning a small portion of satisfaction. While Murph took out his cigarettes, Fanning stole another glance at the man Delaney was talking to. He was clean-shaven, in his late twenties Fanning calculated, wearing a newish leather jacket. The furrows on his forehead suggested that listening to Delaney took all his concentration, or patience. He gave curt answers to Delaney, pausing to yawn once. Fanning heard him say something about an Eddsie. It was an odd accent, not quite Dublin-sounding.

  Delaney asked him another question. The man answered. Delaney’s head went back, and a look of distaste came to his face. “West Ham?” Fanning heard him say. “What kind of a name is that?”

  Smoke from Murph’s freshly lit cigarette washed over Fanning’s face then. As he batted it away, a smell of aftershave came to him in its wake. Who the hell would douse themselves with it, and then show up here?

  Delaney and this man were now joined by another man, also in his early twenties. There was a sleepy, morose look to him. His hands hung in the pockets of a plain, zippered jacket. His eyelids slid open and shut to reveal a flat, unfocused gaze. The bored teenager look about a decade later than it should be, Fanning wondered. Probably just stoned. Delaney was staring at him, but the man seemed to be making a point of avoiding eye contact. Delaney glanced at the maroon T-Shirt showing above the zipper, and a sliver of some crest visible, and he turned away.

  Murphy’s elbow was sharper than it needed to be.

  “Cut the gawking.”

  “What colour’s the West Ham jersey?”

  “The what? West Ham what?”

  “The football team.”

  “Christ, I don’t know, do I.”

  Another volley of cigarette smoke came his way from Murph.

  “Well, who is that guy?” Fanning asked.

  “What guy? I don’t know. And quit asking.”

  “He said something about Eddsie.”

  “Who did?”

  Fanning saw that he had Murph’s interest now.

  “That guy, the leather jacket there. And his mate, the dopey-looking one. Who’s Eddsie?”

  Murph stepped in close and glared at him.

  “When we get out of here…”

  He waited for Fanning to meet his eyes, and jabbed him in the chest.

  “This can’t be going on, you hear? You’re going to get us into trouble if you can’t keep that mouth of yours shut.”

  “It’s just a question. After all I’m paying, right?”

  “It’s not about the money. This is my call here. I told you already.”

  The man said something into his mobile and handed it to Delaney. Delaney held it to his ear, and listened. He nodded slowly several times, said something and handed it back. He looked uncertainly at the two men again and then ushered them by with an open palm. Then he walked back to face the groups, and he waited. Fanning saw him glance several times at the two men, now settling themselves into the small crowd.

  “Ready when yous are,” Delaney called out then.

  Fanning studied the group of men congregating at the far end of the cage. He saw corners and sections of banknotes in several hands. The men shuffled again and the talk subsided.

  “Them tinkers have plenty of money, I tell you,” Murphy said.

  “Get yourselves in order,” said Delaney. “‘When the cage is set, that’s it as regards to bets. Rules is rules.”

  Fanning had no idea what breed of dog was now walking by the gate of the enclosure. The dog – mastiff, bulldog – jerked its head constantly as if it were having fits, straining and lurching clumsily at the end of its leash. Tony didn’t glance up from the dog once.

  The dog stopped pulling then, and it lifted a leg. Murph nudged Fanning.

  “Marking the place,” he said. “That’s what that is.”

  Fanning watched the dog being led back to the hallway.

  “Territorial, that’s what that was. Did you know that?”

  Fanning noticed that Delaney was again eyeing the two men he had spoken to earlier. The second of the two had taken out a flask. He took a drink from it, and passed it to the other. As he let back his head, the man stared back at Delaney. It was Delaney who looked away first.

  “Can anyone come to this?” Fanning asked Murph.

  “Are you joking me,” Murph replied with a sneer. “You know what I had to do to get you in here? This is strictly invitation only.”

  Fanning looked over at the mismatched pair again. The one in the suit kept his gaze on the cage, but Fanning was certain that he had everything he wanted to notice in his peripheral vision.

  “Invitation only,” he repeated back to Murph.

  “Didn’t I just say that? You can’t just walk in. No way.”

  “People come a long way for this,” he said to Murph. “Do they?”

  “I suppose.”

  “England, maybe?”

  Murph had been rooting in his pocket for something. He stopped.

  “England? Why are you asking me that?”

  Fanning nodded toward the two men.

  “You are so fu– so nosy, you’ll get us both– Look, here’s Tony’s.”

  As quickly as Murph had turned angry, his expression had changed.

  “Tony’s not a man to bet against,” he murmured.

  Something in Murph’s tone made Fanning look over. A blank expression had taken over Murph’s face
now, Fanning noticed. Mister Expert himself couldn’t hide his own nervous anticipation of the fight to come.

  The second dog looked like a terrier of some kind. It had no ears. It walked with a more jerky intensity than the first, growling low in its throat, and straining to get to the small pool of piss. The man pulling it back kept talking to it. Definitely a tinker, Fanning concluded.

  “Wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something to him,” Murph said.

  “But he’s been hurt,” said Fanning. “Look at his mouth.”

  “No he’s not. Don’t be stupid.”

  “That’s blood there.”

  “So?”

  “He had another fight earlier?”

  “Listen,” said Murph, dipping his head close. The scorn had returned to his voice. “Question for you. Where do you live again? Dundrum, someplace?”

  “Near enough. Why?”

  “Any pets missing there?”

  “Pets? I don’t know. Why?”

  Murph let smoke out the corner of his mouth.

  “Cute, cuddly little pets? Kittens, like?”

  Fanning stared at him until Murph looked up.

  “Now, are you happy?”

  Something shrank in Fanning’s stomach, and he looked away. Everything was crowding in on him now, the smells, the faces, the slow movements of the men, all under the milky overhead light that cast soft shadows and a pale, dun cast over everything and everybody here.

  He half-heard Murph say something about jaws, and teeth, and stamina.

  “A hundred, I said.”

  “What?”

  “Give me two fifties, is what. We’re going to do a bet.”

  “Go ahead, yourself. I’m here for research. Not gambling.”

  “Yeah, well research me the money or we’re leaving.”

  Fanning gave him the eye. Well, at least he had tried. Slowly, he reached into his jacket.

  “Fifty for me, fifty for you,” Murph said. “Winner splits anyway.”

  “Bets!” Delaney yelled. “Your bets!”

  Chapter 10

  After the service, Minogue found himself making his way to the churchyard wall. From there, he had a view of the mourners coming out after him, and a place to smoke on the sly. The wind cut into his coat, but he welcomed it, as he did the patches of sunlight that had appeared on the sides of the hills behind the church.