“Thanks, Liam. See you later.” I might as well have said abracadabra.
I pulled out my smokes and mused on the black-and-white nude on the wardrobe, her Rubenesque figure and comely smile the antidote to many an ail. But not mine. Here I was, up in the loft with Jack, whose sole noble concern was tacking a crucifix and nameplate onto old Harry’s coffin, while my own mind was filled with maintaining deceptions. Brigid Wright was still waiting for me, I knew, and I felt a growing reluctance to go out to her. I was out of the woods with her mother’s autopsy; she’d never be made to suffer the truth now of Lucy’s far from romantic exit. Yet still I faltered. I was attracted to Brigid, deeply attracted to her, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to pour out to her what she’d stirred inside me. However attractive she was, I could never build something special on foundations of duplicity.
And on top of that, as well as my second meeting with Cullen had gone, I still felt a burning need to confess to Christy what I’d done.
“Jack, can you do something for me?”
“Sure,” said Jack, ever willing to help anyone out.
“I have to go up to Walkinstown to see the Hayes family. Could you head around to Pembroke Lane and pick clothes up for me?”
“Certainly,” said Jack. “Now?”
“If you can, Jack, yeah. They’re for Michael and Lucy Wright. Their daughter will be there. Tell her I’ll see her when I bring their remains out this evening at half six or so.”
When Jack had started in the yard, I’d given him enough money to get him going in the syndicate, and no matter how many times I told him to, he never forgot it, claiming me afterwards as his number one ally. He rubbed his hands together as if relishing the task.
“I’ll leave them in the embalming room for you,” he said.
—
CHRISTY WAS SO NERVOUS he was chewing the inside of his bottom lip. The Hayeses agreeing to a closed coffin had sent him into a terribly stressed state, and he wouldn’t be able to sit still till the grave was filled in. As Christy saw it, I was the cause of his trouble. I’d shifted the blame from Kershaw to ourselves and, in doing so, had gone against the grain and raised Christy’s blood pressure considerably. He gripped the wheel tightly as we drove up Windmill Road. Never a better time to take his mind off it.
“I’ve something I’m going to tell you, and when I say you have to keep this to yourself, I mean you can never tell another soul, all right?”
“Right,” said Christy.
“I knocked Donal Cullen down last night and killed him.”
Christy stayed looking at the road ahead while a sarcastic curl took hold of his mouth.
“You’re in flying form, Buckley. It’s lovely to see you back in the game, but I’ve had enough of your bollocks for one day.”
I turned around in my seat.
“Christy, I’m serious. After you left me last night, I headed home through Kilmainham, and when I drove down James’s Street, I hit him.”
“Fuck off,” said Christy, not having a bit of it.
“Christy, I’m deadly fucking serious. Look at me,” I said. He turned his head briefly to smile at me then turned back to the road.
“You won’t get me, Paddy, no matter how hard you try, so give it up, I’m not buying it.”
“I didn’t have my lights on, and I was shattered tired. I was tuning the radio; I’d taken my eyes off the road . . . I didn’t even see him.”
“You’ve put some thought into it anyway, fair play to you, but fuck right off, Buckley, you’re beginning to annoy me.”
With Christy in this mood, there was no talking to him. I’d have to take another tack.
—
OF GALLAGHER’S six premises, the funeral home in Walkinstown was the busiest. Purpose-built in the seventies and freestanding on the corner of a busy intersection, it had become a landmark in Dublin 12 and was known to everyone within a five-mile radius as Gallagher’s corner. We’d come up to make sure the Hayes coffin stayed shut and to make the family feel fussed over.
During the three days it usually takes to have an Irish funeral, a family’s emotions are prone to peaking at a number of stages, and the triggers that precipitate these crescendos are well defined and known to anyone working in the trade. One of the more pronounced ones is when the coffin is removed from the funeral home or house or hospital and put in the back of the hearse and taken to the church. When the coffin is open with the family sitting around the parlor and the undertaker comes in to tell them it’s time to go, knowing that this is the last time they’ll ever see their loved one, the emotional upheaval that follows can be quite upsetting to witness, never mind experience. And it’s not unusual for family members of an emotionally delicate disposition to throw their arms around their loved one, sometimes even trying to pull them out of the coffin, often screaming proclamations of undying love, unbreakable bonds, and intentions of following soon after.
The danger with the Hayeses was that at the last minute, if the father was momentarily absent, the mother or one of the sons or daughters would get their way and have the coffin opened. Usually we stayed out of the parlor to give the family as much privacy as possible, but on this occasion, we stayed at the back of the room for the duration of the family’s time in the funeral home. To my relief and particularly to Christy’s, not a word was said to us, and old Mr. Hayes’s order went unchallenged.
We were due at the Assumption church in Walkinstown at five o’clock. At five minutes to the hour, we carried the coffin out of the parlor and placed it in the back of the hearse, Christy visibly relaxing as he firmly shut the back door and knocked on the side of the hearse to send it on its way. The Hayes family, tucked in the back of their limousines, was ferried down to the church behind the hearse. Their focus was safely on their grief and the coming prayers, well away now from the fact that they were denied their open-coffined farewell.
—
I’D TOLD CHRISTY I needed to pick something up at home, knowing full well there was nothing else I could say to him that would convince him of my guilt. He pulled up outside my house.
“Come in for a minute, I’ve something I want to show you.”
“Buckley, if this is more of your messing—”
“Christy, I want to show you something . . . all right?”
Reluctantly, he gave in to the sense being made to him.
“Fair enough,” he said.
I led him in through the kitchen and down the step into the darkened garage, and turned on the light. There was my Camry. If he’d seen a child getting shot beside him, it could hardly have had a more profound effect on Christy’s composure. He winced as he slowly placed one hand on his belly and the other to his mouth. The shattered windscreen sparkled like a thousand diamonds in front of us, and the bonnet was even more crumpled than I remembered. Christy just looked at me, bereft of anything to say. All he could do was look increasingly pained.
“I didn’t see him. I didn’t even brake till after I’d hit him,” I said.
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Christy, saying each syllable with whispered emphasis. “Did you stop?”
“Of course I did. I got out and leaned down over him to see was he breathing, but he was gone. He died instantly, I’d say. I took out his wallet, which was hanging out of his coat, and it was then I saw his name. Now there was no way I was hanging around there—”
“Fuck no,” said Christy emphatically.
“For what, a slow death? Accident or no accident, Cullen would have me killed. No thanks. I got back in my car, left the lights off, and came back here. And I didn’t sleep a wink. Not a wink.”
“And nobody saw you?”
“I don’t think so. I looked around and the street looked as dead as he was. When I was nearly out of sight, somebody rushed out of a building to his side, but he couldn’t have seen me or got the reg.”
&n
bsp; “Holy fucking Mary,” Christy said to the car. “And what about Cullen, how are you getting on with him?”
There was a part of me that wanted to tell Christy about my Independent Channel 24 experience. My father had taught only me about it, and I’d never shared my knowledge of it with anyone. Even though it had taken up quite a bit of the last twelve hours and had in some ways been my saving grace, telling Christy about it now, on top of what he was already struggling under, would be unfair and unnecessary.
“Started off shaky when I went up to the house. Man, was I scared in there, but then when he came down to the yard, he was all over me, like best buddies. I don’t think he knows, though.”
“Paddy, you wouldn’t be standing here talking to me if the man knew. But if you get as much as a dirty look, skate the fuck out of town immediately.”
“I already got one.”
“What?”
“Frank nearly let it out earlier on,” I said.
“Does Frank know?”
“No, he doesn’t, but he came into the front office talking about me getting that flat at three in the morning after me telling Cullen that I went straight home after the pub . . . and Cullen overheard it.”
“So what you tell Cullen?”
“I told him it was part of the job and I didn’t want to bring him in on other funerals I was looking after.”
“Did you tell him you were in the pub?”
“No, he told me, that’s what has me shaking. The fucker knows everything.”
Christy’s shock was now replaced by deep concern.
“You should never have made those arrangements, Paddy. What possessed you to go up?”
“I don’t know, Frank insisted on it, and I felt strange this morning, and numb, so numb I couldn’t feel a thing, so I just went up. I was getting on grand till I spotted his dog at the end of the room, and whatever that did to me, it put an end to my numbness. All I could feel then was panic and fear.”
“Fear of the dog?”
“No, of Cullen and the other guy in the room, Sean Scully, who were both playing silent staring games, and I had this notion that I couldn’t shake that Cullen somehow knew that I’d killed his brother and was about to tell me . . . it was terrible, my whole body was trembling and I was sweating like a horse.”
“Paddy, call in sick, that’s what you do, I’ll look after the rest of it for you.”
It was comforting to have Christy’s understanding and concern, but that’s all he or anyone else could give me.
“No, he’d seek me out, I know he would. And this is where he’d come to,” I said, indicating the car. “I’ve no choice but to see it through.”
Christy’s eyes widened behind his glasses as it sunk in that this wasn’t a family like the Hayeses, whose trusting nature could be manipulated. We were dealing with the violent world of Vincent Cullen and the terrifying and bloody implications of such a man’s vengeance.
“I’m shoulder to shoulder with you, Paddy,” he said.
SEVENTEEN
6:30 p.m.
I’d often remarked to myself, countless times, in fact, how strange it was to see the remains of someone I knew. Most of the people we buried were unknown to me, and when I’d dress a remains, or embalm them, or even close the lid of their coffin, I was always aware that I could get no real sense of how they looked when they were alive. The animating feature had gone; Elvis had left the building. But when it’s someone you know, and you see them laid out, expecting them to look at rest or asleep, you get a nasty jar when they don’t look like themselves at all. There’d been cases in the past where a family member had insisted that it wasn’t their father or mother in the coffin when it absolutely was. Something happens to the face, it collapses a little. All that’s left is a husk.
When I saw Lucy Wright’s remains laid out on the embalming room table beside her husband’s, waiting to be dressed, I was filled with memories of her living beauty; of her laughing heartily, making me laugh, too; of her standing by the counter, making tea; leaning on the chair, smiling, disarming me completely; holding my hankie to her eyes, containing her emotion; and of her legs opening while taking me inside her. I wondered if her ghost was near, and what she’d think of everything now that she’d awoken from the dream.
Eamonn opened and closed the scissors while raising his eyebrows at Christy.
“Polikoff Special, Christy,” he said, winking at me. The Polikoff Special was one of the tricks of the trade that gave Christy an uneasy feeling going out on funerals, particularly ones he’d arranged himself. To facilitate the path of least resistance in getting a garment on a remains, the back of it was cut open right up to within an inch of the neckline. Then it was just a matter of placing it over the head, putting the arms in the sleeves and tucking the back in to where it originally belonged. I’d bought a relatively cheap suit in England years ago under the Polikoff label, and the inside lining came apart in the same week of my buying it. After that, whenever I’d put a blade to a suit in the embalming room, I’d always preface the cut with the words “Polikoff Special.” I showed Eamonn when he first started embalming, and he took it as his own.
The trousers were always a cinch to get on and needed no cutting. One man lifted the legs while the other pulled the trousers up to the waist. We had Michael Wright’s remains dressed and coffined within minutes.
And then Lucy. Eamonn was about to cut her blouse and cardigan up the back, but I raised my hand.
“There’s three of us here, just as quick to put them on her,” I said, and started lifting her shoulders. Eamonn was slightly taken aback as I’d rarely not go for the Polikoff, but Christy moved in immediately.
“Bang on, Buckley,” he said, and helped me dress her without tearing anything. We lifted her from the table into the coffin then, and I fixed her hair. It was common practice within the firm to administer only the smallest amount of makeup, so I put on just the subtlest hint of rouge around her cheeks to raise her color slightly. As corpses go, she looked dignified and composed.
I opened the embalming room door out onto the yard where the two hearses were waiting in the darkening evening. As I turned on the deck lights in the back of the first hearse, a white articulated lorry slowly maneuvered its way through the gates.
“I thought Conway’s only delivered coffins down here on Saturdays,” said Christy from the door.
“They made an exception today,” I said.
“That’s a first,” said Eamonn.
“It’s for Cullen.”
Eamonn let out a little chuckle.
“Amazing what a bit of fear does to people, isn’t it?” he said, closing the lids on the coffins.
“Amazing,” I said, looking at Christy.
—
I LED THE WAY out to Pembroke Lane, Christy and Eamonn each in a hearse behind me. The nearer I got to Brigid Wright, the more my heart swelled, never mind that I was bringing her parents’ remains home for her to grieve over. When I stepped back and looked at it, it all seemed a little twisted, but I hadn’t wished for it or invited it in, and the chemistry between us didn’t have a switch I could hit, nor did it seem right to hand the funerals over to Frank or Christy. The moments I shared with her mother in the kitchen were golden to me, and I felt duty-bound to carry out the funerals as originally intended, all the more now that I’d met Brigid. To honor the Wrights and atone for my role in Lucy’s death, the least I could do was bury them well. I’d keep my feelings in check and my heart hidden.
After pressing the buzzer, I felt the door shake and hum before I pressed it open and walked through to the open front door. I expected there to be a crowd rallying around Brigid by this stage, but she was on her own.
“Hi,” she said. “Come on in.”
I followed her through the living room into a bigger room, a study with wall-to-wall bookshelves. Brigid pointed to w
here she wanted the coffins.
“There and there, I was thinking. What do you think?”
“Perfect,” I said, and it was. I’d been in many beautiful houses making arrangements in my time, some of them opulent beyond belief, but what the Wrights had done in their home no interior designer could do. They had class. Not manufactured or emulated, but genuine, and they were artists. The room was filled with the smallest, seemingly effortless details. The little framed charcoal sketch fitting snugly between bookshelves; the old rug on the floor, probably woven in the west of Ireland with colors to paint the night red with; and countless other inimitable touches.
“We’ll bring them in. Do you want to wait in the kitchen, and I’ll come and get you when we’re ready?”
“Sure,” she said, and then disappeared back through the living room.
We wheeled the coffins in one by one and left them on their trolleys, side by side, just in front of the fireplace. Christy got out his screwdriver and opened the lids, resting them against the books while Eamonn and I fixed the hair and clothes on Michael and Lucy, respectively, and adjusted their heads on the little pillows beneath them. We did this deftly and without a word as we always did when in someone’s house. Everything in its place, both men nodded silently to me and walked out of the house into the night and away with their hearses.
I knocked gently on the kitchen door and walked in to where Brigid sat at the table, looking at me expectantly.
“Can I go in now?”
“Of course.”
I stayed in the kitchen while she went in, her scent still alive in the room and doing a number on my senses. She looked even more gorgeous than she had in my head all day. Her hair was half up, half down, and she wore a white linen blouse with jeans and knee-high brown leather boots. I sat down at the table with my stomach aflutter, wondering should I have gone with the boys and left her alone to grieve her departed parents. I knew from compiling the death notices that there weren’t many relatives on either side, certainly no sisters- or brothers-in-law, nor were there nephews or nieces; surely, though, she’d be expecting someone. The reason I’d hung around was to give her the estimate—at least that’s what I’d told myself. I could’ve given it to her when she’d let me in, but I didn’t. I’d kept it till after, when we’d be alone. Shaking my head at my inner machinations, I pulled out the envelope containing the estimate and placed it on the table in front of me. I’d no further business there.
The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley Page 10
