The Murk Beneath_A Cork Crime Novel

by L. Danvers

  “You fancy meeting up for a pint in an hour?” I said.

  “Does the Pope molest choir boys in the woods?”

  Thank God for Mogs's irreverence. Exactly what I needed just then.

  Once again I found Mogs without a pint.

  “The usual?” I said with a wry smile.

  I went to the bar and came back, as I had before, with a pint of Howling Gale and a pint of Bud.

  “Jaysus, I'm gaspin,” Mogs said.

  He took such a gulp that I wondered how his throat could cope with the deluge. Not one for savouring was Mogs. I took a more leisurely sip. The Howling Gale had a tang to it, kind of citrusy – worth giving the taste buds the time to enjoy the experience.

  “Story, feen?” Mogs asked.

  “Ah, I'm OK. Sorry for not hanging around too long the last night.”

  I didn't want to mention the date with Grace. I'd only get the full wind-up merchant treatment from Mogs.

  “Ah, you're grand, boy. Sure, didn't I get two free pints of Bud and half a Howling Gale.”

  He winked at me with a withered eyelid. He was getting on in years. What was he now? At least sixty?

  “Anyway,” he went on, “was it something I said, like? The Moolah – was that it? I thought you barely knew him.”

  I took another sip. I felt the cold beer soothe my throat.

  “Nah. I just remembered I needed to be somewhere.”

  Mogs looked like he bought my guff. He wasn't exactly the brightest button in the haberdashery.

  “Don't worry about it, boy,” he said. “Happens to me all the time. Memory like a sieve, me.”

  Mogs took another gulp of Bud. About a quarter of his pint left and we'd only been talking for a couple of minutes. He went through beer faster than a gas bubble.

  “What do you think about the Cork team in the league, boy?” he asked, directing the conversation into comfortable territory.

  “Hurling or football?”

  “Does it matter? Like, we'll be lucky if the players don't all go on strike. Dozy muppets.”

  “There's two sides to every dispute, Mogs.”

  I knew first hand about sides. There was the media version of me giving Chambers a right flaking, and there was the version that my Garda friends should have held up on. Now, it didn't matter a tuppenny fuck that the media was on the money – that wasn't the point – the point was that a plausible story wasn't offered in my defence. A little white lie would have done: Chambers resisted arrest – which he did – and required ultimate force in restraining him. But I could have cuffed him easy enough and didn't. One fist flew, then another, and another. It was the picture of the boy under those twigs, burnt into my memory like staring at the sun for too long does to the eyes. And I could have sworn Chambers had smirked even as the fists flew. The more I'd laced into Chambers, the wider the smirk appeared to become – or had his brain gone by that stage?

  Mogs's lips were flapping vigorously as he was saying something undoubtedly unimportant, but I could not hear him. Instead, I was picturing both Chambers's pulped visage and the stark image of Little Robbie O'Meara's corpse, so white that the bruising around its neck was clearly visible – a necklace of knuckles like the one I had given Chambers to cut off the blood supply to his brain and send him into that coma.

  “I said,” Mogs repeated forcefully, “they can get in all the minor and B squad players, get guys with some pride in the jersey, boy. Like, maybe show up the senior panel for the jumped up pricks that –”

  “Ah hang on, Mogs. I think you'll find they're on strike precisely because they have pride in the jersey. They're sick of all this amateur crap from the county board. They just … ah for feck sake, I don't want to have another Roy Keane-style argument where we both lose – even if we think we win.”

  “Too right, boy” Mogs said. “Those feens can go and take a running jump into the River Lee for all I care. Not worth the steam off me piss talking about them.”

  Mogs finished the last of the beer and fumbled in his pocket for a non-existent – at least that would be his excuse – wallet. He tisked loudly and said, with the most exaggerated exasperation: “Sure, didn't I only go and leave me wallet in me dirty jeans.”

  I half coughed, half grunted. “Let's hope Maude doesn't put that dirty jeans into the washing machine with your wallet still in it, eh?”

  I raised up my eyebrows to indicate my disbelief. But this was just a game we played. I had my part to play and so did Mogs. I would nearly have been disappointed had Mogs actually had the temerity to pay for his own pint, let alone mine.

  “Mam's not so thick as to not check the pockets,” Mogs said without a hint of irony.

  “What is she now? Ninety?”

  “Eighty-eight.”

  “Shame on you,” I said, laughing. “Getting your old mam to wash your clothes.”

  “Jesus Christ, Mickey,” Mogs said, a serious look in his eyes. “Be sure to never let her hear you call her old. She'll come after you with her blackthorn stick and give you a right flake.”

  Mogs cupped his hand around his upper arm as if covering a sore spot. He appeared quite unaware of what he had just done and rather than feel amused, I imagined how distressing a childhood Mogs had had. There had been other clues to this. Little mannerisms here and there.

  “Anyway, about this Moolah fella,” I said with such apparent disinterest that it must have appeared to Mogs that I was just filling an awkward silence.

  But this was partly why I was here. The eavesdropping at O’Brien’s house had suggested Moolah was O’Brien’s handiwork. But if there was a link to Jordan, then I needed to know for sure. I needed to know if Jordan was as retired as he claimed. I needed to know because I was about to date his only daughter.

  “What about him?”

  “You said he was shipping in some stuff on a yacht?”

  “That's right.”

  “From Spain or somewhere?”

  “Couldn't tell ya. Maybe.”

  “How did you hear about this?”

  Mogs looked incredulously at me. “And if some feen – oh, I dunno, let's just say some porky fecking pig … no offence –” I offered up my hand to indicate none had been taken. "– were to ask you where you heard the skinny from?”

  I gave Mogs a few sharp nods of my head.

  “Exactly,” Mogs said. “You got your sources, boy …” He placed the fingertips of both hands, their knuckles standing proud like a mountain range, on his chest. “… and I got mine.”

  I felt like there was a colony of ants crawling all over my arms and the back of my neck. There was honour among thieves, even retired bagmen, for sure. I couldn't push this line of questioning any further and the frustration was agonizing.

  A lifetime deal, Doc O'Reilly had said about the kind of meds I would need should I not mend my ways. And here I was inviting stress into my life when I should probably have booked into a fecking spa – not that I was into that kind of girly shite, just that that was what they usually did on TV shows like How Long Will You Live?

  I felt like leaving early again, perhaps more abruptly this time, but I realized I enjoyed the kind of banter we had engaged in prior to hitting that brick wall. It took my mind off the serious stuff – Jordan, O'Brien, Dad.

  Mogs and I drank a few more, laughed loudly more than once, and decided, ultimately, that hunger would call a halt to our drinking rather than the barman flashing the lights for closing time, not that the clientele of An Capall Bán – an assorted rabble of sham-feens and flah-bags if ever there was one – were ones for such limp gestures.

  I felt like I could murder my own mother for a battered sausage and so Mogs and I decided to head for Phelan's chipper, a short walk down Blarney Street.

  “You're some gimp, you,” Mogs said with a grin, about halfway to the chipper.

  “What?”

  “You were onto a good wan there, boy. In da shades, like. Pension, overtime. Then you go and mangle that kiddie rapist big time. Li
ke, nearly bate him to death, like.”

  “I know, but –”

  I felt and heard a swish in my right ear. And then Mogs wasn't there anymore. I looked around. He was down on the ground, back to the wall of a house, holding his stomach. He looked up at me pleadingly, blood pouring between his fingers. His mouth opened, but no words came.

  My police training kicked in. Even as langers as I was, I managed to duck behind the nearest car. Then the sound of a shot registered. A shotgun blast. Then another blast sent pellets clattering into steel and smashing through the car window.

  “Mogs! Mogs?”

  I looked to him. He was out in the open, easy prey for whatever gunman had opened up on us.

  I didn't carry a piece. I'd been stripped of my side-arm when I was thrown out of the Guards and I'd not bothered applying for a private security or a gun licence. I'd always thought the butt of a torch, like the one I used to carry on my rounds in Churchfield, would have been enough.

  I stayed crouched by the front wheel arch of the car. The pause in the action seemed interminable. Another shot rang out and I could immediately feel something dig into my shin. I tried to suppress my voice, but I let out a strained cry. Again it seemed like time forgot its business and everything froze. And in that moment of temporal frigidity, I experienced several things that my usually suspect memory would later recall as clearly as the seven, exactly seven, twigs I knew had protruded over Robbie O'Meara's body: the warmth of the blood trickling down from my shin onto my calf; the rumbling growl of a high-cc motor cycle; a man shouting, “forget him, he's not important,”; some girl in some house screaming; Mogs looking at me desperately, piss streaming along the ground from beneath him. And then, mercifully, there was the screeching of tyre rubber as a bike sped away up the hill.

  I continued to stoop, petrified almost. My friend was lying on the ground, his life quickly draining away and I could not move. Then I could stoop no more and fell onto my arse with my back to the tyre of the car that had saved my life.

  “Are you OK?” some girl was asking.

  It barely registered. I looked up to see a freckly red-headed girl, no older than fifteen, staring down at me.

  “Your leg looks pretty bad.”

  “I’m … I’m fine.”

  I tried to get up, but couldn’t. I climbed to my feet using the car for leverage and felt fine – for about ten seconds. Then the endorphins wore off and the pain was like someone had stuck a bread knife through my calf muscle. The girl – with that red hair of hers, like a river of blood, oh Christ! – she pleaded with me to sit back down and wait for the ambulance her mother had called, but I was having none of it. Mogs. I had to check Mogs.

  “Dad!” the girl cried in the direction of what must have been her home. “Get a coat!”

  I hobbled towards Mogs. It was a horrific sight, one that I – what with my tendency towards obsessive thoughts – would never be able to banish from my memory, in much the same way I had never been able to clear my mind’s eye of that crime scene with the dead boy whose name I would rather have forgotten. I had to look away for a moment and felt ashamed for doing so.

  I noticed a light in the corner of my eye and looked across the street to see an old woman, maybe in her eighties, peering out from between some tattered old curtains and netting. She looked for all the world like Mogs’s mother. What was her name again? Christ Jesus, what was her fucking name? Mogs’s mother with the blackthorn stick, with all those knobbles eager to make contact with muscle and bone. She’d not hit him again; the bitch would see her son go into the ground before her.

  And then a weak voice said, “Ya fecking gobshite, help me!”

  Mogs was alive. I bent down to look at the damage. I pulled up his shirt and could see that blood was draining from at least two holes. There was nothing gaping, though – that was something positive to hold onto. Probably a couple of pellets had lodged in his gut. With some luck, he'd make it through. I looked into his eyes. I saw enough pain in them that I believed he was going to be able to cling on by those filthy fingernails of his.

  Hang on a minute. I’m standing here waiting for an ambulance. For the Guards. Detectives. Savage. That cunt could be out there somewhere monitoring the radio, might even be the first responder. Could be that the dirty fuck was behind the hit.

  I had to get away from there, get some medical attention, and think things through. Then maybe call Cotter. If I thought he could be trusted.

  “I'm sorry, Mogs, I've got to make a run for it,” I said and put my hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “You're going to make it.” I said it like I meant it.

  The girl’s father came from the house with a coat. “Hey, where are you going?”

  “I’m grand. It’s just a nick. I’ll look after it myself. He needs help more than me.”

  “Are you mad? The ambulance will be here in two minutes.”

  “I’m grand!”

  “Stop him, Dad!” the red head called out.

  “I’m not getting involved,” her Dad said.

  That’s right … look after your daughter. Be a good father. Take her inside and keep her safe.

  I shuffled off dragging one leg behind me in the direction of Doc O’Reilly’s home.

  You better be in, you fucking sadistic cretin, I thought as I approached the door to Doc O’Reilly’s home, the pain crawling up my leg like some kind of demon spawn was gleefully burrowing its way around inside my thigh.

  The doc lived in a new apartment just around the corner from his practice. I thought maybe he owned some of the other apartments too, had maybe lost a good deal of his pension on the ill-advised investment when the boom became bust. I buzzed the intercom and prayed the old man was in.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Doc. Mickey.”

  “Mickey?”

  “Fecking Bosco, you … just let me in, please.”

  There was a pause. No buzz.

  “I’m hurt, you bastard,” I called into the microphone, my lips pressed up to it such that I left a trail of spittle behind me.

  There was the buzz and the door released. I went into the main hall. I tottered over to the lift. Out of Order, a sign read. I looked up at the ceiling as if I could see through it to the heavens above.

  “You langer,” I said. “You good-for-nothing langer.”

  In all my life, I resolved, I had never experienced such pain. I began to climb the stairs. Each step seemed worse than the last, to the point where I considered just stopping and lying there. And if I bled out, then all well and good as far as I was concerned. I’d had a good run of it for a while. But the last few years had been shite and it wasn’t as if the next few offered anything different. I’d bleed out on the nice shiny marble stairs and crawl right on into the boot of that rusting car with my father.

  “What the fuck?” Doc said as he stood at the top of the stairs. “What a mess.”

  I looked behind myself as if I were a child who’d soiled himself. A trail of blood snaked its way up the steps to meet me. My blood? Of course it was. Maybe it was the mess on the stairs the doc was more worried about than the undoubted mess that I had become.

  “Sorry, Doc. I kind of had an accident.”

  “Never mind that, you poor fecker.”

  He ran down the last six or seven steps – I had climbed at least fifteen – grabbed my arm and put it around his shoulder. The doc was twig-thin, but showed surprising strength in supporting me as we awkwardly bundled our way up the remaining steps.

  “What kind of shite have you heaped upon yourself now, Mickey?”

  I grunted as much out of non-committal as from the pain. The less I told the doc, the better. We stopped at the third door along the corridor. A rubber plant was in a pot to one side of it – real or not, I couldn’t tell, or give two shites about.

  “Mind yourself,” O’Reilly said as he dipped his hand into his pocket to fetch the key. I whelped as some of the weight transferred onto my injured leg.

  �
�Sorry, Mickey.”

  He helped me to a couch once we got inside and fetched a towel to put under the bleeding leg. Some blood smeared on the leather and I apologized, but the Doc said it would wash off easily.

  “You can start by telling me what happened and then I’ll tell you whether we need to amputate or not.”

  My eyes bulged. Ampu-what?

  O’Reilly let out a throaty laugh.

  “Relax, Mickey. It’s just a flesh wound. You wouldn’t have made it this far if the bone had been shattered.”

  He fetched a scissors and cut my trouser leg to reveal the extent of the damage.

  “Shite,” he said.

  “What?” I said, suspecting the doc may have reevaluated the need to cut my leg off.

  “Got some blood on my jumper. My son got it for my birthday.”

  I didn’t think the guy had ever been married. Couldn’t even imagine the guy being married. But quite frankly, I couldn’t have given a rat’s ass about the doc’s geansaí.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened, or am I going to have to drug you to get some answers?”

  “I’ve been shot.”

  Doc O’Reilly examined the wound, cleaned it off with a wet cloth.

  “No shit, Sherlock. But it doesn’t look like much of a gunshot wound to me.”

  He got another cloth and poured some foul-smelling liquid on it, probably some kind of disinfectant, and wiped the wound again.

  “Wait here a minute,” he said as if I could even consider moving from the settee.

  He returned a minute later from another room with some forceps.

  “There’s something in there all right, but I’ll be fucked if it’s a bullet. Brace yourself.”

  The pain was at a level that I couldn’t put a number on. I simply couldn’t count that far.

  “Jesus Christ, Doc! You going to plant a fucking tree down there, or what?”

  The doc kept on digging.

  “Just a second … shite.”

  Darkness. The pain. Too much.

  “Got it!”

  A few seconds passed and I was unclear about whether I was awake or not. I opened an eye. The doc was there holding something with the forceps. Something black. Like the Devil’s snot.