by Chris Binchy
Dessie sat down for a moment and took a cigarette out of his pocket. The girl shook her head at him and pointed at the sign. He stood to go and realized that the bill was still in front of him, unpaid. He left a fiver on the counter and wandered out to look for a taxi.
61
A car door slammed and Victor woke with a jump. The television screen in front of him was blue and he saw Gareth sitting at the other end of the couch, asleep, chin resting on his chest, a beer can still in his hand. From outside he heard voices. He thought it might be one of his housemates arrived home with friends but the sound was wrong.
‘Gareth,’ he said.
‘What?’
Victor got up and walked across the room in darkness to the front window. Besim and the other Albanians were standing beside a black BMW parked in front of the house. There were at least four of them.
‘Oh, fuck,’ Victor said.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m in trouble here.’
Gareth came to the window and looked out.
‘Who are they?’
‘Albanians.’
‘What do they want?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing good.’
‘Why? What did you do?’
‘I hit Agnieszka. She’s obviously gone to these guys.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’
Besim was walking towards the house now with something in his hand. He saw Victor looking out at him and, without slowing, pitched a brick straight at him. Victor and Gareth ducked down as the window came in around them.
‘Right,’ Victor said, as he stood. He went into the hall and opened the door.
Besim stopped and looked at him. ‘You fucking bastard,’ he said.
‘What’s it to you? It’s none of your business. You don’t know anything about it.’
‘I know what you did.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Victor said.
‘Are you going to come out?’
‘Well, there’s five of you and there’s two of us. That’s hardly fair.’
‘I’ll do you on my own,’ Besim said. ‘And I’ll dance on your fucking head.’
‘Okay,’ Victor said, and ran at him. He was stronger, he could feel that straight away. He got a hand to Besim’s shoulder and a foot behind him and brought him to the ground. They grappled there for a minute as the others stood around in silence, and then Victor was on top, his knees pinning down Besim’s arms. He had one hand on his throat and slammed his elbow into the middle of Besim’s face hard three times in a row. ‘Enough?’ he said. ‘I have you now. You tell me when to stop.’
‘You’re fucking dead,’ Besim said.
‘Knife, Victor!’ Gareth called from somewhere, and Victor looked up. Behind him he saw a blur of movement and felt a sting in his back twice. It didn’t hurt but it frightened him. He got up off Besim and ran a couple of steps back towards the house. The Albanians were moving away now, dragging Besim with them to the car. They got him into it and took off. Victor reached around and felt the dampness on his back.
‘How bad is it?’ he asked Gareth, who was beside him now, pressing his jacket against Victor’s back.
‘I don’t know,’ Gareth said. ‘It’s not good.’ With his other hand he was dialling the emergency number. Victor sat on the front step. His breathing was clogged now, rasping and hard to find. He spat blood on to the ground in front of him.
‘I thought there’d be more,’ he said, looking at his hand as the light began to turn grey at the edges.
62
On the street outside she thought about what she would do. There was a chance that he was at her place, waiting. There was nothing he could say or do that would change anything. She was going now. Or maybe he wouldn’t even want to apologize. Maybe he would feel he needed to punish her for what she had done even though he knew nothing about any of it. It was unlikely but, then, she would have said that his hitting her was unlikely. She came to a junction and saw a taxi rank in front of her. At her building she got the guy to wait for her outside. There was no sign of anyone on the street. She couldn’t see Victor’s car anywhere. She went up to the flat, let herself in, and just as she was about to open the door of her bedroom had a moment of panic. He could be in there. One of the others might have let him in, not thinking anything of it. He could be standing on the other side of the door, waiting to grab her and beat her into the floor. There were no notes in the hall for her, no messages to say that Victor had been by.
There was nothing else she could do. She was ready to scream as she opened the door and saw her room, empty and exactly as she’d left it that morning. She put her stuff into a suitcase. There wasn’t much she needed. The rest she would leave behind. She counted out a month’s rent and left it on her bedside table. Then, as she was leaving, she went back and took it with her.
‘Early flight, isn’t it?’ the driver said, when she got back into the car and asked to go to the airport.
‘Yes.’
‘What time is it at?’
‘Six. But I want to get there early.’
‘Jesus, you’ll be out there for hours. Where are you going?’
‘Home,’ she said.
‘Where’s that?’ She kept her gaze out the window and didn’t answer. The driver didn’t ask again and neither of them spoke for the rest of the trip. There was nothing about here that she would miss, she thought. Wherever she went in her life, wherever the next phase would be, she would never come back here. A hard place.
When she arrived at the airport she checked the boards and saw that there was a flight to Wroclaw at seven. From there she could get to her mother’s house in three hours on the train. She talked to a staff member, who told her that the check-in crew could sell her a ticket, then wandered across the terminal building taking apart first one phone, then the other, dropping the SIM cards in different bins.
She sat with her bag between her feet against a wall in Departures. There were bodies sleeping around the place, backpackers mostly, saving taxi fares or the cost of a hotel by spending the night there. She should sleep herself but didn’t feel tired enough. Her face was sore. She rested her cheek against the cool marble behind her head. There were cleaning staff with buffing machines and bored security guards, who wandered around hoping that nothing would happen or maybe that something would. Every few minutes an announcement blasted through the building about only smoking in designated areas. She began to get cold, the air-conditioning too much for the empty halls at night, and went outside, dragging her bag behind her. She sat on a bench in the warm still air. The sky was already brightening in front of her. By the time the sun went down again she would be with Jakub. She had time enough to think about where they could go next, what they would do and how they would manage it. Nothing had changed. All the things that had made her leave in the first place still held. But she would be with him and for a while that would be enough.
63
Sylvester woke and, for a moment, had no idea where he was. The light was on and he could see the room but just for a second he didn’t recognize it. There were no clues, a blank canvas of bed, table, chair, television without history. Words. Then it came to him and things started to move very quickly. He sat up, looked at his watch and saw that it was half four. Why was he still here? What had happened? Had the girl drugged him or had he been attacked? He slapped his face with both hands and tried to think.
They hadn’t done anything. She was hurt. He’d given her some money and she’d left. Then he lay down and now he was here. Where the hell was Dessie? He went and got his phone from his jacket pocket. His head hurt as if he was hung-over. He rang Dessie’s number and it went straight to message.
‘Fuck,’ he shouted, and his voice scared him, way too loud in the eerie quiet of the hotel room at night. He hung up, then dialled straight back. Whispered into the phone: ‘Dessie, it’s Sylvester. It’s half four and I’m in the room. I don’t know why I’m still here. I’m coming down now. See you in a minute.’
<
br /> He put on his jacket and saw himself in the bathroom mirror. There was a ghost looking back at him, pale and scruffy and disturbed. He turned off the light and was opening the door when he thought about the bag and the hundred thousand. His heart stopped and his body went rigid. It was a good-sized room but from where he was standing he could see most of it and there was no sign of the bag. He dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. Nothing. He crawled across the floor, checking under the bedside table, the desk, the television unit. It wasn’t there. He stood up and stripped the covers off the bed.
‘Where are you?’ he screamed, into a pillow held against his face. Back into the bathroom. Not in the bin, in the bath, in the toilet, in the shower or in the cupboard above the sink. He rang Dessie’s phone again, and again heard the scratchy low growl of his message. ‘I’m in trouble here, Dessie. If you get this come up to me. I don’t know what’s going on.’
He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think. Had the girl come back? Would she have done this? She didn’t seem the type, especially not after what he’d done for her. But she was a fucking prostitute. What was he thinking? He could ring the company, whatever crowd it was they used, and then he realized he knew nothing about any of it. Dessie did it all. There was a member of staff who arranged everything for them here, who kept the room free and clear, made sure that they were never disturbed and that no one ever saw them, then cleaned up afterwards. It didn’t cost much for all that he did. What was his name? If Sylvester had ever known he’d forgotten it now. He looked at the phone beside the bed and tried to work out if there was anything he could do. Any call he could make to Reception. I’m in Room 538. Do you know about me? Can you help? I’m not supposed to be here and a prostitute has stolen my client’s money.
He would go to Dessie, tell him everything, and he would be able to sort this out. Get his man involved. Get on to the whore company and get the money back. He went through the room one more time, knowing that the bag wasn’t there but thinking maybe he could jolt reality back to where it should be by playing dumb. It didn’t work.
He opened the door and looked down the corridor. Nobody was there. He left the room and made his way to the stairs, then went down, down, down into the basement and into the underground car-park. He was trying not to run, desperate to get to the next stage when they would be able to do something but trying to be quiet. When he turned the corner he saw only empty space. There was no car. There was no Dessie. He put a hand across his mouth and felt his hot breath pulsing against it. He walked as far as the next corner. There were cars here and there but none of them was his. He kept going until he came back to his starting-point. Dessie was gone. There could be no doubt. His ability to make sense of what was happening was breaking into pieces and floating away. He walked slowly up the concrete ramp to outside and tried Dessie’s number again.
‘Where are you?’ he said, and left it at that.
Sitting on stools behind the porters’ desk, Ray and Tommy watched Sylvester on the security camera as he wandered aimlessly up the ramp from the underground car-park.
‘What the fuck is he doing?’ Tommy said.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Where’s Dessie?’
‘I don’t know. Gone, I suppose. No sign of him.’
‘Should we do something?’ Tommy said. ‘Should we see if he’s all right?’
‘No,’ Ray said. ‘Dessie’s always said to ignore him. Pretend he’s not there. That’s the way he wants it. That’s what he pays for.’
‘So that’s what he gets.’
‘That’s what he gets,’ Ray said. Sylvester turned left at the top of the ramp and disappeared from the picture. ‘If he needs anything he’ll come in.’
Ray headed off towards the kitchen, then stopped and called back over. ‘Where’s Marcin?’
‘Haven’t seen him. Somewhere around.’
‘If he turns up will you tell him to get the breakfast cards?’
‘Will do,’ Tommy said.
Sylvester walked along the driveway in front of the hotel. He looked up at the entrance, glowing in yellow light, and knew what it would be to walk in there and feel the blast of coolness, to smell the flowers and hear the water-feature. Above his head the trees met and birds were beginning to sing. He passed the rockeries and flowerbeds and came to the entrance and the security box at the gate with a guard sleeping in his chair, head lolling back, and kept walking. He turned right and saw in front of him a huge sky full of yellow and pink and blue in the approaching dawn, the air completely still and clear and silent as if the day itself was holding its breath. He stood there not moving, watching this, and believed for a moment that everything had stopped. That he was alone in this beautiful world and that if he wanted he could stay standing there for ever and that nothing would ever change.
64
It was three o’clock when Marcin woke from a dreamless sleep into the pain and confusion of a hangover. He lay there feeling poisoned in the half-darkness, trying to remember why he felt so bad, and then it came to him. He sat up, threw his pillow across the room, and the bag was there, where his head had been, looking back at him as he stared. He sat on the edge of the bed and took the money out, then looked at it all for twenty minutes, stacked in neat piles. It baffled him. He tried to contemplate the options that were in front of him but in the presence of all these notes, with their smell filling the room, it was hard to keep focused. He looked at his phone and saw that there were no missed calls, no messages. He checked the news on the television and saw nothing of relevance. Nothing had happened yet.
It was not his. That thought kept occurring to him. He had no right to rob anyone, to take something simply because it was there. Who the money belonged to or what it was for didn’t alter anything. It did not belong to him. He could find a way to give it back. Be honest and say that a moment of weakness overcame him, that he had done the wrong thing and that, on reflection, in sobriety, in the cold light of the mid-afternoon, he was ashamed of his behaviour. He was sorry and here was the money back. Untouched.
Or he could say nothing. Find the man’s address somehow and take it to his house in the middle of the night. Put it in an envelope, leave it for him in the hotel lost-and-found and call him from a public phone. ‘I am a friend. There is something important for you waiting in the hotel. Good luck.’
He put the money back into the bag and took it into the bathroom with him while he showered. He got dressed and packed his rucksack carefully, set the alarm on his phone, then lay on the bed with his eyes closed. He thought about what might happen, allowed himself to be optimistic and felt himself drift. When the alarm went off he thought he was ready. His phone still had not rung. There were no messages for him.
He left the flat with the rucksack on his shoulder and rang Tommy’s mobile as he walked towards the bus.
‘It’s me,’ he said.
‘How are you?’ Tommy said.
‘I’m all right. And you?’
‘Grand.’
‘Any news?’ Marcin asked.
‘No news here. Have you anything for us yourself?’
‘I’m not coming back. If that’s news.’
‘Not really.’
‘I just… I can’t do it any more, you know.’
‘I know,’ Tommy said.
‘Will it be all right?’
‘I’ll tell them.’
‘What’ll they do?’
Tommy laughed quietly. ‘They’ll get someone else. It won’t be a problem.’
‘Thanks, Tommy.’ Was there something else he should say? ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It’s fine. Listen, I have to go.’
Marcin heard the splash of water and the background sound of people laughing, ordering, being served. ‘I’ll see you around.’
‘Good luck.’
The bus brought him to the centre of town. He walked along the quays towards the sea until in front of a bank he saw a crowd of people and the colours of
the coach company. He wandered among them, people saying goodbye and loading bags into the bottom of the bus, smoking cigarettes and hugging each other. The driver asked him how far he was going and he said to Warsaw. ‘You’re in for the long haul,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Marcin said. But he didn’t think he was. The bus would go through Wales and England, then take the boat to Holland and travel on through Germany to Poland. He could get off anywhere, go anywhere. Disappear into some small town for a couple of months away from all of this until he got his head together and his story straight. And when he knew what to say to people, how to explain everything that had happened to him and all the things he had done, he could begin to think about going home.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Brendan Barrington, Marianne Gunn O’Connor, Richard and Sue Ogilvy, Magda and Marcin Gajko, Cormac Kinsella, my parents and Sarah.
PENGUIN IRELAND
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
