by Bateman
That brought a little colour back to his cheeks. ‘Get him out,’ he snapped.
Eric caught hold of me by the collar and started to drag me back.
‘I don’t mean . . . I mean . . . I think I love her . . .’
‘Now!’
I was out of the house and tossed on to the tarmac. Eric looked menacingly down at me. And then the menace dropped away and he said, ‘Sorry, sometimes I have to do the heavy stuff. It’s what I get paid for. Left to my own devices I would probably have given you a thank-you card and a quarter of fudge.’ He winked. ‘I’d give you a lift, but y’know, better get back inside.’
I pulled myself up into a sitting position. I said, ‘Okay.’
‘There’s a bus goes past the bottom of the road every half-hour, if that’s any help. You need money for the fare?’
‘No. I’m okay.’
I stood and wiped at the black skidmarks on the knees of my trousers. I nodded at him and turned away. Then back. ‘Eric?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You should get Derek to a hospital. That’s a nasty crack.’
‘I know. I will. Thanks.’
‘And Eric?’
‘What?’
‘Who’s Bosco?’
Eric thought for a moment, then glanced behind him. He stepped forward. ‘I think it’s really sweet that you can fall in love with someone so quickly. Derek tells me youse were at it while he was being whacked.’
I shrugged.
‘She’s a lovely girl, except that silly old Hector doesn’t appreciate it, and his own daughter too.’
I looked at him.
‘So Bosco’s the guy stole the horse,’ he said. ‘Bosco Brown, find him you’ll find the horse, and maybe Mandy too.’
‘Can you tell me something about him? Does he––’
There was a shout from the house. ‘Sorry,’ Eric said, ‘gotta go.’ Then added swiftly, ‘He’s one of our jockeys. Down Cork way.’ He made a little hand movement to suggest drinking. ‘That’s why we’re not getting too hot under the collar. The fucking little people are always giving us grief. Bosco’s strictly small-time, he’s probably holed up down there in a barn with a bottle of vodka. He’ll phone in a ransom demand, except he’s not bright enough to realise we can trace it. We’ll have them both back in no time, no doubt about it. But if you’re going looking yourself, Dan, I hope you find them first, cause when I find him, I’m going to fucking plant him.’
Eric hurried back to the house.
I watched him go for a moment, then walked back down the drive to the mangled gates, and out along the road to the bus stop.
I leant against it.
Eric had been doing so well. My chum. Love was sweet. Volunteering information. But just a little too much. Strictly small-time. Drinking. Cork. If you’re going looking . . . Of course I was bloody going, they knew that, and it was all designed to throw me off the trail.
Geordie was frightened silly.
I heard the sirens before I saw the police cars. They weren’t stupid. The burning horse box, the abandoned Ferrari and the discharged shotgun, they could all be traced back to Geordie. They didn’t need to add me into the equation.
I have long been convinced that sirens serve only to warn criminals and further inflate the egos of policemen. I wasn’t complaining. I did what every dashing hero does when pursued by his enemies.
I hid behind a tree.
19
I had two pints to steady my nerves. I sat in the bar at Connolly station. If I craned my head and pressed it against the smoked glass I could just make out the train timetable hanging down from the ceiling outside, but there was really no need. It wasn’t like stations in England, where you had to keep an eye on constantly fluctuating times and destinations. Here you’d a choice of three or four, north to Belfast, north-west to Sligo, and maybe a couple more.
Drink can take you both ways. Highs and lows. You’re never quite sure which. That’s what makes it fascinating. You can be quite positive right up to the fourth pint, then hit the depths with number five, only to resurface beaming once a pretty girl sits down next to you and smiles on number six and wey-heh! you’ve forgotten what you’re depressed about and turned into Benny Hill. That’s what’s different about drugs. Once you’re locked into the blues, you’ve difficulty getting out of them. I’ve dabbled occasionally. Just never went along with the party line. They always say, hey, so three or four people die from Ecstasy every year – but thirty thousand die from alcohol. Which makes you think, well maybe they have a point. But then you think, when was the last time someone dropped down dead from a bad pint? Fuck no, to die from alcohol you have to really work at it. You have to know what you’re doing. I was born too late really, for drugs. When I was growing up dope was the guy who sat at the back of the class and smack was what you did to people’s sunburn. Horse was a horse and speed was what took you down the left wing. E? We were more into D. And Junior Disprin when we couldn’t get the grown-up stuff.
I was waiting for a train, I’d the fifth-pint blues and an overwhelming feeling that someone had spiked me with acid.
I needed to talk to Hilda, but until my ESP developed further I hadn’t the means. If they’d been able to hack into my e-mails to her, tracing a phone call wasn’t going to be difficult. Besides, it would have been too easy for her to just slam the phone down once I started into What the fuck do you think you’re playing at? People are getting killed all around me because you set me up as the Horse Whisperer without telling me the single most important piece of information I could have, that you were married to Geordie McClean. And by the way I’m screwing your daughter. And by the by, she’s missing presumed . . .
Presumed what?
Kidnapped. Murdered. Raped.
And she was carrying my child.
Just to be melodramatic.
And she was nuts.
We’d made love once. She could be pregnant. As a woman, it had of course been her responsibility to provide protection, but you couldn’t always trust them to do so.
You know you don’t fall in love with the first one that comes along.
I’m not, I’m . . .
There was a phone in the corner. I phoned Trish at work. I said, ‘Hi-di-hi.’
She put the phone down.
I tried ‘Ho-di-ho’ a moment later and didn’t get much further than the first ho.
I took another five minutes’ worth of beer and phoned her back. I changed to a nice Ballymena accent. I said, ‘Sorry to trouble you, hey, the name’s McGimpsey, I’ve been having terrible trouble with m’tax return. Seems I––’
‘What’s your tax reference number?’
‘My . . . hey, what would that be now?’
The pips started to go. I tutted and put some more money in. She recognised the tutt.
‘Dan, what’re you playing at?’
I tutted again. ‘You’ve the time of day for some clown from the sticks but you won’t even speak to the man who made love to you twice a week for ten years.’
‘No, but I’ll speak to you.’
‘Oh very fucking funny. That’s what I need right now. Your fucking sarcastic fucking . . . fuck stuff.’ I scowled angrily at my jaundiced reflection in the pint glass I cradled in my free hand. I took another drink and snapped, ‘What do you want?’
‘Dan. You phoned me.’
‘Yes I did. You’re right there.’
‘Dan, what is it?’
‘Nothing. Just checking in. I still care.’
She was quiet for a moment, then: ‘So what’ve you been up to?’
‘This and that.’
‘What about the new girl?’
‘Kidnapped.’
‘Dan.’
‘I need help.’
‘I can’t, Dan.’
‘C’mon.’
‘Dan, last time . . .’
‘I know what happened last time.’
She sighed. ‘What sort of help?’
‘Moral
support.’
‘You can have that.’
‘Somewhere to put my head down.’
‘No.’
‘Money.’
‘No.’
‘A car.’
‘No.’
‘It might be easier if you were to tell me what you are prepared to offer.’ There was silence. I filled it. ‘Is there any fucking wonder there isn’t any peace up there, never give an inch, no surrender, no fucking compromise. What’s done is done, do you hear me? We can’t go back in time! I did my best! I didn’t mean for him to die! All I’m asking is somewhere to put my head and all you can think about is what some cunt with a beard will think. You’ve changed, you’ve fucking changed from the person I loved. You would never, ever, fucking ever have gone out with someone with a beard before, I’ll tell you that for nothing. So fuck you, and your progeny.’
I put the phone down, even though there was fifteen seconds left on the clock.
I was wild and crazy and just didn’t care. I bought another pint, but there was someone sitting where I’d been sitting. She looked a little embarrassed as I returned from the bar with my drink and she said, ‘Sorry, I thought you’d . . .’
‘Never worry.’ I put my hand on the chair opposite. ‘Do you mind?’
She shook her head. She was eighteen if she was a day and had mousy brown hair tied back in a little mousy-tail. Her accent and demeanour were Northern. She was drinking a hot whiskey. There was an open packet of Handy-Andies beside her. I sat down. ‘Bit of a cold?’ I said.
She nodded and sniffed up. She had a paperback lying face up on the table, perfectly flat.
‘I hate that,’ I said, nodding at it.
‘What? Agatha Christie?’
‘No. People who break the spines of books. It’s like murder.’
She smiled. ‘So do I actually. I just bought it second-hand across the street. It was like that. I was desperate for something to read.’ She picked the book up and showed me the title. There was a picture of Agatha on the back. ‘I’ve often wondered,’ she said, looking at it, ‘why they bother putting the picture of her on.’
‘The old-bag picture?’
She nodded. ‘The old-bag picture, exactly. When she was actually quite a mover and shaker in her day. Quite glamorous. Pretty even. Why not use that?’
‘Maybe they’re going for the old-bag market.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Not, of course, that you’re an old bag.’
She put the book down. ‘You sounded quite upset on the phone.’
‘Oh. I didn’t think it was that loud.’
‘Drink does that. Turns up the volume.’
I shrugged. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. You sounded very passionate. I like that.’
I took a drink. ‘So what’s your story?’
‘Job interview.’
‘Did you get it?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t care. Fancied a day in Dublin really.’ She kicked at bags at her feet. ‘Shoes. I’ve a thing for shoes. Six pairs. You just can’t get them like this in Belfast.’
I nodded.
‘So what’s your story?’
‘Oh, the usual. Dead Chinamen in my front room, on the run, that kind of thing.’
She nodded. Then sipped her drink. Then gathered up her Handy-Andies, her Agatha Christie paperback, her precious bags of shoes, and left. She didn’t say a word, but looked at me like I was mental.
I sat on the train, drawing pictures on the misted-up window, as we pulled out of Connolly station. Fifteen minutes later, chugging gently towards Drogheda, she slipped into the seat opposite. ‘You were serious, weren’t you?’
I shrugged. She pushed her bags under the table and set down two cups of coffee. I looked at her. ‘I don’t drink coffee,’ I said.
‘It’s not for you,’ she replied.
I nodded and returned my attention to the misted window. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘I want to be alone.’
‘I imagine you already are.’
Something touched my elbow and I looked down to find she’d pushed a newspaper across the table, folded into a little rectangle so I couldn’t miss the story she was pointing at on the front cover of the Evening Herald. It was about the discovery of three dead Chinamen in a rented house in Ashtown.
‘You were telling the truth.’
‘No, I just read the same paper. I’m a slabber. Be warned.’ I returned my attention to the window.
‘The coffee is for you.’
‘I don’t drink coffee.’
She looked at me glumly. Then, ‘You didn’t ask what job I was going for.’
‘I know.’
‘RTE. Reporter.’
‘Christ.’
‘They run a trainee scheme.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘Except it’s all stacked against you if you haven’t got a degree.’
‘Please stop.’
‘But if I came back with a genuine scoop, I’d be set.’
I sighed. My brow against the cool window. ‘Tell someone about a little murder, and all they can think of is me, me, me. I’m not interested in your fucking job. I did not murder anyone. I made it up. It was a joke. Now go away and take your coffee with you.’
‘A good reporter doesn’t let go of a story just because she’s told to go away.’
‘Have you ever heard of Veronica Guerin?’
‘No, but I’ve heard of Woodhead and Bernstein.’
I sighed. ‘It’s Woodward. Woodward and Bernstein. Christ.’ I stood up. ‘I’m going for a pee,’ I said.
I walked down the train. There wasn’t a buffet car, as such, more of a shop. You bought and went back to your seat. I bought a four-pack of Holsten Pils, then continued on down looking for a spare seat. I hated cub reporters, because I’d been one myself. I wasn’t sure whether it was the enthusiasm or the lack of cynicism that annoyed me most. But it did. Jesus Christ, I was on the run, I’d left bodies behind me all over greater Dublin, and she was looking for a leg-up into the profession; what she deserved was a fist-down. I do not of course condone violence against women, unless they’re asking for it, and smaller. I stopped off for a pee. It’s difficult to stand peeing in a moving train. Really you’re meant to sit down. But real men don’t, they just get nasty bruises on their foreheads. Or spots on their trousers; using one hand to hold you up and the other curled round your can, you can’t pee straight, you spray and leave it for the next woman in to clean up the seat you haven’t bothered to lift anyway. I drank Holsten Pils and peed at the same time. In one end, out the other. The glorious circle of life, although not quite what the Lion King had been yapping about.
We pulled into Drogheda. I stayed where I was. People got off, people got on. Somebody tried the door. We started off again. I finished the first can then pulled down the window and threw the empty out. My trousers had dried sufficiently for me to face the public again, but I was quite happy where I was, leaning on the windowsill, looking at the countryside humming past. I could have stayed there until Belfast. No interaction required. No one to annoy me. I was just opening the second can when the door was rattled again and a man’s voice said, ‘Are you going to be long? I’m bustin’ out here.’
It was followed almost immediately a second voice. ‘Jimmy, there’s another further down.’
‘I want this one.’
He had another go at the door.
There was no reason for me to recognise their voices. To Northerners, Dublin accents all sound the same. I didn’t have my thinking cap on. And I was half cut. Besides, I knew what it was like to be dying for a pee.
I unlocked the door. It opened outwards. Jimmy had to step back to let me out. He had one hand on the door and was in the middle of saying something to the other guy, so there was a split second when I was looking at him and he wasn’t looking at me. It was just long enough for me to recognise Jimmy, Jimmy Farrelly, the chicken man, and clock the other fella, who I knew only as Oil Paintings, his mout
h just falling open as he realised who I was. A frozen moment before I yanked the door out of Jimmy’s hand, stepped backwards and banged it shut behind me, slipping the lock across and staggering back against the toilet bowl, silently cursing and already shaking and shuddering.
Then the hammering started.
So much for Agatha Christie.
This was Murder on the Belfast Express.
20
‘Don’t be fucking stupid, son,’ Oil Paintings said through the door. ‘You’re in a toilet. We have guns. And lots of bullets. With the noise of the train they won’t hear a thing. Come out before we fill you with fucking holes. We only want a chat.’
Well okay then.
‘Just give me a moment while I freshen up.’
‘Don’t be smart,’ growled Jimmy the Chicken.
I was in a blind panic, again. I needed valium and a holiday. All these adventures, and I never learn. If I really wanted to flee the country, what the hell was I doing hanging around in the main fucking train station. Stevie Wonder could have found me.
I had the window down. Fortunately it was an old enough train for the benefits of fresh air not to be outweighed by concerns about potential suicides. Moments before I’d been enjoying the breeze, but now it felt icy cold.
There was another hammer on the door.
‘C’mon! I swear to God––’
‘Nearly there . . .’
‘Shut the fuck up and get out here.’
‘Tell us why you’re fucking following us, you fuckin’ creep.’
‘I’m not following you. I’m just going to Belfast.’
‘Yeah. Right. We’re going to kill you this time, you fucker.’
Well that helped sway things.
There were two choices left, the surrender option obviously being a no-go. Dive out the window of a speeding train – it wasn’t going to set any records, but tell that to your skull as it bounces off the ground – or climb up on top, like they do in the movies. It would be a difficult enough little manoeuvre for a fit and sober person, well nigh impossible for . . . Ah hell, if I failed, sure I would only be falling back on the first option. I peered out, and twisting round, up.
