Headbanger

by Hugo Hamilton

  A smoking mickey, Coyne offered. But there was a suggestion of offside because Vinnie Foley was being serious.

  What I admire about you, Coyne, is how you can hang on to one woman, he said, as though he was referring to some extreme form of brand loyalty.

  The conversation with Foley was always more like one-way traffic and it was clear he didn’t really want to know anything about Coyne. It was like answering back to the TV. Foley just took over, rearranging the world in his own advertising vocabulary.

  Carmel! She is beautiful, he said. That’s all I can say. She’s a fucking lady.

  Ah, come on, Foley. You can’t hold your drink any more.

  I’m serious, Coyne. She is a real person. No question about it.

  And Foley took a hold of Coyne’s shirt to indicate that he meant every word he was saying. With the sincerity of a Toyota ad, he looked into Coyne’s eyes, holding on to him in a fierce grip of white-knuckle friendship.

  You are one lucky bastard, Coyne. Carmel and three lovely children.

  Coyne was still indebted to Vinnie Foley for many things. He had got him a job at the harbour with Jack Tansey when they were growing up, selling mackerel and crabs and lobsters; working at the boats, hiring them out to people who came to the harbour for pleasure trips in the bay. Men who came to fish in groups. Families with all their children in lifejackets. Lovers sailing off to get shipwrecked on Dalkey Island.

  Whenever Coyne and Vinnie wanted to get close, they would recall this time. They talked about the schoolteacher from Loreto Abbey who came down to swim at the harbour. All the lads working at the harbour knew Miss Larrissey’s body intimately because Jack’s shed had a small window at the end, through which they could watch women undress and perform a kind of Houdini act under the towel. The Irish striptease. Until the schoolteacher looked around one day and noticed a half-dozen faces crammed into that little window staring at her naked arse. And of course it was Coyne’s face she remembered. And Coyne who had to get the lobsters for her the following evening, when she arrived down all dressed up with earrings and high heels and Failte Romhat written across her plunging neckline. Coyne who hauled the lobster storage box up from the water and sold her three of the biggest lobsters, knowing that they would soon blush and boil in the pot. And Coyne who forgot to tie the storage box properly so that the lid opened on the way down and all the remaining lobsters fell out into the harbour, splashing into the water one by one. Crawling helplessly backwards out to sea with rubber bands tied around their claws, defenceless and doomed.

  They were quite drunk by the time they moved on to the nightclubs. But at last Coyne was back to his mission, sizing up the bouncers on the way in. Boneheads stinking of aftershave and with faces like hub-caps. Necks as thick as sewer pipes. Wearing tuxedos or double-breasted suits, like double glazing, making everybody feel honoured to be let in.

  The Fountain! Coyne looked at the sign outside. Blue neon handwriting, with a small palm tree and a pathetic pink sprinkle of water pissing upwards and flashing on and off. Underneath, the words ‘Nite Club’.

  Inside, the methodical thud and the usual cast of frozen intellects that you found in any nightclub. Stale basement air, laden with sweat, smoke and perfume. More men with big jackets and greased-back hair throwing deadly looks around as though they were going to mutilate all the women. And the women wore hunted expressions, dancing with packets of cigarettes and throwaway lighters in their hands as though the men were only after their cigarettes. Maybe they were all really nice, decent people at home, but the club brought out a cold killer instinct. Hot pants and cold hands. You Sexy Motherfucker – shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass. One man allowing a young woman to lead him around the dance floor by his tie, turning him into some kind of farm animal out for the night. A couple dancing back to back like Balloo scratching himself on a tree trunk, and one guy on his own as though he was working out to a time trial on an invisible Pec Deck.

  There was an oval-shaped bar with a bald barman and backless barmaids. Customers were perched on high stools and there was a fountain with green and occasionally pink water gushing upwards. At the end of the dance floor there were two elevated cages with railings, like raised corrals, in each of which a young woman did a kind of marathon breast-stroke in a silky miniskirt. Coloured spotlights flashing down on them and dry ice coming up under their legs.

  Coyne approached the bar like a serious law enforcement agent, ordering a bottle of wine, acting like he was Nick Nolte with a brain implant. Vinnie right behind him, already drawing up a short list from the dancers on the floor.

  But you had to get all the talkin’ off your chest first before you got to the shakin’. So Coyne and Vinnie had a further existential yak over a lousy bottle of wine, served by a waitress who refused to look at what she was doing. They stood facing each other, Coyne listening avidly to the healing power of his friend’s proclamations.

  I want you to know one thing, Foley said. We’ll always be best mates.

  Sure, Coyne agreed.

  They had reached a level of friendship that could never be surpassed. It was like the old days. You couldn’t go any higher. You couldn’t become closer than they were at that moment, with Vinnie’s arm around his shoulder.

  No matter where I am in the world, you can count on me, Foley swore. No matter what happens, I’ll be there.

  The same goes for me, Coyne said after a moment’s hesitation.

  It was what Vinnie wanted to hear. Like a soul brother, he stared silently into Coyne’s eyes for a long time as though he was close to tears. Tears of unbreakable friendship. Embracing him, then punching him in the chest.

  You fucking bastard, Coyne.

  Then he leaped on to the dance floor as though he was imitating a rooster recently aroused from his sleep. Elbows flapping to the music as he strutted Jaggeresque rings around the woman in fur-rimmed hot pants. She was shakin’ that ass alright. Coyne could see the bum-creases and all. Then he found his view blocked by a woman with a massive Georgian backside and conservatory who was slightly overdoing the hip movements, like she was making a point, doing a new Lil-Lets ad. There was condensation running down the mirrors. Some total gobshite was doing air-guitar in the background with his head down like he was Rod Stewart or Aerosmith or something. And the dance floor was momentarily packed for Let’s talk about sex, baby, as though it was a new national anthem, for a United Ireland. Exploratory talks that everybody could agree on.

  Vinnie danced back over to the bar and told Coyne to come join them.

  I’ll say you’re an accountant, he said, and dragged Coyne out on to the floor. The big Coyne comeback. But Coyne moved around a bit like a shaggin’ knee-cap victim, lifting each leg alternately to see if it still worked, with the imprint of his inhaler clearly visible in his trouser pocket. Trying to look cool, noting details about the décor and the lights. Scanning every shadow in the place for suspicious signs.

  At one point Vinnie came over and reminded Coyne how he had once saved his life. When they were out on the sea at night in one of Jack’s boats, rowing across the smooth black water until they got to a cast of lobster pots. The plan was to steal a few lobsters and then call on two girls they knew who would cook them up. Food of love. The lights all along the shore like a necklace behind them. The lighthouse casting a flash across the surface and Coyne lifting one pot after another up to the boat. It was too dark out there to see into the pots, so Coyne had to stand up and hold each one up against the lights on the shore. Until he lost his balance and fell backwards, going all the way down into the deep black sea with the lobster pot strapped across his chest. Coyne would have drowned if Vinnie hadn’t caught the rope just in time with his oar.

  Started pulling the pot back up so that Coyne eventually surfaced again, coughing up mouthfuls of sea water.

  Remember! I saved your life, Vinnie said as he danced a circle around Coyne, giving hi
m a drunken kiss on the cheek before going back to dancing belly to belly with the fur-rimmed goddess of the sea. Coyne had the impression she had silver mackerel scales all over her body. As though they were on the floor of the ocean, surrounded by lobsters and waving seaweed.

  Except that there wasn’t a lobster in sight nowadays. Everywhere was overfished to bejaysus. Two or three hundred pots out waiting for the one poor unfortunate creature that was left, searching around for his mates. All emigrated. It was Armageddon for lobsters. The rest of his clan crammed into a glass holding centre in some bastard’s sea-food restaurant. People coming in to look them in the eye and say: I’m going to eat you. Lobsters once had the whole bay to themselves. Now it was all over. And because Coyne was such a bad dancer, he found himself trying to talk to the woman with the conservatory at the rear, telling her about destruction, boring her to death with his endangered lobster statistics.

  Don’t tell me – you do the accounts for fishermen, she said, and looked at him as though she had detected the smell of mackerel coming from his crotch.

  Coyne left the dance floor and sat alone at the bar, drunk, watching Vinnie Foley doing hip collisions with the mermaid. Some time later, Vinnie came over and said he was leaving. The woman with fur-rimmed hot pants, smiling on his arm, with Vinnie’s leather jacket thrown over her shoulders.

  I’ll be fine, Coyne insisted.

  Give me a shout, Vinnie said, winking.

  They were like warriors parting, locking arms and vowing to reunite again in battle soon. Then Vinnie walked towards the exit and their friendship became suspended again. It would lie preserved in ice until the next time they met, who knows when. In a way Coyne was glad because he could now begin to search the place for anything that might be relevant to his investigation. He ordered another bottle of plonk and the waitress gave him a white plastic beaker as though he could not be trusted with a glass. Drank the best part of it until he suddenly saw a young woman he recognised on the far side of the bar.

  I’ve seen that woman before, he thought, but where? He liked the way she looked. Dressed in the most provocative tight-fitting ribbed top that magnified every detail of her breasts. I’d eat broken glass out of your knickers, he muttered to himself in a drunken way.

  It was only when the young woman spoke up and ordered an orange juice that Coyne’s memory finally clicked into gear. It was Madonna on oysters and Guinness. Coyne was amazed to realise how close he had already come to the Cunningham gang.

  He kept looking at her. Making mental notes. The real detective. He could teach Moleshaver a thing or two about the nature of crime detection. Wait and see, he repeated. Knocked back his beaker, grabbed the bottle and walked around casually to the other side of the oval counter.

  Naomi, isn’t it?

  She looked up at him with a wasted expression. There seemed to be nothing behind the focus of her eyes but a series of interlinking empty rooms.

  Do you remember, we met on the railway tracks, Coyne blurted. It was such a stupid thing to say. Blowing his cover right away. But she appeared to remember nothing. Just stared at him as though she had to pick him out of an identity parade of men in her memory. Coyne took the liberty of sitting down beside her, pouring the last of his wine into a plastic beaker for her. But she stared at that too as though all human gestures were alien to her.

  What’s your name, she asked suddenly, and Coyne was put on the spot, hesitating.

  Vinnie, he said. Vinnie Foley.

  But that was another mistake. Subconsciously he had always wanted to be like Vinnie. Now he was losing his cool altogether. Too drunk to be a cop.

  Vinnie Foley, she repeated a number of times, then swivelled around as if to indicate that she had an announcement to make.

  Well, listen carefully, Vinnie, she said, pointing at the door of a VIP lounge, with brown leather upholstery. You better not be sitting there when he comes back. That’s all I’m saying.

  Who?

  Drummer, she said, speaking in such an exhausted tone of voice that it meant she was perfectly serious. Coyne felt rejected. Wanted to tell her how concerned he was for her. He could help her. He would look after her. Get her away from that gang.

  Coyne had reached such a suicidal drunken pitch and was ready to have the showdown with the Drummer, right there and then in his nightclub, vowing to protect her honour at all costs, when she suddenly showed him her wrists.

  Look, she said, like a final warning, and Coyne stared down at the scars where she had allowed the hot blood to rush out. The taut, almost see-through skin draped over the thin blue rods of her arteries had been disfigured by a violent design. Gashes like melted wax. Healing over like white latex cloth which had been held to the flame. Coyne recoiled from the aesthetics of this mutilation, but also perceived it as an expression of intimacy. She was showing him where she had poured out her life into a blood-red bath. He took it personally. He was entertaining his emotions.

  Do you need help? he asked.

  She looked puzzled by that. And before she could even react, Coyne tore off a tiny piece of beermat and wrote out a telephone number. She refused to accept it in her hand, so he placed it in an empty beaker.

  The man’s name is Fred. He’s a nightwatchman. He’ll get in touch with me.

  Moments later, Coyne was picked off the chair from behind by a large, beefy companion of Drummer. It was the Chief Accountant, pulling him up by the collar.

  Are you giving trouble, mate?

  And Coyne became instantly aggressive. Instead of leaving it alone and walking out, pretending that the whole thing was a mistake, he began to argue with Drummer’s right-hand man. Trying to stand up for Madonna with the slashed wrists.

  I’m having a conversation here, right.

  Is this man hassling you? Chief asked her.

  But Naomi didn’t even look up, delivering Coyne up to his own fate.

  Piss off and mind your own business, Coyne said, but there was a halting slur in his speech which lacked conviction. Perhaps he felt the security of Vinnie’s companionship around him like a protective charm. Tried to shake the Chief’s vice grip off his shoulders. Pushed him away with his elbow and tried to engage Madonna’s eyes to show that she had a free choice to decide whether or not she wanted to talk to him. But Coyne was wasted. Couldn’t even stand up properly, let alone fight back.

  Out, Chief shouted, dragging Coyne away.

  For a moment, Coyne felt it was quite funny to be hauled away like a limp statue, with his feet sliding along the floor behind him, and the dancers turning round to look at the cartoon simplicity with which he was being ejected from the club. The barman was already clearing away his beaker and wiping the counter. Naomi didn’t look up. And outside, things were not quite so funny. The two bouncers took over from Chief, hauling Coyne up the cast-iron stairs on to the pavement with a punch in the ribs.

  Before Coyne could retaliate or begin to speak out with righteous indignation at these men in tuxedos, he received a boot in the crotch. He didn’t know where it came from, but the pain spread like a vicious stain right up through his stomach and stopped him from wanting anything. He doubled over obediently. Received a few more punches here and there, but they seemed only like minor pats on the back in comparison to the great purple ache in his groin. He sank down. Hand on the railings, face on the cool pavement, feeling the full ignominy of his expulsion.

  Now fuck off home, he heard one of them shout through a cloud of sickness which had begun to churn around inside. His whole mind was white. Thought people in the street were looking at him, but could see nothing apart from the polished shoes of a bouncer, and the white socks, inches away from his eyes. He was vaguely aware of the men standing over him, folding their arms. His ears were whining with nausea. He dragged himself away by the railings, but stopped again, puking up all he had, holding the agony of his manhood in his hand.

 
Back in his humble Ford Escort, Coyne sat for a long time by the canal feeling huge anger. Then he went back to feeling stupid, knowing that it was his own fault. He felt self-pity. Felt there was no fair play left in the world and came full circle again with a growing fury that he had never dealt with before.

  He drove around, knowing that he was too drunk. He was just the kind of man he would have been arresting if he was on duty. Drove past the nightclub a number of times wishing he could do something, trying to find some way of getting back at the men who beat him before he went home and before sleep would rob him of all the resentment. He held an image of the girl in his mind. Felt he had suffered everything for her.

  In a side-street he spotted Berti Cunningham’s Range Rover, parked neatly under a street light. He knew the registration number by heart. He couldn’t believe his luck. What if he just slashed the tyres. That would give them a taste of their own shite. That would teach them not to mess with Coyne.

  He parked near a small laneway and waited for a while to survey the street. He had one concern, that a patrol car from Irishtown or Donnybrook might cruise past and one of the lads would recognise his car. They would stop and say hello, maybe. And he’d have to abandon the plan. When the street seemed quiet, he faced his car into the opening of the laneway, giving him direct access on to another street. Left the engine running and got out.

  He walked up and down past the target car. When he was satisfied that there was nobody around, he first of all decided to urinate on the door of the Range Rover, looking around him all the time. A symbolic piss, transferring ownership to himself, like some common canine law where the property belonged to the individual who last urinated on it.

  After that, Coyne had to act fast because it would all become very noisy and spectacular. He had no Stanley knife in the car. So he took the spare petrol can from the boot, along with the wheel brace. Went back along the pavement, calm as anything. Not a single nerve twitching. Broke the windscreen with one smack of the brace, setting off the agonised wail of the car alarm. There was no breeze and no danger of doing lateral damage to any other property. Precision bombing. Coyne threw the contents of the can on to the front seat and set the vehicle alight with one match. Coyne the car terrorist! Felt the air being sucked violently towards the flames from all around him. He didn’t even need to look back and see it. Burn, you bastards. It was like 1916. Flames reflected in the Georgian windows all around the city.