You’re in trouble, he said, talking like a priest. You’re entertaining some very bad company.
Yeah, she said with laconic resignation. What a creep. Wanted to teach me flying, for fucksake.
Not him, the Drummer.
What about him? she asked suspiciously.
You know he’s killed somebody. Murder, Naomi. That’s what.
You’re a cop, aren’t you, she said, looking him in the eyes. I knew it.
Coyne gave a little affected laugh.
What makes you think that? I work in advertising. I’m only trying to help you out of this mess, Naomi. You’re a nice girl. You shouldn’t be hanging around with those guys.
In fact, he sounded just like an archbishop. Really in touch, like. There she was, with her legs all over his car and he was starting to speak like a concerned parent. Giving her a load of paternal advice that she didn’t want to hear.
If you’re a cop, then I’m dead, she said.
Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. You need treatment. I can help you.
Chief and two of the bouncers who could recognise Coyne got into the Pajero and drove around the area searching in the alleyways, checking all the side-streets. Mick went out on foot while Drummer stayed behind in the nightclub trying to calm Builder Brendan down a bit. He was more interested than ever in making sure that the builder was enjoying himself and saw the potential of a neat little sex scandal which he could hold over him. Gave him some explanation about a jealous former boyfriend. Got two of the silky girls down from the elevated corrals and asked them to dance with him instead. Drummer ordered lots more champagne and persuaded the builder he was still having the time of his life. That plane trip over Wicklow was still on schedule, with a new cabin crew.
Coyne left the engine running. He felt uneasy by the canal. It was too close to the nightclub scene and he should have driven away to some other part of the city. But where? He had no game plan. Thought of driving up to Fred’s lock-up compound. That was the safest thing to do. Fred would have some things to say.
What do you do for a living? Coyne asked.
I’m a dancer, she said. I dance people to death.
Come on, Naomi. I’m trying to help you. Where are your parents?
Fuck my parents. They should have used a fucking condom, she said. Now look at the result.
You need them, Coyne argued. They’re the people you can turn to.
Like fuck. Are you trying to rescue me or something, Vinnie?
I’m on your side, that’s all, he said.
Coyne was just about to drive off again. He had finally decided to take her to Fred. Perhaps she would start drinking tea and eating lots of Mikado biscuits. See the light of justice and tell the whole truth about Drummer and his gang. It was worth a try. There was nowhere else.
But in that moment, Naomi began to embrace him. Threw her long bare arms around him and kissed his cheek. Coyne froze. Looked all around him as though the people of Dublin were watching him, even though the street was silent and empty, with nothing stirring except a few leaves being blown along the canal bank walk. She rubbed the back of his neck with her fingers and he felt a warm, erotic shiver. He denied it and began to push her gently back into her seat.
Look, you must be cold, he said, reaching into the back for a jacket, which he placed around her shoulders. He was treating her like a daughter again. And she stared out at the canal silently. Disappointed.
You’re married, aren’t you?
She leaned forward and picked up a child’s furry rabbit from the floor of the car. Played with it in her hands as though it was one that she had owned not long ago as a small girl. Her childhood flooded back, and for a moment she was like Coyne’s daughter, grown by almost twenty years in the space of one night.
You need protection, Coyne tried again. I can get you protection. Trust me.
Protection, she said, puzzled. You’re married and you’re a cop.
She sat looking at the soft toy in her hand. Tickled it under the chin as if it was her baby. Held it to her chest and then started crying. The sudden exposure to such family warmth had overwhelmed her. She opened the car door, threw off Coyne’s jacket and stepped outside, running away along the street.
Wait, he shouted.
He took the jacket and followed her, leaving the doors of the car open. It was sure to attract attention. So he ran back and switched the engine off and closed the doors. Then went to where Naomi had stopped in the mouth of a small alleyway, back against the wall, staring up at the yellow street light through her watery eyes. All around her, the junk which people had thrown out into the lane. He reached her and put the jacket back around her shoulders again, trying to take her hand and coax her back to the car.
Let’s go and see Fred, he said. He’s a good pal of mine. He’ll help.
Love me, Vinnie, she pleaded, throwing her arms around him once more. I swear I want to go clean. I’ll get off junk. I’ll go for treatment. I’ll do anything for you, if you love me. Just once, Vinnie. Go on.
She looked different in that laneway, in a jaundiced twilight, with an upturned couch and an old electric cooker dumped a few feet away from her. Coyne had been asking her to make a choice and realised that she had been so whipped by authority, so subservient to the demands of her addiction, that he would have to employ a more commanding tone. For her own sake, he would have to drag her forcibly back to the car. But when he took her arm and allowed the soft, milky flesh to enter his imagination, his conviction slipped.
Coyne was drunk and did what Vinnie Foley would do in this moment; took hold of her hands and kissed the mutilated wrists, to which she responded by looking into his eyes as though they were in a suicide pact together. Their faces were green, almost, under the yellow light, and he was struck by a great spontaneous urge to fuck her brains out. He was being honest about his desire. More than ever before, with the graffiti and the scorch marks of old fires along the walls of the lane, where men pissed on their way home from the pubs and where cats howled their tortured songs at night, he wanted to follow his instinct. In the gap between her top and her skirt, he watched her navel moving in and out gently on her breath. He placed his mouth on hers and pushed himself up against her so that he was no longer sure how tall she was. As he began to examine her body with his hands, each part of her took on such an immense significance that she seemed to be completely out of proportion with any other earthly or material measurement.
For once, Coyne did not ask questions. Under this gold-grey reality of the yellow street light, his mind stopped triggering off a running commentary to his audience. Her eyes and her mouth looked black, with a wet, liquorice tongue and sweet liquorice breath. His lobster-blue lips sucked her nipple as if it was a dark-green cough drop. Even her knickers looked black when she pulled them down and stepped out of them like she would step out of a currach, holding on to his arm. She placed them in the pocket of his jacket for safe keeping and he held one of her legs, the one with no shoe on, by the knee underneath. His feet crunched on broken glass and he pushed her against the wall with such ferocity that he was in danger of breaking her bones. He was doing it now. What he had never fully been able to imagine. Unprotected. Unforeseen. Irreversible. He had become Vinnie Foley. He was sailing down the Amazon. The fact that he was striking at the Cunninghams increased the intensity of his desire and he squeezed her slender jaw in his hand to extract a contorted expression of pain on her face. The Pajero passed right by them.
You should have told me that’s what you meant by treatment, Naomi said afterwards when they got back into the car. Coyne wanted to tell her all about himself but couldn’t risk such a compromise. He would never let her go again, he vowed to himself. He wanted to bring her back to where she lived and repeat the whole thing, but she suddenly had an idea. She was starving and wanted chips, so he drove off to find a chipper on Baggot Street and got
out while she sat in the car with her feet up on the dashboard, inhaling the glory of her recent sexual encounter with a Garda, knowing that she would never be the same again. When he came out, however, carrying two bags of chips, she had disappeared.
Chief and the bouncers returned to the nightclub. Mick was already back there talking to his brother. Chief was worried, saying the girl could no longer be trusted. Something should be done with her, he was suggesting. But Drummer was far more relaxed about the whole situation. They underestimated his power over women. He knew exactly how to deal with Naomi. And besides, there was no point in making a fuss right there and then. He didn’t want Builder Brendan with the redbrick face to get the impression that something was going wrong. He had plans for him and had invited him back to his house in Sandymount for a private party.
Coyne threw the chips into the canal where the rats would swim out in due course and claim the salvage rights. Sat in the car waiting to see if she’d come back. Then it was his turn to cruise around like a returned emigrant and search for her like a distant first love in his memory. He should have gone home and stored it in the vaults of his mind, but he drove back to the laneway and stopped to look at the place where they had stood together, staring at this love shrine of casual sex. He was soon filled with such longing and fury that he decided to move straight on to the real mission. He had planned to target Cunningham’s house that night and the self-destructive aftermath of sex with Naomi forced him into action.
As Coyne drove out to Sandymount, he began to think about Carmel too, feeling a new guilt which could only be avenged by war and attrition. He ripped the luminous green statue of Our Lady from the dashboard of the car and put it in his pocket. He had already spent long enough surveying the house to know that there were two dogs at the back waiting for Drummer to come back and feed them. The house seemed impenetrable. There was an alarm and wire meshes on the back windows. In any case the two ugly-looking Rottweilers in the back garden went into hysterics as soon as Coyne glanced over the wall with a Man United holdall bag under his arm. They snarled and barked as though they hadn’t been fed in months. There was a sign saying: ‘dog bites first, then asks questions later’. Rottweiler number one was consistently showing his dentures to Coyne, while Rottweiler number two kept turning around and coming back again. Like a man in a stetson hat renewing the pleasure of seeing himself in the mirror, the dogs kept running back and then attacking all over again from the beginning, as though they wanted to relive the darkest experience of their lives, the first sight of Coyne’s face coming over the back wall. Imagine the neighbours having to put up with the barking and the pungent stink coming at them from the next garden, like a burning hamburger, Coyne thought. Not to mention the sight of Berti Cunningham every now and again in his jock strap feeding them scraps of his kebab and petting them like he was St Francis of Assisi or something.
Coyne had come prepared. He threw them a piece of meat: nice fillet steak for you, lads. They ignored it at first because they were just too angry and disgusted. Who the fuck do you think we are? Mind you, we’d settle for the prime hindquarters of a live Garda through a seven-foot concrete wall with razor wire on top, they seemed to be saying. But eventually the glistening red piece of fillet steak became too tempting, flashing at them like a neon sign in the grass, so that each dog was inspired by subliminal jealousy at the thought of the other dog getting it. Even if it wasn’t Garda loin chop, one of them just inhaled it between barks, before you could say succulent.
Coyne had his gloves on. From the bag under his arm he took out some more pieces of mildly tranquillising meat, giving the less fortunate of the two Rottweilers the chance to get his own bit as well. Very soon the barking stopped and the dogs dropped down where they were standing. Lie down, ye dogs of illusion.
Quickly Coyne took the opportunity to snip the razor wire and climb across the wall. He had to negotiate his way among the landmines of dogshite all over the lawn until he got to the back door of the house. It was locked. But then he found the patio door unlocked so that he could walk straight in. Berti hadn’t even switched on the alarm. Or maybe he didn’t have an alarm, just put the box on the wall like everyone else. Probably thought he was immune to crime. And what about all this neighbourhood watch? Some neighbours you have, Berti.
Coyne’s first concern was to find some evidence which would put Berti behind bars. Even though the house had been searched in vain many times before by the Guards, Coyne tried to locate secret lockers.
The twin reception room was furnished with a white Louis XIV sideboard and a white piano, for God’s sake, with Richard Clayderman open on the stand to show the level of refinement in the Cunningham home. There were two suites, a leather one and a pristine white one on which there were two long brown stains. Coyne worked them out to be the fake tan stains left behind by one of Berti’s women. As though everything in the man’s life was fake. Coyne threw a few cushions around. Ripped the leather sofa in order to stick his hand right down and feel for hardware. He searched the whole room and came up with nothing more than a few Bryan fucking Adams CDs. Whitney dentures Houston, and the fucking ‘Woman’s Heart’ album. Berti, you sad bastard, there’s more musical taste in a donkey’s fart. If ever the courts needed evidence of a complete bone-brain moron, here it was.
Coyne took a quick blast of his inhaler, holding it up in this strangely tacky and elegant palace like a symbol of demonic vengeance. He had decided that gathering evidence was too much trouble at this late stage and resolved to deliver justice right into the heart of Drummer Cunningham’s home. There was no point in acting like gentlemen any more, Coyne thought as he pushed the Waterford glass cabinet over until it rocked and fell into the room like an office block collapsing into the street. There was glass everywhere and Coyne thought the noise would have been heard right across the street. The dogs outside had heard it and he was taken by surprise when they were up again so soon, barking like never before, knowing how easily they had been duped. They could see Coyne inside the house, smiling at them, kicking over the TV set, which fizzled as it imploded. No more MTV, for you, Berti Butthead.
On the way home, Drummer decided to call into Abrakebabra for some kebabs for the dogs. Brendan Barry and the two silky girls on either side of him were in the back of the Pajero, while Mick and Chief were stopped right behind them in the Chief’s Mazda 626. What a service! Drummer offered his creditors only the best of everything. They would even phone his wife in Stepaside for him and tell her he was detained at an official function. And food too. Drummer came out carrying a bag of kebabs, offering them around.
Anybody want some of this dogfood? he asked, placing them on the dashboard, where they steamed up the windscreen.
Coyne wandered around Drummer’s house, ate a chocolate chip cookie in the kitchen and found the study full of Berti’s law books. The constitution. The one and only Bunreacht na hEireann. But what did Cunningham care about Ireland or the Irish people. He was only interested in his own rights and what was in the constitution for him. He had other books on case history since the foundation of the state. Extradition law, the lot. Jesus, the guy knew more about the law than a Supreme Court judge. No wonder he was impossible to pin down. The latest government white paper on legal reform lay open on a small Victorian desk. A notepad beside it on which Coyne hastily wrote his guiding slogan – The law is an asshole.
Coyne went upstairs and took a small petrol can from his bag, placing it on the landing. He laughed when he saw the master bedroom and thought Mrs Gogarty would appreciate the pink, two-inch-deep, furry carpet, heaving with house mites. Pink bedside lamps held up by brass snakes coming out of the wall. Brass bed posts for Drummer to tie up his women, and mirrored wardrobes so he could watch his own arse as though he was in a porn movie.
Outside the dogs continued barking again and Coyne stared down at them, knowing that his escape out the back was blocked off. He felt he had already spent too much time in
the house and intended to leave again, giving his enemy a slightly religious message to reflect on. Took out the luminous Virgin Mary that Mrs Gogarty had once stuck on to the dashboard of the car and placed her in Berti’s bed, tucking her in under the duvet. In bed with Madonna. Sleeping with the BVM – the immaculate contraception.
Coyne heard the car outside. Then the voices coming towards the house, followed by the key in the hall door. He was trapped, and it was too late to start pouring petrol.
Drummer Cunningham came in and dropped the keys of the car on the hall stand, ushering Brendan Barry and the two silky girls inside. Mick Cunningham was there too and they stood in the hall for a moment where Coyne could see them from the landing. Berti with his blond hair; short on the sides and long at the back like some kind of helmet. Whenever he moved his head, the helmet of hair moved with it. Any minute, all hell would break loose, and Coyne took the decommissioned gun from the Man United bag. He had kept possession of it instead of handing it in, initially with the intention of threatening Mr Sitwell. Now he stood in Cunningham’s home with a useless weapon. It was all he had.
Ah fuck, he heard Berti shout downstairs. The bastards. We’ve been done.
Drummer came rushing back out into the hallway, just as Coyne ran down the stairs, pointing the gun straight at his head.
OK, hold it right there, Coyne shouted, stopping halfway down.
Just give me a reason to paint your brains all over that wall, Cunningham. Come on.
But Berti kept his cool and said nothing. A lot of things could go wrong, so he just stared at Coyne, memorising his face. Brendan Barry was the first to put his arms up in the air. You could say what you liked, but no amount of aeronautics with the silky girls was worth having to look straight at the foreskin of a gun. There was peace at any price written all over his Stepaside façade. The Pope’s underpants were not so pristine perhaps.
Headbanger Page 17
