MERCIER PRESS
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Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.
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© Kieran Mark Crowley, 2009
Epub ISBN: 978 1 85635 722 7
Mobi ISBN: 978 1 85635 759 3
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For Jessica
The world’s greatest niece.
and for Dee
Thanks for all your love and support, for reading the chapters late into the night, and for the seven hundred and twenty-one times you said, ‘go to your desk and get writing’. You were right – it wasn’t nagging, it was encouragement.
Special thanks to Mam, D.J., Deirdre and Fiona.
One
The little red car rattled around the bend at forty-three kilometres per hour. Colm, who was squashed into the back seat alongside The Brute, made a quick calculation. At this speed they’d reach his aunt’s house in two hours and seventeen minutes. In less than two and a half hours The Brute would be out of his life forever.
The Brute was Michael James McGrath, Colm’s first cousin, Aunt Deirdre’s little boy, as Colm’s mother called him. Little wasn’t exactly the right word to describe him. Ants were little. Bonsai trees were little. Chihuahuas were little. Michael was big. No, not big, huge. He was three years older than Colm, over a foot taller and two stone heavier. Colm wouldn’t have minded if it was two stone of fat. Fat he could deal with; he wasn’t exactly slim himself. But The Brute was pure muscle.
None of that mattered now. The longest fortnight of his short life was almost over. It had been exactly fourteen days since The Brute had arrived at Colm’s home, a sneer on his lips and a battered sports bag slung over his shoulder. Aunt Deirdre and her second husband, Bald Seanie, were in Lanzarote for their honeymoon and Michael had been dumped on Colm’s family. To make matters worse, because the house was so small he had to sleep in Colm’s room. He had even been given Colm’s bed – ‘he is a guest, after all’ – while Colm had the choice of a sleeping bag on the floor or the couch that stank of his father’s socks.
Reasons why Colm disliked The Brute:
1. When he slept he either snored or let go of some immense rippers; on the bad nights he did both at the same time. As his mother said, ‘He’s fond of bum belches.’ She thought that giving it a polite name made it easier to put up with, but she didn’t have to live with the smell.
2. Every single morning he punched Colm on his left shoulder. This was his ‘daily dig’. He wasn’t happy until huge purple and yellow bruises had formed on Colm’s shoulder like a badly drawn tattoo.
3. When he first saw Colm’s large collection of books he looked confused and asked: ‘Why do you have so many books? Is your television broken?’ Then he called him a girl and gave him his very first ‘daily dig’.
4. When he wasn’t punching or snoring or ripping, he picked his nose and either ate what he excavated or flicked it at Colm’s head.
5. During the week, he had come up with a lot of nicknames for Colm. Random sample of nicknames: Pygmy (partly true; Colm was small for his age); Weasel Features (just plain mean); Rancid Reject (made no sense).
He also boasted. About the number of goals he scored every time he played a hurling match. About the number of fights he won in school until he had to stop fighting because he was going to be thrown out. And about girls. Mostly, he boasted about girls.
The Brute: Number of Girlfriends – 32; Number of Kisses – 39
Colm: Number of Girlfriends – 0; Number of Kisses – ½
After the first night, when his mother asked him how they were getting on, Colm told her that they didn’t have much in common. She said that he’d have to try harder. Maybe she’s right, he’d thought. They had to have something that connected them other than blood.
They didn’t.
The car turned onto the main road. The speedometer showed they were now travelling at sixty-one kilometres per hour. This was quite fast for Colm’s father. He didn’t like driving and avoided sitting behind the steering wheel whenever he could. He always cycled to work, jeans’ legs tucked into his socks and, much to his wife’s horror, his shirt tucked into his underpants.
‘Keeps out the cold,’ he’d say, by way of explanation.
But since Michael lived in a small village on the coast that wasn’t served by either rail or bus, he had no choice other than to drive.
Usually journeys with his parents were quiet and peaceful. Colm would sit in the back of the car reading a book, while his mam asked his dad questions from a quiz book. His dad almost always got all the answers right. They’d had a quiz earlier, but had given up when The Brute kept distracting them.
Question: What type of acid is the main acid in your stomach?
Dad: Hydrochloric Acid.
The Brute: Aunt Acid.
Question: Which is the largest of the apes?
Dad: Silverback Gorilla.
The Brute: King Kong.
After that the journey had taken place mainly in silence.
Colm’s father took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white, as he prepared to overtake a tractor. It was only when they were safely past that he breathed out again.
‘You were just like James Bond there, Uncle Joe,’ said Michael.
Oh yeah, The Brute was also sarcastic. Colm didn’t mind that too much – sarcasm was better than a dig in the arm any day – but his parents hated it. They’d bitten their tongues a lot over the course of the first week as they knew it couldn’t have been easy for Michael to spend some of his holidays with a family he barely knew, but they could only be polite for so long, especially his father. He’d made a promise to his wife not to say anything nasty to Michael, so whenever he got annoyed with his nephew he just left the room until he’d cooled down. He couldn’t do that now. He was trapped.
The bald patch on the back of his father’s head turned red, a sure sign that his temper was rising, but before he could say anything, his mobile phone jerked into life with its chirpy U2 ring tone. Colm hated that ring tone. He had been with his father in the car park in Dunnes once when the mobile rang, just as two of the lads from his class sloped past. Dads weren’t meant to have musical ring tones. They were meant to have the boring ring-ring or the default Nokia setting. It was an unwritten law. And when Paddy and Iano heard the phone’s pitiful tune and spotted Colm, it was instant public embarrassment followed by days of slagging in school about his pathetic old man. Just what he needed. He’d tried to explain to his dad that he shouldn’t have such a ring tone at his age, but his dad wasn’t having any of it. When it came to anything to do with U2, there was no talking to him. He’d been a few years behind Bono in school and regarded him as a personal friend even though they’d never even spoken.
‘U2 is the best band in the world and if your friends can’t see that then they’re fools,’ was his final word on the matter.
Luckily, his classmates tired of slagging him soon enough and found someone else to tear into, but Colm still prayed that none of them would ever see his dad cycling his old racer to work. They’d never let up if they copped on to that one.
‘Answer the phone, Mary,’ his father said through gritted teeth.
Colm’s mother pressed the answer button.
‘Hello. Oh, Deirdre, how are you? We’re just on the way to …’
Her tone swiftly changed from cheery to frosty. She wasn’t happy.
‘No, of course not. That’s no problem at all. Do you want to speak to Michael? OK. See you then.’
She ended the call and turned to Michael with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
‘That was your mother.’
‘Yeah,’ said The Brute, acting cool.
She hadn’t phoned her son directly because he’d flung his mobile against the bedroom wall when he was angry and it hadn’t worked since. Mobiles usually didn’t when they were smashed into fifteen different pieces.
‘They missed their flight, but they’ll be able to get one in the morning.’
‘Oh.’
Colm wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw The Brute’s lower lip quiver. Was it possible that this creature had emotions hidden behind that blank face of his? Did he actually miss his mother? For the briefest of moments he almost felt sorry for him. He offered up what he thought was a sympathetic smile. His cousin looked at him and said, ‘What are you laughing at, you fat-headed clown?’
Sympathy over. Twenty-four more hours with The Brute. Fantastic.
·•·
Twenty minutes later they were eating greasy burgers in silence, as the traffic roared past the roadside café. Empty plastic chairs shook whenever a lorry trundled by, which was about once every thirty seconds.
‘What are we going to do, Dad?’
‘We’ll just have to go back home, I suppose,’ Colm’s father said, as he picked at the piece of onion that was stuck in his back teeth.
His mother snorted. It was a sound she rarely made, but one which Colm and his father never liked to hear. It meant that she was cross. They silently chewed on their burgers. Both of them hoped that by ignoring her, she might forget what had annoyed her. It was a trick they often used. As usual, it failed.
‘Back home?’ she said in a voice so icy you could have used it to chill a warm glass of Coke.
Colm’s father paused before he spoke, choosing every word carefully.
‘What else can we do? Sure, Michael’s parents …’
‘Seanie’s not my dad,’ The Brute interrupted, through a mouthful of curly fries.
‘Michael’s mam and his stepfather won’t be home for at least a day. We don’t have a key to their place, so we can’t stay there. We might as well go home.’
‘I could break in,’ said The Brute. ‘You could leave me there. I’d be fine on my own.’
‘That’s an option,’ Colm’s father said.
‘No, it’s not,’ said his mother. ‘The boy is far too young to stay by himself.’
‘I don’t mind,’ The Brute said.
‘You’re not staying on your own,’ she replied in a voice that meant the argument was over.
‘What are we going to do then?’ Colm’s father asked.
‘We could stay in a hotel. Make a weekend of it. Have a bit of an adventure.’
‘No way,’ he said. He hated sleeping in any bed other than his own.
His wife gave him a dirty look. When it came to dirty looks she was up there with the best of them.
‘I said no and I mean no,’ he said, although his voice was a little shaky. ‘We’re not going to a hotel and that’s my last word on the matter. I’m putting my foot down.’
His foot remained down for fourteen minutes before he gave in and they began to look for a hotel. Colm’s mother didn’t like the first one they found. She said it was soulless. Colm wasn’t sure what she meant, but it was big and unwelcoming and he didn’t like the look of it either. The second hotel was rejected due to the litter that swirled around the car park.
‘If it’s filthy on the outside, you can imagine what it’s like on the inside,’ his mother had said.
The third hotel was just right. The driveway was long and winding, and the gravel crunched beneath the car tyres. It was bordered by large, neatly trimmed hedges sprinkled with September lily.
‘This is more like it,’ she said.
The driveway opened out into a large courtyard and they got their first look at the Red House Hotel (although it was really more of a large country house than a hotel). It was three storeys high with old-fashioned windows that had been installed long before double-glazing had been invented. Ivy crept along the stone walls.
‘Looks a bit posh,’ said Colm’s father. When he said posh, he meant that he was worried it would cost a lot of money to stay there.
‘It’s not open,’ The Brute said, but nobody paid any attention.
‘There’s a sign on the door.’
‘Colm, get out and have a look, like a good man. See what it says.’
Colm got out of the car. He smelled pine in the air. Must be coming from the forest, he thought. The courtyard was surrounded by trees that were at least a hundred years old. A little wooden signpost pointed to various paths in the woods where guests could take a stroll. He wiped his glasses clean on the end of his shirt before having a look around. His dad beeped the car horn and gestured at him to hurry up.
He didn’t need to climb the steps that led to the front door of the hotel to see the sign that hung on the ornate door knocker. His cousin was right. Closed.
Pity. It would have been good to stay there for the night. There were probably lots of places where he could hide from The Brute and read a book or listen to music. At least then the next twenty-four hours would have passed a lot more quickly.
As he turned back towards the car he suddenly felt that something wasn’t quite right. If it had been dark or if he had been on his own, Colm would have been more nervous, but even now, at four in the afternoon, with the sun still in the sky and his parents no more than ten yards away, he didn’t feel completely safe.
Relax, he thought, it’s just your imagination. But even as the words ran through his head he felt that someone was watching him. He spun around, but there wasn’t anybody there. He peered into the woods. It was dark in there and he couldn’t see much of anything. For a moment he thought he heard something move in the undergrowth – a cracking twig, the rustling of leaves – but then his father beeped the car horn again and the spell was broken. As quickly as it had arrived, the feeling left him.
‘Well?’ his father asked through the rolled-down window.
‘It’s closed,’ Colm replied.
‘Right. Get in. Let’s not waste any more time here.’
Colm climbed into the car. The Brute had stolen even more of the back seat in the couple of minutes he’d been gone, so that when he closed the door the window-winder dug into his side leaving a little circle of red on his chubby belly.
‘Dad?’
‘Mmmm?’
‘Did you see anything strange?’
‘Strange? What do you mean strange?’
‘You know when you’re out somewhere and you get the feeling someone’s watching you. I got that feeling. Like someone was watching us from the woods.’
The Brute threw his eyes up to heaven.
‘There’s nobody watching us from the woods,’ said Colm’s father.
He was right. There wasn’t anyone watching them from the woods. The person who was watching them was on the third floor of the hotel. He was tall and thin, and he shouldn’t have been there.
Two
If the only things you know about private detectives are from watching television programmes or reading about them in books, then you might think that they lead exciting lives full of car chases and shootouts, of racing after criminals and thugs, of beating people up or getting beaten up. In real life things aren’t like that. Most private detective work involves long hours on the internet, making endless amounts of phone calls and sitting in cars waiting to take photos of people doing things they shouldn’t be doing. To sum up, it’s boring. And for Cedri
c Murphy, who had been a private detective for fifteen years, it was the way things had always been. He didn’t mind that much. It wasn’t as good as being a professional soccer player, but better than working with sewage.
But Cedric’s life had changed three days ago when he’d received a phone call. If he could go back in time he would never have answered the phone; then again, if he had the ability to go back in time he probably would have gone back with the winning Lotto numbers. Instead here he was in his tiny office shaking like a boy who’s accidentally smashed every plate in his mother’s best dinner set minutes before her family and friends call around for Sunday dinner.
He glanced at his watch again. It had only been thirty seconds since he’d last checked the time. His client was al-most ten minutes late. Maybe he wasn’t going to turn up. He felt a wave of relief wash over him. He was off the hook. In the clear. Free as a …
The intercom buzzed and Cedric Murphy sighed. He knew he was in trouble. His hand shook as he pressed the talk button. The voice that crackled over the intercom was calm and strong.
‘I have an appointment.’
This was his last chance to back out. He wondered if he should try climbing through the window, but the window was very small and Cedric Murphy was very large. Too many full Irish breakfasts and Indian takeaways for dinner meant he constantly balanced on the slender tightrope between very fat and obese. He promised himself that if he got out of this alive he’d start eating healthily.
‘Come on up,’ he said into the speaker.
He heard the soft click as the door below opened, followed by the quiet footsteps of the man as he climbed the narrow stairs. Murphy tried to compose himself. He didn’t want to appear nervous. That would give the man the upper hand. He checked his shirt. Damp patches of sweat beneath the arms. That was a giveaway. Even though it was boiling hot in the cramped office, he put his jacket on to cover up the stains. Why hadn’t he ever bought a fan or an air conditioner? He was hotter than an unsheared sheep in Death Valley on a cloudless July afternoon. He gulped down a large glass of water, then pretended to be interested in some papers on his desk as the door creaked open and the rat-faced little man entered the office.
Colm & the Lazarus Key Page 1
