Phil shook his head as enthusiastic lapping noises came from under the table. "That cannot be hygienic," he said.
"You should have seen what happened when I didn't get her a pint," said Paul, "that really was unhygienic." Paul had originally thought Maggie would be like Hooch, the dog from the Tom Hanks classic, Turner and Hooch. He was coming to terms with the fact she was a lot more like Begbie from Trainspotting.
Phil lifted his pint and gave Paul a knowing look over it. "So, how are things with Brigit?"
"Oh tremendous, thanks for asking. I mean, she won't talk to me or anything but the last time she actually answered the phone, her choice of swear words was noticeably warmer."
Phil took a sip of his pint and shook his head sadly. "Ahh, the course of young love never runs smooth."
Paul braced himself because he knew what was coming.
"I've been discussing it with Da Xin," said Phil, "and she reckons you should try a big romantic gesture."
Four… five…
"Does she?" said Paul, using every ounce of his self-restraint not to sound sarcastic. Da Xin was Phil's imaginary former girlfriend, now imaginary fiancée. They had 'met' nine months ago while playing some online game and one thing had led to another, at least as far as Phil was concerned. As far as Paul was concerned, one thing couldn't lead anywhere until they'd actually been in the same room. They'd been ‘engaged’ for almost two months now. It had been his ‘stag do’ that Paul had been on when what happened, happened. True, you normally only had a stag do when you'd set a date but then, you normally had a stag do when your fiancée wasn't so clearly a con too. The so-called stag do had actually been just the two of them, an idea concocted by Phil's Auntie Lynn. She had been understandably horrified that Phil had now expanded his gullibility to encompass whole other continents. Paul had been supposed to talk him out of it. It had not gone well on any level.
"Yeah," said Phil. "Da Xin knows a lot about stuff like that."
Phil had a defiant look that Paul knew all too well. Like he was daring Paul to doubt her existence. It was heartbreaking to look at.
They'd not spoken over Skype or anything like that as the Chinese government blocked it in the region Da Xin was from. Her father was a dissident politician; the whole family was under house arrest. They were very wealthy but their assets were temporarily frozen, which was why Phil had to get them plane tickets. In short, Phil was doing the romantic version of helping a Nigerian prince by temporarily allowing him to put money in his account. It was like watching a painfully slow car crash and nothing could be done to convince Phil to step on the brakes. Paul decided to change the subject. The last thing he needed was Phil storming off again.
"So," said Phil, "how come Bunny isn't helping you with this?"
"Ah that drunken bumpkin has disappeared off the face of the planet. Hasn't answered his phone in days."
"Do you think he's alright?"
"Course he's alright. He's Bunny. He's just drunk in a ditch somewhere, having a whale of a time. Leaving me to do all the bleedin' work." Paul had become used to this behaviour from Bunny. For the last two months Bunny had appeared and disappeared, seemingly at random. At one point, three weeks ago, the dial tone when he rang Bunny's phone had indicated he was out of the country. Paul still didn't know where he'd been. When he'd asked, Bunny had just responded that he'd been topping up his tan.
Paul looked out the window. "There's a lot of press over there, isn't there?" He indicated the court steps across the street, where several photographers and two film crews were sitting around, looking bored.
"Yeah," said Phil. "So who is this guy you're supposed to be following?"
Paul lowered his voice. "He's one of the Skylark Three." He had hoped not to have to go into this, but if the alternative was comparing love lives, all bets were off.
"Are they like a band or something?" asked Phil.
Paul shouldn't have been surprised that Phil wasn't keeping up-to-date with current affairs, but he was. The Skylark trial was everywhere, dominating every front page and leading every news report. He would have assumed it was impossible to avoid.
Skylark had been the biggest development project in the history of the state. Paschal Maloney, Craig Blake and Jerome Hartigan, the three biggest stars in the crowded firmament of Irish developers had partnered up. A brown field site, formerly the old Gettigan’s printing factory and warehouses, was going to be transformed. The three amigos had been on the chat shows, laughing it up; ‘Awh shucks, no need to be calling us the dream team. We're putting our personal rivalries aside, just trying to do what we can for the country.’ Property developers as rock stars. A wapping 524 high-spec two- and three-bedroom apartments, perfect for the first time buyer looking to start a family; a retirement village with another 186 homes offering unsurpassed assistance for the elderly; 88 luxury apartments at the very top end; not to mention the multiplex, supermarket, restaurants and so on and so on. It was going to be the be-all and end-all; the jewel in the Celtic Tiger's crown. Celebs were queuing up to put a deposit down on the fancy pads and there had been fist fights, actual fist fights, when the first tranche of as-yet-unbuilt apartments for the plebs had become available to buy.
Then the arse had fallen out of the economy. Skylark was fine though; people had put in so much money up front, how could it fail? Investors were reassured, bank loans renegotiated, politicians stepping in to make sure ‘sanity prevailed’. Then, the first batch of happy buyers had begun moving in to Skylark 1 to discover a property with more than a few flaws. ‘Teething problems’ the spokesman had said, the three amigos having become a little camera-shy by this point. Nothing to worry about though, all in hand. Sure, nothing worked on the first day at Disneyland either! The other thing that they had in common was the massive part a mouse would play in their future.
The fire would eventually be traced back to wiring that had been incorrectly sealed, allowing a mouse to nibble through it. It was a miracle nobody had died. By sheer chance, a firefighter had lived next door to the apartment where the blaze had started and she had managed to contain it long enough for the building to be evacuated. Initially, the flat's owners had been accused of disabling the fire alarm but once the fire inspectors started looking, they were shocked by what they found. They discovered that less than half of the fire alarms in the whole complex had been installed correctly. Under the rather handy self-certifying system that some ‘developer-friendly’ politicians had put in place, nobody double-checked anybody else's work. Skylark 1 was designated as being unsafe and all the residents forced to move out. Questions were asked in the Dáil. Inspections were carried out, then more inspections, then some arguments, then a whole lot of arguments. Along with the wiring, the ‘state-of-the-art’ insulation was discovered to have been banned in Sweden, for very good reasons. Then, after six months, somebody noticed the subsidence. The building was condemned for being cheaper to rebuild than fix. Everybody blamed everybody else, but the three amigos assured all parties that they would not rest until everyone received the dream home they had been promised.
They said that in a statement released on a Tuesday morning. They'd filed for bankruptcy by Wednesday lunchtime. All three amigos had tried to file separately for bankruptcy in Britain where the rules were a lot more lenient but by this point, the authorities had copped on to that one. Meanwhile, most of the vast Skylark complex remained half-built and abandoned; an already crumbling monument to excess. The massive billboard you could still see from the motorway had been altered to read 'If you lived here, you'd be fucked by now'.
Amazingly, up until this point in the proceedings, nobody had done anything actually illegal. Some building codes hadn't been followed, but that was merely a slap on the wrist with a fine. It was only when the receivers moved in that the real fun started. That was when the great big black hole in the middle of the Skylark accounts had been found; 148 million euros, according to most reports. The three amigos were horrified, the investors were horrified,
the banks were horrified, the government were horrified. The Skylark financial controller unhelpfully threw himself off a bridge while out walking the dog. The dog was, reportedly, horrified.
People had demanded answers, and politicians, keen to distance themselves from the development they suddenly always knew was a disaster waiting to happen, were mad keen that somebody else give them. The Director of Public Prosecutions duly announced that the three amigos were to face criminal charges for fraud. Finally, said the people of Ireland, somebody would pay for the suffering they'd caused.
Four… five… "No, Phil," said Paul, "the Skylark Three are not a band. Do you not read any news?"
"I do," said Phil, looking hurt, "but I've mainly been focusing on the news in the Xinjiang province, as if there's a change in leadership that might mean—"
"Uh-huh" said Paul, not listening. "Something is wrong."
"Well, the oppression of the—"
"Not that," said Paul, "this!" He pointed out of the window where the photographers and camera crews had suddenly been whipped into a frenzy of activity. "I looked it up. They expected the trial to go on until 4 pm today. It only started forty-five minutes ago. Shit, get the car."
Phil looked horrified. "But I've not finished my pint."
"Go! Now!"
"All right! Keep your hair on."
Phil knocked his chair over and stumbled into another table on his way out of the door.
"Watch where you're going, ye lanky string of piss!" said the barman, who was probably not in the running for a golden service award. Paul grabbed Maggie's lead and headed for the door. Luckily, she had finished her pint.
"What's going on?"
The photographer pushed Paul aside roughly and ignored the question. Uniformed police were now trying to belatedly put a cordon in place to hold back the crowds. More and more journalists and photographers appeared to be arriving all the time. An RTÉ van had just pulled up and disgorged a rather flustered-looking whats-her-name who used to do the news in Irish. Along with all of the press, members of the public were now crowding around. In Dublin, nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.
A couple of young guys in suits shrugged at Paul's questioning. "Dunno, fella, but it must be something though, hey?"
Paul kept making his way through the crowd who were all jostling each other for position, Maggie nimbly weaving around behind him. They pushed past punters with mobile phones at the ready, not knowing what was about to happen but hoping to capture it in case it could become a YouTube sensation.
Then Paul hit a strange air pocket of space and silence amidst the chaos, and he stopped. He turned to look behind him. The man’s name was Dessie O'Connell. His picture had been in all the papers at some point. He'd even been on the chat shows, telling his story. Telling the world about the woman he'd loved. He was in his seventies. When anyone met him, it was the vivid brightness of the old man's green eyes that stood out amidst the creases and worry lines of his weather-beaten face. It was like an unexpected flash of colour in a black and white photograph. He held a framed picture of his wife in his hands, smiling back at the world from a happier time.
They had sunk all of their savings into Skylark, on the promise of a safe and cared-for future in that state-of-the-art retirement village. He had some problems with rheumatism, or so Paul thought he remembered. Yes, you could see it in the awkward way he gripped the picture frame to his chest. His wife had suffered from MS. When Skylark had fallen apart, so had she.
Paul had seen Dessie O’Connell read the note out on television. How she was sorry to leave him, but she was terrified about the future. How she didn't want to be a burden. How maybe there'd be enough money if it was just him. He had cried softly as he read it. Then the host had asked him in a voice barely above a whisper, why he stood outside the court every day holding up her picture? To remember, he'd said. What struck Paul as he'd watched wasn't the anger; the man didn't seem to have any in him. He knew nothing would happen, he said. There would be no justice. He just had to remember her every day, and if he did, he wanted them to have to as well. As Paul met his eyes, he wished he could recall her name.
"That's a nice dog you've got there," said the old man, bending down to pat Maggie on the head. He stood up straight again with a small wince of pain. "It's a mistrial," he said, without emotion. "One of the nice girls who brings me tea and sandwiches came out and told me."
"Oh," said Paul.
"They're not supposed to help me out, but they do. They've been very kind. They even snuck me in to use the toilet a couple of times. People are very good in their way, mostly."
Paul nodded.
"They won't have to do that any more, I guess. Now it's over." He looked down at the ground, as if this thought was just occurring to him for the first time. Like the rest of his life was a long empty road that had just opened before him, and he was too tired to walk any further.
"If there's a mistrial, they'll probably start again, won't they?" said Paul.
Dessie O'Connell laughed a soft humourless laugh. "Ah, what would be the point? They said something about how they’d discovered that one of the jurors was related to somebody who’d lost all their money in Skylark. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to find a dozen people who didn't know somebody."
He nodded over at the folding chair, golf umbrella and blanket that indicated where his station had been for the last few months. They were well over to the left of the main entrance, down by the railings. "There were a lot more of us in the first couple of weeks," he said. "Protesters and that, I mean. There was a nice family with two kids and a lot of other people, but they all gradually disappeared. Most people have lives to be getting on with, I suppose."
Then, any further conversation was swept away in a torrent of camera flashes and shouted questions. Hartigan, Blake and Maloney had appeared at the top of the steps, surrounded by lawyers and a couple of heavies in suits. Craig Blake wore a finely-tailored charcoal suit. His face was round and chinless, with one of those slightly upturned noses that hinted at both breeding and inbreeding. His expression was one of distaste, as if all of this was a great inconvenience, distracting him from something far more important. Hartigan, on the other hand, while about the same age as Blake, was all chiselled features and natural grace. He wore the white shirt and tieless black suit combination that Paul realised he'd seen him wearing in every picture. His hair was brushed back and slightly tousled, with the suggestion of a widow's peak that hinted at a no-expense-spared battle against male pattern baldness; one he was winning. In contrast to the other two, Maloney looked rumpled and edgy in a suit that seemed slightly too big for him, the sun bouncing off his irredeemably bald pate. His small eyes peered out apprehensively from round, frameless glasses as his hands clasped at each other nervously. He reminded Paul of Penfold from Danger Mouse, minus the cuddliness. He looked the type to stand in the background, cheering the big boys on while they stole your lunch money.
Hartigan strode down the steps confidently, and raised his hands for silence. He left a few seconds to let the undignified scrum of journalists holding out mics and digital recorders settle down.
"Thank you for coming. My colleagues and I are greatly relieved that this politically-motivated show trial has finally come to an end. We would like to thank Judge Green for ensuring that justice has indeed been served. As much as anyone, we are bitterly disappointed with what the dream that was Skylark has become. We will not rest until justice, real justice, is served for the good of all those involved, but looking for easy scapegoats is not the answer. Trying to punish those who fell victim to an economic downturn of an unprecedented scale helps no one. This country was built by those who took chances, punishing those who do so sets a dangerous precedent for future generations. Rest assured, we remain committed to getting to the bottom of what has gone on here, and we will do everything in our power to make it right. As always, we thank you for your support."
And with that, Hartigan turned and headed back up the stairs, h
is entourage in tow, a barrage of shouted questions plus a few catcalls following in their wake. As the glass doors swished closed behind them, Paul could see Hartigan putting his arm around Maloney's shoulder genially. Blake, in conversation with one of the lawyers, barked out a laugh.
Paul turned to go. He needed to find Phil and the car fast. As he hurried away, he glanced back to see Dessie O'Connell standing silently amongst the throng, wordlessly holding up the picture of his dead wife whose name Paul couldn't remember.
Chapter Three
Brigit took a long drag on her cigarette and looked at the trees. She'd miss them. Hospital grounds always had such nice trees. There was something very comforting about watching them sway in the soft summer breeze.
It was not like she had actually liked nursing, she told herself. She hadn't actively disliked it either, though. It was supposed to have just been a means to an end. Train as a nurse, they'd told her, and you can see the world. People will always need their arses wiped – that'd been the half-joking sales-pitch they'd given each other in training. Nurses did a lot more than that, of course, and up to a certain point she had enjoyed that side of things. Helping someone get better, or at least feel better about what life they had left. That wasn't nothing. No, she didn't hate the job, she had just always felt like she was supposed to do something more with her life. She was going to have to now, she was about to get booted out on her arse.
The fire door banged open and Dr Luke Mullins stepped out. His hawkish nose, combined with the garish waistcoats he had a misjudged affection for, made him appear older than his forty-or-so years. He always looked like he was about ten pounds too heavy to comfortably fit into his suit, like he wasn't so much dressing for the job he wanted as for the body he hoped to attain. His standoffish manner made him one of the less popular doctors amongst the nursing staff, but Brigit had never minded him much. He was all business but he treated everyone the same, being just as happy to launch a rocket up another doctor's arse as he was a nurse's.
The Day That Never comes (The Dublin Trilogy Book 2) Page 3
