'I dunno. I've a donkey riding at three; go down the bookie's check on that.'
'Well it's not three yet. Tell you what, we'll give you a hand putting the books back up.'
Spider-web stared at him. 'What the fuck?'
'Sure what's the harm?'
'Fuck sake. You do what you want, I'm goin' outside for a fag.'
Spider-web shook his head and walked out of the shop. Rolo shrugged. He nodded down at me. 'Sure you sit where you are, I'll sort these out. Will I just put them anywhere or do they need to be in some kind of order?'
The answer to that was much too complicated - but it was too early in our relationship to get into that particular bag of spiders. So I just said, 'Anywhere would be great.'
And so he dutifully began to return the books to their shelves.
I said, 'You never really did say who sent you.'
'Well, we never really know.'
'Oh. Right. Okay. Fair enough.'
'Though for all we're being paid, don't see what difference it makes. I mean, thirty quid, and ten per cent of that goes to our agent.'
'Your agent?'
'Aye well, you need someone a bit organised, bit of a talker, to bring in the business. Bit like a taxi service: you call in for a job or they call you and give you the address. If we weren't available, they'd go down the list to the next pair.'
'You always work in pairs?'
'Yep. One to hold you down, and one to do the bashin'.'
'And do you take turn-abouts?'
'Nah. Yer man enjoys the bashin, I don't mind the holdin'. We just get sent to do a job.'
'Do you think you could find out who wanted me dealt with?'
He finished placing an armful of books on a high shelf before turning to study me. 'You serious?'
'Yep. Absolutely. I'll match what you were paid.'
'For both of us?'
'Will it take both of you?'
'Like I say, one to hold him down, one to do the bashin'.'
'Okay. Both of you. Deal?'
'Deal.'
I am so good at this.
Rolo helped me to my feet. 'Still bleeding?'
'Slowing,' I said.
Still holding the towel to my face, I went behind the counter and took out one of my own business cards this time and handed it to him. 'Give me a call when you find anything out.'
He flicked it between his fingers. 'Sure thing.'
'And take this.' I handed him a copy of The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker. Funny, tense, complex without being forbiddingly wordy. A perfect way to start. 'I think you'll enjoy it.'
'I can't really afford
'It's on the house. Go on.'
He took it. For a moment I thought he might well up. But it wasn't an act of kindness or some sort of philanthropic gesture. He would read it and he would come back for another. And then another. He wouldn't be able to help himself. Parker wrote nearly sixty novels before his recent untimely demise, and I would make sure that after this first one, Rolo paid for them all. I would be in profit in a matter of weeks. And then, once he was addicted, I would move him on to the harder stuff.
Spider-web rapped on the window and gave him an impatient let's go gesture.
I nodded at Rolo. He nodded back.
He opened the door. He hesitated. He looked down at the nunchucks.
He said, 'Are you really featherweight nunchuck champion of Ireland?'
'No,' I said.
* * *
Chapter 22
I told Alison about trying to convert Rolo to mystery fiction. I said it was just like Pygmalion, except interesting. She responded with: 'You can't polish a turd.' To be fair, that response only came after a lot of screaming and crying when she saw the state of my nose, although even during that she stopped long enough to snap: 'I thought you said you were a haemophiliac?' and I took time out to study my reflection in the shop toilet mirror, and the relatively small quantity of blood on the towel, and then punched the air and shouted, 'It's a miracle!'
'You could have been killed!'
'Nah,' I said.
I started in on my theory about their reasonably light beating, but she cut in with:
'Never mind that, what are we going to do about your nose?'
'Is it that bad?'
'Man dear, it looks like someone tried to open it with a can-opener.' She shook her head. Then she kissed me on the forehead. 'I saw them go in from across the road, but I was in the middle of this hard sell and couldn't get away. I thought there was something suspicious about you having two customers in a day, but I just couldn't get rid, and then the wrinkled old bag didn't buy anything. I came as quick as I could, a bit like you.'
I gave her a look. She gave it to me back.
'Is it very sore?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'Have you taken a painkiller?'
I gave her another look. I had been addicted to Nurofen, Anadin, generic paracetamol, Night Nurse, Sleepeaze, co-codamol, Kapake and Vicks since 1992. My senses are so dulled that if I was caught in a flood, I would be able to cut off my own arms for use as paddles without flinching, although I wouldn't be able to hold them.
'What do you think it means?' Alison asked.
'What what means?'
'Presuming for the moment that they were sent by Dr Yes, what do you think it means?'
'I'm not sure we can presume. I have a lot of enemies, and not just in retail. But if it's Dr Yeschenkov, and if we're thinking that he hired Buddy Wailer to whack Augustine, then he must either think we're not worth the whack treatment, or Buddy Wailer isn't available right now. Which is probably good either way. Rolo will go back and report that I've been dealt with; that takes the spotlight off for a little bit, gives us time to manoeuvre.'
'And how are we going to manoeuvre? Bearing in mind that I'm with child and if I'd been in the shop they would probably have beaten me as well?'
'We just have to be careful.'
'Careful would be leaving it alone.'
I nodded. She nodded.
'But we won't do that,' said Alison.
'Probably not.'
I went home via the Sunny D. I gave Mother a stern talking-to. She pretended not to hear. But when I casually mentioned that I'd forgotten her illicit supply of vodka, her head snapped round like a demon.
'Gotcha,' I said.
'You are an evil child,' she said. 'I like you least of all my children.'
'I'm an only child, Mother.'
'That's what you think. What child would lock his own mother up in a prison like this?'
'It's for your own protection, Mother. And if you behave like that again, they will throw you out.'
'Then I'll come home.'
'No you won't. You're living here, and you will conform, or I will stop bringing you your drink.'
'You're as bad as they are. Nazis.'
Despite her numerous complaints about the regime at Sunny D, it was clear they were doing something right. Previously she would have said Nathis. Since her stroke Mother had had some trouble talking clearly, but she'd been undergoing speech therapy in her new home and her diction was definitely improving. Where before Youfthinweakthwistedfudheadth would have left most listeners baffled, it was now clear for her fellow patients and caring support staff to hear that she was referring to her son as a 'fucking weak-wristed fudd-head'.
She referred to her lady-bits as her fudd. I'm not sure why. She just always had. She wasn't the least bit sheepish about it either. As a child I clearly remember her screaming at me one Sunday afternoon, 'You look like a slapped fudd, you pathetic little cretin!' Needless to say, her membership of the Plymouth Brethren was swiftly revoked.
Now she was staring at me.
'Well?' she snapped.
'Well what?'
'What happened to your beak?'
'I told you, Mother, what I do is dangerous, that's why you're safer here.'
'Yeah. Being poisoned and screamed at. Who did it?'
'I
t's a long story. Don't worry about it.'
'I do worry about it. You're my son.' She nodded to herself. She didn't meet my eyes. She stared off into the distance. 'Such a disappointment.'
To fill the awkward silence that followed, I decided to tell her about the case. She closed her eyes as I spoke. I wasn't sure if she was treating it as a goodnight story and was slowly drifting off, until I came to the end, with Rolo and Spider-web in the shop, and her eyes snapped open. 'Is that it?' she barked.
'That's it.'
'I don't understand.'
'Well, it's complicated.'
'No, I don't understand why you don't just go straight to the horse's mouth instead of dilly-dallying with the support staff. Why don't you just go up to this Dr Yeswhatever and ask him about it?'
'Because . . . because he's an important man. People wait months and months for an appointment with him.'
'He's only an important man to people who want him to operate on them. When he's at the garage, getting petrol, he is not an important man, he is just a man who wants petrol for his car. Take him out of his environment and he is no longer an important man, but a shit, like all men.'
For the first time in a long, long time, I smiled at her. 'You know something, Mother, you may have a point.'
'Of course I have a point. I'm your mother, you should listen to me more often. And stop smiling, it makes you look like an imbecile.'
'Yes, Mother,' I said.
I hadn't been home for ten minutes when the phone rang. It was the manager from the Sunny Delight saying that Mother had done it again and she would have to go. I told her she had a wrong number. She said she recognised my voice and I said that was impossible. I hung up. The phone rang again and I picked it up and said, 'It's still not me.' I clearly hadn't thought it through properly, but fortunately it wasn't the Sunny D, but Alison.
'My hormones are up the left,' she said. 'I have a craving.'
'You're pregnant, not disabled. If you want something to eat, go down to the shop.'
'I was talking about sex.'
'I'm on my way.'
'Don't bother if ...'
I didn't hear the rest. I had dropped the phone and grabbed my keys.
When Alison let me into her apartment, the first thing she said was, 'Craving's gone.'
* * *
Chapter 23
We were in bed. It was after midnight. She wanted to be held. I wasn't in the holding business. She huffed.
She said, 'You pay more attention to your mother than you do to me.'
I said, 'Well, my mother talks sense.'
This did not help.
She said, 'I'm not some kind of sex machine.'
I said, 'It appears not.'
She elbowed me in the stomach. She almost dislodged my gastric band.
It was darkish. The curtains were open, street lamps providing a faint glow. It was unsettling. Alison maintained a bizarre ambition to make it as a comic-book artist, but had yet to win any professional commissions. She had a Facebook page to promote her work that had so far attracted seven members, of whom I wasn't one. This lack of an outlet for her debatable talents meant that she inflicted them not only on herself but on her occasional guests by hanging completed pages and panels unframed on the walls. All her characters and creatures had horrible bug eyes. If she had a style, or a theme, it was a bug-eyed style, or theme. And now they were all looking at me, plotting. With my glasses, with lenses stronger than the Hubble telescope, making my eyes look so big, I wondered if that was what had first attracted her to me.
'No,' she said.
'I said that out loud, didn't I?'
'You did.'
'I'll have to stop that.'
'It's quite endearing. I'd hang on to it. Do you think absence makes the heart grow fonder?'
'No. Why do you ask?'
'You and your mother, getting on well.'
'I wouldn't go that far. She's still a nightmare, just with occasional outbursts of clarity.'
'You can't just abandon her there.'
'Yes I can. At least until they reconsider. They should learn to deal with their problems, not be handing out ultimatums.'
'You think she has a point, about confronting Dr Yes?'
'I don't know about confronting, but certainly getting closer to him. As you know, I prefer to examine the evidence and draw my conclusions; I'm not big on interaction
'Or holding.'
'. . . but sometimes there's no escaping it. I think we should stay clear of Pearl, she
'Scares you . . .'
'. . . is too much of a player . . .'
'. . . scares you . . .'
'. . . and tackle Dr Yes outside of his natural environment. Let's build up a picture of him based on our own observations, not from Augustine's ramblings or what we've picked up on the internet. Let's see if he doesn't somehow give himself away.'
'Staking him out? Following him? Doing this how? Me with my job and you with the shop.'
'I can do nights.'
'Lurker extraordinaire.'
'He's going to be in the clinic most of the day, but we still need to watch him, see if he pops out, or what he does on his time off.'
'I'll do my share, but it won't be enough. We need Jeff.'
'Jeff ran off, calling me a mentalist.'
'I thought he paper-cutted himself?'
'He did, but I shouted at him and he didn't take it well.'
'Did you fire him again?'
'Nope. Though I don't believe he'll be back.'
'He has a nerve, after everything you've done for him.'
'Stood by him through thick and thin.'
'He owes you big time. You took him back when he sold you down the river.'
'The Case of the Cock-headed Man.'
'You let him use the phone for all that Amnesty International wank.'
'Exactly.'
'You didn't say a word when he tried it on with me.'
'He tried it on with you?'
'Yes! Remember we all got pizza and you said you were allergic to it and went to bed. We rented out Hotel Rwanda and I started to cry and he tried to comfort me by fondling my breast.'
'You never told me that.'
She was silent for a little bit. Then she said: 'I thought you were dealing with it rather too well. Forget about it. He was drunk.'
'And you let him?'
'No, I removed his hand and poked him in the throat with a fork.'
'He said that was a love bite.'
'He would.'
We were silent for another bit. Then I said, 'You have to be a weirdo to eat pizza with a fork.'
She said, 'You have to be a weirdo to pretend to be allergic to it to get out of paying for it.'
We lay quietly, assailed only by bug eyes.
After a bit I said, 'I have cravings too.'
She didn't respond. Her breathing became light, regular. After ten minutes of it, I put my hand on her breast.
'Weirdo,' she said.
* * *
Chapter 24
A Belfast dawn, with a shepherd's-warning sky.
I was staring out of the window, thinking about the good old days when I could spend the night standing in the bushes in Alison's garden watching her watching TV or getting changed for bed. It is such a joy to watch somebody sleep peacefully through their slightly steamy window, like love in soft focus, and to not have to listen to her alternately snoring and farting her way towards daybreak.
They say if you want to stop somebody from snoring you should gently pinch their nose, but it wasn't having much effect. I think to be sure you should block all airways, forcefully, and hold them down until they stop moving. What is a death rattle but a final snore? Sometimes the temptation is overwhelming. But then common sense prevails and sanity is restored. I would be caught, and then how would I survive prison with my claustrophobia? And she lies there, unaware that her lives are in the balance, every night we stay together.
There was a knock on th
e front door, unexpected and heavy. Alison mumbled, 'Brian?' and I immediately regretted allowing her to survive.
Who could be calling for her at this time of the morning but a lover? Or a postman with a parcel that would not fit through the letter box. Or a lover. The knocking came again. It could be a lost traveller seeking directions, or a relative in distress, or a fireman saying the building is burning and for God's sake get out while you still can, or the ghost of Christmas to come with special offers, or Mother, tracking me down, or a lover, or a lover, or a love—
Alison jabbed me with her elbow. 'Will you just frickin' get it? I've nothing on!'
Oh yes, I remembered now. She did, after all, have a craving.
I stumbled out of bed, pulled on underpants, trousers, socks, shoes, T-shirt. I wasn't sure what was louder, the repeated knocking or the clicking of my joints.
'Will you hurry up?'
She was face down in her pillow, and snarling out of the side of her mouth. I should have finished the job while I had the chance.
'I'm going, I'm going!'
I moved along the hall. By the time I reached the door, most of the grogginess was gone and I was thinking clearly. This normally doesn't last for long, as my meds dull me right down again. But such was my rush to crave last night that I had left them behind. I would have to go home for them before work. But now I really was thinking about who would call at this time, bearing in mind the dangerous line we were in, and that perhaps I shouldn't just open the door in case it was Buddy Wailer with a silencer. Knock loudly, kill quietly. The moment it was wide enough he'd shoot me in the eye. I was wondering which eye would be better to get shot in. You have to give way to traffic from the right at a roundabout, so surely the left eye would be better, but what if I was to go on holiday to France, where they go round the roundabouts the wrong way, or at least they don't think they're going round them the wrong way, but I, as a visitor, would find it strange, and would need the use of my left eye, not that I was ever going to go to France, what with their French cows, or on holiday, because I get violently ill if I move outside of a three-mile radius of Belfast and . . .
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