The Child Before

by Michael Scanlon

  The late Inspector’s right hand was extended, the palm facing upward, the fingers slightly curled, as if he had been holding something before he died.

  Beck turned and noted the books on the shelf. The title of the one facing him, Bangkok Guide: Night Time Delights. On the cover a picture of a female in a tight micro-dress, standing in front of a bar, a galaxy of neon lights behind her. Beck was wearing gloves. He reached out and separated the book from the others, straining to see its title.

  ‘Beck!’

  Inspector Mahony was glaring when he turned to look.

  He pointed to the door. ‘That way. Now piss off.’

  Forty

  Beck snapped the visor down as he sat in the unmarked police car, leaning his head back against the headrest. He watched the half dozen or so crime scene-suited figures file through the front door into the house. Among the collection of marked and unmarked vehicles parked on the road was a purple four-wheel drive. A GSOC vehicle, the organisation responsible for garda internal affairs. The death of a serving garda under suspicious circumstances would automatically demand their attendance.

  ‘The room. It was, like, almost kinky,’ Beck said.

  But he couldn’t take his eyes off the purple four-wheel drive. This was a distraction no one needed.

  ‘They interview you yet?’ Claire asked, following his gaze.

  Before he could answer the radio crackled.

  ‘The Noose pub. Report Billy Hamilton’s gone berserk. Anyone available?’

  Beck reached for the handset, brought it to his lips, clicked the talk button.

  ‘He still on the premises?’

  ‘Don’t know. That you? Inspector Beck?’

  ‘Yes. It’s Beck.’

  ‘Can you take it, boss?’

  Beck glanced at the purple four-wheel drive again.

  ‘I can take it. Delta Five Two on the way. Out.’

  Claire started the engine and spun the front wheels as she pulled away, turning on the blues and siren.

  They were the first to arrive. A group of men were on the pavement outside, talking loudly and gesturing with their hands, smoking cigarettes. Sitting on the window ledge was a walrus of a man Beck knew to be the proprietor. He only knew him by his first name, Christy.

  Beck got out of the car and stood observing the scene for a moment.

  ‘Look-e there. If it isn’t Dick Tracy himself.’

  The man who had spoken was small, early sixties, and despite the weather, wore a heavy dark overcoat. A roll-up hung seemingly without any effort on his part from a corner of his mouth as he spoke.

  ‘Jimmy Brennan,’ Claire said. ‘Haven’t seen you in a while.’

  ‘I gave up the drink for a while so I did, guard. Was going to them meetings up in Ozanam House. Look-e there, isn’t that right, Dick Tracy?’

  Beck looked at the man, who seemed familiar. The man smiled at him as Beck crossed to Christy on the window ledge.

  ‘I think you’ll need an ambulance.’

  ‘Uh uh. No ambulance,’ Christy said, holding a wad of tissues to his nose. ‘It’s worse than it looks. I’ve got to clean up me pub. Did you see what the headcase done?’

  ‘I’m looking at it,’ Beck said.

  ‘No. To my pub I mean. Come on, I’ll show ya.’

  Beck followed him in through the doorway of the pub. There was scarcely enough room for the walrus to pass through. They stood inside, and Christy crossed to the counter, gripped it with both hands, and wheezed loudly.

  ‘This is doing nothing for my heart y’know. I’ve a dickey ticker. I’ll get him sorted so I will for this. I swear to God.’

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Beck said. ‘Tell me what happened?’

  Christy squeezed the tissues against his nose and when he spoke it sounded like it was from inside a cardboard box. ‘He came in, and I knew as soon as I looked at him something wasn’t right. But it’s Hamilton, ya, and we all know something’s not right with him anyway. He ordered a pint and started talking weird…’

  ‘A buck fifty, did you say?’ Beck said. ‘What’s that?’

  Christy took the tissue from his nose, which appeared now to have stopped bleeding. He touched it with a finger and winced. Most of the tissue paper was a deep red colour.

  ‘I asked him that too. It’s slang, that’s what he said, from the ’hood, that’s what he said too, for a hundred and fifty stitches. I’m tellin’ you, he’s a head case Hamilton, so he is. Anyway, he was annoying me so he was, going on and on like he was some kind of tough guy.’ Christy’s eyes widened. ‘He’s no tough guy, he’s a big mammy’s boy, that’s what he is, but just ’cause he looks like Brad Pitt… Wait’ll I get him, I’m tellin’ you. Okay, okay, you don’t want to hear about that.’ Christy took a slow deep breath, continued. ‘I lost my temper, told him to feck off and go and join those good people looking for his daughter. His daughter, I told him: His daughter! Anyway, he started talking real soft and apologetic, told me I was right, that’s what he should be doing. “Come here,” he says then, “I have something to tell you, privately like.” And so I leaned in and that’s when he done this. Headbutted me in the face he did, the absolute bastard, that’s what he is. You’d need to get him quick, before I do, ’cause he’s liable to kill someone the ways he’s going on, so he is.’

  ‘Any idea where he might have gone?’ Beck asked.

  Beck noted the floor was littered with glass, the linoleum strip separating the tacky carpet from the counter awash in spilt beer, broken bottle necks like buoys in a shallow sea.

  ‘I’m not finished,’ Christy said. ‘What I want to tell you is he then went berserk. Went behind the counter and started knocking stuff over. Everything. Bottles. Glasses. Even the kettle, look at it there. He was pure mad so he was. Thank God he didn’t cop the spirit bottles at the end. I can’t claim on insurance for this y’know, put my premium through the roof, it’s comin’ out of me own pocket it is. And the bastard passed me a dud fifty-dollar bill so he did. I took it ’cause I’m going on a holiday to New York. The bastard!’

  ‘Did he now?’ Beck said. ‘Hang onto that. We’ll deal with that later, okay?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll hang onto that alright, what else can I do with it?’

  ‘Any idea where he might have gone?’ Beck asked again.

  ‘I don’t know. And I don’t give a damn either.’

  A patrol car had arrived when Beck got back outside.

  ‘This town is gone to the dogs,’ the female guard said to her colleague as they approached the pub. ‘Hi, Claire.’

  Claire smiled. ‘Hi, Alice.’

  Alice was medium built with short dark hair. Her smile disappeared when she looked at Beck.

  ‘Can you take over?’ Beck asked her.

  ‘We were sent over because you’re stretched. We were close by. Call this a favour. I can’t investigate it. This isn’t my area.’

  Beck lit a cigarette and pulled on it so deeply the glow almost became a flame.

  ‘There’s nothing to investigate,’ he said, exhaling a thick stream of smoke. ‘There’ll be no statement. We have to get this nutter before he does something even more stupid.’

  Beck began walking towards the Focus without waiting for a reply.

  The Ballinasloe mules didn’t object. Without a statement forthcoming they had nothing to do but look official. That wasn’t so bad.

  Beck stood next to the car, smoking his cigarette down to the tip. He dropped it into the gutter.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you as we’re driving.’

  They drove to 4 Ravenscourt Drive, banged on the door, but there was no reply. Beck peered in the windows, but the curtains were pulled. The window that had been broken was panelled over in ply board. Beck thought about forcing it.

  ‘Has he left town?’ Claire asked. ‘He’s not supposed to.’

  Beck pondered that question, cursing under his breath. He thought of something.

  ‘Just on
the off chance. Come on.’

  The Elegant Print and Design Company was really a newsagents shop at the front, a printing business at the back, and a kiosk with a yellow-and-red neon sign that said ‘Keys Cut Here’ to the side, tucked into a corner. It reminded Beck of an old seaside Punch and Judy booth. Inside it were rows of blank keys along the back wall, dusty, like they’d been hanging there a long time. A couple of aisles in the centre of the shop were devoted to books, separated into sections by genre, but too small to offer any worthwhile variety: Irish Literature, Popular Fiction, Biography, Non-Fiction, each with maybe three feet of shelf space. Other shelves along a side wall were sectioned into magazines and offices supplies – packs of printing paper, ink cartridges, pens, etc – the other side wall stuffed with cuddly and cheap toys. Beneath the counter, under the chocolate bar display, the daily newspapers were laid out. Beck ignored those.

  A girl, seventeen or thereabouts Beck guessed, was behind the counter, in a white T-shirt, plucked eyebrows and a nose piercing. She turned to them, chewing gum.

  ‘Can I help?’ the voice unexpectedly friendly, smiling. Somehow, Beck hadn’t expected that.

  ‘I’m looking for Edward Roche,’ Beck said, too late to take the cut from his tone.

  Her eyes flicked from Beck to Claire as the smile disappeared.

  ‘I’d better get Benny, the boss.’

  She opened a door behind her and went into the back of the shop. There was a glass panel in the wall and Beck could see a man stacking sheets of paper at a table. The girl spoke to him and Beck watched as the man looked up, turning towards the window. The man nodded and wiped his hands on his apron, began walking towards the door, his head and shoulders stooped, like a defeated boxer. There was the loud clanking noise of machinery and the whirl of electric motors as he slowly opened the door and with it the smell of hot ink and paper. The door closed again and the man crossed to the counter.

  His forehead was furrowed like a ploughed field, his expression like he had lost his life savings on a horse in the 4:45 at Chepstow. He stood before them, his shoulders narrow and slumped from carrying the weight of the world.

  He spoke, a slow and throaty mutter, ‘I don’t have a lot of time.’

  Beck could almost hear the black dogs straining at the end of their leashes as they dragged old Benny here along behind them. He looked into the man’s wide, vacant, eyes.

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ Beck said. ‘We’d like to speak to Edward Roche?’

  ‘Really? So why’ve you come here?’

  ‘He works here, doesn’t he?’ it was Claire.

  Benny’s mouth opened, but no words came out. His face softened.

  ‘This a joke, is it? I haven’t heard a joke that could make me smile in ages.’

  ‘No,’ Beck said. ‘Why would you say that? We haven’t time for jokes right now.’

  And the expression returned, as if he was walking away from the bookies with nothing left in the whole world but some jangly loose change.

  ‘Roche,’ he said. ‘I fired him months ago. He doesn’t work here.’

  Forty-One

  Inside the front door of 4 Ravenscourt Drive, three bulging suitcases sat on the floor, pressed tight to the back so they couldn’t be seen if someone looked in from outside. Even if the curtains were pulled.

  The printing press in the garage made a munching noise as it spewed out each sheet of paper, like the sound of someone biting on a big apple. The noise was from a broken bearing in a roller. The machine was almost a hundred years old after all, and parts were hard to come by. But it did the job better than anything else for the money he had paid for it.

  Edward Roche went into the living room, nudged aside the curtain with his little finger. If the cops were to come back, he’d have to be quick in shutting it down. Anyway, he was almost finished now. Just a little longer, then it would be over. He took his finger from the curtain and it fell back into place. He turned to go into the garage. And froze.

  Shit!

  Nobody else should be in the house. It was locked. Secured. He’d checked.

  So why was somebody standing in the doorway?

  Forty-Two

  ‘G’day, mate. The girl who’s been killed. Samantha Power. I want to speak to someone about it. The Superintendent, eh. The gaffer.’

  The white-haired guard behind the public counter looked at the man standing before him, sun-bleached hair, deeply tanned skin, the corners of his green eyes concertinaed with laughter lines. But he wasn’t laughing now. Garda Frank Kennedy stretched himself to full height, which wasn’t much, and puffed out his chest. This was important business.

  ‘Have you information, sir, about that?’

  ‘Who’s the boomer in charge, mate? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘The boomer, what do you mean, sir?’

  ‘Aye, the head chef. I don’t care what you call him. You just go get him, mate?’

  Garda Kennedy felt it important the public show due respect in dealing with the institutions of the State, especially the gardai, and he did not take kindly to at any attempt at undermining this authority. He was old school, and he didn’t like the way Crocodile Dundee here was speaking to him. He reached under the counter for a notebook and pen and held the pen poised above the page.

  ‘Your name there good man, and contact details, and the specific nature of your business, please.’

  ‘Some things never change around here, mate, do they, aye? Once a bogan, always a bogan, aye?’

  Garda Kennedy felt himself getting a little exasperated. ‘I’m sorry there now, but I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No, ya don’t mate, do ya? Mikey Power is my name. Brother of Samantha Power, the girl who’s been killed.’

  Kennedy put his pen down.

  ‘Why didn’t you say. Take a seat please. I’ll get somebody.’

  ‘No worries, mate. You do that.’

  Forty-Three

  Roche didn’t move. In the twilight of the curtained room he could see an outline standing in the doorway. He knew who it was. The arm of the outline reached out and flicked the light switch.

  Hamilton’s mouth was twisted. His eyes wild. A word came to Roche’s mind: Deranged.

  ‘How’d you get in?’ no anger in Roche’s voice, just mere enquiring, humouring him.

  ‘How’d I get fuckin’ in? I’m a burglar, bro, how do you think I got in?’

  Roche felt his breathing quicken, each intake barely moving down his throat before it was coming back out again and he was gulping for more air. His body tensed, solid and brittle, both at the same time. It was a feeling that came with fear. No, more than fear, beyond that. He was petrified. Hamilton was a head case, everyone knew that. But even so, he would never admit how scared he was of him, not to anyone. This was the reason he had gone round that night, to prove to Samantha that a girl like her could be with a man like him, that he could handle the Hamiltons of this world. But of course he couldn’t. Hamilton didn’t even break a sweat, two punches and he was a heap on the floor. He’d never get the better of someone like Hamilton, he knew that now. But Samantha secretly liked that he had tried, as he’d known she would.

  So, how was he going to get out of this?

  ‘What is it, Billy? Why are you here?’

  ‘Billy is it? Don’t call me Billy. Who said you could call me Billy?’

  It was then Roche saw the box cutter in Billy’s hand, the blade twinkling like a shiny trinket in the light. He felt a looseness in his lower belly, a heat sensation emanating from his anus. He knew he was on the verge of shitting himself. The ultimate humiliation.

  ‘Where’s my child?’ Hamilton asked calmly, taking a step forward. ‘And before you answer, just so’s you know, you’re goin’ to die either way. But if you tell me where my child is, I’ll do it quick.’ He laughed, a high-pitched sound of someone out of their mind. ‘I’d do a nickel for slicing you, bro. I’ll give you a buck fifty, man, across your motherfuckin fa
ce.’

  And Roche felt a pressure building, and suddenly giving way, and a release, with it a noise, a crackling sound, and with it a smell like charcoal and fish as he stood there, as it ran down his legs, as he shite himself, and he began to sob.

  Hamilton flicked the knife back and forth in his hand. ‘You tell me where she is. You tell me Roche.’ Another step forward.

  ‘I didn’t touch her. I didn’t touch anybody. I swear it. I swear it, Billy. I had nothing to do with it. I had nothing to do with it. You’ve got to believe me. Pleeeease.’

  ‘Where is?’ Another step. ‘My?’ And another. ‘Child?’ And one final step. Right in front of Roche now. ‘You stink, bro. Don’t you have any self respect? How did Samantha ever fuck something like you? How?’

  And from somewhere within Roche, it came. A defiance. A final last grasp at something resembling self respect before the inevitable. One last chance to roll back, just a little, on his utter humiliation. To at least try.

  ‘Ya,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘She told me your dick was like a cocktail sausage, she had to finger herself to get off because you were crap at it.’

  But not even that had any effect, except to make Hamilton laugh.

  ‘What? Is that it? Is that all you can do? Man, you’re pa-thet-ic. I’m hung like a donkey and every bitch in this town, no, in this county, knows it. You didn’t make her pregnant, did you, bitch? It was me. You’re not capable of it.’

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  And Roche took his chance. His only chance. His last chance. He ran for the door. But Hamilton, in a flash, brought up the knife and with one short, sharp movement, stepping to the side, out of the way, brought it down onto his face as he passed, slicing the cheek open with the ease of gutting a fish. Roche stumbled into the hallway, screaming in pain, fell against the staircase.