Moriarty- The Road

by Jack Spain

  ‘It won’t stick.’

  ‘Well, your proposal was to build the road around Black Hill, not through it like I wanted, but was turned down because of the supposed historic importance of Patrick Grogan’s house. By coincidence, the same day that I’m supposed to start work on the hill as a second site, Grogan’s house gets blown up in a gas explosion, while I am there. Combine that with everything else, people around the county will smell smoke, even if there is no fire, and if you know me, and the kind of family I came from, I’ll be pretty quick to take advantage of that, and rest assured, anything that looks like dirt will be sticking to you.’

  Delaney looked at McManus for a long time and then began to pace back and forth in front of him.

  ‘You’re just like your father. So what sort of deal are you looking for?’ said Delaney with a sigh.

  McManus strolled around the Range Rover, opened the passenger side door and took out a large rolled up piece of paper. He then walked over to Delaney’s car and opened it up on the bonnet. Delaney came around and had a look for a moment and then looked to McManus.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said to McManus.

  ‘I’m going to subcontract you in for half the road,’ replied McManus. ‘I won’t be taking a piece of that as profit, but you’ll have to agree to subcontract some of my workers in, and use the same suppliers as me. You don’t have enough to do this anyway so I can’t see you complaining about that, but we have to build the road like this.’

  ‘And what is this box?’ Delaney asked, pointing at the drawing.

  ‘That’s Patrick Grogan’s new house that the council are going to build him. He didn’t have any insurance.’

  ‘Why, tell me, would the council want to build him a new house?’

  ‘I don’t care. You are on the council. You can work it out. But relax. I only want you to approve planning permission for the new house, and quickly.’

  ‘But why there?’

  ‘That’s the deal. We can negotiate the details, but the offer is for you to take the second half of the road.’

  George stood back from the drawing and scratched his head. He then leaned forward and looked at the drawing more closely for a few moments. McManus just looked at George and waited for an answer.

  ‘What’s in it for you?’ asked George.

  ‘I do half, you do half,’ replied McManus.

  ‘And what about the health and safety people?’

  ‘We’ll work it out. Your brother works in that office doesn’t he?’

  ‘But I wasn’t sabotaging you. What’s the plan for that? What if they come back?’

  ‘I’ll deal with that.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to know what you have in mind. Your family has quite a reputation.’

  ‘A can’t deny that, but I’m a nice clean businessman. I’ll just let the family reputation scare people off. If that doesn’t work I’ll make the roadworks a twenty four hour operation.’

  ‘And if I don’t agree to this?’

  ‘I might have to take up the family business. It will be a special project. This is a win-win situation for you. All we have to agree now is a deal in principle. I can get the lawyers in tomorrow to work out the details.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  George Delaney stood back and walked back and forth for a few moments, occasionally looking McManus right in the eyes. Eventually he sighed, scratched his chin and extended his hand to McManus. They shook hands.

  ‘I feel like I’m making a deal with the devil,’ said Delaney.

  Fort Knock

  Cut, battered, bruised, grazed and exhausted, Balor and Moriarty stood guard on the hill. They hid in the hedgerows, watching the fire brigade come and go, and then watched McManus when he came back. They waited until the sun went down, but nobody came. Unable to get back into the hill, they waited in the hedgerow all night. Balor suggested that they make another attempt at sabotaging the machines, but quickly thought better of that plan. The two little men sat silently for a few hours in the dark, couched in a depression at the back of Grogan’s shed.

  ‘We should have done something to McManus while he was here,’ Moriarty said.

  ‘It was too hard to get close,’ replied Balor, ‘and it was better to save the comither in case something worse turned up.’

  What’s going to happen to us?’

  ‘I don’t know. We will have to see,’

  ‘Why aren’t we trying to dig them out of the hill?’

  ‘You saw the crater. It would take us days. We are too small. We are better off to stand guard here and see what is going to happen.’

  Moriarty reflected some more on the situation before turning back to Balor. ‘What will happen if they discover us?’

  ‘They won’t have to discover us,’ Balor replied. ‘If they turn up with their machines we’ll have to jump out and tell them that we are here.’

  ‘And what will happen if we do that?’

  ‘Lots of things. We live a long time, and they will want to know why. We are very strong for our size and they will want to know that too. They will want to know the location of all the other hills. We will be detected, inspected, injected and dissected in the name of science and national security. We might get lucky and scare them off long enough to get away. We might even end up as a special documentary on TV. Little green men found in Ireland, surprise, surprise. We might not get lucky at all.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means the end, Moriarty,’ said Balor looking Moriarty straight in the eyes.

  ‘Is there nothing we can do?’

  ‘We are doing it. We’ll just wait here and see what happens.’

  The sun came up and the hours continued to tick by, but nobody came. Then, at midday, Old Man Grogan came up the road on a borrowed bicycle. They were very happy to see him. He parked his bicycle and walked up his driveway and stopped to look at the ruins of his house. Balor ran up to him, but Moriarty stayed back. Grogan and Balor spoke for a few moments and then Balor sank to his knees.

  Moriarty feared the worst. A few moments later, Grogan followed Balor to where Moriarty was hiding. Moriarty came out and stood in front of them.

  ‘The news is good,’ said Balor. ‘McManus has made some sort of deal and is going to divert the road around the hill to save money. He is going build a new house at the foot of the hill for Grogan, where the road was originally going to go.’

  Moriarty was surprised. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Gospel,’ said Grogan. ‘Now let’s get a shovel out of the shed and get that entrance to the hill cleared!’

  For Moriarty and Balor the best part of having to dig their way back into the hill was that it was a spectator sport, as neither of the little men was big enough to hold a shovel. They just sat a little higher up the hill while Grogan dug into the crater that had formed around the old entrance. Grogan spent most of the time talking while he was digging, about the new house that he was going to get on the sunny side of the hill. It was going to have thick double insulated walls, double glazing, central heating, a modern kitchen, and unsurprisingly it was going to be all electric, which meant no gas.

  ‘It’s going to be very secure too,’ he said. ‘Just like Fort Knox. In fact, I think I’ll call it Fort Knock, after the one that you guys knocked over!’

  The longer he was digging, the shorter he seemed to become until he disappeared altogether. Occasionally he would emerge from the hole to get a drink of water. The more times he emerged the less happy he seemed until at last he got somewhere.

  ‘I think I’m through,’ he yelled. ‘There’s some rock with a big hole in it. I’m going to try and put my hand through!’

  Moriarty and Balor stood up and walked to the rim of the crater. They could see that Grogan had dug another three feet into the deepest part and was now nearly seven feet below the rim of the crater. Moriarty climbed down first and tried to assist Balor, who resisted and made his own way down to Grog
an, a bit faster than Moriarty had expected. Grogan was on his knees with his arm thrust deep into the hole that was the original entrance. He pulled out a few rocks and put his arm back in again.

  ‘I think I’m through,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure this time?’ Moriarty said with a smirk.

  Grogan was about to say something when his face suddenly turned red and his eyes opened so wide they looked as if they were going to pop out. He leaped back and let out a tremendous scream, before tripping backwards. Chopper had bitten deeply into his hand and was still attached. As soon as Grogan was on his back, Chopper let go of his hand and leaped onto Grogan’s face and buried all of his claws into his head to secure his grip and started to chew on his head with his sabre teeth. Moriarty wasn’t sure what was going on or what to do so he looked to Balor who didn’t appear to care as he was more interested in the hole.

  ‘Deal with that if you don’t mind, old chap,’ Balor said before turning and casually strolling over to the hole. Moriarty climbed up onto Grogan’s chest and began to pull the angry rabbit off by grabbing the saddle. Balor took one more look at the commotion, sighed, and started to crawl down the hole back into the cavern.

  About half way down, the ground gave way below Balor, and he practically fell, face first, down a small incline into the dark cavern. He grunted and groaned a few times, stood up and waited for his eyes to adjust. The electricity had been cut off by the explosion at Grogan’s house so the hill was lit dimly with the only light coming from some burning torches and candles. In anticipation of a heroic reception he grinned widely and took a step forward before something pricked his nose and he froze. A few seconds later his eyes had adjusted to the dark and he could see all twelve of the King’s Guard with bows drawn, and all of the arrows pointing at his head.

  ‘We should do him now, while we have the chance,’ said one guard.

  ‘It’s been a long time coming,’ said another.

  ‘Yeah. Friendly fire,’ said another.

  ‘Whose hand was that?’ the Captain of the Guard asked.

  ‘It was Grogan, our sentinel and local old weirdo who lives at the base of the hill,’ Balor replied as he moved an arrow away from his nose with a finger. ‘What sort of reception is this?’

  ‘Balor!’ King Bruan yelled from behind the guards.

  The guards slowly lowered their bows and stepped back. Balor eyed them all disapprovingly as they separated and he could make his way forward into the hill. Much to his surprise the King stood only a few yards away, in full battle dress, including a helmet that was too small even a thousand years ago, with the entire population of the hill behind him, armed to the teeth and ready to fight with swords, spears, and bows drawn ready to fire. There was another painful yell from outside the hill. Balor glanced back at the entrance and then turned back to the King who had paced up to him.

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ the King asked.

  ‘Moriarty is trying to pull Chopper off Grogan’s face,’ Balor replied in a matter of fact tone before adjusting his habit and looking the King in the eye. “And what is going on in here?’ he said.

  ‘What’s Chopper doing on Grogan’s face? Where are the road builders? How did you survive the blast? Where is the spy?’ the King asked impatiently.

  ‘I can’t account for the rabbit,’ said Balor,’ but I survived the blast thanks to a combination of bravery and extremely precise timing as a result of my meticulous planning. The spy is dead, I fear. He blew himself up in Grogan’s house after an extremely violent battle that he had with me, and to a lesser extent the young Moriarty. This presented a tactical opportunity that I was very quick to take advantage of in the interest of achieving a strategic solution, and I was able to convince Grogan to convince the road builder to build the road around the hill. Ergo, our situation has very much returned to its previous hum drum status quo, thanks to me, and I would have expected a much better reception than for you to call out the entire hill to kill me, which I must say, I find incredibly ungrateful. Ungrateful I say, ungrateful.’

  The king just nodded a few times and rolled his eyes up to the roof of the cavern as if to express how much he regretted asking Balor a straight question.

  ‘But, what does that mean?’ the king asked, gingerly, almost whispering.

  ‘It means the hill is saved,’ Balor said with a sigh, at which the whole hill erupted in one great cheer. The king stepped forward and put an arm around Balor and led him back through the crowd who clapped very loudly as they made their way towards the square.

  ‘So, what was your plan?’ Balor asked the King.

  ‘Stand and fight,’ King Bruan replied.

  ‘Fight?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘better to fight and die today than live through being laboratory experiments tomorrow. I had a vote on it and I won the vote. I like this one king one vote thing.’

  ‘The result would have been very different if it was one man, one vote, I’m sure.’

  ‘Aye, maybe, but that is the very mechanism by which the Irish invaders in this country can participate in regularly voting for idiots. My system is better. You get to do what I want, without the regret of having voted for it in the first place if it doesn’t work.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t know why you are surprised, Balor. I’m a war King, like my fathers before me. A last stand was inevitable.’

  ‘No. I’m not really that surprised.’

  ‘Tell me, Balor.’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘You didn’t really have a plan did you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Balor said as he stopped and looked at the King. ‘Historically I’ve never usually had one, and if I did, statistically they never worked, and in philosophical terms, you could just say that I’ve been unusually lucky.’

  ‘And if you are lucky, so are we all. Your secret is safe with me,’ the King boomed as he gave Balor a great slap on the back before they continued back down into the square with the entire population in tow. Balor just smiled and allowed himself to be led into the square by the crowd, fully aware of the King’s reputation for being unable to keep a secret.

  Moriarty stayed outside with Grogan to tidy up the entrance to the hill. Grogan was rearranging the turf to hide the crater while Moriarty pulled large branches up from the hedgerow at the bottom of the hill to help disguise the entrance. Chopper watched for a while before becoming bored, and much to Grogan’s relief he decided to go back down into the hill just as Moriarty dragged the last big branch up to the entrance. Grogan took it from him and carefully placed it over the entrance before standing back to admire his work.

  ‘I think that will do it,’ Grogan said with a smile.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Moriarty. ‘Are you going to be alright? You don’t have a home anymore?’

  ‘That’s true but I have my health and that’s the main thing. I can always get another house.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about the house,’ Moriarty replied. Grogan nodded.

  ‘It’s a wonder that rabid rabbit wasn’t able to dig his way out, Grogan said.

  ‘He would have found a way out, eventually. The hills are like big rock domes inside with only one way in and out. If you don’t know exactly where the hole in the dome is, then you have to dig to find it. There must have been a lot of damage on the inside.’

  ‘I see. I’d love to see what it looked like inside.’

  ‘You wouldn’t fit.’

  ‘What’s it like if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I don’t mind. It’s a big dome with a village in the middle. We have about five hundred stone houses with straw roofing. There’s a big square in the middle. It’s not that interesting really.’

  ‘And there is only the one way in and out?’

  ‘Yup. You’re looking at it. Apart from the underground river that is. But you cannot get out that way. Too far to travel under water.’

  ‘I wondered about that,’ Grogan said as he rubbed his c
hin, ‘and are all the hills the same?’

  Moriarty looked up at Grogan and then looked around the countryside. He felt a bit reluctant to reply but then he caught sight of the ruins of Grogan’s old house and felt he should say something.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Moriarty said. ‘White Rock, Beal Easa, Carrick Hill, Black Hill, Long Fort Hill, The Mound, and Carraroe are the same. Ox Mountain is different, only because it is bigger. Nobody really knows what’s in Ox Mountain.’

  ‘Ox Mountain? Do you mean the Ox Mountains?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Moriarty replied as he pointed to the mountains in the distance. ‘One of those peaks is the home of some of us. It’s probably where the spy came from. It’s certainly the closest of all the hills. Nobody knows what that hill is like inside.’

  ‘I see,’ said Grogan as he looked to the horizon. He turned back to look at Moriarty and was surprised to see the little man extending his hand. He wiped some of the dirt off of his and the two men shook hands.

  ‘Thanks,’ Moriarty said, ‘and sorry again about your house.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re very welcome.’ Grogan replied.

  Then Moriarty turned around and descended into the hill.

  Chopper was standing guard at the entrance to the cavern when Moriarty slid down. He was a bit surprised to see that the main courtyard, where the King often played golf, was completely deserted. He could see the celebrations happening in the main square about fifty yards away and began to stroll towards it. After about ten yards he stopped and looked back at Chopper who remained on guard at the entrance. He looked up and to either side to see how much of the hill had been damaged by the explosion and was surprised as his eyes adjusted to see the extent of the blast. It had clearly been a lucky escape.