Cold Eye of Heaven, The (14 page)

‘I said I'd ask you anyway.'

‘Yea, well you can tell him to go fuck himself.'

‘Grand. Anyway, no, we didn't run a check on the cars. The solicitors said to keep the expense down. They don't hold much hope, but the wife, it seems, wants to take it to the bitter end.'

‘Are there kids?'

‘Think so. Three or four.'

‘Right. I'll give it another go. Why do women put themselves through this, Noreen? Why don't they just forget about these bastards? No, actually I'll put it another way – why do they get married at all?'

‘Because we – well, we're fuckin eejits, I suppose.'

He glances up, the traffic is moving again. ‘Better go.'

‘Hold on,' she says. ‘Did Frank get you?'

‘No.'

‘He's been trying to phone you. From Italy.'

‘He stayed on then?'

‘Looks like it. He managed to get tickets anyway.'

A horn beeps behind him. ‘I'll phone later,' he says, flinging the schedule onto the seat beside him.

Farley pulls into the left lane where the traffic is starting to move. He decides after all it might make more sense to double back and chance St Michael's Estate. As he turns his ear picks out a ripple of something small and soft; a flicker of sound. He turns up the volume and yes it is him, that big Italian bloke. The sound grows into the car and he feels the surge of music, the words that he can't understand, the story behind them, the richness in one man's voice. It oozes under his skin, into his blood, his heart, his balls. The car at last getting a good run at the road, flies up and over Sarah's Bridge as if the wheels haven't touched off the ground.

He didn't come back. He didn't come back.

He just might phone her. He promised he wouldn't, but he just might anyway. Only a few seconds – long enough to say, ‘Look, I'll see you in Ma's house, after the match.' Then again, maybe he'll wait a while – see if she phones him first. What he'll do is this – if he gets lucky with this summons, he'll take it as a good sign and then he'll phone her. No, better still, if she doesn't phone him by midday he'll phone her then. But. It might be better to wait until he's finished work and available. Yes. That way, when he's no more than a quarter of an hour away from her, he can sort of spring it on her. The less time he gives her to think, the less time she'll have to change her mind.

*

He parks the car out on the main road, a short walk from the flats. Then he memorizes the details on the summons; the block and number of the flat in question; the name of the punter – Leonard Montgomery, which just goes to show you never can tell with names. A witness subpoena in an insurance case – at least it's not a criminal matter, so slightly less chance of getting battered. Farley rolls the summons into a scroll, sticks it down into his pocket and covers it with his elbow.

God he hates this desolate place; the block-built look of it, the speckled high-rise walls, the jumbled graffiti all over the landings and stairwells, the piss stink. Beirut, Slowey always calls it. ‘Bay-fuckin-root minus the sunshine.' The last place anyone wants to serve a summons.

There's the skull of a burnt-out Volkswagen car on a scabby playing green behind the flats, and in the playground, the limb of a broken swing hangs from one hinge. He crosses the grey slabs of the courtyard, a crunch of broken glass under his feet. The yard deserted, apart from flutters of litter, a burst ball and a few buckled cans of last night's lager. At the west end a bright new Irish flag is hoisted to a pole. More Irish strips are draped over balconies; green, white and orange, all spanking clean against the general background of dingy grey and scribbled slogans –
Drugs Out
.
Up the Provos
.
Dolores sucks cocks
.
Fuck the Begrudgers
. The last two appear to be written by the same hand; he wonders if they could be connected.

At the end of the block he notices a pair of runners dangling on long laces from telephone wires: the merchant sign of a resident drug-dealer. He checks its proximity to the Montgomery residence. Good. At least whoever else he might be about to wake up – it won't be the drug-dealer.

It's more like a door to a meat safe in a butcher's shop than the door to somebody's gaff: reinforced steel, bolts all around it, one of those handles. No knocker, no bell. On the far side, a low sturdy growl. He gives the door a thump with the side of his fist and the growl combusts into a rage of barking; two maybe three dogs in there. He backs away and while he waits, leans on the balcony and looks out. Over the rooftops of Inchicore, past the coned spire of John's church, all the way across to the
Phoenix Park; a bush-covered skyscape and a slender glint from the pope's cross. All the same, what a view.

‘Hey mister?'

He starts, then brings his eye back over the landscape down into the dirty-grey courtyard. A small girl, maybe four years old, standing outside a boarded-up flat. The youngone gawking up at him, mouth open, hair standing on end. She's dressed in a grubby night dress, wellington boots that come up to her knees, a scarf around her neck with the word Ireland written on it.

‘Hey mister?' she says again.

Farley leans over the balcony. ‘Yea?'

The child blinks a few times. ‘Nuttin,' she says, but keeps looking up anyway.

Behind him, the rattle of chains. He turns and sees through the crack in the door, a nose, an eyebrow, the inky slur of a home-made tattoo on a large forearm. The dogs fling themselves off the door, begging to get out and get stuck into him. Farley shouts over the din, ‘I'm looking for a Leonard Montgomery?'

‘For wha?' a voice asks, rattling with phlegm.

‘Well, it's personal,' he says, and the door moves to close.

‘Alright, alright,' Farley shouts, ‘it's only a witness summons in a road traffic case. No trouble, I promise. Just a summons and a cheque to cover expenses.'

A bit more face shows, hair blonde with long roots of black. It's only now Farley realizes that he's been talking to a woman. Sort of. Down at her knee a Staffordshire terrier is twisting his head to get out, his jaw like a vice grip dripping with ancient hunger. Behind him his twin is fighting for space, flat savage face ramming through now and then. The woman turns to the dogs. ‘Shurrrrup youse,' she says through her teeth. ‘Shuuruupp to fuck…' and the barking abruptly cuts off. He'd love to ask if her name is Dolores.

‘How much is the cheque for?' she drawls.

‘Eh, let me see now. I haven't got me glasses on – where is it now,
O yea,' he lifts the cheque to his face and squints into it, ‘looks like two hundred and fifty quid here.'

The hand comes out. ‘Righ' I'll make sure and he gets it.'

‘Sorry, love, but. I have to give it to him personally.'

A sigh, a tut, a mumble. ‘Hold on and I see if he's here.'

She closes the door and the two terriers completely lose it, until a yelp, probably the result of a kick, slides into silence. Now a man in his vest; a sour, sleep-battered face, just out of the scratcher.

‘Yea?'

‘Are you Leonard Montgomery?'

‘Yea?'

‘I have a summons here for you, cheque attached, details are on it.'

A hairy hand comes out, Farley puts the summons into it and quickly walks away.

He's halfway across the yard when he hears Montgomery's voice come over the balcony. ‘Here you!'

Farley looks up, sees the cheque waving over the balcony.

‘I thought you said this was for two hundred and fifty quid? It only says twenty-five here.'

Farley lifts his hand. ‘O sorry, my mistake. Wasn't wearing me glasses.'

‘Ah, you think you're fuckin smart – do you? You stupid bollix. You think you're so fuckin smart. I could be working that day, for all you know.'

‘Get a letter from your boss so.'

‘Ah yea, very fuckin funny. Bollix.'

He increases his pace, the little girl wide-eyed as he passes. ‘Hey mister, he's after callin you a bollix.'

‘Yea, I know,' he says, ‘and I wouldn't blame him either.'

Farley drives through the tail end of the South Circular road. Blips of sunlight on a shaded street. He's forgotten how much he enjoys being out on the road, the sense of moving through a day, rather than having it
come at you; locating the punters, planning the strategy, the little rush of success after. In the early years they worked as a team; Frank and himself, like Starsky and Hutch in their Ford Cortina. Every day was an escapade. The half-drunk blonde still in her nightdress at two in the afternoon who'd tried to get off with Slowey. The elegant wife of a businessman who'd ended up running after the car, bashing the bonnet with the lid of her dustbin. Or the time they walked in on a wake and had to pay their respects to the corpse before turning around to serve on his brother. There have been ones to regret, of course, summonses he'd rather not have served: some unfortunate bastard who got in over his head in a business venture; a doting mother going guarantor for her waster of a son; a domestic. But as Slowey says, what has to be done has to be done, if not by us then by some other fucker.

Under the sycamores a flock of girl guides wait for a bus, fidgety little tricolour flags in their hands. Like the car before him he gives them a beep and they raise their flags in response. On the far side of the road outside the garda club, two cops are having an animated conversation that could only be about football. A summer's day full of hope and glory.

He runs the jobs through his head again. One down, four to go.

The boutique turns out to be some sort of a bridal shop and the owner gives him no trouble. She turns puce of course the minute she sees him, putting two and two together – a man in her frilly shop and her up to her gills in unpaid loans. But she accepts the summons with a sweet shy smile and a slight genuflection, like he was a page delivering a love letter from her knight in shining armour.

The doctor is a much better actor. A quick glance around the waiting room to see who's watching and he takes the summons with a little ‘Ah!' as if it contains some vital information that could save a patient's life, instead of news of a malpractice suit for making a hames of some poor bastard's gut. ‘Thank you for that,' he says with just enough disdain for Farley alone to read.

‘O, the pleasure is all mine, doc,' he returns in equal measure.

Farley comes back out through the carpet-padded hall, chandeliers winking overhead, and on the table a bowl of big-headed flowers. He crosses the granite threshold, closes the brass-badged door behind him and wonders if the grin he feels inside is showing on his face. He doesn't like doctors and the further up the scale they are, the more he doesn't like them. A fucker like that now, he hates.

He sits in his parked car under the leafy fringe of Fitzwilliam Square North, keeping one eye on the basement office of the fax rental man. Back in an hour, the jittery daughter/girlfriend/wife had said; pretending to be the secretary anyway, whoever she was. With the other eye he watches the drift of the day. So long as there's people to watch, lives to be guessed at, he never minds. That specky fella coming down the steps – a chartered accountant. That pretty little one in her late twenties – a typist who'll marry the first plonker who asks, just to give herself something to do. Those two youngfellas yapping at each other over a computer they're loading into a van, the one on the left is a benny, the other one senses something but isn't sure what. They'll come and they'll go and he'll watch and he'll wait. Workers and residents. Some trapped for the day in houses boxed into offices, others trapped for a lifetime in houses cut up into one-roomed flats. Like that old woman, a carefully dressed silver-blonde with her arm in a sling. Whippet thin. She takes each step as if she expects it to be landmined. She'll live in a room at the top or a room in the basement – nothing in between. Spinster. Not a bad-looking bird in her day. Just never met a man good enough. A dipso, he'd say – of the shabby genteel variety.

It's getting too warm in the car; the heat like a shell forming around him. He opens the door, puts his feet out on the ground. A man and a woman dressed in white shorts, tennis rackets tucked under oxters. Householders.
One bell on the front door and a gar-
adge
round the back. You wouldn't see that many of them nowadays. The man turns the key in the lock on the gate and they disappear into the garden of the private, residents-only-you-can-fuckoff-the-rest-of-you Fitzwilliam Square. By nightfall all that will have changed; it'll be flashes of white thigh from an open coat, cheap boots over the knee. Trickles of fag smoke under the street light. The glint of a slowing car. The thud of a deal-done door.

He stands for a minute, stretches, then gets back into the car. Dropping his arm through his legs he finds the handle under the seat, and jerks it back. His legs greet the sudden space, his arms go up, he pinches the leather and sponge of the ceiling;
stretch
and yawn, then watches a woman in a Toyota Starlet enter the parking spot next to his. One smooth, clean movement, bonnet first… aaand she's in. Across the way, a man is reversing his brown Opel into a space. His face contorted with the exertion of it all; puff, pant, hands this way and that, while out on the road two other cars are waiting for him to finish so they can get by. Nine times out of ten it happens this way; men reverse in, not giving a damn about how tricky it is or how much longer it's going to take, or who they hold up in the process – so long as they have a quick escape. Women on the other hand take the easy, fast way in and then worry about how they're going to get out later. Nine times out of ten. He wonders should he call her now, then he looks at his watch. The hour almost up, better wait so. He picks up the briefcase, begins rummaging through the pile for the fax man's summons, then notices something odd stuck in between all the documents. His mother's copybook. In his hurry to get away he must have bundled it in with the rest of the papers. She'll go on and on about it for the day and Jackie will do his nut. As soon as he finishes serving this he'll phone; maybe drop it in on his way to Rathfarnham. He opens the copybook. Her little drawings inside. He feels a slight ache in his chest. He remembers as a child, how proud he was of the fact that he had a mother who could draw. In those days women couldn't really do anything, unless it involved kids and the house. But his ma? His ma could lift things out of their location and put them on a page – the trees in the park, the horses from the
barracks, the giraffe looking over the rails of the zoo. A child's face. She could put light and shade and life into them all with no more than a pencil. When she'd finish she'd ball up the picture and throw it in the fire, like it just didn't matter. He used to hate the way she'd do that; the slight violence in the gesture.