Evening Class (27 page)

So he went into the disco, and within fifteen minutes he met the first girl that he ever thought he could love and live with for the rest of his life. Her name was Suzi and she was a tall, stunning redhead. It was her first time at the disco, she told him. But she was beginning to vegetate at home in her flat, and she decided she would go out and see what the night brought.

And the night had brought Lou. They danced and they talked, and she said she loved that he drank mineral water, so many fellows just stank of beer. And he said he did drink beer sometimes but not in great quantities.

She worked in a cafe in Temple Bar, she told him. They liked the same kind of films and they liked the same music and they loved curries and they didn’t mind swimming in the cold sea in the summer and they each hoped to go to America one day. You can learn a lot about other people in four and a half hours if you are sober. And everything that Lou learned about Suzi he liked. Under normal circumstances he would have driven her home.

But these were not normal circumstances. And the only reason that he had a car at all was that the circumstances were so very far from normal.

‘I’d offer you a lift home but I have to meet this guy here a bit later.’ Could he say that, or would it be suspicious later when he was questioned? Because questioned he would be. Could he walk her home and then come back? That might have been possible, but Robin wanted him to establish his presence as being on the scene all night.

‘I’d really like to see you again, Suzi,’ he said.

‘Well, I’d like that, too.’

‘So will we say tomorrow night? Here, or somewhere quieter?’

‘So is tonight over now?’ Suzi asked.

‘For me it is, but listen, tomorrow night can go on as long as we like it to.’

‘Are you married?’ Suzi asked.

‘No, of course I’m not. Hey, I’m only twenty. Why would I be married?’

‘Some people are.’

‘I’m not. Will I see you tomorrow?’

‘Where are you going now?’

‘To the men’s room.’

‘Do you do drugs, Lou?’

‘Jesus, I don’t. What is this, an interrogation?’

‘It’s just that you’ve been going to the loo all night.’ It was true he had, just to get himself noticed, seen, remembered.

‘No, I don’t. Listen, sweetheart, you and I’ll have a great night out tomorrow, go wherever you want, I mean it.’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘No, not Yeah… Yes. I mean it.’

‘Goodnight, Lou,’ she said, hurt and annoyed. And picked up her jacket and walked out into the night.

He longed to run after her. Was there ever such bad timing? How miserably unfair it all was.

The minutes crept by until it was time for action, then he went to his car, the last to leave the club. He waited until the minivan filled and the lights went on. At that very moment he shot backwards in its path. Then he revved the engine over and over, flooding it, ensuring that it wouldn’t start.

The operation worked like clockwork. Lou looked at none of it, all the time he played the part of a man desperate to start his car, and when he realised that dark figures had climbed a wall and got away he watched astounded as the scarlet-faced manager came running out crying help and wanting the Guards and panicking utterly.

Lou sat helpless in the car. ‘I can’t get it out of here, I’m trying.’

‘He’s one of them’ shouted somebody, and strong hands held him, bouncers, barmen, until they realised who it was.

‘Hey, that’s Lou Lynch,’ they said releasing him.

‘What
is
all this, first my car won’t start and then you all jump on me. What’s happening?’

‘The takings have been snatched, that’s what’s happened.’ The manager knew his career was over. He knew there would be hours ahead with the Guards. And there were, for everybody.

One of the Guards recognised Lou’s address. ‘I was up there not long back, a crowd of kids broke in and stole all before them.’

‘I know, Guard, and my parents were very grateful you retrieved it all.’

The Guard was pleased to be so publicly praised for what had been, after all, a tip-off out of the blue. Lou was regarded as the most unlucky accident to have happened for a long time. The staff told detectives that he was a very nice fellow, couldn’t be involved in anything like that. He got a good report from the big electrical store, his car payments were up to date, he hadn’t an ounce of alcohol in his body. Lou Lynch was in the clear.

But he didn’t spend all the next day thinking about Robin and wondering when the next envelope would come and how much it would contain. He thought instead about the beautiful Suzi Sullivan. He would have to lie to her and tell her the official account of what had happened. He hoped she wasn’t too annoyed with him.

He went to her restaurant in his lunch break with a red rose. ‘Thank you for last night.’

‘There wasn’t much
of
last night,’ Suzi complained. ‘You were such a little Cinderella we all had to come home early.’

‘It won’t happen tonight,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to, of course.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Suzi darkly.

They met almost every night after that.

Lou wanted them to go back to the disco where they had met. He said that it was out of sentimental reasons. In reality it was because he didn’t want the staff to think that he never came back again after the Incident.

He heard all about the Incident. Apparently four men with guns had got into the van and told them to lie down. They had taken everyone’s carrier bag and left in minutes. Guns. Lou felt a bit sick in his stomach when he heard that. He had thought that Robin and his friends were still in sticks. But of course that was all five years ago, and the world had moved on. The manager lost his job, the system of banking the takings was changed, a huge van with barking dogs picked them up each night. You’d need an army to take that on.

It was three weeks later when he was leaving work that he saw Robin in the car park. There was again an envelope. Again Lou pocketed it without looking.

‘Thank you very much,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you going to see what’s in it?’ Robin seemed disappointed.

‘No need to. You’ve treated me well in the past.’

‘There’s a thousand quid,’ Robin said proudly.

That was something to get excited about. Lou opened the envelope and saw the notes. ‘That’s absolutely terrific,’ he said.

‘You’re a good man, Lou, I like you,’ said Robin, and drove away.

A thousand pounds in his pocket and the most beautiful redhead in the world waiting for him. Lou Lynch knew he was the luckiest man in the world.

His romance with Suzi developed nicely. He was able to buy her nice things and take her to good places with his stash of money. But it seemed to alarm her when he pulled out twenty-pound notes.

‘Hey, Lou, where do you get money like that to throw around?’

‘I work, don’t I?’

‘Yeah, and I know what they pay you in that place. That’s the third twenty you’ve split this week.’

‘Are you watching me?’

‘I like you, of course I watch you,’ she said.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’m hoping not to find that you’re some sort of a criminal,’ she said quite directly.

‘Do I look the type?’

‘That’s not a yes or a no.’

‘And there are some questions to which there are no yes and no answers,’ Lou said.

‘Okay, let me ask you this, are you involved in anything at the moment?’

‘No.’ He spoke from the heart.

‘And do you plan to be?’ There was a pause. ‘We don’t need it, Lou, you’ve got a job, I’ve got a job. Let’s not get caught up in something messy.’ She had beautiful creamy skin and huge dark green eyes.

‘All right, I won’t get involved in anything again,’ he said.

And Suzi had the sense to let it rest there. She asked no questions about the past. The weeks went on and they saw more and more of each other, Suzi and Lou. She brought him to meet her parents one Sunday lunchtime.

He was surprised by where they lived.

‘I thought you were posher than this place,’ he said as they got off the bus.

‘I made myself seem posher to get the job in the restaurant.’

Her father was not nearly as bad as she had said he was, he supported the right football team and he had cans of beer in the fridge.

Her mother worked in that supermarket that Robin and his friends had done over a while back. She told them the story, and how Miss Clarke the supervisor had always thought there must be someone in the shop who had left the door open for them but nobody knew who it was.

Lou listened, shaking his head at it all. Robin must have people all over the city loosening bolts, parking cars in strategic places. He looked at Suzi, smiling and eager. For the first time he hoped that Robin wouldn’t contact him again.

‘They liked you,’ Suzi said, surprised, afterwards.

‘Well, why not? I’m a nice fellow,’ Lou said.

‘My brother said you had a terrible frown but I told him it was a nervous tic and he was to shut up about it.’

‘It’s
not
a nervous tic, it’s a deliberate attempt to look important,’ Lou said crossly.

‘Well, whatever it is, it was all they could find fault with so that’s something. When am I going to meet yours?’

‘Next week,’ he said.

His mother and father were alarmed that he was bringing a girl to lunch. ‘I suppose she’s pregnant,’ his father said.

‘She most certainly is not, and there’ll be none of that talk when she comes to the house.’

‘What kind of things would she eat?’ His mother was doubtful.

He tried to remember what he had to eat at the Sullivans’ house. ‘Chicken,’ he said. ‘She just loves a bit of chicken.’ Even his mother could hardly destroy a chicken.

‘They liked you,’ he said to her afterwards, putting on exactly the same note of surprise as she had.

‘That’s good.’ She pretended indifference but he knew she was pleased.

‘You’re the first, you see,’ he explained.

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘No, I mean the first I brought home.’

She patted him on the hand. He had been very, very lucky to have met a girl like Suzi Sullivan.

At the beginning of September he met Robin by accident. But of course it wasn’t by accident. Robin was parked near his parents’ shop and just got out of the car.

‘A half pint to end the day?’ Robin said, jerking his head towards the nearby pub.

‘Great,’ Lou said with fake enthusiasm. He sometimes feared Robin could read minds, he hoped he couldn’t see the insincerity in Lou’s tone.

‘How are things?’

‘Great, I’ve got a smashing girl.’

‘So I see, she’s a real looker, isn’t she?’

‘Absolutely. We’re quite serious about it all.’

Robin punched him on the arm. It was meant to be a punch of solidarity but somehow it hurt. Lou managed not to rub where it felt bruised. ‘So you’ll be needing a deposit on a house soon?’ Robin asked casually.

‘We’re not in any hurry with that, she’s got a grand bedsit.’

‘But
eventually
, of course?’ Robin wasn’t taking any argument.

‘Oh yes, way down the line.’ There was a silence. Did Robin know that Lou was trying to get off the hook?

Robin spoke. ‘Lou, you know I always said I liked you.’

‘Yes, and I always liked you too. It was mutual. And is mutual,’ Lou added hastily.

‘Considering how we met, as it were.’

‘You know the way it is, you forget how you met people.’

‘Good, good.’ Robin nodded. ‘What I’m looking for, Lou, is a place.’

‘A place. To live in?’

‘No, no. I’ve got a place to live in, a place that our friends the Guards turn over with great regularity. They sort of regard it as part of their weekly routine, go in and search my place.’

‘It’s harassment.’

‘I know it is, they know it is. They never find anything, so they know well it’s harassment.’

‘So if they don’t find anything… ?’ Lou had no idea where all this was going.

‘It means that things have to be somewhere else and that’s getting increasingly difficult,’ Robin said. In the past Lou had always waited. Robin would say what he wanted in time. ‘The kind of place I want is somewhere that there’s a lot of activity two or three times a week, a place where people wouldn’t be noticed going in and out.’

‘Like the warehouse where I work?’ Lou asked nervously.

‘No, there’s proper security there.’

‘What would this place have to have, in terms of facilities?’

‘Not very much space at all, like enough for… Imagine five or six cases of wine—packages about that size, in all.’

‘That shouldn’t be hard, Robin.’

‘I’m watched like a hawk. I’m spending weeks going round talking to everyone I know that they don’t have a file on, just to confuse them. But there’s something coming in soon, and I really do need a place.’

Lou looked anxiously out the door of the pub in the direction of his parents’ shop.

‘I don’t think it would be possible in my Ma and Da’s place.’

‘No, no that’s not what I want at all, it’s a place with bustle, doors in and out, lots of people moving through.’

‘I’ll think,’ Lou said.

‘Good, Lou. Think this week will you, and then I’ll give you the instructions. It’s very easy, no driving cars or anything.’

‘Well actually, Robin, this is something I meant to bring up, but I’m thinking of… um… well not being involved any more.’

Robin’s frown was terrible to see. ‘Once you’re involved you’re
always
involved,’ he said. Lou said nothing. ‘That’s the way it is,’ Robin added.

‘I see,’ said Lou, and he frowned hard in response to show how seriously took it.

That night Suzi said she wasn’t free, she had promised to help the mad old Italian woman who lived as a lodger in their house to do up an annexe up in Mountainview school for some evening class. ‘
Why
do you have to do that?’ Lou grumbled. He had wanted to go to the pictures and then for some chips and then back to bed with Suzi in her little bedsitter. He did not want to be on his own thinking about the fact that once you were involved you could never get uninvolved again.