The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (19 page)

4:10 p.m.

T
here were only a few places I could go to hide out. Cullen, who'd have saturated Dublin with his soldiers, had his mind on nothing but my blood and wouldn't stop until he'd spilled every bit of it. I could never go back to Mourne Road again. There'd be somebody there around the clock now. All my mementoes and photographs of Eva I could kiss goodbye, along with my passport and computer, and everything else I owned. I'd already dumped my phone in town—if they had my laptop, they could track me with it—but not before I'd sent its contents to my e-mail and taken down a few numbers. The only thing I could hope to hold on to was my life, and even that was a long shot.

I'd been keeping to alleyways and side streets the whole way across town, expecting a car to roll up beside me at any moment and reef me into the back of it, but I made it to the vacant market space at the back of the Liberties and slipped into the safety of George Perrin's yard. George was a mechanic and crash-repair specialist who'd been a close friend of my father's and the equivalent of an uncle to me since I was a teenager. I don't think I'd ever seen him out of his green overalls, and I knew he felt more at home in his yard in Newmarket than he did anywhere else in the world. He had an Icelandic look about him with a beard like William Shakespeare's and kind, streetwise eyes. I'd pop into George's regularly for a chat, but today I needed something beyond the pleasure of his company and safe house.

As was often the case, I found him lying under a car—a 7 Series Beamer—working on an engine.

“George,” I said.

“Good morning,” said George, as he always did no matter the time of day. “Who's that? Paddy?”

“How's it going?” I said, as he wheeled himself out from beneath the car on a wooden board.

“Haven't seen you in a while,” said George, wiping the grease from his hands with a piece of mutton cloth.

“Listen,” I said. “I need a favor.”

“What do you need?”

“A car for a few days—mine is out of action.”

“Matter what kind?”

“No. As long as it goes.”

“There's a '93 Fiesta down there beside the MG. Keys are in it. Take it away,” he said.

“And do you mind if I use your phone for a minute?”

He pulled it out of his pocket. “As long as you're not calling Honolulu.”

“Thanks, George,” I said.

Now that I could unwind a little, my mind turned to Brigid. I punched her number in to George's phone and sat in the Fiesta.

“Hello?” said Brigid.

“It's Paddy.”

“Hi. Are you finished with your funerals?” I could tell by her voice she was smiling.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm finished.”

“Do you want to come over?”

“I'd love to . . . but I can't.”

“Where are you?”

“In town.”

“Shall I come in to you?”

“No, that's probably not a good idea,” I said, finding us in a cul-de-sac already.

“. . . Why, what's going on?” she said, the smile in her voice vanished. There was nothing I could say to her. I couldn't involve her in a bit of it, not even by telling her I was on the run or mixed up with people who wanted to kill me. As much as I'd wanted to, I'd never gone past four veils with her. I was hiding so much. Not just the incident with her mother, but what had happened on James's Street, too, and everything surrounding it. I was torn between wanting to tell her everything and being able to tell her nothing, and I wondered would we ever be able to move past that. Maybe I could tell her about the Cullens in time, but not now and not on the phone.

“Brigid, there's so much I want to tell you, about how I feel about you, as well as everything else, but I can't tell you now. I'm in a bit of a tight corner . . .”

There was silence from the other end that sent my focus searching over the cracks in the windscreen.

“Are you in trouble?” she said, beginning to sound nervous and concerned. I'd wanted to avoid upsetting her from the outset, but it seemed to be where I was bringing her nonetheless.

“No,” I said. “I'm not in trouble at all. I'm just in the middle of negotiating my way out of the funeral business, and it's proving a little trickier than I'd first imagined.”

“You're leaving your job?”

“I've already left it. I'm just tying up some loose ends, then I'm out of here.”

“I'd no idea you were even thinking about it,” she said, with genuine surprise.

“Yeah, it's been brewing for a while, even though it came up faster than I'd expected in the end.”

“And what will you do?” I could hear the excitement creeping back into her voice, which only ignited my own. And then, as I became enveloped in the warm glow that happened whenever we were around each other, I let myself forget about the Cullens and the trouble I was in, and indulged us both in our fantasy, even if it was to remain unreachable.

“I was thinking of cracking the art world,” I said.

“Really?” said Brigid, getting a little laugh out. “Where? Here?”

“No, I've had enough of this town. Across the water maybe . . .”

“London?”

“Yeah, see what they make of me.”

“Well,” she said, still laughing. “When am I going to see you so you can tell me more about it?”

“In London,” I said.

“In London?” she said, her laughter stopping.

“Yeah, I'm catching a plane tonight.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly serious. There's a little more to all this than I can tell you now on the phone, but I am leaving the country tonight . . . and I wanted you to know, Brigid, that meeting you has changed everything for me.”

“Same,” she said simply, making my heart swell.

“When are you heading back yourself?”

“At the weekend.”

“Can I phone you?”

“Make sure you do,” she said, rescued from any trace of worry.

“Okay, I'll get back into it here and I'll see you in London.”

“Okay, see you in London,” she said, her voice smiling.

“And I'll bring the wine this time.”

“Right.”

“Bye,” I said, and ended the call. The phone went black, but the glow stayed with me, offering little glimpses of salvation that nearly made a future seem possible. But I wasn't that much of a fool. I knew that death was very close. I'd spent my life around it. The likelihood of escaping Cullen's clutches was slim, I knew that, and deep in my heart I feared that the price on my head would be paid in full and that very soon Paddy Buckley would be nothing more than an engraved name on a breastplate and a blemished memory.

5:20 p.m.

T
rembling like a snared rabbit, Jack lay trapped in the back of Sean's car in total darkness, his mind boggling at what Vincent and his men might want from Paddy. Jack had read every newspaper article he'd ever come across on the Cullens and had long marveled at their brazen and longstanding hold over Dublin's underbelly. But Paddy didn't fit into their world. The funeral had gone off without a hitch. What could they possibly want him for? If he remained in Scully's boot for a week, he'd never guess that it was Paddy who killed Donal. In fact, the only reason that Jack could conceive of was that Vincent had somehow noticed the Polikoff Special on Donal's suit and was more than a little angry about it.

After what felt like an eternity, he heard a door open somewhere near the car and heavy footsteps get nearer and nearer until they stopped right next to the back bumper. The boot was pressed open, filling the space around Jack with early evening light and the shadow of Matser's big frame. That's when his trembling gave way to shaking. Matser reached in and pulled him onto his feet before frog-marching him across an enclosed courtyard through the back door of a nightclub, not stopping until he'd brought him into a little windowless room where he released his grip.

Jack placed his hand on a small table and turned around to see Matser's fist coming down hard to belt him across the face. He cowered and raised his arms to defend himself but received a continuous pounding of slaps and kicks for his trouble, the only sound, apart from the slaps themselves, being the irregularity of both men's breathing. Matser punctuated the end of it with a final punch to the nose, leaving Jack in a heap on the floor with blood streaming over his mouth and chin.

“Now fucking stay there,” said Matser.

Matser straightened his jacket and left the room, leaving the door ajar.

After a few minutes lying as still as he could to try to ease the pain, Jack slowly moved himself into a sitting position by the wall and held his pounding head in his hands. He ached all over; he felt as if he'd been run over by a bus. Which in some ways he had. All he could think about was his wife and son, and whether he'd be killed. And from what he knew about Cullen from the papers, he figured he'd be dead by suppertime.

Be brave,
he told himself.
Be brave, be brave, be brave, and stop crying.
He did his very best to stay as silent as he could, knowing full well that whoever was outside the door could hear his blubbering. With considerable effort Jack managed to reduce his weeping to a kind of barely controlled silent whimpering.

And then Vincent walked in, which only brought Jack right back to square one. As he was helped to his feet, he started hyperventilating. Vincent pulled out a chair and sat Jack down, resting his hand reassuringly on his shoulder.

“Shhhh. Stop crying now,” he said softly, before leaving the room again only to return moments later with a bowl of steaming hot water and a cloth. He pulled another chair right up next to Jack's and sat down on it. Jack kept his eyes on the table beside them and tried to control his shaking. His face was caked in a mixture of dried and oozing blood, and his nose, which was now broken, had swollen to twice its normal size. He looked like a boxer who'd spent too long in the ring with a fighter who wanted to kill him.

“Shush now,” said Vincent, as he gripped Jack's face and tilted his head back, sending his gaze from the table to the ceiling. Fear gripped him again as he grappled with the fact that Vincent Cullen was wiping his face clean, and while trying to level his fitful breathing, Jack expelled a rather large clot of blood through his nose that sprayed all over the table and the sleeve of Vincent's suit. Horrified, Jack looked into Vincent's eyes for the first time.

“I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry.”

Vincent stood up and very calmly slipped his jacket off, which he hung behind his chair before sitting back down and dipping the cloth in the water.

“Stop crying,” he said, while concentrating on bathing Jack's face. “Now.”

Jack nodded his head, and by the combined wills of both men, he'd succeeded in putting an end to his tears within a few minutes.

Vincent moved in close to Jack's ear and whispered, “Tell me about Buckley.”

“I don't know where he is,” said Jack wearily. “I haven't a clue . . . I don't even know what this is about, I swear, I don't know . . .”

Now that Jack's face was largely clean of blood, Vincent's focus was on Jack's hair, which he went about gently stroking and shaping.

“How long have you known Buckley?” he said.

“Nearly two years,” said Jack, doing his best to remain relaxed.

“Two years, right. Do you trust him?”

“Yeah,” said Jack hesitantly. “I do.”

“Listen to me, Jack. Paddy Buckley killed my brother and then came into my house and sat with me, drank coffee with me, he stayed in the funeral parlor with me during my last moments with my brother as if he was a friend, when what he was doing was turning a knife in my back. Trustworthy? Well, he hasn't put you in the picture, has he? Buckley doesn't give a bollocks about you. And in case you're in any way confused as to where you stand with me, I don't give a bollocks about you, either. Clear?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, with as straightened a nerve as he could manage.

“Now, what I want is for you to start talking to me like there's no tomorrow.”

Jack's chin was a mass of little quivers as he looked soulfully into Vincent's eyes.

“I will tell you everything I know, but I don't know anything about Paddy knocking down your brother, I swear, nobody tells me anything . . .”

“Come on, Jack, Buckley involves you in all his activities. You think I don't know about you? I know all about you, Jack—how your wife is unhappy working in that school in Finglas, how you struggle to get the money together for your kid's medication. You work with Buckley to look after your family, Jack, I know. Now, your single motivation is to keep thinking about your family. Do you want to see them again, Jack?”

Vincent gently wiped away Jack's tears and moved his fingers affectionately over the curve of his jaw.

“Of course I do,” said Jack.

“Right, then start talking to me,” said Vincent in a whisper, brushing his lips against Jack's cheek.

“I don't know what to tell you,” said Jack, trying his best to pray and answer Vincent's questions at the same time.

“Just tell me the truth, Jack, okay? Now, how much do you make off this betting syndicate?”

“Em . . . my end usually comes to around three hundred a race, sometimes five.”

“And how much do you put in?”

“We work off a core amount they've been using for years.”

“So you never put any money in.”

“No.”

“And where is this core amount kept?”

“In the funeral home, in Paddy's locker.”

“And that's never touched.”

“No, that's the money we work off,” Jack repeated.

Jack had stopped crying, and Vincent was sitting back in his chair with his hands on his lap.

“Right,” he said. “Right. You see, you do know something, Jack. You needn't have been crying at all.”

Jack swallowed hard as he looked back at the floor, utterly unnerved by Vincent's behavior. Vincent sitting so close to him had started it, but being touched by him and whispered to as if he were a woman had crystallized the experience for Jack. It was the strangest and most terrifying encounter of his life.

“Would you like a cup of tea, Jack?”

Jack just shook his head. Vincent stayed there another few minutes, looking at him. He seemed to derive a strange kind of enjoyment from watching him squirm. He got up then, picked up the bowl and cloth slowly and deliberately, and left the room.

Jack sat there, breathing through his mouth, his eyes fixed on Vincent's jacket hanging on the back of the chair. Then Matser came in, escorted him outside, put him in the boot of Sean Scully's car, and drove him up the Dublin Mountains, where he was thrown out and left there, without his phone.

As the taillights of Scully's Chrysler disappeared into a darkening Dublin, Jack took in the tall pine trees surrounding him and felt the cold October air fill his lungs. As he settled his eyes on the blinking lights of Poolbeg Power Station in Ringsend, he noticed his legs and hands were still trembling. His experience with Cullen had left him more shaken than he'd ever been, but it had also given him a renewed and profound appreciation for his simple life, never mind that his nose was broken, his ribs badly bruised, and his head swollen and aching.