The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (7 page)

At half two in the morning, these poor old souls got to see us at our worst: Our five o'clock shadows had doubled in length, and our dark suits and overcoats took on an even darker hue in the badly lit wards and corridors. It was always the same: These old men, scared and gaunt, would gape out from beneath their covers, looking more like concentration camp detainees than senior citizens in a modern republic. And they all had the same expression on their faces, which said only one thing:
Will I be next?

We placed the stretcher on the bed beside old Harry's remains. His eyes and mouth were both wide open and he hadn't been shaved in a week. We pulled the covers off him and got ready to lift him, Eamonn at the legs, Christy and I on either side of his shoulders. Just as we went to lift him, a pocket of gas found its way up through the windpipe and escaped through the mouth, filling the air with a noxious smell, which regularly happens when a remains is lifted. But it still came as a shock to some people, and the smell was like nothing else—the worst smell in a zoo couldn't hold a candle to it. Eamonn and I were long since hardened to such smells but Christy was still a novice, and as soon as he smelled it, he hit the deck—the best place for fresh air.

Eamonn and I couldn't help laughing silently through our closed mouths, our shoulders shaking up and down. The two of us easily lifted the corpse onto the stretcher, old Harry being as light as a twelve-year-old child. We buckled the straps tightly around his torso and legs, placed the black plastic cover over him, and pulled the screens back. By this time, Christy had recovered and the three of us carried Harry out of the ward.

“I nearly brought my dinner up there,” said Christy, pressing the elevator button. “As if the smell of piss and Pine-Sol isn't bad enough.”

We stood the stretcher up in the elevator and sank to the ground.

3:00 a.m.

W
ith Harry Roche's remains locked safely in the embalming room behind me, I turned my thoughts again to slumber and a soft pillow. I was about to head home when Eamonn slowed his Mercedes down as he was leaving, lowering his window.

“Back left tire, Pat,” he said with a downturned smile, and drove out the gate. I looked at the tire on my Camry. It was completely flat. And then, as if on cue, the rain came down, prompting Christy to rush to my boot and open it.

“Come on, Buckley, you unlucky fuck,” he said, pulling the spare out. “Let's get it changed.” If it had been hailing golf balls, Christy wouldn't have hesitated to help me, such was the quality of his friendship. We battled away at the wheel with the rain bouncing heavily off the ground beside us, the pair of us saturated by the time we'd finished changing it.

“Go home,” I told him. “I'll get the gate.”

Christy didn't have to be told twice. He ran to his car and drove off.

Alone again, I settled into my car and relaxed, closing my eyes to listen to the rain on the roof. Memories of laughter came in and out of my mind. Lucy laughing her beautiful laugh while holding my hankie, and me laughing with her; Brigid stifling her laughter while we whispered together; Eamonn and I silently laughing in Lia Fáil; and Eva laughing the sexiest laugh I've ever heard, her hoarse and croaky voice crowning it. I imagined being away in another land with Brigid Wright, remembering the laughter from there, but I was only tormenting myself with pleasant notions that could never be.

After locking the gates and getting back in my car, I moved off down the street and failed to do something so routine, so reflexive, that I unintentionally transformed my car from an everyday object of convenience into a giant bullet. I'd forgotten to turn my lights on.

I drove down James's Street, headed for Kilmainham, my attention more absorbed in tuning the radio away from a late-night chat show than focusing on the road in front of me. Just as I tuned into some music, something ahead of me grabbed my attention. In the fraction of a second that I got to see him, I saw the trotting figure of a man holding a newspaper over his head to shield himself from the rain while he was crossing the road. But he was moving so ridiculously fast towards me that I only had time to raise my foot from the accelerator. His body was hit by the car with such a deafening wallop that he must have been thrown a good fifteen feet up in the air. I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop on the rainy street twenty yards up the road.

It was only as the car finally stopped moving that I realized my lights weren't on. I looked in the rearview mirror and in the dark could just make out a body lying motionless in the middle of the street. I looked at the shattered windscreen and the crumpled bonnet, and then I turned around and looked out the back window, my heart marking each moment like a pounding drum.

I got out of the car and walked shakily towards the crumpled prostrate figure. I knelt down beside it and saw a tall, well-built man, not yet middle-aged, dressed in a suit and overcoat not dissimilar to my own. The man's eyes were open and there was a little stream of blood that had trickled out of his mouth down the left side of his face. He didn't seem to be breathing. I felt for a pulse and, for the second time that day, found none. The man was dead.

Sticking out of his inside coat pocket were a bulging zip case and a leather-bound rectangular wallet. I took out the zip case and looked inside. It was jammed tight with fifty-euro notes, totaling what looked to be more than seventeen or eighteen grand. I put it back in the man's pocket and took out the wallet. I opened it up to see a large collection of credit cards. I searched for the name and saw it in raised print:
DONAL CULLEN
. My eyes widened with increasing horror as I looked to the face of the dead man, and then I recognized him: from the papers, outside the courts with his brother, Vincent, Dublin's number one thug.

“Oh, no.” I barely whispered the words. I dropped the wallet to the ground as fear swept through me like a ghost, and I stumbled backwards to my feet. The hum of the engine running behind me never sounded so inviting. I scanned both sides of the street, both ends, to see if anyone could see me or had witnessed the accident, and I saw no one. I backed away from the body slowly. Once I got a few yards away, I turned and walked purposefully to the car. I snapped the number plate off the back of the car, quickly did the same around the front, and then got back in and shut the door. A little voice in my head made a suggestion.
Leave the lights off,
it said. I put her into gear and drove off slowly with my hands trembling. Just before I turned the corner, I noticed in the rearview mirror somebody running from a building to the body in the middle of the road. I punched the accelerator, kept my head looking forward, and a moment later I was around the corner and gone.

The voice continued.
You killed him. Not like Lucy, who happened to die while you were fucking her, this man died because you killed him with your car. You killed him by not looking. By being tired. By tuning the radio. By driving with no lights on and not braking. You took his life.

I shook my head and gripped my face.

“Jesus Christ,” I said out loud. “Oh, Jesus.”

Any worries I had about Lucy Wright's autopsy disappeared the moment I'd read Donal Cullen's name. In the blink of an eye, my concerns switched from being caught out for riding a bereaved widow, a client, and sending her to the grave in the process, to being butchered alive for the unceremonious killing of the brother of the most dangerous gangster in Ireland.

By the time I'd pulled up outside my house on Mourne Road, I was numb, still not breathing normally, and living in a full-scale nightmare. I'd fled the scene, acted like a coward. Countless times had I sat with families who'd had a son or daughter killed by a hit-and-run driver, and I'd silently condemned the driver along with them. I knew well the added injustice a family felt at not having someone put their hand up and say, “Yeah, it was me, I'm so very sorry.” On James's Street, I'd been fully intent on doing just that until I saw who it was. I knew it was the right thing to do. And then the fear took me. It had me by the balls and the hair and the neck, and wasn't letting go.

Eva's car, a silver ten-year-old Renault Clio, had been parked in my garage since she'd died, and I still carried the key. I opened up the garage, moved past the dusty clutter, and climbed into the little French car, praying the battery wouldn't be flat. It had been four months since I'd turned her over. I pumped the pedal, turned the key, and listened to the engine roar to life. I closed my eyes to appreciate this small triumph. I moved it out onto the street and parked it, then I drove my Camry into the same spot in the garage. I locked the garage doors and checked the damage to the car. It looked like it had killed someone.

I went into the house as quietly as I could and didn't turn on any lights. I crept upstairs to my bedroom. I left the light off while I got undressed, the room being sufficiently lit by the streetlight outside. I took off my coat and threw it to the floor and noticed a bulge in the inside breast pocket, the same one as Donal Cullen had his money in. I knelt down and put my hand in and pulled out a damp green facecloth, the one I'd cleaned off Lucy with. I'd forgotten all about it. I closed my eyes and tossed it towards the little pile of laundry in the corner before heading to the bathroom where I stripped and ran the shower. I stepped in and washed myself thoroughly and dried off afterwards with a fresh towel. I avoided looking in the mirror. I didn't want to see myself consumed by fear.

I crawled into bed and huddled in the fetal position, my mind scrambling for exits or explanations. What would Frank have done? Frank wouldn't have been in this position in the first place. If he had filled my shoes for the day, none of this would have happened. And Frank couldn't help me with this one anyway. Nobody could. If I'd Eva here beside me, she'd hold my head in her hands and kiss my forehead tenderly and be my lover and confidante, and we'd get through it together with our bulletproof love shielding us from the world. But Eva was gone. As I lay there bereft of comfort or hope, grappling with my predicament, if I could have had the counsel of any one person, living or dead, it would have been my father.

After bringing my father to the forefront of my mind, my thoughts spontaneously vaulted back to an afternoon I'd spent with him when I was fifteen. We'd been painting the living room in the house I'd grown up in on Arnott Street at the back of the Meath Hospital, and had stopped to have a cup of tea. It was a hot day in the middle of summer and a big fly was buzzing around the room. Shay smiled at me. He had a way with all creatures, no matter what kind, like no one else I'd ever known.

Out of the blue, he said, “Make the fly land in your hand.”

“Come on, Dad, the fly's not going to land in my hand.”

“Why not?”

“There's no way I could get the fly to do that,” I said emphatically.

“Try it.” He smiled.

“It's not going to happen,” I said, smiling back at him.

“Relax,” he said, “and clear your mind.”

I'm not sure if it was what he said or how he said it. But at that moment, I understood what he was talking about in a way I hadn't before. I let him guide me.

“Open your hand and imagine all your power, all your spirit, your essence, moving into the center of your palm. Imagine it's the seat of your soul. Everything that makes up who you are is now in that hand.”

After a minute or so, there was a subtle but definite change in the feeling of my hand.

“Right?”

I nodded.

“Now allow the fly to land in your hand.”

I looked at the fly, and as soon as I'd imagined it landing on my hand, it flew down and did just that. I was so astonished that my jaw dropped open. But I had the sense not to move my hand. And the fly stayed there. I looked at my father, who remained relaxed as always. Like he knew this would happen.

“You can close your hand,” he said.

Slowly, I closed my hand over the fly, and it let me. Then I opened it slowly, and still it stayed there.

“Now let him fly away.”

Just then it flew away, out the window. Neither one of us said anything. We drank our tea in silence while my father's eyes smiled, his head nodding imperceptibly.

Back in my bed now on Mourne Road, I stretched out my hand and imagined all that I was, my soul, my mind, the totality of me, in its palm. And after about a minute or so, I felt the change. I felt my palm pulse. Every part of my mind was focused on it. I became the process. Then the perceiving part of me left its seat behind my forehead and traveled slowly down my arm until I was in my hand, looking back at my face. And what I saw on my face was rapt focus. And then an even stranger thing happened. I detached. I was released from my body and gently floated up to the corner of the ceiling where I rested in my suspended state. I thought I must have died, had a painless heart attack, and this was my ascent to somewhere else. But I wasn't leaving the room, and my body didn't look dead at all. It looked very much alive, still with its hand outstretched, still focused. I imagined moving my hand and relaxing it, and it did just that. I imagined changing position in the bed, and my body did exactly as I'd just imagined. This was oddly perfect. Independent Channel 24 like I'd never thought possible. All the panic and stress and fear and horror that I couldn't escape just moments ago had gone. I didn't feel any of it. I decided to say something, to see if I could get myself to talk, and then watched my mouth open down on the pillow.

“We'll get through it like this,” it said. It all felt so certain, so effortless and easy, it was strangely euphoric. From this dislocated, suspended channel, I continued to watch myself watch the wall until the darkness was replaced by a room full of light.

October 14, 2014,
8:20 a.m.

V
incent Cullen was on his knees in the greenhouse in his back garden, planting pepper and tomato plants. He'd spent the last two hours in the outdoor vegetable patches in his back garden, weeding and planting, finding that having his hands in the soil was exactly what he needed this morning. After all, it was Donal who'd dreamed up and built the extensive greenhouse in the first place. It had been Donal, too, who'd established and expanded the vegetable garden, and planted and tended to the variety of fruit trees—apple, pear, plum, cherry, apricot, nectarine, and fig—scattered around the walled acre that constituted the back garden. Donal had even convinced his brother to let him build a chicken area at the back of the patches and raised boxes, which now housed fourteen chickens, whose eggs supplied both Cullen households. Before Donal had graced the garden with his imagination and talent for growing things, with the help of a team of gardeners, Vincent hadn't known a cloche from a cold frame, but lately he'd been getting as much satisfaction from the growing abundance in his garden as his brother had.

Seven years his junior, Donal had been Vincent's partner in crime since they were teenagers. Vincent was the leader, but Donal's enterprising spirit and fearlessness were equally responsible for the sway and influence the Cullen brothers held over Dublin. Aside from being blood and a savvy business partner, Donal was Vincent's best friend, his closest confidant, and his most trusted accomplice. Vincent knew he could rely on Donal for anything. Whether it was smoothing out a misunderstanding with a group from Belfast with his artful negotiation skills or putting together a deal with a pack of Serbs from Marseille, Donal's input into the Cullen operation matched his brother's, ounce for ounce.

And now somebody had plowed Donal down in the dead of night and robbed him in the bargain. Taken out in his prime when his star had just begun to rise.

The injustice of it deeply saddened Vincent and rankled him, fueling his hunger for retribution all the more.

The brothel on James's Street that Donal had left just prior to his death was his brainchild. Impudently called the St. James's Club, it was decked out like a five-star hotel, housing forty girls from as many different countries who were quite literally real-life fantasies for the top-end clientele. Since its doors opened four months ago, the place had become a bona fide goldmine for the Cullens, bringing in a fortune on a nightly basis. Its reputation was already luring high rollers from as far away as Stockholm, and incoming flights were being booked on a daily basis for clients across the water in London and Manchester. Of all Donal's schemes and ventures, the St. James's Club was the brightest and most flamboyant feather in his cap. It was one of life's ironies that Donal had ensured only weeks before his death that the St. James's clients would be spared being picked up on the cops' street-surveillance cameras by bribing the right officials to have the cameras permanently pointed away from the club in the direction of Thomas Street.

Death made all the bullshit fall away for Vincent. All the stuff that had taken up hours of thought and conversation only the day before ceased to be of any consequence. Matters of the heart had taken their place. He thought of his own four-year-old son, Fiach, and his wife, Angela, and cherished the fact that they were alive and in his keeping. But that didn't change the fact that Donal, who'd been around since Vincent was seven, had been robbed from him. Whoever the swine was who killed him had driven a knife deep into Vincent's heart, and it was this particular matter he was consumed with today. Every bit of power he wielded was focused entirely now on catching and destroying Donal's killer.

As Vincent finished tying up the last tomato plant to the stake beside it, Sean Scully arrived at the greenhouse door.

“Matser's here,” he declared. Sean was a tall, wiry man with a permanently scheming brow and snarling nose whose loyalty to his boss was beyond question. At fifty, he'd been working with the Cullens since the early eighties and was as hell-bent as Vincent was on hunting down Donal's killer.

“Bring him out,” said Vincent.

While Sean went to get Matser, Vincent wiped the dirt from his hands and got to his feet. Standing at a straight six feet, he'd the frame of a middleweight boxer. Under his T-shirt and tracksuit pants, his strength seemed to brood in muscles ever ready for quelling anything that came his way. At odds with his apparent manliness was a nearly feminine aspect to his face, a prettiness to his features, his unruffled forehead and high cheekbones, but his black menacing eyes and grown-out crew cut put paid to any trace of androgyny. It was an undisputed fact in Dublin that Vincent Cullen was the alpha male of alpha males.

He walked out of the greenhouse and watched Sean escort Matser from the house over to where he now stood. Sean looked like a midget next to Matser. Six-foot-seven and thirty stone, all Matser needed to do was show up to get his way. With a cleft palate and stick-out ears, Matser was far from pretty, but what he lacked in beauty he more than made up for in brute force and determination. He'd put his life on the line for his boss more than a few times and was willing to do it again to help find Donal's killer.

“Sit down, Matser,” said Vincent, gesturing to the antique bench beside the greenhouse door. Matser sat down with his elbows on his knees, eager for his orders.

“Whoever hit him took the twenty grand he'd just taken out of the club. Geno heard the bang from inside, but by the time he got out there, the guy who'd hit him was driving away with no lights on towards Kilmainham, the reg plates already ripped off the car. It looked like a dark Toyota Camry, but it was pissing rain and it was gone before Geno could get a good look. I want everyone on that street talked to today, without exception. Got it, Matser?”

Matser nodded.

“Now, if you need to use the shooter, one shot only. Two shots, people start making phone calls. Right?”

“Right,” said Matser.

“Sean, get on to Gallagher's. I want somebody up here straight away.”

Sean and Matser went back to the house, leaving their boss alone. As soon as they'd gone, Vincent let out a low whistle through his teeth.

“Dechtire,” he said.

From the far end of the greenhouse, a large rust-colored dog raised its head and looked at Vincent. It rose and walked out slowly towards its grieving master and sat down next to him, allowing the back of its neck to be rubbed.