The Rage (9 page)

‘That’s—’

‘I know, I know, and I’m not gonna do anything – OK.’ He spoke now as though talking to himself. ‘Every day it hurts, and every day it makes it worse that that bitch is out there enjoying herself.’

Vincent said, ‘What happened your face?’

‘What’s the matter with it?’

‘You’ve got a bruise – just there?’

Noel touched his face where Vincent pointed. ‘No idea – the way it was, things got a bit frisky last night, Bannerman’s boys.’

‘Bastards.’

‘Nah. They were doing their job, keeping me off the cunt.’

After a minute, Noel said he was right, wasn’t he? The Tommy Tiernan DVD – it was a good choice for last night, right?

Later, when Noel was having a shower, Vincent rang Albert Bannerman and said, ‘Hope everything’s OK – no strain, right?’

‘Not from this end.’

‘Let’s talk, maybe tomorrow?’

Albert said that would be fine.

The Abbey Street food hall was awash with the smells of Turkish, Italian, Mexican and Chinese food. Vincent was wondering if he maybe shouldn’t bin his sandwich and find something more tasty.

Michelle looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got to get back.’

They’d walked a few yards up Abbey Street when Vincent said, ‘OK for tonight?’

Michelle stopped and faced him. ‘You and Noel, there’s something happening?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Bits of phone calls, things you said. There’s something coming up?’

‘That isn’t – it’s business, it isn’t—’

‘I don’t want details.’ Her eyes were big and round and he could stare into them for the rest of his life and it wouldn’t be long enough. ‘I just need to know if you’re going to suddenly disappear for ten years.’

He grinned. ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily.’

Her face remained serious. She waited until a noisy Luas train thundered past, bell clanging. ‘It matters to me. For the first time in a long time, it matters.’

‘Anything I do,’ Vincent said, ‘if I take a risk it’s for a reason.’

She had a way of leaning into him that made talking redundant, and she did it now. They embraced, Vincent closed his eyes. ‘I’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

‘Tonight,’ she said.

He said, ‘Tonight.’

James Snead shook Bob Tidey’s hand, and accepted the bottle of whiskey. ‘You’re welcome, you and Mr Jameson.’

James had long insisted that he wasn’t an alcoholic. ‘Those poor sods,’ he once told Tidey, ‘it’s something in the body, they don’t have a choice. Me, I choose to drink too much. I know what it does to me and that’s OK.’

He led the way into his fourth-floor apartment. Bob Tidey closed the front door and followed.

James Snead was in his sixties, a former construction worker, tall and grey, muscular with a thickening middle. Face wrinkled around the eyes, thin red capillaries criss-crossing his nose. In another life he’d been a widower rearing a daughter alone, seldom going beyond his habit of two pints on a Friday evening. Then his daughter died with a needle in her arm. She left a baby son, and James reared him past his teens, until one day someone put two bullets in Oliver Snead’s chest and one in his head. Shortly after that, James Snead decided that he’d been sensible for long enough. ‘A world this ugly, I’d rather look away.’

The best part of two decades back, Tidey was the young uniform who found the body of James’s daughter. The two kept in touch and when Oliver was murdered Tidey was part of the investigation. One night they shared a bottle and in a matter-of-fact tone James told him there wasn’t much left he wanted to do or see. ‘It’s all repetition, now. It’s hard to give a damn. Any day looks better when it’s topped off by a few drinks, and if that brings me closer to lights out – that’s a fair trade.’ Given the circumstances, Tidey couldn’t bring himself to argue the point.

James twisted the cap on the bottle of Jameson. ‘Not often I manage to rise to a good whiskey these days, but after a couple of drinks it’s hard to tell the difference.’

The flat smelled of Chinese takeaway.

Tidey said, ‘You’re eating properly, of course?’

‘I’m a martyr to my five-a-day.’

James brought two glasses and poured. The block of flats was noisy, people talking loudly, music from more than one direction. Tidey sipped at the whiskey, James offered a silent toast and drank.

‘I’ve a bit of news,’ Tidey said.

James leaned back in his chair. ‘You and Charlie Bird.’

‘There was a murder – I’ve just been assigned. A man over on the Southside – two thugs came to his door with guns.’

James’s interest seemed polite, less than wholehearted.

‘One of the guns they used, it turns out it’s the gun that killed Oliver.’

James lifted the glass again to his lips. He said nothing.

‘What I’m hoping is, if we find whoever did this murder it might lead to whoever killed Oliver.’

James looked at the whiskey lining the bottom of his glass. ‘That’s good, I suppose.’

‘I promised to keep you informed, for what it’s worth.’

‘If I had him within reach I’d have to be dug out of him. I imagined it many a time, but that’s not going to happen.’ He savoured some more Jameson. ‘And, knowing it was this little shit who pulled the trigger, as opposed to some other little shit – that doesn’t matter at all.’

He sat a moment, as though wondering if it was worth trying to explain. ‘Oliver’s death – it’s not about the little shits who did it. It’s about what Oliver lost. All the time he didn’t have, the things he didn’t get to do. Switched off like a light, and no sense to it. Nothing will fill that hole. I know you’re doing your best, but knowing the name of the creep who killed him, that won’t do it, not even if he goes to jail. There’s nothing positive to be got out of any of this – it’s all shit.’

James was leaning back in an armchair, his long legs straight out in front, the bottle within reach, the glass sitting in the palm of his upturned hand.

‘You take it seriously, this policing lark?’

‘You were a good builder, or so you’ve told me. People ought to take pride in their work.’

‘Runs in the family, does it?’

‘My father was a die operator in a plastics extrusion factory – small place, non-union. Only time you got to open your mouth was to say “yes, sir”. What he said to me – you get the habit of bowing and scraping, it becomes part of your nature. Don’t get the habit, he said.’

‘Why the police?’

‘It was the 1980s,’ Tidey said. ‘I was just out of school, you know the state the country was in – queues at the American Embassy, kids begging for visas. So, a job’s a job.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘That was part of it. I had notions, in those days – I was young, I wanted to do something that meant something. If I wasn’t an atheist I might have joined the Legion of Mary and delivered meals on wheels. What I did was hook up with the Simon Community – soup runs, that kind of thing. One day, I walked into my local station and asked how I could become a Garda. Know what I really liked about the job?’

‘The overtime?’

‘When trouble happens, most people turn and run. It’s the people who run towards the trouble – medics, firefighters, the police – they’re the ones I wanted to be with.’

James nodded. ‘I can see the attraction in that. But there were times – on the picket lines – trying to protect the little we had, our backs were to the wall, and sometimes it got a bit technicolour. Your lot – the batons would come out, or they’d link arms and come at us like a tank. A lot of those fuckers were enthusiastic about their work.’

‘Wherever there are uniforms, you’ll find little corporals – people who get their kicks barking orders. But there’s all sorts in the force.’

‘No doubt – but back in the day, it was the little corporals I always seemed to come across.’

They were well into the bottle when Bob Tidey went to the flat’s claustrophobic kitchen. He found some Cheddar in the fridge and half a sliced pan and made a couple of sandwiches. James accepted his and said, ‘You still living the bachelor life?’

‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘The women are flocking, no doubt?’

Tidey grunted. ‘Have to beat them off with a stick.’

‘Life’s grand when it’s grand, right enough.’

Tidey leaned forward, his voice gentle. ‘You’ve given up, then, body and soul? Or does anything matter?’

‘I’m mildly curious about how they’re going to fix this mess – broken banks, queues for food parcels,’ James said. ‘When I was young, I waved my fist around. The workers’ flag is deepest red, all that shit. Trade unions are out of fashion now, but everything we ever got we had to fight for it – money, hours, conditions. Today, it’s like everyone’s grateful to be a unit of labour, to be plugged in or pulled out according to their master’s will.’

Tidey said, ‘People are scared. They just want this to be over, whatever it takes.’

‘After all the bullshit about the fight for freedom, about throwing off the foreign yoke – they gave the country away. The politicians fell in love with the smart fellas – gave them any law they wanted. The smart fellas made speeches and gave interviews about how smart they were, and the journalists kissed their arses. And in the end it was the smart fellas broke the country in pieces, without any help at all from the red brigades.’ There was no humour in his laugh.

‘They’ll figure something out,’ Tidey said.

‘They surely will. They always do.’

James poured more Jameson, topping up his own glass to near the brim.

‘When’s the last time you arrested one of those bastards, and all they’ve done?’

‘Not lately.’

‘Not ever.’

‘Not unless I catch him, on live television – on the halfway line at Croke Park – fucking a chicken.’

James smiled. ‘With the Artane Band standing behind him, playing “A Nation Once Again”.’

‘That would help.’

James carefully raised the brimming glass to his lips. ‘Even then, the hard neck on those fellas – he’d claim the chicken led him on.’

If she let another day end without doing something . . .

Pushing thought aside, Maura Coady reached for the phone.

‘Yeah?’

‘Mr Tidey? It’s Maura, Maura Coady.’

He said nothing and she felt a slight disappointment that he didn’t remember the name. But he was a policeman, and policemen must meet hundreds of people – and this was well over a year ago.

‘The Teresa O’Brien—’

‘Of course – Maura, it’s been a while.’

He sounded tired, his words a little slurred.

‘There’s something, I’m not sure – when I say it, it doesn’t sound—’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘There’s a car, parked outside my house – I’ve wanted to call you for – look, I know it sounds silly, but they were wearing gloves, plastic gloves.’

‘Who?’

‘The men. There were two of them.’

‘Look, Maura, I’m – it’s getting late, and I’m on my way home – it isn’t – look, I’ll give you a call first thing in the morning, OK?’

‘Of course, of course, it may be nothing.’

‘Good to hear from you – I ought to drop around, come see you.’

‘Of course.’

‘First thing in the morning.’

When Tidey came back from the toilet, James’s eyes were closed, his head back, his hand still holding his half-empty glass. Tidey took the glass away. He brought a blanket from the bedroom and draped it over the sleeping figure. Before he left he switched on the kitchen light, so James could get his bearings if he woke during the night. Then he switched off the main light and went in search of a taxi.

Noel Naylor’s footsteps echoed in the stairwell. He was halfway towards Vincent’s squat on the fourth floor when he met Michelle Flood coming down.

She smiled and grimaced. ‘Late for work.’

‘Need a lift?’

‘My car’s downstairs, thanks. Vincent’s in the shower.’

Noel had coffee ready when Vincent emerged from the bathroom.

‘Met herself on the stairs – this is looking serious.’

‘Could be. She’s – you know—’ Vincent shrugged.

‘Good for you. Hope it works out. Meanwhile—’ Noel offered a folded piece of paper. Vincent opened it and saw a name and an address.

‘Thanks, but I don’t think so.’

‘If it was me—’

‘I broke his nose, he gave evidence against me, I went away for eight months – it balances out.’

‘He’s got it coming.’

Vincent folded the piece of paper, left it on the kitchen counter. ‘You’re probably right, but these things – do you know Michelle’s brother, Damien?’

‘Not personally – I’ve heard of him.’

‘Their younger brother, Conor – he was done for shoplifting from an off-licence. Damien dropped in to see the shopkeeper, told him to withdraw the complaint. The shopkeeper told him to fuck off, so Damien put him on his back in Beaumont for two weeks. Michelle gave him an alibi, said he was with her that evening – but the cops had it on CCTV. When I went into the Joy, Damien was already there nearly two years. When I left, he still had a year to do.’