Irregulars
Page 38
O’Keefe considers this. Considers going after Charlie Dillon himself when he has healed properly, and realises that though he knows Dillon killed the two boys—tortured and killed them—there is no way that he can prove it. He could kill him, he thinks. Justice would be served if he plugged Charlie Dillon. But no, no I won’t. No more killing. There is enough of it about in the country.
‘No. I don’t want that, Finch. I mean it.’
‘Whatever you say, Sarn’t, who am I to go against what you want? Anyway, this’ll compensate, look …’
Finch, smiling again, gets up from the chair and goes to the small closet to rummage through O’Keefe’s suit jacket. He comes out with something and tosses it onto the bed beside O’Keefe.
‘What’s this?’
‘Payment for services rendered, Seán. Mrs Dolan’s not one to forget who done her a good turn. You’d think there’d be more of it out of fourteen grand, but there was any number of folks needing paying. And we ’ad to blow some of it up, obviously, so the bag would look real enough for them lads to take it.’
‘Who’s idea was it to rig up the bag with the Mills bomb?’ O’Keefe asks, knowing the answer.
‘Mine,’ Finch says proudly, never thinking for a moment how dangerous the booby-trapped bag had been to Nicholas Dolan. ‘I done it more times than once in the war, me. Under tin cans, books, bodies, I can rig up about anything given a grenade and a bit of twine.’
O’Keefe has no doubt he can. ‘You kept enough of it back …’
‘Of course we did. I got my cut—and well I might, seeing as it’s money I likely as not laboured for in the first place, say no more. And I done sent an ’efty share of it already to Bennett’s missus and the mums of the other boys in my old mob whose tickets got clipped to get that wonga, again, say no more. You remember old Bennett from when we was in Ballycarleton? Mind you, Sar’nt, I’ve given up some of mine to Mrs C for ’ousekeeping and medical bills, the like, bought myself a new tin of fruit and am looking at a motor today, a nice big, swish Austin so’s Mrs C and the kids can go to holy mass in style.’
O’Keefe lifts the wedge of pound notes in his good hand. ‘Jesus, Finch, how much is it?’
‘A monkey.’
‘A what?’
‘Five ’undred pound, mate.’
‘Five hundred pounds? Nearly two years’ wages when I was a Peeler,’ he says, and as he says it, he knows that he will not keep the money. Blood money. He will divide it between the families of the dead boys. Unable to bring them justice, he can at the very least help them to go on living.
Finch is oblivious. ‘I know! You get yourself back on your feet, mate, and we’ll have a right splash, you and me. A trip out to Leopardstown and Fairyhouse for the ponies. But no knocking-shops, Sar’nt, not me, no more, mate. That kind of larking about is done with me and I with it, what with Mrs C and all.’
O’Keefe smiles. ‘Never mind, Finch. I was never one for the whoring myself.’
‘Wise man, Sergeant, you always was. ’Cept when you joined me and Albert on that tram … that wasn’t wise, mate, it weren’t.’
‘No, Finch, it wasn’t.’
Nor was falling in love with Nora Flynn, he thinks, remembering how quickly it had happened and understanding, suddenly, how Finch and Mrs Cunningham, unlikely a pairing as they may seem, could fall for each other in so short a time. Love is like that, he thinks, remembering Nora’s face, her body, her voice. Memory as sharp as reality to him in the wavering after effects of the morphine.
‘You don’t look so chuffed, now, Sarn’t, about the money. Is it not enough or what? You just say and there’s more …’
‘No, Finch, it’s not that at all. I didn’t ask for any money from the woman. I don’t even want it.’
‘But surely you earned it, didn’t you, mate? Why’d you take the job on in the first place if it wasn’t for the few bob?’
O’Keefe thinks of his father and the debt owed to Ginny Dolan. And he thinks of Ginny’s boy, Nicholas, now in England. The lad’s eyes, like Peter’s. The hair too. The cut of the boy so much like the brother he left forever on a beach in Turkey. Looking so much like him a man could be forgiven for thinking … O’Keefe stops himself from thinking. The debt has been discharged.
‘I’m tired, Finch.’
‘Well you should be, mate. Well you should be.’
‘Has the doc left any of the laudanum, has he?’
‘He has.’ Finch looks at him.
‘Let’s have it then, Finch. Let’s have another sup of it, so.’
53
In the end, Jeremiah Byrne can think of no other way but to pay in fags for one of the young Sheriffer lads—an eight-year-old with enough bottle to climb those stairs—to lay the bait. To make it so the auld bastard cannot but drag his plastered carcass down into the street, into the night-dark laneway.
While he waits for the lad to return, Jeremiah peeks out from the cover of Hambone Lane and lets his eyes wander the nightscape of Sheriff Street. Lantern light burns in sporadic windows and the wind hums among the mesh of laundry lines that stretch from one side of the street to the other. A barrel fire burns and his old mates surround it, mock-scrapping, throwing digs at arms and shoulders, youngfellas jostling in the way of youngfellas. Ragging. Having a laugh. Able for it and all. Taking time on the cobbles to avoid the bustle of tiny tenement rooms and not because they have no homes to go to or no one to love them in those rooms. These lads are nothing like the lane boys who want Jeremiah’s skin to piss on. Nothing like them. Those boys have nothing but meths and petrol fumes for to warm them; no cramped room, no Ma—not even a whore of a Ma—no sisters or brothers to bundle up with on the pallet of a winter’s night. No.
Jeremiah’s eyes catch movement from the doorway of his own building as the boy he has employed skips down crumbling steps and jogs to the entrance of Hambone Lane.
‘Well?’
‘Well, wha’? Where’s me smokes?’
Jeremiah thinks to Welsh the youngfella, but then realises he will need his silence.
‘Here,’ he says, ‘take all ten.’ They had settled on four for the task.
‘Ten?’
‘Go on, yeh slow cunt,’ he places the Player’s box in the boy’s hand. ‘Is he coming?’
‘He fuckin’ is, he said he’d be down shortly. He’s a brace of crutches so he’ll be ages I’d say.’
‘I’ve the time, I do,’ Jeremiah says. ‘Now you’re to say nothing to no one, righ’? Yis don’t want end up in Artane or the ’Frack, do yeh?’
‘Head down, mouth shut, wha’?’ the boy says.
‘Proper order, youngfella. Now fuck off away from here and don’t be minding any business but yer own.’
‘All righ’, I will. And if y’ever need any more jobs done, Jerry, I’m yer man, you know it, righ’?’
Jeremiah smiles. ‘I’ll keep yeh in mind, youngfella. Now shift it.’
The boy tips his cap and is gone.
Jeremiah waits, and after some minutes he smiles and backs deeper into the darkness of the laneway.
‘Froggy Maughn, I should’ve known you’d pay me, one day, mate.’
Uncle John Keegan propels himself from the half-light of Sheriff Street and into the darkness of the lane. ‘I fuckin knew it, me aul’ pal, I always did be telling any manjack who’d listen, Froggy Maughn’d be back with me cabbage, the day he raised head out of Cork Prison, I did say.’
‘Froggy Maughn’s dead these past two year, yeh soft prick, yeh,’ Jeremiah says, stepping forward, faint light from the laneway’s entrance revealing his face to his uncle.
‘You? What’re yeh at, yeh little bollix yeh. I’ll fuckin tan you, yeh little …’
‘You’ll tan nobody, yeh cripple bastard,’ Jeremiah says, and takes the surgical knife from his sleeve.
‘Ah now, Jerem
iah,’ his uncle says, and it is the first time he has called Jeremiah by his given name in as long as the boy can remember.
‘“Ah now” nothing, yeh cunt,’ Jeremiah says, stepping closer and bringing the glinting blade to his uncle’s throat, his uncle helpless with his hands bucked under the crutches, one leg bound in plaster and hanging inches off the cobbles. ‘You’ve this coming a long time, y’auld whore’s pox. Y’auld dirty fucker.’
‘Please, Jerry, I’m sorry, I never meant hurt any of yis …’
Jeremiah drags the razor-sharp blade across his uncle’s throat. His uncle’s last words emerge as bloody spray, and Jeremiah jumps back to avoid the deluge.
Uncle John Keegan’s mouth gapes and he slumps against the brickwork. As his crutches go from under him, he falls and his hands flail at the arterial plume of blood. It takes two minutes before he is still, and Jeremiah watches as he dies.
Before he turns away, Jeremiah spits on the warm corpse of his uncle. ‘Save your sorrys for the devil,’ he says, and walks down Hambone Lane and out into Saville Place. He stops only to clean his uncle’s blood from his hand in a muddy puddle, where he feels for the first time in many years sated, and somehow hopeful for the future.
END
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53