‘Fetch them,’ another Irish voice commanded. ‘It’s time.’
Frank wanted to cry out, beg. What stopped him was an adamantine quality he’d detected in those voices, a hint of mercilessness that, by a process of osmosis he understood well, because he possessed it himself.
Now he heard more footsteps, including what he thought was the click of high heels, surmised those belonged to the woman. What part had she in this? What was it about her that had intrigued him? What had he failed to decipher?
Rough hands untied the rope around his chest and the sack was pulled upwards. Light exploded all around him, blinding him for a second. When his eyes adjusted he realized he was in a warehouse, bright strip lighting overhead. He was bound to a metal chair and four figures were lined up watching him like members of a firing squad, their accusing eyes deadly weapons. The woman was standing next to a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Two burly males flanked them, staring at Frank with contempt. The faces of the woman and the boy were way beyond contempt, brimful with hatred for him, as though it wouldn’t take much for them to tear him to pieces with their bare hands. He understood then that nothing he could say would move them. The woman had the mad look of a she-devil incarnate.
‘Why? he asked, his voice strangulated, hoping against hope that he was wrong, that there was a way out for him.
‘Justice!’
The word snapped from those luscious, blood red lips like the crack of doom — his doom.
She came forward, kneeled down in front of him like an acolyte at the feet of a holy man, except there was not a hint of rapture in her fierce expression.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a handkerchief, wiped away her lipstick, rubbed those alabaster cheeks. When her make-up was off, he noticed little brown spots on her cheeks, realized they were freckles, which seemed incongruous with that dark hair. She looked up at him.
‘Know me now!’
Her tone was so different from the tone she’d used in the pub. It was as though the last person in the world she wanted to speak to was him and she was having to force her words through a strainer.
He stared hard, trying to place her. That smile, the one that had flirted with his memory, must have been a clue he’d been foolish to ignore. Realizing he still didn’t know her, she put her hand to her brow, lifted the black hair right back so that he saw fair roots beneath the black.
The way it takes time to see the meaning in an abstract painting and then you wonder why you hadn’t seen it earlier, the woman’s face metamorphosed before his eyes into that of a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old girl. Understanding made him jerk his head backwards away from her, emptied him of any hope. Now, he knew. Now, he got the who and the why.
She saw it all happening to him, relished it, smiled her satisfaction.
‘It was jealousy, wasn’t it?’ she hissed. ‘Just because I turned you down for a better man — for Bull.’
Frank nodded. He knew it was no good lying to her. Nothing mattered now. He was done for.
‘I would never have married you,’ she said. ‘But I never told Bull how you pursued me like an idiot, turned nasty after I turned you down.’ Her voice rose. ‘I tried to protect you and look what you did to my Bull, you — filth.’
He lowered his head but she was tenacious, hadn’t finished with him, scourged him with her voice.
‘Look at the lad!’
When he didn’t obey, she grabbed his hair, lifted his head.
The boy was looking at him with a steady gaze. There was no innocence in his eyes.
‘That’s Bull’s son. The lad you deprived of a father. He’s had to grow up fast has Charlie, too fast, had to be man when he was still a child — all because of you.’
She let go of his hair, addressed the two men.
‘Let him see!’
They dragged the chair backwards, the scraping noise on the concrete like a scream tearing at his fractured nerves. The men bent down beside him. He heard other scraping sounds, metal sliding against metal, realized they were bolting the chair into the ground.
One of the men stood in front of him, pointed skyward. Frank looked up. Five feet above his head, there was a steel block the size of a washing machine suspended from a gangway that ran across the warehouse. It didn’t take much imagination on his part to realize why it was there, how they intended to kill him. Every nerve in his scalp prickled, as though ants were crawling over his head. He wanted to believe they were bluffing, knew there was no chance. They hadn’t gone to all this trouble to simply chastise him and send him on his way like a naughty boy. No way! That steel block hovering ominously was his death sentence and they wanted him to know it, to enjoy him knowing.
One of the men disappeared for a moment, returned with a stool in one hand, a clock in the other. He placed the chair in front of Frank, put the clock on it facing towards him so that he could read the time. It was one o’clock.
‘The sands of time are running out for you,’ the woman said. ‘We haven’t a sand dial that could do the job but the clock will do fine.’
All Frank’s hopes telescoped to one desire, a quick death. He glared at the woman.
‘I loved you once,’ he said pathetically. ‘So shoot me and get it over with quick.’
The look she gave him could have turned water to stone.
‘How did you kill my husband?’ she rasped. ‘Remind me!’
Frank didn’t answer. Whatever he said would be wasted and he knew it.
‘Let me remind you, then,’ she continued. ‘You weren’t man enough to face him, so you struck him from behind when he was defenceless, then let your own brother go to gaol.’ She laughed like a madwoman. ‘All that because I turned you down.’
The boy spoke for the first time. ‘He’s a worm. My da would have stamped on him.’
The woman patted the boy’s head.
‘He’s going to die the way your da died.’
Frank couldn’t help himself. He lifted his eyes upwards to that block of steel. It was hanging there like a giant fist ready to pound him into the concrete, only chains preventing it. Perspiration trickled from every pore in his body, snaked down his spine.
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Yes! You’ve got the idea.’
One of the men sniggered and she silenced him with a look, as though, in her mind at least, what she was doing deserved dignity and he had crossed a line.
‘But Bull didn’t know it was coming,’ she said,’ and you do, so we’ll have to make a little refinement in the name of justice.’
Frank felt exhausted; the tension had drained all his resources. His brain couldn’t take any more, started to divorce itself from the proceedings. The figures around him seemed to recede into the distance, the woman’s voice to be coming from further away. She saw it happening, wasn’t to be denied her satisfaction, struck him twice across the face with the palm of her hand, demanded he look at the clock.
‘Sometime within the next twelve hours one of us will return to release those chains,’ she said. ‘It’ll happen dead on the hour but you won’t know which one.’
She pushed her face right into his, bored into him with her eyes. They were nothing like the eyes of the innocent young girl he tried to woo all those years ago.
‘If I was you,’ she continued, straightening up, ‘I’d wonder about my Bull waiting to meet you on the other side.’
Frank had had enough, started to shake uncontrollably. In all his life he’d never given more than a passing thought to his own mortality. Now, as though out of nowhere it was at his elbow, a silent desolate creature waiting to rob and defile him. He was very afraid.
‘We’ll leave you now,’ the woman said, ‘to think about the good man you killed, the son and two daughters you deprived of a father and the widow who still cries at his grave.’
He heard them walk away, didn’t look up as the echo of their footsteps gradually died. Finally the shaking stopped but he was no better fo
r that; the terror inside remained, an octopus searching out every part of him with its tentacles. A perverse compulsion dragged his eyes to the clock. Only ten minutes had passed. He let out a howl of pain. Now he knew how a trapped animal felt, jaws of steel clamped down on its limbs, a long time to wait before death came to release it from its agony. He lifted his head and howled again, this time so loud it came back at him from the walls like a voice from another world.
He tried his best to wriggle free but it was impossible. The clock gradually became the centre of his existence. Its long, black hands seemed to take on a life of their own, torturing him with unbearable anticipation as they approached each hour, filling him with a sense of relief when it was past and nothing happened. But each relief was short lived, a miniscule respite, because it would start all over again, the hands creeping inexorably forward, dragging him with them to the hour of his doom.
It was five minutes to twelve. His mind was becoming deranged, on the verge of madness. But enough logic survived to know, even if those relentless hands swept past twelve and he was still alive, he’d only have one hour left. He longed for it to be over but if his torturers had let him come this far, surely they’d take him all the way, maximize his suffering.
Only seconds remained of that penultimate hour. Those remorseless hands hovered, teasing his battered brain. His body was as rigid as a corpse with rigor mortis. Nothing existed for him except that clock. He blinked uncontrollably.
The hands struck home. Just for a micro second, he thought the moment had passed. Then the weight of all the world seemed to descend on top of his head and the clock’s onward march lost all meaning.
*
Henry could see Bull Jackson on his knees, a lost look in his eye. A wind was howling, tugging at his hair, rippling the dark field where he kneeled. Behind him stood a shadowy figure in executioner’s garb. Henry cried out to warn Bull but he couldn’t hear him. Further off, something moved. He saw his father arise from the dark field, eyes wide, mouth open, watching as the executioner struck Bull three mighty blows from behind. Bull fell headlong and the field was transformed into a river of blood. Out of the blood, a face swam up, eyes a lupine yellow, blood dripping from the lips. Frank’s lips! Then something dropped from above and the face dissolved to nothing.
He woke with a start, looked at the clock, was surprised it had just turned midday. He lay for a while, pleased that the headache that had plagued him all night had gone away.
Over lunch he told Mary about the dream. She said it wasn’t surprising, given how traumatic it must have been for him when he found out what had happened, that it was best not to dwell on it.
‘I’m afraid there might be a bit of Frank in me,’ he said. ‘After all, we’re brothers.’
‘You’re nothing like him,’ she said. ‘He’s cold. The first time I saw him in the pub I knew. You reached out, Henry — to me, to Tom Daly, to John.’
‘But sometimes I had no self-control. My temper — There was a time I could have kicked off against the whole world.’
‘But you didn’t. You learned to think twice. You’re always telling John to do the same.’
That much was true. He’d struggled with his demons, hoped he’d conquered them. Even at his worst he’d never done anything without provocation, not in cold blood, always in the heat of the moment. Frank had never reached out to anyone except for an ulterior motive, when he stood to profit. He supposed in the end all that really counted was that reaching out, otherwise you were nothing, just a piece of debris floating through an indifferent universe, touching nothing, helping nobody. Like Frank. Cold as stone.
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