The Murk Beneath

by L. D. Cunningham

  The Garda investigation could hardly have been described as comprehensive: a few door-to-door enquiries, an interview with the owner of the scrap yard where my father's body had been discovered, an appeal for witnesses to come forward. Far from leaving no stone unturned, it looked as if they had lifted up a token pebble and placed it neatly back in its place. Nothing from informants about the word on the street, nothing about surveillance of suspected smugglers or dealers. They'd ticked the minimum number of boxes and buried the file in records. Besides, there were more pressing matters at that time, like IRA sympathizers.

  That fixation on the IRA and INLA would allow others to quietly build their crooked little empires while the Gardaí had paramilitaries on their mind. The scourge of heroin that poisoned much of Ireland's urban areas – and still does – went largely unchecked. It led to The Gentleman, for instance.

  I phoned a flower shop to order a wreath. Nothing special, just a standard round one with white flowers. Nothing too gaudy. The wreath was more for my mother than myself. I wasn't sure how much she cared anymore, though.

  I spent the rest of the day moping around the house trying to distract myself, somehow trying to project myself beyond my insane urge to suck on a cancer stick – that's what I began to call cigarettes from then on – trying to fill the house with constant noise so that there wouldn't be any silence to fill with thought. But nothing worked and the sweat poured down my forehead and stank my armpits.

  I went to the kitchen, soaked a facecloth, and returned to the sitting room. I put the facecloth across my forehead, sank back in my armchair, and closed my eyes.

  I went to see my mother the next day at her home in Gurranabraher. I went early enough that there were still some sausages, rashers, and of course black pudding, in the frying pan – that heavy, filthy old cast iron thing that had fed me since I was small. It was Denny black pudding, though – OK, but not my favourite. Obviously that would be the Clonakilty, but I would admit to an overly-discerning palate when it comes to the full Irish.

  Most people think that any old fried shite will do, but I know that it takes the finest local ingredients, cooked in the right order, served at the right temperature, and presented appropriately, to count as a proper full Irish.

  My mother’s not your average blue rinser. Her hair’s white, but not from bleaching, straight and cut shoulder length. She wears a house coat, but does so with panache. She’s seventy-six, five-feet tall and obese, but mobile enough to drive to the farmers’ market twice a week and mass every morning at eight.

  “Look at you, Michael – all skin and bone,” my mother said.

  She lowered the drawbridge of a shelf on the dresser that seemed to have been in the kitchen for as long as I could remember. Nothing in the kitchen, not even the toaster, was younger than twenty years old.

  “The doc wouldn't agree with you there, Mam.”

  “Hmm. Well, I never did like that O'Reilly fellow. It would be more in his line to practice what he preaches. He's a chimney. Always out the front of The Long Valley puffing away. Drink, fags, and curried chips on the way home. And then he tells you to watch what you eat.”

  “I know. He's a good doctor, but a lousy human being.”

  I cut a piece of black pudding into three segments and put one in my mouth. I savoured the texture and flavour; I didn’t intend eating the stuff for much longer.

  “You know what today is, don't you?” I said, chewing.

  I didn’t doubt she did. She nodded.

  “I've ordered a nice wreath,” I said. “I'll take us out to St Finbarr's.”

  “You're a good man, Michael. Whatever others say. I know you're decent inside. You're a good Christian … even if you don’t believe that.”

  I didn’t know what kind of man I was. I knew I was capable of killing a man with my bare hands. I didn’t care much for my measurement on the Christian scale, though. I couldn’t have cared less how the Miracle Man Himself rated me.

  “I go now and again. You know – to give the Guy in the Sky a piece of my mind.”

  A blatant lie. I only went for funerals, just to pay my respects, to be seen by the bereaved. I didn’t even bother with weddings – not that very many invites were forthcoming.

  “You shouldn't talk like that, Michael.”

  “Why, because he's everywhere? Well, where was he when Dad died?”

  A provocative line I’d used many times before. I wouldn’t pretend to be the greatest son. Silence. It's the one line to kill a religious argument. Why does God allow the innocent to die? Only Dad wasn't so innocent. Even his death had the stain of suspicion about it. But I was close to him, knew he was decent inside, like my mother was fond of saying. If there was a foul whiff about his death, it was because someone had set him up, had made it look like a deal or a meet gone bad.

  “Well,” my mother said, finally breaking the impasse, “I baked some nice bread last night. I'll put a couple of slices in the toaster for you. And there's some fresh free range eggs in the fridge. I got them off the farmer this morning if you fancy a fried egg.”

  “No thanks, Mam. I think it's time I started heeding what the doc says.”

  I washed down the last of a greasy sausage with a sup of Barry's Gold Blend. There was time enough to heed the doc.

  The drizzle was heaping down on us as we stood at the graveside. The wet grass tangled around our shoes as we sank into the ground. The section of the graveyard where Dad’s grave was looked unkempt, the grass badly in need of a cut. I craved a cancer stick. I didn’t even care then that I’d started calling them that.

  “It’s like a cliché, isn’t it?” I said.

  Mam looked at me with one eye cocked.

  “Rain at the graveyard. It’s like some kind of film noir.”

  “Sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about, Michael. But if you were expecting rain, why didn’t you bring an umbrella?”

  I shrugged. “Twenty-five years, huh?”

  I looked at the wreath I had collected from the flower shop. It was plain, with funeral-grade flowers. It would look tired by the morning.

  “Maybe I should have gotten a better wreath,” I said. “Something to commemorate the anniversary.”

  “He'd have moaned about the cost, your father. We didn't have two shillings to rub together back then.”

  “Twenty-five years, though. If you think about it, I've been alive for thirty-nine years and he's been gone for two-thirds of it. And before long it’ll be –”

  “Ah Christ, Michael. Let's just have a moment of silence.”

  We stared at the headstone – Cork limestone. Already the lettering was smudged as the etching was eroding. We stared as if waiting for a reply from the cold, wet stone.

  “A touch of black paint would be good,” I said. “It would bring out the letters nicely.”

  Mam stayed silent for a moment. She seemed to get more tired of the ritual each year. Then, perhaps having contemplated my words for a while, she replied.

  “The way you're going, Michael, we'll have an engraver out here to mark your own burial. We can kill two birds with one stone then, save a few bob.”

  I laughed. It was a fatalistic laugh. In a brief moment I thought going for a nap next to my father wasn't such a bad thing. Not the way things were going. I tried to change the subject.

  “Do you believe what the Guards said about his death?”

  It sounded strange to my own ear saying “the Guards”. It used to be us or we.

  “Pah!” she said. “Your father wasn't exactly Mr Transparent. I could never tell what was going on in his head.”

  I could never tell what was going on in my own head, so I could excuse my father of that. But I had asked the question before and gotten the same answer. Maybe even exactly twelve months before … and twelve months before that. But my perspective had been shifting. Something about what happened in Churchfield, and what I had heard about Johnny Moolah, was powering it. And God knows I had plenty of time now fo
r thinking. Too much time.

  “But,” I said, “do you believe what they said? That he was up to his elbows in the black market. A smuggler. A dealer. I mean, it’s complete shite isn’t it?”

  “I don't know what to believe, Michael. I just don't know what to believe. There was a time I would have spat at anyone who suggested it. But I'm tired. I'm just so tired now.”

  “There’s never been a follow-up investigation. You know, to rake over the leaves again to see if there might be any new leads or some DNA evidence. I asked about it … you know, when I was a Guard. I thought about doing my own investigation on the side.”

  The crime scene photo flashed into my mind. Dad was under the ground pretty much as he had been found. Understandably, it had been a closed casket affair.

  Mam sighed. “You’d have gotten into a right heap of trouble. I’m sure that’s not what your father would have wanted for you.”

  I laughed. “I might as well have. Better to be thrown out for that than what happened with … with Chambers.”

  Again she sighed. “Best to leave some things in the past, Michael. Some things are best not talked about. I’m sure God has his plan for all of us, a reason why we have to suffer.”

  “You mean you hope he has.”

  She said nothing.

  At the entrance to the cemetery, a hearse arrived with a small procession of mourners. They walked slowly through the gloom like ants and forked onto a path to the far end of the cemetery. An expensive-looking wreath with flowers spelling son dominated the display on the roof of the hearse. A smaller one had the Manchester United insignia. Some poor kid, I assumed, dead before his time. Like Robbie.

  As the drizzle became rain, it seemed then that Death wasn't much of a one for sunny days.

  “Come on, Mam,” I said finally, when it seemed the damp had permeated every layer of clothing. “Let me take you home.”

  3

  A Deal with the Devil

  Later that afternoon I picked up The Examiner and looked at the jobs pages again. I focused in on positions with titles like facilities manager and premises officer. When you cut to the chase, though, they were just fancy words for caretaker. A mop and bucket, a card for the cash and carry to buy toilet rolls and Cillit Bang, and unsociable hours. I didn’t think I’d get a sniff at an interview for those, though. I mean, how can you blag your way through a CV when you were front-page news not so long ago? But maybe I was just being impatient. Maybe I’d get a call out of the blue, maybe have two or three all at once. And there was always another security job – something where my reputation had been a positive – but I didn’t know how that would pan out now that I was the guy who let Druid Distribution get robbed.

  So, unemployed as I was, I had an entire afternoon to fill. I was still adjusting to daytime hours and would find myself napping during the day and rising in the middle of the night, restless and with the remnants of nonsensical dreams still fresh. Doc O'Reilly was in them a lot. Dad too.

  I sat on the couch reading a book and listening to chillout music. Music with no words so that I could keep my train of thought as I read the words of Billy Budd by Herman Melville. I prefer to read old classics. At least those worlds are static, predictable, safe to retire into. Melville's Moby Dick had stuck with me from an early age and I had never read anything else by Melville, so I decided to try another of his.

  The book was tattered and yellowed. I had inherited it from Dad. It was the one thing my father had been specific about in his will – Michael Junior was to be left his collection of books, some of them early editions, collectors' items even. I had read most of them in my teens, but they had stayed hidden away in a box in the attic ever since. Something had prompted me to climb into my mother’s attic to retrieve them.

  I got to the part of Billy Budd where Billy stabs the evil captain in the heart. Good for you, I thought. Then someone was knocking on the door using the flap of the letter box.

  I opened the door to a stranger in a black suit. The morose, granite-like face of the man who stood there suggested, just for a moment, that this could have been one of the mourners from yesterday's trip to Saint Finbarr's. I would have put his age at about thirty.

  “Mr Bosco.” Not a question.

  “Yes?”

  “My boss would be grateful if you could accompany me to his premises where he would like to engage in conversation with you.”

  “What about?”

  “It's not my place to presuppose the words of my boss.”

  He would have seemed like a very educated heavy had it not been for the fact that the words were spoken robotically, as if the man had been rehearsing in front of a mirror for an hour before driving to my house.

  “Look, I'm in the middle of something. Please tell Mr Jordan that I'm busy and ask would he perhaps phone me in advance to make an appointment.”

  I smiled wanly.

  The man, who I had no intention of finding out the name of, brought forward an enormous hairy hand and grabbed the shoulder area of my T-shirt into such a clump that it stopped the blood flowing to my arm.

  “My boss doesn't need to make appointments,” he said with a thicker accent, betraying his social background. These words were unrehearsed, but still, I felt, something the man had uttered many times before.

  My smile disappeared quickly and I could feel my eyes widen dramatically. I could handle myself, but to a certain extent I had been living off my reputation. Beating and strangling Chambers into a coma had certainly made people think twice about messing with me. But this guy, all six-foot and some four or five inches of him, with an Eastern European-style buzz cut, had no respect for that reputation, if indeed he knew of it.

  “Let me just get my coat,” I said meekly.

  I wasn't up for a fight and it wouldn't have been smart to pick one with one of Jordan's guys. Not when there were twenty more to take his place, every one as hard and uncompromising as the last.

  The man led me to a black Mercedes that I thought of, what with the earlier visit to my father's grave, as a funeral director's car. The one that carries the family after the hearse. I sat in the back on cold, fresh-smelling leather. A loud clunk signalled to me that I was now locked in, a prisoner. I watched the man drive north from my home in Blackpool, then up Blarney Street, past Clogheen Grotto, and on into the north Cork countryside.

  It took about forty minutes to arrive at the Jordan estate, somewhere between the villages of Buttevant and Doneraile. We were buzzed through a heavy iron gate and drove up a tarmacadam drive that snaked between rows of mature trees – sycamore, oak mostly. I swore I saw a pheasant as something brown flashed by, but I couldn't be certain.

  We came to the front of a big Georgian, red-brick house that seemed to be a perfect cube. Two pillars stood on either side of an enormous front door that had a large round black iron knocker on it.

  Lying on the porch was a big white and grey ball that suddenly unfurled to reveal an Old English Sheepdog. It looked freshly blow dried, its fur sticking out like it was statically charged. It bounded over to the car and peered in the window where I sat – at least it only seemed to, because the windows were blacked out. I thought it looked benevolent, in a dopey kind of way. All the same, I would be keeping my guard up. Benevolent by nature perhaps, but in the hands of Jordan you could never know what to expect.

  The driver shooed the dog away and then opened the door for me.

  “Follow me,” he said like I had no choice.

  We walked to the porch where a woman who had all the appearance of an accountant greeted me. She was thin – a bit too thin – and baby-faced. She wore a grey trouser suit and had matchstick legs, so her trousers billowed about like sails. Her auburn hair was tied up in a bun. She ran her eyes up and down me like I was a balance sheet.

  “You must be Michael. I’m Grace. My father has been so looking forward to seeing you.”

  She spoke softly with an indistinct, perhaps forced accent. She directed me into the hall where
I could see pretty much what you expect to see in a country manor: stag heads, pictures of hunts, ancestors in formal dress – only these weren't their ancestors. No, they had bought their way into this realm. The only question was, how much blood had coated that money?

  A wide granite stairs rose from the centre of the hall and split left and right like a snake tongue to the landings on the first floor. A floral carpet ran up the centre of the steps, held in place by twisting brass rods.

  On the wall above the stairs was an enormous mural. It looked freshly painted and was entirely out of keeping with the other pictures. In it a man stood proudly in a riding outfit, his chin elevated, his riding helmet at his right side, a stallion to his left. At least it wasn’t a ridiculous Napoleon on a horse type painting, but it still had something about it that was over the top by some way, like a horse clearing a fence in the Grand National by a far greater distance than it needs to, just to try and demoralize the other horses in the race. The subject of the painting was, of course, Jordan.

  Grace led me along a corridor that had busts on plinths, a couple of suits of armour that shone from frequent polishing, and stained glass windows with scenes from the bible. At the end of the corridor a heavy oak door was slightly ajar and I could hear a man speaking.

  When I finally saw Jordan, the thing that struck me immediately was how different he looked from his daughter. His daughter's face had sharp features – thin lips, pointed nose, narrow chin – and her father's, by contrast, had a boxer's nose, square jaw, and the look of a man who believed that heavy doses of vitamins would see him past a hundred. Without her deceased mother for comparison, it would have been impossible to imagine them as father and daughter. I had only ever seen Jordan in stock photographs that had graced the front pages of tabloid and broadsheet newspapers over the years. Not so much this millennium, though.