The Murk Beneath

by L. D. Cunningham

  After a few seconds he said: “Best read since The Da Vinci Code. A right fucking page turner.” He handed the sheet back to Barry. “What’s next? A pop-up book, a happy meal toy?”

  I looked at Barry. I caught his glance. He looked away instantly.

  “Listen, Dick,” he said, “if you want to make more of this, we can talk privately. I invited Mick in for a statement and I’m satisfied with it.”

  Halloran took a step towards me.

  “I said you were a bad seed. Rotten to the core. You waltz in here, the saviour of us all … it’s enough … it’s enough to make me puke. Thirty years I’m a Guard and the likes of you –”

  I got out of the chair and rose so that my face was inches from his. It put a halt to his ramblings.

  “I’m a co-operating witness. Unless you have any more questions, I think, no, I know, I’m free to leave.”

  Halloran said nothing.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said.

  “I think we should call it a day,” Barry said. “Let everyone cool off.”

  “Not so fast,” Halloran said and took a file from under his armpit.

  He opened it and thumbed to a page he searched for. He handed the open file to Barry. I noticed the letters Fitz with some more letters covered by Halloran’s thumb. Fuck! Moolah. Jordan had asked me to keep my eyes and ears open for intel on the Fitzmaurice hit.

  Barry studied the page for a minute, briefly thumbed through the rest of the file.

  “What the fuck, Barry?” I said. “A statement. Remember?”

  Halloran reached for the file and turned the page over to reveal a photograph. He pointed to it. I had a good look to see if I could get something worthy of Jordan’s interest.

  “There,” he said.

  “Barry?” I said.

  Barry didn’t shift his gaze.

  “Same MO,” Halloran said.

  He seemed smug.

  “As?” Barry said.

  Halloran held out his arm in my direction.

  “As the fucking hillside strangler here.”

  I was all at sea. Why was he connecting me to Moolah?

  “Barry?”

  “Say nothing, Mick. Just keep your trap shut.” He turned back to Halloran. “You’ve got nothing here. No transfer of alleles – nothing. Any judge would laugh at this.” Without looking at me, he said: “Mick … walk out the door and keep walking.”

  “Not so fast,” Halloran said. “There’s more.”

  He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. He handed it to Barry.

  “I’ve saved the best for last,” Halloran said.

  Barry gave it a once over. Then a twice over.

  “Purely circumstantial,” he said.

  Halloran seemed to pick up on something. “Did you know about this? That he was the arresting officer?”

  Barry shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.

  “Jesus Christ,” Halloran said. “You’re covering for him, aren’t you?”

  “What is it, Barry?” I asked.

  Halloran intercepted the conversation. “An old pal of yours … Brick. You caught him with a jar full of X, but he got off. That must have got on your goat. I mean, he must have laughed when you fucked up the chain of evidence and the guy walked. I’ll bet you wanted to wrap those big hands of yours around his neck and –”

  “Walk, Mick!” Barry shouted. “Out that door now.”

  “What –” I began to say.

  “Walk. Now.”

  “Sit back down, Bosco. I’m not finished with you. The law’s not good enough for you, eh? You literally have to take it into your own hands? Who do you think you are … Batman?”

  “Walk, Mick. He’s got nothing. Dick … you’ll fuck up the case if you go through with an arrest.”

  “Bosco!” Halloran shouted.

  I decided to take Barry’s advice. I would walk. I would test the strength of whatever case Halloran thought he had against me. If he thought he had enough, he could arrest me, read me my rights.

  “OK, Barry,” I said. “Do your worst, Halloran.”

  I walked through the door and could hear the argument continue behind. Halloran didn’t come after me.

  I wondered what Halloran’s story was. What case was he building against me and why? Was he bent like Savage? Was he in cahoots with Savage? And what could this mean for my relationship with Jordan. He’d asked me to get the inside track on the Moolah case, and there I was at the centre of it and another murder, seemingly the prime suspect for both in Halloran’s estimation.

  I was walking along the corridor when a Guard walked from another interview room in front of me. I couldn’t tell who it was from behind, but it seemed like a greenhorn.

  “Two sugars in mine, Dom,” a voice boomed.

  Savage.

  I came to the door and just had time to glance in. O'Keeffe was sitting there, bruising around his left eye. No one else other than Savage was in the room. No solicitor. I assumed the situation hadn’t escalated beyond just questioning.

  “I hear you are good with your hands, Bill,” Savage said, holding his hands in a choke position.

  Like the Eel had. Christ, how many suspects did they have? And how many were linked to Jordan?

  Savage never took his gaze off O'Keeffe, didn’t seem to notice I was there. I picked up the pace until I reached the car park to the rear.

  Savage came thundering out the back door.

  “Bosco! Bosco!”

  I turned to face him. I was already shell-shocked from my encounter with Halloran, so I was in no position to fend off the barrage from Savage.

  Savage scrunched up his nose, breathed in deeply through his nostrils.

  “We’ll have to get in the cleaners after you stinking the place out, Bosco.”

  Savage pushed my shoulder, goading me.

  “What are you doing here, Bosco?”

  He pushed my shoulder again and continued his tirade.

  “Haven’t done enough damage to the reputation of the Guards – you have to come back for more? You’re not wanted round here, Bosco. You were a disgrace when you wore the uniform and you’re an even bigger one now.”

  Again he pushed my shoulder and I could take no more. I rushed Savage, sending him sprawling to the ground. Before I could get a kick in, someone grabbed my hair from behind, then pinned my arms like chicken wings behind my back.

  “Good man, Dom. You hold him there for me.”

  I was in no shape to resist the young buck that was Dominic. As much as I tried, I could not free my arms from his.

  Savage got up and his eyes seemed to glow with relish at the sight of my exposed body. He delivered a punch to my gut. I bent over, but Dominic pulled me back up. Savage sent another fist into my right ribs and this time the pain nearly made me pass out. A liver punch.

  “You’re not much without your hands, are you, Bosco?” Savage said with a sick leer.

  He hooked a punch to my jaw. The cheek inside my mouth cut and I spat blood on the ground.

  Other Guards had begun to gather at the back door. I couldn’t tell if they were enjoying the beat down or just too afraid to be the first to break it up, to appear weak in front of the others. Savage just had time to get off a final punch to my belly when Barry ran out to intercept him, restraining him in a bear hug.

  Dominic released me and backed away. I doubled over, my vision blurry, my legs barely able to support me.

  “Go, Mick, just go,” Barry said, struggling to keep Savage at bay.

  It was the final nail in the coffin. I was a disgraced ex-Guard. Now I was a total embarrassment, a shambles. I scurried away, shuffling Quasimodo-like until the blue mob could see me no more.

  9

  Rum and Reasons

  Back at the car I gave serious consideration to going back to the Bridewell with my gun. I thought I might gladly spend the rest of my life in jail in order to plug one in Savage’s skull. I thought of Grace and the deluded thought dissi
pated.

  I let out a roar, which hurt my ribs. I gripped the steering wheel hard. I strangled it. For a moment, I pretended it was Savage’s neck. Was that my basest of all reactions? To choke something … someone? Was it any wonder Halloran was all over me for the Moolah murder?

  It was hard to call that a hit now. A hit was something planned, something clinical, detached. A bullet to the back of the head with a pistol or a spraying of shotgun pellets from a motorcycle. Strangulation was more personal. I knew that from experience.

  As my breathing calmed, I began to think more clearly. I decomposed what had happened into chunks that I could process. I started with Savage.

  Why had he rushed me like that? If he had something to do with the hit, why get his hands dirty? Why make himself a suspect if down the road a hit did eventually work on me? I’d heard the bastard in the house in Carrignavar. Heard him … or had I? I replayed in my mind the few sentences I did hear. How sure could I be that it was Savage, or even a Guard? The gist of the conversation suggested it, but what level of certainty did I have? I had jumped to conclusions with Savage, perhaps tainted by my encounter with him in Churchfield. No, it was Savage; I couldn’t start second guessing myself on that score.

  Next up was Halloran. Why go after me with nothing? So the Moolah and Brick murders and my seeing to Chambers all involved strangulation. Weren’t there other incidents involving strangulation that would have revealed other suspects? It’s not like I had patented the technique. It seemed too personal with Halloran.

  It felt like the more I got involved, the further away from the truth I was getting. Dancing around the edges had gotten me nowhere other than Hurtsville – a beating here, a shooting there. It was time to turn the tables, dish out some hurt of my own, invite a few others to a little town I called Retribution.

  It was past time I paid a visit to Mogs. The rumour about a Moolah hit and The Gentleman’s involvement was looking ever more suspicious and I needed to get to the bottom of it.

  After a quick trip to an off-licence, I parked around the corner from Holy Cross Hospital. I made sure to park facing out into the traffic in a location where I was unlikely to be boxed in should I need to make a quick escape.

  Would Mogs be under Garda protection? There was every chance. Could I just ask at reception which ward Mogs was on? I guessed it was OK. I’d been to the Bridewell, given a statement, put it up to Halloran to arrest me. If Mogs wanted to see me, then Mogs had every right.

  Mogs was on St Therese’s ward and a nurse at the nurses’ station directed me to a room where there was, indeed, a Guard on duty outside. He was vaguely familiar. I thought his name might have been Hartigan or Halligan. He was old as Guards go, looked like he might have been put out to grass with this assignment. He got up. He clearly recognized me.

  “Are you out of your mind, Bosco?” he said.

  I peered into the room. Mogs seemed to be asleep. Or was he in a coma? Not another fucking coma!

  “Mogs,” I shouted.

  “Be on your way, Bosco.”

  “I’ve every right … Mogs!”

  “I’ll have you removed for making a disturbance.”

  Then a whispering voice: “Mickey.”

  I put a finger up to my mouth to try and shush the Guard.

  “Mickey, you dirty sham-feen. Get in here, boy.”

  Mogs’s voice was a bit clearer.

  I stared down the Guard for a few seconds. Eventually he relented. He patted me down – obviously I had left the gun in the car – and allowed me into Mogs’s room.

  Outside I could see the Guard was on a mobile phone. I didn’t have long before Savage or Halloran, or both, would arrive.

  Mogs pointed a bony finger at a chair and I sat down. I couldn’t say he looked any worse than he usually did, as close to death’s door as he perennially seemed.

  “How are you, Mogs?”

  He looked up at me, a bitter look on his face.

  “You left me, you cunt. To die on the road. Like a dog, boy. Like a fecking dog.”

  I couldn’t deny I’d run. I had good reason, though. But this wasn’t the time to enter into a debate. I needed information on the Moolah murder.

  “I can see how it might look that way. But if you knew what I knew, you’d understand.”

  Mogs looked away, looked right out the window at a view of the River Lee.

  “I need you to tell me something, Mogs. My life might depend on it.”

  Mogs said nothing, kept staring out the window. A flock of seagulls was picking away at whatever tasty morsels were being flushed into the Lee.

  “Mogs, I need you. I need … my friend.”

  Mogs sighed. Kept staring the other way. But if there was one way to win him back, it was free drink. I looked to the door; the Guard was busy with his smart phone.

  “Hey, Mogs,” I whispered. I took out a naggin of Captain Morgan and shook it so that Mogs would hear the familiar slosh. “I got something to perk you up, get some heat back in your bones.”

  Mogs turned quickly and I could see there was a glimmer in his eyes. Mogs was a dependent drinker, of that I was sure. I doubted he’d gone more than twelve hours without drink in the last twenty years.

  “Don’t fuck up again, Mickey.” He held out his hand, swiped the bottle when I offered it, and immediately opened it, taking a long swig. “I swear to ya, boy, I’ll get my mother’s blackthorn stick and make you wish you’d never heard my name.” He took another sip. “Jaysus, that’s class, like. Can you come and visit again tomorrow?”

  I was relieved that Mogs was somewhere approaching his old self. The one that was determined to curse life all the way to that six-foot-deep hole in the ground.

  “I’ll see what I can do, Mogs. But I need to know where you heard about the Moolah hit.”

  Mogs thought for a bit. “You won’t be mad if I tell you, boy, will ya? I know you’ve said to avoid the place, like.”

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  And I meant it. He was due a break.

  “I heard it at a card game in the Steamship, boy. Some feen I didn’t know said it. Mad red hair he had. Could’ve been about fifty. A demon at the cards he was. Like he could see what I had in the hole. I’d have thought he was cheating, only the Eel –”

  “Doesn’t take too kindly to cheating,” I finished. I wondered about that, though. Maybe he was selective in that regard. Like he’d snitch to one Guard, pay off another.

  Mogs grinned. “You hear the one about the blood stain on the table?”

  I smiled back. “Yeah.”

  “Two Fingers Terry the feen’s called. At least, that’s what the Eel calls him, like. I nearly believe the sham too.”

  I’d done business with the Eel, gotten a piece I had yet to use. I didn’t really have an excuse for a return journey. But Jimmy had been there when someone talked about a hit by Jordan on Moolah. I didn’t have much choice but to go back to swim with the Eel.

  I’d be keeping Mogs’s information from Jordan for now, like I had kept silent about Savage and the Limerick man. I didn’t want to go in head first with that particular accusation when I had yet to see if the rumour had any substance.

  Mogs gave me a few other details about the red-haired poker player. Height, weight, his tendency to bully with his chip stack.

  “One other thing that might help,” Mogs said. “The guy only plays in the weekly tournament. High stakes stuff, eight players max, winner takes all. Goes on all night, boy. A bit rich for most, like, so it’s usually the same five or six guys.”

  “That’s good, Mogs. Really good. Rich for most? How much we talking?”

  Mogs paused. Usually he blurted the first thing that entered his mind. Now he was scheming, it seemed.

  “Five thousand. Usually I play in the cash game, but I chanced my arm at the tourney.”

  I nearly swallowed my tonsils.

  “Five grand!”

  “Ah, I had a bit of money coming to me. Inheritance, like.”
<
br />   I was sceptical. Was there some rich uncle of his I didn’t know about?

  “Who died?”

  Mogs squirmed in the bed. Not from pain, though. A natural reaction to being trapped in bed when all he wanted to do was run.

  “Eh, no one. You see, me mam’s getting a bit dotty, like. She leaves cash in drawers, in tins up in cupboards. Doesn’t spend much of her pension. So it’ll be mine soon, anyway.”

  I brought a hand up to cover my forehead.

  “Mogs … doesn’t she have the right to a will, to decide what to do with her estate after she dies?”

  He winked at me. “Sure, won’t I write her will for her anyway, make sure she does what’s right, boy.”

  I just grunted in response. I didn’t want to interfere. He’d suffered at his mother’s hands long enough to deserve the cash. He didn’t deserve her giving it all away to the dogs’ home.

  I had to broach something else before I left. The hit had been intended for Mogs. He hadn’t co-operated with the shades, but he might tell me something. Maybe I could help in some way.

  “Guards say you didn’t co-operate with them. They seem happy … no, that’s not the right word … they seem sure that you were the target and not me.”

  Mogs laughed. “It took my retirement before I became important to someone. I know things, Mickey. I know enough to put some people away for a long time, like.”

  I wondered if Mogs was talking to the Guards. Was he a CI? Is that why he was on someone’s hit list? But there was another possibility.

  “How much of a problem is the cards?” I asked. “How much are you in the hole to the Eel?”

  Mogs swiped a hand.

  “Ah, I can handle it, boy.”

  The holes in his belly said otherwise. His possible need for Garda cash also.

  “You don’t think the Eel had anything to do with it?”

  Mogs snorted.

  “Nah, boy. I’m worth more to him above ground. It’s got to be something I know about some sham or other.”

  I wasn’t so sure I agreed with him. If there was even a grain of truth in what the Eel said he did to card cheats, what might he do if you welshed on a debt? But I kept my counsel. I had enough scumbags to sort out without adding Jimmy the fixer to the list.