The Murk Beneath

by L. D. Cunningham

  At that point I’d heard enough. Enough to last me a lifetime. I rose from my seat.

  “I would love to stay longer, Mogs, but there’s a couple of dodgy shades that have a hard on for me.”

  Mogs nodded. When it came to the Guards, Mogs was all in favour of getting one over on them.

  “Hey, Mickey,” he said as I exited the door. “You owe me a pint, boy.”

  Didn’t I always.

  Mogs wasn’t the only patient I knew in Holy Cross. There was also Chambers. The last time I’d laid my eyes on him was when I had almost choked the life out of his. Now he was in a coma, barely a flicker left in his brain. Enough maybe for a next of kin to deny he was brain dead, but in truth not enough to justify his undoubted continual suffering. And maybe it was the one flicker left that was enough for Chambers to be aware of the suffering, perhaps God’s or whatever vengeful higher power’s last laugh.

  I had a ridiculous thought. Chambers was the seed of all my troubles. Maybe if I could just see him for a moment, maybe say … say what? Sorry? Damn you? Maybe choke him until his life’s flame was finally snuffed out? Wouldn’t I be doing us both a favour if I did?

  I knew which ward he was on, had heard it more than once from an acquaintance or overheard it in a bar. It couldn’t hurt, surely, to take a look.

  I went into the lift, punched the button for the fourth floor. The lift stopped at the third. A burly man, his head bald, a tattoo on his pate, got on. He was wearing a white tunic, white pants. A nurse. A male nurse. It was Scoobs.

  I turned my head slightly to avoid my face being seen, but the lift was all mirrors and I could see Scoobs had identified me. I said nothing. Scoobs said nothing, initially. But he looked at the display panel on the lift when we stopped at the fourth floor, knew I meant to get off there. And there could only have been one reason for that.

  “Mickey, isn’t it? We met … we bumped into each other in the Horse.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nice to see you again.”

  I moved towards the door. Scoobs put an arm out to block me. He hit the close door button.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “Do you?”

  I probably looked a dishevelled mess, maybe looked desperate enough to try anything.

  “I just want to see him.” I almost called him Scoobs, tried to remember his real name. “I just want to …” I tried to find something to say, hoped something would come from the heart. Instead I just made up some bullshit I’d heard all too often from victims on the news. “I just want to find some closure.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Look, you might just come back if I turn you away, so I’d better do the decent thing and make sure there’s no family there first.”

  Make sure I don’t cup my hands around his throat, you mean.

  He pressed the open door button.

  “Wait here by the lift,” he said. “I’ll check.”

  I had an anxious wait. Were there grounds for security to eject me? Probably. I had no proper business on the fourth floor. But Scoobs returned alone and he led me to a room where I saw Chambers for the first time in nearly two years. I didn’t recognize the man I saw.

  “He’s been stable a while,” Scoobs said. “I’ve heard there’s even been some sign of improvement in his brain function.”

  The man I beat to a pulp had been a monstrous man in both size and behaviour. What I saw before me was a thin man with saggy skin. He looked … no, I didn’t want to think it. He looked angelic. Like Robbie had.

  I had a revelation then, one that I was glad to have, relieved almost. What if this idea that there was a heaven and a hell was a load of crap? What if there was only one gaff in the sky teeming with the best and worst of humanity. Like down here on Earth. No, Chambers was better off in his purgatory right there in the room where he was of no harm to anyone.

  “Enough improvement for him to ever wake up?”

  I counted the numerous tubes and wires poking out of his body. Were there seven? Like those twigs poking out over Robbie’s body?

  “Doubtful,” Scoobs said. “Improvement is one thing. Maybe he’ll piss on his own one day. But he’ll never have any quality of life, probably never another conscious thought.”

  Scoobs looked down at Chambers. I didn’t like the look of pity on his face. Chambers didn’t deserve it.

  I’d seen enough.

  “Thanks,” I said. I remembered the name. “Geoff.”

  Should I touch Chambers, say goodbye in some way? Like the last touch of a loved one in the funeral home. No. God, no.

  Scoobs walked me to the lift.

  “So did you get it?” he said.

  I was puzzled.

  “Closure,” he clarified.

  I pondered. Had I? Would the dreams stop? The visions of things in dark corners? No. There would never be closure. But I knew the boogie man would never boogie again.

  “In a way,” I said. “In a way.”

  I got out on the ground floor and walked to the exit.

  I saw someone walk in. Someone wearing a suit jacket that looked like it might have been scalped from an animal’s back. It was Halloran. Either he was there to question Mogs, or the Guard at his room had phoned him.

  I turned. I’d find another way out or wait for him to walk past.

  “Bosco?”

  I picked up my pace.

  “Bosco!”

  I ran down a corridor in the opposite direction to the front entrance. I saw an empty trolley bed. I pulled it and it turned sideways to block the corridor. It slowed Halloran.

  “You can’t dodge my questions forever, Bosco.”

  I took a left at the end of the corridor and ran a bit more, though it was more of a hurried shuffle by that point as I ran out of steam. To the right I saw a back entrance – a service entrance where dirty linen was being loaded onto a truck. I left Holy Cross hospital and looked back. No sign of Halloran.

  Why had I run? I had nothing to hide, did I? But I did. I had a gun in my car and I had every intention of discharging it.

  I couldn’t claim that Blackpool is the most glamorous of neighbourhoods. But it’s full of what southerners in the United States call good people. I think in the round I’m good people. My Mam’s definitely good people.

  It seemed I wasn’t on anyone’s hit list. I was on Halloran’s radar, though. But he’d had his chance to arrest me and he’d blown it. All things considered, I decided it was OK to return home. Before I did, I retrieved my Fiat Uno and left a message on Grace’s phone that I had left Geary’s VW in the field.

  When I arrived home, the kitchen smelled terrible. The bread on the counter top was mouldy, bananas had turned black, and the fridge smelled like a horse rendering plant. I opened the windows and hoped a good breeze would freshen up the gaff.

  Could I dare sit down, enjoy a stiff drink and get back to my book? Surely I deserved one relaxing evening having circled a whirlpool of destruction.

  I rummaged through the box for a new book. Or should I say, an old book I hadn’t read before. I’d enjoyed Melville’s Billy Budd, still had some of it to read, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it anymore after finding the Starman note.

  I found an old favourite, Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. It made me reconsider my search for something I hadn’t read before. Vonnegut’s writing style was uncomplicated, unpretentious, the cadence carrying the reader along. For probably the fourth or fifth time, I settled in for a night with Billy Pilgrim. It was a sufficiently intoxicating read that I didn’t lament the absence of alcohol in the house.

  Sitting in my old armchair, my stomach was hurting. Worse was the pain pulsing metronomically up the ribs on my right side with each laboured breath. I found it difficult to find a comfortable reading position. I still had some painkillers left and downed a couple with a bottle of Diet Coke.

  As I read, I thought about how it would have been nice to be Billy Pilgrim. To travel back in time and make some changes. But
when I thought deeper about it, I realized that Billy was just a passenger, that he had no control over events, that no matter what he did, things never changed. It was exactly how I felt.

  I slept terribly that night. For once it was the pain in my body rather than the pain in my mind that kept me awake.

  The next morning I planned to go to the shops in town to get some food. Healthy food. A ring of Clonakilty, though, to have with my dinner. If you didn’t have some kind of treat, you were liable to fall off the waggon completely. Low-fat milk, porridge – Organic Odlums – and fruit muesli to mix with it for the breakfast. Maybe a newspaper too. It was time enough that I started connecting with the world again.

  After some changeable days weatherwise, the morning was cold, but bright and the good people of Blackpool seemed to have a spring in their step. I put on a light jacket, donned a pair of sunglasses and opened the door.

  My house is just off a little cul de sac hill-lane called Farren Street. How it became known as a street is anyone’s guess. I took a right onto Gerald Griffin Street.

  Gerald Griffin was a Limerick man, but joined the Christian Brothers congregation in the North Monastery just around the corner from where I live. I was educated in The Mon, went some way to becoming a man there – one might well call it a school of hard knocks, and I received a few there. Griffin, one of Ireland’s lesser known literary figures who had been a newspaper reporter in London in the early nineteenth century, died a young man. Young like my Dad. A newspaperman like my Dad. But I felt like I had a few years left in me yet, might even see old age. I hadn’t thought like that for a while. Maybe I had found some new reasons to live. Like Grace, for instance.

  Some kids were on their way to the North Presentation school. A little one, probably still four years old and no more than a few weeks in big boy school, was clinging on to his father’s trouser leg. I vaguely remembered doing the same more than three decades ago. It was sights like that made me feel my age, feel pressure to find a woman, settle down, have a kid or two. I’d found a woman. I think I wanted to get serious with her. And she was of good child-bearing age. Jesus, that was reductionist of me, but pragmatic all the same – no point pussyfooting and dying alone and childless.

  The new burner phone rang. I recognized Grace’s number.

  “I was just thinking about you,” I said.

  “O'Keeffe’s at home,” she said, getting right down to business. “He was released without charge this morning.”

  “That’s good, Grace. I saw one of the Guards in there laying it on thick. But I guess he was just putting the frighteners on O'Keeffe.”

  “I think O'Keeffe’s pretty immune to the frighteners, Michael.”

  “True that,” I said.

  It didn’t sound right to my own ears when I said it. I sounded frivolous. I took a left onto Cathedral Walk in the shadow of the North Cathedral.

  “Daddy would like to meet you in person. He’s in a funny mood. I’m not sure whether I like it or not.”

  I was surprised by this development. Grace had been the intermediary to this point, but now The Gentleman wanted to talk to me directly. I could be sure it wasn’t something to like.

  “There’s a small warehouse unit near Blarney Street that he’s having converted to some sports hall or something. He wants to meet you there.”

  Grace gave me the address on Glen Ryan Road. Told me to be there at six. I agreed to the meet, albeit reluctantly. I’d gone a long way towards trusting Jordan, but for me trust was always over the next hill, never quite in sight.

  “We must meet up again, Grace. I enjoyed our meal at Shanley’s. Maybe we can go somewhere fancier?”

  Again I had to remind myself that when it came to fancy places to frequent, I was about as knowledgeable as I was about the inner workings of a computer.

  “That sounds nice.” She paused for a while and I could hear her breathing more heavily than normal. “But let’s see what Daddy has to say at the meeting.”

  I didn’t see how the two were linked – what Jordan would say and another date with Grace – but I didn’t follow up to clarify. Instead, I wished her a pleasant day and continued my journey to the shops in town; there was the pressing matter of sourcing gourmet black pudding for my dinner.

  I called to my mother’s house on the way home from the shops.

  The last time I had seen her, I had been concerned. She’d been distant. She’d been worried about what I was up to. I hoped she was in better form.

  She didn’t look so bedraggled when she answered the door, but she had a stern look. I hadn’t called around, not made a phone call for a couple of days.

  “In the name of Saint Padre Pio, Michael, I was worried sick.”

  Invoking the name of Padre Pio was probably apt enough. I had my own stigmata of sorts: the wound to my leg, the bruising to my ribs. But I was no saint.

  “There was no need, Mam. I’m grand.”

  I held out a bag, which she took. She went to the kitchen and I followed.

  “Arbutus bread and a jar of Folláin strawberry jam,” I explained. “Not from the farmers, but not far off either.”

  She smiled. “Well, it’s the next best thing to the farm, I suppose.”

  I never fully understood her obsession with farm produce. She was an inner city girl from Barrack Street, but I assumed in her day that the farmers brought their produce to the markets on the Coal Quay.

  She peered into the bag I kept for myself.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I shrugged my shoulders, but knew what she meant. “The black pudding. I thought you said the doctor had warned you off the stuff?”

  I blundered over a few words: “I, uh, em …”

  She laughed. “I see it’s Clonakilty too. I prefer the Denny myself. A bit more bite to it. The stuff hasn’t done me any harm in all these years.”

  The last time I saw her I might have disagreed. Now her spirits were higher, her pallor soft and warm.

  “I’ll keep myself to the two slices,” I said.

  I meant it. They’d even be thinner than normal. Down to about fifty-percent of my usual helping. Tapering was the best approach. Like I had tried with the fags before going cold turkey.

  “You seem in good form today,” I said. “The last day I was worried about you. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

  Her smile melted away. Some colour drained from her cheeks.

  “Jesus, Mam. What did I say?”

  She sat at the table.

  “Sit down, Michael. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of it. With my tendency for hypochondria, my first thought was cancer. It’s my first thought for many things. I didn’t sit down.

  “I had a visitor an hour before you called over the last time. Someone who knew your dad.”

  For some reason I thought about the note. Starman. I had yet to ask my mother about the name. But I’d get to that later. People who knew Dad were at a premium.

  “Who was it?”

  “He seemed to know you, too, Michael.”

  “Who, Mam?”

  “A detective. He had on this mohair suit jacket. The kind he wore back then too.”

  I knew the answer before I asked the question.

  “His name, Mam?”

  “Richard.”

  First name basis. I wondered why.

  “Halloran?” I asked.

  She looked puzzled.

  “How could you know that, Michael?”

  “Dick Halloran and his hairy suit,” I said. “We’ve met more than once. But he has business with me. Why did he call here? Why didn’t you tell me? Was he harassing you? Because if he was, I’ll –”

  “No, Michael. That’s not a road I want you going down. Richard and your father had history.”

  At that point I sat down, couldn’t bear my weight anymore.

  “What kind of history?”

  “You remember when the IRA kidnapped that horse trainer? Harkin, I thi
nk it was.”

  I did. The ransom demand. The botched Special Branch operation. I nodded.

  “Richard was one of those Special Branch officers. Your father did that exposé in the Standard. He would probably have had to retract it if …”

  I saved her the pain. “He hadn’t died.”

  She nodded. She got up and went over to the cupboard with the drawbridge.

  “No, Mam,” I said. “That stuff doesn’t do you any good.”

  “Pah!” she said and opened the cupboard. A full bottle of Huzzar was in the back. “It helps me think.”

  I’d thought that about the Jameson. Thought wrong, though. Nothing made you think more clearly than a clear head.

  Mam poured herself a standard measure. Left it neat. She sat back down.

  “It explains a lot,” I said. “Halloran’s had it in for me. Was getting up close and personal. Didn’t seem rational.”

  Mam took a little sip. She was more measured in her approach to drink than I had been.

  “Richard was asking about your whereabouts on the morning of the tenth.”

  He’d asked the same question when he doorstepped me a few days earlier. I’d pleaded the fifth, dared him to return with a warrant. That was before he revealed his suspicions in the Bridewell.

  “And?” I prodded.

  “What do you mean and?” She was offended for some reason. “And nothing. I said you spent the morning here.”

  I hadn’t. I’d woken in a stupor, crawled to the doc, gone home and drunk some more before falling asleep. I was offended she thought she might need to alibi me.

  “Jesus, Mam. That wasn’t clever. Do you know what kind of trouble you could get yourself into lying like that? And how suspicious I would look if they proved you were wrong?”

  That bitter look painted her face. “The fact that I feel like I have to lie about your whereabouts should tell you all you need to know. Moping about at home, on the drink, no doubt.”

  She looked into her glass. “Like father like son,” she said and took another sip.