A Man With One of Those Faces (The Dublin Trilogy Book 1)

by Caimh McDonnell

  Paul stopped in front of the gates. They looked so small now. Back in his youth, they’d seemed massive – a portal to another world. In a way, they had been. Being part of that team was the only time in his whole life he’d felt like he’d belonged anywhere. The big chain with the padlock was lying on the ground beside the gate. He pushed through and Brigit followed him. The old gates squealed to announce their arrival.

  Paul turned to his left and realised what the unusual smell was. The three portacabins were now burnt out shells of their former selves, wisps of dead smoke still rising in places. Amidst the carnage, on a deckchair, sat Bunny McGarry, a half-full bottle of whiskey in hand. He raised it in salute. “Ah, Paulie and Nurse Conroy, welcome to the barbeque.”

  Paul walked towards the burnt-out structures, looking around him in horror. “What the hell happened?”

  “Gerry bastard Fallon is what happened, the fat-arsed son of a skinny-arsed whore that he is.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Brigit.

  “Me and him had a little chat earlier, about how all men have their weaknesses. The bastard found mine in record time.”

  Bunny took a slug straight from the bottle; Paul noticed an already empty one lying discarded nearby. He moved forward and looked at what was lying on the ground beside Bunny. It was the remnants of a large sack, containing a load of half burned yellow and blue jerseys. Bunny looked down at them forlornly.

  “They’d been new at the start of the season. Spent fecking weeks traipsing around finding a sponsor for those.”

  “Were you insured?” asked Brigit.

  “Hah! Oh God, yeah. We have been ever since we got the fecking chandeliers installed.”

  Paul looked down at Bunny, squeezed into the deckchair that was far too small to contain him, his ever-present black sheepskin coat hugged tightly to him, closed against the elements.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Not nearly as much as I intend to be.”

  “Is this why you dragged us over here, Bunny? So we can watch you wallow?”

  Bunny glared up at Paul, his lips moving as if starting and abandoning several different responses, before he turned to look at Brigit instead.

  “You should have seen yer man here, back in the day. He was the finest pure striker of the ball this field has ever seen. Could’ve played for the county, if he hadn’t quit.”

  Paul could feel all the old anger rise in him. “Yeah, that’s what happened. I quit. You’re full of shit, Bunny.”

  “Punish me all you want, but why’d you have to go punish yourself? And the rest of the lads? We had a championship final!” There was a note of pleading in his voice, like this decision could be revisited. “D’ye know how many times we’ve got past the second round in the 17 years since then? Once! And we got that on a forfeit.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I was sick of playing your stupid game.”

  “Fecking bullshit,” he spat the words out, saliva speckling his lips as he spoke. “Call me a shite all you want, but don’t disrespect the game. You fecking loved it. I know you did.”

  “I’d have loved a home more!” Paul nearly screamed the words at him, before he turned away. He hated this. He hated that Bunny could still get to him. That all these emotions could come rushing back to the surface. He hated how his hands were shaking, and how he could feel hot tears forming in his eyes. Now was not the time.

  “I’m sorry.” The words had been spoken so quietly that it took a few moments for Paul to realise that they’d not just been in his head.

  He turned to look back at Bunny.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bunny repeated, staring down at the ground. “I’m sorry for everything.”

  “Christ, the great Bunny McGarry apologising. You must be drunk.”

  Bunny’s deckchair creaked under his weight as he leaned forward.

  “Ah for feck sake, just take the apology and don’t be a prick about it.”

  “Shove your apology up your arse, ye miserable old bastard!”

  Paul could sense Brigit looking at him but he didn’t want to make eye contact with her. He didn’t want her trying to take his anger away. He had every right to it. He’d never had much, but this he owned.

  “I messed up, alright?” said Bunny. “I messed up so many things in my useless fecking life, but messing up your life too is my biggest regret amongst the many. Y’know, since this thing started, people keep bringing up the Madigan’s job to me. How you and Paddy Nellis made me look like a fecking eejit. They keep expecting me to be angry. Do you want the truth? I’m not. I had it coming and you gave it to me but good. Jaysus, truth be told, I was proud of ye.”

  “Yeah, so proud that you’ve been hassling me non-stop ever since.”

  Paul was taken aback by the look of shock in Bunny’s eyes.

  “Hassling ye? Hassling ye? I’ve been watching out for you. That was my worry. That you’d end up wasting yourself on becoming just another two-bit gurrier, running around doing little jobs for grifters like Nellis or worse, scumbags like Fallon. I didn’t want your one big success in the world of crime to become the start of a shitting career in it.”

  “So what? You’re expecting me just to forgive and forget now?”

  Bunny shook his head and gave a sad little laugh. “Fuck no. I can’t forgive me, and I can’t think of one good reason why you should either. In fact…”

  Bunny went to heave himself out of the deckchair. His right hand slipped on the armrest, sending him sprawling messily onto the ground, atop the scorched remains of the jerseys.

  “Oh for fuck sake,” said Paul.

  Brigit looked at Paul but he remained firmly rooted to the spot. Instead, she moved over to try and help Bunny up.

  “I’m alright, I’m alright,” he slurred, dragging himself unceremoniously back onto his feet. “Standing eight count, I’m fine.” He bobbed and weaved a bit to prove his point. “All I was going to say was…” he extended his chin out in Paul’s direction, “hit me.”

  “What?”

  “Hit me. C’mon, you’ll feel better for it.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you fight before, Bunny. I’m not stupid enough to believe you.”

  Bunny crossed his heart and then held up three fingers. “Hit me, as hard and as many times as you like. I’ve got it coming. I promise I won’t fight back, dib dib – scout’s honour.”

  Paul’s hands clenched into fists. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Tempt you? I’m fecking begging you.”

  “This is typical. You’d only offer this when you know my shoulder is screwed. I’d hurt myself more than you by trying.”

  Bunny’s face became a mask of drunken concentration, as he pouted his lips in thought. Then he raised a finger and smiled broadly. “One sec.”

  He bent down, almost stumbling as he did so, and retrieved a hurley from the ground. He extended it out, handle-first, towards Paul. “Here ye go, use this – s’perfect. You get to wallop the bollocks off me, and I get to see you swing a hurl again. There’s something in it for both of us.”

  Paul angrily snatched it out of his hands.

  “Paul!” The outrage was there for all of them to hear in Brigit’s voice.

  “What? I’m just giving the man what he wants.”

  “Absolutely,” grinned Bunny. “This is natural justice at its finest.”

  Paul adjusted his grip and pulled the hurl back.

  “Paul, put that down this instant.”

  “Feck off back to Leitrim, love, this doesn’t concern you.”

  “Don’t talk to her like that,” said Paul.

  “C’mon ye pissy wee fecker, show me why not.”

  Brigit moved and stood in front of Bunny. “Enough!”

  “Get out of the way, Brigit.”

  “No, I won’t. I’m not going to stand by and watch you two idiots do whatever the hell this is. Need I remind you, WE are in trouble and WE are here because this fool is supposed to have information t
hat can help us.”

  Their eyes locked. Paul looked at her for what felt like a very long time, before he slowly lowered the hurley. Brigit turned on her heels and faced Bunny.

  “And as for you, you are supposed to be helping us. So either start doing that, or else we are out of here.”

  “Well you can fuck off.”

  Paul wasn’t sure which one of them looked more surprised by the slap, Brigit or Bunny. She’d not put that much power behind it, but in his drunken state, it’d still been enough to cause him to stumble a couple of feet to his right.

  “Stop making this all about you,” she said. “Either help us, or get the hell out of the way.” There was a pause when nobody spoke, before Brigit added in a much calmer voice. “I’m very sorry for hitting you. I’m not normally a violent person.”

  “You did rugby tackle a man through a plate glass door earlier,” added Paul.

  “Today is not a normal day.”

  “You’ve also hit me quite a few times.”

  Brigit glared at Paul, who sensed that now was a good time to stop talking.

  “Bandon.” Bunny spat the word out.

  Paul gave a bitter little laugh.

  “We know about Bandon,” said Brigit. “We’re heading down there now.”

  “Then you know feck all,” said Bunny.

  “Meaning?”

  “Down? You’ve got the wrong Bandon. There’s another one across in Mayo, a tiny village. That’s the one you want.”

  “How’re you so sure?” said Brigit.

  “I got an old friend to tell me by dropping him out a window.”

  “And how do you know he wasn’t lying?”

  “Because he really didn’t want me to do it again.”

  “What’s supposed to be there?” said Paul.

  “I’ve not got a fecking clue. All I know is Gerry Fallon seems awful keen for people to not have a look there. Good enough for me.”

  Paul and Brigit looked at each other.

  “Well,” said Brigit, “Kruger did say that he thought she was held somewhere in the West. Mayo does fit.”

  Paul turned back to Bunny, “anything else?”

  “Yeah, I know who Fallon’s boy in the Guards is.”

  “And?”

  “The worst person imaginable. You can’t trust anybody.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” said Paul, before adding. “Is that everything?”

  Bunny nodded.

  “Right, have fun cleaning this lot up.”

  Paul turned and started walking back towards the gate. Brigit caught up with him after a few steps and put her hand on his left arm to stop him walking.

  “Wait a sec.”

  Paul stopped and looked at her pointedly.

  “I think we should take him with us.”

  “What?! No way.”

  “C’mon, look at him, for Christ sake.”

  “Exactly.”

  “He’d be very useful,” she said.

  “Are you high?”

  Brigit started counting reasons off on her fingers. “Firstly, he’s a policeman, it’d be nice to have one of those on our side.”

  “Bunny is only ever on Bunny’s side.”

  “Secondly,” she continued, “he does seem to have a flair for getting information out of people.”

  “Through violence!”

  “Well, seeing how things have gone over the last couple of days, the chances are, there might be more of that.”

  “And?”

  “And thirdly, if anything, he probably hates Gerry Fallon more than we do now. From everything you’ve told me, a pissed off Bunny McGarry might be the best weapon we’ve got.”

  Paul looked back and forth between Brigit and Bunny a few times.

  “Damn it. Alright.”

  Brigit patted Paul on the arm.

  “Excellent decision.” It was nice of her to say, but neither of them believed he’d actually been the one to make it. She started walking back towards Bunny.

  Paul turned on his heels and raised his voice. “But I am sitting in the front seat!”

  Brigit turned and gave him a humouring nod and smile.

  “And… I’m in charge of the radio too!”

  Brigit again nodded. Paul noticed Bunny looking at him in confusion. He could feel his cheeks redden. He turned and headed back towards the car as fast as he could. He needed to figure out how the radio worked as apparently, he felt strongly about it.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Brigit awoke with a start and looked around her, her face flush with the embarrassment of waking up suddenly, anywhere, that isn’t your own bed. She yelped involuntarily when she saw the stern pudgy face of a woman in her 50s glaring in the window at her, squinting eyes over lips puckered with disapproval. Brigit gave an apologetic smile and rolled down the Bentley’s window. The woman reflexively pulled back in disgust and waved her hand in front of her nose, adding another layer to Brigit’s embarrassment.

  When they’d pulled over, it had been a stark choice: either leave the windows open and freeze to death in the bitter November night, or shut them and trap yourself in an enclosed space with the human rights violation that was Bunny McGarry’s arse.

  In what was probably for the best, Bunny had passed out on the back seat almost as soon as they’d started driving, once he’d delivered a brief but impassioned monologue on the injustice of Brigit taking his bottle of whiskey away. The first time he’d farted, it had been novel. It had broken the tension between herself and Paul. The entertainment value had however lasted nowhere near as long as the smell. The man’s arse reeked like something had crawled up there and died a slow and painful death by cabbage. In the space of the few hours that they’d been pulled over in the pub’s carpark, Brigit must have in some way become accustomed to it as, judging by the other woman’s facial expression, the smell clearly had not improved.

  “We’re not open,” said the woman in a surprisingly plummy accent.

  “Excuse me?”

  She pointed at the pub. “We’re not open for several hours, and this is not a halting site. It is a private carpark.”

  “Yes, sorry, we just pulled over to rest.”

  The woman looked at Brigit’s two unconscious companions, before pulling another in her seemingly endless array of disapproving faces. Clearly, something untoward was going on here, and she was not having it. Not in her carpark. Not on a Sunday morning.

  “Good day to you.” The way she said it made it very clear that she didn’t really care what kind of a day Brigit had, just so long as she didn’t have any more of it here.

  Paul awoke at the sound of the Bentley’s engine roaring into life and looked around him.

  “Jesus, the country really does stink.”

  Brigit put the car in gear and pulled back out onto the N60. ”That’s not the country.”

  She’d pulled over for a few hours just outside Castlebar once she’d realised that reaching Bandon at 4AM was going to be of no use to them. There’d be very limited investigative opportunities when everybody was tucked up in their beds. Besides, if everybody else in the car was going to get some kip, she’d be damned if she was going to be the only one missing out. It had also been a good way of forestalling the inevitable, the moment when they’d have to face up to the fact that they’d absolutely no idea what they were looking for when they got to Bandon. Could it really be possible that Fiachra Fallon and Sarah-Jane Cranston had been living all this time in a small town in Mayo? Nowhere was that out of the way, was it? If not that, what were they hoping for?

  They reached Bandon at 8:27AM, and the other end of it about seven seconds later. Even by the standard of country towns, it was small. Really nothing more than a crossroads, a pub, a church, a shop and about 20 houses. They’d passed a small primary school and a couple of playing fields on the way in.

  “Where the hell is the rest of it?” asked Paul.

  “Well,” said Brigit, “there’ll be surrounding farms
as well, but it’s a small town alright. What should we do?”

  And there it was. The question she didn’t have an answer to and, judging by Paul’s facial expression, one he’d no more of a clue on than she did.

  “We could say we’re thinking of moving to the area?” he suggested. “Knock on a few doors?”

  “Or we could go into the pub,” added Brigit, “ask around?”

  “Bollocks.”

  Brigit was surprised; she’d thought Bunny was still asleep.

  “Moving to the area? To where exactly? D’ye think there’s a house around here for sale that every local person wouldn’t know about? And the pub? Yeah, the three strangers who turned up in the fecking Bentley asking questions, that won’t arouse suspicion either.”

  “Alright then, what should we do?”

  “Take the next turn then circle back around. We’ll park this car at the school. That’s as out of the way as you’ll get around here. And then…” He left it hanging, waiting to be asked. Paul looked at Brigit: clearly he wasn’t going to oblige. She rolled her eyes.

  “And then?”

  “We’re going to mass.”

  “That’s your big plan?” asked Paul sarcastically. “The power of prayer?”

  Bunny sighed theatrically as he sat up. “Small towns are made up of two things, people and buildings. Whatever we’re looking for, our best chance of finding it is by looking for what’s not supposed to be here. The best way of seeing the most amount of the people in one building at one time is…”

  “Mass,” finished Brigit.

  “Mass,” repeated Bunny.

  “You’re not just a pretty face, Bunny.”

  In response, Bunny farted loudly.

  They parked the car and made their way back to the church on foot, timing it to arrive fifteen minutes before 10 o’clock mass. They tried to keep a low profile as they walked in, although that was easier said than done. Paul was now sporting an impressive collection of injuries and Bunny looked like he’d lost a fight with a dumpster. Brigit was undoubtedly not looking too hot herself but it was best not to dwell on it.