Once inside, the trio grabbed a pew near the back and did their best to be unobtrusive. By the time the priest appeared, the church was relatively full, with a congregation of about a hundred Brigit reckoned. Not too shabby attendance-wise. It’d been a waste for their purposes though. She’d compared every man and woman who passed her to the mental pictures she held in her mind of what Sarah-Jane Cranston and Fiachra Fallon might look like now. Even allowing for hard lives or extensive plastic surgery, there was nobody who came close. Maybe they’d have more luck at the midday mass.
Bunny sat on Brigit’s right, his head buried in his hands as he knelt. She guessed the mother of all hangovers had finally kicked in.
“Are you OK?”
He spoke without raising his head. “Three rows up on the far side, brown wax jacket.”
Brigit looked at the man indicated. She’d seen him walk in alone. He was mid-30s at most, with a rat-tail hairdo, and a squirrely way about him. He was also way too young to have had anything to do with Rapunzel. He’d not have been old enough for a paper round at the time.
“Who is that?”
“That,” whispered Bunny, “is the thing that is not supposed to be here. As soon as communion starts, you,” he pointed to Brigit, “back to the car with me pronto, and you,” pointing at Paul, “follow him. Get car make, model, license plate.”
“Who put him in charge?” asked Paul, a little too loudly.
The man in the pew in front of them turned and gave them a look. Paul waved his hand apologetically. He then turned to see Brigit giving him a look too. He nodded begrudgingly and kept quiet.
Brigit nipped out with Bunny as soon as communion started, offering up a silent apology to her mother as she did so. She remembered all-too-well being spotted sneaking out of mass early when she was a teenager. Her mother had been clever about it. Instead of grounding her daughter, she’d grounded herself. She didn’t go into the village for two weeks, mortified for people to see her, after her raising such a wayward hellion of a daughter. This was long before Brigit had even heard the term passive-aggressive. It’d worked though. She’d stayed so long at the end of mass after that, priests would regularly come up and ask if everything was OK.
“So who was that?” asked Brigit, as they walked back towards the school as quickly as they could without drawing attention.
“A creepy little shite called Jonny Carroll.”
“You’re sure?”
“I never forget a face, especially one I put behind bars about twelve years ago.”
“Oh, what for?”
“Let’s just say, you’d have to be really stuck to use him as a babysitter.”
They had made it back to the school’s small carpark in under ten minutes. Two young boys, their BMXs strewn carelessly on the ground, were staring at the Bentley like it’d just landed from another planet. The taller one looked at Brigit and Bunny with unreserved disappointment, and then walloped his snotty-nosed compatriot across the back of the head. “I knew it wasn’t Kanye, ye lying ball-bag.”
Paul staggered in ten minutes later, sweating from the exertion of speed walking. He leaned against the car, regaining his breath.
“Ford Mondeo, red, 04-G-17435… no 14735.”
“Which way’d he go?” asked Bunny.
“I dunno,” said Paul, before adding nervously, “I didn’t actually see him get into the car.”
“What?! How da feck do you know it was his car then?”
“He was… sorta standing near it with – you could tell by his body language and…” Paul looked fazed, “this old fella started chatting to me for some reason.”
“For some reason?!” exclaimed Bunny. “You’re in the country city slicker, where people are polite! Mammy Mary and all the saints, I give you one job to do! Do I’ve to do everything myself?”
“Well why didn’t you then?” said Paul.
“Because Jonny Carroll might not be the sharpest tool in the box, but even he’s going to notice if the man who sent him down is following him about. I was lucky to get out of the fecking church without being spotted.”
“Ahhh, blow it out your foul arse, Bunny.”
A huffy silence descended on the carpark as the two men leaned against the car and stared off into two different bits of distance. Brigit sighed heavily; this was going to be a very long trip. Maybe they should get back on the road? Do another sweep of the town before the midday mass or…
Brigit opened the driver’s door and hopped in.
“If anybody is interested, a red Mondeo just drove by.”
By the time they’d got on the road, the Mondeo was out of sight around a bend. Brigit put her foot to the floor and, after two nervous miles, she got the Mondeo back in her sights just in time to see it take a left at a crossroads.
“Don’t get too close.”
“But don’t leave too much room.”
“Hang back…”
“But don’t drive like you’re deliberately hanging back.”
“Everybody shut up!” she snapped. “This isn’t the first time I’ve followed somebody.”
It was. What she’d meant to say was she’d seen it loads on telly, but then had remembered how that would sound. To be fair, she’d rarely seen somebody cope with the unique problem of following somebody when there was no other traffic on the road, as was now the case. The constant advice had been ruining the moment somewhat though; James Bond never had to put up with that crap.
Brigit pushed the Bentley up to sixty when the Mondeo disappeared around a blind bend in the road. As they rounded the corner, she had to slam on the brake to prevent ramming right into the back of it. The Mondeo having become trapped behind a tractor that’d just pulled out of a gate, oblivious to the possibility of other traffic existing.
“Jesus!”
Brigit’s heart pounded as the car skidded on wet leaves before coming to a stop, all of two feet behind it.
She was dimly aware of Bunny diving for cover in the back seat. As she looked up, she could see the man from the church looking back at her over his shoulder.
Bunny’s hand pushed forward from between the two seats and slapped the horn, its loud honk ringing out.
“What the?” exclaimed Brigit.
“Don’t look back at me,” barked Bunny. “Quick, give him the fingers.”
“What?”
“Do it!”
Paul obediently threw up his fingers and was greeted with an enthusiastic wanker gesture in response from the man in front. They could see him shaking his head as he drove off behind the tractor.
“Off you go,” said Bunny.
“What was the point of that?”
“No eejit who is trying to follow somebody is going to almost ram them up the arse and then flick them the Vs. He’s now thinking you’re a pair of clueless gobshites from Dublin who don’t know how to drive. What he’s not thinking is – those people are following me. If the two of you could have a row now, that’d be fabulous.”
“Your driving is bloody appalling,” said Paul, with way more sincerity than necessary.
“How dare you! I was trying to keep up with the bloke that you almost lost.”
“Perfect,” said Bunny, “just like that.”
Half a mile down the road, the Mondeo pulled out around the tractor and accelerated away. Brigit tried to follow suit but sod’s law meant two cars were now coming the other way, blocking her path. They then reached a stretch of winding road where over-taking was impossible.
“We’re losing him!”
Brigit laid on the horn in pointless frustration. All this got her was a relaxed wave from the man on the tractor. When they finally reached a straight bit of road, Brigit fired the Bentley out and around, getting way too close for comfort to a van in the oncoming lane. They came to a crossroads and looked each way. There was no sign of the Mondeo.
“Shit!”
In the absence of any other information, they went left for a couple of miles but there was no sign
of their quarry. When they reached another crossroads, Brigit pulled a U-turn and zoomed back to the original crossroads they’d lost the Mondeo at, heading the other way. By this point, ten minutes had passed since they’d last seen it. With the headstart, it could be half way out of the county by now.
As they passed a couple of small side-roads Paul suddenly walloped the dashboard. “STOP THE CAR!!!”
Brigit slammed the brakes on, almost sending Bunny hurtling into the front seat as she did so. “Shitting Nora woman!”
Paul turned in his seat, his face flush with excitement.
“In the hospital, before McNair attacked me, he was rambling about death and all that. I thought it was random nonsense. At one point he asked me about believing in heaven or something, then he said he knew he wasn’t going there.”
“She keeps driving like this, we’ll all be fecking joining him!”
Brigit aggressively shushed Bunny, she could see the fire in Paul’s eyes.
“The point is, he said he wasn’t going to heaven, he’d be going to the other place, six feet under. Only, he didn’t say ‘under ground’ like people say, he said ‘under the rock’… and…”
“And?” said Brigit.
Paul pointed behind them and they all turned to look. There, by the side of the road was a battered and worn wooden postbox. In the cracked and faded paint on the side were written the words ‘The Rock.’
Chapter Forty-Nine
‘The Rock’, as it turned out, was a fairly ordinary looking farmhouse built on the top of a large rocky outcrop, surrounded by fields. Half a mile from the main road and with no other buildings in sight, save for a couple of disused sheds at the bottom of the hill behind it, it was the definition of remote. If ‘The Rock’ itself was something of an anti-climax, the fact that the Red Mondeo was parked outside thrilled Paul. He had been right.
Since Thursday night, he’d become entangled in some complicated web he didn’t understand. Whatever it all meant, the best chance for answers lay inside that farmhouse.
When they’d turned onto the road, they quickly realised that the only thing on it was The Rock. The boreen was only wide enough to fit one car and, even then, overgrown briars clawed at the Bentley’s flanks as it drove slowly through. Brigit stopped the car at the bottom of the gravel drive leading up to the house. “We need to get out of here before he sees us.”
“What’re we going to do?” asked Paul.
“I reckon we put the place under surveillance, try and figure out what’s going on,” said Brigit.
“Right.”
“Yeah,” chimed in Bunny, “I’ll go get a fecking panto cow outfit and you two can stand in that field all day and try and peak in the windows.”
Before anyone could respond, Bunny opened the back door and stepped out.
“What’s he doing?” said Brigit. “Why’s he opening the boot? Why’s he got his hurley out? Where does he think he’s going?”
Paul looked at her. “You’re asking me like I have any more information than you do.”
Bunny sauntered by, casually swinging his hurley by his side as he headed up the gravel driveway.
“Well, I guess that answers all of your questions.”
“We should discuss this!”
“Don’t look at me, you’re the one who wanted to bring him.”
Paul got out of the car and quickly strode up the driveway to catch up with Bunny, Brigit joining them a second later.
“What’s the plan here?” she panted.
“Plan?” said Bunny. “There’s no plan. I’m just saying hello to an old friend.”
“And there is no need for violence.”
Bunny turned and regarded her with surprise. “Moi? How dare you – I’m Mahatma fecking Gandhi, only, y’know, without the whole nappy thing.”
“Asshole,” spat Paul. Bunny and Brigit turned to look at him in surprise.
“That’s a bit of a controversial opinion to have on Gandhi.”
“I wasn’t…” Embarrassed, Paul nodded his head towards the adjoining field. In it, regarding them with a look of belligerent boredom, stood a donkey.
“I’m not a big fan,” said Paul.
Bunny was about to ring the doorbell when they heard singing from the back of the house. A nasally male voice was murdering some song about how he fought the law. The trio walked around the house to see the man in the brown wax jacket they’d seen earlier, hanging out his washing. His back was to them, and he was humming along to whatever music was in his headphones, bobbing his head and gyrating his legs spasmodically as he worked. He threw in a sharp 360-heel turn that went totally out of control at the midway point. That was when he saw Bunny McGarry beaming at him.
“Howerya, Johnny?”
In his haste to turn his spin into a sprint in the opposite direction, Johnny Carroll went flying over his half-full basket of washing and planted his face messily into the ground.
Bunny turned to look at Brigit. “I never touched him.”
As Carroll tried to scramble away, Bunny calmly grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and heaved him to his feet. His iPod landing softly on the wet grass.
“Jaysus, Johnny, is this anyway to greet an old friend? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you weren’t pleased to see me.”
Paul had heard people described as having eyes like a trapped animal, but he’d never known what it really meant until that moment. Carroll’s eyes bulged and darted about frantically, looking at anything that wasn’t Bunny. Looking for anything that could help him escape from Bunny.
Bunny shoved him up against the back wall of the house. “Last time I heard about you, Johnny, was all of eight years ago now. You were out on parole and the girl’s family were mad keen to meet you. Rumour was they had, hence your unlamented disappearance. I’m so happy to see you alive and well.”
“I… how did… I didn’t… who are… why… it’s not… don’t… where did…”
“All excellent questions. Calm down, Johnny, you’ll do yourself a mischief.”
“I thought she was sixteen!”
Bunny casually lifted his hurl to leave it resting on the other man’s shoulder.
“Now, now, Johnny, let’s not go over old ground. You know how it upsets Mabel here. You remember her?”
Bunny moved the top of his hurley to rest under Carroll’s chin, who nodded as briskly as he could in the circumstance. Bunny named his hurleys. Of course he did. Paul had forgotten that little tradition. It was Samantha way back when he was on the St Jude’s team. He’d always warned his boys, anyone who was caught robbing would have a date with the lovely Samantha. It was a joke, a joke nobody wanted to test.
“I am impressed to see you’re going to mass though, Johnny, asking forgiveness for your many sins.”
“I’m trying to be good, honest, Bunny. I’m on the side of the angels.”
“Well isn’t that marvellous? If only you’d shown the same dedication to the parole process.”
“It’s not my fault,” pleaded Carroll.
“Of course it isn’t,” said Bunny, in that mocking Cork lilt of his, “Gerry Fallon made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.”
Carroll’s eyes bulged so much, Paul thought his head was about to explode. “You know?!”
Bunny smiled calmly back at him. “Look where I’m standing Johnny. I know everything. Did you think this was a social call?”
“But Fallon said…”
Bunny pushed the hurl up until it applied pressure to Carroll’s throat.
“You need to ask yourself a question, Johnny. Who’re you more afraid of – Gerry Fallon in the future, or me, right here, right now?”
Bunny leaned in to put his face a couple of inches from Carroll’s, so that the patented McGarry wonky-eyed stare filled his entire field of vision. “Well?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Bunny, anything you want. He made me come here when the last guy died and… I’m as much a prisoner here as anyone.”
“Of course
you are. I’m sure the parole office will take that into account.”
“Oh God, please, no. I can’t go back. They’ll kill me.” He licked his lips nervously before continuing. “Do you… do you want to see him?”
Bunny looked back at Brigit and Paul, before turning to face Carroll.
“Sure, isn’t that why we’re here?”
Chapter Fifty
Carroll led them down a set of rough stairs to the two sheds at the bottom of the hill, chattering away as he did so. Bunny seemed happy just to let him keep talking, and neither Paul nor Brigit wanted to interrupt. For better or for worse, Bunny was in charge now.
From what Paul could pick up, Carroll had been living there for a long time, about 5 years. He wasn’t allowed leave for more than a few hours. Gerry Fallon came to visit from time to time. He made a reference to the odd special visit which Paul didn’t understand. Carroll kept claiming that Fallon had threatened to do something to his dear old ma, and that was the only reason he’d agreed to do this. Paul still didn’t understand exactly what ‘this’ was, but it did occur to him that for a man so allegedly worried about his poor old ma, Carroll at no point checked to see if Bunny could protect her.
He led them into the shed that was built up against the rock and turned on the single bare light bulb that dangled from the ceiling. Paul didn’t know what he’d expected, but a dusty old shed full of broken furniture and ancient looking farm machinery was an anti-climax.
Bunny’s voice was a low warning growl. “This better not be a wild goose chase, Johnny.”
Their host looked around at them nervously. “It’s not, I swear it. Hang on a second.” He moved down the path that led to the back of the shed, where an extremely large wooden wardrobe rested against the back wall of rock. He opened it wide and then pulled across the curtain that hung at the back, to reveal a large and clearly thick metal door that was built into the rock-face. There was an electronic keypad on the metal frame beside it and underneath the small porthole-style window, in faded yellow paint was the word SHELTER.
A Man With One of Those Faces (The Dublin Trilogy Book 1) Page 29