On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland

by Joseph Éamon Cummins

Tony’s head shook.

  The man shrugged. ‘Anything happens to you, don’t say Mick Quilty wasn’t the man that warned you. I’ll be in Madigan’s, beside where the Pillar used to be, if you know Dublin. Don’t forget that.’

  * * *

  Tony scoured the length of Talbot Street, now peopled only by stragglers, and shop assistants fleeing the end of a busy Saturday. Once again he paced up and down, along an avenue of staleness and shabby metal shutters locked down over shop-fronts. None of the half-dozen un-shuttered entrances held any inhabitants, and no loiterers showed except two homeless men sharing a bagged bottle under the pigeon-painted bridge. No man in a big green army coat, wearing long grey whiskers, as Mick had described Gus. Beyond the bridge he wandered into Store Street, a featureless lane at the end of which was Busarus, Dublin’s central bus station. He was about to turn back toward Talbot Street when a sound seized him. He held his breath. Imagination, he thought, and longing. But then it sounded again, distinct, a voice, very near, from beyond the corner next to him. Couldn’t be! He hugged the wall, poked his head past the edge, and pulled back. Lenny and Kate! Twenty feet away. Approaching. Almost upon him. No time. No escape. He ruffled his hair, dropped into a squat, collar up, head buried. The click-clacks grew louder. They were laughing, talking, just feet from him, now upon him, in front of him, passing, passing, past. He peeked through his fingers. There was Kate, half-glancing back. And Lenny, blond, blue jeans, hip jacket, tall, shopping bags on arm; Kate shorter, grey skirt, Aran cardigan. They crossed the narrow street to a white Audi, linking each other.

  It made sense, he felt: they’d met earlier at Busarus, left the car and went shopping in the city. It was now 7.10pm, which meant they’d spent the whole day together. As they drove off, Kate’s eyes glanced back once again but his face was still hidden. The Audi turned toward the quays. He got to his feet, hurried back to the vacuity and litter of Talbot Street.

  Just then it occurred to him. Mick had said there were four good ones, meaning they were not obvious. Fuck it, that was it! He’d wasted too much time. Being able to get in behind what looked like a closed shutter, secure it down, stay concealed, that’s what made them good. That’s what he’d missed, which meant four could probably be pulled open from the outside. But which four? Mick said he’d be in Madigan’s, waiting. The crafty little bastard was there now, Tony thought, sure that he’d be needed.

  But he didn’t need Mick. Not yet anyway. Yank up really hard on every shutter, he figured. Fifty, maybe sixty. Try them all. No quitting now. He’d find the man he’d come for, the man who would lead him to Aidan Harper. Not one doubt about that. Work down one side, up the other. Whatever it took he had it to give.

  Just over an hour later he had tried to force all but the last few shutters. Not one had budged. Not a sound or a voice was discernable inside any of them. A patrolling police car made him fade occasionally into shadows or inconspicuous strolling. Now, in a night becoming chillier by the minute, he was nearing the end. At the corner, behind piles of swept-up litter, just two shutters remained.

  He squatted down at the first, his back to the latted metal, poked his fingers underneath, and pushed up hard with his legs. It groaned, then gave. Only an inch. But this time there was no clack of steel against steel. Stuck, jammed maybe, but not locked like the others. He tried again. This time crunching something, a stick maybe. And it gave.

  Still facing toward the street, he dropped down. ‘Gus, you in there?’ he shouted into echoey space. He waited. Nothing sounded. Then, from inside, came a scrape. ‘Gus, I’m a friend. I’m coming in. Okay?’

  He raised the shutter, ducked underneath, pushed it back down. Instantly, he caught the scent of humans, a sensibility nine years of incarceration had gifted him. He readied his fighting brain. Wisps of yellow street light leaked in through slits near the top of the shutter. To his left and right glassed-in mannequins posed in women’s clothing. Straight ahead he sensed only an endless passage, and nothing but darkness.

  ‘Gus. Gus, I want to talk to you,’ he called out. ‘I’m a friend. Mick Quilty’s friend.’ Only hollow echoes came back. He shuffled his feet, faked his advance, stayed alert, listening. Nothing stirred. Nothing sprang. He started forward quietly, reached to where the passage turned to the right. The stench of urine stung his nostrils. ‘Gus, you there?’

  A clatter of noise erupted. He broke into a stance, adrenaline pumping. Another eruption. It was coming from behind him; the shutter rattling violently. Voices outside, on the street, loud, swearing, someone or something crashing repeatedly against the metal, an argument, a man saying the cash was short, he was a lying bollox, he’d get a bullet in his head if he didn’t cough up fifty-eight quid; he had two days, till three o’clock on Monday, if he didn’t get it he’d be in the morgue by four. Then came a final hard thump against the shutter and it was over.

  He edged nearer again to where the passage turned, crouched low, peered into the darkness. And he froze. Two eyes were staring at him. Two catchlights. Then four, dead still in this tomb-like chamber, all watching him.

  ‘Gus, that you?’ he asked. Then a lighter lit, and shapes began to form. Two men. One with what looked like a scraggy beard, in a bulky coat. The other rounder, also heavily wrapped.

  ‘Gus, I’m a friend. I’m looking for a guy. Mick said you’d know him. I’ll make it worth your while.’

  The bearded man cleared his throat. ‘You’re that Yank. I know about you.’

  ‘That’s right. You’ll help me?’

  ‘I can’t do nothing for nobody,’ the man said with a phlegmy growl.

  ‘We don’t bother nobody, mister,’ the smaller said, tipping back his bottle. ‘Don’t we not, Fergus?’

  ‘Listen, Gus, I’ll get you a hamburger and coffee. How about that?’

  ‘Few bob’s better.’ The man’s waxy fingers put the lighter to a small candle. ‘Who’re you looking for?’

  ‘Lanky fella, about six foot, English guy, Aidan Harper.’

  ‘Know nobody by that name,’ he said, then turned to his partner. ‘You, Victor?’

  ‘You’re the man, Fergus, that does know fellas. Don’t know no one meself, except me and you.’

  ‘Kinda grey and black hair,’ Tony said. ‘Could be long, in a ponytail.’

  ‘Where does he be?’

  ‘He used to run a place for addicts. methadone clinic, maybe, something like that. Mick said you’d know him.’

  ‘Druggie fuckers. Me and Victor steer clear of fuckers like that.’

  ‘All bolloxes. Telling you, mister, mad lulas they are,’ Victor said. ‘That’s me own personal opinion anyhow. Right, Fergus?’

  ‘This guy’s a Brit, probably talks like a snob, maybe walks funny.’

  ‘Only one English fella around here, that’s not his name.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Cyril something. Don’t know.’

  ‘Tall, around forty, greyish hair, has a limp?’

  ‘Said you’d have a few bob for me?’

  ‘Take me to this guy. If it’s him, I’ll look after you.’

  ‘It’s him. Has a gammy leg. But his name’s Cyril. Tell you that.’

  ‘Fergus is never wrong, mister.’ Victor’s regard swung to his companion. ‘Tell him, Fergus. How you were the head foreman in Guinness’s before them fuckers thrun you out. Tell him about when you used to make the stout.’

  ‘Quit it, Victor, fuck sake, will you,’ Gus said.

  ‘You don’t want a meal?’ Tony asked. Neither man reacted. ‘How about fish-and-chips, for both of you. How’s that?’

  Victor shifted noisily on the cardboard, gazing into Gus’s bearded visage. Still, neither man answered.

  ‘Okay, a fiver in cash,’ Tony said. ‘Five quid?’

  ‘I get the fiver now; that’s the deal.’ Gus’s words triggered a smile in Victor.

  ‘How far is it, to this Cyril guy?’

  ‘Gardiner Lane. It’s a kip. Up the road. But I’m telli
ng you, I’ll show you it, that’s the deal; I don’t go near it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Victor added. ‘Pack of skinheads. Not one of them working-men like meself and Fergus.’

  ‘Gus, tell me this,’ Tony said. ‘How sure are you that it’s him, and that he’s there?’

  ‘Me word. Don’t know if he’s there. That enough?’

  Ten minutes later, three blocks away, Gus pointed to two dilapidated buildings, adjoining tenements standing alone in darkness alleviated only by the glow of a solitary street lamp, with mountains of demolition rubble on either side.

  Tony took in the scene. A wasteland. He pressed a five-pound note into Gus’s hand. ‘You never saw me,’ he said, dropping two one-pound coins into the same hand. ‘Now go.’

  Gus stared back, as though perceiving something unstated.

  ‘What?’ Tony said.

  ‘I was a fighter, once, in me day. Don’t drop your guard, champ. Or the fuckers’ll get you. Hear me? Never.’

  Their stares engaged for another moment, until Tony’s nod conceded a brotherhood, unspeakable as it could only be. Then Gus retreated, see-sawing into the night, bulked out by his coats, outermost the string-tied, brass-buttoned long green of the Irish Army.

  * * *

  He paced back and forth over a strip of waste-ground, monitoring the lane and both tenements. One house had boards nailed across its Georgian doorway. The second seemed in use. To the rear, blocks of red-brick flats dangled washing from lines stretched across balconies.

  This was no Aranroe, no Arizona, he thought, more the Newark he’d known, and the penitentiary. The clamour of traffic and headlights shielded his presence from four men loitering on the steps of the tenements. Fifteen minutes passed, a light rain began falling; the men had not moved. He’d wait no longer, he decided. He was ready to deal with this final obstacle. But what exactly would he do here, he asked. Force Aidan out of Ireland? Warn him that over meant over, that Lenny would never again be available? If that didn’t work, there was a surer solution. He was ready to fight for a life that was only a dream through nine years in shit-and-piss cells. And if he felt himself shaking now, needing that bit more to fire up, get his power revved, it was only because he’d let himself relax too long. Because normality of a kind had lulled him, Lenny and Cilla, particularly, and the other real people he’d met. At his core, though, certain parts of him hadn’t changed, he told himself. Still the guy who’d held his own inside, earned respect in the pit, who’d put pervert Shift Commander Yablonski in the nailed-shut box he deserved; that’s who he could still be, if he had to, the fighter who dropped Rip Wundt on his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound ass with one shot. That’s who he was. Anto MacNeill. Psyching up for what he had to do.

  The tangle inside him abated. All that was left, he told himself, was to give himself the go-ahead. He stretched high up on his toes, reaching, flexing. And in that instant it came. The uncertainty was over. He drilled his heel into the ground, rubbed damp black earth into his hands and fingers. He was wired now, back on mission, counting down.

  * * *

  Now settled into an oversize sofa with Lenny close by, Kate brooded, as though reluctant to continue the story she had begun in the gallery.

  ‘The fight turned into a disaster,’ she said eventually, ‘and I could not do a thing to stop it.’ The Spanish kid, when he knew he couldn’t win, reached inside his jacket, pulled out a long knife, a switchblade, and started waving it around, just like you see in films. I kept trying to run, to get between them, but someone – I never found out who – was holding me back. All the time, I was screaming at them to be sensible, shouting to people to call the police. I was powerless. And everyone just stared. No noise, no sound. I remember watching Anto back away from the knife each time it swiped at him. I could tell he was waiting for his chance. In my head I was seeing him dying there, bleeding to death. I could barely get a breath. My mouth was wide open but I was getting no oxygen, and my heart was racing. The kid kept making sweeps with the knife, across and up and down, and he lunged it over and over at Anto’s face, but Anto was quick; he danced away every time, then suddenly he’d jump in and punch the kid really hard, two or three punches together.

  ‘Then the kid went berserk. He charged at the crowd like he was going to stab someone. Everyone scattered. Except me. I stood there shouting at him to put the knife away, go home, that it was over. I don’t know where I got the courage. He called me all kinds of names. I kept telling him I wasn’t afraid of him, that I was ordering him to go home. He was shaking. He pressed the blade under my chin. It was like a razor; I couldn’t move. Peripherally, I saw Anto tearing toward us, it was like in slow motion. The kid saw him too, and he grabbed me around my neck, held me in front of him. He began pushing me toward Anto, until there was just a few feet between us. All the time he kept his knife to my throat. The blood from his hands and on his brass knuckles, some of it Anto’s blood, was all over me. I’ll never forget the feel of the blade against my skin, sticky with blood, and the taste of blood in my mouth. Anto tried talking to the kid, told him to let me go and everyone would just leave; he was begging but his eyes were on fire. I thought the knife was going to dig in to me any second, that I would die there, at twenty-eight, on Witchell Heights square in Newark, New Jersey. I kept asking God to save us all. I commanded myself to be strong. I tried to plead with Anto to go home, leave, but the words didn’t come out; I don’t even think my lips moved. Then suddenly the kid jerked my head back and pressed the knife high up under my chin. And I fainted. Went straight down. I know what went through Anto’s mind, though he’s never talked to me about it; he thought my throat had been cut; there was blood everywhere. Looking back, I wish I could have held on, stayed standing. I didn’t. Anto went wild.

  ‘What happened next was told to me by my father, who arrived on the scene just at that moment, along with another man. I was out cold on the ground.

  ‘The Spanish kid was standing over me, switchblade in hand. Anto crashed all his weight into him, knocked him over. My poor father and the other man rushed to me, not knowing if I was dead or alive. Anto and the kid were wrestling on the ground. Anto got on top, pinned down the kid’s hand with the knife in it, and kept punching the kid in the face. By the time the men got to them it was over. The kid wasn’t moving. His eyes were wide open. Anto was straddling him, just staring at him, in shock. My father told me later they knew right away the kid was dead. Jesus Pomental, The Big Blade as he was known, not yet seventeen years of age. It could make you lose all hope.

  ‘Then three years after that I feared Tony was lost to us for good. He was in a fight in prison in Florida. He saved a German boy from abuse, maybe death, an innocent young man who had done nothing wrong, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A guard died, a man named Yablonski. It came out that he was a serial rapist of inmates, maybe much worse according to some of the evidence. It was blatant self-defence, just like the first time. But I was sure they were going to do the same thing again: charge Tony with murder. I wrote to President Reagan, the U.S. Department of Justice, senators, congressmen, the Irish Ambassador in Washington. Everybody who could possibly do something. In the end, no charges were filed. But Tony fell into a near-catatonic depression. They had him on suicide watch, for months. But he pulled through. He always pulls through. That’s Tony. Always pulling through.’

  * * *

  Arrows of sleet stabbed into him. But his edginess and hesitation had been conquered. He darted into the glistening road, halted half-way as cars swept past, and weighed up again the four men loitering in front of the tenement. He took on a purposeful locomotion. At the house the raw-faced men fanned out in front of him.

  ‘He inside?’ Tony said with an implication of familiarity.

  ‘Can you fucking read,’ one of the men said, flicking his shaven head toward the building. ‘Get fuck-all in there. Tell you that.’

  In the iron-barred window a hand-written sign read: Not a Clinic. No Drugs
on Premises.

  ‘Get you fixed up in a light.’ The hooded man in a nylon tracksuit moved closer. ‘Real stuff. Dead clean. Fucking brilliant.’

  ‘Nah. Gotta see this bloke in here.’ Tony’s shift slipped him between the end man and the railings and onto the bottom of the five steps, which he skipped up.

  ‘Hey, pal, hang on, c’mere.’ The man with the shaven head leapt up the steps. ‘Ten quid. Fucking brilliant stuff. Not that methadone shite.’ Tony’s earth-darkened hands distracted him momentarily. ‘Have it for you in two minutes, fix y’up, I swear. Right? A tenner.’

  Tony’s head shook, almost provocatively, drew a dismissive spiel from the trio below.

  ‘Fuck him. Let’s go, Skinner,’ the hooded man yelled. ‘He’s a fucking waster.’

  ‘Now, fuck-head,’ Skinner said, with malice. ‘Give me a fiver for fags. Hand over.’

  ‘Don’t have it.’

  ‘Much you got?’ Skinner’s fingers called for money. ‘Hand over or I’ll fucking do you right here and take it off you.’ He reached for the breast pocket of Tony’s half-length army jacket.

  Like a viper striking, Tony grabbed the man’s wrist while remaining otherwise still. In the spraying rain and the rattle of traffic their faces raged, intimately close. Tony’s vise-like clamp tightened, his free hand a primed fist. Skinner’s eyes narrowed, his face twitching as his body bent slowly, then sank lower, and his mouth broke open.

  By now the trio on the street had drifted away. Tony wrenched the man’s wrist back against its joint and released it.

  ‘Fucking pig bollox. Fucking kill you. Kick your fucking head in. You’re dead, I swear, fucking dead.’ Red-faced and with rain streaming down his skull, he laboured off into the drizzle and dark.

  Tony pushed the massive door until it gave way. As it thudded behind him, it isolated him in near-darkness and marijuana air. In the distance, from what seemed like a half-flight down, light leaked from under a door. He moved into the dark bowels of the house, floorboards groaning with his intrusion. His fingers traced along a pocked plaster wall, past two doors, then the wall was gone and at his left was a passageway. He felt his way forward, stopped on hearing faint voices and music; from upstairs, he thought, but maybe from the door he was headed toward. Could be Aidan Harper’s flat, he figured. If so, he’d give it to him straight: time to go, get back to England, do his good deeds over there, or Africa or Iraq, didn’t matter, just far enough away from Lenny Quin; she had a new life, a better life, didn’t need old ghosts – ’