The Murk Beneath_A Cork Crime Novel

by L. Danvers

  And what was I going to do about Savage? Could I tell Jordan? Was it something I could discuss with Cotter? I decided I would report the fragmentary details of the conversation I'd overheard, the movements of O’Brien in Limerick and the exchange, but hold off on the involvement of a certain Garda Sergeant and the identity of the Limerick man for now.

  I needed more time to think of a strategy for dealing with Savage. For the man in Limerick, if Jordan could tell who he was from the photo, then I’d leave it at that; but if he didn’t, I would follow up myself, put more meat in the sandwich, so to speak. I didn’t know if Jordan was in the business of nipping things in the bud, like he used to, so I had to be circumspect for now.

  I'd known there was a whiff of something from Savage, had done for years. And he'd talked about his lads. What lads? More dirty Guards?

  I paused before punching the last of the digits into my mobile and again before pressing the call button. But I'd procrastinated enough. I steeled myself for an uncomfortable conversation with Jordan.

  It was Grace who answered, though, completely catching me off guard. I couldn't get a word out of my mouth.

  “Michael? Is that you?”

  “Ye-Yes. How did you know?”

  “Because you are the only person with this number. Daddy asked me to keep the phone. This is one of those – what do they call them? – burner phones?”

  I might have suspected as much. He was paranoid as fuck, Jordan. They'd probably change the number frequently.

  “Watch your hands, then,” I said and laughed.

  Silence on the other end.

  “Burner phone, hands on fire?” I tried to explain.

  “Hold on there, Michael. Before you say another word, Daddy insisted on no phone conversations. We meet face-to-face at a moment's notice. OK?”

  “OK … em, where do we meet?”

  “You know Corrigan's near White Church?”

  “Sure.”

  Only when I'd gone there years ago to enforce the closing time, but it was a great deal more civilized a place than the dive I now called my local. It was an old man's arse pub, but there was something endearing about that.

  “Meet me in twenty minutes.”

  I looked at my watch. I'd struggle to make it in that time with the school traffic, but I didn't feel like prolonging the conversation.

  “OK, Grace.”

  I arrived in Corrigan's just before four and went up to the bar. I was out of breath having run from the car park. I was nearly ten minutes late. A barman seemed to recognize me and nodded towards a door at the side of the bar.

  Behind the door was a stairs, narrow and steep enough that it made me a tad dizzy, and this led to a room entirely clad with pine slats – floor, walls, and pointed ceiling. A dart board was on the wall, complete with backboard, chalk scoreboard, and an oche on the floor. Three stubby darts with tricolour flights were impaled in the board. I noted the score was 135, my guess being that the final dart deflected into the treble five.

  Grace was waiting at a table and gestured for me to sit opposite her.

  “Sorry I'm late,” I said.

  Grace returned a nonchalant look. Don't be fucking late again, it said to me. There was something of her father in her, after all.

  I brought her up to speed on the surveillance, leaving out the identities that I was fairly certain about. I also gave her the picture of the Limerick man. Like Cotter, she wasn’t impressed by the quality, suggested that I email her the Jay Peg or something technical like that. She explained that a Jay Peg was a particular file format. I’d thought you just had a picture file and that was that. When I told her that I didn’t have an email account she thought I was trying it on with her. She abandoned the whole email idea when my technical illiteracy became obvious.

  “Daddy's not going to be too pleased when I get back. I think he was hoping for more.”

  “Well, I'm sorry to disappoint, but it's not like I gave any money back guarantees or anything. The way I see it, I was doing your dad a fecking favour. Pardon my French.”

  “Forgive me. Perhaps I'm putting words in my father's mouth. He'll be interested in this guy in the SUV and the trip to Limerick. And maybe he’ll recognize the man in the picture.”

  She paused for a moment, for the first time betraying anything approaching emotion with a crease in her forehead. Then she spoke again.

  “Where are my manners! What would you like to drink? I can get Paul to bring them up.”

  I opted for a Jameson – an odd one now and again wasn't so bad. Besides, rural pubs weren’t really ones for craft beers. Grace went for a gin and tonic.

  Hang on a minute. When was the last time I had a drink alone with a woman? The thought sent a wave of dread up from the pit of my stomach. Deborah, I remembered. 1999, Imperial Hotel restaurant. An expensive bottle of Chianti over a Valentine's dinner. I'd said the wrong thing that night and I was bollocksed if I was going to do the same thing now. What was I saying to myself? That I fancied Grace? Hadn't I been too far up my own arse these past few years to even begin to consider another relationship?

  “Keep doing what you are doing. Just keep yourself out of harm's way till you hear from me again.”

  “So it'll be you I'll be meeting from now on?”

  “Isn't that what I said, or at least intimated?”

  Intimated. God, she talked nice. I was too used to the likes of Mogs and his blabbering on about this feen and that beor.

  Grace took a brown envelope from her bag.

  “Fifteen-hundred,” she said. “The first week’s payment as agreed. Keep track of any additional expenses.”

  I felt awkward taking the money. Maybe it was just the colour of the envelope.

  “I'll await your call, then?”

  “You do that.”

  She smiled. She fecking smiled.

  Don't read too much into it. It's just the sad fantasy of a man who's gone too long without.

  Without what, though? A shag? No, it was something more than that. I was lonely. I needed companionship and I wasn't going to risk that with a cheap shag. That's how Deborah had seen it. No, it was just a smile, anyway. Just politeness. No value in reading more into it than that.

  I'd only planned initially to phone Mam to wish her a happy birthday. But for whatever reason, I decided it was important to visit her, to tell her in person. I stopped at a Texaco garage on the way back from Corrigan's and picked up some flowers. My mind drifted back to the anniversary visit to the cemetery. The same kind of tired-looking flowers had adorned the wreath. It was the thought that counted, though, wasn't it?

  She doesn’t live far from me. I’d always dreamed as a teenager of moving somewhere exciting like New York or Argentina. I can’t remember why Argentina. Maybe Maradona had something to do with it.

  The house where I grew up is deceptively large. From the outside it looks like a standard terraced two-up two-down like my own, but it is very deep and has a big living room to the rear that opens onto a large yard. I’m an only child, so I always had plenty of private space upstairs. Maradona posters on the wall, of course – Mexico ‘86, Italia ‘90. They’re still there.

  It was a rather haggard-looking Mam that answered the door. I'd not seen her looking so bad since, well, since I could remember.

  “Everything OK, Mam?”

  “I'm fine.”

  We walked into the kitchen and she put a kettle on the gas.

  “Happy birthday, Mam,” I said and planted a kiss on her cheek. She reacted uncomfortably.

  “I got some nice jam off the farmer today,” she said. “Blackberry and apple. It's very –”

  “What's wrong? Did something happen?”

  “Oh no. You don't need to be worrying about me.” She pointed to the bread basket. “Get the soda bread over there. I baked it yesterday.”

  I obliged and put it on a chopping block. I took a bread knife from a drawer and cut four slices. I put one up to my nose and sniffed. It smelled wonderf
ul. It was the smell of happier times.

  “Ah Jesus, Michael! Will ya get yer snout out of that bread. You'll spread germs all over it!”

  I quickly dropped the slice to the chopping block. She had a way of making me reflex like that with a snap of her tongue. She gave me an unlabelled jar and I spread jam on the slices. She handed me a mug of tea and, with a slice of bread and jam clenched delicately between my teeth, I brought the tea in one hand and a plate of bread and jam in the other to the table.

  I slurped from my mug and mashed up the thickly-sliced bread and jam with the tea to make a kind of porridge in my gob. My mother sighed as a little bit drooled at the side of my mouth. I tidied it up with a wipe of my finger and sucked it clean. She frowned.

  I looked at her tired face. I wondered what was troubling her and what I could do to lighten the load. Then I remembered the flowers. Hadn't I only gone and left the fecking things in the car.

  “Just a minute, Mam,” I mumbled through a full mouth.

  I ran to the car and retrieved the flowers. Water had seeped from the bulb at the end of the wrapping and left a damp patch on the seat. Nobody had sat in the back for years, anyway, so I didn't pay a blind bit of notice to it.

  “Ta da!” I said as I returned and revealed the bouquet from behind my back.

  “Oh thanks, Michael. Grab a vase, will you?”

  She pointed to one on top of a cabinet. I filled it with water and put the flowers in it, emptying the flower food sachet that had been provided. I returned to my minor feast.

  “How's the job hunting going, Michael?”

  “Ah, so-so. It's not too good out there at the moment.”

  I didn't dare tell her about my current job. It was strictly a freelance deal, but it wouldn't have sat well with her.

  There was a look on her face that I had never seen before. Or was that actually the case? Hadn't I seen it as a kid, when Dad was alive? Those late nights when she would sit at the same table, dragging her fingers down her face until she left white trails on her red cheeks. And the vodka. Always the vodka. She drank it with a dash of white lemonade in the pub, but at the table, waiting for Dad, she drank it neat. There was no vodka at the table now, just the same face, aged by the emptiness of a life lost to devoted widowhood.

  “You know, you can tell me what's wrong,” I said. “Whatever it is. I know there's something up.”

  I thought about moving my hand to hers to comfort her, but I didn't. We didn't have that kind of intimacy. Our love was understood, kept at a distance, because getting too close meant the loss would be greater. And it was the fear of loss that paralysed us both. Was that what had pushed Deborah away? Was that why I left home so soon after turning eighteen?

  “I can't, Michael. I'm sorry. I'm tired now. I'd like to go to my bed.”

  I sighed. She didn't look like she could take an inquisition right then.

  “OK, Mam. Happy birthday.”

  I couldn't think of anything better to say. I felt like a bit of a tool.

  “And Michael … don't do anything stupid or dangerous. Just … just …”

  She left it there, unable to find the right words.

  The woman I helped upstairs to her bedroom was like a stranger. Distant. Very much troubled. And I felt wholly inadequate and ill-equipped to deal with it.

  I dropped into Dunne’s Stores to buy some craft beer before heading home after my mam’s. I’m a sucker for beers with strange names. I picked up a couple of bottles of Twisted Hop and Headless Dog, both from the Hilden brewery in Lisburn up North. I’d pop one of them into the freezer to chill quickly so that I could crack open a bottle soon enough after getting home. I’d settle in and watch the Premier League highlights later, followed by a good read before falling asleep. Hopefully in bed, but it often happened in my armchair.

  I was making a ham and cheese sandwich when my mobile rang. It was Grace. No doubt a quick, sharp instruction on where to meet to discuss the next assignment in the hunt for O'Brien's wider network.

  “Michael?” her gentle voice at the end of the line asked.

  “Call me Mickey. Everyone does.”

  “Like Mickey Mouse.”

  “Em, yeah, I suppose. It's just, there was one Guard, Mick, and another, Mike, and there was Mikey. They were senior to me and got first refusal on their choice of, well, whatever version of Michael they wanted.”

  “And what was wrong with plain old Michael?”

  “Ah come on … Michael? What kind of name is that for a Guard?”

  “I'm not going to go around calling you Mickey. Michael is more … dignified. I'm going to call you Michael.”

  “Or …”

  “Or no date.”

  “Date?”

  “Isn't that what I said?”

  I went silent. I hadn't seen that coming. Was my radar so out of whack that I hadn't seen the come on? I hadn't picked up on anything at Corrigan's and yet here was Grace, free and direct as you like, doing what I thought was unfathomable – a girl asking a guy out on a date.

  “A date,” I said.

  “Dinner and a tape that self-destructs in five seconds. Just dinner, mind.”

  “Of course, just dinner, I mean, of course.”

  I was beginning to be embarrassed by my phone manner, which had deteriorated to the level of the Bozo the clown school of telephone technique. Just dinner. No sex, just dinner. Just plain old meat and two veg, thank you very much, kiss on the cheek, call me, nighty night, see you at school tomorrow. Just dinner and business, see how it goes. Just dinner. Christ, I was a mess.

  “I'll drop by your place tomorrow at eight,” she said. “Is that OK?”

  “That's … em, that's just fine.” I'd have agreed to anything. “Where are we going?”

  “Surprise me.”

  She laughed softly, almost giddily, and hung up.

  For the remainder of the evening, I floated around my house whistling Lemon Jelly tunes. I was in a state of euphoria.

  The next morning reality started to set in. I had my reservations about a date with Grace. Not that it had anything to do with Grace, particularly. She was pleasant to be around. If I was honest, though, I could not quite fathom what she saw in me. I may have cut a dashing figure at one point, a few years back. The uniform might have had something to do with that, though. Like fancy wrapping paper around a pair of Christmas socks. I groomed myself better back then – gelled my hair, moisturized after a shave, wore respectable clothes. Now I was beginning to look like a tramp. That was what living alone and with too little human contact did for you. If you had low esteem, then you didn't care how you looked in the mirror. As long as you had a clean pair of jocks and washed under your arms regular enough, then that was good enough. It would do around the house during my all too many episodes of moping. I'd put on a few pounds in just the last year too, maybe as many as twenty. I didn't have a weighing scales, but it only took the first two popped trouser buttons to tell the story. That meant that anything decent I had to wear would no longer fit. A trip to the shops was well in order.

  “Surprise me,” she'd said.

  But I didn't know anywhere fancy. And it wasn't like I could phone anyone for advice.

  I'd invited Mogs over once for a full Irish. “Better than any hotel,” he'd said, his face smeared with so much ketchup that he resembled a clown. How could anyone ruin my full Irish? I had thought. Sure, anything smathered in ketchup just tastes like ketchup – Clonakilty, Denny, it was all the same with so much sugar mixing with the salt of the cured rashers. As for advice on restaurants? – you'd get better from the travellers' horses tethered in the field up the road. If I'd asked my mother, she would have become nosey. And when it came to nosiness, Mam had few equals, her beak sticking into things like a crossbill finch prising open a seed. I wanted to keep my date to myself for now.

  I walked into Patrick’s Street – only about ten minutes from where I lived – and went into Gentleman's Quarters. I supposed a nice shirt – light blue may
be? – would be appropriate, a pair of navy slacks too. A plain navy tie would set off nicely against the shirt. I thought about shoes too. A pair of black shoes, leather heels.

  Christ, what am I doing? I'll end up looking like a fecking Guard!

  I spotted a pair of what looked like a cross between trainers and walking shoes. Isn't that what the hip people were wearing these days? A plain pair of jeans – no faux vintage treatment, thank you very much – and a check shirt and I was in business, maybe even the business, but I was probably getting ahead of myself. Not until I got my hair trimmed, anyway. And if only Grace knew what an ordeal getting a haircut was for me.

  I flicked my fringe back with a nervous twitch of my head. Between stress and the sheer habit of clearing hair from my vision, the twitch had become almost a permanent fixture in my long list of undesirable mannerisms. I wondered if I would still be twitching like that after I got my hair cut. It might not be long, I thought, before I ended up looking like an epileptic.

  I gathered up my new glad rags and paid for them with cash. Maybe this was some kind of a fresh start for me. Maybe I was now, finally, about to get some kind of a break. Didn't I deserve a turn in my luck like this? Or were the new clothes just a mask – a bandage over a gaping wound that was still festering?

  6

  The Devil's Snot

  I stood in front of the mirror in my bedroom with my new clothes on. A good fit, even if I had to admit I was looking a bit portly. I was on edge, though.

  If I just sit here in this house waiting for tomorrow's date, I'll explode. Like Jaws. Chunks of blubber everywhere. God, I need a drink!

  And when I needed a drink, there was one man I could count on. There wasn't much else you could count on him for, but going for a pint was where he was world class. I punched Mogs's number into my new mobile.