‘I’m retired,’ Arm said.
‘Retired. From what?’
‘I used to box.’
‘But you don’t anymore? You’re pretty young for retired.’
‘I’m old enough. You’ve to be hungry and senseless for it.’
‘And you’re not?’
‘There was a lot of conditioning, a routine you couldn’t skimp on. I lost my spring.’
‘So that’s that. You do a thing and you’re good at it, presumably, and then one day you . . . just . . . stop.’
Arm took a sip of his drink. ‘I keep in trim. I can take down a civilian no worries, but once it goes that spring never really comes back.’
‘That’s a sad story,’ she said.
Arm shrugged.
‘You’re depressing.’
‘Cheers,’ Arm said.
‘That’s okay, though,’ she said, and took a drink. Arm stood beside her because there was no reason he shouldn’t. And neither did she seek to slink away, and after a moment Arm realised she didn’t necessarily want to. He leaned in enough so she’d hear.
‘You have to want to hurt people. That’s what the spring is. You have to keep wanting to hurt people.’
Arm could see their faces in the bar mirror, looming like moons above the miniature skyline of spirit bottles arranged along the back shelf. The neon changed colour and the light caught her nose, and this time Arm noticed the way it was set, and it had been set, just barely imperfectly. It looked like an old break and Arm was about to ask what happened, but right then Dympna clamped him on the shoulder.
His measly eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks puce. Ignoring the girl, he wheeled Arm away from the light of the bar and into a corner.
‘Douglas, tell me now. Can we trust them?’
Arm looked over his shoulder. The rider was talking to the girls. She said something and popped her eyebrows, prompting a giggle from the natives.
‘Hector, Paudi,’ Dympna said.
‘They supply,’ Arm said, ‘if we don’t have them we don’t have nothing.’
‘They won’t let this Fannigan thing drop.’
‘You think they’ll carry through on it?’ Arm said.
‘I think they will. I think they’ll lift him from the street and take him out there and feed him to their dogs. I think they don’t give a fuck about anything after that, the shit storm that’ll follow. They don’t believe in the guards, jail, not really. Fuck, they barely believe in this town. They live out in the fucking wilds with the stones and the dogs and their guns and they think that’s all there really is.’
Arm looked to the bar, but the girls were drifting away through the crowd. The rider did not look back, but there was something in her carriage, in the alignment of her neck and shoulder blades, that suggested she knew she was being watched go.
The night went on. The band churned out an hour of stuff to increasing indifference and relieved cheering when they finished and the DJ took over. The young ones flocked to the floor. Arm watched them, a tribe of women stamping and twisting, and he wondered; where are all the fellas?
‘Good night anyway,’ Dympna said, ‘and fuck the rest of it.’
Dympna’s eyes were wobbling in their sockets. Arm felt nicely dented too. Arm patted Dympna’s shoulder and stepped out onto the dance floor. Spumes of dry ice rolled between the commingling bodies. Arm turned and knew she’d be there. The rider, bobbing in place behind her two mates, both of whom were wrapped round fellas. She smiled at him, flicked the brows in a way Arm figured for consent. Arm smiled and leaned in. Got a taste of the lips before she drew back and her hand was up on his throat.
‘What the fuck,’ she mouthed at him over the music.
Arm shrugged and hung his head at a contrite angle, then stooped in again. She took another step back and at least smiled ruefully this time. ‘Nooo,’ she mouthed, and shook her head like Arm was an idiot.
Arm pointed to the smoking area, meaning let’s go talk, then.
‘Not tonight,’ she shouted, grinning again and giving him a pitying squeeze on the arm before stepping off.
Arm watched her go. He thought, that’s another story.
Arm left Quillinan’s near two, and figured a walk would help wick away the worst of the hangover that was bearing down on his tomorrow. He started for the outskirts of town, out along the quay road. The road stuck more or less parallel to the path that the Mule River cut towards the coast a couple of miles farther on. Arm’s intention was to get as far as the strand a mile out then loop back around, a nice three-quarter hour jaunt. Arm had his music in as he walked. After a while he saw a body ahead of him. Arm slowed his tread, recognising the sedimentary rinse of silver through the hair, the scarecrow elbows and bandy-legged lope. Fannigan, like Arm, was taking the scenic route home from whatever establishment he’d elected to get hammered in.
Arm popped out the headphones and stowed the buds inside his jacket, where they continued to palpitate against his chest. Eyes on the back of Fannigan’s head, he sped up, taking care to dampen his footfall. Fannigan was oblivious as Arm glided right into step beside him.
‘Well, soldier,’ Arm said.
Fannigan jumped, his entire frame bouncing like a rubber band. He stifled a cry and swung his gaze towards the river, twenty feet below. After a moment, his eyes dragged themselves back around to Arm, as they had to.
‘Jesus, Douglas lad, how are you?’ Fannigan croaked with as much composure as he could muster. He had matching black eyes, the sockets pulped and swollen, a band of ragged cotton dressing tacked over his nose.
Arm threw an arm across Fannigan’s shoulders and steered him into the riverside wall. Fannigan mumbled, ‘What—’ right as Arm flipped him. He went headfirst, spinning, sliding over mud, grass and stones. Arm looked both ways—no body or car in eyeshot—and hopped the wall. Quickly he slipped his sneakers from his feet and jammed them beneath a rock. Fannigan just lay there and watched, marsupial eyes blinking out of the dark; it did not occur to him to pick himself up and scramble, to try to run away.
‘Up,’ Arm said.
Arm could practically hear the laggard cranking of the sot’s brain as it tried to process what was happening. Obediently Fannigan got to his feet and began to pat himself down, which only succeeded in dabbling the wet muck farther across his clothes. He was wearing a black Celtic rainjacket with luminous green trim, a sweatshirt, jeans and buckled boots.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Move,’ Arm said.
‘What?’ Fannigan said.
Arm rapped him on the forehead like knocking on a door and repeated his request.
‘Turn. Downstream.’ Arm jabbed Fannigan between his shoulder blades until he commenced moving. ‘The uncles got wind. I hope you knew they always would.’
Arm watched Fannigan’s shoulders go rigid then slacken. Fannigan shook his head, glanced back at Arm.
‘You are not them,’ he said.
‘What?’
Fannigan’s whiskers twitched.
‘You are not them.’
‘Keep going,’ Arm said.
They walked, Arm following Fannigan in silence, until he decided they were far enough along. He put his hand on Fannigan’s shoulder. The Mule was at its widest point here, maybe fifty feet across, and the noise of the current had become industrially loud.
‘Jacket,’ Arm shouted. Fannigan turned around, took it off and handed it over. Arm balled it and threw it onto the water. It hit the surface and in an instant was snatched away, shedding a curl of froth as it was ferried along for a few moments before sinking into the black.
‘Take off the boots, the rest of your clothes.’
‘What?’
He was beginning to get a grasp of the situation. Arm had invoked the uncles; Fannigan knew what that meant. The uncles, Dympna was right,
Arm knew, they’d butcher Fannigan. They’d use him for sport, and take their time doing so. They’d feed his bones to their curs, and sooner or later decide that Dympna’s show of leniency had demonstrated a dangerous weakness at this end of the operation.
Fannigan took his time undressing. The boots he worked off first, then he drew up and off the sweatshirt and the vest beneath.
‘Leave them there,’ Arm said, toeing a spot in the dirt. Fannigan dropped the shirt and vest, and was soon shivering in a way Arm found hard to watch. Fannigan’s torso was pale as milk, his chest hair a scutty fuzz petering down to his navel. His tattoos, in the dark, looked like bruises on his arms.
‘Dympna . . .’ he said, ‘Dympna said this,’ he touched his bandaged face, ‘Dympna said this was the end of it.’
‘Trousers, c’mon,’ Arm said.
‘Is this happening?’ Fannigan said as he stepped out of his pants. ‘Oh Christ, I’m naked,’ he muttered, ‘I’m in the fucking nip.’
Fannigan began to fold his trousers, lining up the legs, then halving and halving them again, until it was a neat, bundled parcel of denim. This small civilised feat accomplished, he began to shake his head.
‘No, No, No. This joke’s over. I’m not putting up with this. Fuck this!’ Fannigan motioned to move past Arm but it was a cursory effort. Arm rested the heel of his hand on Fannigan’s collarbone.
‘Nearly, it’s over,’ Arm assured him.
‘Christ, can I have a smoke then?’
‘In a minute,’ Arm said.
‘There’s no time!’ Fannigan said. He had the blinky, nervous energy of a dreamer jilted suddenly awake. Fannigan looked urgently left and right, then up into the sky, at the scratchy stars and that cute old sphinx-faced cunt of a moon, up there watching and still keeping schtum after all these years. He let out another growl, a scouring phlegm-clearer, boggy and granulated and liquidly rich. He hocked and spat at Arm’s feet.
‘What time is it?’ he said.
‘Must be three,’ Arm said.
‘That’s right, that’s right,’ Fannigan said, wiping his mouth with his forearm. ‘You feeling okay?’ he said to Arm.
‘I am,’ Arm said.
Arm hunkered down where Fannigan had spat and dragged the boots over and piled the shirt and jumper on top of them. Fannigan, standing, still had his jocks and socks on. The socks were a particularly sad affair, Arm noted; once white, they were grimed to grey, cheap and nubbled and flecked with holes. Arm looked up at Fannigan.
‘Put the trousers down here with the rest,’ Arm said.
Fannigan was upright and had the upright’s advantage of height. A part of Arm wanted to scream at him to take his chance. To push Arm over, or run, or smash Arm’s skull with whatever conviction he could channel into his fists; just to try. But the acquiescent fucker only did as he was told, crouching down to Arm’s level and placing the folded jeans on top of the other clothes.
‘Douglas,’ he said. It was dark, but Arm could feel Fannigan’s eyes on him. Fannigan had been tuning in and out of this scenario, but he was back now, emphatically here, a lucid and crawlingly beseeching note in Arm’s name as he mouthed it. A plea.
‘Douglas,’ he said it again. ‘Listen. Listen. When I was a boy—’
It was right there, half sunk in the mud. Arm snugged his hand around it, a smooth, weighty oval, and aimed for Fannigan’s temple, where a delta of veinwork tremulously pulsed. The rock crushed into his head with a flat thud. His eyelids fluttered and he flopped bonelessly down onto the grass.
Arm had his arms in under Fannigan’s frame as quick as he could manage, and hefted the man up. Fannigan’s body was warm, and felt as if it might be convulsing a little. Arm waded into the river, moving deeper and deeper until the cold was cutting across the tops of his thighs, through his jeans. Arm puffed out his chest and threw Fannigan out towards the middle. He hit the water, sent up a plume of spray and was promptly spooled away on the current.
Arm clambered back up onto the bank and watched him go. Facedown and arse up, Fannigan’s body was periodically sucked under the surface before bobbing into sight again. Soon it was nothing more than a diminishing speck in the narrowing turbulence, and then it was gone, baywards to the open sea.
Arm considered the wilted totem of clothing piled by the water’s edge. He figured these leavings would make it appear all the more premeditated, would tell the story of how Fannigan, in a suicidal funk, had ritualistically shed his shitty gear before throwing himself in the Mule. Arm picked up the rock he’d hit Fannigan with and pocketed it. He told himself that the dent on Fannigan’s head would be explained as him dashing against rocks as he was carried to sea. He was a drunk and a waster, Fannigan, and save for his mother Arm didn’t think anyone, neither the guards nor the coroner nor any other soul, would look to pursue an explanation beyond the apparent when it came to piecing together the why of his end.
Arm clambered back up towards the road, stepping on stones where he could, smooshing the impressions his feet had left in the softer ground on the way down, leaving Fannigan’s bootprints intact. He squeezed his runners back on and inched his nose out over the wall’s lip; no traffic or souls about. He slipped over. His iPod was still going in his jacket. There were thorn ends and snarls of sap-coated twigs stuck to his clothes. He batted down the shoulders and sleeves of his jacket.
Arm plugged in the buds, slipped his hood up, and resumed walking right out of town. His trousers, wringing, dried as he went. Eventually he found himself following the familiar wrought-iron railings that looked out over the strand. The railings were eaten through, thinned to crusted spindles of rust at their most exposed points. Beyond them lay the rush-topped hillocks and sandbars, the sand milk-blue in the moonlight. Arm scanned the boiling surf for a long time, watched the way each wave rose, evolved like a fortification, and then collapsed.
It was nearing four in the morning as Arm headed back into town. A couple of teenage lads were coming the opposite way, on the other side of the road. Arm took out his earphones and listened as one vociferated to the other about almost bating the head off a third lad back in the pub or club or wherever they’d been, the boaster milling his fists around, clumsily shadow-boxing the air and his cohort cackling along. They were oblivious to Arm. He was on the riverside of the road, and could hear the Mule, and couldn’t help but listen out for a voice or scream or roar, because even though Arm knew the man was almost certainly already dead he was still susceptible to the dreamlike dread that Fannigan had somehow eluded the laws of the perishable world and staged a resurrection.
But Ssshhhhhhhhhhh went the water.
And Haaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh went the wind.
And from off in the nearing distance of the town centre came the calm hum of the taxis as they made their appointed circuits through what was left of the night.
Arm’s folks had him late, and only him. A single-child family was a rarity around here, where households teemed with ever-expanding factions of brothers and sisters. Arm’s mother was a schoolteacher, forty-two at the time of his birth. His da was already fifty. The da ran a delivery truck out of the local bun factory along the western seaboard for thirty-two years straight and when he walked through the door in the evenings he trailed in his wake a fragrance of cinnamon and currants. His parents’ hair was grey by the time Arm started primary school, and though they raised him right and raised him well, Arm sometimes wondered if he wasn’t just a late concession to the perennial babymaking thriving away about them. Good old Maye and Trevor Armstrong. Arm and they had always got on and maybe too much. Too much civility, too much mellowness; though it was clear to them that there was an aspect to the run of his life Arm kept from them, they refrained from prying. They doted on Jack, and doted on the idea of Ursula; they chided Arm for not sticking with a girl that lovely.
They saw Arm with Dympna and said nothing at all.
It
was their only real fault, this enduring inability to ever think the worst of their son.
When Arm came to the next morning he could hear them downstairs in the kitchen, making breakfast. The noise of their domestic routine got Arm to dwelling on Fannigan’s mother, old and frail and alone in this world for good now, though she did not yet know it. He pulled a naggin of Jameson’s from the foot of his bed and took a few scouring hits, looking to snap himself out of such useless, malign sentiments.
Arm showered, put on a white vest, his good denim shirt, and made his way down to the Dorys. The low sky was slabbed with rifts of cloud the colour and texture of raw animal fat. Ursula’s mother was out front, unloading groceries from the backseat of the family Vauxhall.
‘Can I help?’ Arm asked, hovering at the foot of the driveway with his hands in his pockets. He had the stone flecked with Fannigan’s blood with him. He had not yet decided where or how best to dispose of it, and figured in the interim he should keep it close.
Margaret Dory regarded Arm. She had a narrow, taut face and pale blue eyes that made no bones about boring right through him.
‘Douglas. Urs and Jack aren’t here. No, I’m fine,’ she said.
‘Where they gone?’
‘Over to the town farm.’
‘Guess I’ll drop down so. You think that’d be alright?’
Margaret considered Arm’s question. He could see she was thrown by his requesting permission.
‘Well, Douglas, well I’m sure it’d be okay.’
Arm pulled his hand from the weighted pocket and offered a brisk polite wave. Margaret Dory looked at Arm like he wasn’t there.
The cottage was abandoned. The noise of the radio drifted from inside, and the browned flower-husks on the sill shivered dryly in the breeze. Fresh deposits of shit stubbled the trampled track to the main field. Ursula and Jack were by the gate, their backs to Arm. Jack was in his Spider-Man jacket, standing on the bottom rung of the three-beam fence and baying elatedly as the horse and rider completed a stately lap of the field. Arm came up quietly behind him and grabbed at his shoulders, but Jack didn’t so much as flinch. It was as if he was expecting Arm’s touch at exactly that moment, and perhaps he was. The kid was a mystery from every angle of approach.
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