That will teach them, he said to himself as he got back into the car with the adrenalin foaming around his brain. He raced down through the lane, crossed a main street and raced along another lane. Such intimate knowledge of the city enabled Coyne to put a considerable distance between himself and the scene of the fire. Within minutes he was driving back along Leeson Street just in time to see the men in suits bounding up the cast-iron steps of the Fountain, leaping out through the gate and lashing down the street like they just had a chilli pepper inserted up their hole. A positive indicator if ever there was one.
Coyne’s Justice.
On the way home, Coyne found a hedgehog on the road. Jammed on the brakes and ran along the pavement as though he was possessed by some haunting guilt from which he needed to escape. Looked like he had been struck by some nauseating premonition. Drivers along the dual carriageway caught a glimpse of him bending down, picking a good spot along the granite wall to get sick on, it seemed. Christy Moore blasting out through the open door of the car as though it caused his stomach to turn. Looked like he just puked up a ball of brown needles. Oh Lisdoonvarna.
Running after a fecking hedgehog, for Jesussake. What he intended to do was to catch it and bring it home to the children. They would be amazed to see a hedgehog in their garden in the morning. But there was a practical side too. He had been looking for a permanent and humane way of dealing with the snails who invaded his garden every year, preventing anything from growing. Liberation from snails. The hedgehog and the fight for Irish freedom, he thought, as he took his coat from the car, gently picked up the heaving creature from the street and placed it into the boot. How was he to know that the Irish hedgehog carried twenty-six different kinds of fleas? Coyne was thinking storybook hedgehogs here.
By the time he got home, however, the hedgehog had disappeared. He searched the whole car, under the seats, everywhere. Coyne eventually figured out that it must have escaped through one of the holes where the rust had begun to eat away under the spare wheel in the boot. The night of the escaped hedgehog. He dreamed of missing hedgehogs. Felt a sense of immeasurable loss. Something deeper that he could hardly define. Something that could never be recovered. He’d lost far more than a hedgehog.
Carmel was going mad in the morning. Told him how she had been up half the night worrying. Nearly had to phone the Guards.
I was with Vinnie Foley, Coyne said, as though that was sufficient explanation in itself.
I should have known.
The children watched Coyne attempting to make porridge. They found a black rim all along his lips and Jennifer said there was a smell of petrol coming from his mouth. He stared back at them with cinder eyes, as red as Dracula’s. Everything was too bright for him. They wouldn’t eat the poisoned porridge, so he made a stab at the lumpy lava himself, gave them sugar puffs instead and returned to his crypt, where he slept all day.
In a coma of the undead, he was unable to tell whether he was dealing with dreams or reality. Occasionally he woke up in a panic and remembered the burning car. Saw for the first time with any clarity what he had done. He had broken through the thin membrane between good and evil, on to the criminal side of society. In a half-sleep, he understood the dangers of his borderland excursion, crossing into Drummer’s world, perhaps never finding a way back. Sometimes saw himself back in the nightclub, fighting, kicking the duvet from his bed with a great burst of unconscious violence. He heard Nuala banging a spoon against a toy wheelbarrow in the garden outside and dreamed she was hammering on the outside of his coffin. Voices came and went throughout the morning and afternoon, like muttering mourners. He was aware of Jennifer and Nuala’s presence in the room at one point, whispering and giggling, but his eyelids were too heavy to open. From the kitchen he heard the cutlery being thrown back item by item into their separate compartments, like the bells of disapproval in the distance.
Drummer held a conference at his home in Sandymount. By lunch-time he had selected a team of seven men to comb the city for a guy named Vinnie Foley. He wanted the whole of Dublin to suffer until he found out who did his car. Hadn’t even gone to see the damage himself because it would be too hurtful. Held on to his dignity and just allowed Chief to present him with a picture of the Fire Brigade hosing down the charred brown wreck of his Range Rover hissing and tinkling, with smoke rising up over the streets like a Benetton poster. Took the news in silence, fists clenched, eyes staring into the distance like cigarette burns on the sofa.
All he did was question Naomi. Pinched one of her nipples in his fingers as if he was picking a cherry from a tree, until she squirmed with pain and gave him the name.
And what did you say to him? Drummer demanded.
Nothing. I swear, Berti. He just tried to chat me up.
I don’t like you talking to people like that. Could be the law.
Let go of me, for fucksake. I swear to God, Berti, you’re paranoid.
If I find out he’s a cop, you’re fucking dead, he said, finally releasing her nipple.
Berti Cunningham was the kind of guy with a high metabolic rate who would get up in the morning and think, who do I need to whack today? Now he had a real reason to feel he was under-achieving. He commanded such absolute allegiance that his gang of executive dickheads in suits hung around outside the downstairs luxury bathroom of his swanky home, waiting for instructions while Berti was inside, battling with a serious bowel blockage. It was just like the tribe of communal crappers, except that Berti was the only one who actually engaged in the ritual. The acrid stink imposed a sense of realism on to the proceedings.
Drummer even took his lunch into the bathroom with him, in the hope that it would shift his furious condition. Never ate enough fibre. He would start and end his day with fast food, and the more tense he was, the more he needed to eat. Even as a baby, his nappies used to smell like Big Macs.
I feel my allocation of mercy has run out this month. I want every mother’s son in this city to scream until I find out. I’ll knock long-lasting briquettes out of him, whoever did it.
The Cunningham gang spent the next three days extracting information by brute force from everybody they knew around the city. The Chief Accountant’s trade mark was to hold a lighted cigarette butt up to a person’s eye. Mick Cunningham preferred to let his boot do the talking while Berti had his own subtle techniques that would make his victims sing. He understood pain best of all and knew how to maximise the effects of sleep deprivation. They burst into a service garage at Dublin Bus and slapped some of the mechanics around, threatening them with spanners. At a snooker hall in the north of the city, the Chief Accountant tried to impale a man on a billiard cue. They even slapped Joe Perry around in an alleyway at one point, asking him out of desperation if he had anything against cars. A lot of people would have been cursing Coyne for the mayhem he had unleashed on the underworld.
The widespread investigation yielded nothing. Drummer’s men-in-tights were flit-arsing around the city, cross-examining all kinds of innocent people, kicking rashers and eggs out of harmless junkies and coming up with fuck all. In the agony of his rage, Berti called on a second-rate, ageing dope dealer from Leitrim by the name of Noel Smyth who owed him some money from a long time back. They burst into his Ranelagh flat and slapped him around, going through all his possessions while Drummer stared silently out the window at a stained mattress dumped in the back yard.
You greasy fucking dopehead, Chief shouted. You still owe us some dosh.
Chill out, lads. What money?
There’s a lot of interest due on that, Chief demanded.
I’ve no bread, lads. Take anything you want. You can have Mick Jagger’s underpants. Go on, take them. And Marianne Faithfull’s Mars bar. Take the lot. Take Jimmy’s roach too, that I shared with him in Marrakesh – there on the mantelpiece in the Woodstock ashtray.
Mick Cunningham started force-feeding him a bag of coke which they had com
e across. Chief looked through the CD collection and found The Chieftains in China.
The Chieftains in fucking China, he laughed. But Drummer wasn’t amused. He continued to stare at the melancholy landscape of rainy back gardens, working everything out in his head. Didn’t enjoy the idea of mindless violence. There had to be a purpose. He had to have the right man. So he told the lads to lay off Smyth. Allowed the Leitrim man to gather himself together, thank them for his life and shake his hand. Then they left again.
Carmel started going on these autumn painting workshops, organised by Mr Sitwell. Boom, boom. Off they went, drawing the halfpenny bridge, the Customs House, reflections in the canal. They did a whole series of harbour locations. Then they were off to Enniskerry to draw autumnal landscapes and mountains. Sitwell wearing a tweed jacket and a woolly scarf wrapped around his neck like one of the magnificent men in their flying machines. On top, he usually wore a navy sea captain’s hat and he smoked a cheroot with a filter, leading his troupe of artists up the slopes of Wicklow. He was indiscriminate in his quest for beauty. Undeterred by flocks of sheep and fertiliser bags stuck in hedges, he trekked across the landscape like an explorer with a pack of converts carrying their easels and picnic baskets. All red in the face and sweating like cheese in a greenhouse, they stopped when Sitwell suddenly held out his arms, struck dumb by inspiration.
Splendid, he would say. Bum, bum, bum! But the words were a mere insult to such a vision of magnificent creation. It was breathtaking. Stupendous. Sitwell would take a moment or two to reflect. The artists all humming in agreement, eagerly putting down their gear, before he spoke again.
This place has been touched by divine inspiration, ladies. It’s got everything an artist could ever want in nature – a green patchwork of fields in the valley, a mountain slope of deciduous trees and a sky that was left behind by Michelangelo. The earth is on fire. An inferno of red and yellow shades, flaming along the hills and disappearing into an awesome darkness at the base of the valley.
He would get really exercised about light and darkness for a while. Puffing on his cheroot, pretending to draw a little sketch with it in the air. Then point out the awesome darkness again and say it was the key to genius, to be able to capture that absence of light at the end of the valley.
If you forgive me, ladies. But the artist’s eye is drawn to that absence of light in the same way that a man is drawn to those intriguing, shadowy qualities in the cut of a woman’s blouse.
Some of the women laughed or sniggered in complicity at his jokes. As though you were admitting you had had a mastectomy if you didn’t join in. Some of them gave him more than he bargained for with a string of Wonderbra jokes. The valley of darkness. Twin peaks. Lift and separate. Schtoppem-floppen.
But everything settled down and his troupe was won over by the new purity of artistic invention. Everyone painting away quietly. A mixture of smells, ranging from Sitwell’s cigar, his aftershave, along with the smell of cut hay, lingering in the air. In the distance, the crows arguing in the tops of the trees. At times an unseen car or a truck in the valley. And the landscape shifting with the angle of the sun, the shape of clouds, and the progress of sheep, swinging their jaws endlessly in a silent musical rhythm.
Coyne had left messages for Vinnie Foley. Wanted to warn him. Kept on phoning and speaking to these sweet advertising voices, telling him that Vinnie was not available. Or else he was at a presentation. And when Coyne hadn’t heard from him a week later, he marched into the offices of Cordawl, O’Carroll, Beatty and fucking Banim to make sure he spoke to him. Yes, it was a matter of life and death, in a way. The woman at the reception greeted Coyne like she knew everything about him in advance.
Hi, she said, ushering him into an oak-panelled reception room, leaning over to show Coyne her lace bra. Blinking at him and gesturing towards a seat by the marble fireplace. There was a massive sculpture like a knotted penis by the window.
Have a look at the mags for a sec, she urged, with a laconic smile as though everything had to be abbreviated into a sexual endearment. Vinnie will be with you in three shakes.
Three shakes of an archbishop’s mickey.
Coyne was then brought upstairs by a chubby young woman wearing a big sweater and a ring in her nose. Took him by the elbow and led him into an open-plan office where people hung around talking in a sort of party atmosphere even though it was before lunch. The place was like a big crèche with a basketball net on the wall. A woman in black leather trousers was physically acting out the punchline of some anecdote, after which she turned and walked away with her arm in the air, waving without looking back, leaving two chuckling men behind her. In another part of the office, an old man with a crew cut started fencing a duel of rulers against a younger executive, while a woman with large pink horn-rimmed glasses was silently staring out the window, thinking up some new super-catchprase like ‘Shaws, almost nationwide’. I mean what the fuck was almost nationwide – Dublin, Cork, Borris in Ossary?
All over the place, there were posters and silly messages – Vin, I want to share my last Rolo with you, Viv. Memo to Moll from Mike: cough up the Fisherman’s Friend ad before the big storm. Memo to Fran from Dan: The Ancient Mariner wants the Fish Fingers poster by Friday. Alfie: the sex was great but the coffee was lousy. Everything paired, everything rhymed. Gary Larson humour had spread like a virus throughout the office and people spoke in cryptic one-liners which recalled the latest TV commercials. Somebody held up a three-day-old doughnut with yellowed cream and said: nothing added but time.
Coyne held them in contempt, even worse than artists or golfers, or even motorists. They thought they were all really clever and creative. But their language was just a series of semi-poetic, post-coital hints. They sounded like men on the make. Madame Bovary in leather. They were all living on an endless paradigm shift, like an infinite flat escalator at an airport.
Coyne, what are you doing here? Vinnie said. He was working on a Kerrygold presentation and was pressed for time.
I had to contact you, Coyne said, looking around, indicating that they needed privacy. But there was no such thing as privacy in an ad agency. It was all egalitarian. An open society with no secrets. And Vinnie thought Coyne had come to him with a marital problem.
Did you empty the tanks, Coyne? Vinnie asked, and Coyne looked startled. What tanks was he referring to?
No, I filled them, he replied.
So what’s the problem?
Your life is in danger, Vinnie. I’ve come to warn you.
Foley laughed as though his friend was reading out a script for a new insurance commercial. Coyne explained that he had spoken to a girl by the name of Naomi who was linked to the crime world, but Vinnie took him by the arm and led him back towards the stairs again.
Relax, Coyne. You’re sleepwalking.
I’m serious, Vinnie. These heavies at the club will come after you.
Why? What have I done?
I’m sorry, Vinnie. It was all a big mistake, but I gave her your name. Just for the crack. Then this situation developed. Vinnie, you better not stay at home for a few days. Stay somewhere else for a while.
Vinnie thought the whole thing was a practical joke. Felt his privacy had been invaded. He was ten minutes away from making an all-important presentation to Kerrygold and his brain was like rancid butter.
Jesus, Coyne, you don’t even look like me.
Carmel was complaining about a terrible smell in the car. A really evil stink of something rotten. It was so bad that Mrs Gogarty had been forced to anoint the vehicle with Lancôme.
Carmel didn’t drive the car very often. But when she did, it was a spectacle. She never hit anything, but the sight of her leaning forward, driving in a high gear and turning her whole body around to look behind, was enough to make Coyne nervous. He didn’t have to witness her driving, of course.
Except on that one occasion, when she picked up
one of those luminous yellow Garda cones. Somehow she had chosen to park in a restricted area, thinking that she was immune from the law, and while reversing out, managed to run over and lift up one of the plastic bollards on the fender without hearing the crunch. There she was, driving across Dublin, people waving at her from bus stops and Carmel thinking they were all being terrible friendly or terribly hostile that day. Thought the man in the blue Mercedes was making a pass at her, so Mrs Gogarty beside her kept telling her to ignore him – the dirty scoundrel. Three young children in the back of the car and all. And what had to happen of course was that a squad car from the Clontarf district eventually flagged her down. And she explained that she was married to Garda Pat Coyne from Irishtown, so the news went around double quick – Coyne’s missus dragged a No-Parking cone all the way from Blackrock to Clontarf.
The journey was undertaken on those rare occasions when Carmel’s mother felt the need to go back across to the Northside to visit old friends, look at the old house and chat with the neighbours. A journey of triumph. Behaving like a returned lottery winner. With the Brown Thomas walk, and the scent of Lancôme marching ten paces ahead of her. I’m living in Dun Laoghaire now, near my daughter Carmel. It’s nice over there. Very convenient. But Mrs Gogarty still could not help being curious about her origins and the place she had lived in for so long with her husband. Couldn’t help noticing the improvements around the neighbourhood – a new porch here, a new fence there, an attic converted, and the fact that a certain Mr Donore had finally died so that his pigeons weren’t a nuisance any more. She could not resist the secret feeling of envy, knowing she had betrayed her real friends and was therefore banished for ever across the city to the Southside and a life of imagined superiority.
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