by Declan Burke
I swallowed against some rising bile and maybe she thought I was choking back a sob. Anyway, she took a deep breath and let it out slow, shook her head, then went to the wardrobe to retrieve my jeans and T-shirt, laying them on the bed along with my socks and jocks.
She had to help me dress, filling me in on the events of the past four hours as she eased my limbs into various openings.
Dee had heard the accident happening, the crunching and glass smashing, rang 999 straight away. Christ alone knows how long we’d have been in the gully if she hadn’t. I’d taken a blow to the face, from the steering wheel they guessed, which had fractured my cheekbone and left my eye so swollen it was completely closed. On the plus side, and apart from the concussion that was causing thirst, blurred vision, nausea and disorientation, I’d had a solid four hours of sleep for the first time in a week. I’ve walked away from stag parties in worse shape.
Ben didn’t walk anywhere. The Audi had hit passenger-side first. They’d had to cut him out and he had yet to regain consciousness. His left arm was broken in two places and he had a compound fracture in his left femur. A tangerine-sized lump on his right temple was bleeding into the brain pan.
The cops were downstairs in the canteen, scarfing free coffee and complaining about the stale muffins. Pamela was supposed to tell the doctor the minute I woke up.
‘Do it,’ I said, trying to tie my trainers in through a blur of fingers and laces. ‘I don’t want to cause you any problems.’
‘A dollar short and a decade late.’ The hint of a sad smile. ‘Wait here.’
She unlocked the door, went outside. I snuck up to the door, heard her tell the cop I was coming round, I’d be fit for interview in another ten minutes or so. No, he couldn’t use his mobile phone, and she didn’t care if his two-way was on the blink, the use of mobile phones was banned on this floor in case they interfered with hospital equipment. Twenty seconds later she slipped inside again.
‘I’d say you’ve about fifteen minutes,’ she said.
She stuck a Band-Aid on the needle’s oozing wound and told me the ICU was three floors up. Then she gave me two Dilaudid and a ten-minute start. Which is as fair as you can ask of any woman.
21
The corridor looked no longer than the Marianas Trench. It didn’t help that I’d been operated on by some fiend who’d replaced every last bone with a strand of hot cotton wool, which left me zig-zagging a course between wheelchairs and beds, stern-faced nurses and blank-eyed porters. Dizzy, weak and sick, the polished floor lurching up then falling away.
The elevator lobby was a safe haven. I propped myself between two doors and dry-swallowed one of the Dilaudids waiting for the lift to arrive. My vision seemed to be getting worse. Not only was everything shorter and narrower due to the patch on my left eye, but I was suffering a kind of blurring in the good one. Or maybe that was just the artist’s impression of a fiery sunset hanging on the opposite wall, a vermillion blaze that did my thumping headache no favours.
Three minutes burned up already. The elevator door dinged, then opened. I staggered inside. The doors closed and the floor rose and I stared at the fuzzy reflection in the mirror, something that looked a lot like the Elephant Man after fifteen rounds with Jake La Motta. I found myself wondering why they put mirrors into elevators and decided it was for the claustrophobics, fully aware that I was trying to distract myself from the dread slithering up my spine at the prospect of what lay three floors above, a tangerine-sized lump bleeding into his brain pan.
By the time I left the elevator and stepped out onto the ICU floor, the Dilaudid had gone off like a depth-charge. I was queasy below and woozy upstairs, giddy as a three-legged donkey on wet cobbles. I went through to a waiting area of low chairs, low tables and people who paced, fretted or wept quietly. No worst there is none, Hopkins reckoned, although he’d never had a child comatose in ICU. You could taste the desperation on the dead air. Salty, like an offshore mist in the early dawn.
Two of the people were Dee and an angular guy in his early forties, sandy hair brushed across his forehead, wide eyes. A chin like a soft-boiled egg. He was wide in the shoulders and wore a mauve shirt under a checked sports jacket with leather patches at the elbows.
She saw me coming. Closed her eyes, allowed her chin slump forward onto her chest. Then she turned her head away and held up a hand to ward me off.
‘Don’t even come near me,’ she said. Sounding dull, raspy. The guy unfolded from his seat and got up in stages. I had to peek under his armpit to speak to Dee.
‘Whatever they told you, it’s not true.’ My own voice was a croak. ‘We were rammed, ran off the road.’
‘Jesus, Harry. Do you really think I give a fuck how it happened?’
She had a point. I looked up at the guy. ‘Hey, d’you mind? I’m trying to talk about our son here.’
‘She says she doesn’t want you near her.’ He sounded smooth, controlled. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t rasp or croak. He pointed over my shoulder. ‘Why don’t you sit over there? There’s a seat free.’
‘Why don’t you sit over there?’
‘I’m already here,’ he said.
‘I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,’ I said, ‘but-’
‘Frank.’
‘Right.’
I gave Frank some fish-eye. By now someone had iced the cobbles and the donkey was down to two legs. I tilted my head to peek under his armpit again and the room swam away, seemed to loop around on itself, then settled down into a whirlpool groove. Frank put out a hand, maybe to steady me, maybe to fend me off, as I began to topple in towards Dee. I swiped at it, missed, and wound up with my jaw planted on Frank’s chest.
Dee whipped around, using the heels of her palms to swab her cheeks. Eyes red-limned and raw. A mascara tear-streak had curved outside her right cheekbone to head for her ear. ‘Christ’s sakes, Harry, I’m trying to fucking pray here.’
I’ve had worse moments, although most of those were idled away in front of a gun. ‘Pray?’
It was bad, then. I struggled away from Frank, which is to say he stood me upright, just as a barrel-shaped Sikh doctor came through the double swing-doors at the end of the room. Every head turned but he barrelled straight for us, a clipboard tucked under one arm. I don’t know why, he didn’t refer to it once. Dee stood up, a hand to her mouth. Frank put an arm around her. He looked solid, dependable, so I lurched up against him.
‘Mizz Gorman?’ the Sikh said.
She nodded. He took a deep breath. ‘I am very sorry,’ he said, not so much rolling his Rs as bowling them at skittles, ‘but I have very little to report. No significant change, yes.’
‘O Christ,’ Dee whimpered.
The Sikh held up a forefinger. ‘This means, you understand, that he has no deterioration. But soon he will need the transfusion. He has lost a lot of blood.’ A hint of reproach, as if it were Ben’s fault. ‘The boy has had two transfusions in four hours. At this rate …’ He tailed off with a shrug, turning his palm upwards.
From behind her hand Dee emitted a sound that was somewhere between sob and stifled screech. Frank squeezed her shoulders. The Sikh glanced from one to the other as if waiting for applause.
‘So give him the transfusion,’ I said.
‘It’s not that simple,’ Frank said over his shoulder.
The Sikh looked at me for the first time. ‘Who is this?’ he said.
‘The father,’ Frank said.
There followed a conversation I didn’t fully follow, its natural flow clogged up with AB negatives, anti-Ds, antigen factors and incompatibilities, but as the room swirled away, then came rushing back, I realised they were all staring at me, waiting for an answer.
‘What the fuck are we waiting for?’ I said, ripping the dressing off my forearm. Drops of blood flew, spattering the tiles, the Sikh’s penny loafers.
The effort, or the momentum, tugged me sideways. Frank half-turned to grab at me. The donkey, down to one leg, gave one l
ast kick.
I don’t remember making it all the way down.
22
More tubes, crisp sheets, muted beeps. A different room, another nurse, this one a pert blonde with a luscious overbite. Tohill leaned against the wall at the foot of the bed, hands jammed in his pockets, his face now looking like they’d just pulled the boot out of a canal.
‘Don’t mind the cop,’ I told the nurse. I felt sharp enough, even though I heard myself chewing tinfoil. ‘It’s what they call community policing. He’s just taking an interest.’
She flushed a little, averting her eyes as she fussed around, checking this, measuring that. My jaw still throbbed but the Dilaudid had bedded in. The pain was there, constant but tolerable.
I’d slept again. Long enough to allow them round up the donkey, take him away to some sanctuary in the hills. The nausea was gone and my vision had cleared, although the world was still shorter and narrower than God intended. ‘How’s Ben?’ I croaked.
The nurse glanced at Tohill. He blinked once. ‘No change,’ she said. ‘Stable but no change.’
‘I’m compatible?’
‘Already done,’ Tohill said. ‘They’ll be giving him a transfusion once they know it’s clean.’
‘You won’t find any booze in it,’ I said. ‘And even if you do, you’d have needed prior permission before it’ll stand up in court.’
He nodded, grim. ‘You nearly finished?’ he asked the nurse.
‘Nearly,’ she said. When she was done, she asked if I wanted a cup of tea, some toast.
‘Coffee’d be nice.’ But my heart was a cotton puff, so tea it was. The nurse left. Tohill locked the door, opened the window and produced a battered pack of Marlboro Lights, sparked us up.
‘Sorry about the kid,’ he said.
‘He’s not gone yet.’
The niceties observed, he jumped in. ‘Tell me again,’ he said, ‘how you weren’t boozing.’
‘We were rammed. Maybe it looks like a one-car deal to you, but we were rammed.’
‘By who?’
‘The fuck would I know? He came up from behind, hit me blindside.’
He had himself a drag while he thought about that. ‘Convenient,’ he said, ‘that the only person who can verify your story is in a coma.’
‘So we wait ’til he comes out of it.’
His stare was a deadpan ‘If’.
‘We found the stuff,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ll be telling me the guy who rammed you planted it.’
‘What stuff?’
‘The coke,’ he said, patiently. ‘About ten grand’s worth, although we’ll work it up to fifty. Plenty enough to put you back where you belong.’
He wasn’t kidding. Given my record, ten grand worth of coke was enough to see me deported to the dark side of Jupiter. I took a long hit off the Marlboro while the prickles of cold sweat dried cold into my back. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said.
‘Probably the bang on the head,’ he said. ‘Temporary amnesia. When you remember, be sure to let us know. Some of the boys are keen to know where it was going, who stumped up the ten grand. Unless it was all for personal use, hey?’ He winked, the grin that of a hyena with bad gas. Then he stubbed out his smoke in a kidney-shaped metal dish and took a pair of gloves from a side pocket. For one horrific moment I thought he was aiming for a cavity search, but instead he reached into his breast pocket, drew out a padded envelope. The cling-film had been unwrapped, hung loose. ‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I’m more interested in this.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You tell me. We found it on the back seat.’
‘Back seat?’
He stared, the bleak eyes tightening. Then he tossed the envelope onto the bed.
‘Try this,’ he said. ‘We have a one-car accident that looks like you lost control, probably as a result of your driving under the influence.’ He waved away my attempt at protest. ‘In the car we find a load of Class A, this in a car also containing your young son. Sordid, sure, but at least it’s open-and-shut. Except then we find this.’ He indicated the envelope. ‘So take a quick look inside before you start talking.’
‘First off, I know nothing about any Class A.’
‘So your prints won’t be all over the gear?’
‘Matter a fuck if they are, I was unconscious when it was found, or when you say it was. Who’s to say it wasn’t you had me fondle it? Reasonable doubt, Tohill. Especially when I’ve no previous for anything drug-related.’
‘You think that’ll stand up?’
‘You’re fishing, Tohill. And you’re gonna need a bigger boat.’
He shrugged that one off. ‘What about this?’ he said, nodding at the envelope.
‘I haven’t the faintest clue what’s in there. You can check with the cop at the PA, I went around there to feed Finn’s dog. I needed to piss, then the toilet wouldn’t flush, and when I looked inside the cistern I found that under a false bottom. I presumed it was his suicide note, so I brought it with me to give to his mother.’
‘A suicide note?’
‘I know, yeah. You wouldn’t be giving it to me now if it was a suicide note. But that’s what I thought it was at the time.’
‘Says you.’
‘Check with Saoirse Hamilton. She’ll confirm she asked me to find it.’
‘And you didn’t even take a sneaky peek inside?’
‘At a suicide note?’
He scratched his nose, then gestured at the envelope. My prints were already on the cling-film, so I opened the envelope. Inside was a passport that had been issued six months previously. Tucked inside its inner sleeve, folded neatly in half, were ten crisp, pink five-hundred euro notes. For a second I thought they were fakes. I’d never seen a five-hundred euro note before.
The passport bore Finn’s photograph, a signature that looked a lot like Finn’s writing and a date of birth that was Finn’s own. Oddly, the passport appeared to belong to one Philip Winston Byrne.
‘Tell me this,’ Tohill said. ‘What kind of suicide stashes a fake passport and five grand for a quick getaway? And while you’re at it, tell me some more about how you just so happened to be at the PA when he jumped.’
I stubbed my smoke and beckoned for another. The Marlboro tasted harsh and dry but I needed a little thinking time.
‘I’m presuming you had a warrant to search the car,’ I said. ‘Otherwise anything you found’ll be thrown out as inadmissible.’
‘Still with the legal shit.’ A lupine grin. ‘Your kid had to be cut out of the wreck and you’re worrying about procedure?’
‘The law’s the law.’
‘Not when it’s bent into knots by fuckers like you. And anyway, there was no search. The shit was just lying there.’
‘Says you.’
‘Says about ten cops and firemen, all of us with honest faces. So fuck your warrants and procedure. If you don’t play ball, right now, I’ll turn you out to the boys want you for the coke. And my best guess is, they’ll keep you just long enough to get whoever owns the gear wondering about what you’re telling them.’
‘I know nothing about any-’
‘Here’s how it is, Rigby.’ He ticked off on his fingers as he went. ‘We have you cold on trafficking Class A while transporting a minor in a vehicle you’re not insured to drive. And then,’ he nodded at the passport, the money, ‘there’s the incriminating evidence in what’s starting to look like a murder investigation.’
‘Circumstantial, and only because you want it to look that way. So you can screw Gillick and Hamilton Holdings.’
The heat was getting to him. He slipped out of his jacket, draped it on the bottom of the bed, leaned back against the wall. ‘Explain the fake passport,’ he said. ‘The five grand.’
‘You don’t know when Finn stashed them. Maybe he had plans and changed his mind.’
‘According to you, he had those kind of plans about twenty minutes before he went walkabout on the window ledge.’ He ease
d himself away from the wall, started pacing. Three strides to the window, a turn and three strides to the door. ‘See it my way,’ he said. ‘The first thing you do is bolt, leave the scene. Then you come in and make a false statement. Next thing we know you’re driving around with the guy’s fake passport and five grand in cash.’
‘I called it in,’ I said. ‘Gave the medic my number, went off to tell Finn’s mother. Then I came in, voluntarily, to make a statement. All the Good Samaritan shit. And that envelope was sealed. I didn’t open it because I thought it was Finn’s suicide note, I was giving it to his mother.’
He quit pacing, turned to face me. Open his arms wide, as if pleading. ‘That might even work,’ he said, ‘except for the kicker.’
‘What kicker?’
‘Your rep, Rigby. You’ve already put one guy away, your own brother.’
‘Try to use that in court and you’ll be laughed out of the building.’
‘It’s not what’s said, Rigby.’ The lupine grin now an incisor short of a howl. ‘It’s what’s known.’
I nodded. He folded his arms, triumphant.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Sorry what?’
‘For not playing along. I didn’t realise this was a CSI episode.’ I glanced up into the corners. ‘Where’s the cameras?’
‘Rigby,’ his teeth grinding, ‘what you don’t fucking realise is-’
‘Bullshit. Okay? Bullfuckingshit.’
‘You think? I say the word, you’re in a cell and-’
‘First off,’ I said, ‘you’re CAB. So any and all crap about murder or homicide or any of that shit, it won’t be your call. Two, if you had enough to put me in a cell I’d be there already. Three, it’s not what’s known, Tohill, it’s what you can prove. You take a case to the DPP on what’s known, you’ll be out on your arse so fast you won’t even bounce.’
‘You want to take that chance?’
‘I’m taking it. Because this is a game here, and you’re trying to push me into some corner where I have only one way out. Because it’s not me you want, it’s the Hamiltons and Gillick, or whoever they’re fronting for. And I’m fucked if I’ll be your boy.’