The Accident

by S D Monaghan

  ‘When what happens?’

  Christine finally stood and stepped away from the stool. ‘Well, I think I’ve already taken up too much of your time. I have to run. Thank you, Tara. I’m happy to have seen what has preoccupied Ryan for the last six months.’ Then she sharply slapped Tara across the cheek – a quick cuff that came out of nowhere.

  ‘Jesus. You bitch!’ Tara shouted. Christine’s nails had slightly nicked her when Tara had abruptly turned her head. She could feel the contours of whitened scratches already rising, the skin swelling, breaking and leaking beads of blood. Swallowing back tears of frustration and pain, she said, ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘And I care?’

  ‘Get out of my house before I call the police. You nut. You mental case.’

  Christine picked up her coat, tucked it under her arm and calmly walked into the hallway. Tara, still rubbing her face, shouted after her, ‘You should’ve heard what Ryan said about you. It must be terrifying to realise that the one who knows you best actually pities you? You sad, pathetic, stupid fucking bitch.’

  The front door slammed. Tara wished she didn’t know how things had got to this point. She wished it was a sad, unknowable mystery. Instead, she was cursed with the knowledge that just two nights ago, a fork had appeared in her journey and she had taken the wrong turn. From the living room she watched now as Christine crossed the road and swung open the heavy door of Ryan’s SUV.

  ‘Where the fuck are you?’ Tara muttered. A man like Ryan didn’t simply disappear. It had only been two nights ago that his life had radiated from him with such unrelenting energy.

  The landline began to bleat. She plucked up the receiver and snapped, ‘What?’

  ‘This is Sandra in KLT; can I speak to Tara, please?’

  It took a couple of moments, but then Tara placed her. ‘For fuck’s sake, don’t tell me – you can’t reach my husband?’

  ‘Excuse me? Is this a bad time?’

  ‘You think? Look, what is it?’

  ‘Actually, I was talking to your husband this morning. But I wanted to check with you – as joint account holder – if there is any way we could convince you to keep your money with us? We have very competitive rates, but your husband wasn’t interested. I can call back at another time if you’d prefer.’

  ‘Sorry – but what now?’

  ‘David’s transfer of one million, four hundred thousand euros arranged for tomorrow morning.’ Sandra spoke a little too slowly, her pronunciation a little too clear. ‘I’m officially calling to run our most competitive rates by you. So, is there something you want to ask me, now that you have me on the phone? Anything?’

  Tara’s breathing continued down the line for a few moments. Then she said, ‘Sorry, but David has arranged for what?’

  A deep inhalation through the mouth. A loud exhalation through the nose. After that: ‘He has arranged the transfer of one point four million euros from your joint account.’

  ‘Sorry Sandra, I need a moment.’ Tara lowered the phone to her side and carried it to the kitchen. She poured what was left of the wine into Christine’s empty glass and drained it in two gulps. This was the beginning of something that she couldn’t see the end of. ‘OK Sandra, start again. Because obviously there’s been a very big fucking mistake.’

  Chapter Seven

  In the driver’s seat next to David, Fenton’s rictus smile revealed two perfect lines of white teeth. Even now, with the pistol swaying confidently in his grip, he looked like a kitchen appliance salesman.

  ‘Let me guess, David: you’ve been so long living your new life that you’re now the type of man that generally hates violence? I get that. I really do. Violence is no longer the source of your power. Instead, it’s a threat to your wealth and to your handsomeness. But in life, we are all at some time confronted with what we hate so much. My friends in the back, let me introduce them. They’re from Zagreb. The skinhead is Viktor. He is the Mozart of ferocity. The Picasso of gouging out people’s eyeballs. Am I connecting with your hard-earned university degree temperament yet? Am I being under-fucking-stood?’

  Viktor smirked obligingly, but from his expression David could tell that he hated being paraded around as Fenton’s ‘isn’t that so, Viktor’ dancing monkey. Presumably the money was good, and he had the self-assurance of an employee too indispensable to be fired for bad attitude. Viktor picked sleep out of his eye now, revealing blue prison tattoos slinking down his fingers, while his palm looked dipped in ink.

  ‘The other fella is Pejo. He has a reputation for being the most dangerous, ruthless and psychotic fucker that ever unsprung a flick blade.’

  Pejo nodded in agreement; a man of importance had given judgement.

  ‘In their world,’ Fenton continued, ‘you can’t build that sort of brand overnight. Believe me.’

  David believed him. He recognised a certain deadness in both Viktor and Pejo’s eyes. The study of war after war had shown him that conflict doesn’t just kill off a few hundred thousand men. It murders something that can never be brought back. And if a man lives in a zone where there’s many wars, then soon all that is left is the raw beast that had originally stumbled out of the jungle.

  ‘Here’s an interesting fact, David – you and me, we’re from the same side of town. The Cawley Estates are just up the road from where I grew up. Isn’t that amazing? I couldn’t believe it when you told me that last night. I’d assumed you’d be just another ponce who’d got everything from his da. And when I met you, you even looked like a ponce who’d got everything from his da. Fair fucks, man. You did it. You pulled yourself up by the bootlaces. I’ve what – ten years on you? So while you were still kicking a ball around the street with other scumbags, I probably walked by one day with my mates: older, cooler and meaner than you. You must’ve looked at me and thought, “I want to be him one day”.’

  ‘Yeah,’ David said, trying to show no fear. ‘That could’ve happened.’ Cawley and all the other neighbouring areas for about five square miles had produced many men like Fenton: men who decided that the world would only stop hating them when they beat it.

  ‘Considering the shitholes that we crawled out of, we’ve done quite well for ourselves. I did what I’ve needed to do to get myself here. While you did the impossible and weaselled your way into college, got learned up and never looked back. That must’ve took some doing when most of your mates left school at thirteen. It was hard enough just to ditch the accent, huh? Don’t I fucking know it. But it had to be done. No one who speaks like we did can have any success in this life.’ Fenton laughed and play-punched David on the shoulder.

  ‘What do you want?’ David asked.

  Fenton checked his hair in the mirror. ‘I want Ryan.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why is not relevant. What is relevant is that sometimes shit happens that I just can’t ignore. That’s when I gotta stand up and strike out and make sure the scum know their place, which is at the bottom of the shit pile. That’s why I’m going to cut Ryan’s balls off, dip them in soy sauce, put them in his mouth, tape his lips shut and wait till he swallows them.’

  Trying hard to be nonplussed, David said, ‘And again – why?’

  ‘He stole merchandise from me.’

  ‘What kind of merchandise?’

  ‘Narcotics.’

  ‘Ryan doesn’t sell drugs.’

  ‘Uh-huh. He imports them. For me.’

  ‘Ryan? He’s a builder. From the country. He likes... housewives and bottled beer.’

  ‘OK, I exaggerate. He imported them just the once. Well, he was supposed to.’

  ‘Look, you got me in your car. You’ve threatened me with a gun. You can presume that I now know what you’re capable of. So explain. Cawley boy to Cawley boy. Mano a mano. What the hell is going on?’

  Fenton rubbed his chin in an exaggerated pose of thought while his other hand relaxed its hold on the pistol in his lap. ‘Yeah, all right. Knowing where I’m coming from just might help you focus more
fully on what I require from you. So basically, Maximum Building Services import a lot of their building materials from Eastern Europe. When Ryan ordered steel for some council houses he’s due to renovate any day now, he arranged to have hollows bored into the beams, and my connections stuffed them with Siberian gear. It was then trucked through the Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic before, in theory, crossing the border at Germany and into France to be shipped to Wexford and trucked here. Ryan gets his steel, I get my delivery, Ryan gets paid. Everyone is happy.’

  ‘So how did it inevitably go wrong?’

  Fenton crossed his leg. He was enjoying David’s drollness. ‘Ryan claimed the shipment was stolen. The whole lot. Steel and produce. Jesus, does he really think it’s that easy to rip me off? Davy, you worked with him. Did he strike you as that stupid? He didn’t strike me as that stupid.’

  ‘So you’re upset.’

  ‘Not too much at first. I mean, obviously he got a better deal somewhere. So I told him that bygones will be bygones in that I’ll just accept, from him, the price of the merchandise I’d purchased, plus a percentage of the mark-up of the profit I would’ve made. Therefore I still make my money but without having the bother and expense of getting it onto the streets. In effect, the merchandise becomes just another cross that someone else has to bear instead of me. And in return, Ryan not only remains alive, but he keeps the difference that he made from selling it to whoever gazumped my deal. Jesus, Davy – that makes me a fucking saint. So I gave him till Monday morning to have it for me. But on Sunday night, he just vanished. Into thin air. Puff!’

  ‘But Ryan’s just a builder from the country who did all right for himself up in the big smoke. He doesn’t import smack from the East. How did he get mixed up with you?’

  ‘His wife, Christine – know her?’

  ‘Never met her.’

  ‘She’s an interesting one,’ Fenton muttered as he looked out of the driver’s side window. ‘The way that people are interesting when they lose everything and will do anything to get it all back. So, Christine was working with one of my little helpers that a judge sent to that Future is our Youth centre for troubled teens.’ He paused to give a big sitcom sigh. ‘Boys will be boys, eh? But instead of helping him, she got him to help her. See, through him, she had Ryan make a deal with yours truly.’

  ‘So ask his wife where he is.’

  ‘Like, “duh”. But she doesn’t know where the fucker is, either. In fact, she thinks we killed him. See, Ryan has gone into hiding and he is the type of prick that will leave his friends and family in the shit while he sails away into the sunset. Well, that is not going to happen this time. I want my merchandise, or my money, or Ryan’s head on a plate. Which brings me to the point of our little tête-à-tête.’

  ‘I don’t know where Ryan is. He’s just my builder.’

  ‘The thing is, David, the only lead we have is that the last place Pejo saw Ryan was when he was driving towards your house the night before you moved in.’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘And then there’s Ryan’s phone we took out of his car, with all those calls between your hot little missus and Ryan on the day he vanishes. Weird, huh?’

  ‘We told you about that already.’

  ‘Yeah... You did. And I hope you’re not telling any porkies, Davy. Because if I was to discover that you interfered with my business model in any way, then—’

  ‘I’m not a dealer. How could I interfere with your “business model”?’

  ‘If you were to come between me and Ryan – say for example you helped him, hid him, hindered me getting to him in any way – then it will be you who I will hold responsible for all of Ryan’s crimes. And believe me, I won’t show you the mercy and kindness I had originally offered Ryan. I will come down and introduce myself to dear, lovely Valerie, your seventy-six-year-old mother in her single-bed apartment, Unit 6, in the Belmont Retirement Home. I hear your ma is a devout Catholic – that God is her happy pill in her grand old age. That’s lovely. I’d like to have a chat with her about that. See, I’m an atheist. And not because I like being a smug prick. I’m an atheist because God doesn’t exist. And believe me, when I’m through with your ma, she’ll be one too.’

  David leaned into Fenton, pressing his chest into the barrel of the pistol. ‘You even think about touching my mother—’ But the arrival of Pejo’s flick blade against his throat floored his threat.

  Fenton poked David in the chest with the pistol. ‘You won’t do anything, David. Like most people, you’re a sheep – and sheep don’t eat meat.’

  Pejo slowly withdrew the blade.

  ‘So, I’m being totally honest when I say that I don’t want to hurt your ma. Valerie’s obviously a fine woman, to have brought up a son like you against all the odds. But I will if you make me. And when I’m finished with your ma, I’ll have Tara raped with a broken bottle. Viktor knows what to do. He can cause maximum damage very neatly. Oh yes, we heard that Tara is with child. Christine let it slip. Lovely. Congratulations.’

  David visibly tensed. Jesus Christ.

  ‘If you want a Caesarean, Viktor is the man for the job. He studied medicine a long time ago, back in Croatia. I’ll have Tara’s belly opened up and let her bleed out your kid into your spanking new bath over three or four hours. Tara wouldn’t dare scream, because we’ll already have pulled out her tongue and kicked in her teeth.’ He gestured to the back seat. ‘For example, just like that.’

  David glanced over the headrest precisely as Viktor smashed Pejo in the mouth with a tattooed fist armoured with the chunk of a stainless steel knuckleduster. Blood splattered against the side window and broken teeth ricocheted around the car’s interior like wood chippings. A gush of blackish liquid broke from Pejo’s mouth, dumping onto the leather interior in wet clumps. David recoiled against the dashboard, shouting, ‘Jesus!’ and frantically brushing broken enamel off his shoulder. Pejo issued a high-pitched squeal before a second blow into his eye socket shocked him into silence, though his hands lifted pointlessly as three more blows pounded into his skull.

  Fenton, holding up the bloody stump of an incisor, said, ‘Tragic. He had two implants in his mouth – two works of art – each one more expensive than a mid-range car.’ He gave his eyebrows a Groucho waggle and, miming a drum roll, added, ‘Ba-dum-psh!’

  ‘Why did you?... You didn’t have to…’ David raised his hand before his mouth, feeling that he was next, thinking of all the countless hours he’d spent flossing and brushing. In the back seat, Pejo coughed: a ferocious rasping hack dragged from the depths of his lungs.

  ‘It was Pejo’s job to follow Ryan. It was his job to know where he was at all times. But he lost him at your house. Ryan went in and, according to Pejo, never came out. But Pejo didn’t wait long enough. He left, thinking Ryan would do what he’d always done – go home, play video games and sleep. But by the morning, Ryan had either disappeared or he was still in your house. But I’ve been there and we’ve been watching it. I don’t know where he is, but he isn’t your house guest. So Pejo disappointed me. Do you intend to disappoint me, Davy?’

  David didn’t reply. He just glared into Fenton’s eyes.

  ‘Of course not. I mean, you’ve such an amazing house. All I could think of when I was walking around it was what fun it would be to watch it burn down. Jesus, Davy, there are just so many ways I could ruin your life; it’s like you’re a chocolate box. Now – are we clear on what happens to the man who gets in the way of me getting Ryan?’

  Dispassionately, David said, ‘One hundred per cent clear.’

  ‘Good man. We’re watching you, always – as you will have noted this morning in your back garden. And if things don’t change for the better, then we’ll be in touch again shortly. Next time, we’ll leave a message. Now, why don’t you fuck off and make yourself a protein shake, or whatever it is people like you have for lunch? Get out.’

  As David opened the door, he glanced to the back
seat. Pejo remained upright and groaning, his bloodied skull nestling in the headrest, his left eye exposed and bulging, its lid half-torn off. His other eye was closed, the socket the colour of a kidney. He was alive, if not aware that he was alive – less a man, more a collection of pulsing wounds.

  When the Skoda drove off, David looked across to the football pitches where the parents and kids were making the most of the heatwave before autumn swallowed up the blue skies. He used to tell his students that the only thing history teaches us is that history teaches us nothing. I’ve committed the same mistake over and over again. The mistake was in believing that there was a way out of this; that it would all somehow go away.

  So, it was Fenton who had sent David a messenger that morning. And the message was: We’re Here. You’re Gettable. Fenton’s men originated in places where a person would pull the trigger for a can of Coke, never mind whatever it was that Ryan owed them. And when Fenton was finished with David, he was the type of sociopath who would go on to damage Tara just because he could. David trusted his instincts. Some things didn’t need to be scientifically replicated under laboratory conditions and reported in a peer-reviewed journal to be true. David had seen enough of the world to know that it was populated with individuals who just wanted to pour acid into life’s spring water.

  Climbing into the BMW, he powered down the window and tried to breathe normally. There was an emptiness in his stomach but he wasn’t hungry. He felt as if he’d never eat again. It seemed like something people only did in films; something decorative, that whole charade of raising fork to mouth. He cruised away from the park with nowhere to go but home. As he drove, the red lights turned to green like doors being opened by attendants. Before the events of this week he would have seen that as an omen of good fortune.