The Accident

by S D Monaghan

  David sped past his childhood road without even glancing at it. Then, as the blocks depopulated, the shopping centre appeared before him. He swung off to the right and pulled up in front of number 61. Getting out of the car, he felt both the security of familiarity and the diffidence of the misplaced. He remembered how it was a twenty-minute walk to here from his old house – a walk that he’d hated, because of the shopping bags pulling his arms from their sockets on the return trip.

  Opening the garden gate, he scanned the windows. The net curtains didn’t twitch, shadows didn’t retreat. Am I afraid? It didn’t matter. There was nothing shameful about it; one cannot be courageous unless there is something to be frightened of. He pressed his hand against the door to test its heaviness and it clicked open. Too easy. He stepped into the hall. The only sound came from the kitchen – a running tap. He moved forward, past the side table and turned the handle. And there was Ryan – alive and well before the kitchen sink – his eyes wide, confusion parting his lips into a half-smile.

  Ryan withdrew the box-cutter from his pocket and extracted the blade. ‘How’s it hanging, bud?’ Then his eyes widened, registering a great injustice. ‘You almost killed me, you fuck’n prick.’

  David looked affronted. ‘It was an accident. If I’d known how much of a pussy you were, I wouldn’t have bitch-slapped you so hard.’

  ‘Don’t know why you blamed me. I just finished what your wife started with those tits.’

  David lunged forward, his hand grabbing Ryan’s wrist, knocking it against the sink and forcing Ryan to drop the box-cutter. They crashed into each other, arms and legs flailing. Almost immediately, a stalemate was reached with both men doubled over, side by side, braced in headlocks. Ryan punched David in the side of the head. David punched him back.

  ‘Enough!’ Gordon shouted like a parliamentarian from the hallway. He entered the kitchen and stretched for something on top of the fridge – a black pistol. It looked very real and yet very unreal. It was something David had seen too often on TV. ‘Dave, you can’t outpunch a bullet, and I can’t unpull a trigger.’

  David’s face tensed, willing himself to take the risk.

  Gordon saw it. ‘Think about it, Dave. Long and hard.’

  ‘Where’d you get a gun?’

  ‘Jesus, what do you think I spent my formative years doing? Hanging around street corners? My father worked for the RAF – remember? He made sure I could shoot before I could ride a bike. I’ve being hunting since I was ten.’

  David released Ryan and shoved him back towards the kitchen door. Ryan’s head wound was bleeding again through the ripped bandage.

  Ryan shook his head like an animal awakening. ‘You’re a dead man, Dave. Fuck’n dead.’ The tendons on his neck bulged, his teeth exposed and gritted.

  Gordon snapped, ‘Stay where you are, Ryan. This is not the time for that shit.’ The gun wavered in his hand as he struggled to make a decision. He gestured to David. ‘Into the front room. Where there’s no knives. Where you can’t fuck up my life any more than you already have.’ Gordon retreated into the hall, keeping the gun trained on David as he entered the living room. It had a coffee table, a three-seater sofa, a grubby carpet and net curtains.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ Ryan shouted from the hall. ‘You were meant to be meeting him at the fucking bank! Jesus. Can’t anything go right? It’s like... It’s like God has just decided that I am fucked.’

  Gordon reddened. ‘It’s OK. We’re still going to the bank. It’s going to be fine.’

  David laughed. ‘What? You’re going to walk in holding a gun to my head?’

  ‘No. Ryan’s going to stay here, holding a gun to Tara’s head.’ Gordon didn’t even sound as if he believed himself. He sounded as if he’d had enough.

  David sensed that it was all coming to an end. Suddenly, Christine appeared on the staircase, moving slowly, holding her head. She stopped halfway down and looked over the banisters into the front room. The side of her face was bruised, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. But even more noticeable was the smudged eyeshadow and lipstick, giving her an air of decay.

  ‘Tara’s gone,’ she said, her tone flat and dead, full of the inevitability of the day.

  Ryan covered his face with his hands. ‘That’s it. It’s done. It’s over. I’m dead. We both are.’

  Christine stared down at Gordon before beginning to sob. Gordon had paled. He blinked rapidly a few times, as if a coding error was occurring in his brain.

  ‘Where’s my wife?’ David said.

  ‘Did you not hear me?’ Christine screamed. ‘Are you fucking deaf? She’s gone. Out the bathroom window. She’s gone and—’

  ‘I’m getting my passport,’ Ryan said, climbing the stairs and squeezing by his wife as if he didn’t know her.

  Gordon said, ‘It can’t end like this. Not after everything…’

  David took a small step forward. ‘It’s over. You know it is.’ He needed his architect to put down the pistol. Gordon looked tense and scared. And when people were scared, they were stupid. And stupid didn’t go well with guns.

  ‘He’s right, Gordon,’ Christine said. ‘It’s over. We have to leave now. We have to run.’

  Gordon looked up at her, smiled wistfully and said, ‘Whatever happens, I love you.’

  David straightened when he heard that. Which meant that the bullet hit the wall next to his face instead of going through his skull. Powdered plaster and flecks of paint fell onto the shoulder of his suit. He looked round to see where it had come from: it had first passed through the window in a perfect round hole. The rest of the glass had cobwebbed.

  The front door whacked against the wall. Fenton’s footsteps moved towards the living room. There was the sound of a single pop and on the stairs, Christine recoiled backwards, clutching her face. Ryan turned to catch her and both of them sprawled across the steps. David looked at Gordon, waiting for him to raise the pistol, to do the smart thing: let off a burst of rounds, make a spider line of bullet holes along that shitty internal wall and take Fenton down before he reached the living room door. But the architect seemed paralysed.

  ‘Shoot him!’ David shouted as Fenton rounded the corner. He slammed into Gordon’s back and, as if slipping into a suit, reached round him, fitting his hand over Gordon’s fingers, raising his arm to point the weapon at Fenton. As Fenton entered the room, David pressed on Gordon’s trigger. He squinted just in time for the noise and the flash – but all that happened was a single, measly click.

  ‘It’s fake,’ Gordon said, terror raising the timbre of his voice. ‘Of course I don’t own a fucking real gun.’

  Fenton pointed his Glock at both men and pulled his very real trigger. It fired – a deep bass concussion that David felt in his chest. The brief blaze from the silencer barrel was woven through with strange green sparks. It was something David could still see as he shut his eyes. More bullets came, the rounds hacking off pieces from Gordon like chips from axe blows. Gordon wasn’t a hostage. More a human shield; a thick mound of bullet-absorbing flesh. And then, just as David opened his eyes again, Gordon took a direct hit to the side of the head and a chunk of his forehead blasted across the room, landing on the old sofa.

  The architect’s weight pushed David backwards until his legs hit the coffee table. Both men crumpled to the floor. Lying on his back, David stared into Gordon’s devastated face, which had been blown open like a ruined jigsaw. Gordon’s lips moved, saying something. Then his eyes glazed over, staring up to the ceiling at the final mystery. There was little blood – the insides of Gordon’s head remained static, as if he’d been refrigerated.

  Over the years, the terrifying idea had remained with David that his mother was right, and that God really existed. And if He did exist, then He might become aware of David’s existence and lay His hand on him, and then he’d be stricken with religion and waste his entire life with everything that accompanied it. Now, for the first time, he wished that there really was a God, and that
he believed in Him, because then he could pray.

  Fenton turned and pointed the Glock up at the huddled Ryan, who was muttering, ‘Jesus, Jesus,’ as he rolled his dead wife off him.

  Fenton said, ‘Ryan, apologise.’

  Ryan shouted, ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Again.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘One more time.’

  ‘I said, I’m fuck’n sorry.’

  ‘Apology not accepted.’ Fenton closed one eye. David, back on his feet, lunged into him from behind, grabbing Fenton’s arm, raising the Glock to the ceiling, his other hand seeking out every hard man’s weakness – the eyes.

  ‘Why are you fucking alive?’ Fenton muttered as he shoved backwards, his bulk pinning David to the living room wall. Suddenly, from behind, Ryan’s right arm arced through the air and the box-cutter blade plunged into Fenton’s neck. Fenton dropped the Glock, clutching his throat, the tips of his fingers burying themselves in the gaping, seeping wound. Within the red moisture David could see loose, soaking tendons.

  Fenton staggered into the centre of the room, clearly horrified by the feel of his blood oozing between his fingers, pumping hard with each pulse. Ryan dropped his arm and attacked again, low, straight into Fenton’s stomach. The blade passed through his shirt and seemed to confront, for a moment, stiffer resistance. But then that too gave way and the blade continued on, scraping by bone and cleaving through internal organs with a squelch. Fenton remained standing, staring wide-eyed. Ryan had to tug the box-cutter a few times to free it. It made a moist pop sound as the tip reappeared.

  Fenton fell backwards onto the carpet. Down there, his eyes remained stubbornly alive as his body thrashed about – a dying shark. Then his eyes widened, as whatever he had been left the world in a second. With the blood drooling from his neck and smeared over his face, it seemed that the only part of Fenton remaining human was his mask of pure fear.

  Ryan, his face rained-on with blood, staggered backwards until his back hit the fireplace. He then sank towards the floor, the mantelpiece propping him upright in a sitting position, his legs splayed out.

  David stepped over Fenton’s body. With assured, steady movements, he took hold of Ryan’s hand and tossed the blade across the room. Then he grabbed Ryan by the hair and twisted him onto his back. Ryan was too finished, too traumatised, to fight, to resist. Sitting on the builder’s chest, David stared down. He was stunned at how much he suddenly hated Ryan. Those dark, unanalysed forces disengaged him from his fear of consequences and provoked him to new levels of recklessness. He placed his hands on Ryan’s blood-greased neck and felt the knotty Adam’s apple beneath his thumbs. He began to press. His feelings were now beyond language. Ryan had tried to destroy everything David had believed he was worthy of – his wife, his child, his house. Ryan was a nightmare totem to David’s unworthiness. A part of David knew he was doing the worst possible thing – but something within drove him on, told him it was for the best, that he would regret it forever if he didn’t finish this now.

  He began to squeeze. Ryan’s eyes bulged. They watered. Blood vessels burst. He tried to take everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you have. History didn’t just affect nations. It affected the individual, in the most private way. History demanded a debt from the world and it insisted that people pay in blood. History was this very moment.

  * * *

  Tara looked up the staircase. Christine was lying there, face down, her head towards the hall. Tara entered the living room. There was Gordon, his life of plenty blown away to nothing. She glanced down at Fenton. A damp pool of burgundy was expanding around his abdomen. He’d only left the van a few minutes ago. Viktor had been watching through the binoculars before cursing in Russian and starting up the engine. He hadn’t even tried to stop Tara when she’d jumped out. She’d shouted over to a woman in the car park to call the police; that there was an emergency; that there had been a shooting.

  Tara stood over her husband as he squeezed the life from Ryan. The whine and howl of emergency vehicles came ever nearer. Already, blue lights stained the room. She placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘David, I need you. The baby needs a dad, too. Let him go.’

  People were already in the hallway. Tara didn’t look to see if they were police or not. A woman screamed, over and over, like a siren.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was late on Saturday afternoon, and the house-warming party on Lawrence Court was three hours old. There was an outdoor bar set up along the line of the hedge. The guests mingled and circulated through the opened slider to the kitchen and the library, and on to the front room, where a DJ played Tara’s favourite songs. Catering staff worked the crowd.

  Tara, alone for once on the patio, scanned her friends, neighbours, art dealers and fellow artists. When she’d first come to Dublin in her twenties, with no money and an uncertain future, it had been enough to have a great coke connection at your party. A decade later and you had to have someone famous – which thankfully Scott McCoy had provided, by bringing along a Hollywood star in the middle of his European publicity jaunt.

  Tara had already given five guided tours around her home. The house was perfect now – even the stain at the top of the stairs had been painted over. As her guests had ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at each new architectural flourish, it was interesting to see the many ingenious ways they found to ask how much something cost. Tara had hung out long enough on the art scene to realise that just because a person was an intellectual, didn’t mean that they didn’t care what sort of car someone drove.

  From her corner on the patio, she spotted Shay in the kitchen, filling another glass of water for Stephanie – who was ‘resting’ in the library with David’s mother. Shay seemed shocked, almost alarmed, at any conversation he happened to overhear, while the dress sense of the artists – especially the female ones – left him wandering around with the expression of a teenager at a party for the first time. But Shay and Stephanie were getting on surprisingly well with David’s mother, with whom they had swapped anecdotes about growing up on opposite sides of Dublin.

  ‘Tara!’ Someone had spotted her alone. ‘I am pleased it work out so well in the end of it all.’

  ‘Bruno? Oh, hi.’ Tara couldn’t help but look him up and down. She’d never seen him in a suit before. It was almost impossible to recognise him without his uniform of blue overalls or paint-stained jeans. She waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t, preferring to just stand, smile and shift awkwardly. He then looked at his wrist as if checking the time, but there was no watch present.

  Trying to muster up some enthusiasm, Tara suggested, ‘Go and get a drink. Go. Go. Lots of cocktails while they last. And David’s looking for you, I’m sure.’

  Excited at the prospect of examining the wares of a free bar, Bruno drifted off. Tara scanned her party again. And there was the star of the show: Scott McCoy, roving by, his all-American face marred by vagueness, but willing to talk to anyone – which was just as well, because everyone wanted to talk to him. Of course, he always dictated the conversation, spinning it quickly to his favourite topic – God – and he was too rich and too famous for anyone to tell him to shut up. But Tara understood Scott’s unrelenting self-righteousness. He had no doubt that the next life contained even greater riches for him than the vast amount he’d already collected in this one.

  Tara was flattered that so many distinguished figures of the art world – some so distinguished she’d thought they were dead – had turned up. But she knew that the reinvigoration of her reputation had everything to do with the headlines of the past month. Because of the incessant attention, she’d worn shades every time she’d gone out. She had been like a widow in sunglasses, seemingly wearing them to hide her tears when, in fact, the dark lenses served to hide her relief.

  And still the stories kept coming in. The papers loved the drama. Especially the tabloids, who followed the gangland scene like it was a soap opera. Just a few weeks ago, Viktor had been arrested at the ai
rport with a false passport as he tried to make his way back to his own corner of the world.

  Then there was Ryan: he’d been attacked in jail while awaiting trial. Two Russian prisoners, associates of Fenton’s, had tried to kill him by shoving a bar of soap down his throat. So he was now in a secure wing for his own safety. Tara couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. She also felt some gratitude: despite everything else he’d done, Ryan hadn’t mentioned their fling to the police. According to Ryan, he’d fought with David over money that Sunday night in the attic – a story which David had been only too happy to corroborate.

  But where had Ryan’s unsolicited loyalty sprung from? Did he feel that he owed both of them his life? Privately, she wondered if it was because he had nothing left now but reminiscences. Unsurprisingly, David maintained that it was because the only sympathy Ryan could evoke in his trial was from the fact that Christine had been an unfaithful wife – which evidence of his own adultery would nullify.

  Of course, David had been on hand to make sure that Tara’s career capitalised on their great newsworthiness. In the last few weeks, he’d already secured a London retrospective at Brick Lane, despite the fact that the markets were depressed. But Tara knew what to expect once this second flurry of interest died off: they’d discard her as quickly as she’d risen in the first place. But that harsh fact wasn’t so demoralising to her any more. At first she had assumed this was because of her forthcoming child. But then she had realised that it was because she had actually felt the old hunger return; that luxurious exhilaration from the great potential of a new idea for another series of artworks. She was still wary about it at this point, though, feeling that she mustn’t yet talk about it, as if it might benefit from secrecy.

  There was also the fact that Tara needed the added distraction of making art. Her pregnancy wasn’t enough to keep away what she’d seen. And even as she thought that, the vision of the bloodied mayhem in the Cawley Estates returned to her – as it did twenty times a day. But she was trying to be philosophical about it: life was just trying to tell her something, and wasn’t it her job as an artist to hear it?