The Abstainer

by Ian McGuire

  “You’re a fucken dark horse, you are,” he says.

  “He shouldn’t have grabbed me,” Sullivan says. He is trembling and the words are catching in his throat.

  “You need to hide yourself now. They’ll be coming in from all directions when they hear that whistle.”

  “I’ll go out the back way.”

  “They’ll be expecting that. It’s safer if you stay here. There’s a storeroom downstairs. I can push some old barrels up in front of the door. They won’t find you down there even if they go looking.”

  “I don’t want to trouble you any,” Sullivan says.

  “It’s no trouble,” he says. “I appreciate a fellow who can stand his ground.”

  * * *

  —

  Sullivan spends the rest of the day barricaded in the empty storeroom. The floor is packed clay and there are no windows. Riley gives him three candles for light, a jug of beer, and a wedge of Melton pie for sustenance. There is a wooden bucket in the corner when he needs it. He eats the pie, drinks down the beer, then falls asleep. When he wakes up shivering, and remembers where he is, he feels a mixture of excitement and fear. Jimmy’s plan has worked even better than they hoped, but now he must manage the rest on his own. In his head, he goes through the preparations again—what to say and what to keep quiet about, who to believe, when to walk away. He knows he is only one step away from Doyle now. If he can convince Riley to trust him, then the rest will follow on naturally enough. He is not scared of Riley, but he wonders what questions he might still have and what suspicions he might yet harbor.

  Near midnight, when the alehouse is closed and locked up for the night, Riley pushes the barrels away from the storeroom door and leads Sullivan back upstairs into the darkened parlor. He throws a handful of coal onto what’s left of the fire and gestures for Sullivan to sit.

  “You have another place to go to, I suppose?” he says.

  “I rent a bed in one of the lodging houses on Pump Street.”

  Riley frowns.

  “Pump Street? Is that the best you can manage?”

  “I’m still looking about for work.”

  “That was a fine punch you landed there. Put that mouthy bastard Magee right down on his arse.”

  “Is he still out searching for me?”

  Riley shakes his head.

  “It’s just the regular patrols this time of night. They don’t know what you look like, and I doubt they care very much about Magee’s injured pride.”

  “What about the gin?”

  “That was nothing. There were no witnesses. They just try that kind of thing to cause me trouble. Every week nearly it’s something else. I’m a freedom-loving Irishman, you see, and they don’t appreciate my politics.”

  Sullivan nods and looks into the fire. He waits for a moment. If he is too quick or eager, then Riley might start to wonder.

  “I’m not much for politics myself,” he says. “I don’t read the newspapers, but I heard about the three fellows they hanged. It didn’t sound right to me.”

  “It wasn’t right. It was murder, that’s what it was, plain and simple. Three good men, widows, children, but they don’t care about any of that. All they want is revenge.”

  “For that dead policeman? What was his name?”

  “Charles Brett.”

  “Brett, that’s right.”

  Sullivan nods, then smiles quickly. Friendly but not too friendly was Jimmy’s advice. Enough but not too much.

  Riley looks at him.

  “What’s your name anyway?” he says.

  “Michael Sullivan. I was born in Dublin, on Ash Street, but we left in ’fifty-six.”

  “And do you remember Ireland?”

  “Not so much.”

  “See, that’s the tragedy right there. We’re driven out of our own country, scattered to the four fucken winds.”

  “I’d go back, but I hear there’s no work to be had in Dublin anymore.”

  “Because the British landlords suck us dry, that’s why. No nation can thrive and grow if its wealth is stolen from it.”

  “It’s a pity,” Sullivan agrees. “I’ve thought on that myself.”

  Riley stands up.

  “You stay there,” he says.

  He goes back into the kitchen and returns with a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. He puts the tumblers on the mantelpiece, fills them halfway, then offers one to Sullivan.

  “Good health to you,” he says, “and God Save Ireland.”

  “God Save Ireland,” Sullivan repeats. The whiskey burns on his tongue and brings tears to his eyes. He takes a breath in and waits for it to fade.

  “I appreciate your help,” he says. “The police would have caught me for sure. I’d be locked in a jail cell by now.”

  Riley waves it away.

  “You did nothing wrong. You stood up for yourself like a man, that’s all. We could do with a few more like you around here.”

  They sit back down. The fire is coming to life again, the dark new coals cracking and spitting amid the mound of pale ash.

  “You might be wondering what brought me in here,” Sullivan says. “I know I told the policeman I was just walking by, but that isn’t the whole truth of it. There’s a fellow I met on the boat from New York, a fellow named Byrne, said I might find him in Riley’s alehouse on Rochdale Road. I owe him a small debt and I was thinking he might help me find some work.”

  “Byrne?” Riley says. “I don’t know anyone by the name of Byrne. What does he look like?”

  “He’s American like me. Thirty years old or so. Stern-looking. He has long dark hair and scars on one cheek.”

  Riley looks at him a moment.

  “Scars, you say?”

  “Here and here.” He points at his own face. “Deep ones.”

  “And what boat were you both on?”

  “The Neptune out of New York.”

  Riley shakes his head and takes a sip of the whiskey.

  “I don’t know anyone named Byrne,” he says again, “but I can ask around.”

  “I thought he might help me find work,” Sullivan says, “that’s all.”

  Riley nods.

  “I’ll ask around.”

  Sullivan expects him to say something more, something that might be important, but he doesn’t. Instead there is a long pause. The stuttering flames throw vague, soft-edged shadows across the floorboards and wall.

  “He told me he was a draper,” Sullivan adds suddenly, “but I wasn’t sure that was true. He didn’t look much like a draper to me. He looked more like an old soldier with the scars and the hair. I’ve seen a few of that type roaming about New York since the war finished. They don’t know what to do with themselves now that the fighting is over. It’s a sight to see.”

  Riley’s eyes narrow. His manner hardens a touch. Sullivan wonders if he has made a mistake, then decides it’s nothing.

  “If a man tells you he’s a draper, why would you doubt him?” Riley says. “Why would he lie about it?”

  “Just the way he looked. No other reason.”

  Riley nods twice, looks down at his whiskey, then drinks it off.

  “What kind of work are you looking for, Michael?”

  “Anything,” he says. “Anything at all.”

  “Well, I may be able to help you, then. I have plenty of friends. You should stay here with me tonight, though,” Riley says. “It’s safer all around. I’ll make you a bed down in the cellar and we can talk some more in the morning.”

  Riley finds a straw mattress and some blankets, and they go back down the steps. It is chilly and damp in the cellar and there is a strong smell of mold. They clear some space on the flagstone floor and lay out the bedding.

  “It’s not the Queen’s Hotel,” he says, “but it’s no worse
than those fleapits on Pump Street, I’m guessing.”

  “It’ll suit me just fine,” Sullivan says. “I’m grateful.”

  They shake hands. Riley turns to leave, then pauses.

  “You say you owe this fellow Byrne some money? Is that it?”

  “We played poker on the boat to help pass the time. Just nickels and dimes, but it added up to a few dollars by the time we reached Liverpool, and I didn’t have the cash to hand.”

  “And he gave you this address?”

  “He said when I was in Manchester I could leave the money for him here.”

  “A trusting sort of fellow, then?”

  “Looked to me like he had other things on his mind. Like a few dollars didn’t matter too much in the grander scheme.”

  Riley nods and smiles.

  “There’s plenty of money in drapery, I suppose.”

  “I’d say there must be.”

  “Unless he was lying about that part.”

  “That was just a notion I had. I could be wrong.”

  * * *

  —

  Riley goes back up the steps into the parlor and stands in front of the fire. He hears the wind humming inside the chimney breast and the rain skittering against the windowpane. He is wondering what he should do next with Michael Sullivan. He stands there frowning and rubbing his chin for a while, then he remembers the happy sight of that mouthy peeler picking himself up off the floor, with his uniform half-covered in damp sawdust and a face like murder, and decides, with a smile, that a young man like that, with such an overflow of gumption, must surely be brought into the fold.

  CHAPTER 9

  Robert Neill, the mayor of Manchester, is square-shouldered and thick-necked; he has narrow, questioning eyes and a mouth as wide and lipless as a monkey’s. He made his pile as a builder, flinging up rows of shoddy back-to-backs in Ancoats and Hulme, and there is still, despite the black frock coat and cashmere stripes, a hint of the navvy about him. You can see it in the way he moves, impatient, stooped, purposeful, and in the shape of his hands—the wide, blunt fingers, the thick knuckles, brown and gnarled as walnuts. It is as if he is ready any moment to put down his fountain pen or wineglass and pick up a trowel. A knife will not do it with a man like that one, Doyle thinks; if you get in too close, he will likely rassle you for it. It must be a pistol. That will take more time to arrange, no doubt, add to the expense and complication, but now that the informers are dead there is no reason to hurry; they can plan it out, gauge the risks, choose their moment.

  Doyle is sitting in Skelly’s ancient cab on Cross Street across from the Dissenters’ chapel, close enough to the junction with King Street to have a view of the entrance to the Town Hall but not close enough to draw attention. It is after seven o’clock and the lights in the mayor’s office are still burning brightly. Doyle is guessing Neill has another dinner to go to, or another speech to give, and is dandying himself up in preparation. They have watched him for nearly a week already with no tangible reward. They need to find him alone, in a place without witnesses, but except when he is in the carriage being driven somewhere, he always has company. They could ambush the brougham, of course, but that would take four or five men at least, and Doyle doesn’t yet know four or five men in Manchester who he would trust with the task. He hears Skelly banging on the roof of the cab with the butt end of his horse whip and leans out to see what he wants.

  “He’s away on foot,” Skelly says. “Look over there. It’s him, I swear.”

  He points to a stocky figure crossing the road in front of the Town Hall. He is wearing a top hat and holding a black umbrella up at an angle against the gusting drizzle.

  “Why would he be walking?” Doyle says. “Where’s the brougham?”

  Skelly shrugs.

  Doyle steps down from the cab. Carts and omnibuses rattle past him; there is the hard hiss of gas lamps and a faint smell of sewage. He turns up his collar against the rain and squints.

  “You stay here,” he says to Skelly. “Watch out for that brougham. Follow after it if you need to.”

  He crosses over onto King Street. The man is thirty yards ahead of him now. Doyle quickens his pace until he is close enough to be sure it is the mayor, then slows down and steps sideways into a doorway. He feels in his jacket pocket for his clasp knife. He prizes open the short blade, thumbs its edge, thinks for a moment, then presses it shut again. He steps out of the doorway and looks to the right. The mayor is still walking steadily up the hill toward Brown Street and Spring Gardens. The wet bend of his umbrella catches the silver light of a streetlamp, then lets it go again. Something new is happening, but Doyle doesn’t yet know what it is or how much it might matter. Neill pauses to check his pocket watch, then carries on walking. He passes the glaring façade of the Queen’s Theatre on his left, then turns in to the narrowness and shadow of Milk Street. He walks halfway down, then stops in front of a darkened shop front and looks up. The windows above the shop are shuttered, but one of the shutters is half-open and there is a light showing behind it. Doyle steps into an alley and watches. If he had a pistol he could do it now, but all he has is the clasp knife. He looks about for a length of timber, a half-brick, but sees nothing he can make use of. Neill lowers his umbrella, steps forward, and raps on the glass of the shop door. After a minute, the door opens and he takes his hat off and steps inside. Doyle waits five minutes to be sure he is not coming out again, then leaves the alley and goes across the street to take a look. The shop window has a display of bonnets, handkerchiefs, and artfully draped swatches. The sign above says ELIZABETH STOKES, DRESSMAKER AND MILLINER. He nods and his lips move silently as if he is reciting a short prayer, then he turns and walks back down to Cross Street. Skelly’s cab is where he left it.

  “He’s got a woman,” he tells Skelly. “She has a shop on Milk Street, number twelve, halfway down on the right-hand side.”

  Skelly whistles lowly, then grins. His weather-burned face is a skein of fine wrinkles, and his occasional teeth are the color of cheese rind.

  “Well, the sly auld fucker,” he says.

  “Drive the cab up there. Watch what time he leaves the place and where he goes to afterward. Write it all down.”

  “I’d say we have him now,” Skelly says.

  “I’d say we do.”

  “He’ll pay for his sins at last.”

  Doyle wonders for a moment what this means, then he remembers the hangings. Skelly is a good man, he thinks, trustworthy and useful in his fashion, but he sometimes misunderstands the task.

  “It’s a war we’re in,” he says.

  Skelly nods and tips his cap.

  “A war,” he says, “I know that.”

  “You be sure to write down the time he leaves,” Doyle reminds him. “The time is what matters most.”

  He rides with Skelly as far as Market Street, then crosses Piccadilly and walks up Oldham Street into Ancoats. The rain gilds the pavement and cobblestones and drips off the brim of his hat. After trying the Two Terriers and the Cheshire Cheese he finds Peter Rice drinking gin in the Blacksmith’s Arms. He is standing up at the bar with Jack Riley; his broad face is shiny and red, and his far-apart eyes are wet with recent merriment. Doyle nods to them, then sits down at a table near the door.

  Peter Rice finishes his drink and tamps his mouth on the cuff of his jacket. He says something quick to Jack Riley, then shambles over and lowers himself down onto a stool. They lean in closer and Doyle explains about the shop on Milk Street and what he saw there.

  “I need two pistols quick,” he says.

  Rice shrugs and looks away.

  “Clean pistols is hard to come by,” he says.

  “The sooner I do this, the sooner I’ll be gone.”

  “There’s a fellow down in Brummagem I know, but it’ll be a week at least, mebbe more.”

  They talk for anoth
er ten minutes about the cost, and who will travel down to Birmingham to bring them back. Then Doyle stands up again and offers Rice his hand.

  “There’s something else before you go,” Rice says. “Jack Riley has a question.”

  Rice beckons to Riley, and Riley comes over to join them at the table. Doyle sits down again, and Riley tells him about Michael Sullivan and the fisticuffs with Magee the day before.

  “The boy claims he knows you. Says he met you on the boat and you told him to come by the alehouse to drop off some money. Is that the truth?”

  Doyle nods.

  “He’ll talk you to death with a drink inside, but there’s no great harm in him. At least none that I saw.”

  “So you’ll have no complaint if we give him something at the tannery?” Rice says. “Now that Jones is sick, it’s been Neary and Slattery on their own in the yard for a week.”

  “Is there no one else?”

  “It’s hard, dirty work, and it doesn’t pay so well as the factories or cotton mills. Most of the fellows around here will turn up their noses at the tannery, but when I mentioned it to Sullivan he was all eagerness.”

  Doyle shrugs.

  “He’s not the brightest, but if you want him, go ahead,” he says. “Leave me out of it, though. If he asks after me, tell him Mr. Byrne says he can keep the money.”

  “I like the look of him,” Riley says. “He’s bold, and I like to see some boldness in a young fellow.”

  Doyle stands up again and buttons his coat.

  “Won’t you have another drink with us, Stephen?” Rice says. He smiles, but there is something snide and scornful in the way he asks.

  “I need to get back to Skelly now.”

  “What are you doing with that old fucker?” Riley says.

  “It’s better if you don’t know about it,” Doyle says, “safer all around.”

  “Jack here can be trusted,” Rice says. “He’s no traitor.”

  “I’m not saying he is. Fewer is better, that’s all.”

  There’s a pause. Rice shakes his head. The tangled noises of the tavern rise up around them.