by philip boyle
On Princes Street he felt a little dizzy as he fought his way through the afternoon heat and the waves of oblivious tourists. The idea ran with him, like a flashlight shining haphazardly in his face, blinding him with its guilt. Should have done it weeks ago, the moment she’d gone. He thought he knew where the station was, he’d seen it on his way to work. He stopped, looked around, getting his bearings, trying to picture the place. There was no other option. He was lost, couldn’t think his way out, couldn’t fight his way out, he needed help, their help. He thought of Rebus, solid, grumpy, honest only when it suited but he believed in the truth. A fictional fallacy that justice, moral or otherwise, would always win out. Where would such a man, or woman, be today, in this sadistic sauna of a town.
The police. But not today, Eddie thought. Work on it, sleep on it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. It was a tower block eyesore of no saving grace. He was shaking, he had no idea where to start. From the beginning of course but where was that? Why? That would be the question on everyone’s lips as they tried to keep the laughter back. Oh, they’d shake their sympathetic heads and then shuffle him out the door with fifty pence for a cup of tea. Maybe a card with the address of the local Samaritans drop-in centre. Because why would they believe him? Why would they take her, Eddie? She’s nobody, you’re nobody. Now fuck off ’cause we got better things to do. He saw all this in the first few glances across the busy road. He was shaking, needed to relax, plan what he was going to say. Structure, thought, show them that you’re not just some joker, an Irish joker, with nothing else to do. He chose The Gallows, a wine and cheese kind of establishment with blurred photographs on the fake marble walls. They served him beer in a glass fit for champagne and gave him a bowl of complimentary nuts to accompany it. He drank a little, then a little more and his contempt for the waiter, for the chrome sheen off everything, for the air of contempt against people like him, started to wane. He ordered a second and a third and was positively friendly towards the camp waiter. Relaxed to the point where he was starting to forget what he intended to do that afternoon. Go in, tell his story straight and true, then leave in the comforting knowledge that all the resources of the force would be mobilized to find her. He envisaged something on the news, a grave reporter outside the Glasgow hotel detailing the grim deeds of that night. Eddie even foresaw footage of his own house before they cut to an interview inside, him perched nobly on the couch, telling his story over and over. Three drinks in and Eddie could almost see Edie sitting on the seat beside him, restored to him, so they could continue their lives again. All this in the last remaining bubbles at the bottom of the royal glass, the waiter at his side wanting to know if he would like another. He wanted ten more, a dozen and he would roll out of the bar delirious with anticipation.
He skipped from toe to toe, wanted to piss badly. No more delays, hold it in for God’s sake, anyway they’d let him go in there. He lifted his eyes to block out the sun when a familiar voice whispered in his ear.
‘Come with me.’ A hand on his elbow, full of intent, turning him away from his original destination. Away, out of the crowd, out of the sun, a narrow street, a knock on a steel door then into darkness, through red velvet curtains to a circular bar with a flickering light above. Frankie poured himself a scotch and already Eddie knew this was a different man to the one he knew in Dublin.
‘Sit,’ Frankie said, an invitation not a command. Where, Eddie thought? He found a stool and sat by a pair of huge speakers from a concert long since finished. Frankie didn’t offer him a drink.
‘Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. What are we going to do with you?’ ‘What haven’t you done with me? Where is she?’
Frankie seemed to ignore the question. He circled the circular bar and
swirled the ice in his glass.
‘Well? Next thing you’ll be telling me there’s a train leaving Waverly
at ten. ‘Be on it.’ Is that it? What is it with you people, you do nothing but
watch gangster films?’
With shocking speed Frankie covered the few feet between himself
and Eddie and landed the blow before Eddie could blink. He put out an
arm to support himself and he feared his wrist snapping as it connected
with the splintered floor. He was helped up, feeling like an old man,
shamed more than hurt. Frankie’s eyes wavered, compassion floating in
there.
‘You okay?’ Eddie nodded.
Frankie finished his drink, put the glass down on the bar that looked
neglected.
‘I can’t remember the last time I did that.’
‘You normally get others to do it for you.’
‘You’re right, I do. Jesus, it hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘Good,’ said Eddie, forcing a smile from both of them.
‘Were you going where I think you were going, Eddie? ’Cause that
would be very stupid indeed.’
‘I am very stupid. Thought you all might have guessed that by now.
Think I’d just take it like all those times in the past. Give him a few quid
and he’ll just roll over and die. That it? Yeah, I’m fucking stupid, Frankie.
That’s exactly where I was going. Across that road, tell them my sad little
story.’
‘What story, Eddie?’
‘Well, why don’t you come with me? You can help clear up any
details I’m not clear on. Something funny, Frankie?’
‘Just you.’
‘Was there something in particular you wanted to tell me? Or am I
just being held prisoner?’
‘You’re free to go any time you want. No prisoners here. Just. You
know that going to the police won’t do you, or her, any good. They won’t
believe you anyway.’
‘They can try. They can listen. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. I
don’t know. I don’t know anything, do I? Nobody will tell me anything.
I’m begging you, Frankie, just tell me what happened to her? You can do
that at least. You knew about the money, you showed no concern about it.
Why?’
Frankie lowered his eyes, his spirit, to the floor.
‘Because I’m afraid, Eddie. Okay? And I don’t like being afraid.
Thought I was past all that.’
‘Where is she? Please.’
‘It’s better if you don’t know.’
‘Better?’ Hot, angry tears stung. ‘She’s all I have. All I’ve ever had,
Frankie.’
‘You have more important things to worry about.’
‘I don’t understand. Why can’t you just tell me?’
‘I’m sorry. You need to forget, move on, go home. They have what they want now. They’ll leave you alone. I can give you a little money. You’ll keep it this time, I promise.’ He lifted an envelope from a shelf behind the bar and pushed it down toward Eddie, who looked at it like it was a scuttling insect.
‘’They’? You can tell me that at least.’ You know, don’t you. ‘I could tell you, Eddie. And what would you do with the information? Try and find him, try to find her. You don’t really want to do that. Let it go.’ Frankie turned to leave. He was parting the velvet curtains with a magician’s swagger when he looked back. He came back to the bar and poured himself another drink. Eddie saw the hand shaking as he drank it.
‘Take the fucking money. Go home. Or somewhere else. Find something, somebody else.’
‘I can’t do that.’
Frankie shook his head. ‘The girl is dead, Eddie. The girl you hit is dead. Okay?’ Eddie felt as if he’d been hit by surprise again but held his ground.
‘I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill her, Frank, I know that.’
‘It makes no difference whether you did or not. Not anymore. As I said, they have what they want.’ He nodded at the envelope on the bar. ‘Don’t forget it. And don’t lose it this time. Take care, E
ddie. And don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope we don’t see each other again too soon.’ He left and Eddie started to count the money in the envelope until he realized that it made little difference how much was actually inside it.
And he and Frankie would meet again, much sooner than either could have imagined, but only one of them would remember the encounter.
CHAPTER 21
Frankie is dead. Eddie has a visit from Detective Harding The kid in the porkpie hat stopped and pulled out his earphones. Straddled his pink bike and stared in wonderment at the circus of police cars and ambulances across the street. Eddie had almost fallen over the kid he had pulled up so quickly. He was about to slap him across the back of the head when he too saw what was across the street. Behind the police tape and the fluorescent jackets, behind the forensic men in their white spacesuits, and behind the haze of alcohol that clouded everything in front of him, Eddie saw the side of Frankie’s face, one eye staring at the darkening skies above, blood trickling from his ear.
Eddie was pushed and crushed on both sides as the crowds gathered for the free show. The kid looked up at him and Eddie half-expected him to point his finger and shout ‘it was him!.’ Like Peter he would deny any knowledge, any friendship with the dead man on the cold ground.
In a laneway not two minutes away he was sick into a pile of plastic bags. Kneeled in them afterwards, all energy gone. All sense of reason and sanity. He took out the envelope of money, the second such thing that Fair Frankie had given him, and dropped it on the ground. He thought about it and took the cash of out the envelope, pushed it deep into the pocket of his jeans. Couldn’t help wondering how much it was. He walked the unsteady steps to the bottom and realized this was the same spot where he had collapsed after being beaten. That seemed a lifetime ago. Sirens wailed in the near distance, all his senses on alert, every muscle tight, tense. There must have been a hundred witnesses who saw them together on the street yesterday. The doorman at the Scotsman would remember him, would remember how out of place he looked. There would be CCTV cameras on every corner, pick him out clear as day.
~ From the upper hotel window he watched the Train of Delights across the street. No sign of Manny. He would be long gone. Newspapers were scattered like clues throughout the hotel, on every spare table. All leading with the same story. A businessman they called him, Frank Noon, such kindness would not last long. A few days and they would pour scorn and ridicule over his dead body. By the weekend he had become ‘Fair’ Frankie, nightclub owner, drug dealer. Pimp, gangster, all names under the sun. Some of the stories were true of course, they even gave Eddie pause. He knew Frankie by reputation, heard the stories, but he remembered mostly the man who had given him a chance, several in fact.
Eddie worked and waited. Slept in the too big house and waited for the knock on the door. He waited across from the station once more and thought of telling his story. The irony was that they’d believe him now. Too much. If he went in there he might never get out again.
In the hell kitchen, while sweat dripped in rivers onto the dishcloth in his hands, they came for him. Called him upstairs. He had to tidy himself up. Looked at himself in the portrait toilet mirror and thought of running. He’d been doing it all his life, in one way or another. Decided to stay for a while longer, made his way slowly to the bar.
He was Detective Alan Harding. There was a uniformed officer with him but Eddie didn’t catch his name.
‘You’re Irish?’ Eddie said, surprised.
‘Galway.’
‘What brings you here? How did you find me?’
‘What brings you here, Mr. Brogan?’
His moment in the sun, his fifteen minutes of fame, the stage was his, spotlight on him. audience hushed and boy, did he have a story to tell.
‘Work.’
‘Work,’ the detective repeated, looking with contempt around the frayed remains of a once fashionable hotel. ‘And you’ve really made it, haven’t you? Washing dishes in a flea pit like this.’
‘There are worse things I could be doing, believe me.’
‘True,’ agreed Harding. He settled back in the chair and noticed the porcelain animals on the shelf above him. He opened a notebook, more for effect than anything, Eddie spied a blank page.
‘Frank Noon.’ He looked with theatrical intensity at Eddie when he mentioned the name. Eddie had to smile.
‘Something funny?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘You knew the man?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘Define ‘pretty well’.’
Two ways to move through a minefield, either close your eyes and
Philip Boyle run as fast as possible or crawl inch by inch, carefully studying each particle of dirt. Eddie had a nanosecond to decide.
‘I worked at one of his clubs in Dublin. On the door. A bouncer.’
‘Did you get on with him?’
‘Yeah, as I say, he did me a favour. Gave me a job. He was a very – fair – man.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Harding. ‘Fair’ Frankie, that’s what they called him. Why do all these gangsters have to have a nickname? What, Eddie, you object to the word ‘gangster’? But that’s what he was. That’s why he ended up with a knife in his stomach? Harding took a little break, looked at the uniform and asked to get him a coffee.
‘Want one, Eddie?’ Eddie declined. ‘Just me then, thanks Steve. Oh, and one for yourself if you like.’ He closed his notebook, rolled his head to push fatigue away, looked at his watch and fidgeted with the cuffs of his shirt. ‘So, why Edinburgh, Eddie? What happened to the job at the club?’
Little jabs to the heart of him. Pounding punishment until he was on his knees begging for mercy. Not Eddie, never. He’d take the blows, pulls himself back up, by the ropes, by whatever was to hand, by the slender remains of his pride if necessary.
‘I came here once when I was a kid. With my parents. Always wanted to come back, never had the chance.’ Eddie found the lies quite easily, like lost coins scattered on the ground, just waiting to be picked up. Harding was looking at anything but Eddie, swatting away imaginary flies.
‘Then I heard Frankie talk about it one night, just in passing. He must have had some business here or something. The idea just came to me, maybe come over for a few days, I had some time owed to me. Hadn’t thought about Edinburgh for years and there it was. So—’
‘So,’ interrupted Harding. ‘You came over for a little holiday and you loved it so much you decided to stay. And here you are, washing dishes in a shithole hotel. Fucking paradise, isn’t it Eddie?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘It is how it is.’
‘And when did you last see the ‘fair’ Mr. Noon?’ Too long a delay in answering, Eddie was sure the detective could see the cogs turning, churning very slowly in his feeble brain. There were mines all over the place now, time to open his eyes, watch where he was going. ‘Well, Eddie, the last time you saw him? You need help, want me to remind you?’
‘I saw him the day before he died.’
‘You did indeed. Tell me the circumstances.’
‘I met him by accident really. He found me. I was walking along. Not sure of the name of the street. And there he was. He took me to a little bar nearby and we had a drink. That was it really. Just one drink. Frankie wasn’t much of a drinker.’
‘The name of this bar?’
‘Don’t know. All I remember was being led down tiny side streets, in through a back door, velvet curtains. The bar itself was tiny, odd. It was circular. There was nobody else there. I got the impression that it might have been his own place.’ Eddie had thought it wise to sprinkle some truths among the lies, confuse Harding maybe or at least slow him down a little.
‘What did you talk about?’
‘The weather.’ Stupid, stupid Eddie. Want this fucking bloodhound on your back because that’s what going to happen now. ‘Nothing, we talked about nothing. Old times. He was asking me how I was doing, that’s all.’ He could see the blood v
essels swelling in the detective’s neck, watched the man’s hand to see if it was closing into a fist. And why not just tell the man, for God’s sake? Maybe he could explain it all to Eddie.
Harding simply took a breath.
‘You know what he was doing in Edinburgh?’
‘No. No, really.’ Eddie remembered something. ‘I’d seen him a few days before. I was walking by the Scotsman. I saw him in the lobby. He was talking to someone. I couldn’t see clearly. I tried to speak to him but he’d gone by the time I got inside. That’s the truth.’
‘I believe you, Eddie. The doorman remembered you.’
The interview, interrogation, whatever you wanted to call it, was finally over. The lost time meant lost wages as well as the suspicious looks that hotel management would now start to throw his way. Eddie stayed in the bar for a full fifteen minutes afterwards, shaking, arms crossed, getting upset, angry at the truths that remained hidden, the courage he kept hidden. Edie remained hidden, bound, probably dead. His whole body shook with shivered emotion. He spied the manager coming into the bar, searching for something. For Eddie. And in that moment before he was hauled back to work, he remembered. The name, how could he forget the name, the phone call, the sulphurous rain that night as he’d stood in the shelter of the theatre. The manager’s glaring eyes had found Eddie and he was heading in his direction.