But he was a trusting son of a bitch and either not very good at this or was under orders to go softy softly with me.
“You walk ahead of me, we’ll wait downstairs, there’ll be a car along in a couple of minutes.”
“Where are we going?”
“Doesn’t concern you.”
“The Garda is looking for me. You can’t just take me away, they’ll spot you in a second.”
“Aye, heard about that. How long have you been in the city? About four hours? And they already have a photofit of you up on the telly for attempted murder. Nice work. But don’t you worry about the Garda, mate, we know all the ins and outs of this town, believe me.”
“Where we going?” I tried again.
“North,” he said ominously.
So it was Bridget.
I walked along the oak-paneled corridor and into the foyer. It had been cleared of girls, clients in pig noses, and Albanian cleaning ladies.
He was behind me. I looked at our reflections in the polished oak. He was following me about four feet back.
I wriggled out of the right handcuff. A tiny clinking sound, but he couldn’t see what I was doing.
I wouldn’t have long to make my move. A car was coming. Presumably with more men inside.
Three steps led down from the hallway into the foyer.
It would have to be now.
I tripped and fell down the steps, keeping my hands in front and landing on what looked like my unprotected face.
“Jesus,” the man said and ran over to help. He transferred the revolver from his right to his left hand and pulled me up by the hair. I let him lift me six inches off the ground then I made a grab for the gun. My left hand found his wrist, I stuck my knuckle into the pressure point an inch below his life line.
He screamed, his grip loosened, and I grabbed the pistol. He threw a punch at me with his right, missed, smacked his fist into the hardwood floor. I kicked his legs and he fell on top of me. He landed with a two-hundred-pound crash on my back, crushing the air out of my lungs and nearly opening my stitches.
Painfully I rolled to the side just as he was drawing back a big fist to smash into my face, but there wasn’t going to be a fight. I wriggled my arm free, held the gun out horizontally, and pulled the trigger. A bullet caught him in the armpit. He screamed and writhed, and I pushed him off. And as he made a desperate lunge for the gun, I shot him in the shoulder. The second bullet knocked him on his spine.
I stood up and backed well away from him.
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
Through one of the brothel windows I could see that a red Range Rover had pulled up outside. Men getting out. Bollocks. No time for twenty questions.
“Ammo,” I said.
He pointed to his jacket pocket. I reached in and pulled out a bag full of assorted .38 shells. Old, new; still, they would do the job.
“Handcuff key?”
“Other pocket.”
I reached in and took out the key.
“Don’t kill me,” he pleaded.
“This is your lucky day, pal,” I said and ran back up the foyer steps and along the corridor, kicking open doors until I found a room with a girl inside.
Mousy little brunette taking a break.
“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked her.
“What?”
I put the gun on her forehead.
“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked again.
Running. Those stars again. My eyes were definitely fucked up. Couldn’t see properly. I rubbed them. Big red birds sitting around a black mark in the road. As I got close they turned into kids in Man. United shirts.
I looked back.
No one behind me.
“Over here, mister,” a voice said, and a tiny hand tugged me down a narrow lane. Dogs barking. Papers. Cardboard boxes. Beer cans. Bottles. Narrow streets. An outdoor toilet. Smell of bacon fat. Curtains of gray slate, yards of washing.
“This way,” the voice said.
Finally I stopped seeing the stars. But Jesus, I’d have to get to a doctor for that.
We went into a court between some back-to-backs and then across a yard full of burned-out cars. In front of us was an open space where a block of flats had once stood and now was derelict. Kids playing in the cement, women talking. Caravans. Trailer homes.
“You’re safe now, mister,” the voice said. The kid was a boy of about thirteen. A dark-haired wee mucker with a scar on his face below the ear. He was wearing a patched sweater, dirty plimsolls, and trousers miles too big for him. Clearly he was a Gypsy kid, or a traveler, if you wanted to be politically correct about it.
“Who ya running from? The poliss?” the kid asked when he saw that I had my breath back.
“Sort of.”
“Aye, thought so. I just seen this eejit running and I thought the poliss are after him. That’s why I done come after ya, show ya a wee route.”
“Thanks.”
The kid looked at the handcuff still attached to my left wrist. It was also still holding a silenced revolver, but the boy didn’t give a shit about the gun.
“Did ya make a break for it? Outta the car?”
“Aye. Sure,” I said. I found the key, took the handcuffs off, and gave them to him.
“Did ya have that key made? How did ya get out of those things?” he asked.
“You ever heard of Houdini?”
“Nope.”
I drank in air, safetied the pistol, and shoved it down the front of my trousers.
“Ya want me to get ya a drink or something?” the kid asked.
“No. Thanks.”
“Are ya heading back?”
“Yes.”
“Where to?”
“Belfast,” I found myself saying. “I’m going to Belfast to get some answers.”
The boy was looking at me funny now. Squinting as the sun came out and then smirking as it went back behind the clouds. I stretched my shoulders where they hurt and reached in my pocket. I found a twenty-euro note.
“Buy yourself some candy,” I said.
“I will,” the kid said, with a trace of ungracious defiance, as if he was just begging me to tell him to say thank you, in which case he would be ready to tell me to fuck away off. But I wasn’t falling for it. I looked at the wee lad and found myself breaking into a grin.
“Have you any brothers or sisters?” I asked.
“Jesus, you’ve no idea, mister.”
“Give them a share of the candy.”
“I will,” the kid promised.
“Give you another twenty if you could russle me up a T-shirt, this one’s fucked.”
The kid nodded, walked across the waste ground, walked into the nearest caravan, came out with a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt. A man appeared and said something to the kid and pointed at me. The kid replied, nodded. Brought me the T-shirt. I put it on.
“What did that man want?” I asked.
“Nothing. He was just telling me there was two men who came after ya, looking for ya, loike, asking questions.”
“What did he say to them?”
The kid grinned.
“Nobody saw anything or anybody.”
“Ok. Good. Which way back into the city center?”
“Down to the right. All the way down the hill.”
I left the boy and walked down the hill, past boarded-up houses and a few scary-looking hoods keeping watch at the corners. This was the heart of a bad area (interestingly, just behind the façade of new Dublin) and I walked fast to get out of it, but not so quickly that I would attract attention. If they thought I was an undercover cop or a rival hood I’d be approached at gunpoint, bundled into a van, and taken somewhere to be interrogated. Take me bloody hours to get out of it.
At the bottom of the hill I came to a bus station and then I saw some familiar street signs.
I was near the river again.
Belfast, I’d told the kid. And Belfast it would be.
The peelers.
Oh, they’d send a couple of beat cops to the exit points. Avoid the train station, avoid the bus station, avoid the airport, but there was no way the Garda could control cars leaving the city, not these days. Dublin was a big, modern commuter city with a thousand roads in and out.
Piss easy, steal a car, drive out of town. Shit, hire a car. They didn’t know who I was. Get my credit card, dial Hertz.
I found a quiet nook and took out my cell phone.
I called up every car-hire place in County Dublin but in every one the story was the same: “We’re all out of cars, there’s a big festival in Dublin to do with James Joyce. You’ll have no problem tomorrow, but not today.”
So, it was either thieve a vehicle or risk the bus or train stations. I really could chance the latter two. I didn’t have much respect for the Garda’s ability to apprehend someone even if they did have a photofit. But then again maybe that would be pushing my luck just too far.
As for the first option. There were hundreds of cars parked right here in the street, but who knew what fuckwit would miss his vehicle fifteen minutes from now, call the cops, and then they’d circulate the license plate and some keen motorcyle cop would lift me. What then? Shoot an unarmed Garda Síochána just trying to do his duty?
Nah. I had another idea. I found the card in my trouser pocket. I phoned the number.
“Hello,” I said when I got connected.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Hey, it’s me, the old geezer from the parade.”
“Oh, you, where did you go?” Riorden asked.
“Hey, let me ask you something, have you got a car, a Volkswagen?”
“Yeah, I do, a Volkswagen Beetle. One of the new ones. Why do you want to know?”
“Uh, I don’t. Just checking. Friend of mine wants to buy a car, he really likes Volkswagens, that’s all. You’re not in the market to sell it?”
“Is that why you called me up?”
“No, you got me. It’s only an excuse, I wanted to see you again and I couldn’t think of a reason for calling you. Where are you?”
“We’re still at Jury’s, do you know it?”
“Aye, I know it.”
Twenty minutes later I walked into Jury’s. A party was in full swing. It was a nice June day, the international media were in town, term was winding down. What more excuse did you need for celebration?
In any case it was packed with students. Standing room only and there wasn’t much room to stand. Two hundred dead easy if someone shouted “Fire.”
I found the girl talking to an enormous black-haired English rugby player in an Aran sweater. She was on lemonade, but he was half wasted and thought his luck was in. I waited till she took a bathroom break before I approached him.
“Fuck off, Hercules, the lady is spoken for,” I said with menace.
“Are you talking to me?” the rugby player asked.
“No, I’m talking to the midget who works you by remote control, now fuck away off before we test the adage, the bigger they are . . .”
“You’ve got to be pulling my leg?” he said.
“No. I’m not pulling your fucking leg. I’m not climbing up your fucking beanstalk to steal your magic beans either. I’m telling you to fuck away off before I get upset.”
“Jesus, are you looking for trouble?” he persisted.
“Believe me, I don’t have to go looking. I’ll count to ten and you better be out of here, this lady is spoken for.”
“You picked the wrong guy to start a fight with,” he maintained.
As I began my countdown, he clenched his fists.
“One, two, three, four,” I counted and kneed him right in the nut sack. He sank to the floor and as he tumbled I grabbed him by the hair and smacked my fist twice into his face. He wilted, wobbled, fell. I checked to see if anyone had spotted my assault on a brother student, but everyone was drunk, exuberant, not paying attention and I was a fast wee turd when occasion arose.
“Lend a hand here, Nigel can’t hold his drink,” I shouted and pushed the big guy’s head backward onto the concrete floor.
A couple of his mates, looking round for the first time, saw that their pal was out for the count and ran to help him. Just then the girl came out of the toilet.
“Your boyfriend can’t take his drink,” I said.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” the girl said, looking to see that he wasn’t dead, but not much beyond that.
“Good, you deserve better,” I said.
“Who are you?” she asked, exasperated.
I bit my lip.
I was going to romance her but suddenly, from out of nowhere, I was fed up with this story. I wanted to expedite matters. I wanted to bring things to the goddamn climax. There wasn’t time for an hour or two’s worth of bullshit.
“You want the truth?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“I’m a police officer, I’m undercover. Inspector Brian O’Nolan. Dublin CID. I know you don’t want to hear this in the middle of a party but someone broke into your car,” I said deadpan.
“Someone broke into my car?” she said, horrified.
“That’s right. We ran the plate, your name and number came up and I thought, Jesus, that’s a coincidence, I was talking to that wee lassie this morning.”
“Is that why you asked about it on the phone?”
“Aye, but I hate to tell people bad news on the phone. Thought I’d come in person. Come on. We’d like you to ID the vehicle and drive it to the nearest station for us, if you don’t mind.”
“Jesus, I’m glad I gave you my number,” she said, happy enough to buy the story without a heartbeat.
“Come on, let’s go ID the car.”
Five minutes later and we were at a small parking lot near Trinity. I deflected easily the many “You don’t look like a cop” or “You have a bit of an American accent” questions, reassured her that her car was relatively unharmed, and asked her a couple of details about her habits, friends, and teachers to see if she would be missed.
“There’s the car,” she said, pointing to a blue Volkswagen. “Shite. It looks ok from here.”
I checked the street.
There were people about but no one paying us any particular attention. We walked to the vehicle.
She looked at me with first a puzzled and then a suspicious expression playing across her pretty face.
“No one broke into the car,” she said.
“Don’t scream or I’ll fucking shoot you,” I said, taking out the revolver and shoving it into her ribs.
“Are you serious?” she asked, wondering, no doubt, if this was all some nasty practical joke.
“Aye.”
“W-what do you want?” she asked, a little bit more frightened this time.
“Well, I want your car, but you’ll have to come with me, because I don’t want you reporting me and I’m not feeling well enough to drive.”
“You must be kidding,” she said, her big eyes widening in terror. Her chest heaving up and down. It was not unattractive. I pushed the gun farther into her body.
“No joke, love. Now unlock the fucking car and get in.”
“You wouldn’t kill me in broad daylight.”
“I fucking would,” I said savagely.
This was the turning point for her.
“I don’t want to get shot. I’m, I’m . . . I’m pregnant,” she said and began to sob.
It threw me for a second, but only for a second.
“You listen to me, honey. You’re going to live till you’re a hundred and twenty years old. You’re going to be popping champagne corks in the year 2100 and you’re going to be here when the aliens show up with all their videos of Jesus and Alexander the Great. Either that, or you’re going to be fucking dead with a bullet in your skull, thirty seconds from now. Your call. And if you die, the bairn dies too.”
She composed herself a little, looked at me, stared at the gun.
“What do you want
?” she asked.
“We’re going to get in your car and you’re going to drive me to Belfast and you’re going to drive back down to Dublin and never bloody mention this to anybody. Now enough yakking, get in the fucking car and drive.”
5: PENELOPE (BELFAST—JUNE 16, 1:35 P. M . )
Dublin in the rearview mirror. At last. The girl stinking of fear, sweating, not speaking, but that was ok. The journey was only two hours now that the Irish government had gotten millions from the European Structural Fund and finally built a couple of decent roads.
She was a competent driver even with a maniac kidnapper pointing a gun at her. She drove carefully and fast. It was all good. We had a full tank of petrol and in the backseat there was even a water bottle and a packet of biscuits. I ate the biscuits, offered her one, but she refused, giving me a look of utter scorn. I liked that.
The run was quick, easy, and straightforward until we hit Drogheda.
Here things were bollocksed because of a traffic jam on the bypass; the cops were diverting people into the center of town and over the Boyne Bridge. We were moving very slowly and there were about a dozen Garda milling about uselessly. I knew she wouldn’t try anything but I had to remind her.
“Honey, just because you see a lot of cops and the traffic’s slow, don’t think of being a hero. You make one bolt for that door and I’ll fucking plug ya. And don’t think I wouldn’t just because I like you. I’ve killed more people in the last twenty-four hours than you’ll kill in this and in your next half-dozen incarnations on planet Earth.”
“I believe you. You seem like a bastard,” she said bravely.
“Aye, well, we’ll all live through this and it’ll be something you can tell your wean about.”
“Don’t think I’d tell her anything about the likes of you.”
“You’d be surprised how I can grow on people. Seriously. Peruvians, Colombians, Russians, Americans, I make friends wherever I go.”
The Bloomsday Dead Page 9