No matter, it was just a costume, and shopkeeper was just a role he played. But he played it diligently, Fryer gave him that. Which was why, riots or not, Sunday morning or Christmas morning he knew he would find the Accountant opening his shop. But should you get closer, look into the grey eyes behind those glasses, you might get a glimpse of another man, a different story.
The Accountant, Quigley, had been, and Fryer was very sure still was, the IRA’s Chief Financial Officer, the little guy who sat on the big table. By virtue of his rank, Quigley had a place on the IRA’s Army Council, had held the post of Chief of Staff, the power of life and death. He had sanctioned the execution of informers and Special Branch double agents, men who ended up wearing black bags over their heads and shot behind the ear in South Armagh. But unlike grunts like Fryer, who had pulled the trigger, the Accountant never spent a day behind bars; never had anything pinned on him.
Fryer carefully slipped the razor blade with the band aid out of his back pocket, removed the sheath, stuck it to the dash. He pocketed the razor, got out, walked across the Donegal Road and looked into the entry. The Accountant’s car, about fifteen feet in, was empty. The back door into the 7/11 was open a crack. No handle on the outside, just a key slot. Fryer squeezed himself between the wall and the side of the car, and used his fingertips to grip the inside lip of the door. He tugged; it emitted a sharp creak, opened.
Inside it was black. Fryer hesitated, one hand dropped to touch the razor in his back pocket. He squeezed his eyes tightly closed, counted to five, then stepped fractionally in, opened his eyes. Better adjusted, now he could see the dimness of a storage room. Not full dark after all, not so bad, he could deal with this. For a short time, he could deal with this.
Fryer stepped inside, breathed in the cold odour of the many cardboard boxes stacked in neat rows on the pressed metal shelving units, lined floor to the ceiling. He tasted soap powder, the clean astringency of tea bags, and the sharpness of soil on new potatoes. But nothing else.
He scanned the room quickly, straight ahead a gangway running along the mouth of the shelving units. About three metres ahead was a door, slightly ajar, where weak light seeped in from the still shuttered shop. From that direction the muffed music, volume turned down, barely competing with the somnolent buzz from a fridge freezer. And that was all, no movement, neither from the shelving stacks to his right nor from the shop beyond the door.
The Accountant must be in the front, maybe counting out a float for the till. Fryer padded up the narrow aisle of boxes, quiet as a cat. He watched the door to the shop, mentally scolding the Accountant for his sloppiness. Just like Dempsey, grown fat in his brain in the last ten years, his vigilance and awareness had weathered down to nothing.
Fryer stopped, watched the weak light from the shop, now less than five feet in front of him, and frowned. There was something not right, no sign or sense of life from beyond that door. It felt as vacant, empty as the rows of shelves (and how dark they were, dark as gullies) which Fryer had just walked gingerly past. His hand slid carefully into his back pocket, found the razor’s plaster grip.
He drew it silently, waited, all senses on fire.
The music was closer now but not originating from within the shop as he had surmised, it was –
A toilet flushed, the sound muted but unmistakable, and coming from Fryer’s left.
His stomach sank like an anvil in a net and he had a second to now curse his own sloppiness and rusted senses, suddenly ten years too old, his mind pill worn and cell numbed. Yellow light flooded from beyond a stack of boxes containing packets of crisps. They were stacked high, had looked as though they were against a wall. The music grew instantly louder. Fryer heard the distinctive click and pong of a ceiling pull cord and the light disappeared. The Accountant emerged from behind the stack, holding a small black transistor radio in one hand that was moulded to look like a miniature ghetto blaster.
He stopped, stared Fryer straight in the face. His eyes flicked quickly to Fryer’s right hand which held the blade. He flicked off the radio, silence filling the small space between the two men. His cool grey eyes surveyed Fryer, leaking mild curiosity, nothing less and nothing more.
Fryer felt the urge to shuffle his feet, resisted it, not breaking the man’s stare.
‘You know you should not be here,’ said the Accountant. Fryer felt his stomach flush. The arrogant wanker; surprised on the bog by a man holding a blade, but he was chastising like a Christian Brother in school.
‘Learn to lock your door,’ said Fryer. The Accountant offered him a small shrug and a faint smile, and then shook the radio and moved out of Fryer’s vision. A second later and he heard a soft knock, presumably it being placed on a shelf or table top Fryer could not see.
‘You keep your hands where I can see them, mate,’ said Fryer. The Accountant ignored this, observed Fryer over his glasses.
‘I heard Jim Dempsey’s dead, though I expect you know that. They’ll be looking for you, John Fryer,’ he said. The money man knew his name, all those years locked away, but not forgotten, at least not by this man. Fryer was right to have come here for information; the Accountant clearly banked it like currency and assets. He read Fryer’s change of expression.
‘Oh, yes, I know all about you. Now leave,’ he continued, the tone reasonable, but also self-assured, someone who had been giving orders his whole life. Fryer felt his scalp prickle, the room was feeling too small and his clothes too tight, he needed a smoke. He reached for his makings, remembered the blade in his hand and stopped. The Accountant followed his movements, and then continued, though at this stage it should be Fryer doing the talking, making demands and watching him squirm.
‘And, I heard you killed his bloody dog, too. Disgusting. Though, let’s be honest John Fryer, hardly surprising, given your form,’ he said and then he smiled that smile again. Fryer growled, stepping into the space between them, observing from behind his rising film of rage that the man’s right hand, the one which had had held the small radio, was still obscured by the boxes. He was mocking him; this little prick was calling him a dog killer.
‘I. Never. Killed. That-’ But he did not get to finish his objection.
The Accountant moved, fast and precise, like a seasoned squash player darting to Fryer’s right, too fast for Fryer to follow.
In his right fist, Fryer caught sight of a black snake, swooping up in a dark blur. Fryer had the millisecond that was left to see its arched head rearing over the Accountant’s hand, the two forks of its tongue visible for just an instant. He twisted his face away, but too late. The snake struck Fryer hard on the side of the jaw, connecting with a massive crack and crunch inside his head, clamping his teeth closed on his tongue. Two agonizing fireworks exploded simultaneously, the first from the side of his face, the second in his mouth, rapidly filling with the metallic syrup of his own blood.
Fryer staggered, dropped the blade, and raised his right arm in defence, eyes up.
The Accountant had a mini-crowbar held aloft, ready now to dish out another strike. If the iron had connected squarely instead of glancing him, Fryer would already be on the floor and his jaw would be a broken biscuit. But one strike to the head and he would be out cold, probably permanently.
Fryer lunged forward, grasping the Accountant’s right wrist as he did so. His legs, rubbery but not entirely turned to water, mostly obeyed him. The effort set his face off, the jaw taking centre stage above his lacerated and fattening tongue. He twisted the Accountant’s arm with everything he had.
The smaller man turned under the pressure, Fryer rammed his right elbow into the Accountant’s face, aiming for his eye socket, missing it but feeling and hearing the hard connection of bone on bone. Quigley coughed out a cry, and in the slow speed of the struggle, Fryer noted what a sad sound that was, an old man’s gasp, surprised and injured.
Fryer did not stop. He pushed the Accountant’s arm up and back over his head, the crow bar now raised between them like a solid, dar
k flame of hate. Quigley’s arm shook, started to give. Fryer stuck his leg between the Accountant’s feet, twisting the man’s arm viciously once again as he did so. He used his heft to turn him with the same movement, pushed him hard from behind, bundled the smaller, wiry man to the floor, and landed on top of him. He let out a large woofing sound and the crow bar slid fast along the floor and into the shadows, where it made a soft knock against something Fryer could not see.
Cardboard boxes, probably.
Fryer was panting like an animal in labour, a runner of bloody saliva drooling from his open mouth. His jaw was a live wire, and he could feel the growing tightness of a blossoming welt, big as an egg. He wiggled it left and right, found it serviceable, but groaned as a fresh bolt of pain lit up in his face. The Accountant was slapping at the linoleum floor with his outstretched palm, making hoarse rasping sounds as he did so. Fryer pushed off him, and the man started to struggle for breath, respiration watery and shallow. Fryer straddled him, and patted him down as he lay on the floor. His breathing had started to open up. Fryer took his car keys, wallet and mobile and set them on the small shelf which Fryer could now see was next to the toilet door, the one where the Accountant had found the crow bar.
‘I want no more of that hospitality from you,’ he said. No response from the Accountant. ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t have a problem with you, you know,’ Fryer said, standing over the man.
The Accountant raised his face from the floor, turned slightly to look at Fryer. Glasses crunched, one of the arms broken off. He had skinned one side of his forehead when he had hit the lino, but otherwise he looked to be ok, for the time being. The Accountant nodded. Fryer heaved him up, one hand on the seat of his trousers and the other on the scruff of his collar. Fryer turned him round and quickly marched him over to where a shoulder high stack of boxes stood next to one of the metal shelves. He shouldered the top box out of the way and it fell to the floor with a heavy slap. Fryer pinned Quigley over the boxes, one fist filled with his shirt, and pressed heavily on his throat.
‘Dempsey told me that you have my pension,’ said Fryer.
The Accountant looked up at Fryer; caution in his eyes for sure, but the money man was also back, surfacing above the indignity of his predicament. Fryer could see him recalculating the odds, estimating how much Dempsey might have known and how much Fryer had managed to get out of him. At the end, it was a profit and loss calculation, distilled into one all important question: How much will it cost? He obviously overrated Dempsey’s staying power.
‘Bollocks, listen to yourself,’ he replied, a trace of that smile again on his face. Fryer heard something, something moving.
‘Dempsey said,’ replied Fryer. But the words sounded weak, infantile. The same sound, a shifting sound from his right, where the shelves were hidden in shadows deep and dark. Fryer resisted the temptation to look. A trickle of cold sweat ran a finger down his back, into the crack of his arse. Instead, he glanced over the Accountant’s shoulder and spotted his razor on the floor in the doorway to the shop front. He quickly returned his eyes to Quigley. He had already proved more capable than Fryer had estimated, and as though in affirmation the smaller man raised himself off the box, weight on his elbows as Fryer’s hold on his shirt fractionally relaxed. Quigley was looking at him, question in his eyes, he must have said something.
‘What?’ said Fryer, and glanced at the blade again, a mile away in the thin crack of light. Another sound, like something wet shifting and sliding, again from his right, but closer now. Fryer held his breath, the better not to smell the air. The darkness, at first murky and dim, had now thickened like black smoke broiling off a burning tyre. It was closing in, slow and indefatigable. Fryer stole a look behind, it would be good to let go of this man completely, to make a run for it while he still had time, get across the floor, through that exit door, away from this blackness, from what lurked within.
‘I said there’s no pension for volunteers, Dempsey lied to you,’ he said. Quigley shook off Fryer’s hand, sat up. He straightened his crooked tie. He considered Fryer slyly. ‘There’s float money for the till in my wallet. Take it, leave. Here,’ he said, and slid off the boxes to his feet. ‘I’ll get it for you.’ Fryer didn’t shove him back, he took a step back, eyes searching the thickening darkness to his right. No longer able to hold his air, Fryer was now panting, heart banging, and he could smell IT, taste IT, thick and so very near, about to be born from that darkness.
‘No! No, no, no, you fucking bastard you!’ he screamed into the darkness. His eyes returned to the Accountant, suddenly his solace. Fryer held him, saw the razor gleam from the floor, shoved Quigley aside and lunged for it. He plucked it off the lino, scrambled back to his feet, and dragged the Accountant to him, all his strength back.
‘Do you smell that?’ he hissed. The Moley’s stagnant, wild stink had overwhelmed the smells of dry cardboard and soap powder. Fryer emitted an involuntary sound, something between a moan and a cry, the hair on his arms and neck erect and electrified. His bladder was hot and massive and ached for release.
The Accountant’s composure dropped. He started to really struggle. Fryer’s fear had jumped into him, a black spirit moving between men.
‘Fuck off, let me go,’ he said, choking the words out under the pressure of Fryer’s iron fist, once again at his throat. Fryer pushed him into the boxes, drove a knee into his chest, feeling the hard steel of the blade between his fingers under the sponge of the textured band aid. The Moley was almost on him. He didn’t want to, but it had to feed.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fryer. He swiped the blade upwards, streaking it across the Accountant’s face. The blade raced cleanly through his left cheek, across the open cavity of his mouth, scratching the hardness of his gritted teeth, and sliced a deep score up the right side of the man’s face.
No blood at first, just the Accountant’s eyes, boiling in his face in recognition and terror, sudden silence.
Then his face fell apart, opening in a perverse gash along the trajectory of Fryer’s razor cut. His left cheek was severed to the bone, the skull-like grimace of his teeth revealed. His right cheek sagged open, fatty yellow tissue revealed, intact, though only just. The blood came, sudden and furious, streaming down Quigley’s face like a scarlet cloth.
He started to screech.
Fryer looked up, but there was no Moley, just the darkness, and the rich coppery sweetness of the Accountant’s blood in the air. Fryer mopped his brow, trying to blot out the screaming. He needed a smoke, badly. By the time he had sparked up his first, he’d stopped screaming, and started talking through a wad of kitchen paper Fryer had found in one of the cardboard boxes. Pain, it was the ultimate information laxative.
Turned out Dempsey was telling the truth after all. The loot from the big bank robbery had been washed and returned, mostly as diamonds, and other high carat gems. Whatever had not been cashed and distributed to retired IRA volunteers was stored in safety deposit boxes, mainly in England. Ready money was buried in disused arms dumps.
‘Where is my share?’ asked Fryer.
‘Mosht of the Belfasst money has been given out, but there is a schtore. It’sh up the top of the old loney, near the dry well on the Black Mountain. You know where I mean?’ asked the Accountant.
Fryer nodded, he knew the loney. It was an old country lane that once ran from the lower Falls area all the way to the Whiterock Road, ended up near a dry wishing well on the slopes of the Black Mountain, overlooking west Belfast. It was a courting place for young people in his grandfather’s time. If there was an arm’s dump up there, Fryer had never heard of it. The Accountant was right about the well though, it had always been dry, even when Fryer’s grandfather had been a boy. There were stories that it had been dug into the hill side by the ancient Celts, in search for gold, people used to say it was a gateway for the Si, the little people. They would gallop out of the hole on their horses under the moonlight to cause mischief.
‘I wonder,’ said Fry
er, pointing his smoke at the Accountant, ‘I wonder if you are telling me a wee fairy story here?’ he asked.
The Accountant shook his head, and with wide eyes in a Halloween mask, he watched as Fryer ripped open one box, then another, before removing a plastic container of table salt. The Accountant’s eyes opened even wider, two poached eggs with black yolks, and he started to scrabble from the boxes he was still slumped over. His arms gave way and he ended up on the floor on his side. He got to his knees and started to whimper and plead, lisping and slipping over his words through his tissue wad.
Fryer stood over him.
‘I am not interested in going hunting for the crock of gold, mate. I want my fucking money, and unless I can put a hand to it right now, this,’ he said, flicking the lip of the container open and pouring a handful of white salt into his hand, ‘is going into your face,’ he said.
Fryer leaned over the man, bringing his salt filled fist within inches of the bloody carnage of his face. The Accountant screeched horribly and raised his free hand up, to cover his wounds.
‘There’s a shafe, I have the code,’ he said.
It was built into one of the structural walls, and (once again), concealed behind a stack of cardboard boxes. Inside, Fryer found bundles and bundles of cash, wrapped in paper jackets and fastened together in the same currency, same denomination piles; Sterling, Euros and US Dollars. Fryer was no genius at sums but if there was less than 100K in that safe he was a blind donkey. He found a strong orange plastic bag with a supermarket logo on one of the shelves. He dumped the contents and filled the orange bag up with money. Fryer was nearly done, but not quite. Fryer returned to the Accountant who was still on the floor, his breathing slow and shallow.
‘What else is there?’ he asked. The Accountant murmured something about not understanding, please, sorry. He was slurring, eyes closing. Fryer cursed under his breath. The Moley was gone, but the fresh blood only kept it at bay for so long. Dempsey knew something, something that was worth more than all the cash in that safe. And Quigley knew it too. He reached for the salt and let the Accountant see it. He flinched and tried to sit up, big eyes again fixed on John Fryer.
Blood Will Be Born Page 20