The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set

by David B Lyons

  10:50

  Lenny

  Lenny stabs at the button. Six times. As if it’s going to make the lift come any sooner. He doesn’t eyeball the stairs behind him this time. He just waits; transfixed on the sheet of paper he’s just unfolded. Gordon rushed him out of the ward; told him to concentrate on the note he’d written and to call him when he needed to ask any questions.

  Suspects

  Alan Keating. Keating is a well-known criminal, nicknamed The Boss in the newspapers. I had some dealings with him before Betsy went missing. Underhand dealings. Illegal. I’m sure he had something to do with Betsy’s disappearance. But Keating keeps his hands clean. Knows he is always being watched by the cops. He’s now living up in Rathcoole. His seventh house in the last seventeen years. He has a sidekick freak who does all the dirty work for him…

  Barry Ward. Keating’s sidekick freak. I think he was a traveller. Certainly sounds like one. Would do anything for Keating – including killing people for him. He’s more than capable of kidnapping a four-year-old. I’ve no doubt about that. He’s a scumbag. Lives in Drimnagh still. Be careful with him.

  Jake Dewey. Slippery fucker. Thinks he’s ex IRA – but he’s not. He’s deluded. Lies for a living. Came into my wife’s life just as Betsy went missing. Never trusted him. Cops sounded him out but didn’t dig far enough. Has a restraining order against me, so I can’t go near him. Need you to dig deep today.

  You make an impact today, Lenny, my house is yours. This is literally a million euro job for you if you get it right.

  Lenny takes a deep inhale as the lift door pings opens into the hospital lobby. He hadn’t even realised he had gotten into the lift. Then he paces out the door, over the zebra crossing and towards the car park. He stares upwards just before he enters the archway, after the first drop of what looks like many today drips onto his shoulder. The clouds turned from off-white to dark grey in the fifteen minutes Lenny had been inside the hospital.

  ‘The fucking Boss,’ Lenny whispers to himself as he slides his parking ticket into the machine. He’s lost in thought as he waves his debit card over the reader, not even noticing that he’s paying ten euro for leaving his car here for just a quarter of an hour. If he noticed, he’d be furious. Ten euro can go a long way in the Moon household. Goose pimples begin to bubble up on his arms; and not because the temperature has dropped. He smiles to himself as he paces up the steps and towards his car.

  ‘Fuck it!’ he says as he swings his legs inside. ‘This is why you became a private investigator, Lenny boy.’

  He turns the key in the ignition only to be met by a loud hissing of white noise. The radio doesn’t work in here. He reaches for the standby button, knocks it off. Then he stares at his own eyeballs in the rear-view mirror and winks to himself.

  ‘You can do this.’

  His orange Nissan Micra pulls out of the car park and over the speed bumps. It’s a 2005 Micra Lenny has. He can’t afford anything more modern. With the temperature dropping, and the car heaters not working, Lenny flicks the collar of his yellow puffer jacket up to cover his bare neck, then reaches for his Sherpa hat and pulls it on. A small part of him – the conservative, weak side of him – is beginning to wish he was back in his pokey office, playing Solitaire, waiting on one of the insurance companies to ring him with another boring job. But another part of him – the adventurous life-is-too-short side that he used to be filled with until he married Sally – is excited about what lies in store. He became a private investigator because he wanted to solve crimes. And it’s pretty impossible to solve crimes if you don’t deal with criminals. Though, he must admit, criminals don’t come more notorious in Dublin than Alan Keating. The whole of the country knows Keating’s the head of one of the biggest crime gangs in Dublin – but the cops can’t do anything about it. He keeps his nose too clean; controls his men from the comfort of his own homes.

  Lenny knows titbits about Keating – like most people in Ireland do. It’s no secret Keating was involved in the attempted murder of crime journalist Frank Keville back in 2003. Keville was shot in the back outside his child’s classroom during a routine school pick up one Friday afternoon. The Guards still haven’t found the man who pulled the trigger, but they know the instruction came from Keating. They just can’t prove it. Keating was on holiday in Portugal when Keville was shot. He always hid himself well. It was actually Keville who first coined the nickname ‘The Boss’ for Keating. He was obsessed with Keating; wrote about him at least once a month in his weekly column for the Irish News of the World.

  Lenny squelches up his mouth, then sucks his teeth. While he’s aware just how dangerous Keating can be; he can’t see a reason why he would have abducted Betsy without there being financial gain for him and his gang. It doesn’t make sense. He drums his fingers against the steering wheel as questions whizz around his mind.

  ‘Where’ll I even start?’ he says, eyeballing himself in the mirror again.

  He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone and when the traffic halts his progress, he presses at buttons on his cheap mobile phone and goes into his call history, straight to the last dialled number. Lenny can’t quite afford a hands free kit for his car, but he’s mastered the art of gripping the phone between his thighs with the phone’s loud speaker turned on. A horn beeps from behind just as the tone begins to ring and Lenny steps on the accelerator and pulls off with his wheels spinning.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Gordon, it’s Lenny Moon.’

  ‘Good. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m on the N7. Heading to Rathcoole to see if I can have words with Alan Keating. You wrote on the note ‘Peyton Avenue’ – where is that exactly?’

  ‘It’s up off the village, a left turn before The Baurnafea House pub. You can’t miss the estate.’

  ‘Estate? What number does he live in?’

  ‘I have that information at home. I can’t think of it. You’ll have to ask somebody when you get there. I think it’s on the second row of houses.’

  Lenny rolls his eyes, then blinks them. The surreality of the whole job begins to consume him.

  I’m off to question The fuckin’ Boss about the Betsy Blake disappearance.

  Lenny stares at his eyes again in the rear-view mirror as he pulls off the N7 at the Rathcoole exit.

  ‘Lenny,’ Gordon says, startling him back to the call.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What are you gonna ask him?’

  Lenny blows out his cheeks.

  ‘I’ll just start off as if I’m interviewing him for a routine investigation. I certainly won’t be accusatory. I’ll just say that as an associate of Gordon Blake at the time I’d just like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Lenny…’ Gordon says, then pauses. ‘Ye have to tell him I’m dying. We used to be mates once; ask him… please, if he knows anything about Betsy. Anything at all. I don’t have much time. No pussy-footing around. If you’re happy with one-thousand for your day’s work, fine, pussy-foot. But if you want serious money – and I mean if you want to become almost a millionaire in the next few hours – you gotta get me some answers. Answers I’ve never heard before. Please. I’m almost convinced that fucker has something to do with Betsy’s disappearance. He’s gotta know something. I’m begging you to figure it out!’

  ‘Hang on, Gordon.’

  Lenny scratches at the stubble under his chin, then pulls into a parking spot outside a bungalow at the entrance to Rathcoole Village.

  ‘You wrote on the note that you had illegal dealings with Keating. You’re gonna have to give me the details.’

  Lenny hears the sigh on the other end of the line.

  ‘I was his accountant. He practically forced me to handle his books; ran all his dealings through me. In simple terms I cooked his books… what can I say? I was doing it for about five years. I was probably a bit afraid of the fucker… but I… y’know… I was earning great money doing it and then… And then we just had a falling out. He kept wanting to
push it too far… I was wary of getting caught. At one point I told him ‘no’. And he… he threatened me.’

  ‘Threatened you how?’

  ‘Y’know… he just held me up against the wall, said I’d regret fucking with him.’

  ‘Did he ever threaten Betsy?’

  The line goes silent. Then Lenny hears a woman’s voice in the background.

  Gordon’s tone turns different. More mature. More pronounced.

  ‘Sure, Elaine. That is no problem. Whatever if it is you need to do, my love… Lenny,’ he says, returning to the call. ‘I’ll have to ring you back. A nurse is here to run some tests.’

  Lenny stares at the phone in his hand after Gordon’s hung up.

  ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ he says. He laughs after he says it too, then shakes his head.

  I’m off to question The fuckin Boss about the Betsy Blake disappearance.

  The million pound house on South Circular Road crosses his mind. Not because he’s dreaming about living in it – nor is he even considering the possibility – but because it’s added to the craziness of his morning. He then runs back through the moment he held Gordon’s medical chart in the ward; just to remove the possibility of being bullshitted to. He’s been pranked well before, but this’d be some world-class award-winning pranking. He picks the phone up from his lap and presses in to his call history before pressing at the button beside ‘home’. It was at moments like this, when he had to ring Sally to check something on the internet, that Lenny wished he had a smart phone.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Sweetie, sorry to bother you, But could you just check the online banking? I wanna see if money was put in this morning. Somebody was supposed to pay me today for a job.’

  Sally hid her sigh well, but Lenny still caught a hint of it. It didn’t bother him. He wouldn’t have expected anything less. The fact that her sigh was so subtle was actually a sign that she was having a good day. The slight humming of a tune from her lips while she typed away at the home computer confirmed it. Today was a good day for Sally Moon. Normally that’d be enough to make Lenny content, but he’s still staring down into his lap, scratching at his bald head with confusion when Sally sucks her lips; signalling she’s about to talk.

  ‘Yep. One thousand euro exactly. About half an hour ago. Who’s that from – that’s a big payment?’

  ‘Oh a client I did a couple of jobs for a while back. He’s owed me that for quite a while.’

  ‘Gordon Blake?’

  ‘Yeah – he’s a guy I met through one of the insurance companies… asked me to look into a number of old clients of his he thought was scamming from them. I had to look into each of them. Turned out to be very little in it, but eh… yeah, he said he’d pay today, so I can scratch that off my list.’

  Lenny wasn’t concerned Sally would take the conversation much further. She’d been bored by his job for quite some time. Nothing exciting ever happen to her husband.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Nice few quid. We need that coming up to Christmas. How is your—’

  ‘I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’m gonna have to go. I got a spate of calls from insurance companies this morning and… eh… give me a call at, y’know, the usual time. Love you.’

  Lenny hung up. It was unusual he’d hang up on Sally, but her feelings, unusually, aren’t at the forefront his mind right now.

  ‘A grand,’ he says to himself. He’s chewing on the edge of his rubber mobile phone cover when it buzzes in his hand.

  ‘Yes love.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Oh sorry. Eh… Lenny Moon – Private Investigator.’

  ‘Lenny… it’s Gloria Proudfoot, Excel Insurance.’

  ‘Gloria – how are you? Sorry… miles away.’

  ‘Listen, I have a job for you. A Delaney Griffith. Claims she injured her back in a car crash back in August. But we’ve just had somebody tell us she’s off down the gym lifting weights this morning. Can you get out to Coolock now, get confirmation and a photograph for us?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Lenny brings the phone back towards his mouth to bite on the edge of his rubber case.

  He normally jumps on anything an insurance company offers him. In fact he lives for it. But he never had the option of comparing the taking of a standard photograph of somebody in a gym over the interviewing of Dublin’s biggest gangster about the most intriguing missing persons case to ever hit Ireland.

  ‘Can’t, Gloria. I’m sorry. I’m on a job at the moment.’

  ‘Ah… okay, no probs, Lenny. I’ll hit you up next time.’

  ‘Sorry, Gloria,’ he offers once more before the line goes dead. Then he stares at his eyes through the rear-view mirror again and laughs; his laugh fogging up part of the mirror.

  He rolls down his window and points his index finger towards an elderly lady pushing her trolley along the narrow pathway.

  ‘Can you tell me how to get to Peyton Avenue?’ he asks.

  The lady twists her body, to look in the opposite direction.

  ‘That’s one of the new estates,’ she says, rolling her eyes, as if new estates are bothersome to her. ‘Next left, then you’ll see it when you get to the first roundabout. Sure, ye can’t miss it.’

  Lenny winks a thank you back at the lady, then winds his window back up and pulls out from the curb.

  The woman was right. You couldn’t miss it. Even before Lenny got to the roundabout he could see a massive sign reading ‘Welcome to Peyton’. It was like one of the signs you’d see in America for a new housing estate; he even had to drive through a pointless archway to enter it. He blows out his cheeks while driving towards the first row of houses.

  ‘There must be a hundred gaffs in here,’ he mumbles to himself. He rounds the first bend, to get to the second row of homes just as Gordon instructed, then pulls over to stare at the front doors. They’re big enough gaffs. Red brick, three storeys. The homes of people who make comfortable money. He couldn’t quite work out why Alan Keating, who must rake in millions a year, was living here.

  Lenny pulls the zip on his puffer jacket all the way up to his chin and yanks at the two strings of his hat, as if those actions are going to protect him from the rain. Then, without hesitating, he walks up the pathway of the house he pulled up outside and rings the doorbell.

  A middle aged woman greets him with a confused smile.

  ‘I’m looking for the Keating house. Do you know what number they live in?’

  The woman drops her smile, narrows the gap in the door so just half of her face is showing.

  ‘Number forty-nine,’ she says. ‘You’ll know he’s in if his black Merc is in the driveway.’

  The door is fully closed before Lenny has finished his thank you. He walks back down the pathway, begins to stroll past the row of houses, counting the numbers on the doors as he goes. Then he stops dead, stares at the front of a black Mercedes that’s taking up way too much space on the driveway of number 49. He takes the mobile phone from his pocket and then brings it to his mouth; not to ring anybody, just to chew on the rubber case; the rain falling around him.

  Go on, Lenny Boy – grow some fucking balls!

  He swivels, stares up and down the estate for no reason and then, almost as if somebody pushes him, he paces confidently, as if he isn’t intimidated one iota by the infamous figure who lives behind the door.

  It’s only when he holds his thumb against the bell that his stomach flips itself over.

  11:05

  Gordon

  There’s a fumble at my door, a clanging. Then Elaine walks in, wheeling a small machine in front of her; leading it towards me. She purses her lips at me again, but I don’t mind this constant sympathy gesture coming from her. She’s nice looking. Not good looking. There’s a distinct difference. And I’d take nice looking over good looking all day long.

  She notices I’m on the phone, mouths the words ‘heart rate’. I stretch the phone away from my mouth.

 
‘Sure, Elaine,’ I say. ‘That is no problem. Whatever it is you need to do, my love.’ Then I bring the phone to my mouth again. ‘Lenny. I’ll have to ring you back. A nurse is here to run some tests.’

  Elaine opens the Velcro strapping on a small rubber tube and then releases two blue suction tabs. She motions towards my T-shirt and without hesitating, I lift it over my head. Then she places the two tabs on my chest and turns to twizzle at some nozzles on her machine.

  ‘Sorry to disturb your call. Won’t keep you long,’ she says. ‘We just need to keep checking your rate.’

  I’m about to tell her the call wasn’t that important when Elaine makes a strange sound; almost as if she’s sucking her own tongue.

  ‘Heart rate’s gone up significantly, Gordon,’ she says staring at me.

  ‘I’m not surprised. After the news I was told an hour ago.’

  ‘Have you been resting as we suggested?’ she asks, while walking to the end of my bed to pick up the clipboard. She scribbles some notes on it while I try to find the words to phrase my lie.

  ‘Yes. Just as you said. Haven’t really done anything… Was just ringing a friend of mine there to—’

  ‘That the same friend who was in with you half-an-hour ago?’ she asks, staring at me over the clipboard.

  ‘Yeah – an old friend. My best friend. The only person I could think of to call on to be honest.’

  Elaine purses her lips again. She hangs the clipboard back on to the rail at the foot of my bed and then walks around to sit her pert bum on the edge of my mattress.

  ‘Gordon… Mr Douglas spoke to you about the need for relaxation today. I can’t stress how important that is.’

  I roll my eyes. She catches me. It wasn’t difficult – my eyes are about two feet from hers.

  ‘I can’t fully understand how difficult it is to digest the news you’ve been given, Gordon,’ she says, ‘but your best chance of surviving these procedures is to keep your heart rate steady.’