Minogue’s back was prickly. A cyclist wearing only shorts and runners and a Walkman dawdled by their parked car. “181,” said Malone. Minogue looked at the flowers and the fresh paint. A dozen feet of brown lawn ran from the low pebble-dash wall to the house. Neighbours to one side of 181 had begun what might have looked like a rockery had they not lost interest. A Hi-Ace van squatted on cement blocks at the far end of the street.
Music with a disco beat sounded against the door. Minogue knocked harder. The chain pulled tight as the door opened. A woman with tied-up hair and sharp black lines on her eyebrows peered out. He pegged her for forty, for someone who didn’t like that one bit, for someone willing to fight it tooth and nail. She gave him a once-over and looked to Malone behind.
“The windows, is it?”
“No, ma’am. I’m looking for a Mrs. Irene Mullen.”
“No. No Irene Mullen here.”
She had said it too brashly for Minogue not to notice.
“Aren’t yous the Corpo come to fix the windows? I called them a fortnight ago.”
Her eyes kept moving from Minogue to Malone and back.
“Do you know a Mrs. Mullen?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Sorry. My name is Minogue. I’m a Guard. Matt Minogue.”
“That so? Where’s your ID.”
She barely looked at the photocard. Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m here about Mary Mullen.” He fixed her with a glare. “She’s the daughter, you know.”
“You’re wasting your time then, aren’t you? She doesn’t live here.”
“This is her last known address. There was no phone number. We drove out to check.”
The sun was on his bald spot now.
“Well, now you know,” she said, and closed the door. He strolled back to the car and leaned against it. Two youths emerged from a house up the street. They took their time walking toward the two policemen. Malone watched them, scratching his forearm.
“She’s trying to put one by us,” he murmured.
The youths stopped by a wall in front of one of the houses, lit cigarettes and stared at the policemen. A motorbike cruised by, turned around and stopped. The driver kicked out the stand, switched off the engine and stood next to the two by the wall.
“I wonder if our timing mightn’t be a bit off,” said Minogue. “We could come back with a posse, I reckon.”
A Post van appeared at the top of the road. Minogue saw the curtains in the upper floor of the house stir. He waved the van down. The driver was a middle-aged man with heavy jowls and a cigarette burning close to his knuckles. Beads of sweat high up on the driver’s forehead competed with a face full of large scattered freckles for the Inspector’s attention. Minogue’s eyes kept wandering to the wiry tufts of ginger hair sticking out over the man’s ears. He held up his card to the open window.
“Howiya there now. I’m a Guard and I’m looking for someone.”
The driver returned his hand to the gear shift.
“Well, good for you, pal. I’m not.”
“No-wait, I mean. It’s not the way it sounds. There’s been a death in the family. I’m trying to locate next of kin for someone.”
The driver thumbed his chin. The cigarette stayed in place against his knuckles.
“Yeah?”
Minogue’s eye went from the sceptical Dubliner behind the wheel back to the three youths. The man had taken him for a Guard trying to pin a warrant on someone.
“I was looking for a Mullen, Irene Mullen. I don’t know about a Mister Mullen, just her. She was here four years ago.”
The driver stared down into the wheel-well by the passenger seat and then back at Minogue.
“One of her family?”
“I’m afraid so. Do you know her?”
The eyes darted to the house Minogue had just left and he nodded once.
“She said there was no one that name there.”
“Who was it?” His hand moved the gear shift slowly from side to side in neutral.
“I don’t know who she is or says she is-”
“I mean the person what’s dead.”
“Well now, we’d prefer to pass the news on to the next of kin first.”
The hand stopped abruptly and the driver’s face set into a hard expression.
“Get a bit of cop on, for Christ’s sake,” he said.
Minogue took a step back from the van.
“Don’t you get it? I’m taking a chance here just talking to you. I’m the only one that comes through here now, Chief. You won’t even get the Corpo repairmen or the gas and meter fellas without an escort. The people here know me, man. Do you get it? I just deliver letters here like I done this last twenty-three years. I know me onions.”
“What are you saying?”
He jerked the ignition off and opened the door.
“Don’t they speak English down in Cork?”
“Clare. And I’m here thirty years if you need to be asking.”
The driver was nearly a foot shorter than Minogue.
“Let me tell you something, Chief. One year here is longer than thirty of yours.”
He shoved his fingers of his left hand in his mouth and whistled. The sound, a skill Minogue assumed was specific only to Dublin corner-boys, was piercing.
“Oi!” the driver called out. “Crunchie! Oi!”
The motorcyclist stood away from his bike and lifted his helmet. His face was a rash of acne. He shook out his hair as he walked over. The Post driver spoke with him and then walked to the door of the house. Crunchie winked at Malone and sat back on his motorbike. Malone nodded once. Minogue joined him by the side of the car. A half-dozen youths, two of them girls, had materialized out of nowhere. Minogue saw faces at some windows, curtains being moved.
“I think we’re all right,” said Malone. The postman stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. Crunchie strolled over to the van.
“Oi,” he said to someone Minogue couldn’t see. “Get away from the bloody van there!” Two teenagers skipped away from behind the van. Crunchie walked around the van and looked at the two policemen.
“What are you looking at,” he said to Malone. The detective returned his stare.
“Not much, by the look of things.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Minogue nudged Malone. The door opened. Minogue took in the fright on the woman’s face. She came slowly down to the wall and folded her arms.
“I’d as soon not discuss anything out here now,” Minogue said to her. The van driver came down the step and worked his way around her.
“Thanks, Joe,” she said. She turned back to Minogue.
“You’re not coming into my house. No way. That was a promise I made to myself. Yous weren’t there when yous were wanted, years ago.”
“Mrs. Mullen?”
“My name isn’t Mullen. I have me own name back now. What do you want?”
What Minogue wanted was a phone to check the PM time with Eilis. If this woman was the mother, she’d have to identify the body.
“It’s Mary, isn’t it,” she said, and bit her lip.
“Your daughter?”
She nodded and her jaw quivered.
“Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it?”
Her voice seemed to be trapped in her throat.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“I’m very sorry but…”
She grasped at her face and turned away. The Inspector stepped forward.
“Oh, my God,” he heard her gasp. “Oh, my Jesus. Oh, my sweet Jesus.”
“Have you people in the house?” Minogue asked. “I think we should maybe go in and sit down for a minute.”
“Kevin,” she yelled. Her voice was ragged now. “Kevin!” One of the group walked over.
“Get your mother, Kevin. And hurry up with you!”
Malone parked behind an ambulance. Minogue rolled out of his seat and opened the back passenger door. Irene Lawlor made no move to get out. She sat there with the door open, staring down at her hands. Malone looked across the roof at Minogue. Irene Lawlor had said little in the car on the trip over. She had rebuffed most of Minogue’s queries with a stare fixed on the roadway by her window. Her companion, a Mrs. Molloy, had big eyes and what looked like goitre. She’d chainsmoked and murmured to Irene Lawlor all the way into the city centre. Whatever she’d said had had no noticeable effect. Irene Lawlor’s glassy stare remained.
Mrs. Molloy walked around the back of the car and leaned in. Minogue saw the red lines of the car seat impressed on the back of her thighs where her miniskirt had been creased. He stepped back and Mrs. Molloy pulled Irene Lawlor out. She walked in a crouch as if trying to recover from a punch to the stomach. She entered the hospital, with her arms wrapped around her waist.
Murtagh met them inside the front door. He fell into step beside Minogue.
“Any word, John? Bag? Witness?”
Murtagh shook his head.
“They wanted to start the PM in half an hour. Which one’s the mother?”
Minogue glanced back at the two women.
“On the left. Can’t read her much yet.”
Minogue had pieced together some things from the few words Irene Lawlor had let slip, often mere monosyllables which she seemed to wish to, but couldn’t summon the will, to prevent the garrulous Mrs. Molloy from detailing. Where did Mary live? Inishowen Gardens, off the South Circular Road. Shared a flat with another girl. When had she last seen Mary? April sometime. Didn’t get on so great the last while. Phoned the odd time though. Recently? Couple of weeks back; forgot which day. Had she seemed worried? No. Money troubles maybe? Didn’t mention any. Boyfriend? Didn’t know. Mary worked in the city centre. Some hairdresser’s, as far as she knew. As far as she knew: the phrase kept cropping up. Had Mary any contact with her estranged father? Didn’t want to have any. He’d gone on the dry a couple of years back. Where was he? Didn’t know. Somewhere in Ballybough, she’d heard. Did he contact her? He’d come by the house a half a dozen times before he finally took the hint. Asking to see Mary. Did he say what for? Wanted to make up with her, she supposed. Mary didn’t want anything to do with him. He’d gotten Jesus or something because it helped him dry out. Mary had told her a while back, last year maybe, that her father had tried to talk to her a few times on the street. He’d seen her and him driving by in his taxi. She told him to get lost. To drop dead. She hated him. Irene Lawlor hated him too. Did she know or had she maybe heard anything about Mary lately, anything that suggested things were not going well? It was the only time Minogue remembered Irene Lawlor taking her eyes from the passing roadway and looking at him. Mrs. Molloy with her big mouth broke that one up. What sort of trouble, she’d asked, and Irene Lawlor turned back toward the open window.
Minogue took Malone aside.
“You go with John too, Tommy. Take it handy with them. Gentle, no matter how they react.”
“What am I supposed to say, like?”
“Don’t say anything if you’re not sure. The attendant will pull back the covering as far as the chin. John’ll ask them. Okay?”
Minogue stepped over to the two women. Mrs. Molloy’s face had lost all its pink now. Her arm was twined tight around Irene Lawlor’s.
“Mrs. Lawlor. Detective Malone will escort you along with Detective Murtagh here.”
He cleared his throat.
“You don’t actually need to follow through here. We’ve already identified Mary from our end. Any time you want to change your mind now…”
Irene Lawlor’s words came from between her teeth.
“I know what they do here,” she said. “I want to see her.”
“No Jack Mullen,” announced Eilis. Minogue heard her type something else in. The phone was greasy in his hand. Minogue looked up from the page in his notebook where he had listed the points. Jack (John) Mullen-father. Mary in London. Egans, the gang.
“Doyle was looking for you,” she said, still typing. “Returning a call about her.”
“I’ll phone him in a minute. You’re sure about this Jack Mullen?”
“Nothing. He’s clean.”
“All right,” said Minogue. “I’ll try his place one more time, then we’ll go after the taxi companies. Capitol Taxis, the missus thinks. Ex-missus.”
Minogue switched the phone back to stand-by.
“Nothing on Mary Mullen’s da, Tommy. I’ll see what Doyler has.”
“Darlin’ Doyle? Prostitution?”
Minogue nodded.
Malone turned onto Dorset Street. The sun fell on Minogue’s side now. He was left on hold for over a minute before he heard Doyle’s voice.
“Morning there, John. Matt Minogue, yes. Have you anything to update the file on this girl Mary Mullen?”
“I’m afraid not. She hasn’t figured with us here since her last conviction there three years ago. Left the canal trade or maybe got sense.”
“Well, now that I have you, maybe you can smarten me up on things. I was wondering if, say, some of the trade down at the canal is done independently, like. Girls on their own, I mean. What are the chances she got the treatment from someone for not paying her way there?”
“Well, we’d probably get to hear about one in, God, I don’t know, one in twenty of that. Unless a pimp is beating the head off one of the girls in broad daylight.”
“But she could be there for some time and ye wouldn’t know her?”
Doyle didn’t reply for several moments.
“Well, now, you said it. As regards pimps now, we break up stuff by the canal pretty regularly. But it’s gotten right tough to make charges stick. The sting has to be good. Depending on things, Harcourt Terrace and Donnybrook stations take turns at cleaning up the trade. You always get gougers and girls moving through the area though. Girls doing business there very irregular, like. They might do a few tricks one night and that’d be all. Be gone in a few hours with a hundred quid in their pockets. But you’d see a lot of the faces turning up there again and again. Users who need more and more cash to feed the habit or pay off debts from their dealer.”
“The dealer and the pimp could be one and the same thing then?”
“Right, Matt. Pimps often double as pushers. Some of them feed the girls, see? But there are girls out there solo.”
“How about a crowd called the Egans? Do you know them in your line of business?”
“Does the Pope fall to his knees of a Sunday? But this is not their big thing though, is it? Unless they’ve changed. They’re more into the organized crime, I believe. Drugs, moving cars around, fences, all that. Protection rackets and stuff too. That falls more to Serious Crimes really. There’s, em, a gale of work being done on that very outfit lately, I believe.”
Code for go ask the Serious Crime Squad, Minogue registered.
“Well. Thanks now, John, I suppose.”
“Sorry and all but. I just haven’t had anyone finger them directly in the trade yet-but here, wait a minute. I’ll give you the name of someone who runs a drop-in centre up near the canal. For girls on the street, addicts and so on. Sister Joe, do you know her?”
Minogue didn’t.
“She might know more. She’s a nun. Here’s her number.”
Minogue scribbled it in his notebook and hung up.
“File on Mary is all we seem to have, Tommy,” he muttered. “Doyler and company don’t know her since then.”
Malone opened his hands on the steering wheel and shrugged. Minogue returned to watching the passing doorways.
“Didn’t expect the mother to talk afterwards,” said Malone. “Did you?”
“Maybe she didn’t believe us. Didn’t want to believe us.”
“Wonder what Mary was really up to the time she was in England though.”
Minogue looked down at the notebook again.
“Hairdressing course, beautician stuff. Well, we can check.”
Minogue looked at his watch.
“So we all get together?”
“To be sure, Tommy. Statements, leads, progress reports. Collate, exchange, talk. Drink tea. Evidence, rumours, leads. Dreams you had, even. It’s too early for any tight forensic. Depending on how I divide the job, we’ll split into teams. And that can change in an hour too. We pull in who and what we need from CDU and stations.”
“What about Mary’s place? I mean, what happens with that?”
“The gas company, the ESB or someone may have an exact, Eilis has put through a call to the local station too. When we have the number of the place, a station patrol car will go out and keep it for us. Then it’s up to you and me, when we’ve accounted for ourselves back at the ranch. The meeting probably won’t take more than half an hour. Get a cup of coff-”
The trill startled him. He picked up the phone off the floor. Kilmartin asked him where he was.
“Five minutes, Jim. Start without us.”
“Stay away,” said Kilmartin. “You have work to do. That place you got for the girl, the flat. Eilis phoned in for a hold on the place. Turns out that a woman the name of Patricia Fahy phoned in to report a burglary there last night. She’s the Mullen girl’s flatmate.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Nope. She’s up at the flat now.”
“F-a-h-e-y?”
“No e.”
Malone drove fast. He was lucky with traffic lights. Minogue let his arm dangle out the window. The Nissan’s door panels remained hot under his hand. He checked his watch as they turned into Inishowen Gardens: ten minutes. A group of boys was tapping a scuffed soccer ball across the street to one another.
“There’s another one,” he heard one of them, a boy with protruding ribs and shoulder-blades and a Spurs shirt wrapped around his waist, call out.
“There’s a squad car anyway,” said Malone.
The boys followed the Nissan to a house where the squad car was parked. A small crowd, mostly children, had gathered at the gate. The house had been split into two flats. Minogue stepped up the pitted concrete steps to the open door. Already he could smell perfume. A Guard was coming down the stairs sideways from the flat above. Minogue introduced himself. The Guard headed back up the stairs, the wet patch on his shirt shifting from side to side as he ascended. Minogue thought at first that the flat must have been a chemist’s shop or a beauty parlour. The floor was littered with hair spray cans and tubes, nail polish containers, mascara brushes and shampoo.
A woman with short, stiff, black hair was talking with another Guard. She had a pale face and dark eyelashes. Minogue glanced at her before picking his way through the mess on the floor to peek into the other rooms. A tiny kitchenette similarly wrecked, the fridge door still open, the cupboards emptied onto the floor. Both bedrooms had been turned upside down. Minogue made his way back to the Guard.
“How’s the man. Listen, has she mentioned the flatmate?”
“She hasn’t. We got the word to hold fire until you showed.”
Minogue looked around at his feet. The perfume stung high up in his nose.
“What kind of a place is this anyway?”
“This one worked as a hairdresser. She was always trying out new stuff, she says. Jases. I have two young ones at home and they’re just starting off on this stuff. ‘Da, I have to get this,’ ‘Da, everyone wears it this way now.’ Jases. Is this what’s in store for me too?”
Another Guard came to the doorway and gestured to Minogue.
Minogue turned back to the first Guard.
“Do you know this house for anything before?”
The Guard shook his head.
“But she looks like a tough enough young one to me. Been around, like.”
Minogue negotiated his way over the litter. Patricia Fahy was still talking to the second Guard. The Guard nodded at Minogue, folded his notebook and tiptoed around to the door.
“Hello,” Minogue said to her. “My colleague Detective Malone. I’m Inspector Minogue. Matt Minogue.”
Patricia Fahy stood with her arms folded. She kept flicking her cigarette.
“Are yous with them, then?”
“No, we’re not,” replied Minogue. Her face seemed to lift a little. “We were notified when you called in to report the burglary.”
“Burglary?” She spoke with more humour than disdain. “Jases, more like a demolition squad.”
She took a long pull of the cigarette. It came away from her lips with a soft pop.
“So, what are yous going to do about it?”
“We’ll do our utmost.”
She squinted into the glare from the window. On her shoulder by a strap of her top, Minogue spotted a tattoo of a butterfly. The sun glinted off the jewellery in her nose.
“Goes to show you, doesn’t it,” she said. “I mean to say we’re the ones out working and trying to pay our bleeding way and lookit! Rob you blind, so they would.”
Some memory slid around in Minogue’s thoughts: Iseult at fourteen, eying him after saying something provocative. She was staring at Malone now.
“Jases,” she declared. “I seen you before. You’re not a Guard. I know you. Remember? With Jacko and Eileen and…? Down in Sheehan’s pub? It’s you, is’n it?”
Malone bit his lip.
“No. Wasn’t me.”
Her face twisted up in a sneer of disbelief.
“Bleeding sure it was you! You ended up in the nick too, if I remember. What’s that?”
Malone let her take his card. She turned it over, brought it up close, scraped it with her nail.
“Well, it looks like you. Is this a joke or something?”
“What time were you home last night?” asked Minogue.
“Home here? I wasn’t. I was with me fella. We were over at his place.”
“You came home from work yesterday and…?”
She engaged his look for several seconds.
“What?”
“Was Mary home yesterday?” Minogue asked.
“No.”
She drew on the cigarette again and squinted through the smoke at Minogue.
“Not at all?”
“What’s all this about Mary?”
The cigarette was shaking now, Minogue noted.
“What’s going on here? Yous aren’t here just because the place got broken into, are you?”
“When did you see her last then?” asked Malone.
“Day before yesterday. Why?”
“She doesn’t spend all of her time here, you’re saying,” Minogue tried.
“I’m not saying anything. What’s all this about? Who are yous?”
Something in Minogue’s expression made her frown. She turned to Malone with words framed on her lips, but none came. Minogue waited until her eyes came back to his. She backed away from him.
“No way,” she whispered. She pointed at Malone. “You’re trying to set me up or something! But I seen you before, I remember you! Yous are trying to pin something on Mary!”
Minogue shifted his stance.
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Oh there you go now! Now you’re starting!”
“Why?”
“Just because once she was…”
She didn’t finish. She let the smoke curl up from her open mouth and she stared at Malone.
“And you,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it stinks.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” said Malone.
“Liar,” she murmured. “You’re trying to screw me with something here. It won’t work, ’cause I know what I know. I remember your face, and I remember you bragging about being a hard chaw-yeah, you were into drugs-”
“That was me brother.”
Malone rubbed his nose and looked around the room. She stuck her head out.
“Your brother?”
“That’s what I said, yeah.” Malone kept biting his lip. “Me brother. We’re twins.”
She started to smile but couldn’t manage it.
“This is bleeding ridiculous! Jesus. I never heard that one before, so I didn’t.”
“I have some bad news for you, Miss Fahy,” said Minogue.
She turned back to Minogue and gave a short breathless guffaw. He stared into her eyes and watched the disdain slide off her face. Now when she blinked she seemed to have trouble raising her eyelids again.
“What are you telling me?”
A droplet fell from Minogue’s armpit. The stench of spilled and punctured cosmetic containers had made him groggy. His fingertips came away slick from his forehead.
“Mary is dead. We need your help, Miss Fahy.”
Her nostrils flared and she dropped her head. Malone stepped across to her. She jerked her head up but her eyes stayed shut. Tears ran sideways across her cheeks and her stomach began to shudder. Malone reached around her waist. Her sobs gave way to short squeals.
“You’re all right,” said Malone.
The stink of smoke and beer from the open doors of the pubs seemed to follow him down the street. The burger and chips he had downed a half an hour back had formed a greasy lump in the bottom of his stomach. The joint had worn off. He had a pain in his back. He was thirsty again. That moron Jammy didn’t know the half of what he could do. Mister Straight. Never taken a chance in his life.
The air around him seemed to be thick and smelly and he couldn’t escape it. He watched the buildings quiver above the traffic. He had one joint and a bluey left in his pocket. If he dropped the bluey now, he’d get Jammy Tierney’s face out of his brain. Junkie: he couldn’t get the word out of his head. Bastard. He should’ve given Jammy a dig for that, no matter if he got a hiding in return. Show him he still had his self-respect. He looked over the stalled traffic and spotted a bus.
Three business types with their jackets held over their shoulders came down the steps of a new office building. The office had those green windows you couldn’t see in. Laughing about something, with their ties loosened, like they were models in an ad. They stopped at the bottom of the steps and he heard their southside accents. See you in Hogans tonight maybe, Jonathan? One of them had a bag with the handle of a racquet sticking out. Some of them played squash instead of eating their dinner, he knew. Some day’s work. Work? Banging on a computer once in a while, playing with bits of paper and phones. Christ. He stopped and looked back at them. What did Mary say about them? They picked up a phone and made money, that’s how it was. Just picked up a phone. As if money were made by magic, down the end of a phone or on a bloody computer screen. Wheeler-dealers. One set of rules for them and a different set for everyone else. They had the inside track all right, just knowing where everything was going down and when.
The traffic began to move. The bus approached but passed the stop. Damn bus was going to the garage. Jesus! The people in the queue murmured and rearranged themselves. An oul one put her shopping bag down again and sighed. Her forehead was shiny and pink and her face looked all swollen, like she was going to burst. The three models were still talking on the steps behind. They didn’t wait on buses. Behind them, the office had disappeared. It had been taken over by sky. He stared at it. For several seconds his senses were decoyed. Another suit coming out of the door brought it all back. He tried to see through the reflections on the glass. He couldn’t see a thing inside. How the hell did a building stay up if it was all glass?
The traffic was stopped again and the sun glared from a windscreen into his eyes. He stood on tiptoe and looked over the cars for the next bus. Nothing. Fucking nothing. To hell with this. He stepped out of the queue. The backs of his legs were tight from all the walking he’d done this morning. His feet seemed to be swelling up even more, pushing at his shoes by his toenails. Maybe he’d nip into a pub, have a quick pint. He put his hand into his pocket, felt the coins. Down there somewhere… The one with the sports bag stepped onto the footpath ahead of him. The handle caught him in the thigh.
“Watch where you’re bleeding going!”
“Well, sorry.”
“So you should be! You fucking iijit.”
Their eyes met. The other two were looking down at him now. The racquet guy’s brows lowered. He looked him up and down again, sneered and walked on. The bastard could go off and get into his car. A BMW probably, or whatever car these wankers thought was the cool car now. Drive off to the little woman and the 2.3 brats off in Foxrock or somewhere. Sarah. Jonathan. He imagined grabbing the racquet and breaking it across the guy’s face. Let him bleed all over that white shirt and stupid tie: that’d sort the bollicks out. He looked back over his shoulder. The three were all looking at him and grinning.
“Fuck yiz!” he shouted.
One of them threw back his head and laughed. He stopped and gave them the finger.
“Wankers!”
He didn’t care who was looking at him.
“Fuck off the lot of you!”
He walked faster. Why not, he thought, when the idea hit him: Tresses was just around the corner. What was he rushing home for anyway?
God, he was tired. A twist of dust flew up from a building site into his face. He stopped and rubbed at his eyes. Still rubbing, he went into a shop and bought a Coke. He felt around at the bottom of his pocket for the pill. Nothing. His belly ran cold. He took out all the coins and tried again. This time he found the hole in his pocket. The girl behind the counter was looking at him. He had been cursing out loud, he realized. Christ, only halfway through the day: what else could happen to him?
He put his back against the wall and felt the rage melt into that sickly, mixed-up feeling he knew so well, that mess of sorrow and comfort and injustice. The first taste of the Coke reminded him of being a kid again, when Dessie and Jer and himself were out on their bikes all day, nicking stuff from Quinn’s shop, setting up wars and forts and ambushes… He filled his mouth with Coke and swallowed it in slow gulps. The fizz stung his gums but it didn’t take away the feeling that something was pulling him down. He couldn’t think straight. He stared across the traffic and caught sight of himself in a shop window opposite. Twenty-three, and he was sliding into nowhere. He thought of the guy with the bag and the racquet: a blade, slicing him right down the side of his face, the blood pouring out of him. See the look on his face then.
He shifted against the wall and swilled more Coke. The dole, the job training for no jobs, the nixers he’d done hadn’t brought him anywhere in six years. Washing windows. Working off the milk lorries at one o’clock in the morning. Delivering coal. His best chance was to go back to dealing. It’d only be for a temporary thing, of course. He didn’t actually need to. It was only junkies needed to deal so they could use their cut straightaway. He thought about Jer. He hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks. Maybe he’d really gone to London like he said he was going to. All those plans he had, all worked out like he was the top banana. H was thirty per cent on the streets in London, Jer had told him, twice the bang you got here. Foolproof, Jer kept telling him. He swore he could carry enough to pay everything and walk away with five hundred nicker too. As well as a couple of sessions in London, even! The memory of Jer’s laugh came to him. He’d known straightaway that Jer had been high. Jer couldn’t handle it. He, Liam Hickey, could.
He drained the can and let the fizz tear at the back of his throat. The resentment crept back into his chest. Maybe he wasn’t a goner like Jer, but still he lived at home in a crummy little room with his ma nagging him, with an oul fella who hadn’t brought wages home in ten years. He grasped the Coke can tight and crushed it. There had to be something for him. Mary only worked part-time in this place around the corner.
What if she wasn’t there now? He elbowed away from the wall and headed down the street toward Tresses.
Sting, he thought as he pushed the door open. Jases, couldn’t they do better than that? A fat guy with a buzz-cut was sitting in one of the chairs reading a magazine. Two women were getting their hair done. The woman at the counter was trying to fix a bracelet with a nail-file.
“Howiya there,” she said. “A trim, was it?”
No sign of Mary. She’d told him not to show up here. She was only in the place a couple of months, part-time.
“No, thanks. Not today.” Maybe Mary was on a break. “I was, you know, looking for someone who works here.”
“Oh, who’s that?”
Screw Sting, he thought. Screw the Amazon rain forest for that matter.
“Mary, you know?”
Buzz-cut looked up from the magazine. The receptionist glanced over at him and then back. She was still smiling but her tone had changed.
“There’s no Mary here.”
“Mary Mullen? Kind of tall. Always wears a-”
“Mary doesn’t work here,” said Buzz-cut. Dub accent, he thought, and he had that glazed look in his eyes that was telling him to get the message.
“Well, she used to, didn’t she. Three weeks ago she was working here.”
Buzz-cut opened his eyes wide.
“So?”
He stared into Buzz-cut’s eyes. Jammy Tierney, the guy who was supposed to be his friend, coming the heavy with him. The tiny hole in his pocket. Going home to be pestered by the Ma again. Knowing he’d be out again after tea looking to score. Mary hadn’t even told him she’d left this kip. Maybe she’d been in a barney with them here.
“So I came by to talk to her. Can you live with a major crisis like that?”
Buzz-cut closed the magazine and stood. He looked a damn sight bigger standing.
“Hit the trail here, brother. She doesn’t work here any more.”
The wet hair and the shampoo, the hot damp stink of hair being dried became suddenly choking.
“I was only asking. What’s the big deal? Jesus!”
Buzz-cut flexed his fingers. He kept his eyes on Buzz-cut’s as he stepped out the door.
“What’s so strange about asking a question about a friend of mine? All you have to say is, well-Jesus! People these days! Must be the bleeding music turns you into head-cases here.”
He was out on the footpath before Buzz-cut began to move. Why the hell hadn’t Mary told him? Had it been that long since he’d seen her? He looked at his watch. Was there a phone box around here?