Dirty Game

Billy felt himself blush uncomfortably at what she was saying. What was this man doing to her, that she had to be naked? He thought he knew. His mum had told him about the birds and the bees and how only dirty people did things like that. His jaw clenched in anger. This wasn’t right, this man forcing Annie to do things against her will.

‘Okay, Kieron, half an hour,’ Annie said, and walked back into the kitchen only to find that Billy was gone. He’d only drunk half his tea. The back door was standing open and the rain was coming in. She closed it, paused for a moment to think again about what Billy had told her, then quickly got back to counting out yesterday’s takings. She had to scoot. It might only be Kieron, but you didn’t keep a Delaney waiting.

24

At four o’clock on a Sunday morning an arsonist slipped a rag soaked with lighter fuel through the letterbox of the Galway Club. Then the arsonist did the same at the Liberty. The clubs were both owned by the Delaneys. By five o’clock the fire brigade were in attendance, hosing both places down. By six, dawn was breaking and the twin jewels in the crown of the Delaney empire were nothing more than smouldering wrecks, black and gutted, open to the early morning rain. By seven, Orla and Redmond and Pat Delaney were outside the Galway looking at the wreckage. At seven-thirty, Kieron showed up, bleary-eyed and incredulous as he saw what had happened.

‘Fucking Carters,’ Pat roared, and hit the blackened wall.

The police were there, standing some distance away. They knew the score. This was a gangland reprisal. They had already taken details from Redmond, but every one of the Delaneys knew that the Bill would take the paperwork back down the station and promptly lose it. They had enough work on their hands policing law-abiding citizens, they wouldn’t trouble themselves over mob fights.

‘You think it was them?’ Kieron asked, open-mouthed with shock.

‘Give the boy a coconut,’ sneered Pat.

‘Because of what happened to Eddie Carter?’

Pat said nothing but kicked the wall.

Kieron looked at Redmond and Orla, both standing there like statues, saying nothing. He hadn’t ever allowed himself to think about what had happened to Eddie Carter. But at the back of his mind was a suspicion that his family had been involved. They might not have done the deed, but he suspected they had been behind it.

Pat was violent and a natural-born liar, and Kieron knew it. Pat had always been a loose cannon. But hadn’t Pat also been keen to get the family involved in the lucrative drugs trade? He’d talked about it to Orla in front of Kieron and, although Redmond had said no, Kieron knew that Pat chafed under his brother’s rule. They all knew that Pat wanted to be boss after Tory got himself killed. Maybe Pat had done some independent work and stirred up a hornet’s nest. Maybe this wasn’t the Carters at all. Maybe Pat had started getting interested in dealing and had stepped on someone’s toes.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Kieron stared at the wreckage of the Galway, Tory’s favourite of their two clubs, named for their Irish homeland. All gone now. As usual he found that he had to cut dead all thoughts of his family business. He had never been a part of it. They were involved in dangerous games. It was a nightmare to him, and that was why he had stayed away so long, travelling the world, forgetting where the wherewithal that allowed him to do so had come from. From crime. From gambling dens and prossies and casinos and dodgy deals and intimidation. He’d shied away from it. Enjoyed the privileges it bought, yes, but turned his head away from the facts of his family’s livelihood.

Now it was staring him in the face. At least they were honest about it all; whereas he was just a fucking hypocrite. He was glad Mum and Dad were back in the old country and didn’t have to see this.

His exhibition was starting tonight in Toby Taylor’s Jermyn Street gallery. Toby was a crime junkie. He nearly had an orgasm just talking to the Delaneys. He got high on the danger of it, tried to dress like Redmond, treated Orla like a queen. When Kieron Delaney asked about an exhibition, he’d turned him down flat. Fuck it, Toby said, he had Hockney lined up, he was having talks with Lucian Freud, he’d exhibited Warhol just last year, he was hot. Who needed a fucking no-hope novice? But then Kieron had given in and told Toby he was one of the Delaneys. He’d uttered the magic word. Toby was all over him now like hives.

Kieron had been at the gallery all weekend, working on getting the positions of the canvases just right and checking that the lighting did them justice. The nude of Annie was smack in the centre of the thing, visible the instant the punters walked through the door, raised up above all the other works, stairs ascending to either side of it. He’d sweated hard over the exhibition, had gone to bed in a state of high excitement and happy exhaustion.

Now this. A reminder.

What was it Annie had said? That the gallery-owners wouldn’t say no to him, because he was a Delaney. She was right, and he knew it. It soured his achievement more than a little, to know people so feared his family. So did he have this exhibition because he was a great artist – or because Toby Taylor didn’t want his gallery to burn to the ground one night, or to find himself lacking a pair of kneecaps?

He knew the answer to that. All too well.

‘I’m going home,’ he said, turning away sick at heart.

Maybe he should stay and comfort Orla, but he knew from years of experience that she and Redmond were a pair, entirely co-dependent. As for Pat, big stupid bully that he was, banging on walls and snorting with rage, what a joke. Kieron didn’t even recognize Pat as his brother any more. He didn’t miss Tory. Tory had been a bastard. The worst kind of bastard. He wished Mum and Dad could be here. Ah, but they were old now, too old to stomach all this shit. Better for them to be where they were. The game was changing. The game was getting too dangerous.

25

 ‘Oh Christ, not you again. I’ve been wondering when you’d show up to gloat.’

What a welcome. Annie stood on the doorstep and wished she was somewhere, anywhere, else.

She looked at her mother through the fug that was seeping out of the half-open front door. God, what a pesthole this whole place was. Funny how when she’d been living around here she’d never noticed the litter in the streets or the dog mess on the pavements, or how scraped and battered Connie’s front door was, or how Connie never cleaned her front step or got the window sills painted, or how the new nets Connie had splashed out on for Ruthie’s wedding were now coffee-coloured and caked rigid with dirt.

‘I haven’t shown up to gloat, Mum,’ said Annie flatly. ‘I’ve shown up to see Ruthie.’

Or at least this had been her intention when she’d got up and dressed this morning. Her stomach had been churning with nerves ever since. It had been so long since she’d seen her sister. She’d had that brief glimpse at Eddie’s funeral, but that hadn’t helped; Ruthie had been as changed and as remote as a total stranger.

‘She don’t want to see you. I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to ask.’

Annie held on to her temper. When she looked at Connie she felt a sort of sad contempt. Connie was as scruffy as this shit-tip of a rented house. God knows how she kept up the payments. Annie didn’t even want to think about that. Maybe Ruthie pitched in to help? Annie didn’t suppose Connie was up to working any more. Her mother was more to be pitied than hated.

‘Why don’t we let her decide that?’ said Annie. ‘Is she in?’

‘Yes, she’s in,’ said Ruthie, stepping into the doorway beside Connie.

Annie looked at her sister and was suddenly struck dumb. No, this wasn’t the Ruthie she had known all her young life. This was a cool, sophisticated woman with pain-filled eyes. Pain that she had caused. Annie swallowed and licked her dry lips.

‘Hello, Ruthie,’ she said.