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?
FOUR
Don’t have much of an appetite meself either,” said Malone. Bun under his belt, Minogue stirred his coffee and watched his colleague wolf down another sausage roll. The Inspector had picked a table near the door of Bewleys’ restaurant. The late-morning crowd continued to move through the ground-floor section. Many patrons sat slouched, their faces flushed and even slick with the heat. Eyes shone in the clammy gloom. Two men in ponytails and brightly patterned shirts were lining up for coffee. He knew from Peter Flood in the Drug Squad that the taller one was a convicted drug dealer. Both men were elegantly groomed and outfitted. They were enjoying a good laugh. One of them spotted Minogue and his laugh turned to a smile. Minogue saw him elbow his crony and murmur something. The crony began to concentrate on the food he was picking. Some town, thought the Inspector. Bananas we should be growing.
A waitress began cleaning up the adjoining table. He watched her blow breath up from under her bottom lip at a stray strand of hair over her forehead. Blonde, he saw, and out of a bottle at that. The roots looked black, same as Mary Mullen’s. He sipped more coffee. The image kept soaking in behind his eyes: the killer astride her, slamming her head on the pavement. Minogue stretched and rubbed hard at his eyes. The image was still with him.
“Quite the bullock,” Minogue murmured. Malone looked up from his tea.
“Patricia Fahy’s father, I meant.”
Minogue stared at the question marks he had scribbled in his notebook. He shifted in his seat and snapped his notebook shut.
“Well, Fahy won’t get his spake in the next time, Tommy.”
“Will we try her later on again this afternoon?”
“Maybe tomorrow instead. People lose it when they get a shock, but still I think that the same Patricia Fahy
