‘Take off the boots, the rest of your clothes.’
‘What?’
He was beginning to get a grasp of the situation. Arm had invoked the uncles; Fannigan knew what that meant. The uncles, Dympna was right, Arm knew, they’d butcher Fannigan. They’d use him for sport, and take their time doing so. They’d feed his bones to their curs, and sooner or later decide that Dympna’s show of leniency had demonstrated a dangerous weakness at this end of the operation.
Fannigan took his time undressing. The boots he worked off first, then he drew up and off the sweatshirt and the vest beneath.
‘Leave them there,’ Arm said, toeing a spot in the dirt. Fannigan dropped the shirt and vest, and was soon shivering in a way Arm found hard to watch. Fannigan’s torso was pale as milk, his chest hair a scutty fuzz petering down to his navel. His tattoos, in the dark, looked like bruises on his arms.
‘Dympna…’ he said, ‘Dympna said this,’ he touched his bandaged face, ‘Dympna said this was the end of it.’
‘Trousers, c’mon,’ Arm said.
‘Is this happening?’ Fannigan said as he stepped out of his pants. ‘Oh Christ, I’m naked,’ he muttered, ‘I’m in the fucking nip.’
Fannigan began to fold his trousers, lining up the legs, then halving and halving them again, until it was a neat, bundled parcel of denim. This small civilised feat accomplished, he began to shake his head.
‘No, No, No. This joke’s over. I’m not putting up with this. Fuck this!’ Fannigan motioned to move past Arm but it was a cursory effort. Arm rested the heel of his hand on Fannigan’s collarbone.
‘Nearly, it’s over,’ Arm assured him.
‘Christ, can I have a smoke then?’
‘In a minute,’ Arm said.
‘There’s no time!’ Fannigan said. He had the blinky, nervous energy of a dreamer jilted suddenly awake. Fannigan looked urgently left and right, then up into the sky, at the scratchy stars and that cute old sphinx-faced cunt of a moon, up there watching and still keeping schtum after all these years. He let out another growl, a scouring phlegm-clearer, boggy and granulated and liquidly rich. He hocked and spat at Arm’s feet.
‘What time is it?’ he said.
‘Must be three,’ Arm said.
‘That’s right, that’s right,’ Fannigan said, wiping his mouth with his forearm. ‘You feeling okay?’ he said to Arm.
‘I am,’ Arm said.
Arm hunkered down where Fannigan had spat and dragged the boots over and piled the shirt and jumper on top of them. Fannigan, standing, still had his jocks and socks on. The socks were a particularly sad affair, Arm noted; once white, they were grimed to grey, cheap and nubbled and flecked with holes. Arm looked up at Fannigan.
‘Put the trousers down here with the rest,’ Arm said.
Fannigan was upright and had the upright’s advantage of height. A part of Arm wanted to scream at him to take his chance. To push Arm over, or run, or smash Arm’s skull with whatever conviction he could channel into his fists; just to try. But the acquiescent fucker only did as he was told, crouching down to Arm’s level and placing the folded jeans on top of the other clothes.
‘Douglas,’ he said. It was dark, but Arm could feel Fannigan’s eyes on him. Fannigan had been tuning in and out of this scenario, but he was back now, emphatically here, a lucid and crawlingly beseeching note in Arm’s name as he mouthed it. A plea.
‘Douglas,’ he said it again. ‘Listen. Listen. When I was a boy—’
It was right there, half sunk in the mud. Arm snugged his hand around it, a smooth, weighty oval, and aimed for Fannigan’s temple, where a delta of veinwork tremulously pulsed. The rock crushed into his head with a flat thud. His eyelids fluttered and he flopped bonelessly down onto the grass.
Arm had his arms in under Fannigan’s frame as quick as he could manage, and hefted the man up. Fannigan’s body was warm, and felt as if it might be convulsing a little. Arm waded into the river, moving deeper and deeper until the cold was cutting across the tops of his thighs, through his jeans. Arm puffed out his chest and threw Fannigan out towards the middle. He hit the water, sent up a plume of spray and was promptly spooled away on the current.
Arm clambered back up onto the bank and watched him go. Face down and arse up, Fannigan’s body was periodically sucked under the surface before bobbing into sight again. Soon it was nothing more than a diminishing speck in the narrowing turbulence, and then it was gone, baywards to the open sea.
Arm considered the wilted totem of clothing piled by the water’s edge. He figured these leavings would make it appear all the more premeditated, would tell the story of how Fannigan, in a suicidal funk, had ritualistically shed his shitty gear before throwing himself in the Mule. Arm picked up the rock he’d hit Fannigan with and pocketed it. He told himself that the dent on Fannigan’s head would be explained as him dashing against rocks as he was carried to sea. He was a drunk and a waster, Fannigan, and save for his mother Arm didn’t think anyone, neither the guards nor the coroner nor any other soul, would look to pursue an explanation beyond the apparent when it came to piecing together the why of his end.
Arm clambered back up towards the road, stepping on stones where he could, smooshing the impressions his feet had left in the softer ground on the way down, leaving Fannigan’s bootprints intact. He squeezed his runners back on and inched his nose out over the wall’s lip; no traffic or souls about. He slipped over. His iPod was still going in his jacket.
