Dark Times in the City (11 page)

‘Hiya, Pam, how you doing?’

Long time since Pamela and Karl had had a thing – lasted no more than a week or ten days, nothing special. When Pamela had found out he had a wife it wasn’t like a big surprise, and it wasn’t as though the thing was going anywhere. Nice fella, Karl, but dull.

Pamela felt the cold air waft past as Walter came through the doorway. He dumped the delivery pouch on the counter and said, ‘Anyone looking for me?’

Anthony shook his head and checked the order slips.

Pamela said into the phone, ‘That old guy you asked me about – Walter whatsisname?’

Karl said, ‘You seen him?’

All he’d asked Pamela was did she know Walter.
Greasy little geezer, works part-time for Anthony?

You want me to tell him you’re looking for him?

No
, Karl said.
Just, you know, if he comes into work, let me know. I’ve got some money I owe him
. She knew that was bullshit – more likely it was Walter owed Karl money.

Into her mobile she said, ‘Anthony’s got him working tonight. Took a little persuading but the way things are here—’

‘What area’s he delivering?’

Vectors
, Anthony called them. The pizza shop in the middle, one
vector
to the north-west, one to the north-east, two more southwest, south-east.

‘South-west vector.’

‘Where the fuck’s that?’

‘Runs from here up to Carndonagh Road, across as far as the Mansfield estate.’

‘You’re a star, Pamela – thousand per cent.’

‘
No problemo
.’

Robbie Nugent was up a ladder, changing a fuse in a circuit board. An old woman, a few doors down from his home, a right pain in the arse, but he liked her. His dad was a handyman and he’d rewired her front room, free gratis. Robbie helped out and since then the old dear had called on Robbie and his dad whenever she needed something done. No question of paying, and she never even said thanks. It was like she saw it as her right.

It amused Robbie that this old wagon, half dead as she was, had that kind of spunk. Must have been a kick-ass bitch in the old days.

‘That’s done, now,’ he said, speaking loudly because she was a bit deaf.

‘Right,’ she said, and she opened the front door to show him out. Robbie was almost at his house when Karl rang.

The Blue Parrot wasn’t busy when Danny Callaghan came in. He nodded to a barman and arched an eyebrow – the barman waved a thumb towards the back office and Danny went through.

Down the short corridor, a tap on the varnished door, and when Novak said ‘Yeah?’ Callaghan went in.

‘
I need you to do something, set something up. I want to talk to you about it
.’

‘
Drop by later
.’

Dropping by to see Novak in the back room of the Blue Parrot – for a word of advice or the kind of practical help that made a difference – had become a habit since Callaghan had got out of prison. Novak had been there all along, even before the trouble that led to those years in a cell.

It’s almost a decade back and Danny Callaghan, age 23, is very serious about mastering his golf swing.

He’s got the grip right, he knows that. And he’s spent a lot of time getting the correct angle between his forearm and the shaft of the club. But somewhere in the downswing, while he’s keeping his hip movement under control, the angles slip and he loses power and accuracy.

Identify the problem, that’s half the job. The rest of it, all it takes is practice until you do it without thinking
.

Almost seven-thirty in the morning, more than half the stalls in the driving range are occupied. All male, in a line of 26 stalls, each of them blasting one ball after another out onto the range, each working to master his own little glitch. Danny Callaghan, with not enough time in the day to do all he needs to do, is trying to tune out the chatter from the fools two stalls across on his right. Three kids, students, who sound like they’ve been celebrating since the previous evening. Almost sobered up, they’ve come here to wring the last few drops of pleasure from their overnight adventure. They’ve hired one driver and a bucket of balls between them and they take turns hacking balls into the distance. Every swing, every mistake, every remark, creates a chorus of hooting.

‘Cool!’

‘Go for it, baby!’

‘No way!’

One of the kids says, ‘Just as long as you’re back by Thursday!’ and the others go into spasms of chortling. It seems to be some kind of punchline they picked up during their revels, because he says it again and again, each time provoking a gale of laughter that’s louder than it needs to be.

‘Shut the fuck up.’

The fat guy to Danny’s immediate right is squeezed into jeans and a red check shirt. He stands facing the kids, gesturing with his club. ‘Christ sake.’

‘Sorry,’ one of the kids says. The fat man turns away, lowers his club to the ball.

The laughter is muted for a while. The only noise is that of golf clubs cutting through the air, the
thwock!
of the clubfaces connecting with the balls, and the distant sound of a golf cart, far out across the range, the driver protected by a net as he scoops up the used balls.

After a while, the kids forget the fat man and when one of them tops the ball and it hops ten feet, then dribbles to a stop, all three of them erupt in quaking howls of laughter.

‘
Shut
– the
fuck – up!
’

The big fat man, in his mid-thirties, as tall as Callaghan but lots of blubber around the middle, flesh billowing beneath his chin, has dropped his club and he’s standing to one side, hands on his hips, facing the kids.

‘Hey, look, we’re sorry—’

Two of the kids are still laughing, the third is holding his arms out, palms up, head tilted to one side, apologetic. ‘Really – we didn’t—’ He turns to his friends. ‘Okay, lads, let’s not make pricks of ourselves, right?’

The laughter of the other two has subsided to grins, and they’re nodding and making diffident gestures.

‘Little bastards.’

The fat man turns and picks up his club, bends again to place a ball and as he does so a prolonged, very loud fart escapes from his arse.

He turns around at the flare-up of uncontrolled laughter. He faces the kids again, his chin bobbing, his cheeks roiling as he chews gum and seethes. The kids can’t stop now, they’re still laughing when the fat man comes around the barrier into their stall. The one who apologised is the first to recognise that the game is over. One hand raised in appeal, he says, ‘Listen, man—’ His hand is brushed aside and the fat man is right up in his face and his head snaps forward and the kid goes down, his nose a rosette of blood.

Danny Callaghan makes a disgusted sound.

The fat man kicks the fallen kid, not too hard.

One of the other kids, a thin, pale-faced youth, says something to the fat man and the fat man uses one chubby finger to poke him in the chest. ‘You his boyfriend?’ He keeps at it, poking, taunting, ‘You his boyfriend?’ and the kid’s eyes are pleading and the kid says, ‘Mister . . .’ and the fat man grabs the kid fast by the front of his shirt, pulls him forward, holds him there and raises his other fist. He shows the cringing kid the big fist for several seconds, then he draws the fist back and punches the kid un conscious. It’s a boxer’s punch, the fist, arm and shoulder snapping into alignment so the blow has the weight of the fat man’s body behind it.

Everything has stopped. The one kid still on his feet is visibly trembling. All along the length of the driving range no one’s moving, no one says anything. There’s just the
phut-phut-phut
of the golf cart in the distance, the guy down-range, scooping up the balls.

The quiet is broken by Danny Callaghan’s impulsive shout. ‘You fat fuck!’

Novak said, ‘Thanks for picking up those three gents at Citywest.’

Callaghan said, ‘No problem.’

Novak said, ‘The outfit that passed the job on to us, they’re good people – we got them out of a hole, they’ll remember that.’

The back office of the Blue Parrot was dominated by a big oak desk. Novak was in the leather swivel chair behind the desk. Callaghan sat in one of the two standard chairs on the other side of the desk. Brushed aluminium laptop on the desk, along with a penholder, a small calendar and a large hardback notebook. In one corner of the office, three filing cabinets, a small Bose sound system on a shelf behind Novak. Three large photos on a far wall. Novak’s two kids, Caroline and Jeanie, both in their teens, both wearing party dresses, then Novak and his wife Jane at Caroline’s wedding. On the right, Novak shaking hands with Terry Wogan, both of them young, both of them showing their biggest smiles to the camera. This was where it all came together, what Novak called his business empire – the pub and the transport firm and a specialist bread shop run by a cousin of his. Novak was 58 and the empire was the proceeds of forty-five years’ work, and this office was the controlling centre of it all.

Callaghan said, ‘The other night, those two guys, I thought at first it might have been me they were after.’

Novak said nothing.

‘I think I’m being watched. A blue van, it’s turned up a couple of times, then someone’s been asking questions about me, around the Hive.’

‘You think it has something to do with what happened to Walter?’

‘Maybe so.’

‘Or the Tucker thing?’

‘Maybe so. Since I got out, it’s been like waiting for the other shoe to drop.’

‘And you want me to—?’

Novak didn’t come every week, but two or three times a month for eight years when Callaghan was called to the prison visitors’ room it was his smile he saw at the other side of the barrier.

It was Hannah who got Callaghan the job fitting out the kitchen in Novak’s pub, just as Hannah did most of the hustling for business in those days. ‘Good job, son,’ Novak said, and he recommended Danny to a bookie-shop owner who needed someone reliable for a mid-sized renovation. And after what happened at the driving range, when Callaghan’s whole life was going down the toilet, it was Novak who arranged an efficient lawyer who did what he could against an overwhelming case.

At his lowest, Novak whispering, ‘What happened, Danny, it was just the way things went. Sometimes people figure out what they have to do to get somewhere else – they walk over anyone in the way. People like that, the hell with them. What happened with you – it was just one thing leading to another.’

After the trial, it was Novak – even more so than Hannah – who was his link to the outside. And when Callaghan came out of prison it was Novak who gave him work and arranged the apartment, Novak’s wife Jane who bought the sheets and the towels and stocked the fridge

‘Look – I don’t want you to think I’m taking all this for granted.’

‘All what?’

‘I can’t imagine a better friend.’

‘You got a bad break.’

‘I fucked up.’

*

Danny Callaghan, age 23, is six feet away from the big fat man in the red check shirt. The one kid still on his feet has taken advantage of the distraction, and all that’s left of him is the fading sound of his running feet. The kid who’s been punched out is on his back, still and pale. His friend is on the ground a few feet away, half-sitting, one hand held to his nose, failing to staunch the flow of blood from his nose.

‘Be smart,’ the fat man is telling Callaghan. The way the fat man is standing, the kid with the bloody nose can’t stand up without risking a kicking. The fat man looks like he’s savouring the prospect.

‘They’re kids,’ Callaghan says.

‘Walk away.’

The first blow is the one that counts. If it’s fast and hard and accurate enough it can settle everything right off.

Trouble is, throw a sucker punch and if it’s not fast or hard or accurate enough there’s no going back from what follows. And that’s going to be nasty and dangerous. Every fight hurts, even the ones you win.

In that silent moment, Danny Callaghan knows that if he waits too long the chances are that the fat man will start it and maybe finish it right off.

Move now or he will
.

Which is when Callaghan feels a hand grip his left forearm, another hand grip his left bicep, just a fraction of a second before the same thing happens to his right arm. He instantly lunges to elude the grasping hands, jerking his left shoulder, then his right shoulder, but the men he can see on either side are big, their hands are like steel grips on his arms, and his struggle lasts just a few seconds. The fat man is smiling. ‘I told you to be smart.’

He looks first at the man on Callaghan’s right, then the other one, and he says, ‘Hold tight.’

His arms held firm, his body tilted off balance so he can’t lash out with his feet, Callaghan’s belly and chest are totally unprotected.
The first blow feels like the fat man’s fist has punched right through to Callaghan’s spine. Callaghan needs to go down, curl up, protect himself, but the hands on his arms hold him in place.

The judge looks down from the bench. The distaste in his features is not for his task but for the defendant below him, convicted and awaiting sentence. Danny Callaghan looks up and sees a smug man who has never felt pain or humiliation. All through the trial Callaghan has felt like he’s been describing what happened in a language that makes no sense to the judge or the lawyers or the jury.