Eightball Boogie (23 page)

The weather forecast was for heavy snow, high winds. The winds hadn’t kicked in yet but the snow was already coming down, thick and fast. I switched the radio off, slipped a tape into the stereo and decided that it was apt that Gonzo’s overdose hadn’t made the airwaves. He had contributed nothing to society in his time, so there was no reason society should mark his passing. I wondered whether that might have bothered Gonzo, acknowledged that I didn’t know him well enough to tell.

The next question was whether or not I cared. I took the Fifth and checked the rear-view. The Mondeo was still there, still about a quarter mile back. I pushed the needle up past seventy. The Mondeo picked up speed. I dropped down again, took my eye off the rear-view.

There were drifts in the high mountain pass, starting to freeze over, but even so I made it just after one. Went all the way around the second roundabout and turned off into the shopping centre car park, watching for the Mondeo. It didn’t show. I hauled Ben’s bike out of the boot, carried it into the shopping centre. The air inside was humid, heat rising off the damp coats of the shoppers.

I bought an extra-large zip-up fleece with deep pockets, a Red Sox baseball cap, putting them on in the public toilets. The fleece was a tight fit but I could just about swing my arms, which would come in handy if the trapeze artists ever went out on strike.

I went from the toilet to the hardware shop, then out back of the shopping centre, where I locked Ben’s bike to a disused skip. I dialled one of the numbers pasted to the public phone, arranged for a taxi to pick me up at the bus station, across the car park from the Bravo. When the taxi pulled up I tugged the baseball cap low over my face and loped across the car park. I was in the back of the taxi when the driver emerged from the bus station’s waiting room. He manoeuvred his huge bulk into the driver’s seat and looked at me expectantly in the rear-view mirror. He had a wide face, apple-red cheeks and a flat beret of snow-white hair that had been cut with a secaturs.

“
Harrison?”

“
That’s me.”

“
Where to?”

That stumped me. We had always driven to the holiday home and I didn’t know the actual address.

“
Go to the bottom of the main street and turn right. Go right again up the hill. After that, I’ll keep you posted.”

He dropped me about five hundred yards past the house. When he turned the car I strolled up the lane and started rolling a smoke, taking my time. Twenty minutes later I flipped the butt into the ditch. Not a single car had passed in either direction. I walked back down the hill to the house, turned into the gravelled driveway.

It was as safe a hideaway as any. I’d been turning my car up that driveway for nearly five years now and the curtains across the road still twitched. The house was set well back from the road, obscured by a row of Sycamores that ran the length of the low redbrick wall marking the boundary of the huge garden. I walked around the back, noting the tiny boot-prints in the snow. I jumped when Ben gave me his fright, threw some snowballs and let him shove snow inside my collar. When I finally shook him off I took Denise into the kitchen. She poured coffee, cocked an eye at my swollen face and waited for me to start. I let the warm kitchen soak away the tension, sensing the numbness beginning to thaw.

“
Well?” Her face was pale, and she hung from her shoulders like a sail after a storm. “What’s going on?”

I swallowed half the coffee, took a deep breath.

“
Gonzo’s dead.”

It came easier every time I said it and I guess I could’ve said it easier because her face just folded. She shook her head, horrified. I nodded, grim.

“
Last night. On the way home.”

“
What… what happened? Jesus, Harry!”

“
Ssshhhh. Ben’s in the living room.” I got up, closed the kitchen door, went back to the table. “We went to a club. Gonz wanted a few late ones.”

“
You were drunk?”

“
No more than usual, couple of pints, seven or eight. Gonz was popping E all night, though. We left and went on for a kebab.”

“
There was a fight?”

“
There was no fight.” I knew Dee was going to blame me, I just wanted to be blamed for the right reasons. “We were ready to leave when Dutchie found Gonzo in the toilets, having some kind of fit. We found some dodgy E in his pockets – Flatliners, the Dibble called them – before they whisked him off to the hospital.”

“
You didn’t go with him?”

“
Dutchie went. I was taken to the station.”

“
The station?”

“
The cop shop. They wanted to book me for possession with intent. I was still in the cop shop when Dutchie rang. They were pumping Gonzo out when he went into arrest.” I grinned her one I didn’t feel. “Me in the cop shop and him in arrest. Funny, isn’t it?”

She laughed, a nervous giggle pitched one octave below hysteria. Her wet eyes sparkled. I gave her the second barrel.

“
Then the Dibble let me go and someone shot me.”

“
What?”

Her eyes bugged out like a frog on a promise.

“
I was on the bridge. He hit me in the side, knocked me into the river. When I got back out I rang you. The rest you know now.”

“
You’re having me on. Gonzo’s outside, isn’t he? Having a laugh. You’re a sick fucker, Harry.”

First anger, then denial – she was ploughing through the classic symptoms at a rate of knots. I pulled the fleece over my head, unbuttoned the Puffa, hauled my sweater and shirt off. The blood on the edge of the bandage was dry and crusty but there was still a dark pool of thin raspberry jelly at its centre.

She stared at me for a long time, forehead furrowed, searching my face for the tic or tremor that might suggest I was playing a bizarre joke. I shrugged.

“
I’m sorry, Dee. That’s the way it happened.”

Her shoulders shook, then the sobs ballooned their way to the surface and she bawled like a stubborn calf. I went around the table, put my arm around her shoulders but she shrank away, folding her arms, cradling herself. Then the shock hit, a runaway train. She put her arms on the table and cried into them until the nervous energy finally evaporated. She sat up, her face the colour of raw liver, snuffling and tugging at her sleeve for a non-existent paper tissue. I gave her a sheet of kitchen towel and she buried her face in it. Finally, nose blocked and voice muffled, she asked: “Why?”

“
That’s what I don’t know.”

“
Well… who?”

“
That’s what I don’t know as well.”

“
Do you know anything?”

“
I know we have to keep a cool head and dry trousers until we figure out what’s going on.” I handed her a dry sheet of kitchen towel. “No sense in us bitching at one another. We have to think of Ben.”

She took a deep breath, let it out slow, dabbed at her eyes.

“
Okay, okay. Christ.” She thought for a second. “What do the Guards say?”

“
They’re following a couple of leads.” I softened my tone. “Hey, Dee?”

I reached out, took her hand. It was shaking. She didn’t pull back, but she didn’t respond when I squeezed it either.

“
It’s going to be okay,” I said. “All we have to do is sit tight. We don’t go out, we don’t answer the phone. We don’t even open the curtains.”

“
Jesus, Harry.” She sounded helpless, the kind of lost they don’t have maps for. “Gonzo’s dead.”

“
We can deal with that later, Dee. Nothing we can do about it now.”

Her lip curled.

“
You’re a cold bastard, Harry,” she said. “A cold and crippled bastard. You know that?”

“
I do now. Can you hear Ben?”

Her eyes widened.

“
Ben! Jesus!”

She went to look for Ben. I scouted out the cupboards for something edible. I settled for some soup, a sandwich and a glass of Maalox, turning the mobile on when I’d finished. It was almost three-thirty.

The phone rang before I had a chance to dial Dutchie’s number, letting me know I had a message waiting. There were two. The first was from Dutchie, telling me Conway was dead. I thought about Conway for about three seconds, his cold, black piggy eyes. Then the second message arrived. It was from Katie.

“
Harry –”

A northern voice, deadpan, cut in.

“
The Odeon, ten bells. Play it straight and everyone walks away.”

I heard a gentle click, the sound of a giant jigsaw piece slotting neatly into place. I looked at the picture and wanted to cry, then wasted half-an-hour trying to think of people I could trust, coming up with a one-name list, but then I have high standards. I made the call and filled in the details, devised a plan. I turned the mobile off, not feeling entirely confident.

Denise came back in, red-eyed. I rolled a smoke, braced myself. Told her I was heading back to town.

“
You’re what?” She was angry, bewildered and scared. I could empathise. “You said we were going to sit tight. Don’t even open the curtains, you said.”

“
I said you were going to sit tight,” I lied. “I have to go back to town.”

“
Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“
That doesn’t matter.”

“
Doesn’t matter?” She was distraught, working herself into a frenzy. I couldn’t blame her. I was pretty strung out at the prospect myself. “Someone tried to kill you last night and the reason you’re going back doesn’t matter? What are you, suicidal?”

“
I need to get us sorted. To get us somewhere safer than this.”

It was a bargain-basement answer and Denise wasn’t buying.

“
What can you do back there that you can’t do from here?” She thought for a second, and her face took on a stricken expression. “And why do we need somewhere safer? What’s wrong with here?”

And suddenly I was tired again, my nervous system steeling itself for the onslaught of adrenaline.

“
You wouldn’t understand, Dee.”

“
I wouldn’t understand?”

There was menace in her voice, the implication impossible to ignore, but Katie had something I needed, something Denise couldn’t give me, and you only start that kind of conversation with a woman once. You don’t get to finish it, either.

“
What number were you ringing this morning?” I asked.

“
What?”

“
The mobile number, Dee. What number did you ring?”

She told me, sullen.

“
It’s oh-eight-four,” I said. “Not oh-eight-three.”

“
You told me oh-eight-three.”

“
Yeah well, now I’m telling you it’s oh-eight-four.”

I pulled on the Puffa and the fleece. Stood there, hands in pockets, sweating in the warm kitchen. The smell of soup made me want to puke. My fingers touched something cold. I put the key of the bicycle lock on the kitchen table.

“
Ben’s bike is locked to a skip behind the shopping centre. Give it a while, send a taxi down to collect it.”

“
Fuck Ben’s bike!”

I made for the door.

“
If you go,” she warned, “I won’t be here when you get back.”

“
If I get back.”

I stopped at the door. She was leaning against the table, arms folded, defiant, struggling to hold back the tears. That made two of us, except I had nothing to lean on.

21

The snow was coming down hard. Visibility was almost zero, the wipers barely able to cope, and the road was glassy under two or three inches of soft snow. It was impossible to drive faster than twenty miles an hour without running the very real risk of saving the pros a bullet or two. I pushed the needle up to forty and prayed that Dutchie hadn’t skimped on the radials.

I made town just after eight. The storm was blowing itself out, the streets deserted, all sound muffled under the coloured lights. Everyone was at home, wrapping presents and knocking back the mulled wine, or in the pub, hoping they wouldn’t be chucked out early and already too pissed to know what time it was.

I pulled into the car park, crossed the river by the footbridge, slipped in the side door of The Cellars. The place was heaving, the punters three deep at the bar, a bloke with a fiddle giving it large just inside the front door. Dutchie was red-faced behind the ramp, taking three and four orders at a time. I shouted his name. He ignored me twice, but when he finally looked around his jaw dropped. He forced his way through the punters knotted around the hatch, leaving Marie to deal with the mob. He dragged me down to the poolroom, locked the door, gave me both barrels.

“
You thick bastard! Are you looking to get killed? Get us all killed with you?”

“
Easy, Dutch. I’m being cute, remember?”

“
This is cute? You don’t know who you’re fucking with.”

“
I’m not fucking with anyone, Dutch. Everyone’s fucking with me.”

“
The East Belfast boys want to fuck you, you bend over for the soap and wash their dicks with it when they’re finished. Alright?”

“
East Belfast?”

“
Your party favour buddies. The ones Conway was trying to screw.”