On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (31 page)

‘Then the kid went berserk. He charged at the crowd like he was going to stab someone. Everyone scattered. Except me. I stood there shouting at him to put the knife away, go home, that it was over. I don’t know where I got the courage. He called me all kinds of names. I kept telling him I wasn’t afraid of him, that I was ordering him to go home. He was shaking. He pressed the blade under my chin. It was like a razor; I couldn’t move. Peripherally, I saw Anto tearing toward us, it was like in slow motion. The kid saw him too, and he grabbed me around my neck, held me in front of him. He began pushing me toward Anto, until there was just a few feet between us. All the time he kept his knife to my throat. The blood from his hands and on his brass knuckles, some of it Anto’s blood, was all over me. I’ll never forget the feel of the blade against my skin, sticky with blood, and the taste of blood in my mouth. Anto tried talking to the kid, told him to let me go and everyone would just leave; he was begging but his eyes were on fire. I thought the knife was going to dig in to me any second, that I would die there, at twenty-eight, on Witchell Heights square in Newark, New Jersey. I kept asking God to save us all. I commanded myself to be strong. I tried to plead with Anto to go home, leave, but the words didn’t come out; I don’t even think my lips moved. Then suddenly the kid jerked my head back and pressed the knife high up under my chin. And I fainted. Went straight down. I know what went through Anto’s mind, though he’s never talked to me about it; he thought my throat had been cut; there was blood everywhere. Looking back, I wish I could have held on, stayed standing. I didn’t. Anto went wild.

‘What happened next was told to me by my father, who arrived on the scene just at that moment, along with another man. I was out cold on the ground.

‘The Spanish kid was standing over me, switchblade in hand. Anto crashed all his weight into him, knocked him over. My poor father and the other man rushed to me, not knowing if I was dead or alive. Anto and the kid were wrestling on the ground. Anto got on top, pinned down the kid’s hand with the knife in it, and kept punching the kid in the face. By the time the men got to them it was over. The kid wasn’t moving. His eyes were wide open. Anto was straddling him, just staring at him, in shock. My father told me later they knew right away the kid was dead. Jesus Pomental, The Big Blade as he was known, not yet seventeen years of age. It could make you lose all hope.

‘Then three years after that I feared Tony was lost to us for good. He was in a fight in prison in Florida. He saved a German boy from abuse, maybe death, an innocent young man who had done nothing wrong, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A guard died, a man named Yablonski. It came out that he was a serial rapist of inmates, maybe much worse according to some of the evidence. It was blatant self-defence, just like the first time. But I was sure they were going to do the same thing again: charge Tony with murder. I wrote to President Reagan, the U.S. Department of Justice, senators, congressmen, the Irish Ambassador in Washington. Everybody who could possibly do something. In the end, no charges were filed. But Tony fell into a near-catatonic depression. They had him on suicide watch, for months. But he pulled through. He always pulls through. That’s Tony. Always pulling through.’

* * *

Arrows of sleet stabbed into him. But his edginess and hesitation had been conquered. He darted into the glistening road, halted half-way as cars swept past, and weighed up again the four men loitering in front of the tenement. He took on a purposeful locomotion. At the house the raw-faced men fanned out in front of him.

‘He inside?’ Tony said with an implication of familiarity.

‘Can you fucking read,’ one of the men said, flicking his shaven head toward the building. ‘Get fuck-all in there. Tell you that.’

In the iron-barred window a hand-written sign read:
Not a Clinic. No Drugs on Premises.

‘Get you fixed up in a light.’ The hooded man in a nylon tracksuit moved closer. ‘Real stuff. Dead clean. Fucking brilliant.’

‘Nah. Gotta see this bloke in here.’ Tony’s shift slipped him between the end man and the railings and onto the bottom of the five steps, which he skipped up.

‘Hey, pal, hang on, c’mere.’ The man with the shaven head leapt up the steps. ‘Ten quid. Fucking brilliant stuff. Not that methadone shite.’ Tony’s earth-darkened hands distracted him momentarily. ‘Have it for you in two minutes, fix y’up, I swear. Right? A tenner.’

Tony’s head shook, almost provocatively, drew a dismissive spiel from the trio below.

‘Fuck him. Let’s go, Skinner,’ the hooded man yelled. ‘He’s a fucking waster.’

‘Now, fuck-head,’ Skinner said, with malice. ‘Give me a fiver for fags. Hand over.’

‘Don’t have it.’

‘Much you got?’ Skinner’s fingers called for money. ‘Hand over or I’ll fucking do you right here and take it off you.’ He reached for the breast pocket of Tony’s half-length army jacket.

Like a viper striking, Tony grabbed the man’s wrist while remaining otherwise still. In the spraying rain and the rattle of traffic their faces raged, intimately close. Tony’s vise-like clamp tightened, his free hand a primed fist. Skinner’s eyes narrowed, his face twitching as his body bent slowly, then sank lower, and his mouth broke open.

By now the trio on the street had drifted away. Tony wrenched the man’s wrist back against its joint and released it.

‘Fucking pig bollox. Fucking kill you. Kick your fucking head in. You’re dead, I swear, fucking dead.’ Red-faced and with rain streaming down his skull, he laboured off into the drizzle and dark.

Tony pushed the massive door until it gave way. As it thudded behind him, it isolated him in near-darkness and marijuana air. In the distance, from what seemed like a half-flight down, light leaked from under a door. He moved into the dark bowels of the house, floorboards groaning with his intrusion. His fingers traced along a pocked plaster wall, past two doors, then the wall was gone and at his left was a passageway. He felt his way forward, stopped on hearing faint voices and music; from upstairs, he thought, but maybe from the door he was headed toward. Could be Aidan Harper’s flat, he figured. If so, he’d give it to him straight: time to go, get back to England, do his good deeds over there, or Africa or Iraq, didn’t matter, just far enough away from Lenny Quin; she had a new life, a better life, didn’t need old ghosts – ’

‘Looking for me?’

He jumped, backed up against the wall. A man. Somewhere near. Where? He stayed still. Five seconds. Tried to quiet his breathing. Then a bulb turned on, a weak light, in the main hall. Still no one visible. To his right, big, hand-painted lettering stood out: DANGER! KEEP OUT, across a boarded-up staircase. Then came a continuous creaking, wheels grinding, and out of the far passageway a wheelchair emerged, a man, scraggy, coming toward him. It was him, he was sure. The face in all those photos. Older by a good bit. But definitely him.

‘Cyril?’ Tony called out.

‘I have one bed left, in the basement. Share with one other. No drugs, no alcohol, or you’ll be removed instantly by the police. You want it?’

‘Cyril?’

‘Do I know you?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘Who are you?’

‘About Lenny Quin.’

‘Lenny?!’ The man straightened in the chair. ‘God, not bad news?’

Tony delayed. ‘No. But you and I need to talk.’

The man exhaled loudly, flopped back. ‘Follow me, please.’ The chair reversed down the passageway until the grinding stopped. ‘Come in, please,’ he shouted before disappearing through a lit doorway. Tony edged forward.

At the doorway a shirtless man emerged, big, face menacing, arms out-stretched, blocking the entrance. The facts were processed instantly in Tony’s brain: size, stance, eyes, butchered nose, age, threat level.

The man jutted his face into confrontation. ‘DSF, drug squad fucker; DSF, drug squad fucker.’

‘Want to stay breathing, shithead?’ Tony’s stare didn’t waver nor his expression change.

The man’s eyebrows jumped, his face sneered. ‘Rat’s fuck, redneck, prick face. Y’want me, yeah?’

‘Fogarty!’ The roar came from inside the room. The man in the wheelchair arrived. ‘What did I tell you?! Well?! You want the police to take you? Now, this instant? Say the word. Do you?’

The shirtless man glared.

‘Or the morgue,’ Tony said. ‘Take your pick.’

The man skulked to the side. Tony passed him, fully cued.

‘Hey, Brit,’ the shirtless man plucked a parka off a nail, ‘I’m off to Moran’s for a few minutes, see Skinner and the lads.’

‘You’re doing nothing of the sort!’ the man in the wheelchair said. ‘You’re staying right here.’

‘Fucking nothing wrong with a few pints. Half hour I’ll be back.’

‘Inside! Now! Any more of this and the arrangement is off. Try me.’

The man fired his parka into the floor and slumped against the wall, arms locked across his bare, hairless chest.

‘Won’t be a jiffy,’ the man in the wheelchair said to Tony as he got to his feet and manoeuvred through a narrow inner door. Tony took in his surroundings. A huge, high-ceilinged room of stale air and worn-out upholstery, two bulbs dangling on long strings, stuffed plastic bags all about, plates piled with cigarette butts, trash at every turn. A cell. And from somewhere an operatic diva crying out.

He leaned over a large sink to wash the earth from his hands. The shirtless man’s eyes had still not left him. Just then the wheelchair returned, its occupant looking fresher, less dishevelled, silver hair tied back in a pony-tail.

‘Have a seat, please, please,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about all this, you’ll have to excuse the state of the place. It’s impossible at times, you have no idea. Anyway, you were saying?’

‘You’re Aidan Harper?’

‘Was.’ The man paused. ‘Aidan Cyril Harper. What’s this about? Lenny is alright, isn’t she? I mean – ’

‘She’s fine.’

Aidan stalled again, then his tone and demeanour changed. ‘Well then, you’re the bearer of very welcome news. Which makes me feel almost well again. Is there anything I can get you? Cup of tea?’

‘Private talk.’

‘Mr Fogarty, take yourself down to the far end, please. You may take one bottle of Guinness from the box.’ Aidan fired a warning after his words. ‘One. Understand?’

The man grabbed an audio-cassette player and earphones and tramped to the barred window where he dropped into a sofa and wrung the cap off the beer.

‘No drugs, no booze?’ Tony said.

Aidan acknowledged, then spoke quietly. ‘Discretion being the better part of valour, that kind of thing.’ He leaned closer. ‘Courts waiting for a psychiatric assessment; doesn’t happen fast. Ordered to sign daily at police station. Homeless, reformed addict, he claims.’

‘What charge?’

‘Assault and battery, for now. They know he’s a supplier: crystal meth, crack, etcetera. And worse maybe.’

‘What?’

‘The story going around is that he killed a twenty-year-old man. Could be just talk. No body. Officially still missing. Might be two, the police think. Before that a sixteen-year-old boy, an addict, found with his neck broken; owed money to our friend here.’ Aidan glanced in the direction of the shirtless man and tapped his own upper arm. ‘Tattoo. Three scimitars. One for each victim is what a former confederate testified. Still just a suspect, though, as things stand. Habeas Corpus, you know, lack of sufficient evidence to convict. The way it works is I can have him locked up immediately if he breaks my rules.’

‘He will.’

‘Please. You’re not a crime investigator, I assume. Unless I’m totally out of touch with what a modern-day Sherlock Holmes looks like.’

Tony stifled his amusement, tried to stop himself liking any part of this man.

‘Anyway. Now. About Lenny. Your coming here is clearly important.’ He held up a bottle of Guinness. Tony declined. ‘A big surprise too, I must say. You’re a friend of Lenny’s?’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry? Oh, I see. I beg your pardon. Husband. Forgive me. She’s happy then, Lenny, is she? Doing well, all going well?’

‘She’s fine, I told you. I didn’t come for a chat.’ He leaned forward. ‘Look, I know about you and Lenny. I came here because I want you to agree to something. It’s like this: I’m going to ask Lenny to marry me. She wants to, she told me so. And I don’t need trouble; know what I’m saying?’ He got to his feet, his focus still fixed on Aidan. ‘Put it this way: it’d be better for Lenny, and me, if you went back to England, do you work over there.’

‘What? England? That’s absurd. Out of the question. I would not consider such a thing. Does Lenny know about this? What you’re saying? She would know there’s nothing for me in England. Lenny would know that. I don’t believe – ’

‘What’s here for you? This shit house?’

‘People! Irish people. That’s what’s here. Whom I care for, counsel, defend, house, who need help every day. Enough?’

‘How I figured you. Your work’s your god. You can’t escape it.’

Both men fell quiet.

‘Do you know one single iota about the work I do here?’ Aidan asked, sounding less disturbed.

‘I know a lot. You run away. Africa, Iraq, doesn’t matter. You waste your life in deserts and barred-up kips like this, then all you can do is brag about how fucking great the war was, then, you, then you – ’

‘Then nothing. You seem to have it all worked out: why I run away, why I approve of this or that. A theory for everything. Life’s not that simple, I’m afraid.’

‘It is. It’s you, how you are. You pull others into your obsessions. You’re a misfit. End of story.’

‘Excuse me. A misfit, am I?’ Aidan hurried his wheelchair forward, came to a stop in front of Tony. ‘And you? What about you?’

Tony rounded the wheelchair.

Aidan’s stare followed him. ‘Mr high-and-mighty. Whatever your name is. You swagger in here like Bruce Lee, into this jungle, ready to fight a psychopath. And I’m the misfit? I’m listening, go ahead, tell me; what about you?’

Tony kept a stoic face, said nothing.

‘Let’s speculate, shall we? You’ve risked your life for a cause, something you believed in? Battled against human suffering? Cared for people riven by disease and despair? Paid for your principles with something more precious than your life? You have, have you?’