On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (41 page)

Along the river his locomotion eased. He tested the suppleness in his legs, shook out his arms and shoulders, leaned into upper-body arcs, while at the same time battling conscience, and questioning this new mission driving him this hard.

Minutes later he stood glaring across traffic, into Gardiner Lane, the mostly demolished street with just two nineteenth-century tenements still standing, one his target. But the newish navy car stuck out, its interior stuffed with still figures. Police. Watching for someone. He moved off, up the hill of North Great George’s Street, then a turn at the top and back down to the rubble and ruin of Gardiner Lane. No sign of cops now, no sign of Skinner and his pack.

He slipped inside the echoey house, across a dim hall with a big boarded-up staircase he hadn’t noticed last time, and down the passageway to his right. A note was pinned to Aidan Harper’s door:
Back later.
For urgent care go any time to rehab clinic in Hayde Lane, behind Pro-Cathedral. Cyril.

He’d wait, he decided, the dust of decay in his nostrils. He began stretching tendons and muscles, pushing forward and back against a wall, squeezing creaks into the foul air. Sore still, all over, he thought, but in good shape, feeling strong again.

The scrape at the front door stilled him. Footsteps. More than one person in the main hall, voices, the scuff of feet coming nearer. Two figures passed across the top of the passageway, unaware of him. He crept forward. A boy and a girl. No more than fifteen or sixteen. The boy roughly dressed, long wavy hair. The girl bulkier, in a windbreaker and short skirt. The boy pulled knowingly at the board blocking the staircase. Next to him, stiff and jittery, arms stitched to her middle, the girl urged him on. The board swung free. The couple ducked inside and pushed it back into place. Tony listened as their feet scraped the stairs.

Seconds later he followed, kept to the side as he ascended. On the half-landing he stopped. Above him, out of view, the couple were muttering plaintively, rapping against a door that wasn’t being answered. He climbed higher, surveyed the rot. To his left and right ran a long bare-board hallway strewn with wreckage, wind and street noise blowing in through shattered windows at both ends. One room was opposite him, another ten feet to the right, both doors open on crumbled interiors. Another step took him to the landing, into view of the murky corridor from which the racket was coming. In a burst of commotion, the boy and girl scrambled up off the floor, speechless.

‘What you want?’ Tony said.

‘Shit, man! For a minute I thought you was the cops.’ The handsome, slightly-built boy exhaled dramatically. ‘Skinner or Fogo around? Wanna get some stuff.’

‘Get what?’

‘Horse, you know; two bags this time,’ the boy said with an affectation of casualness.

Tony moved closer, switched his gaze to the girl, then back to the boy.

‘Kinda in a hurry. Get fixed up. Y’know.’ The girl spoke assertively. She unzipped her jacket, searched down her top, pulled out folded notes. ‘Ready to go.’

Tony continued staring at them.

The teenagers’ faces grew troubled. The boy opened out his hands. ‘We’re clear, we are, I swear, we don’t owe nothing now. Fogo’ll tell you; we cleared it; we’re clear.’

‘You paid Fogo?’

Neither teen answered. Eventually the boy’s features refocused. ‘No, like, not cash, like. But like, I swear, we don’t owe a penny now.’

‘Said you paid Fogo.’

‘We did! He told you we’re clear. And we are.’ The girl’s voice boomed in the cavernous interior. Then a convulsion shook her body. Her arms pressed into her stomach, her shoulders bent as though fighting a gale.

‘Paid when? How much?’

The boy looked to the girl as a new torment twisted her face. He took her into his arms.

‘How much?’

‘Me and Siobhan, like . . . like we, we – ’

‘Fuck it, Larry, tell him!’ The girl wriggled free. ‘I let Skinner poke me. Okay? Now will you take the money and give us the stuff. Need to get fixed up real fucking bad.’

‘Get out, both of you. Get home. Now!’

‘Hey, mister; mister, look, y’don’t understand.’ The girl shuffled forward, forlornness in her face. Despite Tony’s initial resistance she took his strapped right hand in both of hers. ‘We need real bad, get fixed up, y’know, really bad, y’know. Okay?’

He started to move toward the boy. She moved with him. He stopped, allowed her soft sweaty hands to keep their hold.

‘Okay, mister? Please . . . Okay? Okay?’ Her body jerked again like it had been pierced. It seemed to pass within seconds but left her violet-painted lips twitching. She squeezed his hand, tried to snuggle in to him. He restrained her.

‘You will, mister, won’t you? You’ll help us. Alright?’ Her voice took on a quality of sweetness. ‘I know you will. You will, won’t you? Please? Won’t you?’

He tried to detach; she refused to release his hand. The suffering in her face caused him once again to relent. Suddenly she pulled his hand between her legs. He broke away.

‘We can do it. I won’t tell no one. Swear I won’t. Larry won’t either, I swear. Just get us fixed up, mister; please, please, won’t you?’ Tony gripped her roughly, overpowered her protest, forced back both her sleeves. A mass of bruising and purple tracks scarred her pale flesh.

‘We can do it here, me and you; I can do it real good, do everything, I can,’ she said. ‘I want to, I like you. You can keep the ten quid too. Here, take it, keep it, go on.’

He pushed her aside, made for the boy. The boy squirmed.

‘Don’t you touch him. Fucker!’ The girl screamed, sobbing fitfully. ‘I’m warning you, don’t put your hands near him.’

Tony seized the boy’s left arm, then his right. One bore a few feint blotches, the other nothing.

‘Only done it a few times, ages ago,’ he said. ‘Tried to get Siobhan off of it. She won’t get off. Said she wants to but she can’t.’

Tony looked back at the girl; her face re-signalled her availability. As he turned toward her, his thoughts travelled through her. She was Margo, in Newark, coming on to him in Witchell Heights, trying to get off, turned on, fixed up, trading her body for a high, willing to lie, cheat, go down, do it all, just to feel able to dance with Stewie on Saturdays in the square. Margo, dying to live, living to dance, dancing to escape, until a street knife ripped it all away, an act that somehow had led him here, Tony MacNeill, to this lousy tenement in Dublin, to another Margo, another Stewie, someone else’s best friends.

He shook out of his distraction, forced the boy against the wall. ‘You love her?’ he shouted. ‘Do you love her?’

The boy cringed, then nodded.

‘Look at me! You love her, yes or no? Yes or no?!’

The boy’s face broke before any words emerged. ‘I do, I love her. I tell her. Plenty times.’

Tony let him go, turned to the girl. ‘You love him; I can tell. You willing to fight for him?’

Her mascara-streaked face affirmed, then more vigorously. As she stared at him a look started to form in her, as though she were sensing something in her questioner.

He gripped them by their jackets, drew them in until the young worn-down faces were breathing into his.

‘Know what it’s like to die? Have any fucking idea? No one to love you or hold you. People like you – and me – die every day, and they don’t need to.’

The boy’s eyes fell away; the girl’s stayed riveted to him.

‘You told her you love her,’ he said to the boy. ‘But you’re going to put her in a hole in the ground. Too bad for her, right? The fuck it’s right! You listening? You love her, you save her; you got that? You do everything you have to do. Everything! She worth keeping alive, is she?’

‘I told her, I did, to get off it, always tell her. Hundreds of times, I did.’

‘Tell her she’s murdering you. Because she is. Tell her you want to stay alive. You want her to stay alive. She needs to hear you say that! Follow me?’

The boy’s tears spilled through his fingers. The girl held him.

‘You,’ Tony said to the girl. ‘A girl I knew once, like you, loved my best friend the way you say you love this guy. What do you want from him? Want him to die for you? Tell him that! Tell him you don’t care; you only care about yourself, your fix. Tell him he doesn’t matter, go on.’

‘I won’t let him die. I don’t want to die.’ She wiped her cuff across her cheeks then threw both arms around the boy, kissing sloppily at his mouth. ‘Nothing bad’s going to happen to us, Larry. I won’t let it, I won’t.’

‘Hey, save it!’ Tony pulled them to him. ‘Know the place in Hayde Lane, the clinic, at the back of here?’ Both nodded. ‘I want you to go there, right now. Understand? They’ll help you, no cops, no questions, no money; they’ll get you clean. Deal? Right now? Go on!’

In a fusion of sniffling and hugging, the teenagers started toward the stairs. Tony’s hands seized them, ordered them silent. From downstairs came the squeal of a door, and now male voices inside the house.

‘Any other way out?’ he asked.

There wasn’t, they said, the back stairs were gone, and it would definitely be Fogo and Skinner, no one else was allowed to come up.

The pull-out board sounded.

Tony crept forward, crouched low, peeked down through the missing banister rails. Two men, one in a parka, and one tartan-shirted heavyweight. Skinner and Fogo. Coming up. He ushered the teens toward one of the derelict rooms. The boy responded. The girl froze, then fought against moving. He back-pedalled with the boy into cover, urging the girl to hide. Moments before the men turned on the half-landing she scurried out of sight. Skinner and Fogo reached the top. They stopped, waited. From behind the door, ten feet away, Tony watched, the shaking boy crouching below him.

Shirt sleeves high on his biceps, Fogo’s big shaven head turned left and right, eyes combing like a hunter’s.

In a burst of noise the girl bustled out onto the landing, obviously flustered but with an air of matter-of-factness. ‘Hi’ya, waiting here for you,’ she said.

‘You!’ Fogo said. ‘Y’doing up here? Come to rip me off, yeah?’ He made for her. She backed away.

‘No way. Only waiting for you, that’s all. Just to buy stuff.’

He sneered. His fingers locked onto her throat. She groaned, tugged at his grip from both sides; then he let go and seized her by her hair.

‘Big bone’s what she needs.’ Skinner cooed, air-jerking at his groin. ‘Fuck that skinny prick she hangs around with.’

The girl fought at the fingers embedded in her stringy brown mane. ‘I’m telling you, we were just waiting – ’

‘We?!’ Fogo roared, pulling her closer. ‘We, junkie? We who?’

‘Nobody. I mean me, I was, me. I was, I want to – ’

He bumped his forehead into hers. ‘Fucking warned you never come up them steps.’

‘Strung the fuck out,’ Skinner said. ‘Gobble, gobble, cold fucking turkey.’

‘Hey, Skin, what about this.’ Fogo groped for the end of the girl’s short skirt. She pulled back, held it down. He groped again, forced his hand further and held her, letting out a string of guffaws. ‘Y’had your go, Skin,’ he said. ‘What’s under here’s mine now.’ His tongue licked across the girl’s face. ‘You’re gonna blow me off till I tell you to stop. All fucking day if I tell you to. Right?! Better be fucking right; let’s go.’

The girl refused to move, defiance filling her face. Fogo dropped down in front of her, clamped his tattooed arms around her thighs, lifted her straight up so that her head and shoulders wavered above him. He carried her to the fractured banister, leaned her out over the void. ‘Y’ready? Wanna go? Wanna get splattered? Wanna? Wanna?’

Her blood-filled face craned back, small fists locked to the collar of his tartan shirt. He moved closer to the edge, leaned her farther out.

‘Think I wouldn’t? What? Fucking would. Ready to get splattered? One, two, y’ready?’

Tony tried to stop his body shaking, his judgment on a blade edge. He wanted to pounce. But he knew that could cause her to go over. He fought hard to control what came instinctively, a gut screaming to attack. What he was watching was giving him license to strike, and he would, with no holding back.

Just then the girl cried out, a cry of fear but also of anguish that seemed older than the danger she was in. Then her flushed face said yes, she would do what Fogo wanted. He turned away from the stairwell, nuzzling at her breasts and howling as he carried her down the passageway. Inside the room, still high in his arms, the girl writhed and pushed, tried to force her front back from him. He dropped her onto a cushionless sofa. She curled up, letting out a long, high-pitched wail.

Outside, jacket discarded, Tony swept quietly from his lair, his bandaged hands blackened with soot from a fire grate, a ritual of his he’d never understood. He ushered the trembling boy to the stairs, commanded his descent. The boy hesitated, then obeyed.

Tony stretched his lean muscled arms high above his head, winged his shoulders side to side, pushed his physique into resistance. He could walk away if it weren’t for the girl, he told himself. But maybe not. This was his world after all, the arena of scum and brutality, in which he had triumphed, and knew he could now. Because he was smarter, faster, because he had hardened in the pit. Because he could read opponents, could see the twitch before the strike. Because he risked more and had less to lose than all the others, even now. Had he ever left this life, the rush of it? Would it ever leave him? He didn’t even know these kids, he thought. But he did know them. Knew them well. No time now. The girl was inside. He was on. Up. Dressed for war. Once more.

* * *

He put his ear to the door, loud music, no voices, pushed it open just enough to see in. A huge, broken-down room. Twenty-five feet or more in the distance Fogo and Skinner, their backs to him, stood over a table. He slipped inside. The girl was closer, hunched on the sofa. He signalled her to stay quiet. She jumped up, rushed toward him. The men wheeled around, stared, then sniggered to each other, and they began slowly advancing.

‘The clinic,’ Tony said. ‘Larry’s there. Go!’

‘The cops, I’ll get the cops, will I, I’ll get – ’

‘No! No cops.’