The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (14 page)

2:25 p.m.

D
onal Cullen's remains lay naked on the embalming room table stitched back together after the autopsy. The eyes and mouth were gaping, and his hair was bloodstained and dragged down over his forehead, reminding me of a medieval portrait that hung in the refectory of my alma mater, St. James's on Basin Lane. The lines on his brow suggested a keen intelligence had once worked behind it; his whole body, in fact, was as big and powerful looking as Vincent's. And his teeth were long and sharp, reminding me of the story of the fight he'd had in Limerick. I felt a shiver run down my spine as I imagined him jerking his head back after biting the Adam's apple out of the other man's neck. But regardless of my imaginings, my job was to prepare his remains for the final viewing.

I shampooed his hair, washed his face and hands, and dried them all off with a towel. Then I moved on to his eyes. I tore off a piece of cotton wool and held it between the arms of a forceps. I then pinched the eyelid and held it up while I wiped the cotton wool over the eyeball and behind the lid, removing the fluid that was making it slide open in the first place. Then I pressed the eyes closed, which would stay shut until they withered away.

I gave him a shave with an electric shaver and combed his hair neatly, messing it slightly afterwards to give it a natural look. Then came the Polikoff treatment. It was a petrol-blue cashmere Ermenegildo Zegna suit. It nearly seemed a shame to cut it, but his back was never going to be seen again. After I'd finished dressing him, I put his tie on, giving him a Windsor knot, and slipped on his black Bruno Magli shoes. I fastened the middle button on the suit and finished by joining his hands together.

I stood back and looked at him. I was both his executioner and last custodian. My father had always said the same thing when someone we knew died prematurely or in an accident:
It was their time.
And this, undoubtedly, was Donal's. That didn't take away from my part in it, though. Surely every hit-and-run driver went through a similar justification process. Moved by the hand of God to take back another of his children, having no choice in the matter, like a pawn in a grander game I knew nothing of. I placed my hand over Donal's and looked at his dead and composed face.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered. “If we could only switch places.”

4:50 p.m.

E
ugene Lyons sat alone at a table in a darkened bar on Thomas Street in the heart of the Liberties, calling for his second double vodka and tonic. He'd good reason to celebrate but, as was usually the case with his little celebrations, it was a solitary affair, for if anyone else was made privy to the reason, they'd balk. He drained the last of his drink as the fresh one was placed down before him, and swished the vodka around his badly receded gums. His eyes fixed on the barmaid's rear end as she retreated to the bar.

“Thanks, darling,” he called after her.

Geno was a creepy little man in his fifties with a ferretlike face, bad breath, and a penchant for silk suits. As intensely devious as his innate expression was, he'd been dealt a gift of sorts by fortune in the shape of a nasty childhood accident involving his left eye and a cast-iron radiator that resulted in his eye being removed and replaced by a glass eye, which lent his face a spurious benevolence, allowing him to access positions that would have otherwise been denied him, his role in Cullen's brothel among them.

Geno had been managing the St. James's Club since its doors had first opened, having met Donal at a poker game a few months prior where he talked himself up as a manager of lap-dancing clubs in Liverpool. For a man whose primary urge in life was to rape, managing Cullen's club was a dream come true. And now, with Donal out of the picture, he could start bringing his fantasies to life on a daily basis if he felt like it.

It was only a matter of time before he'd take his place beside Sean Scully in Cullen's empire. With Donal gone now, the opening was there for him, and he'd take full advantage of it. He'd make himself indispensable to Cullen. He'd become more valued than Scully. Maybe even Donal.

In the eyes of Vincent, Geno considered himself to be something approaching a hero. Having given Donal the night's takings as well as a newspaper to shield his head from the rain on Monday night, it was Geno who'd rushed out, too late as it happened, to the side of Vincent's slaughtered brother. Just as it was he who rang Vincent at ten past three that same morning with the news of the hit, snatch, and run, as he'd come to call it in his own mind as well as to the girls in the club. If it wasn't for him, he'd told them, they wouldn't have the make of the car that hit him.

He'd never tell anyone he'd taken the money, just as he'd never talked about other moneys he'd lifted in the past or women he'd raped. As Geno saw it, he did exactly what Donal or Vincent would have done if they'd been in his shoes. He'd kept his eyes open, used his head, and taken his chance when he saw it. Donal wasn't going to be needing the cash, that was for sure, and what was twenty grand to a man like Vincent Cullen? Sure he'd lay more than that on a single trip to the bookie's office. And whoever had knocked Donal down deserved the added charge for running off in the first place.

Monday had been quite the night for opportunities. Donal getting killed hadn't just created a golden opening for rapid ascension through the ranks, but with Donal gone, the girls no longer had their protector. So after alerting Vincent to the news, Geno began his reign of rape on the young Polish beauty he'd had his eye on since she'd started three weeks ago. Twenty grand in his pocket, the promise of promotion, and the prospect of anal rape all made for a powerful aphrodisiac. By the time he'd finished with her, the girl was in a quivering heap. If they weren't whimpering and trembling by the end of it, he hadn't done it right.

Geno finished his drink and left the bar and walked up through the drizzling rain past the deal-yelling stallholders of Liberty Market on Meath Street towards the funeral home. He'd dressed in his favorite suit for the evening, a black three-piece silk number he'd bought in Bangkok, which he'd complemented with a black shirt and red tie. It was, he believed, fitting funeral wear.

He let a gob of phlegm exit the side of his mouth while squinting his eye at the few people gathered outside the funeral home, a few faces he even recognized from the club. He moved past them like he'd never seen them before, went into the crowded funeral home, and made his way towards the front parlor.

5:10 p.m.

S
tanding with my back to the wall and my head bowed in the candlelit parlor, I listened silently along with everyone else to the music Vincent had selected, Pergolesi's “Quando Corpus Morietur.” Of the hundreds of people gathered in the funeral home and the street outside, Sean Scully was only allowing twenty in the parlor at any one time, under orders from Vincent, who sat with his legs crossed in the chesterfield armchair by the head of the casket. The candlelight gave the room a medieval quality, brought to life by the faces of Matser and Richie, the dutiful executioners; the brutal crown of Vincent, whose thoughts seemed to pulse with dreams of bloody vengeance; and the ruthless head of Scully, the ever-vigilant gatekeeper. In a room full of dark secrets—fuller, no doubt, than any other space in Dublin—mine was unquestionably the most coveted, and looking increasingly safe as time ticked by.

But it was the effect of my secret that I was faced with now. The loss and misery I'd created were here before me, all around me, my feelings of remorse made all the more palpable by being steeped in the devastation I'd caused.

As if to trump my hidden lament, a woman in a black dress who'd been sitting on the couch approached the casket, holding her trembling mouth, barely containing her tears. She had raven black hair flowing over her shoulders, skin like marble on a pretty but deeply pained face, and a sizable baby growing inside her. With her free hand, she gripped Donal's arm as the tears erupted, spilling fast down her cheeks and over her fingers.

“What am I going to do now?” she said to Donal's remains. Vincent's face hardened as his eyes moved from the carpet to her knees, while everyone else's moved between Vincent and the woman. She was shaking the arm now, not caring about her place, or Vincent, or the scene she was creating. I noticed the wedding ring on her finger and heard the echo of Vincent's curt reply when I'd asked him whether Donal was married.

“What'll I do, Donal?” she whimpered helplessly, while my heart grew heavier and my guilt laid anchor in her belly. Then she started wailing.

Vincent glanced briefly at Sean, making the smallest gesture with his fingers. Sean reacted instantly by placing his hands around the woman's shoulders.

“Come on now,” he said, gently guiding her back to the couch where her whimpering quieted to silent crying. The urge I felt to step forward and claim responsibility was so overwhelming it surprised me. I wanted to collapse to my knees and tell them I'd hit him. It was my fault. And I'd take the blows. I'd absorb the wailing. I'd take the kicks and the beatings. As dangerous as I knew Vincent was, there was a part of him I liked and respected, which made it all the more difficult to maintain my spineless routine. I had to get out of there before I did something regrettable.

I moved to Vincent's side and leaned in to whisper.

“We'd want to be leaving here no later than half five, so bearing that in mind, we need this room cleared by twenty past so you can have a few minutes alone with Donal. Do you want me to go ahead and organize that?”

After getting the nod, I moved past Richie, Matser, a few old men and women, and Sean, who opened the door for me. As I was about to squeeze out, a small man in a black suit came in, nodding to Sean briefly before turning to face me with a squint. There was something odd about him. The skin around his left eye was fixed in a perpetual smile, and the pupil in the eye itself, which was glass, was completely dilated. This was belied by the other eye, which was devoid of any warmth, housing a pinprick pupil. He looked like he was trying to place me. Satisfied that I'd never met him, I slipped out the door into the main office and over to the fireplace.

The backs of my legs were only beginning to warm when Sean emerged from the parlor and walked right up to me.

“Can I've a word?” he said.

“Sure,” I said, and I ushered him around the corner into the middle office.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

“I just want you to put me wide on something. My mother-in-law died earlier in the year—your competitor handled the job—and she was cremated. Her ashes have been sitting under my bed since—my wife wants to be close to her. Before I met you, I never gave it much thought, but now that I have you here, give it to me straight: What's in the urn? Is there coffin ashes as well as human ashes in there?”

“No,” I said, relieved it was a question I could answer. “Actually, they're not ashes in there at all.”

“What? Then what are they?”

“Chippings.”

“Chippings?” said Sean. “Fuck's sake, go on.”

“This is how it works: You get the coffin, with the remains still in it, put it in the furnace, close the door, and turn it on. It burns at a thousand degrees centigrade for an hour, during which time pretty much everything goes up the chimney. After the hour, and after it's all cooled down, you pick up what you have left, which is usually just the skull and hip bone—”

“What do you mean, ‘usually'?”

“Depending on the size of the remains, you might have a couple of femurs, but if it was you or me, it'd be just the skull and hip bone left.”

“Right.”

“So you pick them up—they're charred but basically intact—and you put them in a grinder, turn it on, and after a few minutes, they're ground down to what appear to be ashes, but what are actually, upon closer inspection, fine chippings. And that's what's in the urn under your bed.”

He smiled wolfishly and shook his head. “Unfuckingbelievable,” he said, and went back in to the parlor. With Frank and Corrine manning the office, I ventured out the back for refuge from the mourning. Christy stood by the counter with a newspaper open and a cup of tea in his hand.

“All right?” he asked. He could see I was struggling.

“I feel like a swine,” I said. “I'm thinking maybe I should turn myself in.”

“Hang on, now,” he said, closing the paper and making sure the door was firmly closed. “Relax for a minute and tell me this: Do you think you deserve to die for what you've done?”

“No.”

“Then keep your mouth shut and get any notions of telling anyone out of your head. You've got immunity on this one, Buckley. Sure half the country is glad he's dead. The first time I heard Donal Cullen's name was in 1991 when he went down for shooting dead a bank manager during a robbery—an unarmed bank manager. He was a menace and a bully, and responsible for more murders and crimes than we'll ever know about.”

“I've just seen his heavily pregnant wife break down in the front parlor. I'm the cause of every bit of anguish in that room.”

“Paddy, you're not thinking straight. Now let's be very clear on what would happen to you if you did give yourself up. After a week or two, you'd disappear. No trace. There'd be an inquiry, it'd make the news for a few weeks, but no one would be even slightly surprised because in the country's eyes you would have effectively committed suicide the moment you'd handed yourself in. And that'd just be the end of Paddy Buckley, the undertaker. Then there'd be the beginning of Paddy Buckley, the torture victim. Remember, Paddy, not only did you kill his brother, but you waltzed into his house afterwards and drank his coffee and ate his biscuits.”

“I didn't eat the biscuits.”

“Fuck the biscuits, Buckley, you'd be strung up! And then brutally murdered. You think Cullen is going to let you away with it because he's got to know you?”

I emptied my lungs. “No. But I still feel like a swine.”

“It'll pass.”

—

AFTER I CLEARED
the room, only a handful of people stayed behind for the final goodbye. Feeling I should leave them alone, I made for the door, but Vincent caught my eye as I clasped the handle and signaled for me to stay. As touched as I was by the gesture, it only made me feel worse. I stood back by the door and waited.

It was the first time I'd seen Vincent's wife and son. They were perfectly cast in their roles: she, as the subservient yet strong beauty, whose hardened gaze could only be broken by the likes of Cullen; and the son, still a young boy, but with Vincent's mettle already evident in his confidence and obvious intelligence. They both sat impassively on the couch, watching Donal's wife bawling as quietly as she could while saying goodbye, leaning down to kiss Donal's lips and rub the side of his face. She probably would've stayed there all night if Sean hadn't walked her to the door and sent her out. Vincent's wife and son followed her. And then it was just Vincent, Sean, and I.

Vincent gripped the side of the casket and looked down at his brother with a tenderness usually well hidden behind his veils. He moved his thumb under Donal's chin and up the side of his face before leaning down and kissing his forehead. And then he just stayed there a minute, looking at his brother for the last time while Sean and I watched him. He turned away from the casket and made his way out the door, only stopping to briefly hold my arm.

“Thanks, Paddy,” he said in a raspy voice, and he left the room, Sean following behind him, making the Sign of the Cross. As soon as they'd gone, Christy, Eamonn, and Jack came in and screwed the lid down on the casket. I stayed back by the door, holding my head in my hands, immersed in my shame. With the lid securely on, Christy moved to open up the double doors to bring the casket out, giving me a reassuring, conspiratorial wink.

“Showtime,” he whispered.