The Midnight Choir (18 page)

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Authors: Gene Kerrigan

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural

BOOK: The Midnight Choir
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There was a camera somewhere. It was a Kodak, Brendan’s. Worth bugger-all.
Nothing to sell, nothing easy to steal. The thing with the bloody syringe had been a disaster.
Synnott—
Bastard
–
all he had to do—
Dixie went downstairs and was halfway through the ravioli when she had an idea. She spent several minutes rummaging until she found Brendan’s Kodak, then left the house and crossed the street. Although Mr Jordan’s chair was still on the pavement he was gone. Dixie knocked on the open front door.
‘Mr Jordan?’
When he came out it seemed to Dixie that he didn’t recognise her. She hadn’t been up this close to him since a couple of Christmas Eves ago when she’d brought him a small Christmas cake that she’d bought in Tesco. Up close now, she could see specks of hardened food on the front of his jacket.
‘Mr Jordan – it’s me, Dixie Peyton.’
He just stared at her.
‘I’ve never – Mr Jordan, it’s just that things are a bit tight at the moment. I’m not asking – it’s just, would you like to buy a camera?’
He looked at the Kodak she held out.
‘It’s a good one,’ she said.
Push him to fifty, eighty – not worth a fraction of that, but how could he know?
Mr Jordan said, ‘I don’t – I haven’t taken a picture – not since—’
‘Mr Jordan, I – please, I really—’
She stopped.
It was like talking to a fucking lamp-post. She looked past him, down the hall to his kitchen, where she could see a saucepan on the stove, the lid bobbing as steam escaped.
Has to be something in his house worth real money.
The only thing that made sense was to just walk past him, into the house, have a look around –
fuck him –
see what there was to be taken. Old people like that – all those years to accumulate stuff – and if he tried to stop her, that wouldn’t be a problem. Besides, once she got the money she needed she’d be long gone and he could tell the police and it wouldn’t matter. Anything she got, he was probably insured, he’d get it back.
Mr Jordan was still staring at Dixie. His right arm was crossed over his chest, the left hanging down by his side, nothing below the cuff of the sleeve. His mouth was open, his eyes wide and fixed and it suddenly occurred to Dixie that it wasn’t that he hadn’t recognised her. He was terrified.
‘I’ll be, later,’ he said, ‘my pension – maybe—’
‘Listen, Mr Jordan – I’m not – I’m OK, it’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure?’ The concern in the words was contradicted by the relief on his face.
For a moment, Dixie felt a surge of desperation –
just fucking do it
–
what’s he going to do?
One thump in the face and he’d be – go in, reef the place – there has to be—
Dixie turned and walked back across the road.
What was left of the ravioli was lukewarm.
Shelley?
Shelley had bugger-all to spare. Shelley was the kind of friend you got drunk or stoned with, told secrets to and in their teens she and Dixie had shared clothes, boyfriends and whatever money they had.
No matter what fix Shelley Hogan got herself into, down through the years, Dixie never had a doubt that her friend would wriggle out of it. Right now, though, there was little room to manoeuvre. Her husband had left Shelley with two kids and his heroin connection when he got a five-year sentence for armed robbery. Shelley had divorced him and her parents were looking after the kids until she got her shit together. These days she was living in Sunnyfield Apartments, a city-centre building east of O’Connell Street. She had the use of the place rent-free from the owner, a man named Robbie, with whom she’d had an on-off thing over the previous eighteen months. Robbie was her ex-husband’s drug connection. He gave Shelley a discount on whatever she wanted – cocaine, cannabis, mostly heroin.
‘I’m using it,’ she told Dixie, ‘it’s not using me. I need it to get through a bad patch. Soon as I deal with this, I’ll pull it all together again.’
Dixie had no doubt that was true. Shelley was as tough as stone. One of her other friends had nicknamed her Tight Corners because of the number of scrapes she’d got herself into and out of. These days, as though dispensing with unnecessary frivolity, Shelley had her hair cut tight and dyed deep black. Whatever her own problems, she never turned down Dixie’s appeals for help. Money, though, wasn’t something she could spare. Most of the money Shelley got her hands on went straight into the hole in her arm.
Three hundred. Jesus, there were times when Owen was flush and we’d spend that in an evening.
The noise at the door wasn’t someone knocking to let her know they were outside. It sounded like someone had punched the door, twice. Then someone put a finger on the buzzer and kept it there.
The first thing Dixie thought was that the old bastard across the road had called the police.
I did nothing.
When she opened the door there were two men outside – she knew one of them, Matty Butler – and the younger one was already walking into the hallway, passing her, raising a single finger in warning, then taking the stairs two at a time.
Matty didn’t raise his voice – he just stood in front of Dixie, one hand flat against the wall to the right of her head, his lips inches from her face when he said, ‘Where is he?’
Matty Butler could see that the bitch was close to tears. All choked up. Not worth a fuck. He walked past her, stuck his head into the front room, then went into the kitchen. No one.
He could hear young Todd making noise upstairs. There was a loud crash as something got turned over. Todd liked to throw his weight around. No finesse. But that was OK sometimes, when an impression needed to be made.
Todd was making a lot of noise coming down the stairs and Matty went back out into the hall just in time to see the bitch running out the front door.
‘Will I fetch her back?’ Todd asked.
Matty shook his head. He went back into the kitchen, pulled out a couple of drawers, had a look at a noticeboard on the wall in a corner. There was a coupon for the neighbourhood Apache Pizza pinned to the board, a printed recipe for pancakes, a flyer for a local taxi firm and a little calendar announcing the dates of the monthly recycling collection. No scribbled notes, nothing like that on the small kitchen counter, nothing on the telephone table in the hall.
On his way back towards the front door, Matty saw that Todd was standing in the middle of the front room, unzipping his fly. Todd liked to piss on things.
‘Leave it,’ Matty said. ‘Come on. Places to go.’
As he got into the car Matty had his mobile to his ear. He heard Lar Mackendrick pick up and he said, ‘Me.’
‘Yeah?’
‘No sign of him.’
22
Jesus.
Matty Butler.
Has to be Lar.
They want Brendan.
They found out.
Dixie knows about big brothers. Her brother Fiachra came home twice to ask her to move to London. He’s fitting out apartments over there, he says, taking them over from builders, making them ready for the clients to move in. Good money.
‘I can get you a place, a bit of work, you’ll love it over there.’
Should have gone then.
Shaking her head, telling Fiachra
no
– this is where she belongs, she’d drown in a sea of strangers. Fiachra worried. ‘You know where I am.’
Brendan Peyton is Owen’s big brother. Not the same thing. A moocher. Chubby and cheerless. ‘It’s just that he’s shy,’ Owen used to say. ‘He has a good heart.’ Dixie thinks that’s probably true but she doesn’t really care.
Lar Mackendrick takes her aside at Owen’s funeral.
‘Good lad, Owen, the very best. I’m really sorry.’ He calls around to the flat three days later and she makes him tea and he says this and that and when he’s leaving he gives her an envelope containing five grand.
Two years later, a few bills overdue, Christopher’s shoes too tight, Dixie goes visiting.
When Lar shakes his head she asks him again, begs him this time, and his face flares. ‘I mean, fair is fair. Coming here like this, you’re taking advantage.’ He leans forward and says, ‘Jesus, woman – some fucking nerve – I mean, I did the right thing when your fella died, right?’
‘You were great, Lar, but the funeral, by the time I paid – Owen died doing a job for you, don’t forget that—’
And he bares his teeth. ‘Owen went into a ditch with two dozen twenty-eight-inch television sets in the back of my van, cost me a fucking fortune. Did I make a big deal of that? Did I?’
‘Please, Lar.’
But he’s shaking his head like he can’t believe the hard neck.
Paying back an overdue loan, a cup of coffee for lunch, there are weeks when it’s about choosing what to skimp on. Dixie prowls the bargain bins at Penney’s and keeps an eye on the
Reduced to Clear
shelves in Tesco. She haunts the pound shops for Christopher’s toys, has the Santa stuff bought and stored away by September.
Maura Holt – Dixie knows her from school; they had their first cigarette together and though Dixie didn’t take to the fags Maura is up to twenty a day. Maura tells her about the butcher who sells white mince. ‘Cheapest minced beef you can get, lots of fat in it – it’s not really white, but you know what I mean, and it tastes OK if you don’t spare the chilli powder.’
When Christopher is three, Shelley Hogan takes him for two mornings a week and Dixie gets a few hours on the checkout at a Spar. She finishes her health-and-fitness course and gets her diploma, then she seeks out Obi-Wan Kenobi from the fitness classes. She could really do with a few hours’ work a week.
‘You know I know my stuff.’
‘Dixie—’ and it’s all over his face, the fear of association with the gangster’s widow and she wants to spit but her mouth is too dry.
‘Don’t be bloody mad,’ Shelley says that evening. But Dixie goes to Obi-Wan’s house, throws cans of beer at the window and the police come and it’s all over the neighbourhood and that’s how she loses the job at Spar.
It just happens, Dixie and Brendan. On the first night Brendan stays over, Dixie tiptoeing over to Christopher’s bed to check he’s asleep, then back to the bed where Brendan is waiting, his eyes wide and urgent.
She and Christopher have been living in a one-room kip. Sometimes when she’s alone Dixie notices that she’s talking to herself, telling herself what happened today, what she’s got to do tomorrow, how she feels about something, what she hopes might happen. She keeps the radio on, listens to music she doesn’t like and discussions of things she doesn’t care about. When she switches off the radio the silence is worse.
The best thing about Brendan staying over is the mornings, when they’re getting dressed and Brendan’s in good humour and they’re chatting about nothing much. Sometimes Dixie catches herself laughing out loud.
Brendan can be funny in a soft, sad way. Owen was right about his older brother. It’s Brendan’s shyness that makes him seem dour, though sometimes he’s just moody. After that first night he stays over a couple of times a week and when he asks her two months later to move into his place she can’t think why not.
A couple of times a week the kid next door babysits and Dixie and Brendan go to the pub or the cinema. Dixie could do without either, but Brendan likes them to do things as a couple.
They never mention Owen.
Brendan calls her ‘darling’ from the beginning and the word sits awkwardly on his lips. It’s like he chose it because he thinks it’s the right word to use to express something that he doesn’t feel but wants to.
There’s a lot of that about Brendan – awkward affection, a hug that never quite connects, always an elbow or a shoulder or a misplaced knee and the embrace is diminished.
Brendan does an occasional delivery job for Lar Mackendrick and some others in the same kind of business, gets regular work shifting stuff from one place to another and things are looking up so they rent the house on Portmahon Terrace.
One evening, while they’re watching
EastEnders
, Brendan goes upstairs and when he comes down he sits on the edge of the sofa, opening a wrap. He looks across at Dixie with pride and nervousness in his face.
That stuff hasn’t once crossed Dixie’s mind in all the time since Owen died. Now, seeing it, she feels the elation surge inside her, as if she’s come across an old friend.
‘Only now and then,’ Brendan says, ‘it just – you know—’
Dixie smiles and says nothing.
When Brendan is pulled in on suspicion of assault, the police come with a warrant and mess the place up. One of the coppers finds his stash at the back of the cutlery drawer. ‘What have we got here?’

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