The Rage (5 page)

Phil went into his house now, and came out a moment later with a yellow duster and a tin of something. He began to work patiently on the brass knocker, bringing up the shine.

What happened was the oddest thing ever. The gloves, then the driver locking the car, his friend going to the front of the car, the driver to the back, and they both hunkered down and began working on something. She could see only the one at the back, and just the top of the other man’s head. Within seconds they stood up and walked away, down the street, past the Spar shop, then across onto the main road. And a day later the car was still sitting there outside Maura’s house.

This wasn’t right.

Ought to do something.

And maybe make a fuss over nothing. The old woman making a commotion over something that ordinary people – real people with real lives – would take for granted.

Two men park a car – maybe they didn’t know the area, they weren’t sure where the place was they were visiting, so they park somewhere, go off on foot to find the place they’re looking for. And there’s a reason, some reason, why they’re too busy to come back. Perhaps they drove away when she was asleep, came back before she got up, parked in the same spot.

Much as she wanted to believe that, it didn’t seem likely.

But it was wrong to simply presume they were up to something sinful.

No good comes of jumping to conclusions.

It was like the newspaper story she read about people who saw a Muslim man praying before he got on an airplane and they created a commotion, got the flight delayed and the Muslim taken off, so he missed his flight while they made sure he wasn’t a hijacker. Thirty years back, people in England heard an Irish accent, the first thing they thought of was maybe this is a bomber. She knew a priest – this was half a lifetime ago – who was pulled in by the police when he got off the boat at Holyhead, held for two days. No good comes of thinking the worst of people.

Why couldn’t two men arriving in the same car have some reason that required them both to wear plastic gloves?

Maura Coady had been standing at the window for the best part of an hour this morning, hoping the men would come back, drive away. She shouldn’t let another day pass without doing something. If the men had stolen the car, they could come back at any time, drive it away, maybe paint it, sell it – whoever owned it would never see it again.

She forced herself to move away from the window. She stood at the kitchen sink for ten minutes, washing up. Then she made a cup of tea, sat at the kitchen table and opened her book. When she finished the tea she washed the cup and left it on the drainer. She went back to the front room. The dark green car was still there.

The jury was removed from the courtroom while the defence put forward a motion to have the assault case thrown out. As the babble continued, Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey wanted to let his mind drift, but professional habits are demanding. Stay on top of the facts even through the boring bits and you’re ready for anything. He found himself parsing the defence lawyer’s argument, anticipating the prosecution’s responses. The conventions of the courtroom insisted on such jousts, in which arguments assumed a logic of their own, anchored in legal precedents and obscure judgements. Sometimes the whole thing separated completely from the facts of the case and drifted off into the upper atmosphere of legal reasoning. With each sentence, the case drifted further from the truth – that two arrogant idiots took a walloping from two overbearing policemen. Courtroom custom demanded that they all pretend that this was about matters of great legal significance.

‘In that case,’ the judge said, glancing at the clock at the back of the court, ‘I’ll adjourn until tomorrow morning, at which point I’ll rule on the application.’

‘You won’t need me – tomorrow morning?’ Tidey asked Mopey Dick.

The lawyer made a face. ‘I really think – given the way this has gone – it might be best, just in case, if you make yourself available.’

Tidey nodded. Another day on the front line in the war on crime.

The assistant in the shoe shop said, ‘Please,’ and Vincent Naylor said, ‘Money.’

It was a small shop, little more than a brightly lit rectangle. Cream walls, chrome and crystal retail decorations, walnut chairs and footstools. Tasteful lighting illuminated carefully positioned glass shelves on which a sparse assortment of women’s shoes was stylishly displayed. Vincent knew nothing about women’s shoes, but he’d bet the stuff in here came with cute little labels that jacked the price up big time. He’d bet the people who owned this place never said they owned a shoe shop – they’d call it a footwear boutique. They wouldn’t have customers, they’d have clientele. And they’d charge through the nose for the freedom of shopping away from the riff-raff. Shop like this, not up to paying top rents, but discreetly advertised and close enough to Grafton Street so the right people would be able to find it. Not a lot of trade, but every sale would be at a tidy price.

For Vincent, the problem with a place like this was that most purchases would involve credit cards. Still, there was bound to be a bit of cash on the premises. And, to get his hands on it, just this tasty little bird to go through.

He gestured towards the back of the shop, where a cash register stood on a curved waist-high counter.

‘Get the money.’

Vincent made his voice come out low, harsh, like he was barely holding himself together. He could see the tremor in her hands.
Jesus, she was something
.

Maybe a couple of years younger than Vincent, which would make her about twenty-four, something like that. A cool face with barely a hint of make-up, a permanently stuck-up kind of face. Short blonde hair drew attention to her long, slim neck. Loose silky dress, a lot of blue in it, coming down to just above her knees. Neat tits, not much showing. He liked that. Bare legs, going right up there. He could feel his hands sliding up the backs of her thighs. Pressing against her, her knees opening—

Which would be really stupid. A bit of money goes missing from a city centre shop – with all the things going on in the world, what’s the chances the cops will give a crap about that? Bend little missy over the counter and make a bit of a mess on her – and do it within a spit of Grafton Street – that’s when they haul out the heavy gang and start pumping up the overtime.

‘Money,’ he said again.

‘Please—’

Vincent was standing with his hooded face turned sideways on to the dinky little CCTV camera, high up on a side wall. He pointed towards the cash register. The woman backed away, until she was standing next to the counter. Vincent made his voice loud, abrupt. ‘
Give it!
’ The woman made a high-pitched
Ah
sound, her hand jerked in fear. It hit a small brown pencil cup and knocked it over, spilling a couple of biros and a long scissors to the floor.

She hurriedly opened the register and took out a thin wad of banknotes, left them down on the counter. She fiddled in the drawer and took out a handful of coins. Vincent shook his head.

‘Any more notes in there?’ he said.

The woman shook her head.

‘I check that and you’re lying,’ Vincent said, ‘you’ll never want to look in a mirror again.’

‘No, there’s – that’s all.’ She spoke quickly, her voice thin. She backed away as Vincent went to the counter and picked up the money. Three fifties, a lot more twenties and tens.

Vincent pointed at a door set into the back wall. ‘What’s in there?’

‘Shoes.’

‘You’ve got a handbag, a purse?’

She nodded.

‘In there?’

Another nod.

‘Show me.’

‘Please,’ she said.

‘Show me.’

Her legs were quivering, her hands too, as she went to the door and opened it.

‘No delay, get in there.’

As he followed her in he glanced back, out through the shop window. People passing, no sign of any interest. He closed the door behind him.

The walls of the back room were lined with shelves holding layers of shoeboxes. There was a short counter against a side wall, with a sink, an electric kettle and some mugs and glasses. The woman picked up her brown leather handbag and offered it to him.

‘Take out the purse, get out the money.’

She did as he said, putting several notes – at least two fifties – beside the kettle.

‘Hand it to me.’

It took her a moment to work up to it, then she picked up the money and extended it towards him. He stayed where he was and after a few seconds she stepped closer, hand outstretched with her offering. He stared at her face, forced her to make eye contact. Then he let her see that he was lowering his gaze to her breasts, to her hips and her legs, just for a moment, then back up. As he took the money with one hand, he reached out with the other, his palm cupping her hand. It felt soft, warm and promising, and it trembled.

Jesus, it would be just
—

Not on
.

Anything like that and this becomes more than an easy cash pickup and maybe he’s missed something along the way and it leads the cops to his door and he’s looking at serious time.

‘You see this?’ he said. He gestured towards his face.

She nodded.

‘You see this face?’

For a moment she was puzzled, then it clicked and she said, ‘No, I didn’t see your face.’

‘I could find you.’

‘Please.’

He let some silence run and watched her tremble.

‘Ten minutes before you call anyone.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll know.’

Her voice was barely there. ‘Yes.’

As he let go of her hand, his fingers brushed hers and he forced eye contact again. He held that for a moment, then he smiled. He turned and left the back room. Again, nothing happening outside on the street. He left the shop immediately, turned right and hurried away. Walking up a narrow lane, out of sight of any CCTV cameras, he took off the rain jacket, rolled it up and stuffed it into his inside pocket.

His hand touched the Tommy Tiernan DVD and he remembered tonight’s get-together with his mates. Something to look forward to.

William Dixon, known to his friends as Trixie, was feeding a succession of red-and-white jerseys into an industrial-strength washing machine. The walls of the small room were breeze blocks, almost all of the floor was covered with dusty, scuffed brown linoleum, layers of dirt worn into it. There was an old bicycle lying against a large, rusted tool chest, a ladder attached to hooks high on a wall. Shelves were laden with cardboard boxes, tins and tools and half-full jars, coils of wire and pieces of metal that might once have had a function. The room was cluttered in the way a room gets when it has no purpose except to hold all the things that don’t fit anywhere else.

‘This is a minimum-wage gig,’ Trixie said to Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey. ‘And I was trying to work out, the other day, what kind of money I earned when I was thieving. I reckon – allowing for the value of money all those years ago – I probably take home more, doing this.’ He coughed. ‘Mug’s game.’

Mostly Trixie’s history was shop burglaries, small change – only twice did he make the papers, each time no more than half a paragraph in the District Court reports. The
Herald
promoted him to the front page – this was twenty years back – after Trixie shimmied up a drainpipe and into the front bedroom of a burning house. THE HERO, the headline said over a picture of William ‘Trixie’ Dixon in a hospital bed. On his way home, after an unsuccessful expedition to liberate a few boxes of cigarettes from a local Centra, he saw smoke coming from an open window. After he roused a neighbour to call the fire brigade, he rang the doorbell of the burning house and began shouting. When there was no response, he went up the drainpipe, in through the window and came back out and down the drainpipe, a baby tucked inside his zipped jacket. A neighbour collected the kid, then Trixie went back up and did it again, this time sliding and groping his way to ground level, using both feet and one hand, the other arm clutching a two-year-old. By then, the brigade had arrived and they took the parents out. Trixie ended up with scorched lungs and a cough that occasionally still troubled him.

A uniformed Bob Tidey was one of the first Gardai on the scene, as Trixie was lifted into an ambulance. Tidey went to Beaumont Hospital later, where a nurse showed him the roll of housebreaking tools she’d found in a long inside pocket of Trixie’s jacket.

‘Isn’t there somewhere we could lose these?’ Tidey said. The nurse looked at him for a moment, then she took the tools away.

The Glencara GAA club, where Trixie had played as an under-21, stepped in when he was back on his feet and still fragile. A variety of things that would otherwise have been done by volunteers were cobbled together into a paying job. Looking after the hurling and football gear, a bit of bartending in the clubhouse, a bit of stewarding on match day.

When Trixie’s son Christy’s image turned up on a CCTV tape after a warehouse break-in, a couple of uniforms were sent to pick him up. Christy didn’t make a fuss. It was only when the uniforms began searching his flat that he got nervous, and when one of them came out of the bedroom carrying a .38 Ruger wrapped in a T-shirt, Christy came close to crying. He sat on the arm of his shabby two-seater sofa, his hands covering his face, and said, ‘Oh fuck,’ over and over.