The inner-city blocks of flats that Lar Mackendrick had known when he was young had had the smell of piss in the hallways. Teenage fuckers, they’d spend hours running themselves ragged kicking a football around, but expect them to walk twenty yards to their homes to use the jacks – why bother when there was a handy stairwell to piss in?
This place, this was more like it. The finish wasn’t great, the materials were second-rate, the stairway was narrow, but it was clean. No graffiti. No smell of piss. Bit upmarket for the likes of Dixie Peyton and her mates.
Lar decided not to take the lift. By the time he got to the third floor he felt pleased with himself. The old days, he’d have been puffing before he got up to the first landing. Now, on his way to the fourth, he was keeping a steady pace. He could hear the flat tin box rattling in his pocket with every step.
She took ages to answer his ring.
When Dixie Peyton eventually opened the door Lar Mackendrick hit her in the face with his gloved fist and she fell backwards and slammed into the wall behind her. Lar stepped forward and held her upright against the wall. She was out of it, stunned by the blow, and halfway to heaven from whatever shit she’d been doing.
Lar let her slide down the wall, guiding her slowly. He put one hand under her head so that it didn’t come down hard on the cork-tiled floor.
Lar closed the door and hurried down the short hallway to the small living room. There was a kind of kitchen in a nook and two bedrooms, all tiny and empty. The place was untidy and smelled of overcooked food. On a small table beside an armchair there was a candle and a blackened square of tinfoil.
Lar stood there for a minute, looking around him. Then he went out to the hallway and held Dixie under her shoulders and dragged her inside. He lifted her into the armchair.
She said, ‘Lar.’ Her eyes were open.
Poor dumb bitch. Out of it.
Lar took a moment to rate her. From the first time he saw her he’d reckoned Owen’s bird was a looker, and even now she was tasty enough in the skirt and blouse she was wearing, her knees slightly apart. Pity she’d let herself go.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ he said. ‘You’re all right.’ He took the flat tin box from his pocket.
Dixie Peyton raised an arm. Weak as a windblown leaf, her hand brushed against Lar Mackendrick’s shoulder, then hung there loosely in mid-air. Lar was holding up a syringe, studying it. He looked down at Dixie and saw her unfocused gaze drift towards the syringe. Her voice, when she spoke, was ragged.
‘No, no, please, no.’
‘It’s OK,’ Lar Mackendrick said. He flicked a fingernail against the syringe, as he’d seen junkies do, and the clear liquid shook. Something to do with dislodging air bubbles.
‘Please,’ said Dixie Peyton. There were tears on her cheeks and she said it again, this time in a sobbing voice that divided the word into several syllables.
‘It’s OK, Dixie, it’s OK. It’s for the best.’
‘Oh, please.’ Snot bubbled at one nostril. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need. I know how it is, you were in a corner.’ Lar looked from the syringe to Dixie’s face. ‘Someone gets into a corner, they have to do what they can to help themselves. I don’t blame you, Dixie. It’s just, you had a choice. And you made it. And what it is, we all have to take responsibility for our actions. Otherwise—’
Lar Mackendrick’s voice was low, gentle. He bent over so that his lips were almost touching Dixie’s ear. ‘The way to look at it – this is all there is for you, now. There’s nothing left. No use to the cops any more. Nothing left except more of this. Hanging on from one fix to the next. This is all you have to look forward to, Dixie.’
The way Lar Mackendrick saw it, it wasn’t like he was taking anything away from Dixie Peyton. A junkie is something that screams, begs, vomits when it can’t get the drugs together. It’s either that or it manages to get hold of the gear and it gets turned into a lump of nothing that ends up lying there, pissing itself because it can’t be bothered to get up and find the jacks.
And a thing like that, when it knows things about people, it’s dangerous and better tidied away.
Lar Mackendrick’s voice became little more than a whisper. ‘It’s no life, Dixie.’
The stuff in the syringe, Matty had assured him that it was uncut. It would take Dixie higher than she’d ever been, past the clouds, around the stars and right through the gates of heaven. Lar wondered if, as she went, her vacant eyes would struggle to make a connection with anything real.
You’re out of it, then it all just stops, you’re gone – not the worst way to go.
He wanted to watch her eyes as she went. He’d watch a while, as long as it didn’t drag on.
Dixie Peyton’s right hand shot out and grabbed the syringe, the fist closing around it, the needle digging into her palm. It was as though she concentrated all the strength left in her body into that one sudden gesture. Her hand shook as it clung to the syringe and Lar’s fingers, her arm rigid.
Lar Mackendrick reached for Dixie’s hand and began to prise open her fingers. Dixie spat once, and again. Some of the spittle reached the front of Lar Mackendrick’s shirt. He punched Dixie in the face and watched her head snap back and her hand let go of the syringe.
Lar Mackendrick, his breath now a little wheezy, said, ‘Ah, Dixie.’
Dixie gave a small sob.
The syringe lay on the floor, bent near the top, useless.
Lar made a disgusted sound. He went into the little kitchen and opened a couple of cabinet doors, then slammed them shut. He bent down and opened a cupboard door under the sink. He pulled out a tool box.
When Lar returned to the living room he was carrying a hammer. Dixie was standing, moving unsteadily towards the door that led to the hallway. Lar led her back to the armchair and gently pushed her down. He knelt beside Dixie and made the sign of the cross.
‘Oh my God I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.’ His voice was low, gentle, and before he finished the Act of Contrition he saw that Dixie’s lips were silently praying along with him.
He put down the hammer and reached for a yellow jacket that was draped over the back of a nearby chair.
Dixie made a noise, a long, liquid sniffle. Then she whispered, ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ then she couldn’t continue.
Lar Mackendrick said, ‘As it was in the beginning—’
Dixie Peyton’s eyes were closed now. She drew a deep breath and said, ‘—is now and ever shall be,’ her voice barely there, ‘world without end, amen.’
Lar Mackendrick said, ‘Amen.’ He draped the jacket over Dixie’s head, picked up the hammer and hit the shrouded shape of the head very hard, several times. He paused. Then he did it again and again until he felt something give way under the yellow jacket. He went over and stood by the window and after a while he noticed that he was breathing hard.
Down below, two middle-aged men were taking their time crossing the inner courtyard. One of them, his head thrown back, was passionately singing a song that Lar could barely hear and didn’t recognise. His friend was keeping time with invisible drumsticks.
Lar went back and stood beside the armchair, looking down at Dixie. There was a blossom of blood coming through the yellow jacket. Lar lifted a corner. He looked at the mess underneath for just a moment, then let the jacket fall back. He looked down at his clothes.
No blood.
He checked around the room. There was nothing to worry about.
He went out into the hallway and very slowly opened the apartment door just a crack. No one in the corridor. He opened the door wide and listened. No sounds from any of the neighbouring apartments. He looked down and saw that he was still holding the hammer. He went back into the living room and put the weapon down carefully on the floor. He stared for a few moments at the heap that was Dixie Peyton, then he went back down the hallway. He went out and pulled the door shut behind him. It closed with a soft, resigned
click
.
*
It’s too late now.
Detective Inspector Harry Synnott looked at his watch. How long since Lar Mackendrick went in?
How long did it take to make the decision, my hand on the handle of the car door, the inside of my head roaring with yes and no and what if—
Lar inside, taking the lift or the stairs.
Five seconds, ten, thirty.
Every second that passed, Lar was another few feet closer to Shelley Hogan’s flat.
Watching Lar’s two thugs in the front of the Peugeot.
When they saw Synnott get out of the car would they recognise him and rush to Lar’s aid? Maybe they’d figure there was no percentage in that, maybe they’d just call Lar on his mobile and warn him?
If I call it in, get back-up—
And cutting across all this – the aftermath. The questions.
Think it through.
Even if we finesse this, get Dixie to England, what’re the chances she won’t fuck up?
Stand back.
See things as they are.
Two evils.
The lesser.
It means something, in the greater scheme of things.
Synnott made a brief involuntary noise.
What I do means something.
His hand relaxing on the door handle.
Feeling a surge inside his chest, realising the brief wail that filled the inside of the car came from his own lips. Then quiet.
Body slackening, yielding to the consequences of the decision made.
Synnott stared down at his knees, wishing away this moment, this hour, this day, this life. It was a while before he lifted his gaze to watch the entrance to the building, waiting for Lar Mackendrick to come out, his thoughts floating, each one disconnected from the one before.
No.
Don’t try to justify it.
Jesus Mary.
Can’t be justified.
Elbow on the steering wheel, fingertips rigid against his temple.
Just the way it has to be, that’s all.
It took a while, then Lar came out and Harry Synnott released a long, slow, loud sigh. He felt like he’d been holding his breath for an hour.
Lar didn’t look one way or the other, just walked quickly down the street. As he neared the black Peugeot the left rear door swung open and Harry Synnott could hear the engine start. As Lar closed the door the Peugeot moved off and screeched into an immediate U-turn, the nose of the car swinging around. Synnott slouched down in his car seat, his legs twisted in under the dash, knees against the wheel, his head below window level. He heard the rush of the Peugeot as it accelerated past him back towards Gardiner Street and he didn’t sit up straight for at least a minute.
Too late now.
49
Garda Joe Mills moved away from the front of the pub. The smokers standing around the entrance were stinking up the air. He’d come outside because the noise was relentless, the crowd jabbering, the big-screen television blaring a replay of a two-month old football match. The sergeant who’d accompanied him to Dublin had linked up for a drinking session with two former colleagues who were now based in the city. Mills had been invited because the sergeant didn’t want to appear unfriendly, and he’d gone along for the same reason. After almost two hours of strangers’ nostalgic anecdotes he needed a break. He said he was going outside for some air.
Only once did the policemen’s chatter touch on the episode that had brought Joe Mills to Dublin. One of the Dublin officers asked about this bastard that Joe Mills had arrested in Galway, the murderer the rumours were about. Was it true he’d got some Dublin detective in the shit? Mills said something non-committal about cookies crumbling. The Dublin officer nodded at Mills and said, ‘All the same, next time you meet some guy on a rooftop, just give him a shove, right?’
The others laughed loudly and Joe Mills smiled. After a while, one of the Dublin pair stood up to order a round but Mills pointed to his half-full pint and said he was OK.
Outside now, three young women, all dressed in short skirts and abbreviated tops, came up the narrow cobblestoned street. One of them, clutching a mobile and a small handbag in one hand, a glass of something in the other, looked at Mills, pursed her lips and discharged an inept wolf whistle. The two others shimmied and made lecherous noises and all three dissolved in laughter. Mills grinned and watched them repeat the gestures to other men as they moved on up the crowded street. Two young men responded with howls and rutting motions, then giggled as they moved on, neither of them able to resist a lingering glance back at the women.
It wasn’t the Temple Bar that Mills knew from the year he’d lived in Dublin. And all the better for it. The lights and the sound and the bustle and the possibilities they held out made him wish he was a few years younger.