Dark Times in the City (15 page)

So, the tart in the black dress, she’s not Callaghan’s ride, she’s spreading for the prat in the rugby shirt. The blonde, maybe she’s Callaghan’s ride
.

Karl Prowse waited another half-hour and nobody else came visiting. He left the Toledo and when he came back two minutes later he had the street address and number of the house, plus the licence-plate numbers of the Nissan, the Saab and the visitors’ Mercedes. He called Lar Mackendrick and gave him the info. Lar repeated each number as he wrote it down.

‘Dinner party,’ he said.

‘May as well leave them to it, then,’ Karl said.

‘You have time to nip off, get something to eat. We’ve nothing to get a handle on the blonde woman. Better follow her home.’

‘Are you sure that’s—’

Lar Mackendrick’s tone was amiable. ‘I know you need your beauty sleep, but it’s best to leave nothing to chance.’

Just what I need
.

Maybe, what – two, three hours – maybe more – scratching my balls in a cold car, waiting for nothing to happen
.

Hannah smiled and said, ‘Come and help me in the kitchen.’ Danny Callaghan said okay and they left the other four chatting in the living room. The kitchen was brushed steel and matt-black surfaces. Hannah took down half a dozen dinner plates, then raised the lid on a saucepan, had a quick glance inside and stirred the contents. When she turned to Danny she was smiling and she said, ‘I’m
not
!’

He stared in silence.

‘Honestly, I’m
not
matchmaking.’

‘A bore and his wife, plus you and Leon. Then what’s-her-name and me.’

‘Her name is Alex and you can stop worrying. Her only ambitions
involve law, money and property. Besides, if she’s partial to the occasional shag, what’s your problem?’

‘It feels odd – my ex-wife pimping for me.’

‘Danny.’

Callaghan closed his eyes and tilted his head back.

‘I’m sorry.’

Her voice softened. ‘Take it easy. We eat, we drink, we chat – nothing depends on it. A pleasant evening goes by. Okay, it’s not the glamorous life you’re used to, but—’ She took his hand. ‘Hey, come on, you’re entitled to live a little.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And stop saying you’re sorry.’

She held him for a moment in a hug. As Callaghan stepped back from the embrace he nodded towards the living room and said, in a mock whisper, ‘Tough going in there, isn’t it?’

‘Ah, Malcolm’s a little pet.’

‘He’s a bore.’

Malcolm Croke was a former adviser to ministers in four separate governments, over a period of a couple of decades. He was a man once trim and he now carried his excess weight uncomfortably. Telling his stories of ministerial vanity and backstage backstabbing, he obviously enjoyed his own performance.

‘He may be tedious, but Malcolm’s one of the pillars.’

‘He must be retired.’

‘Formally – but he’s been snapped up by the boards of one major bank and three mid-sized companies, including Leon’s.’

‘Hotshot?’

‘Malcolm knows things, he knows people. People hire Malcolm because they know that when you have Malcolm on your side you’re halfway towards closing whatever deal you’re after.’

Callaghan paused a moment, then he said, ‘What does he know about me?’

Hannah laughed. ‘Good God, you don’t think Malcolm has
the least interest in anyone below the rank of managing director?’

Callaghan remembered Croke’s weak smile and distant nod when Hannah introduced them.

‘He’s not suddenly going to ask me to give him the low-down on life behind bars?’

‘Can you imagine Malcolm asking anyone else to take centre stage?’

‘And Alex?’

‘Alex is my friend, we’ve known each other for years, and she knows my background, so she knows yours. She’s a lawyer – she takes people as she finds them.’

Callaghan nodded.

Hannah said, ‘No time for chat – I’ve guests to feed.’ She lifted a pan off the stove and shook it, took the lid off and began to transfer the rice into a large serving bowl.

‘You’ve picked up some domestic skills.’

‘Who’s got time for cooking, these days? The Butler’s Pantry – they cook the stuff, you heat it up – twenty minutes later you’re taking bows.’

Alex volunteered to pour the coffee. Callaghan offered to help. They were at the sideboard at the end of the dining room. Around the dining table, Hannah was relaxing, Leon and Malcolm Croke’s wife were chuckling dutifully at another of Croke’s anecdotes – this one about a hair-wrenching fight between a minister’s wife and his girlfriend.

Alex said, ‘It’s six months since I last met Malcolm, and the stories are the same, word for word.’

‘Hannah says he’s a big shot.’

Alex nodded. ‘Big shot, Irish style. The bottom line on Malcolm is that he’s got a little black book of private phone numbers, and
for a price he’ll make a call to a helpful politician or a senior civil servant. I’ve seen him work his magic for a couple of my clients and they say he’s worth every cent.’

‘You do mostly corporate work?’

‘It’s where the money is.’

Back at the table, Hannah’s husband was busy squeezing a word in. Leon was wearing his green Ireland rugby shirt, somewhat tight on his beefy frame. ‘And, if it was up to that sort, this country would still be all about moral victories and the politics of envy.’

‘Precisely,’ Malcolm Croke said. He grunted thanks to Alex as she handed him a coffee. ‘Whether acknowledged or not, exclusion has always been an indispensable element of democracy. The Greeks and the Romans understood that – these days, they’d be hauled up before a commission for political correctness. But it was squabbles about widening the democratic base that weakened them.’ He tentatively sipped at his coffee, then left it to cool on a side table. ‘These days, political democracy is subject to the electoral whims of every brain-dead gobshite, which is what cripples us. How did Yeats put it? “The bitter faces, the vinegar-heavy sponge” – that man knew his Ireland.’

‘No more than yourself, Malcolm,’ Leon said.

‘Politicians looking over their shoulders at the rabble – that’s what makes it hard to take the kind of tough decisions that a recession demands.’ Croke folded his arms, then unfolded them, as though he wasn’t comfortable having them resting on his belly. ‘Political democracy – the begrudgers are welcome to it, it’s economic power that matters. Always has done, always will.’ He raised one hand, like a magician flourishing a wand. ‘As long as that remains unsoiled by the grubby fingers of the hoi polloi—’ And he smiled.

Danny Callaghan looked across at Hannah, who was gazing at Malcolm Croke like he was her favourite uncle.

*

When he took a break from watching the house, Karl Prowse found a café ten minutes’ drive away that did a nice curry and chips. On his way back to the car he stopped at a Centra shop. Used to be that, most of these shops, the owners worked the place all day. In the evenings, their sons and daughters did a couple of hours for pocket money, and they didn’t bother hiding their resentment. Carefully arranged petulant expressions let you know that this wasn’t the kind of work they were born to do.

Spoiled brats. The way Karl Prowse saw it, the one good thing about the waves of immigrants over the past few years was that you didn’t get so many stroppy Irish bastards behind the counter. Not that the stroppy Asian bastards were much of an improvement – though they probably cost less than the pocket money the sons and daughters were paid. The tall Chink behind the counter in the Centra scanned Karl’s twenty Silk Cut and the can of Coke, his face blank, like in his head he was dreaming of a rice sandwich. Didn’t even say thanks, just took the money and gave the change and looked over Karl’s shoulder at the next customer, like Karl didn’t exist.

Fuck you, too, Charlie Chan
.

Karl parked down the street from the house he was watching. Nothing seemed to have changed. The Merc still there, the two cars in the driveway, Danny Callaghan’s black Hyundai. Karl lit up a Silk Cut and lowered the window an inch.

Danny Callaghan was woken by the sound of the shower. When Alex came out of the bathroom she was wearing a pair of denim jeans and a bra. She pulled on a light brown roll-neck sweater and gave him a smile.

‘Morning.’

‘You going somewhere?’

‘Work – it’s almost ten o’clock.’

‘It’s Sunday morning.’

She grinned. ‘Business doesn’t take a day off. I’ve got a couple of clients who have a big meeting coming up tomorrow and they need to be prepped.’

‘Sundays – you don’t lie on, have a long breakfast, listen to the radio, read the Sunday papers?’

She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I don’t read newspapers, unless they’re writing about my clients. I don’t listen to the radio, too much chatter. And I don’t have a television, it rots the brain.’

‘How do you know what’s happening in the world?’

‘What affects me, I know about. The rest – why do I need to know about wars and famines and elections and celebrity nonentities?’

The apartment was an upmarket version of Danny Callaghan’s own place. Slightly bigger, with a better finish. More ornate skirting boards and architraves, a better quality of light fittings. The furnishings all had the feel of money. The difference in locations meant that Alex’s place was likely four times the price, but the two flats offered the same functional qualities – a place to keep clothes and belongings, a place to eat, a place to park your body at night.

Sipping coffee as the dinner party shuffled to an end, Hannah had said, ‘You’ll give Alex a lift, won’t you – she lives down by the docks?’

Alex made a perfunctory protest, saying she’d have no problem getting a taxi. Callaghan said it was no trouble, he was heading across the river anyway, it was practically on his way.

Alex lived on the fifth floor of an apartment block fronting onto the Liffey, across and down the river from the financial centre. When Callaghan stopped the car she gave him a smile, then she leaned across him and opened his door. Callaghan waited a moment, then he switched off the engine.

When they were still half-clothed, Alex pulled away, opened a bedside drawer and took out a small box made of dark wood. She opened the lid and took out a spoon, a credit card and a short yellow plastic straw. She took a small packet of white powder from the box and used the spoon to sprinkle some onto the top of the bedside table. She used the credit card to chop the coke into lines, and the straw to snort it. When she offered him the straw Callaghan smiled and shook his head. She put everything back into the wooden box before shedding the rest of her clothes and getting back onto the bed. A minute later, she fetched a condom from the same drawer.

The sex was urgent and, on her part, loud, and afterwards Callaghan lay quietly while she did something gentle with the hair above his left ear.

After a minute, she said, ‘You’ve got a terrific relationship with Hannah.’

Callaghan gave a non-committal tilt of the head.

‘I think you’ve still got a thing for her.’

Callaghan said, ‘It’s not like that. We’re good friends.’

‘Not even a teensy-weensy crush?’

‘We’re friends.’

‘She left you, right? When you were in prison?’

‘No, we—’ Callaghan felt uneasy talking about Hannah. ‘It’s more complicated.’

‘How so?’

Callaghan felt he was being cross-examined. He said, ‘It’s all a long time ago.’

At the time he’d killed Big Brendan Tucker, the marriage was uneasy. Perhaps things would have been okay if they’d kept their home and work lives separate, but Hannah – her own print shop in its infancy – was increasingly involved in Callaghan’s cabinet-making business. She sought out and won contracts for apartment fit-outs and multiple installations on new housing estates. Callaghan took on a staff of three to make units, and a separate staff to fit them. The business was thriving and it wasn’t what Danny Callaghan wanted to do. Increasingly, he felt like he was one part of an unfamiliar mechanism.

‘I make things,’ he explained to Hannah. ‘I fit them. I make a good living at it, and I like all of that. The other thing I like is that all over this city there’s stuff that I made, handsome stuff, stuff that people use every day. It’s not curing cancer, but it’s what I want to do. And what’s happening now – I spend less time, and soon it’ll be no time, doing what I want to do.’

Hannah didn’t understand how anyone could be so illogical. ‘Nothing stands still – expand or contract – without a business plan you’ll end up no more than an employee.’

‘So? That’s a good thing to be, if you’re doing what you want to do. Anyway, the way it’s going, I
am
turning into an employee – yours.’

She thought at first that it was resentment against her having a significant say in his work. It took a while – and long after the divorce – before they realised there was no right or wrong involved, just a different way of seeing things.