Dark Times in the City (16 page)

When Callaghan was arrested all the bickering stopped and Hannah was at his side throughout the trial. A year into his sentence
Novak came on a visit, with a message from Hannah. A week later she came into the prison and they agreed to begin divorce proceedings. Two years before he was released, Hannah told him about Leon.

Alex said, ‘Do you think she still cares for you?’

Callaghan said, ‘We’ll always be friends.’ Reluctant to be drawn further into the conversation, he closed his eyes and after a while he heard Alex’s deep breathing.

Now she took a brown leather overcoat from a closet and put it on. She leaned over the bed and kissed him. ‘Make yourself that long, leisurely breakfast, okay? Pull the door to after you.’

He watched her go, doubting he’d ever see her again. Then, his mind clear and calm, he turned over and fell asleep.

After he’d had a shower, Callaghan made coffee and looked out across the river. The morning was sunny and cloudless, up to the left the glass office buildings were at their best against the blue sky. To the right, the docks, the multicoloured rows of containers, the cranes and the ships waiting for service.

There was a small bookshelf on the wall in front of the Apple Mac in the corner. Callaghan scanned the titles – legal textbooks and reports. The magazines stacked neatly on the floor beside the leather armchair were all
Vogue, Elle
or
Marie Claire
.

Feeling hungry, he checked the fridge and found one egg, a head of iceberg lettuce and three containers of Cully & Sully soup. He decided to walk up to the city centre to eat.

He washed the mug and the spoon and put them away and cleaned out the cafetière.

Nothing out of place in the tidy apartment. He had a vague memory of tossing his suede jacket onto a chair last night. He went to the bedroom and found the jacket hanging in a closet.

Standing there, jacket in hand, it was the LK he noticed first, the
small silver initials against the black leather of the briefcase on the floor of the closet. He threw his jacket on the bed and picked up the briefcase.

The same. No mistake
.

He’d seen it two months ago, when he’d had lunch with Hannah.

‘What do you think of it? They customise.’

She’d been to the gift shop across the street from her print shop, to get Leon a birthday present.

Callaghan had thought it was a bit tacky. The LK was attached to a short, wide strap, near the clasp. Callaghan had said, ‘He’ll love it.’

Now, although coincidence was unlikely, he opened the briefcase and thumbed through a couple of folders. There were several envelopes tucked into a pocket. He took out three of them. They were all addressed to Leon Kavanagh.
No coincidence
. On impulse, he put the briefcase on the floor and tore the envelopes and their contents in two, then dropped them back into the briefcase.

He knew immediately it was a silly thing to do and he didn’t care.

Leon’s grinning face.

‘Fancy meeting you here.’

It was in the Mint Bar, downstairs in the Westin Hotel in Westmoreland Street, five or six weeks earlier. The pub in Temple Bar in which Callaghan had been drinking had become too crowded, so he moved on to the Mint. Not much better. Fewer people, but louder. The bar’s hard surfaces, the bare walls and the stone floor, amplified the sound. Callaghan had already ordered his Jameson when he spotted Leon at a table on the far side of the bar. Leon was with a woman, big eyes, very thin, with streaked hair. Their heads were close and their smiles intimate. Just then, Leon looked up and saw Callaghan, who immediately took his drink to a table.

‘Didn’t think this was your kind of place.’

Leon was standing beside the table, looking down at Callaghan.
Big grin on his face. It was the first time Callaghan had met Leon without Hannah.

Leon said, ‘You come here a lot?’

Callaghan felt like he’d been caught doing something wrong. He had no idea why he should feel guilty, while Leon behaved as though there was nothing to worry about.

‘You’re not keeping an eye on me, I hope?’

His voice was light, his smile wide, but Callaghan felt like everything was going into a skid.

He knows
.

Half a dozen times since he’d got out of prison, Callaghan had gone to Hannah’s street, always in the evening or late at night, and parked his car near her house. Just sat there for perhaps an hour, sometimes a lot longer. Then he’d go home. It first happened a few weeks after he got out of prison. Callaghan woke in the middle of the night and lay there, trying to measure what it was he felt. He sat silently on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, eyes closed, palms each side of his head. Thoughts surfacing, then popping like bubbles. No sound in the Hive, no sounds from outside. It was as though the whole world had shut up shop and moved away while he slept. The emptiness was a massive physical presence inside his chest.

He’d been to Hannah’s house in the days after he got out, and now he dressed, went down to his car and drove to her street. After a while, the emptiness wasn’t there.

Looking up at Leon, thinking
He knows
, Callaghan felt as if the adults had discovered his dirty little secret. Then Leon was bending down. ‘This—’ and he jerked his head towards the skinny woman on the other side of the room ‘—is exactly what it seems like, okay?’ He winked.

Leon had more than a few drinks on him. Callaghan’s panic subsided. If Leon knew about Callaghan’s nocturnal visits he’d be blunt about it. He was letting Callaghan know what was expected.

Callaghan said, ‘None of my business.’

Leon’s smile was larger. ‘That’s right.’

Callaghan said nothing.

Leon said, ‘Nice to see you again.’ Then he left.

When Callaghan told Novak about the night-time visits to Hannah’s street, Novak said, ‘You’ll never get her back.’

Callaghan said, ‘I don’t want her back’ and it was only when he said it aloud that he realised it was true. He had no yearning to rebuild anything with Hannah. Their marriage had run its course, ended for good reasons. The visits to her street had to do with something else. Maybe it was about feeling the emptiness dissolve, feeling reattached to the world around him. Whatever it was, he knew he wasn’t looking to rebuild bridges – it was more like an animal seeking warmth.

When he finished his whiskey, Callaghan left the Mint. As he passed Leon and the skinny woman Leon raised his glass and smiled. Callaghan walked out of the bar, up the stairs and quickened his pace as he hurried across the hotel lobby and out into the air.

Now, in Alex’s flat, Callaghan looked again at Leon’s briefcase.

None of my business
.

Whatever about Leon’s relationship with the skinny woman, screwing around with Hannah’s friend was scummy.

But none of my business
.

Callaghan left Leon’s briefcase on the floor of the bedroom, the closet door open. He pulled on his jacket and went down to his car.

Callaghan was getting out of his car near the Hive when his phone rang. It was Novak.

‘Yeah?’

‘I got a call just now from Frank Tucker and he says yes, okay, he’ll meet you.’

Callaghan locked the car door and stood looking out across the green in front of the Hive. In the distance he could see smoke rising from the embers of the fire the kids had made the previous night, to heat up their drinking party.

‘Good, thanks.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Where?’

‘The Venetian House.’

‘Best to get it over with.’

‘You okay?’

Callaghan was walking towards the Hive. This Frank Tucker thing, he didn’t need to think about it any more. One way or another, it would be sorted.

‘Fine, everything’s fine. But I’ve got a couple of jobs lined up for tomorrow.’

‘Don’t worry. I can get another driver to fill in.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ll take you there.’

‘No need.’

‘I’ll take you there.’

Danny Callaghan and Novak drove to the Venetian House in silence. Off the M50 at the Lucan junction and down the N4 to the West End Park Road and out past the Cullybawn housing estate. They pulled into the almost empty car park. Novak turned off the engine.

‘You ready for this?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’

‘No law says we can’t drive away from here – let it go.’

Danny Callaghan shook his head. ‘It’s one thing or the other – and I need to know.’

He sat there, looking across the car park at the pub. After a while, Novak said, ‘That’s some pile.’

Wedged between three vast west Dublin housing estates, the Venetian House was just a few years old but it strained to look like it had been there since the nineteenth century. Mock leaded windows and decorative beams gave it a vaguely Tudor look, mixed with a vaguely Italian style. The pub was an assemblage of units of various shapes and sizes, combining space and intimacy. It was a local institution, the centre of birthday, wedding and First Communion celebrations, gala lunches and post-funeral commiserations. It provided mid-range entertainers at weekends and a consistent level of drinking all week. The Venetian House attracted custom from the nearby estates and from more distant areas that didn’t have similar facilities. It had a kitchen that could cater a soup-and-sandwich lunch or an evening banquet.

A far cry from Novak’s own pub, a neighbourhood convenience used only by locals. He looked across the car park and said, ‘A gold mine.’

Danny Callaghan said, ‘You reckon it’s true – that Frank Tucker owns it?’

‘Could be – probably gossip. My guess is he just likes the place. It’s his neighbourhood.’

If you wanted to meet Frank Tucker, you made an arrangement to come to the Venetian House. He ate there most days, had all his parties there, and had daily meetings in a side room, along with his lieutenants and their soldiers.

‘See that window, looks like stained glass?’

Novak was pointing to a wide window covering the width of an extension that jutted out into the car park. The image was of a singing gondolier, one arm held aloft, the other holding his trademark pole as he guided a pair of lovers beneath a bridge.

‘Tacky, isn’t it?’ Callaghan said.

‘Whether or not he owns the place, rumour is that Tucker bought that window – because he wanted something fancy in his home from home.’

‘Nice to have it to splash around.’ Callaghan took a long, deep breath. ‘Time to go in.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’

Callaghan smiled. ‘Keep the engine running – and if you hear a bang—’

‘Nothing like that’s going to happen. Seriously. If Frank Tucker wants you dead, it won’t be done here. In Frank’s business, you don’t piss on your own doorstep.’

Just inside the front door of the Venetian House, a bulky man stopped chewing gum long enough to ask, ‘You’re Callaghan, right?’

Danny Callaghan nodded.

‘The jacks.’

Inside the inner door the pub was doing light business. Lunch was finished, here and there a customer lingered over the remnants
of a meal or nursed a drink. The place was well staffed, the bartenders and waiters, male and female, wearing black trousers, white shirts and red waistcoats.

Callaghan followed the man to the gents toilet. There the man told Callaghan to take off his suede jacket and hold his arms out from his sides. He ran what looked like an electronic table-tennis paddle along Callaghan’s body – over his arms and legs, between his legs, down his back and across his chest. He then lifted up the front of Callaghan’s T-shirt and checked for wires.

Satisfied, he led Danny Callaghan through the pub to a side room. It was more of a large nook, the kind of place a family might hire for a small birthday party. Most of one wall was taken up by the leaded window with the image of the gondolier. Pub tables and chairs in the centre, with deep sofa-type seating at the back. There, sitting near the window in a chunky wooden chair that could pass for a throne, leaning back, one knee crossed over the other, sat Frank Tucker.

That day in court, all those years back, Frank Tucker had been 19, his dark hair curly and full, his chubby but handsome face spoiled by acne. He was wearing dark blue Nike bottoms and a grey hoodie top.

Dead man, Callaghan – blood for blood
.

Today, Frank Tucker was 27, hair cropped to a thin dark layer. He’d lost weight, his face now angular and tight, his frame obviously muscular beneath his well-cut dark grey suit and his open-collared blue shirt.

‘Take a seat.’

Callaghan sat down and the man who’d searched him sat somewhere behind him. An Asian waiter appeared and Tucker said, ‘What’ll you have?’

‘I’m okay,’ Danny said.

Frank Tucker made a gesture and the waiter left.

He looked at Callaghan, his face blank, for a moment. Then
he said, ‘You’ve got something you want to say?’ His voice was relaxed.