The Life Business (3 page)

"It's a gun," I said,
making as if to push his hand away. "Of course I know that. What do
you think we've been lugging around on our parades all week
long?"

Billy had a sudden
thought. "They loaded, those guns of yours?"

"You mean, do we have
ammunition for them? Yes. Obviously we do."

"What kind of guns are
they?"

"Three-o-threes,
mainly. A scattering of two-twos."

He smiled slowly.
"Ancient rubbish."

"Ancient rubbish," I
agreed. "But they're guns, still."

I could see he'd been
wondering if our armoury was worth raiding, and had now decided it
wasn't.

"Are you going to
shoot me?"

"I'm hoping not, Petey
boy."

"You know, there must
be a million people called Billy in Ireland."

"True."

"And plenty of people
called Lar."

"Likewise true. And
who's to say those are even our real names?"

Silence lay between
us. All three of us knew that particular notion of his wasn't going
anywhere. I'd heard them use the names before they'd known I was
listening.

"But" – Billy broke
the quiet, shaking his head sorrowfully – "there aren't a million
people in the
whole wide world
who're called Dennis McLeary,
now are there? And who'll be being looked for high and low come
tomorrow? Whichever way I look at these matters, Petey boy, there
just seems to be no way we can let you go, free to sing like a
lark."

"What are you going to
do to him?" I said, stalling for time.

"To Dennis? Oh, Dennis
is going for a long, long swim at the bottom of the lough, is where
he's going. Which reminds me – Lar, could you go and be gathering
us some rocks and stones? We need to fill the fat man's pockets so
he'll not be floating out to sea. Petey will be safe enough here
with me to look after him."

Lar lumbered off,
leaving the two of us on our own.

"But what if Mr
McLeary's not dead yet?" I said.

"What does that
matter?"

It was a cold
answer.

"You need to be
thinking a bit less about McLeary's fate, Petey boy, and a bit more
about your own."

Was this going to be
it? A bullet in the brain and then an eternity bobbing alongside
fat Dennis in the darkness at the bottom of Lough Foyle?

I sent off another
package of requests for mercy in the general direction of God, not
that I expected Him to notice. The fault was my own. I'd never been
entirely convinced of His existence and the events of tonight,
rather than causing me to cling to the hope of Him as a drowning
man to a straw, the way all the clichés say should happen, had made
me increasingly of the mind that he was just a myth.

A nasty, dangerous
myth, if Billy and Lar here were two of His foot-soldiers.

And if there wasn't a
God then there almost certainly wasn't a life after death, either.
To be honest, I'd always relied even less on the possibility of the
afterlife than I had upon that of God, but it was nice to feel
everything interlocking so neatly.

Either I was thinking
more logically, more dispassionately than ever before or I was in a
complete blind funk and filling my head with rubbish thoughts so I
wouldn't have to face the immediate future.

Or lack thereof.

Because if there
wasn't
an afterlife, if there was no judgement awaiting me,
then death didn't seem so very frightening after all. Assuming it
was a painless death. In this context it was reassuring that Billy
had a gun – he wouldn't have to rely on Lar pounding my skull to
mush with a rock. Death itself could surely be no worse than having
to watch powerless as the pillars of my existence were being pulled
apart and tumbled down in wreckage, of knowing that the only part
anyone wanted me to play in the unfolding tragedy was to stay out
of the way as much as much as possible – to be out of sight, out of
mind, so that any tears I shed weren't seen and therefore didn't
exist.

I decided to make one
final attempt at the life business, just for the sake of
appearances if nothing else. I'd go into oblivion more fulfilled if
I knew that at least at the last I'd given it my best shot.

"I could promise I'd
never tell anyone," I said.

"You could, could you?
And what makes you think I'd believe in your promise?"

"I'd give you my
word."

"And what would that
be worth?"

"Plenty. I'm good at
keeping secrets. I have to do it a lot."

"What kind of
secrets?"

I started to speak,
then bit back the words. I wasn't going to start telling him the
things about Mum I didn't tell Dad or the things about Dad I didn't
tell Mum.

Or the things about me
I didn't tell either of them.

"They'd not be secrets
if I told you," I said at last. "We've only just met."

Billy laughed aloud
and slapped my knee with his free hand, the hand that wasn't still
holding the pistol. "I like you, Petey. Oh, I do surely like you.
But—"

"Even if I broke my
word, and I wouldn't, what would I have to tell anyone? They're
going to be pretty certain Mr McLeary's dead when no one can find
him, aren't they? And I'll bet they'll have a fairly clear idea who
did it. If he's been grassing on you" – I liked the professional
way I used the term "grassing on you", so I repeated it – "If he's
been grassing on you, you're the first person they're going to be
looking for. And Lar? Well, he's not so very difficult to notice,
is he? So tomorrow everyone's going to be hunting for you and Lar
anyway
, and the most I'd be able to tell them – even if I
broke my promise, which I wouldn't – is what you've done with the
body. Which piece of information wouldn't be of much use to anyone
because how're they going to find him at the bottom of Lough
Foyle?"

"But what about
tonight? What's to stop you running back to your barracks as fast
as your legs will carry you and rousting out those three-score
fierce wee warriors of yours?"

I'd been right. He
didn't want to kill me if he could help it. He was looking around
for some excuse not to have to.

"You could tie me up,
gag me," I said, pressing home what I was beginning to hope was my
advantage. "By the time anyone found me in the morning the two of
you would be long gone. And Dennis McLeary too."

"Uhuh, uhuh." Billy
took the gun in his other hand and began slapping it gently on the
palm where it had lain. "You're not daft, are you, Petey boy?"

"And I'd even have a
reason to keep my mouth shut."

He raised an eyebrow.
"And what would that be?"

Very deliberately I
answered him. "I'll help you fill up Dennis McLeary's pockets with
rocks and stones. I'll make myself an accessory. That way I'll have
as much cause as you and Lar to keep quiet."

"I'm not sure that
exactly makes sense," said Billy after a long pause, "but I'll give
you credit for making a good argument. And I'll not say no to the
offer of helping load up our Dennis with rocks. Afterwards? Well,
afterwards we'll see."

I forced myself not to
say anything more, not to risk ruining the good work I'd done.
Billy was already halfway convinced there was a way out of this
that didn't involve killing me, and by the time we'd finished
giving poor Dennis his ballast the other half would have taken care
of itself, I was certain. Then my thoughts sobered. There was
always Lar to consider. Maybe Lar would change Billy's mind, once
he got back here...

Which he did, right
then, bearing an armload of big, water-rounded boulders. It was a
good thing he was such a giant. I don't think I could have carried
all of those even if you'd put them in a rucksack for my back.

Lar let the rocks
crash to the ground beside Dennis McLeary's feet. One of them
bounced with a crack off the rest and landed with a soft, sickening
thump smack in the middle of McLeary's groin.

There wasn't any
reaction from the fat man.

Billy snickered. "I'd
say that answers your question, Petey boy, as to whether Dennis is
dead or not."

My stomach tried to
rebel, but I refused to let it.

"Shall we set to
work?" I said.

~

Once we'd got started,
once I'd learnt to stop thinking about Dennis McLeary as a human
being from whom the life had fled – from whom it had been expelled
– and started just treating his carcase like an inanimate,
irksomely unwieldy object that we had to drag between us down to
the water's edge where we located, bobbing in the shallows, a
little rowing boat some confederates of Billy's had left there
earlier...

Once Dennis McLeary's
corpse was just a fucking
nuisance
, then I found it all very
much easier. He was a side of beef, or a slaughtered pig in the
butcher's window.

Billy and I did the
hauling. Lar had been told –
you stupid gobshite!
– to pick
up the stones from where he'd dropped them and carry them down to
the shore alongside us. We'd load up Dennis McLeary with the stones
once we were out on the water, not before.

I lost my Rupert Bear
flashlight at some stage while we were heaving the dead weight of
McLeary into the boat.

I couldn't see how we
were going to get the three of us – and the stones – in beside it,
but we managed.

One foot planted
firmly on McLeary's chest, the other between Billy and me where we
sat on the boat's second seat, Lar rowed us out from the shore
until we could see nothing at all of the land. We might have been
floating in some distant limbo, with the stars and the reluctant
moon above and a restless obscurity below.

"Here'll do," said
Billy.

"Will I be rowing back
two of us or three?" said Lar pointedly.

"I've still not
decided."

"Ah."

I knew, I knew –
surely it was definitely a matter of my
knowing
, not just of
my hoping – I knew that Billy had already decided all three of us
were returning to shore once the object called Dennis McLeary had
been disposed of.

"I was just asking,
like," said Lar cheerfully. He winked at me. "Nothing
personal."

"Here's far enough,"
said Billy, ignoring Lar's remark.

As soon as we'd got to
the water's edge, Billy had pocketed his own torch. He hadn't
needed to tell me why. There was no gain in sending reflections
dancing across the water all the way to Donegal, or back behind us
to anyone who might have wakened at Magilligan. In the gloomy
moonlight I couldn't know what it was Billy was doing except that
he was making a great rustling about it.

He must have sensed my
incomprehension.

"Plastic carrier
bags," he said. "Fat Dennis has only got so many pockets. The
bigger stones we'll put into the bags and tie them on to him. It
takes longer than a dozen lifetimes for plastic to rot. By the time
it does, he'll be just bones – and so will we."

"Ah," I said, as if
I'd already known all this.

Ten or twenty minutes
later, at grave risk of capsizing the boat, we managed to roll the
uncooperative mass over the edge. I'd have liked to think that the
dead eyes of Dennis McLeary gave the sky one last nostalgic glance
before the water covered them, but that wasn't so. He – he and the
anchors we'd tied around his wrists and ankles and neck – sank
beneath the surface instantly, leaving hardly a ripple on the
lough's face.

"And?" said Lar,
nodding his head towards me, once McLeary had gone.

"I've become very fond
of Petey boy," said Billy.

"Haven't we all?"

"He'll say
nothing."

"I'm sure that's what
he'd want you to believe. You're not growing soft in your old age,
are you, Billy, my one true friend?"

"I'll never grow soft,
Lar. You know that."

"Then...?"

Billy had the gun in
his hand. He looked at me, then at Lar, then at me again. The oily
metal of the gun glistened like a slug's trail in the
moonlight.

"I trust him as much
as I do you, Lar. He's given me his promise as a fine young English
gentleman and probably a Boy Scout, although he didn't mention
that... Are you a Boy Scout, Petey?"

I nodded. I knew what
was about to happen as if I'd scripted it myself.

"That's a promise not
to be ignored lightly, Lar. Whereas you? All you want to do is fuck
Maire. Isn't that it?"

"I never—"

The sound of the
gunshot was far quieter than I thought it would be.

And weighing down Lar
with the remaining stones and plastic carrier bags was far worse
than I thought it would be – far worse than doing the same to
Dennis McLeary had been.

McLeary hadn't still
been warm.

But I got through all
of this somehow. And then, with Billy's gun pointing at my face, I
rowed us back to shore.

~

It was Drac Johnson who
found me in the morning. I can't have been lying there longer than
a couple of hours. Billy had pulled off my pyjama trousers and
stuffed them into my mouth as a gag, which was a rotten thing to do
because they tasted the way shit smells and because it meant Drac
and all the others who came after him could stare at my shrimp-like
penis and my walnut balls in the freezing air of morning. Still, as
Drac said while untying me and carrying me off to put me under a
hot shower, just about anything was better than being dead from
exposure, wasn't it?

I remembered how, in
the middle of the night, I'd begun to see death as a warm and
welcome harbour, and I said nothing to him.

In the years that
followed, I said nothing to anyone else, either – I kept my promise
to Billy. Why not?

Life, on the other
hand, didn't keep its promise to me. Mum and Dad both did just
exactly what they wanted to do, which meant I became an orphan even
though my parents were still alive, with me shuttling between them
and irritatingly reminding them of my existence. They practically
shouldered each other aside when it came to paying for the various
therapists I saw, because coughing up mere money was far easier
than accepting they had a son.