Eight Ball Boogie Part 17

Dutchie spoke up.

"I'll follow on to the hospital, Harry. Alright?"

Galway turned for the door, saying: "Let the c.u.n.t die in his p.i.s.s, I give a f.u.c.k."

Mich.e.l.le was standing outside on the street, hugging herself, as Brady half-carried, half-dragged Gonzo to the blue Mondeo. Dutchie told her that Gonzo was fine, kissed her on the side of the head, but she stayed rigid, staring. I could read her mind. 'Dutchie,' she was thinking. 'There but for the grace of G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d, Dutchie.'

I didn't blame her. I was thinking it too.

The Mondeo pulled off, Gonzo lolling in the pa.s.senger seat, Dutchie in the back trying to support Gonzo's head. I watched it go until Brady clamped a hand on my shoulder, directed me towards a squad car. He pushed me into the back seat, sat in beside me.

"Sit still," he said. "Don't do anything stupid."

From the depths of my torpor I heard someone say: "Put your safety-belt on. I'd hate to see you fined."

He looked across, laughed a reedy laugh, turned away again. Then he straight-armed me flush on the ear with a punch of pure napalm. The side of my face blazed into flame. My head pitched back, clipping the reinforced gla.s.s window. Stupefied, screaming a sound I'd never heard before, I balled a fist on the recoil, putting every last atom of my existence into a punch that was four years brewing.

I was still swinging when Brady's second caught me full on the bridge of the nose. I saw something flash, bright and impossibly white, and then the light dulled to something red and warm. I dove into the embers, found myself a convenient black hole.

I was lying on a thin, grimy mattress, a couple of migraines playing charades inside my head. Wrists handcuffed somewhere down around my kidneys. My head was an over-ripe melon, big, soft, raw and pulpy. My nose was blocked. When I snuffled, my ears nearly exploded. My s.h.i.+rt was covered in snot and puke. That made two nights running. I was on a roll.

I put the erection down to the handcuffs. When it finally went away, I started kicking at the cell door. Brady unlocked the handcuffs, marched me down to the end of a long, narrow hallway. The room was big, bright. Apart from the chair Brady pushed me into, there was a table with a scuffed Formica top and a blackened foil ashtray, for show. The carpet was threadbare and snot-green. The walls were a dirty-brown colour, the paint streaky, like someone had been left there long enough for a dirty protest to get out of hand.

Brady sat on a corner of the table, one leg dangling, placed Gonzo's plastic wrap on the table. He looked comfortable, a.s.sured, on his own turf, or maybe he was just more relaxed when he didn't have to impress the boss. He dug a packet of cigarettes out of his coat pocket, offered me one. I could barely hold it, my hands were shaking so hard. Brady lit the smoke, c.o.c.ked his head to one side.

"You carrying anything, Rigby?"

"Could be."

"Could be?"

"The jacket's his. He wanted to wear mine. There could be something in the pockets."

He held out a hand, snapped his fingers. I unzipped, handed the jacket across. He made a cursory search of the pockets, inside and out, ran his hand down the lining. Then he handed it back. I put the Puffa back on. It might have looked ridiculous but it was warm, quilted on the inside and worth every penny Gonzo had paid for it. Providing, I acknowledged, he had actually paid for it.

"Alright. Now, at the risk of repeating myself, tell me about Frank Conway."

"First off am I under arrest?"

"Not yet, no. That's up to Galway, when he gets back." He leered. "He might want to frisk you himself, by the way."

"I'm all a-tremble. Why haven't you arrested me?"

"You want me to?"

"I'll try anything once. Besides, you'd be surprised how much false arrest is worth these days."

"I wouldn't. And who says it'd be false arrest?"

I stubbed the cigarette.

"Come on, Brady. Even I'm not thick enough to walk into a bacon factory with gear on me, and you have nothing that says I've ever taken anything stronger than Solpadeine. So what's the drill?"

"You're here because Galway wants you here."

"You're pimping for Galway?"

"He calls the shots." He scratched at an ear. "Still, while you're here, no reason we can't be chatting."

"I'll wait for the coffee morning. Cheers all the same."

He drummed a tattoo on the tabletop, came to a decision.

"You like Frank Conway, Rigby?" He waved a dismissive hand before I had a chance to answer. "And save the routine, I might start heckling."

"I like everyone, Brady. Even you."

"Okay, let's do it this way. Your brother, Eddie?"

"We call him Gonzo."

"Gonzo. Jesus." The grim smile belonged in a morgue. "That's not what he called himself when we knew him. He called himself Robbie back then, Robbie Callaghan. Pa.s.sport to prove it, too, with an address in Shepherds Bush. Clocked up some serious air miles, did our Robbie. Amsterdam, Hamburg, you name it. Fascinated by real estate, too. Which was why he dropped in on Frank Conway every time he was home." He dropped the jovial tone. "Gonzo we know," he growled. "Gonzo's a good mate of ours. We had him over for tea and biscuits one day, he liked the place so much he stayed eighteen months. We had to take his medication off him on the way in, but he didn't seem to mind."

"Gonzo'd be too polite to say."

"I can imagine. Anyway, Conway's sc.u.m. Cheap with it, too. He jumped when the s.h.i.+t hit the fan and didn't bounce until he hit Torremolinos. And there he stayed, until one fine day he upped sticks and disappeared. Six months ago we tracked him down here. We can't make anything stick, because all along Robbie keeps schtum. Same old story, it even has a happy ending, Conway's back in business. This time we think the gear's coming in through Belfast. Stop me when I tell you something you don't know already."

"Go on. I like the sound of your voice."

"Jesus, Rigby. You're a What do you call it? A research consultant?" He laughed, harsh. "I'd get a new job, Rigby. One where you don't need to put one and one together."

I let that one float.

"Okay, here's what we reckon is going on. Eddie Gonzo, Robbie, whatever the f.u.c.k he calls himself does eighteen months. It should be two years, but who the f.u.c.k does a full stretch these days and he was a good boy. He gets back here last week, scouting Conway. Once he's sussed what's going on, he tells Conway he's looking for sick pay. Conway makes with the fatted calf, tells Eddie he'll look after him. Gives him a little something, just to show willing. Maybe it's a lot of something, and Eddie's back on commission. Except maybe there's something more in the little something. Something that shouldn't be there."

"No chance. Gonzo knows his drugs."

"Gonzo knows f.u.c.k all, panned out on a gurney with his face inside out. It makes me want to cry, but it'll keep, until we've nailed Conway."

"Why don't you nail him now?"

Brady sniffed, thumbed his nose. Offered me another cigarette. I turned it down, started rolling a twist. The shakes had subsided. I was already sober, the hangover kicking in. Brady said: "Four-MTA."

"Say again?"

"Four-MTA. Four-methylthioamphetamine, if you prefer. It's what the Dutch boys started on, when the authorities put the boot into PMA."

"PMA?"

Brady looked like he was enjoying himself.

"PMA is a primer for MDMA. Ecstasy, like. When the punters started dropping like flies a couple of years back, the vice boys in Holland tried to stamp PMA out. The lads making E just switched to Four-MTA, came up with Flatliners. It's supposed to be a super-E but it's more of a super-Prozac. Gets your serotonin off the charts but doesn't reabsorb it back into the brain. Worse, Flats take about two hours to kick in. Some punter thinks he has strong E that isn't going off, he drops another. Half an hour later another one goes down the neck. By the time the first one starts coming off, there's four or five down the hatch and ready to dance."

I said, dull: "Gonzo had five tabs tonight."

"That'd be right. And once you peak on Flats it levels out. There's no up and down, like E. Once you're up there you think you're coming down again. So you pop another one. And so on. The heart develops arrhythmia trying to keep up and the other organs start to overcompensate. Everything heats up. Meanwhile, the brain is drowning in serotonin. You're dying but you've never felt better in your life."

"Sounds like a good way to go."

"If you want to go. Anyway, we think Conway has diversified into Flats but we can't nail him until we catch him red-handed. No one says f.u.c.k all about a new drug. Dope, E, smack, c.o.ke every f.u.c.ker's talking about those. But a new buzz, people keep it under the duvet." He tapped the plastic wrap. "Eddie was lucky," he said. "Don't let Conway get lucky too."

There was a knock on the door. A garda stuck her head into the room. She jerked her head at Brady.

"Phone."

Brady got up, stubbed his smoke.

"Think it over, Rigby. Think about what you owe Frank Conway."

He left. I thought it over. Gonzo was back in town to put the bounce on Conway, that much I knew. Which was why Conway had been checking me out, trying to work out if I was in cahoots with Gonzo. All that added up.

Gonzo falling for dodgy E didn't make sense, though. Gonzo knew his Cla.s.s A inside out, although it was possible Flatliners had pa.s.sed him by while he was on the inside. But even if everything Brady said fell into place, there was still the matter of Helen Conway and Tony Sheridan. The last thing Frank Conway had expected me to find was the first thing I'd tripped over. No one gets that lucky first try. I never got that lucky, period.

I rubbed at my temples, the side of my head a fire of dying embers. Stifled a yawn, too tired to think. I had the feeling of watching a car pull away from me, late at night, its taillights fading, watching it go with nothing left under the bonnet.

Brady came back into the room. He said, soft: "Rigby."

His tone told me everything I needed to know but I lumbered down the corridor to the phone anyway. Dutchie was on the line. He had something wedged sideways in his throat.

"Harry?"

"It's me, Dutch."

"Jesus, Harry." He choked. "Jesus."

I was aware that Brady was watching me. I focused on the poster thumb-tacked to the wall above the phone. Four tacks: three red, one blue. The blurb on the poster wanted information on criminal activity, had a free-phone number in bold red numerals underneath with a guarantee of anonymity for the caller in the small print. I wondered who the poster was supposed to target, stuck away in the back of the bacon factory. My voice wandered in from somewhere out over the Aran Islands.

"What happened, Dutch?"

"Don't know, Harry. I don't f.u.c.king know. They were pumping him out, no worries, and he just took a fit. Started thras.h.i.+ng around on the table, foaming at the mouth. They f.u.c.ked me out, and then this Paki came and asked if I was family. I said yeah, he's my brother, he said Gonzo had gone into arrest and he was sorry, he'd done everything he could."

"They give him penicillin?"

"Jesus, I don't "

"He's allergic, Dutch. We're both allergic." I thought, briefly, how an hour ago was the time to lay that one on Dutchie. "He wasn't wearing tags?"

"I don't know, Harry. I wasn't "

There was no reason why Dutchie would have been wearing tags. I didn't wear tags. It was just one of those things you never get around to doing, like buying limescale tablets for the kettle. I bit my lower lip, and maybe that was why my eyes started to water.

"He's dead?"

"I'm sorry, Harry."

"Dutch? He's dead?"

"He's dead, Harry."

I pursed my lips, sucked at my cheeks. My eyes p.r.i.c.kled. Someone had let a bear into the building and he had my ribs in a hug, crus.h.i.+ng my chest so I couldn't breathe.

"Alright, Dutch. Hold on there, I'll be about twenty minutes."

"You're coming here? Why?"

I didn't know. It just seemed the right thing to do.

"Don't they need someone to identify the body?"

"They will, yeah, but tomorrow morning's plenty of time. You okay?"

"Never better, Dutch."

"Yeah, stupid f.u.c.king question. I'm not thinking straight. I'll meet you back at the pub, I need a drink."

"Not for me, Dutch." My voice sounded hollow, but it might just have been a bad connection. "I'm getting home. Dee should know."

"Yeah, yeah, of course. Jesus." Dutchie choked up again. I tried not to notice the tremble in his voice. Dutchie and Gonzo had been good mates once, a long time ago, but mates are mates. Time and distance don't change that kind of thing.

"I'm sorry, Harry."

"Wasn't your fault, Dutch."

I hung up. I felt limp, battered and bruised, body and soul. My knees trembled. I didn't know where to look, what to do. Brady was still watching me.

"No luck, Rigby," he said, quiet.

"f.u.c.k you, Brady."

"Rigby "

I turned to face him. Arms out wide, palms up, daring him to come on. I wanted to hit something, anything at all, and Brady looked softer than the wall. Not by much, but enough.

"Step up or step back, Brady. Come on."