Howard Linskey - The Dead

‘I don’t think you do,’ I snapped and realised I was taking stressed gulps of my drink. It was half-gone already.

‘But it has been hard for me too,’ she continued, ‘I never got to see him, to say goodbye. I spend so much time thinking about him and sometimes I feel like he isn’t really dead and…’

‘He’s dead Sarah,’ I assured her, ‘believe me. Your father is dead and he isn’t coming back. You don’t need to know anything more than that.’

‘What happened Davey?’ she asked me. ‘You say I don’t need to know, but I do.’

‘You do know. Alan Gladwell happened. He bundled your dad and Finney into a car and he took them away.’ I held up my hands so she knew that was all there was to it. Just talking about this was enough to make me feel sick. I hated lying to Sarah, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t tell her the truth.

‘I want to hear it all,’ she said.

‘No, Sarah, you don’t, trust me on that.’

‘I didn’t know why I’d been feeling the way I was but then I saw a documentary about families who had lost loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq and how they needed to hear the details from the friends of the dead soldiers or their commanding officers. They couldn’t move on until they had the image of what actually happened in their heads. They wanted closure.’

I suppose I should have made something up real quick, but I just couldn’t do it. God knows I’d had enough time to prepare myself for her questions but I had always hoped they might never come.

‘Closure?’ I asked her lamely. ‘That’s just some psycho-babble American bullshit.’

She flared at that. ‘No David, it’s not. I need you to tell me what happened to my father. That’s not bullshit. It’s real.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s a bit too fucking real.’ I went to take another sip of my drink and realised it was empty. ‘I was there, remember?’

I got to my feet and she watched me with a hurt look on her face. I needed to get out of there. I needed to leave that room and it had to be now, but I didn’t have a good reason so I had to make one. I decided to look shocked and upset, which wasn’t hard because that was exactly how I was feeling inside.

‘I can’t believe you just sprang it on me like this with no warning,’ I rounded on her, ‘like you just expect me to relive the whole thing because you are suddenly ready. Well I’m not.’

She got to her feet too but I was already out of there. ‘Where are you going?’ she called after me.

‘Out!’ I managed and if she did reply I didn’t hear the words because I was too busy slamming the door behind me, glad to be outside in the cold and breathing in great gulps of air as I headed for my car.

I didn’t go home that night. I stayed in our hotel on the Quayside. I didn’t really sleep though. I spent most of the night lying awake, wondering why Sarah suddenly wanted to know all the details of her father’s death. Occasionally I heard raised voices from the street down below, as clubbers stumbled out on to the streets looking for taxis and couples had half-hearted drunken arguments they’d have forgotten about in the morning. I envied them that. I knew I should have spun Sarah some yarn about Bobby dying bravely in a hail of bullets, or collapsing of a heart attack after a beating, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Did I believe Bobby Mahoney would somehow be looking down on me from wherever he was, judging me while I lied to his only daughter? No, but it just didn’t feel right.

The next morning I went straight to the Cauldron. I didn’t call Sarah because I didn’t know what the hell to say to her.

The Cauldron wasn’t open to the public but the lads were lounging about in the bar. Soon they would have things to do and debts to call in. This was the calm before the daily storm.

Peter Kinane is a nice enough bloke, for a thug, and he’s bright too, despite inheriting the brawn of his dad, but sometimes I think he’s too sensitive to operate in our world. Peter had just been dumped by some lass he’d been shagging for a while and he was gutted. He’d been stupid enough to admit it too and the lads began to taunt him mercilessly. He hadn’t yet learned the golden rule about our world. You’ve got to be able to take it, no matter what they say to you.

‘I’m telling you man, she was a munter,’ Kevin Kinane announced when the subject of his brother’s ex came up in conversation again.

‘No she wasn’t,’ Peter protested weakly from a seat in the corner of the bar. Joe Kinane was watching it all with detached amusement, his other son Chris, the quiet one, sitting next to him. Palmer, Vince and some of our more established faces were all enjoying the sledging.

‘She had a canny pair of tits on her,’ conceded Kevin, ignoring his younger brother. ‘If you could have transplanted them onto a skinny bird, Keira Knightley maybe, then they would have looked good, but on her, well, they were a waste of a nice pair of puppies, if you ask me.’

‘Oi!’ warned Peter, ‘I am in the room!’

‘BOBFOC,’ said Palmer quietly.

Peter rounded on him and demanded, ‘What’s that supposed to fuckin’ mean?’

Palmer shrugged, ‘body off Baywatch , face off Crimewatch .’ He then repeated the word, ‘BOBFOC’, to ensure Peter took in his meaning. Peter Kinane looked like he was about to start throwing punches.

His elder brother Kevin was gleeful. ‘He’s been upstairs in his room for weeks now, wank-stalking his ex on Facebook.’

‘No I fucking haven’t!’ replied Peter Kinane, seriously flustered now.

‘I caught you looking at her pictures on your laptop the other day, admit it man.’

‘So what,’ said Peter, ‘I was only bloody looking. It’s not a crime is it?’

‘No Peter, to be fair it’s not,’ I assured him because I was thankful for the distraction of this banter and when his face brightened a little I added, ‘it’s just a bit pathetic.’

‘Hey, howay man, don’t you start an’ all,’ he told me.

‘How long’s it been Peter? Since the break up?’ asked Palmer rhetorically, ‘three weeks? Oh well, never mind eh, because three weeks is the critical point.’

‘How’s that like?’ asked Peter, as Palmer reeled him in.

‘Well, if she really wasn’t shagging someone else behind your back when she dumped you…’

‘She wasn’t,’ Peter assured him.

‘She will be by now.’

‘Fuck off! Will she shite. She’s not like that.’

‘Yes she is Pete,’ said Vince, playing along with it.

‘They all are,’ announced Palmer solemnly, playing the wind-up to perfection, ‘you might think your lass is made of sugar and spice and all things nice but right now, even as I speak and you’re fretting about her, some big, hairy-bollocked bloke is up to his nuts in her.’

Peter launched himself at Palmer then, knocking the table between them to the ground, upending our beers in the process. We were creased up and we carried on laughing as an enraged Peter Kinane chased Palmer round the room, throwing haymaker punches that my bodyguard would have dodged easily if he hadn’t been laughing so hard himself.

In the end Peter managed to connect with one and Palmer was knocked off his feet. I’d never seen that before. Peter moved in to give Palmer a proper kicking and we all jumped in to restrain him, but Palmer was back on his feet already and he hit Peter Kinane with a supreme upper cut that rocked the younger man back on his heels and followed it with a martial-arts-style kick to the belly.

They both had venomous looks in their eyes now, so I shouted, ‘Pack it in, you two fairies!’ as the rest of the lads grabbed them and pulled them apart.