Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

‘Tell him relax.’

‘I’ll need a bit more than that.’

‘What’ll he do, cut me off?’

‘Don’t shoot the messenger, man.’

He thought about that, then came to a decision, shrugged again. ‘Fuck it,’ he said, ‘I’ll be telling you soon enough anyway.’

‘Go on.’

‘The weed,’ he said, ‘I’m putting it away.’

‘You’re telling me? Three bags a month, man, that’s-’

‘I’m stashing it,’ he said. ‘Like, squirreling it away.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’re going, Harry. Taking off in a couple of weeks, it’s supposed to be a holiday. But that’s us, gone.’

‘Shit. Seriously?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s shit, seriously,’ he said. ‘Raising a kid in this fucking hole any time in the next twenty years. That’s shit. Seriously.’

Not the first time I’d heard that. The government kept telling us we’d dig our way out of recession with an export-led recovery. The main export, naturally, being people, and especially those still young enough to be ambitious and bright enough to read the runes.

‘So where to?’ I said.

‘Where d’you think?’

Everyone has their get-out, the place they’ll be when the planets eventually align, and as long as I’d known him Finn had been angling to get away. In the beginning it hadn’t really mattered where, it was all about getting out. Which made perfect sense at the time, or as much sense as anything ever made in Dundrum: when you weren’t talking about getting a proper feed for once, you were plotting your escape, digging tunnels in your mind.

Except Finn never shook it off, even after he got out. And once he met Maria it was all about Cyprus, and specifically that enclave known and unbeloved by the world at large as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. A place, according to Finn, where they were building temples while Europe was wallowing in the filth of its caves, but was still real, still raw. Especially up in the mountains, where the light was, pace Durrell, God’s eyeball.

He slid a record out of its sleeve, got it up on the turntable. Tim Buckley, ‘Song to the Siren’.

‘A big move,’ I said.

‘It’s jump or be shoved is what it is.’ He took a hefty hit off the jay, held it down. Exhaled it slow. ‘It’s all fucked, Harry. NAMA’s on board and they’re playing for keeps.’

‘That bad?’

‘We can hang on here,’ he said, ‘all huddling around a fucking candle and eating nettle salads. Or we can cash in now, cut our losses, start again. Somewhere,’ he jabbed the stub of the jay in my direction, making his point, ‘where family still means something.’

That was twice now. Kids, family. I felt something dislodge and shift sideways inside and it was only then I realised how much I’d miss him. His crazy schemes, the manic energy. The way he could call at any hour, or I’d call him, and we we’d shoot some pool and talk music or surfing or movies or books. Or say nothing at all. The thing unsaid, the black pool, dammed between us. Until the next time it started to seep through the cracks.

‘So what’s the plan? Anything lined up?’

He bob-bobbed his head, considering. ‘Maria’s been talking about doing something real,’ he said. ‘Something that matters, y’know?’

‘A beauty salon that matters?’

He ignored the cheap crack. ‘That’ll pay its way, sure. But she wants to set up a school too, a kind of training college. Give these girls skills they can take anywhere in the world. You ever see Cypriot women? Man, they know how to look after themselves.’

‘Yeah, well, if Maria’s anything to go by …’

‘Here’s the kicker, though. She wants the training done through English, she reckons she read something in Newsweek about how the ability to speak English is the single most important factor, world-wide, if you want to work.’

‘She’d be better off teaching them Mandarin.’

‘Or Russian, maybe. Anyway, the Chinese and the Russians aren’t offering education grants. The EU is, and the EU wants Turkey, and Turkey means Turkish Cyprus. Except Maria’s having huge problems converting her qualifications from here into what’s needed over there.’

‘The EU’s falling apart, squire. You’re talking frying pan and furnace.’

‘Might be an issue,’ he said, easing out from behind the mixing-desk, ‘if this was about the EU and Ireland anymore, if it wasn’t about you and me and taking care of number one.’ He headed for the emergency exit. ‘Excuse me,’ he winked, ‘while I take care of a number one.’

He went out onto the fire escape to piss in the fresh air, as was his wont, so that he wouldn’t have to flush afterwards. Herb, I could hear him already, would have something suitably cynical to say about Finn Hamilton living like a prince among the Cypriot paupers, the part-time philanthropist who’d spent a good chunk of his extended adulescence wandering through Europe in his customised camper van, chasing the next big breaker, the latest fall of crisp snow, boozing, snorting, squandering money he’d never had to earn. What I couldn’t tell Herb was what a shrink had once asked Finn during one of our group therapy sessions, whether Finn thought he was reacting against his father’s suicide, either by blocking it out or trying it on for size.

I’d thought he was done running, that he’d learned you never outrun it. That it’s not a race but a wrestle, and the best you can hope for is an honourable draw. I got up from the couch and wandered over to the stacked paintings, ran a fingernail down his latest take on St Hilarion. From the other side of the room it was another of his riffs on a Gothic kind of impressionism, sheer crags and soaring peaks, barren slopes, a blowsy sunset bleeding across a wine-dark sea. But as always, up close, as the image dissolved, each stroke was a vivid scar etched into the skin of something savage that seemed almost ready to snarl, the frame doubling as the bars of its cage. Even the proverbial blind man could see, by means of braille, that the artist in Finn was not a happy man. He painted in oils, and thickly, leaving a texture so crude it was as if he worked from a palette of blood, bile and coarsely grained gunpowder, a gritty and glutinous blend that you feared to examine too closely lest a spark of light, the faintest transference of heat, cause some raw and lurking quality to spontaneously combust. He favoured for inspiration Oscar Epfs, but for me his landscapes were crude variations on early El Grecos or Caravaggios, men who had harrowed a hell of their own making, and where his canvases lacked for technique they offered a banked rage, the tensile pause in the moment before the world exploded from the frame.

Finn had found his metier inside. All the hours of the day to devote to his craft. Too fanciful to say that every artist paints out his own soul, but even my untrained eye could tell that Finn was so engaged, for better or worse. Whether it was good or bad art was almost incidental: it was startling, arresting, in and of itself. Was it worth money? Is any man’s soul? Yes, with the inevitable caveat of caveat emptor .

I liked them, sure, but I wouldn’t have wanted one on my own wall, even if I could have afforded the two or three grand they generally went for, when they went. Too unsettling, always watching it from the corner of your eye as it prowled the frame, snuffling and growling and poised to spring.

He came back in from the fire escape, got some Sonic Youth going, ‘Teenage Riot’.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘this deal with the beauty salon.’ He took one last drag of mainly roach, stubbed out the jay. ‘That’s kind of under wraps for now, at least until we get the red tape sorted.’