Ken Bruen - A White Arrest

Kev was well pleased. It kept the troops in line if they believed the boss was totally not to be fucked with. He said: ‘Whatcha fink Fen, eh… what do ya reckon, matey?’ Now Albert and Doug were on their feet and the air was crackling. Fen fell back into a chair, saying: ‘Aw Jeez, Kev, you never said nuffing about doing the old bill. Jeez, it’s not on. It’s not… And he groped in desperation for a word to convey his feeling. ‘It’s not British.’

Kev gave a wild laugh, then pulled the Browning out, got into shooter stance, legs apart, two-handed grip, swung the barrel back and forth across his gang, shouted: ‘Incoming!’ and watched the fucks dive for cover.

He could hear hueys fly low over the Mekong Delta, and vowed to re-rent Apocalypse Now.

The Galtimore ballroom confirms the English nightmare. That the Irish are: One, tribal. Two, ferocious. Three, stone mad.

To see a heaving mass of hibernians ‘dancing’ to a show-band with an abandon of insecurity, is truly awesome. Like a rave with intent. When Falls saw the entrance and felt the vibes, she asked: ‘Are we here to dance or to raid?’

Eddie took her hand, laughed: ‘They’re only warming up.’

She could only hope this was a joke.

It wasn’t. Two bouncers at the door said in unison: ‘How ya, Eddie.’

Falls didn’t know: was this good or bad? Good that he was known, but how regular was he? Was she just another in a line of Saturday Night Specials, cheap and over the counter?

Eddie said: ‘They’re Connemara men. Never mess with them. When penance is required, they think true suffering is to drink sherry.’

Inside it was sweltering, and seemed like all of humanity had converged. Eddie said: ‘Wait here, I’ll get some minerals,’ and was gone.

Falls panicked, felt she’d never see him again. The sheer mass of the crowd moved her along and into the ballroom. She thought: ‘So this is hell.’

A stout man, reeking of stout in a sweat stained shirt asked her: ‘D’yer want a turn?’

‘No thank you, I’m — ’ but he shouted: ‘Stick it, yer black bitch!’

A band, consisting of at least fifty or so it seemed, were doing a loud version of ‘I Shot the Sheriff. Mainly it was loud, and they sure hated the sheriff. And here was Eddie, big smile, two large iced drinks, saying: ‘So, did you miss me?’

‘Yeah.’

Then they were dancing, despite the crowd, the heat and the band. They were cookin’. He could jive like an eel. Falls had never met a man who could dance. In fact most of them could barely speak. It deeply delighted her. Then a slow number: ‘Miss You Nights’.

And she drew him close, enfolded him tight. She asked: ‘Is that a poem or are you real pleased with me?’

‘It’s poetry all right.’

And later, it would be.

Falls was in love with love. She yearned to feel the mix of sickness, nausea and exhilaration that came with it. So in love you couldn’t eat, sleep or function. The telephone ruled your life and ruined it. Would he phone, and when, if, oh God…

You bastard. She wanted to do crazy shit like write their married name and buy him shirts he’d never wear. Cut his hair and hang out with his family, prattle on about him until her friends roared: ‘Enough!’

Lie awake all night and stare at his face, trace his lips gently with two fingers and half hope he’d wake. Kiss him before he shaved and wear the beard rash like a trophy. Mess his hair just after he’d carefully styled it, and iron his laundry, or even iron his face. She giggled. Publicly, on matters musical, she’d drop the name of cool like Alanis Morissette. Sing the lyrics of mild obscenity and mouth the words of kick ass. At home, if it wasn’t the Cowboy Junkies, she’d tie her hair in a severe bun and put Evita on the turntable. Her window had a flower box, and with the tiniest push of imagination — open that window full — she was on the balcony of the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires. A couple of dry sherries fuelled the process and she’d sing along with ‘Don’t Cry for me, Argentina’.

The track on total repeat till tears formed in her eyes, her heart near burnt from tenderness for her ‘shirtless ones’. Till a passer-by shouted: ‘Put a bloody sock in it!’

It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that, at odd times, her voice carried to the Umpire, and eased the dreams of carnage he’d envisaged. Reluctantly, like a sad Peronist, she shut Evita down and considered her situation. If she told Roberts about Brant and Mrs Roberts, she was in deep shit. If she didn’t tell him and he found out, she was in deeper mire. If she said nowt to nobody, she’d probably survive. It stuck in her gut like the benign cowardice it was. Falls could vividly remember the day her friends ran up to her in the street saying: ‘Come quick, look at the man on the common.’

When she got there, her heart sank. The object of their curiosity was her dad. Staggering home from the pub after a day’s drinking. She tried to help him. She was four years old. As long as she could remember, her life had been overshadowed by his drinking. He was never violent, but it cast a huge cloud over the family. She felt she was born onto a battlefield. His booze destroyed the family. With it came with the four horsemen: Poverty, Fear, Frustration, Despair.

Dad was anaesthetised from all that. There was never money for schoolbooks or food. Nights were spent trying to block out her parents’ raised voices. Or curled up, too terrified to sleep because her father hadn’t come home. Wishing he was dead and praying he wasn’t. Never inviting her friends home as her father’s moods were unpredictable. Most of her childhood spent covering up for his drinking. Once, asking him: ‘Can I have two shillings for an English book?’

‘Sure, don’t you speak it already?’

Whispering, lest his sleep be disturbed. All of this destroyed her mother. Being of Jamaican descent, she developed the ‘tyrant syndrome’, and tried to enlist young Falls on her side. Early she learned to ‘run with the hare and savage with the hound’. Oh yes! Then she became convinced that mass would help. If she went to church enough, he’d stop.

He didn’t.

She stopped church. Slowly, she realised the terrible dilemma for such a child as she. They have to recover from the alcoholic parent they had, and suffer for the one they didn’t have. When she was nineteen she had a choice: go mad or get a career. Thus she’d joined the police and often felt it was indeed a mobile madness.

Falls, looking in the mirror, said: ‘I am gorgeous.’ She sure felt it. Eddie told her all the time, and wow, she never got tired of it. For no reason at all, he’d touched her cheek, saying: ‘I can’t believe I found you.’ Jesus!

A woman dreams her whole life of such a man. If all his lines were just lines, so what? It was magic. She was sprinkled in Stardust. True, she’d tried the cliches, the mush on toast of trying out his name to see how it fit: ‘Susan Dillon.’

Mmm. How about Susan Falls Dillon?

Needed work.

Eddie Dillon rolled off Falls, lay on his back and exhaled. ‘The Irishman’s Dream.’

‘What’s that, then?’

‘To fuck a policeman.’

After the dance, she’d asked him for a drink. He’d had her. In the hall, the kitchen, the sitting room and finally, panting, he’d said: ‘I give up — where have you hidden the bed?’

As they lay on the floor, knackered, the age-old divide between the sexes was full frontal. She wanted him to hold her and tell her he loved her, to luxuriate in the afterglow. He wanted to sleep. But new-mannish educated as he partly was, he compromised. Held her hand and dozed. She had to bite her tongue not to say ‘I love you.’ Then he stirred, said: ‘I’ve a thirst on me to tempt the Pope. I’ll give you a fiver to spit in me mouth.’