John Brady - The going rate

Darren Mulhall’s last day would be short.

The daylight part began with his awakening to the sound of a door chime. Pieces soon began to fall into place. He was in Martin’s house, in Martin’s bed. Martin’s wife Bernie was no longer beside him, however.

He remembered vodka, and lager, and a bit of hash that Bernie had found in one of Martin’s toolboxes after his arrest. It was gone three o’clock when he had finished with Bernie. They had done pretty well everything. He remembered her complaining she didn’t want to do it anymore. Well, that only egged him on, and sore or not, she looked happy enough with the proceedings. Of course she could have been faking it. Big surprise, there. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it, and she was a bit afraid of him, after all. He didn’t mind that one bit.

His mouth was cracked and furry, and his eyes felt like they had been shoved back hard into his head. He rubbed the hardened goop from the edges of his eyes, and he tried to swallow. There was light on the curtains. He found the alarm: nearly ten o’clock? Jesus. He lay still, listening. There were footsteps coming up the stairs now. He kicked away the sheet and the eiderdown. The chill air washed over him, and he rolled sideways to reach under the bed for the pistol. He was on his feet when Bernadette came in the door. She was breathing hard. She wasn’t even trying to hold her dressing gown closed. Her mouth hung open and for several moments she stood still, her chest heaving so much the shadow between her breasts seemed to have a life of its own.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Gas company? On a Good Friday?”

He kept up his stare, waiting for a giveaway sign.

“What’re you looking at me like that for? I didn’t call them, did I.”

The redness around her mouth and neck from last night seemed to be getting even deeper.

The doorbell’s ring was ten times louder this time.

“Gas company,” came a Dublin accent. “Anybody home here?”

Mulhall picked up his underpants and jeans on his way to the window. He got his second leg in as he inched the curtain away from the wall. The white van out on the road was open, and there were tools and pipes on the bed of it. An average looking joe in overalls was setting up a workmate by the curb.

“I don’t know anything about this, Darren-”

“Shut up a minute, will you.”

He realized that he was shaking, and that she could see it.

“They look okay,” she said. “Don’t they?”

“I’ll decide that,” he said.

He put the pistol on the bed, and leaned his back against the wall while he pulled on his jeans. A cool head, and a dry pants, he thought. Overreacting was the worst thing to do.

“Give me me Nikes there. No — no socks.”

His T-shirt was on the chest of drawers.

“Me phone,” he said. “Were you using it?”

She shook her head, but her eyes stayed on the pistol.

“No, no. I don’t think I did.”

“Go back downstairs. Tell him you’re coming.”

She seemed paralyzed. Her eyes moved from the pistol and back to him. He swore and shoved her toward the door. He tried to keep in step with her as she descended the stairs, whispering.

“Tell him you’re coming, I said.”

She pulled at the belt of her dressing gown, losing one end. He laid his arm on her shoulder, with the pistol pointed at the hall door. He felt her start when she saw it.

“Jesus, Darren, what’s the need of that?”

Her voice was strained with the panic.

“Just keep going, will you.”

He looked down the hallway. Martin had set up an escape route when they moved in here three or four years ago, and one night last summer he had shown Mulhall the setup, his master plan of getting out in a hurry. Three steps out the door to the garage — Martin had never used it as a garage but as a workshop, where he kept all his tools in perfect nick — and a couple of steps to the workbench. Then, up to the window he had put in three-quarters the way up the wall and Bob’s your uncle: you were in the neighbour’s. He had even timed himself taking a few gos at it, he had told Mulhall with pride.

Mulhall had been careful not to scoff at Martin’s meticulousness. Martin was such an iijit. His whole Mission Impossible type of approach made the others slag him mercilessly. Even Murph, who took the gold for being the most complete iijit in the known world, knew that Martin was an iijit. But everyone had still depended on Martin for the welding and the lock-smithing.

Even if Martin was no mastermind, he’d had a good run. He was always careful and modest in his work. It was only bad luck that a cop car was passing that petrol station that night. Though Martin would never admit it, Mulhall was certain that he had only started into his own line of robbing because of Bernie, with her shopping and her holidays and her decorating shite.

Mulhall’s tact had earned him Martin’s trust. It was to Mulhall that the same Martin had turned after his sentencing. Could Mulhall look in on things while he was inside, could he keep an eye on things? Murph could barely look after himself, not to mind someone else. Bernie needed minding sometimes, Martin told him. She wasn’t always on the ball: she didn’t have much confidence. He should make himself at home, naturally. Did that include drinking Martin’s vodka, Mulhall had wondered daily since he had come here last week to lay low. And did the make-yourself-at-home bit cover riding Bernadette twice a day until they were pouring sweat and aching?

Mulhall tiptoed around her as she took the last step down, and he turned toward the kitchen. He heard the man at the door whistling softly to himself, his blue overalls visible even through the frosted glass of the hall door. He kept Bernadette in front of him, ignoring the shudders that had begun to seize at her.

“Stand there,” he whispered. “Right there, where he can see you’re there.”

“Why are you doing this? Christ, stop pushing me, will you.”

He tugged on her shoulder.

“Here,” he hissed. “Count up to ten- No! In your head!”

He pulled the collapsed back of his Air Max up over his heel, swore at the sharp pain as his finger was squeezed, and then he opened the door out to the garage. His nostrils filled with the comforting smell of oil and old grass from the lawnmower. The door swung shut silently behind him: Martin’s work again, he was sure.

Sure enough, in three steps, Mulhall was on the bench, stooped, and pulling the bar release from the window. The neighbours’ garden wasn’t a garden at all: it was more of a dump. Maybe it had started as storage, all the lengths of warped timber and the pieces of ruined particleboard, the cement blocks, and three or four disemboweled lawnmowers. But like Martin had pointed out, the neighbours had let the fence fall apart just like everything else of theirs, and there was a clear run to the lane. Lifting the window, he rolled into the opening. He dropped onto a soggy patch of last year’s leaves that were already almost covered by new grass.

He stayed in a crouch, staring at a deflated soccer ball, and listened. There was nothing out of the ordinary. A face appeared at the kitchen window, an unshaven man, drawing on a cigarette. It was Martin’s neighbour, Mr. Depressed, Mr. Alco. Mulhall gave him the nod, and then he skipped toward the stack of cement blocks. He threw his leg over the wall, gasping as he felt it tear through the denim at his skin. He straddled the wall carefully for several moments before swinging the other leg behind it.

The laneway was graffiti world of course, with all the usual half-arsed, jerry-built cement block sheds and old corrugated iron, and plenty of barbed wire. Dear Old Dublin. Again he listened. The scrapes on his thighs began to burn. The cold morning air had made his hangover vanish. Movement to his right broke his gaze from the glints of light from the broken glass in the laneway. A pudgy man was stepping away from the wall of the laneway ahead, his green safety vest and yellow hard hat almost glowing now in the spring light.