Ken Bruen - Dublin Noir

Aye, I’m a funny cunt. And I needed something to lighten my mood when I got to Mount Jerome. The place was a sea of gray, man. Tombstones, creepy bastard crypts and whatsit… mausoleums ? An Irish funeral in the middle of a cloudburst. Talk about fuckin’ maudlin. I walked through the stones, making sure I trod on as many of they dead cunts’ heads as I could, sidled up against a tomb, and watched all they bastards in their drookit Sunday best watching God’s lad go through the motions.

Ashes to ashes. Funk to funky.

The mourners, they was mostly family. I could tell because they was ugly bastards. Skinny, suits hanging off them like they was three sizes too big. The women, small and stodgy, hidden away behind tatty black veils. Professional fuckin’ widows, ken? And it pished down throughout. I spat at the ground, put my hand in my pocket, and wrapped my fingers around the Stanley.

Barry Phelan’s balls, they was under that screwed-down lid. Unless I shot over there, jumped on the coffin, and pried it open with my bare hands, Phelan’s balls were going to be worm food along with the rest of him. That wasn’t any big deal. Bollocks was bollocks. There was bound to be another lad round here who I could pass off as the real deal. And I saw him as soon as the coffin went under.

He came to me, hand outstretched. A tall lad with a gut and white hair. “Tommy Phelan.”

I shook. His hand like a wet fish supper in my grip. I read somewhere that a man’s scrotum and nose kept growing as he got older. If that was the case, then this Tommy Phelan must’ve had knackers the size of watermelons, I’m telling you, because that nose made him look part toucan. “Hugh Sutton,” I said. “Mates call us Shug.”

“You’re Scottish,” he said.

And you’re a fuckin’ genius. “Aye, fae Edinburgh, likes,” I said, getting coarse with the cunt. He wanted Scottish, he’d get Scottish. “I heard Barry kicked it, likes, so I thought I’d mosey over and check it out.”

“You knew him?”

“I ken Lee Cafferty.”

“Lee’s a good man.”

Lee’s a dead man. I shot him in the crown, left him sticking to the lino like a fly in shite. “He certainly is.”

“You’ll be coming to the wake,” said Tommy. A statement.

“No can do. Got to be back in Edinburgh.”

“Sure, you can stay for a wee while. I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

“Ach, if you put it like that,” I said, “I’d be glad to.”

An Irish wake, like a Scottish wedding, Hogmanay and Burns Night all rolled into one. A cold spread on a long table up against one wall that’d hardly been touched. Empty bottles that had. We was upstairs in this place called The Lantern. Phelan sitting across from us, a half-tanned bottle of Bushmills and a pint of Guinness next to it. Talk about fuckin’ stereotypes, man, the auld lad was half in his cups and two sheets to the wind about an hour after we got there. He had a Players between his fingers. I didn’t ken they still made ’em.

“What do you think of Dublin?” he asked me. But like most soused micks, he didn’t wait for an answer. His face screwed up and he leaned forward, rattling the table. The black stuff didn’t move. “It’s not Ireland,” he said. “It’s England’s version of Ireland. You know you can’t smoke in pubs over here now? Legislated. We’re losing our culture bit by bit.”

“Aye.” Thinking, Smoking’s part of your culture, pal?

“Sure, you know all about that, don’t you? I been to Edinburgh, I seen what they did to that place. Shops on Princes Street all full of See-You-Jimmy wigs, am I right? Fuckin’ English screwing you out of your heritage. Tourist tat. Am I right?”

“Aye, you’re right.”

“Dublin’s the same. Temple Bar, I was down there the other week, it’s full of coffee shops. Theme pubs. Feckin’ yanks coming over here claiming they have ancestors from the feckin’ bogs. You know what I say? I say feisigh do thóin féin, that’s what I say.”

“Gesundheit,” I said.

A young lad came over to the table. He was stringy, had a mean look about him. He put a bottle of clear liquid on the table and Phelan’s eyes lit up like a cheap fruit machine. “Now that’s more like it. You’ll join me, so.”

“I’m all right, Mr. Phelan.”

“My brother died, the name’s Tommy, and you’ll join me. Won’t he, Barry?”

“Course he will,” said the stringy lad. He took a seat. I knew he was a wanker, because he turned the chair and straddled it.

“My nephew’s just come back from your neck of the woods,” said Tommy. He poured three deep shots from the bottle. “Barry, this is Shug. He’s an Edinburgh lad.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said. But his eyes said different. His index finger ran down the side of the shot glass. Brown flecks under the nail. “It’s done, Tommy.”

“There’s a good lad. You take care of it yourself?”

Barry looked across at me, like he was trying to work out if it was safe. Then: “The auld bastard was dead when I got there.” He cracked a grin like a graveyard. “Fucker was sitting in front of the telly, Tommy. Sitting in his own shite.”

I smiled. My mouth was open. Some fuck had put vinegar on the roof and it hurt to breathe. I reached for the shot glass. “What’s this, vodka?”

Tommy’s face flickered. “ Poitín, Shuggie. Sláinte. ”

“ Sláinte, ” said Barry.

“Whatever,” I said, and necked it. It burned my throat. That, or something else.

A rat always knows when he’s in with weasels. That’s the way the song goes.

I drank with them, tried to hold it down. Kept wanting to twitch right out of there. Barry didn’t drink so much, and neither did I, but Tommy got wasted. His eyes glazed over, his chin got loose. It looked like he was melting. “Your da would be proud of you, Barry-son. He’d be proud .”

“I know, Uncle Tommy.”

Barry Phelan, son of Barry Phelan. The fuckin’ Irish, they keep it simple, eh? They have to, the amount they pour down their necks. I got a measure of Barry right away. This cunt clocked on who I was, likes. That’s why he told me what happened to Big Yin. Laughing at me. It tore at my gut, made me want to chew his fuckin’ nose off.

Shug Sutton. The last of the Boyos. The rest all up and fucked off with other firms. Shuggie stayed put. More fool me, eh?

I waited until Barry got to his feet and announced that he had to take a pish. Waited another three seconds and did the same thing. Tommy out of it. I walked into the toilets and Barry had his back to me, pishing in one of the cubicles. Too insecure to use the urinal, hung like a fuckin’ hamster, eh?

“I don’t hear pissing, Shugs,” said Barry, shaking his wee man. Took more than three shakes, the wanker. “Which means you’re thinking about doing something rash, am I right?”

I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t find the breath.

Barry turned in the cubicle. He smiled. His bottom set of teeth was all skew-whiff, likes. “Yer man’s dead, Shugs. He was dead before I got there. So you go back out there and you raise a glass to the new crew, all right? Because if you don’t, I’ll have the whole family rip you a new arse to match yer fuckin’ face.”

I thought about that for about five seconds. And the cunt Phelan made to push past me. I stood still.

“You fuckin’ simple, Shugs? It’s over, pal,” he said.

Right enough. It was over.

I clamped a hand over his mouth, grabbed his balls with the other, and pushed him back into his cubicle. His breath was hot on my palm. I cracked his skull against the wall until he went limp. Lost myself for a second, then came back with blood on my hands and saltwater hanging from my mouth. My lungs hurt. I couldn’t breathe proper.