Claire Kilroy - The Devil I Know

‘And further to this “fee” being paid to Minister Ray Lawless, the Claremont site was rezoned?’

Yes, and fairly promptly too — you’ll see yourself from the records. Ray had fast-tracked our application. I answered the door one morning about six weeks later to find Hickey standing there, fit to burst with glee. He brandished a letter in my face. ‘You get what you pay for!’ he informed me before climbing back into his truck and carving a fresh set of skid marks into the gravel. Who knows what pleasure he derived from the skid marks? Some, I hope.

I closed the door and opened the letter.

the Minister had scrawled in crayon, or that is my recollection — it was a primitive mind that we were dealing with, scratching primitive marks into the earth. The letter confirmed that the land had been rezoned from industrial use to high-density residential and commercial. We had indeed gotten what we had paid for.

The site had been purchased for €10 million. It was now worth, Hickey rang that afternoon to inform me, six times that. The valuer had just delivered his report and had come up with a figure of sixty. ‘That’s over a million in profit a week!’ Hickey said, ever the class thick — we were up fifty million in the space of a month and a half, a profit of over one million a day . Hickey can be forgiven for making this mistake. Even in that economic climate it was difficult to grasp. Besides, he sounded scuttered.

‘Come down and see the new site office while you’re at it,’ he added grandly, as if extending an invitation to a cruise on his private yacht.

*

The site office was a Portakabin with a sign reading Site Office stuck to the door. It was mounted on concrete blocks just inside the old cement factory entrance. Messages were scribbled on its grey flank: Jenny loves Darren, Kerrie loves Karl, a cartoon sketch of a nob. I had heard about Hickey’s famous Portakabins. He rented them to schools for forty-seven grand each per year, and some schools held on to them for a decade, making D. Hickey a rich man, he boasted. ‘Indeed,’ I had said, not buying a word of it — why would a school pay €47,000 a year to park a prefab in the playground when proper classrooms could be constructed for that kind of money? But we now know it to be true. The Irish educational system had humiliated Hickey so he had made it his business to expose the real gobshites.

His truck was parked between a fire-engine-red Mercedes SLK and a silver Audi TT, both 06 registration plates. I approached the prefab and knocked. It trembled on its blocks in response to movement within, then Hickey flung open the door. In his hand was a champagne flute, with which he gestured in welcome. ‘Come in an for fuck’s sake wipe your feet!’

I looked down at the upended beer crate that served as a doorstep. Wipe them on what?

‘Ah relax,’ he said, ‘it’s a joke. This is a site office, not a bleedin castle. For builders, not barons, wha! Bet you’ve never set foot on a building site in your life, am I right?’ He looked down at me from his perch and belched. ‘Ah, God love ya, you’re not the worst. Anyway.’ He stepped back from the doorway to reveal an attractive young couple seated at the rear of the cabin. ‘Here he is at last. Meet Tristram. He’s me business partner!’ The man got to his feet and extended his hand.

‘Tristram, this is me architect, Morgan. An this’ — the woman looked up but Hickey passed over her — ‘is the master plan.’

He cleared the architect out of the way and led me to the table. Displayed on a board like a wedding cake was the scale model of a modern urban residential and commercial development typical of and appropriate to, say, a downtown waterside location in an East Coast US city: eight towers of glass clustered in a crystalline formation. The tallest crystal was located at the most easterly point — the hotel, Hickey’s Pandora’s Box.

Hickey set down his champagne flute and leaned over the table, his nose hovering inches above the model. ‘That thing’, he said with satisfaction, indicating the hotel, ‘could take out your eye.’ He breathed heavily over the development, a god admiring his handiwork from the heavens, picking out which bit he might like to toy with next. If you lifted off the top of Hickey’s head, you’d find it crammed with plastic models. They characterised his relationship with the world. He had reduced it in scale to a size that was manageable, malleable, an entity he could carve up and sell. He was a very simple man. That’s what made him so dangerous.

I could feel the woman’s eyes on me. I glanced over at her and was about to introduce myself when Hickey nudged me. ‘Here, Tristram,’ he said, sensing that he’d lost my attention. He pointed out the encircled H of a helipad. ‘That’s me parkin spot. H for Hickey.’

‘I have the artwork here also, Mr Hickey,’ said the architect.

‘Go on,’ said Hickey. ‘Show us the artwork.’

The architect unclasped his portfolio and produced a set of large computer-generated shots illustrating how the proposed development would look at street level. Hickey devoured each one before passing it to me, the glossy photographic paper mottled with his chip-shop fingerprints. He grunted with relish at these images of the world he was on the cusp of bringing into being. Photoshopped women with ponytails and trim bodies toting tennis rackets. Men in shirtsleeves laughing into mobile phones. In one picture a BMW X5 deposited a smiling blonde toddler into the open arms of a smiling blonde childcare worker at the proposed crèche. A Maserati made its exit from the proposed underground car park with a surf board strapped to its roof in the next. Along a glittering limestone avenue with Ireland’s Eye in the background a man walked a bichon frise.

‘Who’s this prick?’ said Hickey. ‘He looks bent.’

Morgan leaned in to consider the photo. ‘With apartment developments in wealthy areas, our firm find it’s advantageous to include a representation of at least one member of the gay community. It’s a sector of the population with a high disposable income.’

‘Keep him so,’ Hickey decreed, ‘but no lezzers.’ He passed me the offending image. It was a man in a pair of calf-length shorts and a polo shirt. The man looked neither gay nor straight, he just looked preposterous. They all looked preposterous. Every last one of them was dressed for a Mediterranean summer. Sunglasses and shorts and sandals. This development promised another climate. Presiding over it all were these green glass towers, the sun glinting off their elevations in every shot. Despite their height, they cast no shadow at street level, as if they themselves were the source of the light, and very possibly of the heat too, a nuclear power station.

Hickey turned to me. ‘Whatcha reckon?’

‘Smashing,’ I told him. ‘You’ve really outdone yourself.’ I handed back the photos and the woman covered up a smile. I knew her. I knew that face from somewhere.

*

‘So who’s the girl?’ I asked Hickey when we were back out in the yard, having seen Morgan off in his little silver TT bullet. The red Merc was still parked next to Hickey’s truck. I was confused when she hadn’t stood up to join the architect as he took his leave but instead poured herself another glass of champagne. I had presumed that she was part of the design team.

‘What girl?’ said Hickey, and then, tilting his head at the prefab, ‘oh, you mean the wife?’