Claire Kilroy - The Devil I Know

We were in the Site Office with the newspapers spread out on his desk, one headline more fatuous than the next. ‘Bag Yourself a Little Piece of Paradise!’ ‘Live the Dream by the Marina!’ ‘Join the Millionaire’s Circle with This Exclusive Beachfront Development! Prices starting from an unbelievable €379,000 for a one-bedroom apartment.’ The prefab smelled of sour milk and rashers.

‘“An unbelievable €379,000 for a one-bedroom apartment?”’ I read out. ‘They’re right. That is unbelievable.’

Hickey swung his steel-toed, mud-caked builder’s boots up onto the desk. He slurped his milky tea and did his post-pint sigh, Ahhhhh . ‘Starting from,’ he said. ‘Read the small print again.’

I read the small print again. Starting from an unbelievable €379,000. ‘Come on, Dessie. Who in their right mind is going to part with that for a one-bed flat?’

‘There’s only one apartment going on the market at that price an it’s a single-aspect, ground-floor, 440-square-footer facing the bin store. The rest a the one-beds clock in at around 400 grand. The two-beds are over the half-a-million mark. An the ones with the views…’ He winced at the price and reached for his hard hat. ‘Wait’ll you see,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘There’ll be a queue at the gate, so there will.’

He opened the door onto a furnace roar of activity. Out on the site, everything was in flux. Cranes swinging, hydraulic arms pistoning, diggers milling back and forth. It wasn’t going to be finished in time for the launch. ‘Doesn’t have to be finished,’ Hickey said without breaking his stride. Again, the problem of keeping up with him across muck. ‘We’ll be selling most of it off the plans. Just so long as the show apartments are ready to give the punters the general idea. Come on an have a look.’

We walked past the hulk that would one day become the landmark hotel. It was now visible from the castle, its square head gazing sadly in the window like Frankenstein’s monster. Open autumn 2007! the brochures promised, but I didn’t see how that was feasible. A digger had finished backfilling the section of trench housing a pipe. I paused to watch it pound the ground with its metal head like an animal gone berserk before realising that Hickey was shouting at me again. ‘Go back an get a fucken helmet! Before we’re fucken shut down!’

By the time I returned with a helmet, Hickey was laying into another patsy, a man with a suit under his high-viz jacket. The road couldn’t be finished in time for the launch, the man was trying to explain to Hickey, because the pipes—

‘Jesus wept, just lurry the fuckers in. That’s what I’m paying you for. Nobody gives a shite if they’re not perfect — the effing things are going to be buried — but we’ll all give a major shite if there’s no road on launch day an me clients have to stagger across planks in their Gucci heels.’

‘Who was that?’ I asked when the man had been dispatched. ‘What was he saying about leaking sewage?’

‘That dope?’ Hickey spat on the ground. ‘He’s me supervising engineer. Moaning again about pipes getting broken an misaligned if they aren’t encased in a protective structure before being backfilled what with the heavy construction machinery driving up an down over them while the rest a the apartments are being finished, blah blah. I don’t know what that fella’s problem is. Nobody gives a flying fuck about pipes an tanking an pressure tests an what have you since the Building Control Act of 1990. The Building No Control Act, more like. It’s all self-certification now — you’re basically correcting your own exams. Give yourself 100 per cent, I keep telling him. Who’s going to check? The County Council? Ask me hoop. They’re only obliged to inspect 15 per cent of all sites so they’re not going to go near the big ones, are they? That’d be too much like doing a day’s work. They’ll inspect Missus Murphy’s new granny flat instead. I’m not asking him to put his head on the block. He only has to state that the work complies with the building regulations to “a substantial extent”.’

‘Really? That can’t be true.’

‘Are you calling me a liar? That’s the law in this country. That, an wearing a safety helmet.’ He signalled to a roller to compact the soil over the sewage pipes, to compact the pipes themselves. I caught sight of my reflection in its approaching windscreen, just standing there in my yellow dunce’s cap, letting it happen. Then M. Deauville rang. I plugged my ear with my finger and shouted to him that it was fine, it was grand, everything on site was dandy, not a bother.

‘Is he coming to the launch?’ Hickey wanted to know when I got off the call.

The prospect had never occurred to me.

‘Bring him along,’ he said, and it sounded like a challenge. ‘I’d really like to meet the bloke.’

So would I. The shadow of the boom swung over my grave again and I shuddered. Tocka tocka . So would I.

*

‘They’ve started queuing,’ Hickey phoned to tell me not one, not two, but three days before the apartments were due to go on sale. Three whole days. I came down to see it with my own eyes.

The main road was choked with parked cars all the way back to the Burrow Road underpass. Family members were coming and going to sit it out in shifts. How did they sleep like that, with two wheels down on the road and two up on the kerb, the blood either draining from their heads or rushing to it? Ideal conditions for a killing, Hickey observed, rubbing his callused palms.

He had relegated the Site Office and its upended beer crate to a corner and installed a Sales Suite in its place with twin box balls flanking the entrance. Twin box balls were the signal. They were the wink and nod. A pair of twin box balls at a residential entrance was the telltale sign that the occupants had fallen victim to the property-lust plague.

Hickey had laid a tarmac road over the sewage pipes but it was already showing signs of buckling. I kicked at one of the ruckles. It had split in the centre like a soufflé. ‘Shut up,’ he warned me though I hadn’t opened my mouth. The Sales Suite was a large Portakabin carpeted in tan velvet pile with black leather sofas and orange pendant lamps. On a podium was a variation on the original architectural model of the development, displayed like the Book of Kells in a glass case which Hickey clouded up with his breath.

Large-scale floor plans of the individual apartment blocks were mounted on the walls. The plans were peppered with a pox of red stickers. About a fifth of the apartments had already been sold. To whom? I looked at Hickey, who shrugged. ‘A couple a the lads.’ He’d done a few deals to get the ball rolling. At the far end of the suite was the door to the private salesroom where, he said, the sweet magic was going to happen.

It was Hickey’s idea that we sit outside at bistro tables and keep an eye on the Sales Suite from a discreet distance. He wanted to watch his grand plan unfold. He’d had the landscape architect or the balcony dresser or the bespoke furniture designer or all three mock up a sort of afternoon-tea al-fresco vibe to give an impression of… He couldn’t think of the word. ‘What’s it?’ he asked me, clicking his fingers, ‘ genteel living?’ but genteel wasn’t quite it. ‘What’s the word I’m looking for, Tristram? Begins with a G.’ ‘Dunno,’ I replied. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘it’s a lifestyle we’re selling here is my point.’

We couldn’t have asked for a better day — the first promise of summer and the show apartments glinted as they glinted in the brochures. Work had been going on around the clock under stadium floodlights which bled a spectral glow into the night sky. The crews were on double and treble pay to get the job done. A second internal wall of glossy hoarding had been erected within the site to screen the prospective buyers from the ongoing construction work. The unfinished blocks were sheathed in green netting. At the end of an avenue lined with flags stood our show block, the Lambay building. Tender new foliage shimmered at its base — the garden had been unloaded the morning before from the back of a truck. As had the Sales Suite, the bistro dining set and even the lawn. The last time I’d seen it, less than a week previously, the site had been a battlefield in Flanders. You had to hand it to D. Hickey. He had pulled off an elaborate scam.