Claire Kilroy - The Devil I Know

He put on his sunglasses and sat back to contemplate the sales queue with satisfaction, watching the world go buy. The punters had been living in cars for three days by then and were dazed, dehydrated and desperate. The taxi drivers, their wives, anxious young couples, their parents, nurses and guards, all lining up to join the jet set, pressing coins into our palms like medieval supplicants. The smart money — or the slightly less stupid money — hadn’t wasted time viewing the show apartments but had gone straight to the private salesroom to slap down deposits. When they came out the other side with their contracts, they headed across to get an idea of the asset they’d just acquired, calculating the resale value when they went to flip it at completion.

Those still stuck in the queue sized up the people ahead of them, worrying that they had their eye on the same apartment, and so discussing their second choice, and their third. Plan B, Plan C and Plan D. They muttered to their partners, they muttered into their phones, they muttered to their gods, anxious not to be overheard. So preoccupied were they with their quarry that they didn’t register Hickey and I trained on them. They didn’t register that they were the quarry.

Hickey leaned in. ‘Is he coming?’ I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. I was keeping my eyes peeled for M. Deauville too.

‘He says he hopes to be able to make it.’ Tocka tocka over the phone as he had checked airline schedules last night. A nervous tingle on my part at the prospect of coming face to face. ‘But he couldn’t promise. Depends on flights.’

Hickey nodded. ‘Busy man.’

I nodded back. ‘Busy man.’

That’s when Ciara, head of the sales team, emerged from the salesroom with her clipboard. I checked my watch. The apartments had been on sale for an hour and twenty minutes. Hickey lowered his sunglasses to wink at me. ‘Here we are now.’ He pushed the glasses back up his nose.

‘Well?’ he asked when she drew up. ‘Are we in business?’

‘We are, Mr Hickey. Just to confirm that the first fifty-eight units are now sold. A number of investors made multiple purchases. A farmer from Tipperary bought ten.’

Hickey brought his fist down hard on the bistro table: ‘Yes!’ His teaspoon bounced and landed on the gravel. Ciara stooped to pick it up. ‘Good girl. Right. Withdraw the next sixty-five units from sale.’

I jolted upright in my chair. ‘ What?​ ’ but Ciara had already Yes-Mr-Hickey -ed him and was marching back to the Sales Suite, bursting with self-importance. I turned to Hickey. ‘Run that past me?’

He punched a number into his mobile phone and raised it to his ear before cocking an eyebrow my way. ‘We decided that if trade was brisk we’d release fifty-eight apartments today an call it Phase One, then hold back the next batch, add 30 per cent to the price, an call it Phase Two. We’ll launch Phase Two in six weeks. Then there’s Phase Three an Phase— Ah, howaya Mr McGee, D. Hickey here. Grand job, grand job.’

I stared at him in his suit. He never looked right in a suit, same as I never looked right in jeans. A tuft of black bristles protruded from his ear, the match of the black bristles sprouting from his nose, as if something were growing inside him, forcing its way out. He was a few rungs behind on the evolutionary ladder, or perhaps a few rungs ahead on the evolutionary ladder, or on some as yet undocumented stretch of the ladder which had taken off on a tangent, so he was not a man but something hybrid, something wolfish, something that wore its pelt on the inside, because they were a new breed, weren’t they, these developers. And their development was escalating. Soon they would take over. They’d enslave us. Too late: they already had. A commotion had broken out in the sales queue. An agent had placed a sign in the window:

Phase One

Sold Out

Ciara was struggling to force shut the door of the Sales Suite. People were clamouring for entry. Tired people, thwarted people, demoralised people, panicked people, people shouting that they’d been queuing for days.

Ciara clicked her fingers over her head like a flamenco dancer and cried ‘Security!’ Two heavies from the former Eastern Bloc, who were built like the former Eastern Bloc, appeared and enquired if there was a problem. Fucking right there was a problem, said one man pointing at them, and a struggle ensued. The insurrection was efficiently quashed by the hired goons, as insurrections in the former Eastern Bloc tended to be.

The man who had pointed his finger rolled onto his side clutching his knee. A small child wailed in fright. Hickey clapped his phone shut and stood up to claim his winnings. ‘ Gracious ,’ he said. ‘That’s the word I’m looking for. Isn’t that right, Tristram? Isn’t that what we’re selling here? Gracious living.’

*

M. Deauville didn’t materialise. Hickey stood between his big box balls at the close of business that evening and jingled the coins in his pockets. ‘Cristal?’ he offered, then winced in mock apology. He took off his sunglasses to admire them. Two grand, he remarked they’d cost him.

He turned his back and headed off, holding up a valedictory hand in that way that used to drive me mad when I had less to be driven mad by (what made him so very positive that I was looking at him?) but then he paused, dropped his head, relented, and turned around. ‘Lookit,’ he said, as if making a major concession, ‘I’m having a barbeque next Saturday, okay? Me an the wife, up at the ranch. I might see you there. I know you’re a busy man.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, getting up to allow two men in overalls to remove my chair and load it into the back of a truck. The rest of the bistro set had already been packed. I stood there watching the place being locked up. Checked my phone: no calls. Busy man.

I looked about for a chair but found none and in the end sat down on a kerbstone. It rocked in its moorings. Everything built by Hickey rocked in its moorings. There were no moorings.

I loitered there until the warmth went out of the sun, waiting for M. Deauville to walk through the gates and find me, the abandoned birthday boy, surrounded by burst balloons and half-eaten cake, party hats and torn gift wrapping strewn at my feet.

He didn’t come and he didn’t ring either but he was there in spirit. I see that now. I see it all now. Every aspect of the launch bore his hallmark. The Devil is in the detail.

‘And at what point did Dominic Dowdall enter the picture?’

I’m sorry, who?

‘The Viking.’

Oh, him. Yes. I should have mentioned. He pitched up on launch day to sniff around, sensing that juicy spoils were to be had. That’s what Vikings do. They raid juicy spoils. It was only a matter of time before he stuck his whore — I mean, his oar in. We’ll get to her — I mean, to that.

He rocked up with his wife and their three blond children, all of whom had ridiculous names. I realise I stand in a glasshouse in this regard, but at least my ridiculous name is hereditary. ‘Leave that tree alone, Roman,’ he called as the boy struggled to wrench a young Japanese maple out of the ground, but there was no conviction in the Viking’s voice. Pull it if you wish, Roman, he was saying. Do what feels good. Do what feels right. Nobody is going to stop you, son, that’s a valuable lesson in life. The maple snapped. Roman looked at the slender antler of branches in his hand. ‘Put that down,’ his father told him, and the boy cast it aside and moved on to the next target. Hickey shook his head. ‘That little bollocks is going to get such a boot up the hole.’