Claire Kilroy - The Devil I Know

‘No, men in suits. I had to call me foreman over today. I says to him, “Who’s your man?” because this fella in a suit had appeared on site, but when me foreman looked over, your man was gone.’

‘So?’

‘So something funny’s going on.’

‘Like what?’

He addressed himself to the driver’s window again. ‘Might be the Tax Man.’

The phone chirruped in my pocket. Another text. I didn’t move. Hickey looked at me. ‘Are you going to open that or wha?’

‘I’ll open it later.’

‘Why? Is it your man again?’

‘No. It’s your wife.’

He laughed at that. He thought it was a joke.

*

At a quarter past one in the morning the last customer staggered out and Svetlana switched off the lights. I deleted the latest in Edel’s chain of texts and stashed the phone before elbowing Hickey awake. ‘Whuh?’ he said, sliding back up in his seat. ‘Where is he?’

‘He hasn’t come out yet.’

He shivered. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s bleedin perishing in here.’

Svetlana emerged and locked the double doors behind her. No sign of the Viking. Hickey looked up the road. The Range Rover Sport hadn’t budged. ‘Are you sure he didn’t come out?’

‘Positive. I’ve been watching all night.’

Svetlana pulled the shutters down and clipped them into place. She waved goodnight to us and then activated the key fob in her hand. The Range Rover flashed its hazard lights in response. In she got and drove away, just like that. We sat outside the empty bar on the empty street looking at the empty parking space, then Hickey exploded and punched the steering wheel which detonated the horn. The Viking was out there sniggering at us. We hated him. And he hated us.

Hickey started the engine. ‘Right. That’s it. I’ve had it.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘For a little drive.’

He turned right onto the West Pier and drove down the wrong side of the road. The pier was deserted. He could drive wherever he liked, I reasoned, trying to quell a flurry of alarm.

‘Beautiful moon out tonight,’ he noted. Although this was a perfectly valid observation — the moon was especially pure that night, and the sky especially clear — it was not the class of remark that might be expected from Hickey and it alarmed me further still. ‘Sometimes,’ he added, ‘I come down here to think.’

‘You wouldn’t come down here that often, then,’ I said, to get us back on track.

‘That’s funny, Tristram. You’re a funny man. Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘That’s what everyone’s been saying about you lately. He’s a bit funny, isn’t he, that fella? Something funny about him.’

It didn’t sound quite like Hickey’s voice. I was afraid to turn my head to check. ‘Who’s everyone, Dessie?’

‘Oh, you know. Everyone.’

We trundled past shuttered restaurants and fishmongers, the ship’s chandler and the ice factory, piles of ropes and nets. No sign of life on the quayside. The fishing boats had already departed for the night.

‘Do us a favour an pop open the glove compartment for me there.’

I leaned forward and clicked it open. A metal curve glinted amongst the truck’s manuals. I whipped my eyes away in shock. A gun.

‘Give us me flask there like a good man.’

I looked back into the glove compartment. A hip flask. It was only a hip flask. I took it out. It was full.

He glanced at the flask. ‘Be a star an take the lid off for me, would ya? I’d do it meself only I’m driving.’

I unscrewed the cap and held the flask out. Hickey swallowed a mouthful and did the post-pint sigh: Ahhhhh . The smell of whiskey filled the cabin. He handed the flask back.

‘Tanks a million. You’ll have a drop yourself.’

‘No thank you.’

‘Go on. Warm yourself up. It’s bleedin freezing in here.’

‘I’d rather not, thanks.’ A blatant lie.

‘Ah, sorry. Forgot.’

‘Not to worry.’ I put the cap back on.

‘I wouldn’t bother doing that,’ he smirked. ‘You’re only wasting your energy.’ I twisted the cap as hard as I was able.

We crawled along the centre of the pier. You would think we were leading a funeral procession. You would think there was a coffin in the back. Then Hickey took the truck out of gear and let it roll to a halt. He pulled up the handbrake but did not cut the engine. This is an odd spot to stop, I thought. Neither here nor there.

‘Is that a seal?’ he said suddenly, sitting up and craning his neck to get a better look.

‘Where?’ There were no seals in the harbour, as far as I could see.

Hickey pointed at the moonlit water. ‘A little black head popped up over there and looked right at me. It must of been a seal.’ He jumped in his seat. ‘There he is! It was a seal. Jaysus, me heart. For a minute there, I thought I seen the Devil again. Ah for fuck’s sake, Tristram, are you blind or what? Follow the line a me finger.’

I wasn’t looking at the water. I was looking at Hickey.

‘Look at the little fecker,’ he said, shaking his head in disapproval. ‘His skin all black and slimy like the Devil’s. The holes instead a ears, as if his real ears got burnt off in a fire. The sneaky little bollockses duck out a sight before you can get a proper look at them. Seals are disgustin if you think about them for too long.’ He turned to me. ‘D’ya know what I mean, Tristram?’

I said nothing. I didn’t know what he meant but I knew he meant something. The pilot light at the top of the beacon on the East Pier was pulsing behind his head. It seemed quite close but a deep channel of water divided us. Deep enough and broad enough for trawlers to pass.

‘God knows what you’d find if you dredged Howth Harbour,’ Hickey remarked. ‘God knows who you’d find, more like. I used to think when I was a kiddie that there was this big plug you could pull an the whole thing’d go whirling down the drain. All the boats’d be left sitting on the bottom, keeled over on their sides. The fish’d be flipping about in the mud. They’d find the skeletons. An the seals. Yeah, the seals’d be snared rapid. Here, give us that.’ He grabbed the hip flask as if I’d been hogging it. ‘Ah, ya sly bastard,’ he said with a wink when he discovered the tightly screwed cap. He wrenched the thing open and knocked back another mouthful, making a face as if the contents burned: Ahhhhh . I closed my eyes and inhaled the fumes.

‘You’re very pale, Tristram. That’s another thing everyone keeps saying about you. They say: he’s very pale, isn’t he? Hasn’t he gone very pale? He wasn’t always that pale, sure he wasn’t? Death warmed up. That’s what they call you behind your back. Did ya know that? Death warmed up. Something funny there. Jaysus, it’s fucken freezing in here.’ He ratcheted up the heating dial.

I didn’t rise to it. Accept the things you cannot change.

‘Good to be alone though, isn’t it, all the same? Just you an me on our own beside the sea having a nice friendly little chat. No one to interrupt us. Bit a peace and quiet from the wife. I always felt that this was my turf down here. You rich kids had the hill, the run a the mountains an that. The coves an the rock pools on the other side, the sunny side. South-facing. Isn’t the Dublin Bay side south-facing? Isn’t that right, Tristram? Some dickwad grows grapes up there, I heard. But we had down here.’ He lightly depressed and released the accelerator for emphasis. The engine revved but it was disengaged. The truck was going nowhere.

Hickey gestured with the flask at the boulders buttressing the end of the pier. They formed a staggered descent to the sea. ‘That’s where we’d go fishing, me an the lads, down on the rocks. Mackerel an herring. Smoked cod. We’d be sitting there casting lines an drinking tins for hours. These inner-city heads would come out on the Dart an the lot of us’d be talking absolute shite, total fucken rubbage. They thought we were posh! They were in bad shape, them lads. On the gear, ya know yourself. Not the gear you were on. I took care a you, Tristram. I made sure you got nothing but the best. But these poor fuckers. They were on the dirty stuff. The night’d usually end in a punch-up. Then we’d shake hands. They were good lads. Best days a me life. But there’d be these rats crawling around between the rocks.’ The engine note rose and fell. ‘Sea rats. Have ya ever seen a sea rat, Castler?’ I blinked. No one had called me by that name in years. I had almost forgotten that I had been that person. ‘They’re black with this greasy, spiky fur, like them young fellas with the gel in their hair. You’d see them scuttling around between the cracks. The rats, not the young fellas, ha ha. It’s like the seals. The rats an the seals. This place is literally crawling with them. This place is coming down.’ He shook his head and took another swig from the flask. Ahhhhh . That smell. Lord, that smell.