Claire Kilroy - The Devil I Know

‘I’m sorry, Monsieur Deauville, could you repeat that please?’

‘It’s over, Tristram. The money is gone.’ Which is what I thought he had said.

‘Tell him about the planning bond,’ Hickey badgered me. ‘Tell him we need more money for the planning bond,’ but this was serious. I blocked my free ear the better to hear Deauville, or the worse, because I could barely grasp the gravity of what he was telling me.

Hickey wrested the phone from my hand. ‘Lookit, bud,’ he told Deauville, ‘it’s like this: without that money, we’re wanked,’ and then ‘ Fuck. He’s after hanging up on me again.’ He threw down the phone. ‘What was he saying?’

I couldn’t speak for a moment. My mind was racing. My thoughts were skipping grooves. ‘He said.’ I swallowed and started again. ‘He said that a bank has gone under in New York.’

Hickey shrugged. ‘Big swinging mickey.’

I covered my eyes with my hands to try to focus on the information. ‘He said it’s not just any bank. It’s one of the largest investment banks in the US.’ How had Deauville phrased it? Terms were ricocheting inside my skull. International banking crisis. Global financial collapse. Drastic losses . I tried to string them into a sentence. ‘It’s an instrumental bank,’ was all I managed. That wasn’t even the word Deauville had used. Endemic or systemic, something like that. ‘He says the money is gone.’

‘What money?’

‘All of it. All of the money. My money, your money, McGee’s money, Castle Holdings’ money. The country’s money. He says it’s gone.’ I laughed in horror. Not a pleasant sound.

‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know. Just gone. Deauville rang and said that all of the money is gone. That credit event he was saying the Market was nervous about? It just happened.’

‘Is our money gone?’

‘Christ, it’s worse than gone,’ I realised, thinking out loud. Pennies were dropping like anvils. ‘We still have to pay it back.’

Hickey hadn’t yet gotten his head around gone . ‘It’s very simple,’ he said, bulldozing aside the facts as though matters could still be resolved by the brute force of his will. ‘Frenchie or Kraut or whatever the fuck he is will lose his investment if he doesn’t stump up the cash. Get back on to him an spell it out.’ As if we were in a position to issue demands.

‘Deauville will lose nothing. He says he’s a senior bondholder.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He says it means he’s immune. He says it means we take the hit.’ All of the money in the world was gone, and already, within a few minutes of it having evaporated, it seemed implausible that there had been so much of it in the first place.

‘We’ll flip the international portfolio. Make a profit.’

‘Profit? Oh Dessie.’ I actually felt sorry for him then. ‘Deauville says the markets are in collapse. He says the world economy has begun to implode and that our assets have junk status. He says no one is going to want to buy them. And we paid for them with borrowed money. We paid for them with credit. Which in fact means debt. We owe more money than we can possibly count.’ I laughed again. In horror. I couldn’t help myself. Nor could Hickey. He started ranting. I kept laughing. The two of us making all this hysterical noise. I thought the cabin might explode. Either the cabin or my head.

‘It can’t just be gone,’ he shouted over and over, as if saying it would make it true like in the old days, but the old days were gone. Everything was gone. The money in particular. ‘Money doesn’t just disappear into thin air. Someone has to have it. Some fucker has our money. That foreign prick has our money. Where does he live?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You do know.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You do know.’

‘I don’t know.’

Hickey raised his fist to me. ‘Don’t,’ I warned him. I tried the door again. Still locked.

A strangled gurgle of frustration and he punched the steering wheel instead. Then he shoved the engine into gear. The truck shot forward, throwing us back in our seats. He hit the brakes and we collided with the dashboard. ‘Why are ya protecting him?’ Hickey screamed. ‘He controls everything you do. You do everything he says. Here.’ He grabbed the hip flask and thrust it into my face. ‘Have a drink.’ I pushed the flask away.

He twisted out of his seat and jabbed the flask at me again, gouging it into my gums. His foot was back on the accelerator and the unsteered truck hurtled along. The neck of the flask smashed against my teeth like the barrel of a gun. I did my best to fight him off, but… you’ve seen him. He was too strong. And I was too weak. I was too weak.

Hickey broke hard and the whiskey backwashed into my mouth. I could taste it and it could taste me. It latched onto the scent of my blood. Off we shot again. ‘Have a fucken drink, Castler,’ Hickey bayed at me, gripping a hank of my hair. I glimpsed the end of the pier over his shoulder and then the truck was launched.

A fleeting airborne moment between this life and the next. This is it, I thought, to hell with it. I gulped the whiskey down. ‘That’s the man!’ Hickey encouraged me before we were both hurled against his door. The truck landed with a crunch not a splash. We had hit the rocks. The tide must be out, I thought inanely. Yes, the tide must be out.

The whiskey seeped into my bloodstream along with the dire consequences. Hickey had me in a headlock. I didn’t struggle but instead huddled against the wall of his chest, the warm and hairy wall. The worst possible thing had just happened. I cowered there.

‘Are we dead?’ Hickey wondered in a muffled voice. ‘What d’ya reckon, Castler? Are we dead or wha? Ah here, sure you already are.’

‘That was another Tristram St Lawrence.’ My voice was muffled too. The headlock had turned into an embrace. I was nestled in his arms.

‘Get off me, ya puff.’ He pushed me away but I slumped right back. The cheery contagion of the whiskey had turned my limbs to rubber.

‘I’m not a puff. I’ve been riding your wife.’

He laughed at that and gave me a clap on the back, followed by a harder one to let me know that he meant it: get off me now, ya puff. I laughed too, at the shock he had in store when Edel told him the news. Not my problem. I was in the cosy room with the crackling log fire.

Hickey manhandled me back into the passenger seat, my head lolling like a corpse. I saw the lapping waves, the moon, the sleek black shape of the island, the world before electric light. I could have been looking through the eyes of the original Sir Tristram. His blood ran in mine, along with all the bad stuff, which was steadily rising.

The truck was cast up on the boulders like a shipwreck. Hickey tried to start the engine but the ignition refused to catch. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Do you smell diesel?’ He sniffed his armpits. ‘Am I smelling diesel?’ He thumped the horn. ‘They told me this yoke could drive over anything .’

The cosy room started to recede. I was reversing towards a cold and draughty corridor. I had to stay in the cosy room, whatever the price. I gave the flask a shake. Empty. I had polished it off. It had polished off me. I let it drop to the floor. We both lay there drained.

‘Don’t worry,’ Hickey reassured me, ‘there’s plenty more where that came from.’ He reached beneath his seat and produced two bottles of Bushmills. ‘One for you and one for me.’

I grasped a bottle. ‘Good man,’ I said, although he was a bad one. I broke the gold foil seal and glugged a treble down.

‘Look at you,’ Hickey sneered, the beard smothering his face like ivy.

I tried the door. It was still locked. And so was I. ‘I’m frightened,’ I think I may have admitted in a small voice. I cannot guarantee that I managed to get the words out although I know that I certainly tried. You’ll have to ask Hickey for confirmation. You’ll have to ask him for confirmation on a lot of things from here on in. ‘I am frightened of the dark, Dessie,’ my few surviving sober cells tried to confess before they too succumbed to the influence and slipped under. The vault I carried around in my chest opened then. It plunged down and connected me to the bowels of Hell. It plugged me in. And that is where the night stops. Except that it didn’t stop. It never stops. Something else takes over. Your body carries on without you. There is no you.