Claire Kilroy: The Devil I Know

Didn’t I realise how foolhardy that was? he persisted. Didn’t I grasp that I was treading on thin ice? There were danger zones, areas of unusual turbulence, like sunspots on the sun, M. Deauville explained, and they were to be avoided at all costs. The Summit Inn was one such zone. The old man — if he was an old man: it was difficult to gauge M. Deauville’s age, but he was my old man in a way — the old man had kept me sequestered in airport hotels and conference centres. But I had strayed from the path.

‘I am sorry, M. Deauville.’ I was such a sorry soul that it was hard to quantify. Crossing Christy’s threshold had been reckless in the extreme. I blamed the shock of the crash, or the emergency landing, and I blamed D. Hickey. I still do.

‘D. Hickey?’ The name piqued M. Deauville’s interest.

‘Yes. Desmond Hickey.’

Tocka tocka on the keyboard as M. Deauville ran a check. ‘The property developer Desmond Hickey?’

I thought of the bag of grit sleeping it off in the back of his truck, arm in arm with the shovel. ‘Well, he’s more what you’d call a builder.’

‘And why did you agree to enter licensed premises with this individual?’

‘He said he had a proposition.’ Clearly, this was a disingenuous representation of the previous evening’s sequence of events. I had entered the licensed premises because I was gasping for a drink. Hickey only mentioned his proposition as I was leaving.

‘A business proposition, did Mr Hickey say?’

‘Yes.’

Tocka tocka . ‘See what he wants.’

‘Well, it’s obvious. He wants to make money.’

‘And what is so wrong with that?’

He had me there. You could say that M. Deauville brought Hickey and me together. Yes, I think it would be fair to say that.

*

Hickey was back that afternoon, tugging on the bell pull on the front door and not pushing the buzzer by the tradesman’s entrance. I looked out the window and saw his truck parked below on the gravel.

The tails of the setters thumped the floor in welcome when I appeared downstairs, then they remembered themselves and angled worried eyes at Father, who was standing at the window looking out at Hickey’s truck. I had hoped that the castle might be large enough that we should not have to rub up against each other in this fashion. ‘Do you know that…?’ Father groped for a suitable word as he contemplated the hairy spectacle of Hickey. ‘ Character ,’ he eventually managed.

‘Yes.’

‘Kindly go out and inform him that we’ve nothing left to steal.’

Hickey had already cased the joint in the time it took me to get down to him. ‘Gutters need replacing,’ he pointed out. ‘Chimley’s bollixed. Rotten windows. State a them slanty walls. An here, have you seen this?’ The cracks under the sills. ‘Subsidence.’ He sucked air through his teeth. ‘You’re talking big money there, big money.’

I opened the passenger door of his truck and got in. ‘I believe you have something to show me, yes?’

Hickey drove as a dog might, with some part of his anatomy — his elbow or sometimes his head — shoved out the window. The apple on the dashboard rolled to my side when he swung a right onto Harbour Road. ‘See that?’ He indicated a chipper facing the marina. ‘Built that in ’04. Do you remember what was there before?’

Nope, I admitted, I didn’t.

‘That’s because there was nothing there!’

‘Gosh.’ You would think he had invented matter. I never met a man with a higher opinion of his abilities.

The tour-guide commentary persisted up the hill as my attention was drawn to this converted shopfront and that new townhouse. ‘Small fry,’ he protested with false modesty, as if such an assortment of odd jobs could be interpreted as anything other than small fry, but then, I suppose they were big fry to a man like Hickey. ‘Wait’ll you see what I’m up to next, Tristram.’ He flashed me a wolfish smile.

At the church in the village where the road forked, Hickey blessed himself and took a right, speaking with great animation about his next project. A posh old pile, he said over the engine, which was struggling with the gradient. The apple toppled off the dashboard. I caught it and placed it in the handbrake well. He dropped down to second gear, and then first, telling me he hoped to get it off the owner at a fair price. It had been vacant for some years now and was a bit the worse for wear. Not in the same state as the castle, obviously. I mean, it wasn’t totally banjaxed. Huge gardens though, he added, nodding to himself. A good eight acres at least, though he hadn’t had the land surveyed since the property hadn’t come to the market yet. The zoning in the area was one dwelling per eighth of an acre, so he estimated he’d get permission for a small luxury development on the eastern boundary. Large family dwellings, five bedrooms, a jacks for each arse sort of thing. Retain the mature trees, obviously, or a few of them at least. Mature trees sold a development. Pain in the hole building around them but there it is.

Windgate Road still retained the leafy air of a country lane. A country lane punctuated by ten-foot-high electronic security gates, but a country lane nonetheless. Verges of cow parsley, honeysuckle, buttercups. Anyway, Hickey continued, the house itself was probably a protected structure since it was Victorian, or Georgian, or Edwardian, or something, but he reckoned he could still squeeze twelve or so luxury apartments behind the façade.

He slowed down when we reached the highest point of Windgate Road, the blind bend before it began its descent over Dublin Bay. I hoped he wasn’t bringing me where I thought he was. And then he did.

Hickey pulled in at the old stone gate pillars. The name of the house was barely legible. ‘Hilltop’ it read beneath the clusters of lichen. The house itself was screened from view by the woodland garden. The bluebells were still in blossom, thousands of them lining the forest floor.

Hickey jumped out of the truck and grabbed the rusty padlock on the gate. He selected a key from his key ring and unlocked it. I rolled down the window.

‘Where did you get that key?’

He pretended that he couldn’t hear me over the huffing and puffing and grunting and belching required to lever open the gates, which had sagged over the years into the tarmac. He glanced at the rust staining his palms before climbing back into the cabin, a slick of sweat across his forehead.

‘Where did you get that key?’ I repeated.

‘You could a helped,’ was all I got out of him.

We proceeded up the driveway — he’d chosen the shorter one; there were two — and emerged from the trees to encounter the elevated prospect of the house. Hilltop was mounted on a plinth and divided into two wings to capitalise on the view, one of the finest on the hill, if not the city. Ships sailing across the glittering water, Bray Head a cresting whale in the distance. The harbour and islands on the other side. Forgive me if I sound like an estate agent. I have nothing left to sell. The lawn had reverted to a wildflower meadow, alive with butterflies and the hum of bees.

Hickey sighed. ‘Told you it was special. Come on an I’ll give you the tour.’

Why wasn’t I surprised when he produced the key to the front door also? Like the gate, it was sagging on its hinges, as if the departure of the family from the family home had caused Hilltop to slump in dejection. Hickey prodded the scuffed kickboard with his toe. ‘Whole door’ll have to be replaced. An these windows will have to go. Jaysus, have you ever seen so many cobwebs?’

We continued through to the hall. He flicked a few light switches but the electricity had been cut off. It was an internal hall with a deep red carpet and the doors leading off it were shut. We shuffled along in darkness.