Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

He brought his forehead to his fist.

‘Is it the mother thing?’ he asked, and turned then, and said, ‘Is that what drives you to people like that?’

‘No, Dad…’

‘Coz every time I think I’m making progress, something happens to remind me that I’ve fucked up with you. The reason you’re home. The reason you knew that bloody woman.’

‘Dope is the only reason I know her,’ Ryan said, softly.

Tony assumed he was worried about eavesdroppers and retribution.

‘Whatever it is or was,’ he said, ‘you’d hardly tell me. And I’m supposed to be protecting you. Isn’t it desperate? Even if I wasn’t shit at it, you wouldn’t let me, would you? Why would you? Go back up to Karine.’ He shook his head. ‘I won’t say anything.’

How could he tell J.P.? There was no telling with J.P.

Tony returned to his Evening Echo and the lies of his sobriety. Ryan went back upstairs and the rest of them trotted in and out of the kitchen in turns, losing interest as he batted away their questions. The interruption was largely forgotten by dinnertime.

He ran through a confession in his head, and forecast a bloody nose and a march on his home, threats flung at his children, and an interrogation that would expose Ryan’s minor role. What then? The lad would be quizzed on Georgie’s background. Maybe it’d go well. What then? J.P. would track the girl down and grill her. What then? There would be a mess to be tidied. Maybe the girl would be disposed of; maybe she’d be encouraged towards amnesia. Tony pondered taking that chance. She was pregnant. He couldn’t risk it.

She might go to the guards, despite her assertions to the contrary. If someone had let slip to her that Robbie O’Donovan was dead, then chances were good that she knew better than to take it to the cops. Even so. If the cops got wind at all, he was fucked. All the more reason to tell J.P. about the visit.

But then what of Ryan? If J.P. was involved, Ryan would know there was something up. The woman had turned up talking about ghosts and suddenly the meanest cunt in the city — and it was all but guaranteed that Ryan knew who J.P. was, seeing as how he was knee-deep in the runoff — shows up on the doorstep asking after her? Tony’s declarations of ignorance would be examined and judged as bollocks.

Fucking stupid kid. Fucking involved in everything he shouldn’t be. If the girl had turned up on the doorstep and the boy hadn’t recognised her, well, wouldn’t that have been something? Wouldn’t that have been too much to fucking ask?

If Tony said nothing about his afternoon visit, J.P. would remain at arm’s length and maybe the bitch next door would spill sense. There was only one woman looking for Robbie, and judging by her belly she’d moved on. Maybe there was fuck all to worry about but happenstance and his shrunken city.

The rain cleared off in the evening. Tony walked down to the off-licence and stood outside it like a child with tuppence to his name outside the toy shop. If he pressed his nose to the glass, he may well have been able to smell it. The heady warmth of the thought seeped through his shell and into his bones and lifted him onto his toes and rose off him like holy water off the devil’s shoulders.

The twenty-first of April was as miserable as the rest of the month had been, and it came round before Tony had made his decision. The last ninety-six hours he’d spent in airless languor. He had tried Tara Duane’s door every morning and every evening, but there wasn’t a peep out of her, and Kelly had eventually thought to tell him that young Linda was temporarily staying with a buddy while her mam ran up and down the garden path with some sap in Dublin; whatever the destination, it seemed that Tara Duane had thought it a good time to go on the missing list.

The courthouse was packed. Ryan’s hearing was set for 2.30, along with everyone else who’d been summoned to the afternoon sitting. The newcomers mingled with the dregs of the morning’s session, who had commandeered the seats in the stuffy green waiting room. Parents sat gloomy and still, like rows of turnips in a grocer’s box. Their little criminals sat with them, tapping LOLs on their phones, or milled in the yard outside stinking of Lynx and taut nonchalance. Solicitors strode in and out in a twist of slacks and briefcases.

They called him shortly before four. Tony ducked out of the waiting room and found him standing with McEvoy, the solicitor. He gestured them both inside.

McEvoy was a decent chap who had taken more care with Ryan’s case than they’d enjoyed with previous representatives. He hadn’t taken instruction so much as informed his own brief. They were blessed with him; Tony hadn’t wanted to use the same one who’d failed to save him from six weeks in Solidarity House.

They were blessed with a different judge, too. Mary Mullen. McEvoy said she was smart and thorough. Is she OK, though? Tony had asked, and McEvoy had replied, You could do a lot worse .

She spoke to the solicitor. It was a rare judge who bothered with the pleasantries. Tony leaned forward. They could be over so quickly, these hearings.

‘And what do you think yourself, Mr McEvoy,’ said the judge, ‘about where he goes from here, if he’s not in school?’

‘My client intends to return to school in September. He got excellent results in his Junior Certificate and knows that was the better path to be on.’

‘What kind of excellent results?’

‘He shows a great aptitude for music and mathematics, both of which earned him an A grade in Higher Level. University, rather than training, is clearly the right way to go and the boy is taking steps to—’

‘And, Mr McEvoy, how do you suppose he’ll stay out of trouble?’

‘I believe that a probation bond would be the most suitable response, Judge. Given the circumstances—’

‘I’ve heard the circumstances.’ She straightened, and looked over at Ryan, and said, ‘Let me tell you something, young man. Are you listening?’

‘Yes, Judge.’

‘There’s a very specific kind of boy I see whenever I come here. A lot of them have no family support; a lot of them have no education; a lot of them have been, most likely, led astray. But you are not like my typical young offender. Mr McEvoy has shown me that you’re intelligent, that you’ve got a good father, that you did well in school, that when you apply yourself to something you achieve it without struggle. Would you say that’s accurate, Ryan’s father?’

Tony cleared his throat. ‘Yes, Judge.’

She looked back again at the boy. ‘And, Ryan, this is what frightens me about you. You are smart, and you do apply yourself. And you have no qualms about pointing your brains or your determination in the wrong direction entirely. When I see boys coming up here before me, there’s a fair amount of them who don’t know any better. Genuinely. They don’t know any better. But you do. And Mr McEvoy tells me that you have learned the error of your ways and that if I apply conditions to your parole, I won’t see you here again. I don’t have any faith in that.

‘I have to bear in mind that you refused to cooperate with the Gardaí who questioned you and that every time you’ve appeared in this court, it was for the same offence. And what worries me, Ryan, what really worries me, is that you don’t seem to be learning anything except how to do this better.

‘What is he like at home, Mr Cusack?’

Tony went to stand up, stopped, gripped the back of the seat in front of him. ‘Your typical teenager, I suppose.’

‘What I’m concerned about is how easily he can switch between being your typical teenager and your not-so-typical criminal. Other than the loss of his mother, are there any family circumstances that could be contributing towards this behaviour?’