Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

You’d want to be stupid , he told himself, as he unwound the mystery. Tony Cusack knew where the boat was kept and where he’d been promised a watery grave. Tony Cusack had a set on Tara Duane. But Tara was a flighty fuck-up and Cusack a weeping fool. Most likely one of Jimmy’s own had been moonlighting, and lying to him.

Still, though.

Still.

Jimmy did his sums.

Good clean murder was art, and that was reflected in its price. He could do the done thing and call in a professional, but even with favours recalled there’d be a cash penalty, and he baulked at the notion of spending five-figure sums tying loose ends on what was essentially a domestic spat. Five damn years he’d been taming this cock-up.

You’re getting old , sneered the city . Old and fat and soft and soft-headed.

With Duane’s disappearance he was left with two superfluous players.

Oh, far from soft-headed , he snapped.

With Duane’s disappearance he wondered if he could line up his targets.

One to fall and take the other .

Against this backdrop, he re-examined the mystery of his borrowed boat and went with his gut.

He drove up to the estates on the hill and tried the handle of Cusack’s front door. It opened. He let himself in.

Cusack was sitting at his kitchen table, a torn white envelope in one hand and a bill of some sort in the other. In granting himself access, Jimmy had not been quiet. But that was the thing, up where they had nothing worth stealing and five or six kids apiece. Privacy was neither granted nor expected.

Tony looked up and Jimmy watched his expression change.

‘Afternoon, Anthony.’

He walked to the kitchen table and pressed his knuckles against its surface. Cusack gawped. The possibility that he thought their acquaintance suspended once more suggested itself to Jimmy, but he didn’t derive the amusement from it he would otherwise have made use of. Cusack looked… fucking old.

‘I need you to do something for me,’ Jimmy said.

Cusack laid the bill on the table, and made a mask of his left hand. Jimmy looked over his head. The kitchen window was weather-splashed and smeared by little fingers writing lines in condensation, little palms wiping them off. The sill held the miscellanea of the poor bugger’s life: coins and phone chargers and birthday cards soiled by the wet glass.

‘You remember the whore,’ Jimmy said.

Cusack said nothing, but looked down at the table and then back at Jimmy when his silence was matched. Jimmy took the eye contact as affirmation.

‘She never stopped asking questions. Time’s up on that bullshit. I want her gone.’

‘Gone,’ echoed Cusack. He took his hand from his mouth and said, ‘What d’you mean, asking questions?’

‘What d’you think I mean, Cusack? Come on, the ould brain isn’t that mushed, is it? Asking fucking questions. Making fucking noise.’

‘It’s been years.’

‘Years enough for your brood to grow up? No.’

Cusack came round to it. ‘So you need what from me?’

‘I need you to make her disappear.’

Jimmy pushed himself off the table and paced. Over at the sink, he flicked through forks drip-drying in a grey plastic caddy. Over at the drawers, he rifled through tea towels and school timetables. ‘I need you to clean up another mess,’ he said, evenly. ‘I need you to do me one last turn. That’s not so hard, is it, Cusack? For your own sake? For your kids’? I need you to end the whore so we can finally draw a line under this.’

Cusack said, ‘I’m sure you have lads better qualified for this kind of craic’ in a voice no match for his meaning.

‘How would that be, Cusack? How would I have lads better qualified? This is our issue, and one I’m not keen on compounding. I’m not offering it up to anyone else. What do I look like? Fuck’s sake.’

‘Isn’t this compounding it?’

‘No. It’s drawing a line under it. I told you already.’

Cusack managed to get to his feet. ‘Jimmy,’ he said. ‘Jimmy’, and his old friend stopped thumbing through the dregs and raised his eyebrows. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ Cusack said. His voice was a testament to conviction lost. ‘Jimmy… I helped. That’s all I’m good for. Being given directions. Even then I get lost. You saw it yourself. This isn’t something I’m even capable of doing. Think about what you’re asking me.’

‘Capable,’ said Jimmy, and laughed. ‘Oh, Tony. What’s that they say? “You don’t know your own strength till you’re pushed?”’

Cusack shook his head. ‘No point pushing. I can’t do this.’

‘You did Duane, didn’t you?’

Tony sat down again. He put his face in his hands.

Jimmy waited.

‘I don’t know where Duane is,’ Tony said.

‘I can’t imagine you do. It’s been a long time since you sank her.’

‘I had nothing to do with her taking off.’

‘You did,’ Jimmy said.

He returned to the side of the kitchen table and grasped Cusack’s shoulder.

‘She’s no loss,’ he said, mildly. ‘And men do what they have to do, don’t they? Bit of a vampire to that wan. She wasn’t very good at masking it. And sure, didn’t she fuck your young fella?’

‘Where the fuck did you get that idea?’

‘Aw, come off it. Straight from the gee-gee’s mouth. That’s why you put her window in. That’s why you’ve been holding a grudge. Shattered glass, shattered bones… it’s a slippery slope.’

It was a good fifteen seconds before Cusack responded.

‘If you thought I had something to do with her running off, you’d hardly be saying shit like that to me.’

‘What, because you think I’d be afraid of you? Oh Christ, you’re hardly that naive.’

He let go of Cusack’s shoulder and leaned back onto the table. It wouldn’t matter what was said now. The man looked like a child in a dentist’s chair. Jimmy shook his head. A spark was a complication, but out of deference to a shared past he wanted Cusack to show him something. Even a raised vein. A twitch, or narrowed eyes. Not this watery supplication.

‘I don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘My young fella is thirteen in the summer. If anyone interfered with him I’d rain down fire and fucking brimstone. So it was your right, Cusack.’

He leaned closer.

‘And it was my fucking boat.’

‘So you’re saying I owe you?’

‘So you’re admitting you did it?’ Jimmy straightened. ‘I’m not saying you owe me, Cusack, not at all. This is your mess as much as it’s mine. One of us has to get this sorted. It can’t be me. You’re a nobody. That’s why it’s you. You got away with the last one, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know where Duane went,’ Tony said.

‘Yeah, you said.’ Jimmy went for the kitchen door. ‘Let’s say till Friday to find the girl and do the deed. If you need to go boating I’ll let you off one more time. Give me a buzz when you’re finished and I swear to the Lord Above that we’ll be done with this.’

‘How do I know that?’

‘What? You don’t believe me?’

Cusack stood up. He leaned on the table, lost his nerve and looked down. ‘How do I know you won’t pin this on me? Isn’t that why you roped me into the Robbie O’Donovan thing? That’s what dopes like me are there for.’

Jimmy smiled, and jovially slapped his hands off the worktop. ‘Putting two and two together, are we? And what fucking ridiculous number are we coming up with?’

‘What would you want with this,’ Tony said, ‘except a place to pin the blame?’

Jimmy paused to weigh the violation.

‘That could be it,’ he said. ‘And so what if it is?’

Cusack looked up.