Headbanger E-Book

Hugo Hamilton

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 366

Beschreibung

Pat Coyne is a Dublin policeman who is passionately devoted to sorting out the world and its problems. For Coyne, such things as cars, crime, pollution and golf are all ominous signs of a disintegrating society. The world is committing suicide, with MTV droning in the background. Coyne's principal mission is to deal with crime, Ireland's biggest growth industry. Though only a cop on the beat, Coyne decides to take on the notorious gang leader, Drummer Cunningham. When a murder investigation leaves detectives clueless, he enters into a personal feud with the underworld, resulting in disastrous consequences for himself and his family. Coyne is a Dublin Dirty Harry for whom everything begins to go wrong.

Leseprobe

HEADBANGER

Pat Coyne is a Dublin policeman who is passionately devoted to sorting out the world and its problems. For Coyne, such things as cars, crime, pollution and golf are all ominous signs of a disintegrating society. The world is committing suicide, with MTV droning in the background. Coyne’s principal mission is to deal with crime, Ireland’s biggest growth industry. Though only a cop on the beat, Coyne decides to take on the notorious gang leader, Drummer Cunningham. When a murder investigation leaves detectives clueless, he enters into a personal feud with the underworld, resulting in disastrous consequences for himself and his family. Coyne is a Dublin Dirty Harry for whom everything begins to go wrong.

About the author

Starting out as a journalist, Hugo Hamilton went on to write short stories and novels. He is now the author of six novels, two memoirs and a collection of short stories. His work has won a number of international awards, including the 1992 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2003 French Prix Femina Etranger, the 2004 Italian Premio Giuseppe Berto and a DAAD scholarship in Berlin. He has also worked as a writer-in-residence at Trinity College, Dublin. Hamilton was born and lives in Dublin.

PRAISE FOR HUGO HAMILTON

‘Hamilton is a great international writer (who just happens to be Irish)’ – Anne Enright

‘Coyne is a majestic creation… If Flann O’Brien’s lunatic Professor De Selby had genetically engineered a cross between the novels of Raymond Chandler and those of Patrick McCabe, this is what the progeny might well have looked like’ – Times

‘The Pat Coyne novels are mad, wonderful things – so funny, unpredictable and brilliantly written’ – Roddy Doyle

For Mary Rose

The author would like to thank David Collins of Samson Films for his generous support and encouragement while writing this book.

HEADBANGER

Coyne was a father figure to the city of Dublin, holding his paternal arm around its suburbs, protecting its inhabitants like a family. He was a member of the Garda Siochana, guardian of peace; a cop, pig, rozzer, fuzz, bluebottle, who drove the squad car with both hands on the steering wheel, alert and ready for the next situation. His navy-blue Garda cap lay on the ledge beneath the back window, along with that of his colleague, Garda McGuinness. Now and again, the voice from headquarters broke in over the radio, drawing attention to the city’s emergencies, traffic accidents, little rust spots of criminality. It was a bright autumn afternoon, a day on which nothing much had happened yet, and beside him, McGuinness was going on about golf, explaining at length how he had to let Superintendent Molloy win a game.

Molloy couldn’t play golf to save his life, McGuinness was saying. It’s an act of charity. I had to turn my back and pretend I didn’t see him putting the ball back.

But Coyne was only half listening to this golf tirade because he was more concerned with the state of the world outside, observing every tiny detail in the street, waiting for something suspicious to turn up. Coyne – the real policeman – a massive database of ordinary facts and figures, licence plates, faces and social trivia. No detail too small.

Coyne saw the woman in a motorised wheelchair moving up the street. He saw the security van pulling up outside the post office and one of the uniformed men getting out carrying a steel case shackled to his arm. The reassuring emblem on the side of the van, like a Papal insignia – two crossed keys and a slogan underneath saying: vigilant and valiant. At the traffic lights, Coyne scanned the faces at the bus stop as though they were all potential criminals. Everybody looking mysteriously down the street like a bunch of weather vanes to see the bus coming. On the pavement, the usual chewing-gum droppings stuck to the ground in their thousands; flattened discs of dirty off-white or off-pink gum-pennies that people spat out before getting on the bus.

Garda Pat Coyne would be in a position to reconstruct every faithful detail in evidence. Your honour, the youth was seen spitting a grey substance in the direction of the oncoming bus. Your honour, the lady at the front of the queue carried an upturned sweeping brush. When the time came, Coyne was in possession of the facts.

Vigilant and valiant. Somehow, the words applied more to Coyne himself. Mind you, he’d come across some fairly peculiar slogans on the sides of vans lately. Signs like: East Coast Glass – Your Pane is our Pleasure. Or else: Personal Plumbing Services – day and night. And the oddest one of them all was the ‘Dip–Strip’ van, boasting all kinds of stripping services. I mean, how were you to know it was furniture they were talking about? Were the people of Ireland trying to look like complete eejits or what? Somebody should go up and point out how absolutely absurd they looked. ‘Embibing Emporium’ was another Dublin idiosyncrasy that sprang to mind. As a Garda, Coyne took an interest in the precision of language, and one of these days he would walk straight into that pub, slap a concise Oxford down on the bar counter and say: you pack of right honourable gobshites, you can’t even fucking spell. Look, it’s I, not E. Imbibing.

These were the things that mattered to the sensibilities of a cop, not who could or could not strike a golf ball. Whatever way you whacked the thing, it was predestined to seek only one conclusion, that was to go down a hole.

Molloy might as well be playing golf with a shovel, McGuinness went on. He’s got this fabulous Ping driver and he keeps hacking the fairway with it. I swear to God, you’d think he was cutting turf.

Coyne remained silent. His attention was drawn instead to the window display of a lingerie shop. He examined its contents of bras and knickers; a purple camisole; an amputated leg doing a solo cancan; a dismembered female torso cut off at mid thigh and squeezed into a beige corset; a black plastic bust wearing a white lace bra and a large sign, written in red capital letters, saying: BRAS REDUCED. Another sign saying: NIGHTWEAR 20% OFF.

What are they talking about – bras reduced?

Coyne slapped his hands on the steering wheel and, for a moment, both men were staring intensely at this new shrinking phenomenon. As though the women of Ireland were heading into some kind of physical recession. Erin go Bra – that great cry for national freedom would have to be reassessed.

With the afternoon sunshine sloping across the city, he turned the squad car down the street towards the sea and saw a band of water shimmering like a cool blue drink at the bottom of a glass. Even though it was autumn already, Coyne could vividly remember the summer and the people walking along with rolled-up towels, ghettoblasters on their shoulders; prams with parasols; girls who had forgotten to turn over and went crimson on one side of the face, or crimson down the backs of their legs. Now there was nobody except an old man leaning over the granite wall staring out at the ferry.

The kids were back at school, but Coyne still carried with him the rather sad summer image of an upturned ice-cream cone with a white pool spreading out along the pavement, and a crow with tattered charcoal wings tilting his beak to drink from some child’s misfortune. To Coyne it was a symbol for all the invisible tragedy that lurked underneath society. He was there to make sure that the enemies of happiness were banished. Somebody had to deal with all the brutality and misery. And Coyne was going to kick ass, as they kept saying on TV. He was going to sort out some of these bastards. Blow them away. The Dublin Dirty Harry. He had a list of names in his head, like a top ten of local criminals.

Every muscle in his body was spring-loaded and ready for action. He was in a state of cataleptic readiness, lying dormant like a lethal virus that was going to rain down on some of these characters. He had put some of the hoors away before. And he wasn’t finished yet either. You know, Coyne thought, while McGuinness was still going through every stroke on the Straffan golf course, life wasn’t meant to be stationary. Life was more than a series of shagging holes on a green landscape. It had to have momentum, like music. Coyne wasn’t the kind of cop with the cap tilted on the back of the head. No way.

Then it came: the situation. The familiar voice on the radio speaking with precise eloquence.

Ballsbridge area. Armed robbery in progress. Newsagent cum post office. We believe the raiders are still on the premises.

McGuinness picked up the radio mouthpiece and got the exact details, the very post office they had just passed by five minutes ago. Coyne swung the car around. With the siren on, they howled through the streets, blue light flashing back at them from doors and windows as they passed. Maybe this time they would really punch the clock. They arrived just in time to see a motor bike skidding off the pavement out on to the road. Hey Joe, where would you be going with that bag in your hand? Coyne was on the ball, only fifty yards behind.

We have them, Larry, he said. And as he caught up with them, he could have knocked them down with a tiny shove, only that one of the raiders on the back of the bike turned around and hurled a hatchet at them. Coyne took evasive action. Braked and skidded. But the hatchet came crashing through the windscreen like a shark through the side of an aquarium. Glass everywhere. Diamonds cascading all over their laps.

Jesus Christ, McGuinness said, his eyes open wide, staring at the hatchet stuck in the windscreen as if it were alive.

Coyne broke through and cleared away some of the glass with his elbow, then accelerated once more. He hadn’t lost them yet, and after the next junction, he caught up with them again, just as they were heading into a small laneway at the end of which the raiders dropped the bike and jumped over the wall into the gardens, engine left running and the back wheel continuing to spin out like roulette. Coyne brought the car to a halt.

Don’t be crazy, McGuinness urged.

But Coyne was going after them. No wonder they called him Mr Suicide back at the station. In the attempt to apprehend the raiders he jumped over the wall and came close to being savaged by a dog. He crossed the gardens like an obstacle course. Almost severed his leg from the knee down on a wheelbarrow and, in the end, very nearly got himself killed by the passing DART when he tried to give chase across the railway line. Jumped back just in time.

Bastards. Forced to give up the chase, Coyne limped back to talk to a woman who was standing in shock at the centre of a vegetable plot with her gardening gloves clasped as in prayer. They both faced each other suddenly, as though they were at a shrine together. Coyne out of breath and half kneeling to examine the footprints across the trampled leeks. He was embarrassed that he could not recover his breath more quickly. His chest was so badly out of condition that it felt like he was playing the accordion with himself. A tiny E flat note whistling through the air passages like a bent reed.

There had always been a sort of imaginary audience in Coyne’s head. After all, a man’s life was a performance. At this moment, the reaction would have been a short, modest applause, tailing off to silence, everybody waiting for his next move. Now and again, at crucial moments, he would talk to his audience, justifying his motives. Now and again, his audience merged with the real people he knew – his wife Carmel, his late father, his mentor Fred, and his friend Vinnie Foley. God knows who else was there in Garda Pat Coyne’s audience? His friend Billy who had emigrated to Australia. Even his enemies maybe. And the top ten victims were always there in the front row admiring his tenacity in the face of all odds.

The Novena in the garden. Coyne looked like he’d come for a miracle, inhaling furiously. When he finally regained his breath, he asked the woman if she had been able to identify any of the raiders. She shook her head. But Coyne already had his own suspicions and began to lift some of the soil up in his hand, trying to ascertain if it was organic.

Yes, the woman nodded. Totally organic.

Back in the patrol car, with the sections of laminated glass all over the floor, Coyne thought of his own safety for the first time. He had lost sight of any personal fear and stopped acting like a man with a wife and three children. He was being heroic and suicidal again. More like a younger man trying to impress his friends, or his girlfriend, with nothing to lose.

Pat, you’re a mad bastard, McGuinness crooned in his Tralee accent. You’re going to get yourself killed.

I nearly had the fuckers, Larry.

You nearly had yourself mangled, you mean.

It’s that bastard, Perry. I know it. He hasn’t seen the last of me, the little savage.

McGuinness held the hatchet in his hand, and you’d think he was going to burst into song, some kind of Kerry golfing ballad. I don’t want something like this in my skull, no thanks. It would be a terrible handicap on the golf course.

Garda Coyne was in his mid thirties, medium build and a narrow, handsome face. More handsome than he knew himself. He had a good smile, but more often bore an expression of great determination which made him look worried, or furious, or just stunned. Like he’d just been whacked on the back of the head with a newspaper and was ready to turn around and retaliate. A man who had his mind made up. A man who knew exactly what had gone wrong with the world.

He was a dedicated cop. Above and beyond the call of duty. He was following invisible goals, set by his own father, by his wife Carmel and by her mother, Mrs Gogarty. One day he would reach the rank of superintendent or commissioner. But Coyne was interested in more than that. He was a crusader and the streets of Dublin had gone out of control, simple as that. He was answering an inner mission to reform the society and clean up the city. And somebody was going to have to do something about the shaggin’ environment as well.

The world was fucked, basically. The problem was that Coyne frequently found himself making his case to empty houses. Nobody wanted to know. He was explaining his views to an uninterested audience at a matinée, with popcorn left all over the place and sticky patches where they had spilled Coke in the dark. People with nowhere else to go. There he was, telling them about the kind of world he wanted his wife and children to be able to live in, and the audience would just walk out on him, leaving only the cleaning staff with the sound of their buckets and brushes, letting in a brash blast of daylight, flooding the place with the banal sound of traffic from outside.

At home, Carmel was getting ready to go to her art classes – Painting for Pleasure. The brochure from the local night school had been hanging on the notice board for weeks, beside the gas bill, and surrounded by calendar pages of Chagall and Egon Schiele. Some of her own new paintings were also beginning to take over the kitchen wall.

Carmel was slightly younger than her husband. Small build, blonde hair and a round face. She had sad, light-blue eyes. In her own way, she was full of determination too, and looked like she was fond of arguing, but also ready to laugh at any minute. She wanted to go places. Do something interesting with her life. She was maternal but fiercely independent, and in a modest way, proud of her looks, especially her legs. She knew she had talent.

Her mother was in the kitchen with her, drinking tea. The children were playing in the hall: Jimmy trying to arrest his two little sisters, Jennifer and Nuala, persuading them that they had to go to prison in the cupboard underneath the stairs. He was reading them their rights – you have the right to remain silent, but everything you say will be taken down in evidence. Look, there was nothing to be afraid of, he reassured them. He allowed himself to be incarcerated first.

Carmel was packing her art materials, throwing pencils and brushes into her bag. Made her feel she was seven years old again. Held up the fattest of her brushes and pretended to use it as a blusher. They laughed and her mother almost choked on a mouthful of bitter tea, bringing tears to her eyes, not so much because of the inhaled liquid but because of a sudden sense of pride in her daughter. She blew her nose: a mixture of snot and tears and tea, remembering the little flat tins of water-colour paints Carmel had used as a child. Squares of magenta and scarlet and purple that became mixed into a brown mess after a few days.

You were always gifted, Carmel, she wanted to say, but there was a scream from the hallway and Nuala came running into the kitchen crying, sniffling, sitting up on her grandmother’s knee.

There you are, pet, Carmel’s mother said, wiping the child’s face. That’ll teach you never to marry a Guard.

Ah now, Ma. There’s no need for that, Carmel said, giving her mother a look.

At the station, Joe Perry had been taken in for questioning and Garda Coyne was pulling him apart over the raid on the post office. He was a young lad of seventeen, with milk moustache still clinging to his upper lip. He was wearing wide jeans and a hooded jacket. Just the kind of generic description they often put out on Crimeline. He seemed terribly casual as he was brought into the main office, looking around and smiling as though he was being ushered in for some kind of talk show, waiting for somebody to come and clip the little mike to his lapel. There was a kind of swing in his walk. The Ringsend swagger. He sat right underneath the cannabis poster – ‘you’ve got the wrong man’ written all over his face.

Coyne knew how to deal with these clowns. That grin didn’t fool him one little bit.

So it’s hatchets now, he said, leaning against a filing cabinet like it was the mantelpiece at home. But you could see Perry saying to himself: yah thick Garda gobshite. What do you expect me to say, yes?

Coyne approached Perry and jabbed him in the chest.

Chief Running-Foot, he said, waiting to see if the joke worked. You won’t be running very far now, you little savage. Coyne got the hatchet from his desk and held it up to Perry’s face. Exhibit A. Did you leave this behind by any chance? His personal audience roared laughing.

I done nothin’, I swear.

Let’s see your footwear then. Perry’s sneakers had massive tongues; maybe they were meant to make him look like one of those mythical horses with white wings on their hooves.

Come here, Pegasus, you little bastard. And Coyne made him stand up while he examined the soles like a blacksmith.

Organic soil, eh?

I want to speak to my solicitor.

Coyne dropped the hoof and Perry’s shoe made a tiny squeak on the tiled floor. But he wasn’t finished, and Coyne then produced a small bag of soil.

Exhibit B, he shouted triumphantly as he pushed the soil bag into Perry’s face. What was happening? Was it the adrenalin from the chase still surging like a narcotic around his head? Coyne suddenly lost his patience and began trying to feed Perry some of the soil, stuffing it into his mouth as though he was concerned about some nutritional deficiency, until some of the other Guards came over to restrain him.

You’ve made your point, Pat.

Perry was spitting out the black mixture of clay and saliva, proclaiming his innocence. Grimacing at the taste of wholefood.

At this point, Coyne felt a bit of a shit. He was only dealing with small fry. He had let himself down and felt his audience had suddenly switched over to Come Dancing in utter desperation. McGuinness even handed Perry a Kleenex, for God’s sake, and Coyne held his palms out to his inner public, appealing that he was only human too. There is only so much a man can take. But his ratings had plummeted and his audience were all passed out on the sofa, yawning, half watching a couple strutting around in a high-bottomed tango.

As usual, the real crime was happening somewhere else. Public enemy number one, Berti Cunningham, was driving a spanking new Range Rover through the streets of the city. Just about the same time that Coyne was carrying out the special feeding programme at Irishtown Garda station, Berti Cunningham, his younger brother Mick Cunningham and their chief accountant Charlie Robinson were stopping briefly along Baggot Street so that Berti could pick up a kebab. They were the untouchables. Nobody could lay a finger on them. Berti strolled into Abrakebabra inhaling the smell, drawn to the counter like a fly to a ketchup stain. He had a thin, wiry sort of frame as though he had been underfed as a child. Raised on sliced bread and jam. Chip sandwiches, maybe. Where other crime lords needed a drink before they went out on a job, Berti Cunningham, or the Drummer as they all called him, needed some really evil piece of food, something that would set off a vicious clash of gastric fluids, leaving him with the stench of a tannery on his breath and a slight disfiguration at the edges of his mouth that only barely concealed the boiling bile.

His brother Mick was a little less ugly. Small goatie beard and a reversed baseball cap. He sat at a table with Chief, a stout man with a shaven head, wearing a kind of happy, vegetarian shirt, with lots of colours. It was more like a pizza really, with braces holding up his jeans. They had left Drummer’s two Rottweiler dogs in the back of the Range Rover, panting with their tongues hanging out. They sat looking up at MTV – three women standing knee deep in the sea singing: Don’t go chasing waterfalls, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. Right underneath a sign that said: No alcohol allowed on the premises, Chief cracked open a can of beer while Drummer ordered three kebabs, one for himself with lettuce and garnish, and two plain kebabs for his Rottweilers. Abrakebabra. Sure it was only dogfood anyway.

Carmel sat at the back of the class, listening to the art teacher, Gordon Sitwell, with vocation written all over her eyes. An unfinished painting was spread out in front of her and she was mixing up some paint, spellbound by eagerness, soaking up every word that Mr Sitwell uttered as though he was carefully distributing some precious linseed oil you could not afford to lose even one drop of.

Sitwell was a gentleman with a grand accent that somehow went with all that art talk. He had a squat build and wore a green corduroy jacket. He seemed to draw inspiration from his earlobe, which he squeezed gently as he spoke. He was there to spout erudition and to urge his disciples on to greater things. He kept walking up and down the room, talking as though he had a direct link to the great masters, stopping occasionally to hold up his index finger, knocking against an invisible urn and waiting to hear a faint musical note. He was just the kind of art teacher Carmel had expected, somebody with grey temples who was utterly lost in culture.

Sometimes he made eye contact with her, just to see if she understood what he was saying, and she automatically nodded. Once or twice he smiled as he wandered around the classroom, leaving behind him an intoxicating whiff of aftershave, which had to be called something like ‘Renaissance’ or ‘Rubens’ and must have been made with some ancient musk extracted from the entrails of a mythical animal. A sphinx or a unicorn. It curled around Carmel’s nostrils and inspired her to carry on working on an evening sky over the sea, with a tree to one side. Nothing too fancy. Keep it simple.

Nice, gentle brush strokes, Sitwell was saying. Let me see the brush swing a little in your hand. Remember that painting is like telling a story. The colours are your words.

He turned his back and walked away as though he was leaving the room, then swivelled round dramatically and stopped to look everyone in the eye, individually. Some of the people had come back for a second year and knew by the sleepy grin on his face that he was about to say something funny.

Remember, ladies. It’s not a powder puff you’re holding, and everybody laughed in recognition as though they had heard this one before. It’s an instrument of self-expression.

And when he came up behind Carmel the next time, he leaned over with his medieval musk and urged her to use some more dramatic colour for the sky. Something really sensuous. A fiery cobalt, perhaps?

That’s how it started, Coyne was telling the lads at the station. With tribal rituals.

He was writing in the details on the arrest sheet and stopped for a moment to tell the other members one of his little anthropological facts. Sergeant Devaney was listening with a sceptical smile on his face, buttocks perched on a desk. Life on Earth, with Pat Coyne.

That’s how all that art and culture began in the first place. This tribe of people where all the men go out together to have a communal crap.

You’re taking the piss, McGuinness said.

I swear, Coyne insisted. Every morning, all the men go out and leave these little sculptures on the landscape. Defecation missions they called it. I read all about it. It’s only much later that they began to use materials like wood and paint.

Coyne could not remember where he had developed this obsession with facts. Probably at school, as a form of protection. To fit in with the schoolboy hierarchies. It resulted in a real interest in nature, and he still borrowed books and anthropological videos all the time. He still bought the National Geographic and was deeply committed to the environment; anything that affected the future. But none of his knowledge ever brought him closer to people. He had difficulty communicating his vision of the universe to his colleagues. He was not one for bending reality to the demands of story-telling, and in the end, always found himself alone, staring out from his own mind as though he sat on a raft that would never reach the shore. It seemed as if the other Gardai in the station were all listening to him from the far bank.

You wanker, Coyne. You’re making this up.

I’m telling you, it’s a well-known fact, these lavatory parties in the forest. Can’t remember the name of the place.

But Coyne saw them all gazing at him incredulously, as though he was beyond rescue this time. Out of reach. At the mercy of a tide of Garda realism. Maybe it was the way he told it. But as usual, he felt the awkwardness of drawing an unspoken comparison between the actions of tribal men and the toilet-trained men of Ireland with whom he worked. Telling them the unenhanced truth. We’re all a bunch of civilised shitters when it comes down to it, each one of us proclaiming our identity, marking our space in the world through waste. It was clear that nobody had any idea what the hell Coyne was going on about. Where was the joke?

Out in the real world, Drummer Cunningham and his gang were making their way along the canal down to Percy Place. Mick Cunningham had taken over the wheel of the Range Rover to allow Drummer to finish off his mobile meal. The Rottweilers had already inhaled theirs. As they pulled up outside a house in flats, Drummer got out and threw the kebab wrapper on to the pavement as much as to say: this is my city. I’ll throw my shite around if I like.

Upstairs, in a small apartment facing on to the street, Naomi Keegan was lying in a heap along the bed. She was still in her dressing-gown and the ring on the doorbell was her first contact with the outside world that day. Up to then she had successfully been able to remove reality by watching MTV. Her mind was a sponge, soaked in senseless images, heaving with the endless motion of limbs and lyrics. She went to the window, opened it and threw down the key. Then went back to lie on the bed again with a litre bottle of Ballygowan. Not so much to drink it but to hold it like a teddy bear or some kind of comfort toy that offered a vague notion of innocence and purity.

She was around twenty-five and had been a student of architecture at one stage. A drawing board in the corner of the room was submerged under a pile of clothes and personal items. It had also been misused more frequently as a surface from which she snorted whatever substance Drummer brought to her. A rolled-up James Joyce note was stuck in a penholder as the most essential implement. She was the architect of her own misfortune was the last sentence she heard from her South Dublin parents. To them, the sight of their daughter with an earring in her eyebrow and black fingernails was the end of her education. Not to mention the tattoo on her backside. That was a step beyond.

She could smell the kebab coming up the stairs and finally decided it was time to take another drink of water to recover some real sense of purity. Drummer came in and gave her the shite and onion smile. Looked around with disgust at the state of the room and pushed a mug away with his foot. Can I touch you there was on MTV at that moment. Michael Bunburger Bolton floating down some tropical river in a white suit, looking for some woman washing her hair in a waterfall for fucksake. Drummer made a little joke about the lyrics which Naomi ignored until he passed her a tab and she began to perk up. Then he went to the wardrobe and chose some clothes; a gold skirt and a thin black pullover.

I’ve got a job for you, he said.

Berti, please. Don’t ask me. I’ll do anything.

Just a little dance, baby. That’s all.

She looked at him, and he smiled as though there was a VIP lounge in the back of his head that nobody ever got into. Even in matters of sex there was a Bluebeard room in Drummer’s mind which you didn’t want to investigate. Some young one had been turned into a kebab and hidden under the floorboards in the past maybe. A challenge to all women. Please discover me. Try and get into my last VIP lounge and find out what no woman has ever seen before.

He was already pulling her off the bed, taking the fizzy water from her and forcing her to get dressed. Slapped the tattoo on her backside just a little too hard to pass for affection, and while Naomi got dressed, he began to dance to the music on the TV. Some kind of profane jerky movements that made him look like he was suffering a mild form of tropical tarantism. He was a shite dancer. It was Tai Chi meets Michael Jackson, holding his crotch and thrusting forward like he’d just received a kick in the sphincter. His body just mocked everything that was aesthetic.

Carmel’s art class was coming to an end. Everybody was beginning to wash brushes and put everything away while Mr Sitwell stood behind her, commenting on her tree.

It looks like a chestnut, or an oak, he said. Perhaps you could give it a little more body. Make it look stronger, more muscular. If you get my drift?

Carmel looked up. She didn’t know what he meant.

Try a bit of maroon or burgundy, he said, taking her hand and guiding the brush towards the paints, dabbing and mixing with great skill, then applying thin downward lines of burgundy along the tree trunk.

Brilliant, she thought. He had transformed the painting and was already walking away again, talking to the class in general.

Every object has its own personality. Every object has its own dark, romantic secrets inside. When you draw an oak tree, it should look like a mystery man. A tall, handsome, muscular body. You should want to hug him, ladies.

They all laughed. Carmel blushed. The cheek of him.

Superintendent Molloy was in a strange, elated mood that evening. With good reason. He had finally broken through the wall of silence which surrounded Drummer Cunningham’s deeds. He was excited by the fact that he now had a conviction in sight. A key witness, Dermot Brannigan, had turned police informer and was prepared to talk in court. Not so much a supergrass as a disaffected former associate of Berti Cunningham’s who had given Molloy more than he needed to end the Drummer’s reign.

When it came to the armed robbery and the case of Joe hatchet-man Perry, that was a different matter. His lawyer came into the station ranting about his client being assaulted. Superintendent Molloy said there was no harm done and he was happy to release the suspect to show that the Gardai were being reasonable about the whole affair. The lawyer was standing in the office with a long face on him; you’d think it was he who had been force-fed the organic muck. OK, Coyne had gone a little too far on the high-fibre diet, but after risking life and limb to arrest the little bastard, Molloy was now deciding not to have him charged.

He was just helping us in our enquiries, Molloy said.

He has his rights, you know, the lawyer complained. I’m considering a case of serious harassment.

Not at all, there’s no need for that, Molloy brayed. We’ll be releasing him right away. We’re just going through the formalities.

My client has suffered deep distress, the solicitor added.

Well, he shouldn’t be waving his hatchet around the post office then, Coyne said, finally losing his head.

What are you talking about, the solicitor fought back. My client was visiting his sick grandmother this afternoon.

So that’s where he got the muck on his shoes. That bastard is guilty and you know it.

Coyne found himself pointing his finger straight at the lawyer. But it was like touching an electric fence. Once again he felt his audience had deserted him as though the only person in the world who would understand him was his wife, Carmel. She was there in the audience, about five or six rows back with her crisps and her toffees; a devoted fan with her knees up against the seat in front encouraging him. But Coyne had already gone too far and Superintendent Molloy was urging him to calm down.

Everything is under control, he said.

Coyne couldn’t believe it. What was the point in him half killing himself running over those garden walls? As far as he was concerned, the legal profession only interfered with the administration of justice.

Just keep him away from my client, the lawyer said.

And afterwards, when the lawyer was gone, Superintendent Molloy took the opportunity to make a little speech of his own. Telling Coyne he wasn’t up to it any more. He had lost his balance and needed to relax. Should go down the country for a few days.

That’s not the way to go after these fellas, Molloy said. You can’t take any short cuts.

Like Coyne’s own father, Superintendent Molloy came from West Cork. Those county by county alliances throughout the Garda ranks had once established a bond between them, protecting Coyne, keeping him in sight of promotion. Molloy was taking on the role of a lost father figure, using the same tired country clichés.

Superintendent Molloy was a true redneck Garda. His hair crossed over from one side of his bald head to the other, like a lid or a trapdoor that had to be put back in place every time he went out in the wind. A hair-door is what it looked like, with a hinge at the side of the head, just above the temple. And Coyne stared at the mole just under the super’s nose thinking, how does he shave? He imagined Molloy shaving the mole off and a fountain of blood gushing out. Moleshaver Molloy, walking around all day with a plaster on his face with the blood still seeping through.

You’ve got to play by the rules, Moleshaver said like a mantra.

I’ll get him one of these days, Coyne vowed.

Look, Coyne. We’ve gone through this before. You can’t lean on a suspect like that. Everybody knows he’s guilty, but he’s got a smart lawyer. Works for big-time sharks like the Cunninghams as well. Lay off until you’ve got something concrete.

Molloy leaned back, touching the tips of his fingers against each other, shampooing some invisible head in front of him. Coyne could see his own father, with the braces, and the rings holding up the sleeves of his shirt. He could smell the ancient tube of shaving cream, as though it was against the principles of the new republic to change to foam shaving lotion. Molloy took in a deep breath and leaned forward again, with purpose.

A word of advice, Pat. It’s like a fart in the sauna. Unless you catch the fucker at it, forget it. It’s the legal system in this country. He didn’t get away with much anyhow.

That’s not the point, Coyne snapped back in amazement. We can’t just let him go.

Forget Perry, Molloy insisted. We’ve got Brannigan talking. He’s under protective surveillance at the moment. You know what this means, Pat.

The Drummer.

Moleshaver looked across his desk with great Garda pride. Then he got himself ready to deliver an even more profound piece of advice.

You see, you’ve got to be able to connect the shite back to the arsehole it came from, he said.

Now that was ten per cent extra talk. That was the new improved formula language. As though Moleshaver had put forward the greatest ecological message of our time. The solution to pollution. Connect the shite back to the arsehole it came from. Molloy winked, and Coyne could not help being impressed by the impact of this new visual illustration. He liked it. It rounded off the faecal discussion earlier on. An inspiring concept which had a crisp cinematic feel to it, like the final words before a deadly subversive mission. Go for it, men. There was nothing to add, only action.

Coyne drove home along the seafront. Over the rasping sound of his own car, the tape deck was playing the blues. A brilliant red sky over Dublin had begun to fade away and it was getting dark. The red glow on the granite walls was gone and there was a pure white moon up in the shape of a half-masticated host. There was a hint of winter in the breeze, which swirled up dust and leaves and sweet wrappers together along the pavement.

Coyne laughed to himself. It was the most inappropriate reaction to the day. But he felt light-headed and washed over by a kind of dangerous exuberance. He saw everything in black and white. It always came down to this – the two directions: top road or bottom road. You could blame the world or blame yourself. You could try and change the environment and the circumstances around you, or you could try and change yourself. Coyne was certain that he was right and they were all wrong. He would show them all one of these days.

Carmel’s mother was at home, putting on her coat as soon as he arrived in the door.

Your dinner is in the micro, she muttered.

Chicken Chernobyl, Coyne muttered back.

He felt like doing something outrageous. Like pulling down his trousers and exposing himself to her back; that ridiculous wide hairdo on her, the cloud of Lancôme and the chiffon scarf, for God’s sake. Tried the chiffon scarf test lately, Gran? Sorry, Baroness von Gogarty. He made a grimace at the back of her head, pretending to come up and open the door for her. But she caught him.

I can see what you’re doing, she said, letting herself out instead. Spinning around on her hind legs to throw him a filthy look. He watched her walking out the driveway, waiting to see if she would allow herself one more vicious look back. Yes.

Jennifer, one of the children, stood at the top of the stairs saying she couldn’t sleep. So he went upstairs and found them all awake, waiting for him to tell the stories. He was much better than Gran.

She just tells girls’ stories, Jimmy said. And Coyne felt appreciated, knowing that he could re-invent the whole universe for his family audience at least. He was back once more in the bubble of his own home, laughing at arcane little jokes that no other family would understand. Insulated by the warmth of his own group as though the world depended on them to begin all over again.

At other times, Coyne felt he had become his own audience entirely, watching himself on closed-circuit TV; a silent blue figure shifting around in a semi-detached house on a Dublin housing estate, carrying his children into bed, telling them bedtime stories about forsaken places under the sea.

And then the underwater man with no eyelids brought the little pink fishes to a place where they could hide. He lived in a sunken ship where they would be safe. You see the mackerel were smart because they had white tummies and they swam up high where the shark couldn’t see them against the light. But the coloured fishes had to find a place to hide.

The children were gathered all around him in one of the beds. Nuala hiding all her furry toys under Coyne’s arm, as if to act out the story. Jennifer holding her eyes open with her index fingers.

And even though the underwater man had no ears, he could hear everything. Every tiny sound. He could hear a bubble bursting a hundred miles away. So he could hear the shark coming back.

Coyne almost fell asleep himself when the story was over. Coyne the real father, tucking them in, rubbing his hand over his son’s forehead, stalling to pick up a sock near the door, walking down the stairs lightly. Coyne eating his dried-out dinner. Coyne stealing biscuits in his own home.

Relaxing in front of the TV, he was still wearing his uniform, tie undone, watching the men of Papua New Guinea re-enact old tribal rituals. Above all else, he was concerned with extinction; the disappearance of legendary people. Last men belonging to ancient and pure civilisations which had clashed with modernity. Men and women like the Blasket Islanders.

Half-lying across the opulent floral sofa which Carmel had picked out on the advice of Mrs Gogarty, he watched the warriors jumping around, preparing for battle. He was almost asleep again when he saw one of the men running towards him with a hatchet. He jumped up. Kicked the dinner plate on the floor with his foot thinking he was dealing with Perry again. He found the remote control and played it back again and again. The warrior wore nothing but a purple jacket and a felt hat. Chest bare. White curly hair. The braided jacket looked like part of a hotel porter’s uniform which had somehow become separated from the trousers. Maybe it came from some famous American Hotel, like the Waldorf Astoria, and made its way right out to Port Moresby, sold and resold, only to be worn in ceremonious battle with a painted face and bare painted legs underneath. The warrior’s white teeth bared as though he was smiling, waiting for a tip. The hatchet came up in the right hand, just like Perry.