Creature of the Night (16 page)

I only had seven fags left by the time the shops opened. I
went into the mall the back way so I didn't have to walk
past the supermarket where I robbed the six-pack, but
there was a security man beside the door and he watched
me when I went in. Outside the car shop I stopped and
looked back. He was still watching me.

'What you looking at?' I said. That was really
stupid. I wished I hadn't said it.

I went into the shop and I was looking for the brake
blocks, and then I wondered why I was bothering to get
them at all. I never thought about it before, but if we
were going back to Dublin I had no use for them. I was
certain by then that we were going back. My ma would
never get the money together for another month's rent in
advance. She must have got the last lot off one of those
money-lenders that were hassling her sister. Probably
told them she wanted it for a holiday or something. She
wouldn't know where to start looking for another one
down here, and I couldn't see any other way she'd get
that kind of money.

So I gave up on the brake blocks. But on my way
out of the shop I seen something else, and as soon as I
picked it up I knew I had to have it. I looked around the
shop and it was quiet, but when I looked out the door
that security fella was there, and he was still watching
me.

I looked at the price and I didn't know whether to
laugh or cry.

Twenty-nine, ninety-nine. Exactly what I had left. I
went to the cash desk and handed over the last of my
deposit money. I didn't want the one cent change, but I
waited for it anyway. I wanted my receipt so I could
shove it in the face of that gobshite outside. He wasn't
watching me any more, but I showed it to him anyway.

'See?' I said. 'You stupid, culchie bastard.'

When I got home I showed my ma what I'd bought.

'It's a torque wrench,' I told her. 'You can set the
torque on the handle here, look.'

'What do you want that for?' she asked me. 'You're
not going robbing cars again, are you?'

'It's not for robbing cars,' I said. 'It's for fixing
them.'

'What cars?' she said. 'We haven't even got a car.'

I didn't try to explain. I couldn't, really, not even to
myself. I just wanted it.

I went up to my room and took it out of its box and
put it on top of the chest of drawers and arranged all the
socket heads around it. Then I called Dennis in to look
at it. He was nervous coming into my room. He thought
it was a trick, an ambush or something. I lifted him up
and showed him.

'It's a torque wrench,' I said. 'Say "torque wrench".'

He said, 'Toc . . . Say it again?'

'Torque wrench.'

'Torque wrench,' he said.

'Good boy,' I said. 'Now don't you dare touch it.
Not ever.'

He ran off, but I stood there another while, just
looking at it. It was the best thing I'd owned in my whole
life.

'So when are we leaving?' I said to my ma while we were
having our tea.

'Oh, I don't know,' she said. 'I've changed my
mind.'

'You've what?' I said.

'I've calmed down a bit now,' she said. 'And I've
had a chance to think. This place is really cheap, you
know, Bobby. Once my rent allowance comes through
it'll cost us even less.'

'The flat in Dublin cost you next to nothing,' I said.
'It can't cost less than that.'

'Yeah, but look what we've got,' she said. 'Three
bedrooms and that big sitting room and the wood fire.
And you have your job up the road.'

'It's not a job,' I said. 'It's a punishment.'

'But you like it, though. I know you do. And you
haven't been getting into trouble or anything. You're
much happier here than you were in Dublin.'

'Where do you get that from?' I said. 'How many
times do I have to tell you? I . . . want . . . to . . . live . . .
in . . . Dublin. I . . . don't . . . want . . . to . . . live
. . . here. OK?'

'It's better for you,' she said. 'It's better for all of us.'

I was ready to explode, but I knew that would get
me nowhere. 'Well, it's not so good for Dennis,' I said.
'He was outside when I came down this morning. Out in
the grass in his bare feet.'

'It's good for him to be outside,' she said. 'Fresh
air's good for him.'

'At five o'clock in the morning?' I said. 'And he
finished all the milk. He gave it to his little woman.
He thinks he's going to marry her.'

'No he doesn't,' she said. 'There is no little woman,
is there, Dennis?'

'There is,' he said, but she wasn't about to listen
to him.

'It's only a game. All kids have imaginary friends
like that. I don't know why you want to make such a big
deal about it.'

Then I did explode. 'You don't care!' I yelled at her.
'One child was murdered here already and you don't
care if yours get murdered too!'

'Just shut up!' she yelled back. 'You're talking
shite.'

Then suddenly I knew. I knew how to prove it to
her, about the little woman.

'I'll show you,' I said. 'Just you wait there.'

She had moved Dennis's toothbrush from the door
of the cupboard under the stairs and wedged it with a bit
from a cereal box instead. I yanked it out and pulled
open the door, and started pulling the stuff out again –
the clothes and torn bin bags, the shoes. I threw them
out behind me into the room.

'Stop it, Bobby!' she said. 'What are you doing?'

'I'm going show you,' I said. 'I'm going to prove it
to you.'

I kept dragging, threw the two boxes out behind
me, moved the computer out the way. Bits and pieces
scattered all over the place.

'Get off that stuff!' she shouted. 'It's not ours. Leave
it alone!'

I threw a box of books so hard it knocked Dennis
over. My ma picked him up and went out, and slammed
the door behind her. The diary was where I left it,
wedged into the little hole in the wall. I dragged out the
plastic bag and tipped the diary out.

It fell out with the pages open, and something small
landed on the floor beside it. A bank card. I picked it up,
and looked more closely at the diary. Inside the back
cover was a flap, a little file thing that opened out when
you pulled it. There were other things inside it. Two
more bank cards. A driving licence. A passport. And five
hundred and fifty euros in fifty-euro notes.

I was made up.

I put the valuables in my pocket. Then, quietly and
carefully, I put all the other stuff back into the cupboard.

I was anxious hitching into town the next morning in
case PJ or anyone else I knew passed by, but it was too
early for any of them to be on the road and I got a lift
from a young one in a suit who said she was a solicitor.
By eight o'clock I was on the first bus out of Ennis,
watching the fields go by. There were contractors in one
of them, baling silage, but I would never have to do that
again. I was sorted now. The five hundred and fifty was
sure to be enough for a deposit on a room, and then
there was the other stuff as well. The credit card would
probably be good for an hour or two if I could find
places where you still didn't need a PIN code. I wasn't
sure about the driving licence, but I knew I'd heard
Fluke talking about selling passports. Passports were
brilliant things to get.

The smell of rashers in the café in Limerick was
mouth-watering but I didn't let myself be tempted. I had
a packet of biscuits from home and I made myself a big
mug of tea before I left and I drank it going down the
road and left it hanging on a branch when it was empty.
There was no way I was going to break even one of those
fifties before they were safely in a landlord's hands and I
was set up for my new life in Dublin. This time I wasn't
going to screw up.

I was on the Limerick bus and we were just leaving
the city behind and speeding up on the main road when
it hit me. What the passport meant, and the driving
licence, and the cards and the money. It meant Lars had
not set out like me to start a new life for himself where
nobody could find him. He hadn't set out to go anywhere
at all.

So what had happened to him?'

Just for a second, I was blinded by the shock of it. I
was falling into a black hole and all I could think of to
do was to try and put that thought back in its box,
wherever it came from, and get back to the way I was
before I ever had it. But it wouldn't go.

I told myself I didn't care what had happened to
Lars. It was none of my business. I told myself a big fella
like that would be well able to look after himself. I told
myself there was no way it meant that two murders had
happened in that house instead of one.

And for a minute I held on to my dream. My ma
and Dennis would be OK. And anyway, I didn't care. I
wouldn't even know what happened to them once I got
myself set up in Dublin. And anyway, it was her
decision. It wasn't my fault if there really was some
psycho wandering around down there. She had been
warned, after all. Plenty of times. I'd told her a million
times.

But there were these other thoughts going round in
my head, and I couldn't shut them out. Fourteen. She
was only fourteen. I knew she wasn't, but she had been,
when she had me. And there was Dennis, the little bollix.
She wants you and Mammy to go away. I could marry
her, couldn't I, Bobby?

And then I was up at the front of the bus and yelling
at the driver to stop.

'No way I'm stopping now,' he said. 'You'll have to
wait till we get to Limerick Junction.'

'You have to stop,' I said. 'Now! I'm going to puke
all over your bus!'

He pulled over on to the hard shoulder and opened
the door. I jumped out and ran back along the road like
the guards were after me. No. I ran faster than if the
guards were after me.

When I came in the door my ma flew at me and slapped
me with both hands until I hit her back to stop her.

'What's wrong with you?' I said.

'Me?' she said. 'It's you, you dirty little bastard.
Where have you been?'

'Ma, listen,' I said.

'No, you listen,' she said. 'Do you know where I
found him this morning?'

'Dennis?' I said.

'I couldn't find him anywhere when I got up. It took
me half an hour to find him. He was way over on that
boggy field over there. He'd gone through three hedges.
He was frightened out of his wits!'

'What was he doing there?' I said.

'I don't know. I don't care. He just keeps going on
and on about his little woman. And then as if that wasn't
bad enough you go and piss off on me as well. I thought
you were at work until Coley came looking for you.'

'Well I wasn't,' I said. 'I found Lars's passport.'

'You found what?' she said.

I showed her the passport and the cards and the
driving licence, but I kept quiet about the five hundred
and fifty euro. No one needed to know about that. She
didn't seem to understand what it meant. She just looked
at them.

'We have to tell someone about it,' I said. 'We have
to get out of this house.'

I seen hope light up her face, and then fear, and I
thought,
Fourteen
.

She said, 'I'm going to nail up the dog flap. That'll
stop Dennis going out. I don't know why I didn't think
of it before. The dog will just have to go back.'

I took the dog up to Dooley's on a string. It didn't want
to go. When I got to the house I could see Coley over by
his weanling sheds, laying out boards for a concrete
apron. He waved at me but I didn't go over. I knocked
on the door.

Margaret opened it. She didn't look one bit pleased
to see me.

'You've decided to show up then, have you?' she said.

'I just brought the dog back,' I said. 'And I found
these.'

I handed her the passport and stuff.

'What's this?' she said. Then she looked, and I
could see her face changing when she realized what I'd
given her.

'Where did you get these?' she said.

'I found them in the house,' I said. 'Inside an old
diary.'

'My God,' she said. 'However the guards missed
them. I'd better phone them again. You did the right
thing to bring them up here.'

She went to close the door on me. I said: 'What'll I
do with the dog?'

'Just leave him off,' she said. 'He'll be all right.'

I took the string off the dog. It followed me home. My
ma was bringing in firewood.

'You were supposed to leave him there,' she said,
laughing at me with the dog.

'He wouldn't stay,' I said.

'He loves us, don't you, Bimbo?' she said.

Bimbo wagged his tail and ran away from her, into
the house. I told her Margaret was phoning the guards.
She said: 'What for?'

'Because of the passport and stuff,' I said. 'It
changes everything.'

'He probably just forgot to bring it with him,' she
said. 'Wherever he went.'

'He's dead, Ma,' I told her.

'That's rubbish,' she said. 'You don't know that.'

'I do,' I said. 'I'm certain of it.'

I almost felt sorry for her. She was being made to
choose between the money-lenders and something that
could be even worse. But for the moment, at least, she
was clinging on to her dream.

'Well I don't believe it,' she said. 'No way I'm going
to go back to Dublin until I have to.'

But I was clinging to my dream, too. I found my
ma's needle and thread in her room and I unpicked the
lining of my jacket and stitched the fifty-euro notes
inside it. All except one. One way or another I was
getting out of there, and when the time came, I
was going to need another bus ticket.

The guards arrived about two hours later. There were
two of them at first, and they wanted to know where I'd
found the passport and stuff. I told them about the hole
in the wall under the stairs and I showed them the
cupboard with all Lars's things in it, but they didn't
touch it. They asked me what I was doing in there and
for a minute I couldn't think, and then I remembered.

'Looking for the DVD cable,' I said. 'Mr Dooley
said it might be in there.'

'Did you find anything else?' they asked me.

'Like what?' I said. 'There's loads of his stuff in
there but I didn't touch it. I only moved it out of the way.
I didn't steal anything, if that's what you mean.'

They said it wasn't, but I knew it was. Then some
more guards arrived in a van, and we all had to go outside
while they searched the house. I seen one of them
carrying out the computer and then he went back in and
came out with the diary and some other files and books
and things, and he put them in the van, too. There were
more guards searching the sheds and the hedges and
walls around the house, and then another van arrived
with more of them and about four dogs. They all set out
in different directions, and after a while we were allowed
go back inside. I was glad I hid the money in my jacket
and not somewhere around the house. I'd say there was
nothing they hadn't found, right down to Dennis's toenail
clippings in the log basket.

My ma started packing as soon as she got in. She
started with Dennis's clothes and toys and his DVDs that
he never got to watch there. Dennis was diving under the
duvet and trying to play Where's Dennis? with her, but
she was ignoring him.

'He'll have to give me my deposit back,' she said.
'There's no way anyone's supposed to live in a place
where someone's died or disappeared. He had no right
letting it to us in the first place.'

I was delighted. I went and started packing my own
things. My best clothes and my tools were already in my
backpack from the morning. I stuffed whatever else I
could get in there, then got a bin bag from my ma's roll
and started putting things in that.

'Don't put your duvet in yet,' my ma said. 'We
probably can't go until tomorrow, till we get the rent
back and all.'

I could see her mind working. It wasn't just the
deposit, now, it was the whole lot, everything she'd given
PJ in the brown envelope, even though we'd been living
there for more than two weeks and we'd ruined one of
his mattresses. She was like that with money. She always
thought it would be there in the future, even though it
never was. If Carmel saw twenty of it she'd be doing
well. And there was no way in the world it would go
back where it came from, to the money-lenders. I
could see my ma spending it already, in her mind's eye.

There was a knock at the door and I ran down to
get it. It was Coley.

'They found him,' he said, but he didn't sound
excited or anything. He just looked serious.

'Who is it?' my ma said from upstairs.

'It's Coley,' I said. 'They found him, Ma.'

Coley led us over the stile and we walked up across the
rushy fields with him. On the way he said to me: 'Fair
play to you for finding the passport and handing it over
and all. That was the right thing to do.'

'What else did you think I would do?' I said.

He laughed. 'You'd never know with you.'

When we were halfway up the second field Coley
stopped and turned round.

'We could see from the house,' he said.

He pointed down the hill, across the road from our
house and in a bit, to the muddy field where Kevin Talty
kept his cattle in the winter. The guards had taped off an
area around the feeder and they were all standing outside
it, doing nothing.

'They'll be waiting for forensics,' said Coley. 'Or
maybe the state pathologist or something.'

'Maybe they found something else?' my ma said.
'His jacket or something?'

'Maybe,' said Coley. 'But if they did there's an awful
lot of fellas standing around looking at it.'

We stayed and watched for a while but it had
started raining, and anyway there was nothing to see, so
my ma said we'd be better off at home.

'Tell your da we're leaving in the morning,' she said
to Coley. 'And ask him can we have our deposit back,
and the rent we paid in advance.'

Coley was already walking up the field towards his
house. He didn't even look back.

'I'll tell him,' he said.

When my ma got in she phoned Carmel and told her
what was happening. They were happy as Larry when
they were talking about the murder, but when my ma
said we were coming back and had nowhere to stay it
turned into a screaming match again.

'Well, where else can we go?' my ma said, and, 'I'll
have the fucking money. He's giving it me back. Yeah.
All of it, so you can stop shitting yourself.' And, 'It's only
a couple of days, for God's sake! Just while we get ourselves
sorted.' And, 'I never thought my own sister
would turn me away. Our ma will be turning in her
grave.'

After that she hung up and said to me, all smiles
again, 'That's sorted, then. We're staying with Carmel.'

She sent a couple of text messages, then went back
to her packing, but a few minutes later PJ arrived at the
door. I could tell the minute I seen him that he
was raging. There was steam rising up off his bald
patch.

'Coley tells me you're leaving,' he said to my ma.

'That's right,' she said. 'First thing in the morning if
we can find a way in to the bus.'

'Oh, I'll bring you in,' PJ said. 'You need have no
worries on that account. But there's no way I'm giving
you any money back.'

My ma stared at him. 'What do you mean?' she
said. 'I gave you a deposit and all, and a month in
advance. We haven't been here anywhere near a month.'

'And your son stole a car the day after you arrived,'
he said. 'Have you forgotten that? The whole of what
you gave me is nowhere near paying it back. I was
willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and let him
work it off, but since you're walking out I can't get it
that way, can I? I'm going to have to find it somewhere
and give it to that poor lad's mother.' He pointed out
the window in the direction of where they had found
Lars.

'Oh,' my ma said. 'We'll pay that off separately,
won't we, Bobby? I'll send it down to you every week
until . . .'

But PJ was shaking his head. 'You can do that for
what you still owe me, but I'm keeping what I have.'

'But we need it,' my ma said. 'We have to get
another flat and I need the deposit for that. I'll be back
on the bottom of the waiting list. We have nowhere
to go.'

He moved towards the door. My ma went after him.
'You have to give it back. We haven't even got enough for
our bus fare. I haven't a penny until Thursday.'

He turned back and took out his wallet, and threw
fifty euro on the table.

'I'll be here in the morning to pick you up,' he said.
'I'll be here at half eight. Don't keep me waiting.'

My ma said, 'Oh please, Mr Dooley. I really need
that money! We'll send you the money for the car,
honest!' She started turning on the waterworks but PJ
just looked at her.

'The guards have just found a body,' he said. 'Lars
was a nice fella. He was dead sound.'

Then he left, and my ma took it all out on me.