The Midnight Choir (20 page)

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Authors: Gene Kerrigan

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural

BOOK: The Midnight Choir
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Cheney shook her head and said, ‘I’ve no problem with that.’ She stirred her drink again with the plastic stick. ‘You were young, Joyce and Buckley – I know all about that case, and they were shits. What I don’t understand is Wyse. And then this thing at Turner’s Lane? People you were working with?’
J. J. Wyse was a uniformed garda, a sergeant, well settled and well thought of. His run-in with Harry Synnott began during a stag night for one of the lads from the Kilreddin town station, to which Synnott had recently been attached. Wyse poked his head into the private room he’d arranged for the stag party at a pub called Black Benny’s, a kip with sawdust on the floor and a dubious traditional band playing dismal
chéilí
music. There was hardly a function involving station personnel – stags, weddings, first-communion lunches, retirements – that JJ didn’t make the arrangements for.
‘They looking after you, lads?’ The groom-to-be, a man named Ryan, invited JJ to sit down and have a drink.
‘Can’t stay – some of us have to keep the wheels turning.’
As the door closed behind Sergeant Wyse, Harry Synnott almost didn’t hear the exchange between two of those present. ‘JJ’s off to collect the pension.’ The other garda made a remark about it being well for some.
‘Everyone knew,’ Synnott told Rose Cheney. He took a sip of the whiskey. ‘It was like it was no big deal. Friendly Uncle JJ, one hand washes the other.’
It didn’t affect Harry Synnott directly until he was on duty late one night when a local Nosy Parker called in with a complaint that a pub was serving drinks an hour after closing time. Sergeant Wyse smiled. The local drama club, he told Harry, was having a bit of a night out.
In a sing-song voice, as though reciting a piece of folk wisdom, he said, ‘The sociability of a community is in direct ratio to the flexibility of the authorities.’ He tapped the counter lightly. ‘We don’t rule the people, we serve them.’
Synnott couldn’t stop himself. ‘You’re not getting your usual back-hander, then?’
The smile slid down Wyse’s face and he turned and walked away.
It was three weeks before Synnott decided to make a formal complaint to the superintendent. Another sergeant took him aside, explained that JJ never asked anyone for money, it was just that he steered a bit of business towards a couple of pubs and they were occasionally grateful. ‘It’s not like he ever threatened anyone with a raid if they sold after hours and they didn’t give him a few shillings. It’s just – there’s people who appreciate the service, that’s all.’
When nothing had happened a month later, Synnott wrote to headquarters in Dublin.
‘He lost his job? Wyse?’ There was sympathy in Rose Cheney’s voice. Synnott wasn’t sure if it was for him or for Sergeant Wyse.
He said, ‘The way I see it, if you know about it and you stay silent you become part of it.’
‘What happened at Turner’s Lane, what made you leave?’
Synnott shook his head. ‘I know you mean well, but it doesn’t matter any more. If things go the way I think they will, I’ll be gone from here before too long.’
‘OK. I’m not judging you. It’s just—’
‘I know.’
‘It’s just that it’s what people talk about when they hear you’re at Macken Road, and I wanted to hear your side.’
Synnott realised he was about to ask her what she thought of it all, but he decided he didn’t want to know. He wondered when he’d last had a drink with a woman. He hadn’t had a relationship for almost a year – and that had been no more than an awkward couple of months with a woman he’d met at the wedding of a nephew. Studious sort, pretty and droll. They’d nothing in common except their need for company.
He knew nothing about Cheney’s personal life. He noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring.
Synnott’s whiskey was all but untouched. There was nothing in Cheney’s glass except ice.
‘Vodka, isn’t it?’
‘I better not.’ She made a face. ‘Driving. Haven’t taken the time for a drink after work since – probably before Christmas. It’s all go at the moment. Our eldest is making her First Communion this year – another six weeks.’
Synnott wondered if something in his face had betrayed his thoughts. Then he decided that was self-centred nonsense. He remembered why Cheney had insisted that he come to the pub.
‘Big Max and Little Max?’
‘I got a call this morning from a detective at Earlsfort Terrace. He came looking for me once he heard the Hapgood name. Fifteen months ago, he handled a complaint against Max Junior – sexual assault. Two weeks later the victim withdrew her complaint, walked away, wouldn’t say why.’
Synnott said, ‘Paid off, maybe, or frightened.’
‘He talked to her – he seems a good guy, sensitive enough to do it right – but she just said no, she didn’t want to go any further.’
Synnott made a disgusted noise. ‘So, young Max is making a career of it.’
‘Do you think I should talk to that woman – see if she has anything useful?’
‘Fifteen months on? Probably wants to forget it happened.’
‘No harm trying.’
Synnott nodded. ‘No harm trying.’
Cheney was on her feet. She gestured towards his whiskey. ‘You take your time.’
‘Right.’
She took a step away, then stopped and said, ‘Look, it’s not like I’ve any right to judge – it’s just, maybe you were right, about Wyse and the other stuff, and maybe you weren’t. But I just thought – it was in the air, best to clear it away, OK?’
Synnott realised he was smiling. ‘OK,’ he said.
When she was gone, Synnott finished his whiskey and called the Asian lounge boy across and ordered another. It was the first evening in a long time that he hadn’t gone from work to home to sleep. He took his time over the second whiskey, then he caught a taxi home to his flat.
He was getting into bed when he remembered that he’d meant to ring his son. The jewellery robbery had kept him so busy he hadn’t thought of it. Anyway, by now Michael had probably changed his mind again about the attractions of leaving school for the delights of business. Lying back on the pillow, Synnott thought for a moment about reaching for the phone. He wondered if he had the mental energy to conduct a difficult conversation. He stared at the ceiling, knowing that calling Michael was about fulfilling a duty and he didn’t for a moment believe that anything he said would influence him one way or the other.
Tomorrow.
*
Dixie had a key to Shelley Hogan’s flat at Sunnyfield Apartments. She found Shelley asleep on the settee, the television showing some American shite.
Dixie switched off the television and went into the spare bedroom. The place was a mess, clothes scattered across the bed and onto the floor, a pile of magazines in one corner, tipped over and strewn across the carpet. She straightened the duvet and puffed up the pillow. She found a blue sweatshirt that looked reasonably clean and decided to use it as a nightdress. As she changed she heard a noise and went back into the living room. Shelley was awake and standing up.
‘You OK?’
Shelley nodded, still groggy, still stoned. There was a syringe on a coffee table, next to a small wooden music box.
‘I wanted—’ Shelley said. She stood there, her face blank, as though she was trying to remember something. She pushed one hand through her short black hair. Then she said, ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ At the door of her bedroom she turned and said, ‘Help yourself.’
Dixie said, ‘No, I’m all right.’
Halfway there. Not nearly enough.
There was around a hundred and fifty in the right-hand pocket of her jeans, the pension she’d collected from the post office after she’d fled from Matty and his thug friend.
Too late now.
Dixie was still awake an hour later. She went out to sit on the living-room settee. There was just the light from the spare bedroom and the room was cold.
She had used a syringe a couple of times, but although she knew Shelley was clean she’d never got over the fear of what a needle might carry. Shelley kept the tea candles in a kitchen drawer and Dixie brought one back to the living room, along with a box of matches and some aluminium foil. She went to the bathroom and unspooled a nearly-finished roll of pink toilet paper. There was a lot more on the roll than she thought. She made a ball of the loose toilet paper and stuffed it into the small metal bin under the sink. She brought the cardboard tube back to the living room.
Five months.
She hesitated for a moment.
Stupid.
Five months of proving to herself and to them that she didn’t need it.
Throw that away?
It wasn’t like that.
Just once.
Relieve the pressure.
Control the pressure.
The music box played ‘Clementine’ when she opened it. Dixie tore a square from the aluminium foil, then lit the candle. She crumpled some of the heroin onto the foil and held it over the flame. When it melted, the liquid drops of heroin rolled this way and that across the silver surface, leaving trails of dark specks. She moved the foil to try to keep the liquid above the heat of the candle and was rewarded by ribbons of smoke rising from the drug. She bent forward, holding the cardboard tube to her lips, and seconds after she inhaled the smoke she felt it hit her lungs. She chased the smoke, anxious not to waste any.
She could feel the strength of it, the warmth of it streaming through her blood, easing its way around everything that hurt and filling all the empty spaces in between.
Dixie lay back on the settee and it was like everything weighed less. It was all going already, all the shit that overloaded her mind through the hours she lay awake. The fear and anxiety that had crushed her insides over the past few days was still there, but at a distance, blunt, unfocused, harmless. She knew it would come back, as strong and as inevitable as a tide, but maybe by then she’d have the strength to deal with it. For now, her blood was singing with relief. She let her head loll on the arm of the settee and she stared without blinking at the tiny core of red at the centre of the yellow flame of the tea candle.
25
Friday will tell the tale.
The bitch has dropped the blazing smile she usually uses, like she wants Dixie to understand this is serious. The bitch should be fat and warty, an old hag with a voice like emphysema, but she’s about the same age as Dixie and her face has a glow and her teeth are perfect as though someone designed them. Her sweet voice can do the tone that shows how caring she is and when she says that Dixie can’t have Christopher back she does so with tenderness.
Five months since that day at the Prunty. Five months without Christopher.
Monday, when Dixie went to the meeting with her, the bitch walked her to the edge of the cliff.
‘Friday will tell the tale,’
she says.
Friday. Today.
Over.
Too late now.
The Prunty Shopping Centre is fifteen minutes’ walk away, but it takes longer when Christopher is in a mood. Dixie promises him a lolly.
She’s thinking things through. Health-and-fitness clubs – everywhere you look, people running and stretching and hoisting weights, trying to shed the fat so that they’ll look good when they got to the pubs and restaurants. She’s made a list. She’ll start with the clubs nearest where she lives, work her way out until she finds one that has a few hours’ work to offer.
She buys Christopher the lolly in the Sweet Factory, and he runs ahead to Marie’s Big Little Toy Shop, off to the left of the supermarket, where he’ll browse until Dixie’s finished shopping. He’s good with toys, no whining, no demands – he knows money doesn’t grow on trees, but he likes to take the toys down from the shelves and examine them at length, his serious little face appraising them like the expert he is.
The supermarket has changed the aisles around again. Just when you’re used to the layout they change it. They try to stop customers getting used to where everything is, so that you have to check out every aisle and end up buying stuff you don’t need. Dixie has no problem ignoring the temptations. She knows how much she’s going to spend. She finds the tinned tomatoes, the tuna, the sliced pan, the porridge.
At the checkout there’s a kid in the togs of the local GAA team helping to pack bags. Dixie throws a few pence in his bucket. Her head is singing. Half an hour before she decided to go shopping Dixie was slicing a line of coke, bent over her bedside locker, a small, solitary celebration of the possibilities she’s decided to chase.
Get work – stay clean.
She feels an enthusiasm that she hasn’t felt about anything for a long time. She’s wondering if she should swallow her pride, go see Obi-Wan Kenobi, see if he’s changed his mind about helping her get work in the fitness business. It’s been two years since the trouble – if she’s respectful, contrite – it’s not like she wants a full-time job, just a couple of hours here and there – mornings, when Christopher’s at school – all it would take would be a word from Obi-Wan and—

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