Read The Midnight Choir Online
Authors: Gene Kerrigan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural
The Midnight Choir (21 page)
Then—
It’s like something electric has zapped through her chest.
Oh—
And it comes out in a howl.
‘Oh,
Jesus—
’
Jesus—
’
Dixie is five minutes from her home and she drops the plastic bag of groceries on the pavement and turns, running, trying to keep the panic from swamping her.
The woman from the shopping centre is smiling, she’s got Christopher in her arms and he has a thumb in his mouth and there’s a security man and he’s saying, ‘Sorry, love, he was running all over the place looking for you – we’d no idea where—’
‘It was just a mistake—
’
’
Dixie is aware that she’s sweating, a twist of hair is stuck to her cheek, she’s trying to keep the fear from her eyes. She can feel the muscles in her face pulling against the smile she’s trying to create.
‘Come on into the office, love, and—’
‘No!’
But the shopping-centre woman is already walking away with Christopher in her arms.
Dixie says, ‘Please.’ She has Christopher by the hand. She takes a step backwards, she smiles at the garda, she says, ‘OK?’
The garda says, ‘Well—’ and the Prunty security man says, ‘You can see she’s stoned, you can’t let her walk out with a child.’
Dixie makes eye contact with the garda. He has dark eyes and they’re uncertain.
‘Please.’
Dixie is backing away and Christopher gives a little squeal. ‘Mammy, you’re hurting me!’ and Dixie looks down to where her hand is coiled tightly around Christopher’s little wrist. She lets him go.
She says, ‘Oh, please.’
In that second, as she finds the young garda’s eyes again, she can see it all. The police station and the doctor, the tests, the drug charges, child neglect, the social workers, the court and the massive black hole that waits beyond.
‘No,
please
.’
please
.’
The garda says, ‘I’m sorry—’
The shopping-centre woman has Christopher in her arms again and he’s making high-pitched noises and lashing out with his feet and she’s going,
There, there, it’ll be all right
.
There, there, it’ll be all right
.
Social workers who begin every meeting with a smile and when they cross their legs and lean forward the smiles go away.
Five months of meetings.
‘I’m not an addict. I use the stuff – I
used
to use the stuff – I don’t – I won’t.’
used
to use the stuff – I don’t – I won’t.’
‘We’re not judging you – it’s not like that. Today, it’s what’s best for the child, that’s all that matters.’
They ask Brendan to come to a meeting along with Dixie. He answers questions politely. When it finishes the bitch puts on her best smile and next day Dixie calls her and the bitch says there’ll be a case conference shortly and she can’t say anything, but she’d like to see Dixie again on Monday morning. ‘We can do a final progress assessment.’
Please.
Sunday afternoon, Dixie irons her brown skirt and the tan blouse she wears when she goes looking for work.
Christopher.
She has to struggle to keep herself from losing control when she thinks of him. Swelling love colliding with sliding despair.
Sunday night, Brendan says let’s go down to Keating’s and Dixie limits herself to one gin and tonic, after that she sticks with Ballygowan. Brendan keeps glancing towards the door. Dixie wants to go home early but he’s waiting for someone and he orders another pint.
Dixie doesn’t talk to Brendan about tomorrow’s meeting. He knows it’s happening and if they get Christopher back, that’s OK with Brendan, if they don’t, that’s OK too. He sips his pint and tells her what this mate of Lar Mackendrick told him about Lar’s DVD factory out on the Moyfield industrial estate. ‘There’s a pile of money in that caper. Smart man, Lar.’
Dixie nods and decides she doesn’t want to think about Lar.
Piece of shit.
Brendan rabbits on about how clever Lar is, the connections he’s got. ‘That’s the business to be in.’
When they get back from the pub Brendan is complaining about the gobshite who didn’t turn up with the twenty-five he borrowed two weeks ago. The dishes from the teatime meal are still sitting on the kitchen counter. Brendan makes a remark about the state of the kitchen and Dixie thinks he’s joking, so she bows slightly and says something about her lord and master and Brendan gives her the back of his hand.
He’s all apologies, offering a towel to wipe the smear of blood on her upper lip.
‘Jesus, darling, I’ve never, listen, it was just—’
Dixie looks at her face in the mirror.
Aw, Christ.
Monday morning, eleven o’clock. The bitch says nothing about the bruising on Dixie’s left cheek. Dixie has applied foundation, then concealer on top, staring into the mirror, touching up the camouflage. The make-up both hides the damage and draws attention to it.
The discussion is about Dixie’s work prospects and she sits with her legs crossed, her knees turned to the left, her head tilted slightly away from the bitch. She knows it’s pointless but she can’t help it. She knows the smile she’s fixed to her face doesn’t look right but she can’t do anything about that, either. After less than ten minutes she suddenly says, ‘I bet you’re wondering what happened,’ and she touches her cheek. She makes up a story about helping Shelley shift a sofa and how Shelley’s elbow—
The expression of sympathy on the bitch’s face agitates Dixie and she assures the bitch she isn’t lying.
‘Am I going to lose Christopher – is he going to be adopted?’
‘Believe me—’
‘Five months—’
‘We’re not near a definitive decision.’ The bitch smiles. ‘A final decision.’
I know what ‘definitive’ means.
I fucked it up.
She’s taking him for good.
The bitch babbles on about Friday’s case conference, about how it’s essential that they’re convinced that the situation has been progressed, before they can move on to the next stage. The bitch puts on her best smile when she says, ‘Friday will tell the tale.’
Dixie spends the rest of Monday trying to contact Fiachra in London. It’s that evening before there’s an answer at his flat, an unfamiliar male voice saying Fiachra hasn’t lived here for two months. She tries his mobile but a recorded voice says the phone is out of service. She gets the same results the next day, Tuesday.
It’s Shelley who faces up to what needs to be done –
get out, take Christopher, walk away, leave it all behind, go to Fiachra.
Shelley spends half an hour on the phone, comes back with a figure for air tickets for Dixie and Christopher, a B&B in London for three nights, food, odds and ends, and no matter how close she cuts it there’s no way it’ll take less than four hundred, more like five.
get out, take Christopher, walk away, leave it all behind, go to Fiachra.
Shelley spends half an hour on the phone, comes back with a figure for air tickets for Dixie and Christopher, a B&B in London for three nights, food, odds and ends, and no matter how close she cuts it there’s no way it’ll take less than four hundred, more like five.
Come Friday, collect the Widow’s Pension at the post office. A third of what she needs, and leaving it late—
She tries Fiachra’s mobile again on Wednesday morning but there’s still just the recorded voice and Dixie pulls on her jeans and her red jacket and takes one of the syringes from Shelley’s flat and brings it into town.
Total fucking disaster.
Water and ketchup mixed in an eggcup, suck it up into the syringe, there’s no telling it from the real thing. Off to Grafton Street, mooching, find somewhere quiet, the syringe in her pocket.
A few fucking hundred.
Jesus.
The Yank and his tweety girlfriend walking past, chattering away, then the Yank is taking his wallet out of his pocket and he’s sticking his card in the hole-in-the-wall and the money coming out is in fifties and there are several of them and it’s too good to be true.
‘Give it.’
‘Take it easy, now—’
Ah, fuck.
The flame on the tea candle is tiny and wavering. Dixie realises she’s holding her breath in case the least puff of air blows the flame out. She inhales, then turns her face away and lets the air out slowly and when she turns back a quivering twist of pale smoke is rising where the flame was. She makes a small involuntary noise.
Killed it.
SATURDAY
26
Joshua Boyce watched his children chase a ball, Peter taking advantage of the ten-year start he had over eight-year-old Ciara, contesting the game like he was fighting to keep out of the relegation zone. At the table in the decking area just outside the French windows, Boyce’s wife Antoinette poured Tropicana into four long thin chilled glasses.
Back in Cairnloch, when he was growing up, Joshua Boyce used to organise races with his mates, in the back garden of his family’s council house. Later on, when he thought about it, he reckoned the garden couldn’t have been more than a glorified yard, with scraggy grass and relentless weed. Back then it had seemed like a prairie.
Boyce watched Peter throw back his head and laugh. There wasn’t a hint of the teenage moodiness that too often got between them.
It was Antoinette who insisted from the beginning that Saturday morning was family time, whatever happened during the rest of the week. Working around Ciara’s weekly basketball sessions, and levering Peter out of bed when he insisted that it was his God-given right to spend every free morning lying in until noon, Antoinette always organised something the kids could do along with herself and Joshua. Maybe something as simple as a trip to a shopping centre or a visit to granny. Mostly it was just a board game or a romp around the back garden. What mattered was that they did something together. In summer it might be a drive down to Wicklow, a stroll around Howth Head or a swim at Portmarnock. This morning, the weather being excellent, it was an old favourite, a version of football in the back garden, what Ciara called boys versus girls. The game continued between the kids while the adults took some time out for refreshments.
The long wide garden was what had sold Joshua Boyce on this house off the coast road in Clontarf, when he and Antoinette had bought it nine years earlier. This kind of thing wouldn’t last too much longer, the Saturday family mornings, the closeness with the kids, first Peter and then the late miracle, Ciara, now both together. But when it ends, Boyce told himself, there’ll be other things. Holidays alone, self-indulgence, all the kinds of things he and Antoinette had happily sacrificed when the kids came along. They’d have the kind of money they’d never had in the early years.
Boyce went to the table near the back window and picked up a glass of Tropicana. He turned in time to see Peter dart forward to intercept a wayward shot from Antoinette. The boy flicked the ball from toe to knee, bounced it up to head height, then nodded it forward, stuck out a foot and did the toe-knee-toe thing again, then back up to his forehead.
Ciara was laughing, urging him on. Joshua smiled and took a slug of juice and—
Oh Christ.
In the kitchen, through the open doors, the radio was playing in the background.
Joshua Boyce stood facing his family, not seeing them.
He hadn’t noticed the end of the music programme. As a newsreader continued with the eleven o’clock bulletin, Boyce felt his fingers grow too weak to hold the glass of Tropicana. He stood with his head held back, eyes closed, his concentration blocking out the childrens laughter and the sound of his glass breaking on the concrete.
‘
– the dead man, who was employed by a branch of the Cooperative Building Society, witnessed the jewellery robbery and was attempting to apprehend the fleeing robber when he was shot in the leg. A spokeswoman for the hospital told RTE News that the man’s death followed a sudden deterioration in his condition in the early hours of the morning.
’
– the dead man, who was employed by a branch of the Cooperative Building Society, witnessed the jewellery robbery and was attempting to apprehend the fleeing robber when he was shot in the leg. A spokeswoman for the hospital told RTE News that the man’s death followed a sudden deterioration in his condition in the early hours of the morning.
’
‘Are you OK, Dad?’
*
Poor bastard.
In the Comms Room, Harry Synnott and Rose Cheney watched Joshua Boyce and the security guard – Synnott had to think a moment to remember the man’s name – Arthur Dunne wrestle on the ground in the car park. The quality of the CCTV footage wasn’t great. Just two anonymous figures down at the bottom left of the screen, perspective distorted. The footage was from a camera positioned high up above the car park of the twenty-four-hour shop where the gunman had parked his Accord. The car wasn’t visible except for a couple of seconds of footage at the end, when it drove past the camera and out onto the street.
Synnott watched again as the security guard silently screamed on the screen and rolled to one side, clutching his leg, and Joshua Boyce – no doubt in Synnott’s mind it was him – jumped up, holding the gun, and moved out of the camera’s range.
Synnott was woken by the call at around six in the morning, thirty minutes after the security guard died. No point going to the hospital. He was at Macken Road station before seven, pulling together the scant information. He phoned the hospital and an hour later a consultant rang back and said that he couldn’t give a definitive cause of death until after a post-mortem. ‘Off the record – some kind of cardiac failure.’
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