The Runners (14 page)

He opened his eyes and thought he saw Jay’s cheeky smile. He leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. Three teardrops fell on his face. He didn’t want to move away as he knew it would be the last time he would ever see him. His feet were frozen to the spot. He felt his dad’s hand on his shoulder, pressing him forwards. He took a few steps and found himself in front of Bernie.

‘I’m sorry, Bernie.’

She stood up and hugged him, whispering in his ear.

‘You have nothing to be sorry for. I have your jersey on his bed. Why don’t you go up and get it. He loved when you two were up there together.’

She hugged him again before talking to Matt and Laura. Bobby made his way upstairs. The Liverpool shirt was on the bed. Beside it was his trophy. He opened the drawer on Jay’s locker and saw the picture Jay had of the Ballybough United team. Of all the boys in the picture, Jay was the
happiest. He had his arm around Bobby in the back row. Everyone else looked very serious. Jay looked like he had been told the funniest joke he had ever heard. That is the way he always was, smiley Jay. Bobby was glad he had got one last smile from him. Underneath the photo was the tape box where he kept his money. He picked it up, and saw that there was something still inside. Then the door opened. He grabbed his jersey and covered the tape box.

‘Are you all right Bobby?’ asked Anto.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Bobby didn’t answer him.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything to save him.’

Anto left him alone, the way he wanted it. He opened the tape box and could see the packages that Jay had taken squashed into the notes. Bobby closed it and held it to his chest. He slid it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

He picked up the Liverpool shirt and gripped it as hard as he could. He could see his mam and dad from the top of the stairs. They were talking on the balcony outside the front door. Bobby got to the front door and turned left back towards the coffin. He had the folded shirt in his hands. He skipped to the front of the line, and placed the shirt at Jay’s side. He touched his hand off Jay’s and walked by
Bernie again. She reached out and grabbed him, nearly bear-hugging him to death.

‘He’ll be glad you did that. He can wear it in heaven.’

‘He’ll be captain of the team.’

Bobby took the suit off and hung it back in his wardrobe. He never wanted to wear it again. He took the tape box out and opened it. He counted the money. There was one hundred and fifty pounds. And three lumps of heroin. He put it under the floorboards in the corner of the room where his dad always put the mousetraps. There was an old trap still there with what was once a lump of cheddar cheese on it.

He lay on the bed and thought about whether he would rather be with Jay in heaven or playing in Ballybough without him. He wasn’t sure of the answer. He thought about whether it was Anto’s fault that Jay was dead. He thought and thought. It was all he could do. He didn’t ask to go out because he had nobody to hang around with. He stared out his window at Croke Park, with an endless supply of moments to remember. He laughed to himself when he remembered how sick they felt after drinking all the orange juice. He decided he would never snare a pigeon again, though every time he saw a pigeon he would think of Jay. Every time he heard the word Liverpool he saw Jay
flying around the pitch in heaven. He thought of all the times he thought of death and never mentioned it to Jay, embarrassed that Jay might never have thought of death.

Everywhere he went he thought of Jay. If he opened his eyes, he saw something that reminded him of Jay. Every time he closed them, he saw a past memory of Jay. When he lay on his bed looking at the laths above him, he got sad. He touched where he had written Jay’s initials. He tried counting the laths over and over to stop himself thinking of Jay, but, in a way, he didn’t want to stop thinking about him. It made him sad to remember him, but the thought of not remembering him made him even sadder.

Bobby wasn’t surprised how many people were at Jay’s funeral. His mam told him it was a big deal that somebody so young would die from drugs. The church was packed, with hundreds left outside. He sat seven rows back on the left-hand side. Bernie sat in the front row on the right. Bobby didn’t hear anything the priest said. Bobby counted how many people were in each row, and how many rows there were. He saw the two detectives sitting together, just staring straight ahead. At the end, people went up to shake Bernie’s hand. Bobby didn’t want to. He had cried enough, and didn’t want to get upset again. At the burial in
Glasnevin Cemetery, the sun shone down while it lashed rain at the same time. Bernie screamed at the sight of Jay’s coffin joining his father’s. It was a scream Bobby had never heard before. It echoed around the gravestones. Bobby just wanted to leave. He had cried himself dry. His eyes stung and his head ached. His dad threw a handful of muck into the hole in the ground after the coffin was lowered. Bobby felt a frozen fear, the thought of looking into the dark hole was too much for him to contemplate.

Bobby stayed in his room, and remembered only the happy thoughts about Jay. He went over full days’ adventures in his head. He reckoned he could fill his mind with amazing thoughts of Jay for the rest of his life. He knew he would never forget about him, not one minute would go by for the rest of his life, that he wouldn’t think about Jay.

The quiet was broken by four solid knocks on the front door. Bobby heard someone come in, but he didn’t go out to the landing to check who it was. He was too drained to care. It was about ten minutes later when he heard his mother coming up the stairs. She always said to him that he sounded like a herd of elephants going down the stairs; she sounded like a herd coming up.

‘Can you come downstairs, please?’

‘Why?’

‘The detectives want to ask you a few more questions.’

He didn’t answer, he just followed her down, mimicking her footsteps.

‘Hello, Bobby,’ McNeill said.

He wondered if Burns did any talking at all. He nodded at McNeill. He didn’t even try to wipe the tears away. He had never felt as exhausted in his life. He didn’t know if he would be able to run even a hundred yards.

‘I don’t know if you know, but we’ve made some arrests. We have been given some information that could land you in a lot of trouble. We have already talked to your mam and dad, and we told them that the last thing we want is for you to get in trouble. All we need is for you to tell us the truth. We arrested Willo Brown, who told us that Jay, and you, were working for Anto. That you were delivering drugs for him.’

‘Tell them that’s not true son.’

Bobby could feel himself getting weaker by the second, if that was possible.

‘Can I get a drink of water, please?’

‘We need you to tell us everything you did for Anto. If you don’t want to tell us, which I’m sure is not the case, we’ll have to arrest you too. You will probably end up in a children’s jail.’

Bobby didn’t want to end up in a children’s jail. Gringo might be there. He was quickly working out in his head what he should say, and what he shouldn’t.

‘Anto, it’s an evil person who makes children do his dirty work.’

Bobby thought if McNeill knew everything,
then why was he asking questions? He knew Anto wouldn’t have said anything. He couldn’t believe Jay would have told Willo Brown what they were doing. If he did, Willo must have told the police and ratted on Anto. All Bobby knew was that he wanted it to end.

‘Anto asked us to help him with his garden. And to deliver a few videos for him.’

‘What type of videos?’

‘Boxing videos. We watched a few of them in his house, and he had a few friends who were into boxing too.’

‘And these videos, what did they look like?’

Bobby thought this was the stupidest question he had ever heard.

‘They looked like videos.’

‘Were they in boxes?’

‘They were in video boxes.’

‘Where did you bring the videos?’

Bobby didn’t like Micka or Johnny.

‘To a fella called Johnny who lived in the Strand flats. And a fella called Micka who lived in the Sean MacDermott Street flats.’

‘How many times did you bring videos to Johnny and Micka?’

The truth was he didn’t know exactly how many times. He knew he had made about three hundred pounds, which was sixty deliveries.

‘About sixty times.’

‘Sixty times?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how did Anto get you to do this?’

‘He would hand us the video and say “Bring this to Micka,” or “Bring this to Johnny” and we would do it.’

‘The information we have is that you knew what was in the videos. And that Jay, and possibly you too, had then sold some of this to somebody else.’

Bobby knew where the information was coming from now. It was scumbag Willo Brown. He knew Jay had sold some to Willo. Why would Willo tell them that, though? Unless he was trying to save his own ass.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Bobby, if someone stands up in court and says, “Bobby Ryan was delivering heroin to people,” it will stain your character for the rest of your life. It will bring shame on your family.’

‘I was delivering boxing videos. I watched the videos.’

‘Bobby, Anto is in big trouble. The best thing you could do for the memory of Jay would be to tell the truth. We think Jay got the heroin from one of those videos.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘When we arrested Willo Brown, he told us that Jay brought the heroin to him.’

‘And he told you about Anto, too?’

‘He told us about Anto, and you, and Jay. So we know certain things. Other things we are unsure of. When did you know what was in the videos?’

Bobby couldn’t remember when he knew. Jay knew before him.

‘Jay said that there must be something in them because when we went to Micka’s there were junkies outside the flat.’

‘And what did he say then?’

If Bobby admitted he saw Jay opening the video, then his mam would hate him for the rest of his life. If she knew he had known he was delivering heroin, then she would be more disgusted than he could ever imagine. She had warned him about the dangers of drugs. He had never even taken a drag of a cigarette and he was about to admit something far worse.

‘He said we should open one and see.’

He could hear his mam gasp. He was afraid to look her in the eye. He picked a knot on the pine table and kept staring at it.

‘And when did you open it?’

‘I didn’t. Jay did. And he closed it straight away again. It was the last delivery I did, because I knew it was wrong.’

‘And Jay never took any. Are you sure?’

‘He did another two deliveries on his own. So I don’t know if he took any.’

‘It’s possible that Anto could be charged with Jay’s death. Maybe not murder, but manslaughter.’

Bobby had heard of manslaughter, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.

‘Bobby, I know Anto was your friend, but he had you delivering death around the streets of Ballybough. He will have to be punished severely for that. If you saw something in that video, it’s evidence we can use against him. It will stop this ever happening to another boy like Jay.’

Bobby had nothing left to lie about. The truth was out. He should have told the truth at the start.

‘I have something to show you.’

He sprinted up the stairs and pulled the rug back in the corner. He lifted the floorboard and pulled out the tape box. Inside he had stuffed the money. He opened the box and turned it upside-down. He started to shake it to get the money out. It flew out on the fifth shake and straight into the hole. Followed by one of the packages.

‘Bobby, what are you doing?’ asked his mam, as she startled him with her silence coming up the stairs.

He quickly let the carpet cover the hole.

‘I have something to show them.’

He turned to face her and held his hands behind his back.

‘What is it?’

He held out the tape box for her to see.

‘Tell them to look inside.’

Laura couldn’t resist and looked in herself.

‘Oh my God, Lord save us.’

McNeill opened the tape cassette box and took out the packages. He held the drugs in the air.

‘If that is good quality heroin, it is worth an awful lot of money.’

‘How much?’ asked Matt.

Bobby wanted to ask, but didn’t dare.

‘One of them could be worth two thousand pounds.’

Bobby was working out the value of what they had delivered in his head. His mam said he inherited the maths part of his brain from his father.

‘And if there were two in each video, and they were sent with sixty videos, that’s about a quarter of a million quid. The dirty bastard sending my son around with that. I’ll fucking kill him with my own bare hands.’

Bobby looked at his dad knowing he would kill nobody, and that he had his calculations wrong. He was fifty per cent right.

‘We will have him arrested immediately. We’ll also need to take you to the station to sign a statement. I’m grateful, Mr and Mrs Ryan. You don’t understand how helpful he has been.’

‘And what’s going to happen with Anto?’ asked Matt.

‘I can’t guarantee that he won’t get bail; it’s unlikely, but you never know. My advice would be to move house.’

‘Leave just like that. Are you saying we are not safe in this area now?’ asked Laura.

‘And how do we go about leaving just like that?’

‘We’ll be able to help. Your son’s testimony is going to put one of the big guys away.’

McNeill turned to Bobby.

‘When it goes to court, we’ll need you to tell what happened.’

‘I know what testimony means.’

His mam glared at him. The police explained exactly what was going to happen in the police station. Bobby told them the full story. His mother cried through all the details. They wrote a statement that Bobby had to sign. It was eight pages long.