The Runners (15 page)

Bobby could tell who the important police were. Everybody stood to attention when the biggest of the lot came into the room. He had a belly the size of a rhinoceros and a different colour badge on his uniform. He didn’t talk to Bobby directly, everything was addressed to his parents.

‘We can definitely keep Anto Burke in jail for two weeks but there would be a slight chance he could get bail. Only a slight chance. I’m suggesting
moving you out of the area before that two weeks is up.’

‘And where do you suggest we go?’ asked Matt.

‘That is for you to decide. We will be able to help with the initial cost of relocating the witness. It’s all above board. You pick the house and we will take it from there.’

‘As simple as that?’

‘Yes.’

‘How far away does it have to be?’ asked Laura.

‘It’s up to you. Far enough away from the inner city.’

‘I’d need a car and I have a bit of a driving issue.’

Bobby heard his dad explaining about the parking fines and not having the money to pay them. That was no problem either. The fines would be wiped out. All those Friday nights, thought Bobby, missing a few minutes of
A Question of Sport
to pay that swine of a parking fines man at the door, when it didn’t matter anyway.

Bobby knew what was in store for him when they got him on his own. A hundred questions, all beginning with ‘Why?’ He didn’t care anymore. He wanted to rewind the clock to the beginning of the summer.

Houses in Ballybough didn’t sell. They got boarded up. Bobby thought his mam was living in hope that someone might buy theirs. Two thousand pounds had been a lot to pay for the house when they had bought it. He heard his mam say she would take two thousand pounds for it now, ten years later. His dad said to let it go and be positive about starting a new life somewhere else. He had fully bought into the idea. Staying in the inner city wasn’t an option. Clontarf wasn’t an option because it was too expensive.

Portmarnock was miles away from the city. More than seven and a half miles away. Bobby ran the whole way the first time they went as a family to visit the house. The rest of the family drove in his dad’s new car. A brown Fiat 128. Bobby thought he could outrun the car it was such a banger. He bet his dad a pound he could beat the ‘shitmobile’ with a thirty-minute head start. Portmarnock was on the coast. The run took Bobby along the same route he ran with Anto and Jay many times. Anto
would take them over the wooden bridge to Bull Island and along the sandy beach. They would turn around and jog all the way back to Ballybough.

Bobby was running away from Ballybough and it didn’t feel right. He stopped at the wooden bridge and held on to the side. He bounced up and down and tried to make it shake. There was no nervous knot in his stomach. There was just a terrible sadness in his heart.

Portmarnock had a beach so long you couldn’t see one end from the other. There were loads of fields. And a shop. Which in Bobby’s eyes constituted nothingness. A wild nothingness. It was a place where you couldn’t walk to somewhere else. You had to take the bus. Bobby and Jay had never even been on the 23 bus that went up and down Ballybough Road. They only ever mooned it. In Ballybough, Bobby could walk over the bridge into Summerhill and it was different. The canal was different. The railway tracks were different. The city centre was different. Every day was different. Every day in Portmarnock would be the same.

The house was in an estate called Carrickhill. When Bobby got there, he sat on the granite block that had the name of the estate engraved on it. It was surrounded by little flowers of all colours. He knew his mam would love it. There wasn’t a pigeon in sight. Bobby didn’t think the Fiat 128
would fit in with all the other cars. Just like he wouldn’t fit in.

Number 62 Carrickhill Walk had three bedrooms and was semi-detached. This was a big deal. So was the fact that the bedrooms were huge, and there was a shower. And that he wouldn’t have to share a bedroom any more. He kept those thoughts to himself and found it hard to get excited about their new rented house.

A large truck came to take all the boxes from the house on Ardilaun Road. Eileen and Ned came out to say goodbye. Michael Dunne managed to make it to the front door for the first time in six years. Even though he had the district nurse coming to him, Bobby’s dad was his real minder. Bobby had lit Mr Dunne’s fire many times on those freezing cold winter evenings, when Matt would make sure to keep it topped up through the night. He could see real emotion in his father’s eyes when Mr Dunne stood at the door, using a cane to hold himself up on one side, and the doorframe to hold him up on the other. Bobby couldn’t believe he hadn’t been at his front door in that long. He wasn’t able to step out onto the street. Bobby knew it was his fault that Mr Dunne would miss his dad. And his naggins of whiskey.

Bobby wanted to take the laths off the bed but wasn’t allowed. He negotiated to take one.
Everything was in the truck before they knew it. All that was left was to leave Ballybough for the last time. Close the front door and their lives in Ballybough were over.

‘One more thing,’ shrieked Bobby as he squeezed past his dad and ran up the stairs to his room. He pulled back the rug to reveal the floorboards one last time. He took out the wad of notes. All that was left was an old mousetrap and a packet of heroin. And a pissy mattress and an empty wardrobe. Bobby took one last look out the window at Croke Park.

‘Pull it shut after you,’ said his mam as he came out the front door for the last time.

He grabbed the cold brass door handle with both his hands and pulled the door shut. The knocker jumped off the door and tapped the plate twice before resting in place, just like it always did.

Bobby stopped wetting the bed. His new mattress hadn’t smelled a drop of his bladder. He changed the words ‘Our Father’ to ‘Our Jay, who art in heaven’ in his prayers. He answered every time. He still woke up no later than six in the morning. He would go running before the sun had a chance to rise above the horizon. Just him and a few horses. He would try to step in the hoof prints that they made as their owners galloped them along the deserted beach. Bobby could see himself changing. He started to get hair on his legs. He didn’t like them. Every time some appeared he would shave them off with his brother’s razor. He knew Kevin would go mad if he found out, but the bathroom door had a lock, and he made sure to clean all the hairs out of the blade, and to put it back in exactly the same position he found it in. Jay had said he hated hairy legs.

Normally September was the month Bobby hated the most. Going back to school after a summer playing with Jay. Now August was his most hated
month because of what had happened. Bobby refused to go to his new school. It was a protest he knew he couldn’t keep up forever, but one that he knew his parents would have sympathy for. He knew they were concerned for him. He never used to stay in his room in Ballybough, now it was all he did.

‘You’ll fall behind. You will end up being kept back a year if you don’t go to school,’ his mam would tell him.

Bobby didn’t care. Having to memorise all the names of the mountains and rivers in Ireland was stupid. The best river in Ireland was the Tolka and it wasn’t even on any of the maps. Neither was the canal. His mam agreed that he could stay at home for a few weeks, but he had to study in his room. Bobby couldn’t study. All he could do was think of Jay. He would close his eyes and relive everything they did together. He could remember everything about Ballybough. The colours of the front doors, the cracks on the footpaths and the sound of Jay’s voice.

Bobby’s protests lasted until the end of October. At that stage Kevin had made new friends who liked Jimi Hendrix and The Doors and played guitars and drums. The noise coming from Kevin’s bedroom was deafening. He now had an amp and an electric guitar. Bobby felt like throwing them out the window.

He was not allowed to tell anyone about what had happened in Ballybough. His mam registered him in school as Bobby Shannon, using her surname. He hated it being called out in class. He felt stupid. He wasn’t Bobby Shannon, he was Bobby Ryan. Maths was his favourite class. The teacher, Mr Maxwell, would have a quiz every Friday where he called out questions. The fastest to get the correct answer would win a point for their team. Bobby was only allowed to answer every second question because he could get every one correct before his classmates. Everyone would laugh at him for working the questions out so quickly in his head, while they were still writing it down in their copies. They weren’t slagging him though.

Gym class was crap. They played hockey and rugby, no football. Or running. He could have played basketball, but all the girls played that. He made up excuses about torn hamstrings and calf muscles. The teacher didn’t care if he took part or not. He was allowed to sit alone watching everyone else play. He knew Jay would have liked basketball. If he could jump off high walls, he could probably jump up high to put the ball in the net. He would have loved the girls too. Bobby found it hard to talk to them on his own; if Jay was with him, they would have been the centre of attention.

Bobby eventually did all his schoolwork without complaint. He didn’t find it difficult and it took his mind off Ballybough for a while. In school, he found himself talking to the girls more than the boys when he eventually began to find his voice. He couldn’t be himself though; none of them were interested in snaring pigeons or jumping off walls or fishing in the canal. There was a group of three boys in his class who thought they were the kings. They started calling him ‘Shanno’, even though nobody else did. They didn’t know he was an All-Ireland boxing champion, until Bobby mentioned it in class one day when asked about his interests. They never called him Shanno again. Bobby realised very quickly it was easy to stay under the radar. Do your homework and don’t get in trouble.

Even though he had missed two months of classes, Bobby still got excellent results in his exams. The cold dark mornings of November and December meant he wasn’t allowed to run before school. The minute he got home, he would rip off his uncomfortable wine-coloured school jumper, followed by the tie and shirt and horrible grey slacks. He felt comfortable in his runners, shorts and long-sleeved top, even though it was freezing. The minute his bald, white legs hit the winter air, goosebumps would appear everywhere. He had to go fast at the start to warm up, the opposite of what Anto had always told him. He focused on the
noise of his feet caressing the pavement or sand. Anto told him to ‘run on your toes, feather the ground’. He listened to his nostrils taking in a breath and concentrated on blowing it slowly out his mouth. ‘Try and glide along,’ Anto would say. Jay never shut up long enough for Bobby to concentrate on anything Anto said to them. He could concentrate enough now. A sixty-minute run would go by before he knew it. Then it was back to the real world.

The canal was full of rats, and now Bobby was going to be one. Jay used to tell Bobby that a rat was the worst thing you could be. If you ratted on someone in the inner city, your name would go up in graffiti with the words ‘Rats Out’ beside it. This was different though. What Anto did was unforgiveable. It was his name that was put up in graffiti on the pramsheds in Ballybough and on one of the derelict buildings in Summerhill. There were pictures of it in the paper. It was sprayed in blue paint. The article was about the trial and what Anto was accused of. It said he had been one of the major drug dealers in Dublin. Bobby couldn’t help thinking that if Jay had never opened the video, they would both be still be the kings of Ballybough.

Bobby laid his new suit out on the bed for the first time. It was navy with three buttons on the jacket. He picked it out himself, as well as the white shirt and red tie. His mother loved him in it. She looked at him with a loving smile. He polished his shoes, a pair of black patent leather slip-ons with a tassle
on them. His mother thought they were disgusting, which made Bobby want them even more. She wanted him to buy a pair with laces. The slip-ons were shiny enough to see your reflection.

Bobby had been made to sign statements about exactly what had happened. He asked what would happen if he said nothing. The police said he would end up going to a reform school until he was at least eighteen. He knew that would end his chances of running in the Olympics. They said they needed him to testify or Anto would get off. He was given the list of questions he would be asked, and he had to practise the answers to a man wearing a stupid wig and a black cape. The first question was going to be easy, building up to the deliveries, the stolen heroin, and finding Jay in the unknown house. He would have to point at Anto and say ‘it was him who gave us the videos’.

An unmarked police car collected them at 8.45 a.m. They were taken to the station, where they were offered breakfast. Bobby couldn’t contemplate eating anything; he asked for a glass of water, which he sipped, while his parents drank cups of tea. The tea wasn’t made the way his dad liked it. The youngest of the policemen stirred the cup and just took the bag out without squeezing it. He left a trail of drops on the table. His dad would get every drop out of the tea bag. He said each drop was a
valuable commodity. His dad was able to eat two slices of white bread, toasted. Bobby could see it was cold, as the butter didn’t melt when he put it on with the plastic knife. His mother spent the whole time holding Bobby’s hand and making sure he was OK. Every day of the trial so far the papers had run a different story about Anto. Headlines such as ‘Children Used to Run Heroin’ appeared with Anto’s picture. Bobby didn’t know what to think. His name didn’t appear in the paper because he was under eighteen, but he knew it wouldn’t take a Ballybough genius to work out that Jay and himself were the ‘teenage boys’.

Bobby was due to take the stand after lunch. Before him, McNeill gave evidence. He told of raiding Anto’s house and finding nearly two hundred grams of heroin. He told of the two boys who would deliver the heroin hidden in videos to different dealers around the inner city. He said that one of the runners would testify in court that he saw heroin in the video box after his best friend opened it.