The Scrapper (4 page)

Kieran had by now pulled onto the Navan road and was heading north. He settled back with a smile of admiration on his face to listen to the rest of the fight.

‘Fair play to you, Sparrow,’ he said aloud and slapped his thigh.

The bell clanged loudly for the eighth round. Sparrow could hear it, but it seemed to be miles away, not just in another place but in another dimension.

‘He’s on the run! Go after him!’ Molloy’s voice boomed at Sparrow. Sparrow felt the pressure of his cut-man’s thumb coming off his eye.

‘Keep it covered, for fuck’s sake – don’t let him open it anymore,’ Johnny Brough roared.

The perspiration was stinging Sparrow’s eyes. He stood up, and felt the stool rub across the backs of his legs as it was
whipped away from beneath him. Molloy rammed the gumshield into Sparrow’s mouth. It was in crooked. Sparrow straightened it with his tongue. With three paces Sparrow was in the centre of the ring. He was alone. Menendez had not arrived yet. Sparrow knew it then. He knew Menendez had lost his thirst for the fight. It’s all over, he thought. I have him.

‘Keep it covered,’ came the scream from his corner. ‘Keep the fuckin’ thing covered,’ they shouted again.

What? Sparrow thought. Oh yeh, the eye.

Menendez came into focus. He had both gloves in front of his face, and all that was visible to Sparrow was a little triangle, an eye in each corner and the bridge of a nose at the bottom. Menendez’s body was exposed.

Sparrow let fly a right. Menendez’s eyes bulged at the impact just below his ribcage. A burst of air left his lungs, carrying blood-soaked spittle with it as it gushed from the Spaniard’s mouth. Sparrow was sprayed with blood.

Sparrow’s mind was on automatic now: throw a second body-punch – quick – before he has a chance to breathe – when the lungs are deflated, that’s when the ribs are at their most vulnerable.

The punch left Sparrow’s shoulder even before the thought was complete. Thud! Followed by a crack. One of the Spaniard’s ribs had gone; Sparrow’s eyes widened with the recognition of the sound of bone shattering. The training, the practice, the pain, the sweat, it was all coming to fruition. Sparrow’s instinct knew what to do. He dropped his shoulder to feign a third body-punch. If the text books were right the Spaniard should drop his arms to cover the injured rib. The text books were right. As if in slow motion Sparrow
saw the gloves of the Spaniard drop from his face. He was wide open. The Spaniard realised his mistake when his gloves had reached his chest. Too late. The momentum allowed the Spaniard’s gloves to sink another three inches before he began to bring them back up. Too late. Sparrow was focused on his spot.

‘Catch him clean!’ he heard Molloy scream from the corner as he threw his body behind the upper-cut. Right on the button. The speed and power from the punch threw the Spaniard’s head back far enough to cut off the blood supply momentarily from the spine to the brain. His legs began to buckle. Menendez staggered back against the ropes. The crowd screamed in anguish. Above the din Macker screamed, ‘Kill him! Go for it, kill him!’

Sparrow advanced quickly on Menendez. To prevent himself from falling through the ropes Menendez spread his arms wide. It was all over. Sparrow placed his left leg forward to give himself perfect leverage for the final punch. As his foot planted itself squarely on the canvas Sparrow drew back his right arm. The Spaniard knew what was coming. He could do nothing but wait for that millisecond it would take for Sparrow’s punch to arrive. He felt so, so tired. The pain of his shattered ribs was so fierce that he couldn’t breathe. In a way, the punch would be welcome.

Simple Simon leaned forward, excitement in his face. He tried to get closer to the radio; he felt as if he was in the ring with Sparrow.

‘Go for it, Sparrow,’ Bubbles cried.

‘Kill him, kill him!’ Simon growled.

Kieran Clancy had passed through Navan and was heading for Kells. He was slapping the dashboard of the Ford Escort.

‘Go for it! Go on, Sparrow! Take your chance now!’ His radio boomed out the commentary.

‘What a beautiful upper-cut! The Spaniard staggers away. He’s going down – no! Saved by the ropes. McCabe moves forward, he winds up for the big one
…
’

Simple Simon was banging the back of Teddy’s seat. He was jumping up and down like a little child. ‘Nail him! Nail him!’

Kieran Clancy’s car wobbled slightly on the road as he banged the steering wheel. ‘Yes, Sparrow! Throw the punch, throw the punch!’

Menendez looked up into Sparrow’s face; he wished to be eyeball-to-eyeball with his opponent as he went out. He expected to see that look he had seen before, the savage, lustful animal look of the beast as it finishes off the prey. But that’s not what he saw. He saw tears, he saw doubt – the
punch was not coming.

Sparrow watched as Menendez stumbled away after the upper-cut. It was clumsy. It reminded Sparrow of the way a beautiful bird falls, when it is shot from the skies. As soon as the bullet pierced its downy body it ceased to be a bird. For a bird has grace. Style. It has dynamic in its movement. So this thing that falls, tumbling, ugly, from the air is no longer a bird. Instinctively Sparrow followed his target. Automatically he positioned himself perfectly. Of its own accord his right arm wound up for the final punch. He focused on Menendez’s face. It was battered, bloody and bruised. It was ugly. This is no longer a fighter, Sparrow thought. The man was beaten. Victory was one thing, but humiliation another. For a moment the Spaniard’s face changed to Sparrow’s own face.

Sparrow sprang back.

‘Jesus Christ!! What are you doing? Finish him off!’ came the scream from his corner. Even the referee now looked at Sparrow, puzzled. Concerned that Sparrow had seen something in the Spaniard’s face that he had not, the referee tried to move closer to check.

Tommy Molloy was slamming the canvas with his hands, screaming. ‘What in God’s name are you doing, Sparrow? Throw the fuckin’ punch!’

Sparrow turned to Tommy and indicated with a wave of his gloves that everything was all right, he knew he had done enough. This was his second mistake. The referee felt himself being pushed aside as Menendez lunged passed him. Sparrow’s hands were down by his sides and he was mouthing something to his corner. The Spaniard let fly.

Three hours later Sparrow sat ashen-faced in the
waiting room of St Bernadette’s hospital just a mile from the stadium, the anguish of defeat completely overshadowed by Eileen’s delivery of their stillborn daughter. Rita McCabe was right: boxing is not a sport for mothers.

IN THE KILMOON HOUSE HOTEL one hundred and sixty people were gathered, all either members or guests of the Kilmoon Chamber of Commerce. They had come together to be addressed by Bernard McCarthy. A member of the Dáil, the Irish Parliament, for twenty-five years, McCarthy was now a Junior Minister with the dubious portfolio of Industrial Incentive. Nobody in the general public knew exactly what Industrial Incentive meant or indeed what this Junior Minister should be doing, and this seemed to suit Bernard McCarthy fine. At every Chamber of Commerce annual lunch it was customary to have a guest speaker – the status of your speaker usually reflected the status of your Chamber of Commerce. The attendance today of a Junior Minister put the Kilmoon Junior Chamber of Commerce in the top twenty percent, so regardless of what Bernard McCarthy said the members would be happy enough. This was just as well, for Bernard McCarthy, after many years in politics, had perfected a talent for spending thirty-five
minutes saying absolutely nothing. He would punctuate his speech with remarks like, ‘And I pledge to you’, or one of his favourites, ‘My integrity is well known within this constituency.’

In the carpark of the hotel just at the back of the function room the Minister’s limousine waited, along with its chauffeur. Just outside the door of the function room itself stood the Minister’s two police bodyguards.

Kieran Clancy’s eyebrows shot up as he heard Bernard McCarthy use a new phrase: ‘I cannot stress enough how highly I regard the work of the Chambers of Commerce in this country; they are the driving force of the machinery of my office.’ Kieran smiled wryly. In the fourteen years since his graduation from Templemore, Kieran Clancy had arrived where he wanted to be and yet was nowhere near
what
he wanted to be. He had married the Commissioner’s daughter Moya Connolly twelve years before, and had worked his way up to Detective Sergeant, as he predicted he would. There were many that derided his promotions as favours granted to the son-in-law of a Police Commissioner, but they had no idea of the hard work Kieran had put in, nor did they take the trouble to check that he had graduated top of each class he had ever attended. The rumours never bothered him.

What did bother him was that, having made it all the way to Detective Sergeant, he had now become a babysitter. He had spent the last eight years attached to Dublin Castle, and had gained the title ‘Special Detective’, but the only thing special about being a Special Detective as far as Kieran was concerned was that there was nothing to do. Day after day, he escorted politicians or high-ranking civil servants to and from meetings.

An elderly woman pushed the heavy door of the function room trying to get out. Kieran grabbed the brass handle and pulled it open for her. The woman smiled her thanks, nodded towards the room and remarked, ‘Isn’t he very good!’

‘He’s a wanker,’ Kieran mumbled.

‘I beg your pardon?’ the old lady asked.

‘I said thank you,’ Kieran spoke out loud. The woman seemed satisfied and left. Kieran looked down the corridor. Around the corner at the bottom he saw an arm appear. It was pointed straight out and in the hand was a Webley automatic pistol. Slowly the figure of a man crept around the corner, crouched ready for action. The man made the sound of gunfire as he came towards Kieran, still half-crouched.

Kieran grinned. ‘Will you put that thing away!’

The figure now stood erect; he was tall and lean with ginger hair. He pulled back the left side of his jacket to reveal a hip holster for the Webley. Spinning the gun on one finger like John Wayne, he slipped the Webley back into its holster.

‘Is he still talking?’ Michael Malone asked.

Kieran simply nodded. He took out a cigarette and lit it. The only time Kieran had ever asked his father-in-law for a favour was when he had been appointed as a Special Detective – he asked would it be possible to transfer Michael Malone to the same unit. The Commissioner pulled a few strings, Malone was transferred and the two men became partners. Kieran and Michael had been solid friends since Templemore. They’d been roommates there, had graduated together, and Michael had been Kieran’s Best Man.

‘What are you doing tonight, Kieran?’ Malone asked.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Fancy a game of snooker?’ Malone tried to enthuse Kieran.

‘Yes. Sure, why not.’

From inside they heard a round of applause. Kieran quickly stubbed out his cigarette, straightened his tie and buttoned his jacket.

As usual McCarthy simply came through the doors and walked past the detectives. To him they were like office furniture. The chauffeur held the door open for the Minister, who climbed into the back seat. Within seconds the limousine, followed by Kieran Clancy and Michael Malone in an unmarked detective car, left the carpark of the hotel in convoy.

When Dublin Corporation decided to close the tenement buildings of Dublin and knock them down, they created in a semi-circle on the north side of the city a whole new batch of satellite towns. In some cases these were already established outlying villages that were simply expanded into towns. In other cases, as was the case in Snuggstown, a whole new town was built in what had once been green fields. Snuggstown was now the largest of the satellite towns: ninety-six thousand people living in four square miles. Although well laid out, Snuggstown had not been well planned. Now this may sound contradictory, but consider
this: the new town of Snuggstown was twenty-five years old. There was no cinema in Snuggstown. There was no park in Snuggstown. There was no rail service to Snuggstown. There were only three children’s playgrounds in Snuggstown. There was one police station in Snuggstown, and at any given time there were just twelve officers on duty. This meant one officer to approximately nine thousand people. So it was that Snuggstown was impossible to police. The police had, in fact, long ago become spectators to the goings-on in the place. The gangster community of Chicago, New York and the other major cities of America had learned in the 1920s that to make crime a sensitive political issue was not a good thing, so they split the cities into specific areas over which individual gangs or families had reign. This stopped inter-gang squabbling, kept crime out of the newspapers and thus off of the politicians’ table. Since then most American crime has been organised like this – hence ‘organised crime’.

In Snuggstown, organised crime meant Simple Simon Williams. Simon was now lord of anything illicit that moved in Snuggstown – be it drugs, protection, prostitution and the fencing of all major transactions. Simon Williams was Lord of the Manor. There were of course other drug dealers in Snuggstown, and Simon tolerated them – but only because their wholesale supply came from him. As he had predicted fifteen years previously, Simon Williams owned Snuggstown. The two henchmen who had started with him, Teddy and Bubbles Morgan, were now his lieutenants. They did Williams’s running and fetching, and in return he paid them well and ignored their own little scams, such as the mickey-mouse shop protection racket they ran. It gave
them a few bob, he thought, and it made them feel important.

Mind you, nothing could ever make them look important. At that moment Bubbles Morgan looked decidedly unimportant. The thirty-three-year-old man stood in a newsagent’s shop reading a children’s comic. He laughed aloud. His brother Teddy, standing just fifteen feet away from Bubbles at the newsagent’s counter, was not laughing, and neither was the newsagent Teddy was talking to.

‘Listen, Mr McArthur, it’s community insurance. You pay the insurance and me and Mr Williams will make sure you don’t have any trouble from the community, okay?’ Teddy had a scowl on his face as he outlined the deal.

‘I’ve had to close early every night this week. My wife has been sick, you see …’ the newsagent pleaded.

‘Tell me, Mr McArthur, do I look like a fuckin’ doctor?’ Teddy extended his hand.

Without further comment or argument the newsagent opened the drawer of the till, picked out some notes and put them into Teddy’s hand. Before he had even closed the till Teddy had put the notes in his pocket and turned his back. As he walked past his brother on the way out he had to stop and retrace his steps. He tapped Bubbles on the shoulder and signalled him to come on. Bubbles first went to put the comic down and then changed his mind. He rolled it up, stuffed it in his inside pocket, smiled at the newsagent and they both left.

St Thomas’s Boxing Club had been turning young Northside Dubliners into boxers since its foundation in nineteen sixty-one. In its thirty-five-year history it had turned out six Olympic boxers. These Olympians were commemorated in the club building itself with life-size portraits down the south wall of the building. Well, actually, five life-size portraits and one larger-than-life portrait of their greatest hero, Sparrow McCabe. Over that period, of course, trainers came and trainers went. Committees changed, but unfortunately, through the usual lack of funding, very little of the decor had, though the equipment over the years had been updated.

If ever proof were needed that old boxers never die, one would just need to take a walk through the locker rooms in St Thomas’s Club. There the elderly, retired boxers and trainers would gather every day for games of cards or games of chess or just to sit and talk, all of them suffering from the ‘I could have been a contender’ syndrome.

There had been one constant in St Thomas’s Boxing Club over the past fifteen years. That constant was ‘Froggy’ Campbell. Every day Froggy would open the club first thing in the morning and would be the last one to leave when he locked it last thing at night. For this Froggy received no payment. Nor did he seek any. For the world of St Thomas’s Boxing Club was Froggy’s world. Froggy was thirty years of age, and it was believed that lack of oxygen at birth had caused Froggy’s brain damage. At first everyone thought he was just deaf, but as he got older and special school followed
special school, it was discovered that Froggy was trainable but not teachable. A difficult situation to explain, but best described by his mother when she would say, ‘Froggy can be trained how to dress himself but he will never learn why he has to.’

A big man and perfectly healthy in every way, if a bit overweight, Froggy had the mind of a six-year-old child. He mopped out the showers, swept the gym, washed the windows, and spent his entire day shuffling from one task to another, always with a smile on his face. Froggy had two passions in his life. One was boxing, obviously. The other was his polaroid camera. The latter interest began when Froggy was sixteen years of age and he got his first camera. He’d been given it as a present from Madrid by Sparrow McCabe, the man whose portrait was bigger than any other on the club wall.

Froggy never understood what had happened to Sparrow in Spain, but he did remember that Sparrow was very sad when he returned. Still, he had taken the camera out of its box and loaded the film, showing Froggy how to work it. Froggy immediately took his very first photograph, a black-and-white head-and-shoulder shot of a very sad Sparrow McCabe.

It was Sparrow who had taken Froggy to the gym for the very first time. Sparrow had often met the retarded boy, then only fifteen years of age, as he walked to the gym. Every day the boy would smile and say, ‘Hello.’ And one day Sparrow stopped to talk to him. It had been a strange conversation, for at that time Froggy’s vocabulary revolved around four words: Yes, Thank you, Mammy, and of course, Hello.

Sparrow was in training every day then, and he would
call to Froggy’s house at the same time each day, and with Froggy’s mother’s permission take him by the hand down to the gym. Sparrow would be the last to leave, so he would lock up, take Froggy by the hand and walk him back home. After six months of this, Froggy began to make his own way to the gym. And because the pattern had been set, he would insist on being the last to leave the building.

Nowadays Sparrow trained only two or three times a week – and one couldn’t really call it training, it was more of a work-out. But this didn’t break Froggy’s routine; it was easier for his mother to let him go to the gym every day than to try to un-train him.

Today was one of Sparrow’s work-out days. Froggy was sweeping around the ring, for the tenth time, and all the while his eyes never left Sparrow McCabe, who was working-out on a punch-bag. Froggy was dressed in ill-fitting boxer shorts and vest, ordinary street shoes and socks, and had his latest polaroid camera hanging around his neck. His camera had been updated four times. This latest one even spoke to him. Just as he pressed the button a little voice would say, ‘Watch the birdie!’ Where the other three had been bought over the years by Sparrow, this latest one was a Christmas present from all the boxers who used the gym.

Froggy laid his brush against the edge of the ring and shuffled over to where Sparrow was now furiously working the bag. He lifted his camera. Snap and flash. There was a whirring sound as the camera spit out its photo. Waving it like a fan, Froggy shuffled towards the locker-room, past two older men playing chess. Both players had been boxers for years and looked like they’d been hit in the face by the same
frying pan, their features identically flat. Just as Froggy passed, one of them made a move. ‘What kind of a fuckin’ move was that?’ demanded one of the men watching the game. ‘What would you know?’ the one who’d made the move asked. ‘I know this much, if I was the king on your board I’d be chargin’ you with fuckin’ treason.’ The men laughed, but all this meant nothing to Froggy.

Oblivious to it all, Froggy made his way to the lockers. He opened the door of his own locker and placed the new photograph of Sparrow on top of piles and piles of photographs. Froggy had kept every photograph he had ever taken. Froggy then went to the showers and turned one on. He checked that there was soap in the soap tray. Then carefully laid a large towel outside the door of the shower for Sparrow. He whipped up a smaller towel and headed back to Sparrow.