He came to me, hand outstretched. A tall lad with a gut and white hair. “Tommy Phelan.”
I shook. His hand like a wet fish supper in my grip. I read somewhere that a man’s scrotum and nose kept growing as he got older. If that was the case, then this Tommy Phelan must’ve had knackers the size of watermelons, I’m telling you, because that nose made him look part toucan. “Hugh Sutton,” I said. “Mates call us Shug.”
“You’re Scottish,” he said.
And you’re a fuckin’ genius. “Aye, fae Edinburgh, likes,” I said, getting coarse with the cunt. He wanted Scottish, he’d get Scottish. “I heard Barry kicked it, likes, so I thought I’d mosey over and check it out.”
“You knew him?”
“I ken Lee Cafferty.”
“Lee’s a good man.”
Lee’s a dead man. I shot him in the crown, left him sticking to the lino like a fly in shite. “He certainly is.”
“You’ll be coming to the wake,” said Tommy. A statement.
“No can do. Got to be back in Edinburgh.”
“Sure, you can stay for a wee while. I’d be offended if you didn’t.”
“Ach, if you put it like that,” I said, “I’d be glad to.”
An Irish wake, like a Scottish wedding, Hogmanay and Burns Night all rolled into one. A cold spread on a long table up against one wall that’d hardly been touched. Empty bottles that had. We was upstairs in this place called The Lantern. Phelan sitting across from us, a half-tanned bottle of Bushmills and a pint of Guinness next to it. Talk about fuckin’ stereotypes, man, the auld lad was half in his cups and two sheets to the wind about an hour after we got there. He had a Players between his fingers. I didn’t ken they still made ’em.
“What do you think of Dublin?” he asked me. But like most soused micks, he didn’t wait for an answer. His face screwed up and he leaned forward, rattling the table. The black stuff didn’t move. “It’s not Ireland,” he said. “It’s England’s version of Ireland. You know you can’t smoke in pubs over here now? Legislated. We’re losing our culture bit by bit.”
“Aye.” Thinking, Smoking’s part of your culture, pal?
“Sure, you know all about that, don’t you? I been to Edinburgh, I seen what they did to that place. Shops on Princes Street all full of See-You-Jimmy wigs, am I right? Fuckin’ English screwing you out of your heritage. Tourist tat. Am I right?”
“Aye, you’re right.”
“Dublin’s the same. Temple Bar, I was down there the other week, it’s full of coffee shops. Theme pubs. Feckin’ yanks coming over here claiming they have ancestors from the feckin’ bogs. You know what I say? I say feisigh do thóin féin, that’s what I say.”
“Gesundheit,” I said.
A young lad came over to the table. He was stringy, had a mean look about him. He put a bottle of clear liquid on the table and Phelan’s eyes lit up like a cheap fruit machine. “Now that’s more like it. You’ll join me, so.”
“I’m all right, Mr. Phelan.”
“My brother died, the name’s Tommy, and you’ll join me. Won’t he, Barry?”
“Course he will,” said the stringy lad. He took a seat. I knew he was a wanker, because he turned the chair and straddled it.
“My nephew’s just come back from your neck of the woods,” said Tommy. He poured three deep shots from the bottle. “Barry, this is Shug. He’s an Edinburgh lad.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. But his eyes said different. His index finger ran down the side of the shot glass. Brown flecks under the nail. “It’s done, Tommy.”
“There’s a good lad. You take care of it yourself?”
Barry looked across at me, like he was trying to work out if it was safe. Then: “The auld bastard was dead when I got there.” He cracked a grin like a graveyard. “Fucker was sitting in front of the telly, Tommy. Sitting in his own shite.”
I smiled. My mouth was open. Some fuck had put vinegar on the roof and it hurt to breathe. I reached for the shot glass. “What’s this, vodka?”
Tommy’s face flickered. “Poitín, Shuggie. Sláinte.”
“Sláinte,” said Barry.
“Whatever,” I said, and necked it. It burned my throat. That, or something else.
A rat always knows when he’s in with weasels. That’s the way the song goes.
I drank with them, tried to hold it down. Kept wanting to twitch right out of there. Barry didn’t drink so much, and neither did I, but Tommy got wasted. His eyes glazed over, his chin got loose. It looked like he was melting. “Your da would be proud of you, Barry-son. He’d be proud.”
“I know, Uncle Tommy.”
Barry Phelan, son of Barry Phelan. The fuckin’ Irish, they keep it simple, eh? They have to, the amount they pour down their necks. I got a measure of Barry right away. This cunt clocked on who I was, likes. That’s why he told me what happened to Big Yin. Laughing at me. It tore at my gut, made me want to chew his fuckin’ nose off.
Shug Sutton. The last of the Boyos. The rest all up and fucked off with other firms. Shuggie stayed put. More fool me, eh?
I waited until Barry got to his feet and announced that he had to take a pish. Waited another three seconds and did the same thing. Tommy out of it. I walked into the toilets and Barry had his back to me, pishing in one of the cubicles. Too insecure to use the urinal, hung like a fuckin’ hamster, eh?
“I don’t hear pissing, Shugs,” said Barry, shaking his wee man. Took more than three shakes, the wanker. “Which means you’re thinking about doing something rash, am I right?”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t find the breath.
Barry turned in the cubicle. He smiled. His bottom set of teeth was all skew-whiff, likes. “Yer man’s dead, Shugs. He was dead before I got there. So you go back out there and you raise a glass to the new crew, all right? Because if you don’t, I’ll have the whole family rip you a new arse to match yer fuckin’ face.”
I thought about that for about five seconds. And the cunt Phelan made to push past me. I stood still.
“You fuckin’ simple, Shugs? It’s over, pal,” he said.
Right enough. It was over.
I clamped a hand over his mouth, grabbed his balls with the other, and pushed him back into his cubicle. His breath was hot on my palm. I cracked his skull against the wall until he went limp. Lost myself for a second, then came back with blood on my hands and saltwater hanging from my mouth. My lungs hurt. I couldn’t breathe proper.
Slapped the lock across the cubicle door and let Barry’s head drop against the toilet bowl. Fumbled for my Stanley and pulled the cunt’s drawers down. Wiped my nose with the back of my hand and sniffed hard, slumped down onto the floor with him. Got to work. Had to keep wiping my face because I couldn’t see through the water.
Outside I heard people singing country songs. Cunts didn’t cry at the funeral, but stick on Patsy Cline and they greeted like bairns.
“Crazy.” Of all the fuckin’ things to hear.
I leaned back against the toilet, mopped my face with my sleeve. The cunt had bled all over the shop, the tiles sticky. And there was me, sitting right in the middle of it, man. Britches all fuckin’ bloody and that, my shirt a mess. It stank of Barry’s last pish and blood and shite. I let my head fall back and I stared at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, red dots in front of my eyes.
Barry Phelan didn’t kill Big Yin; God did. And it didn’t matter which Barry Phelan did the London Road blag, didn’t matter that Big Yin wouldn’t give a fuck if I had the cunt’s balls or not.
I promised him, ken? You can’t go back on a promise to a dying man. Especially when you was all the poor bastard had.
And aye, there was no way I was getting out of here alive. If I’d had that gun I put Lee to the lino with, I’d have had a fighting chance. But right then, my arse wet through with Barry Phelan’s blood, I didn’t have the strength in me to do fuckall but sit there and listen to Patsy fuckin’ Cline and Tammy fuckin’ Wynette, tears rolling down my cheeks.