“Murph doesn’t even know you.”
“Sure he does,” said Cully. “He just forgot, that’s all.”
“He didn’t know who you were there at that thing yesterday. The dogs.”
Cully shrugged.
“Guys who have a habit, their memories aren’t the best. Sad but true.”
“How do you know he was an addict?”
“‘Was?’” said Cully. “‘Is,’ you mean. You knew too, come on. Look, we were talking about tanning, so look.”
He pointed toward the second-floor windows above a Chinese restaurant.
“See that one up there, the sign? See it? Tell you what. Stand here awhile any day. Afternoons are better. Count the number of people coming and going there, and keep track of who has the tan. You can’t miss it, that orange look. You know?”
“I know. What about it?”
“Well, let’s just say it’s not about the tan. Can you put that in the script?”
“Look, I’ve got to think about this.”
“Think about what,” Cully said, returning to his survey of the street.
“This business about Murph, and where I am now.”
“That’s easy. Murph stepped out of the picture. And good riddance, you should say.”
“He didn’t bow out voluntarily.”
“I did you a favour. He’d get himself into trouble. Drag you in too.”
“I don’t remember being asked about any of this, consulted…?”
“You’ll see, don’t worry. I’ll show you stuff, believe me.”
Fanning bit back what he’d planned to say. He looked at the passing faces, so many of them here clearly not Irish. Across the street, West Ham was resting against a lamp post, his mobile pressed to his ear.
“Murph knows Dublin,” Fanning said to Cully then. “That’s what I hired him for. Obviously.”
Cully made a non-committal nod.
“So I need to find someone else from Dublin, I suppose,” Fanning added.
“I know Dublin,” said Cully.
“You sure don’t sound like it.”
“What do I sound like then?”
“Irish sometimes. Then English. Some of this, some of that.”
Cully’s jaw set in a way that Fanning read as irony, or some private joke.
“Your mate’s not Irish, for sure.”
“Too true. I could accuse him of being a lot of things, but not Irish. Let’s say he’s honorary Irish.”
“Whatever that might mean.”
“Oh don’t think I’m slagging it off,” said Cully, with a haste that surprised Fanning. “It means a lot to say that. Means a lot to him too, believe me.”
“‘West Ham,’” said Fanning. “I mean what’s that about, anyway.”
“Likes football, doesn’t he.”
Cully held up his hand. Fanning followed his gaze across to West Ham, who seemed to have awakened. He too had raised his hand, and now he nodded his head several times, his mobile pressed hard against his ear.
Cully looked at his watch, and then to Fanning.
“What were we talking about?”
“I was saying how I wasn’t consulted on this, what you want to call it.”
To Fanning, Cully finally seemed to get the idea.
“Okay. Yes. You want talk or something, I suppose.”
West Ham crossed through the traffic now, and gained the footpath behind them. Cully seemed to take his arrival as a signal to hurry up.
“How long have you lived in London?” Fanning asked.
“London? Why do you say that?”
“Your accent,” said Fanning.
“That much?” Cully said, with little interest.
“It’s noticeable, to say the least.”
“Well okay. That’s your job, isn’t it. Noticing, and stuff.”
West Ham had caught up to them.
“London’s all right,” said Cully. “Most of it.”
“How long were you there?”
Cully pretended he hadn’t heard him.
“Lot of very strange people there this past while,” he said. “Nasty types. Here too, I’m sure.”
Fanning’s frustration rose again, and it met with the steady current of excitement that had been running in him. He felt jumpily alert to everything on the street. His mind raced with questions that he knew would have to wait.
“Here we are,” said Cully.
He slowed and then he stopped.
“A pub?” Fanning asked. “Now?”
“You have your phone? Keep it handy now.”
West Ham was pretending to examine a billboard for holiday flights.
“Wait here,” said Cully. “Back in a minute.”
Fanning stepped over to West Ham.
“You’re mates with him?” he asked him.
West Ham looked up and down the street. Fanning’s mind scrambled for features and details he could commit to his notebook: didn’t need to shave every day, sort of runny eyes — allergies? Lip hanging makes him look not smart. Twenty, twenty-one or — two? Did he have the West Ham team pyjamas too?
“Saw you at the thing yesterday,” Fanning said.
“Look,” West Ham said. He didn’t look at Fanning. “You’re his idea. Me, I don’t want to talk to you. And I don’t want you talking to me neither. So stay out of my way. And push off.”
Fanning waited for eye contact. Then he noticed West Ham’s stare coming back at him from the reflections on the plate glass of the pub window. Not much point to this, was there. He ambled the ten or so steps to the head of the lane, and he leaned against the brickwork there. He studied the dense razor-wire and wondered what it would do to someone’s hands. The graffiti was layers deep on the walls. A minute passed. He considered just jotting down notes. So what if Cully or West Ham saw him. This was not his part of town, but still he eyed the people flowing down the street, half-hoping he’d recognize faces. He began to try guessing at nationalities. You couldn’t go by skin colour of course. He had no clue what language two slight men were speaking when they passed, but he’d leave it at Slavic something or other. Polish, probably — or statistically likely.
West Ham hadn’t moved. He was looking up and down the street with a slow, lazy stare. Someone, or something, was being set up, Fanning decided. Maybe him. Just as he had decided to walk away, he saw West Ham turn. Then a man came out the door of the pub in a hurry, attached to another man: Cully.
Cully had bunched some of the man’s jacket in his fist, and he pushed and then pulled and turned the man left down the lane. West Ham was already on the move. He stopped at the door to the pub, and stood there.
Cully was keeping one hand in his pocket. The man he was holding and dragging stumbled, and he shouted as his arms waved for balance. Fanning felt his own hand closing on his phone. He made another step toward the edge of the footpath. Nobody walking by seemed to care what was going on.
Two girls stopped in the street to avoid Fanning. He apologized and then slowly traced his steps back toward the laneway. He heard someone shouting what sounded like “police.” Cully let go of the man’s jacket and kicked him hard in the small of his back sending him sprawling and rolling out of sight of the street.
West Ham shot Fanning an angry glance just as the door of the pub was pushed open. Whoever had come out started to shout, but West Ham had his hand on the man’s chest in an instant. He put his forearm on the man’s neck and pushed him hard against the wall. He stared at the man he had pinned, and punched him hard in the belly. The man’s feet actually came off the ground, Fanning saw.
West Ham let him go and he doubled up, and began to back away. West Ham shepherded him to the laneway and flicked his head toward Cully and the other man.
Fanning looked up and down the street. The traffic passed, the pedestrians walked. Nothing changed. He heard someone shouting his name, and he looked down the lane again. It was Cully.
“What are you waiting for?” Cully shouted.
“No,” Fanning said. “No, I’m out of this.”
Then West Ham was in front of him. A different man entirely, Fanning thought, taking the sight of his flattened nostrils and a sharp intensity in his eyes, nothing of the sloucher who had hung around in the margins.
“Don’t piss about,” West Ham said. “Go!”