"No, I'm some kind of detective. Friend."
"Well, I'm kind of busy at the moment, friend. How did you get this number anyway?"
"If I told you, you'd have to kill me."
"That's very funny, friend, but I'm here at home with my family and I really don't appreciate-"
"I hear you, friend. That's what I'm calling about actually, the unappreciated. The jockeys who disappear because they won't carry out orders. The women who sell their bodies because the men they love are scumbags who'd rather pimp them out than care for them. The men whose fathers are gay and vulnerable to blackmail, who end up working for gangsters to keep the family secrets. Unappreciated, every one. We really should do something for them, don't you think? In this season of goodwill."
"What do you want?"
Proby's voice had lost the hail-fellow-well-met tone; now he sounded edgy and dangerous, like a rat in a trap.
"Where do you live?" I said.
"Foxrock," he said.
"Foxrock? Nice up there."
"I worked for every penny," he said.
"So do most people. They just don't seem to end up with as many pennies. A shame, isn't it?"
"Keeps me awake at nights."
"I'm sure it does. I'll see you at midday tomorrow down in Seafield. The West Pier."
"Tomorrow's Christmas Day, friend-"
"So it is. Where are my manners? Merry Christmas. Friend."
It was called pushing the boat out. The cops would be all over this case soon, if they weren't already. But what lay beneath it might never come out in their investigation. It would in mine. Call it justice. Call it curiosity. Whatever it was, it came down to this: I needed to know that nine-year-old girl had a future, one in which she would not be betrayed. And I wasn't convinced that, without my help, she would.
TOMMY OWENS WAS sitting on the same stool he'd been on when I left the pub, but it was as if a carnival had erected itself around him: face painters and street performers in clown costumes; folk musicians wearing bad hats; bearded bikers in leathers and their women in lace and feathers; three Santa Clauses and several drunken helpers in green-and-red elf costumes and, holding the line at the bar, a phalanx of little old men in jumpers of all ages, drinking seriously and devotedly and steadfastly resisting the temptations of excessive gaiety, even if one or two couldn't resist a stray look in the direction of the drunken elves, particularly the one who kept threatening to get her tits out unless one of the Santas promised to "do" her in his costume. Steno the barman, who had a reassuring aura of calm authority, finally brought this seasonal tableau to a close by ejecting the offending elf, but she was accompanied off the premises by one of the Santas, although possibly not the one she favored.
The lounge was calmer and tonier, with a crowd that looked bored by their money and keen to get rid of it; you could sell a lot of blow here tonight, and someone no doubt was. In the warehouse, it was as if everyone we had seen on the street earlier today was crammed inside; indeed, when I pulled open the double doors, three people stumbled back into the lounge; Noddy Holder was shrieking "It's Chriss-miss" on a jukebox as I made my way back to Tommy. I assumed he had been drinking all this time, but in fact he was stone-cold sober, or as stone cold as Tommy ever got; he nodded at me and introduced me to the short, slightly built guy on the stool next to him, who wore an olive-green flight suit and looked like a shaven-headed heroin addict: his taut flesh was mottled and pocked; his drawn cheeks had tight vertical folds like stiletto scars; his tiny eyes were recessed deep beneath heavy brows: dark blue and bloodshot, they glowed like hot coals.
"Ed, Bomber Folan. Bomber, Ed."
Bomber promptly stood up and left the bar. Tommy got to his feet to follow.
"Come on, Ed, we've a trip to make. Bomber's driving."
I followed reluctantly. If I had learned anything over the years, it was not to do business with anyone called "Bomber," and especially not to get into a vehicle with him. Besides, I wanted a drink. I needed a drink.
Outside, Tommy grinned.
"The expression on your face man."
He started to laugh. I didn't like being laughed at, especially not by Tommy Owens. Coming on top of what he had told me earlier this afternoon about Miranda Hart, I liked it even less. Without pausing for thought, I hit Tommy a dig in the mouth that send him skidding on the frosted ground. The smokers in McGoldrick's porch stiffened and a murmur of interest ran through them. Bomber drove up in a Jeep that looked like it had been fashioned from a corrugated iron shed and some old scaffolding. He jumped out and came at me, his hands up.
"No, Bomber, it's all right."
Tommy was on his feet, wiping blood from his mouth. He brought his face close to mine, close enough that I could see the anger in his eyes.
"Fair enough, Ed. I probably would have done the same. But you left before I could explain. Earlier."
"Explain what?" I said, knowing already I was in the wrong, and fearing it was only going to get worse. Tommy looked around at Bomber and nodded him back to the Jeep.
"I paid Miranda money. But I didn't get my money's worth. I didn't…she was so out of it that it wouldn't have been right. And anyway, I…I was never into that, into paying for it…I was kind of goaded into it…"
"You don't have to tell me this, Tommy," I said.
"I do, actually. Because you're the only one who…who even half believes I'm…you know…and the look on your face today when I told you about your one…I didn't want you thinking I'm some kind of fuckin'-"
"I don't, Tommy. All right? I don't."
Tommy nodded, and I put my hand on his shoulder. He looked me in the eyes, and I thought I saw tears in his. And then he hit me, a smack to the left cheek that dropped me to my knees and left my head jangling. I laid my palms on the cold ground to steady myself, and then I got slowly to my feet. The smokers were all beaming at the prospect of what this pair of out-of-town clowns might do next.
"Gonna have that drink now," I said.
"We'll wait for you."
I went back inside and Steno poured me a double Jameson and I added a third of water and he nodded approvingly at me as I drank it down like breakfast juice. The adage about being able to choose your friends but not your family ran through my mind. It wasn't true though, or at least, not as you got older. Unless you were the choosy type, or you went on a lot of cruises. No, you were stuck with your family and you were stuck with your friends, and you'd better just make the best of it. I thanked Steno, who had the solemn confessional gravity I prized in a barman, or at least the appearance of it, and went out to join Tommy in the back of a Jeep driven by a man called Bomber.
SIXTEEN
Bomber was a good driver, given the vehicle, and he had been a promising jockey until the heroin whose ravages still showed in his face had worked its way mercilessly through body and soul, calling a halt to his burgeoning career. Now he "did something with scrap," Tommy assured me. As we crossed a humpbacked bridge across the river at the far end of town and the suspension rattled and clanked like a mechanical press, I concluded that one of the somethings with scrap he did had become the Jeep we were sitting in. We turned in along the river and pulled up briefly outside a set of high iron gates. Bomber unlocked the padlock and uncoiled the chain and opened them and we drove up the short gravel drive to a large granite building with a slate roof that looked like a cross between a church and an asylum. The windows were all boarded up, with the exception of one stained-glass pane high on the rectangular bell tower; the grounds were overgrown; broken glass and beer cans and the dead embers of fires lay strewn about.