Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [35]
The big man grabbed one end of the blue tarpaulin and whipped it off of two dead bodies. Dugan saw it was the twins laying across one another. He saw a hole in the back of one head before he saw the one with the mustache had been shot through the eyes. Dugan gagged twice before he was sick on himself.
The woman was standing now, holding the boning knife in one hand. She held a pint of Guinness in the other. She sipped from the pint before handing it off to the big man.
“Oh, God have mercy!” Dugan whimpered. “God have mercy.”
“Those two talked about what they did to my niece after they had too much to drink,” the woman said. “The wankers went back to the bar and told it to the wife of the man they beat for you and Marty Ryan, thought they could double-team her, too, from the shite you’d said about her. They tried to feck with her head, told her they’d beat her husband again unless she did what they wanted. They weren’t very bright, the twins. It all got back to Rusty here. From the woman herself. Nancy, is it?”
Dugan was shaking his head.
“The boyos here saw the knife and gave you up in a flat second,” she added. “Everything you told them, how we sent her off because she was tainted, you fucking shite. You didn’t have a clue, but you felt like talking, eh?”
“It’s what I was told,” Dugan said. “I swear it, Mary. I was told she’d been raped by felons from Mountjoy and lost her mind from it.”
“She was,” the woman said. “And she was affected, but we sent her away so she’d never have to hear the name of the place again. Never have to see it.”
“I’m sorry,” Dugan cried. “I’m sorry, Mary.”
“Herself asked for permission to bring you back here,” the big man said. “Or you’d’ve been killed in New York. Marty Ryan offered to take you out himself.”
“It was only once,” Dugan pleaded. “Just the one time, I swear. I was pissed. I was fuckin’ berco.”
“Well, you’re tainted now,” the big man responded.
The woman said, “The question is, you feckin’ piece of shite, is will you purr like a cat when Rusty pulls your bones from their joints, or will you wait until I cut you to feckin’ pieces?”
PART III
HEART OF THE OLD COUNTRY
WRONG ’EM, BOYO
BY RAY BANKS
Welcome to Dublin, sir.”
“Get tae fuck.”
It was an hour from Edinburgh to Dublin, all cramped up in the belly of a Ryanair with attendants who didn’t bother to show us the escape doors. One of ’em had the pure blarney shite running free from his puss. I could tell he was a poof, likes. Graham Norton type, y’ken?
Then the cunt of a cab driver, same old shite. A leprechaun with fuckin’ eyebrows on his cheeks. He skinned us out of most of my funny money and dropped us off on O’Connell Street. Best Western, the Dublin Royal. I wondered how royal a three-star could be, got my answer when I saw my room: not fuckin’ very. I dumped the Head bag and switched on the telly. Couple of channels, they wasn’t even speaking fuckin’ English. I lit a Bensons and cracked open the bottle of duty free. Jack Daniel’s. Took a swallie and put the bottle on the bedside cabinet. Looked out of the window, felt sick. Call this culture? Princes Street, that’s culture. This is a motorway with a couple of fuckin’ statues of nobodies.
This country, man. I’d been here before, but that was thirty years ago. Hiding behind a wall in Belfast, trying not to shite my uniform. I had a gun then, mind. Thanks to yer man Bin Laden, the best I could manage this time was a Stanley the Big Yin give us when I was sixteen.
Big Yin. His name was Connolly, like the other Big Yin. And if the comedian had carried on drinking and being funny instead of marrying that blond piece, he’d have looked like our Big Yin too. Must admit, I fancied a wee shot at her when she was in that leotard in Superman 3, likes, but when I found out she was a head-shrinker, Wee Shug wilted.
Big Yin was the reason I was here. Him and a mick called Barry Phelan. A bunch of old scores to be settled and me buff apart from the Stanley.
It didn’t matter. A solid blade