Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [55]
In this case, Reed had seen the man come from a pub off Swift’s Row and simply fell in behind him. He was careful never to be seen with a victim. The first thing that tipped him to the man’s lack of roots in Dublin was that he had on a yellow shirt under a blue windbreaker. No Dub worth his balls would be caught in such an obnoxious outfit. These Dubliners loved their black. Black shirts, black jackets, God help him but he had noticed even the kids favored black on their way to school. Must’ve made the weather look brighter by comparison. Not like home in the west.
Looking into the man’s pale-blue eyes he pulled out the big K-bar, feeling the rough edge catch on some gristle and maybe the last rib. It sounded like his old man sawing on the Christmas turkey when he was a kid. More blood, but similar.
He examined his right hand with the latex surgical glove. It was uniformly red from the fingers to the wrist. The handle of the knife had a string of flesh or tendon hanging from it. Reed watched the man slide down the wall into a sitting position, then slump into his final posture. He didn’t check for a pulse. If this bloke could survive that hacking, he deserved to live. Didn’t matter anyway. An attack like this, even if someone survived it, still accomplished his mission.
He wiped his forehead with his left hand and realized he needed to stop the bleeding with a rag. He glanced around the alley. There was nothing obvious. He had stumbled into the cleanest alley in Dublin. Easing out toward the street he found a wad of newspaper and wiped his forehead. He ripped a section off for a makeshift bandage. Holding it to his face, he started on his way.
He headed out onto the empty street. Most the streets were empty now-a-days. People didn’t feel safe in Dublin after dark. He had seen to that. As he came to Wellington Quay near the Millennium Bridge, he casually flipped the knife over the small seawall and into the water. The glove was tied around the handle and the neat little package made hardly a splash as it sank to the bottom of the channel. This was getting expensive. A new knife every time and the fucking K-bar cost nearly thirty-five euros. So far, with housing and food he’d spent a fortune on this endeavor. All for a righteous cause. That’s how he looked at it. That’s how he had to look at it.
He crossed the road after a few streets, making sure no one had seen him. His old man had always taken the long way home, but he was usually ducking a bookie or one of the other carpenters he’d borrowed money from and didn’t intend to pay back. The long walks with his old fella had taught Reed patience and given him some endurance that had lasted all these years even though he was almost forty.
An hour later, he was close to Lucan and his favorite pub in Dublin, the Ball Alley House. He had stumbled onto it the first night he arrived in town and had been coming every night the last twenty days. He made sure the barmaid, Maura, always saw him and he tipped her well so if he ever had to explain to the Gardaí, he’d have an alibi and a witness. Besides, you could do worse than flirt with a young one with all her meat in the right places. Not that he’d stray. All he thought of most nights was seeing his Rose and the twins again. He wished they could have come with him, but he’d have had a hard time explaining his nights on the street.
After a stop in the