Eight Ball Boogie - Declan Burke [22]
I heard a voice close to my ear, straining to catch its breath, a voice with a northern twang.
“Stay away from her, big man. Ye hear?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t able to breathe, the gorge in my chest rising into my throat. I managed a nod, a snuffle that sent something thick and slimy down the back of my throat. The voice came again.
“Else it’ll be the wee man getting it. Ben, ye call him?”
He ruffled my hair and then I heard footsteps, quick but not hurried as they strolled away down the alley. Leaving me to snuffle some more snot and blood, face down in my own vomit. I tried to move. Bolts of pain shot through me, tripped the circuits. The world went black except for a dull red glow right in the middle of the nothingness. When it started to fade I followed it down.
I couldn’t have been lying there long. Dutchie said, after, that a bloke angling for a sneaky piss behind the beer kegs spotted me, rapped on the pub door while Dutchie was still clearing up. They carried me inside and Dutchie propped me up in one of the cubicles. Once we figured out nothing was actually broken, he went for tissues, hot water and Dettol.
“Fail the breathalyser?” he asked.
I groaned. I was wedged in an oil drum that some maniac was attacking with a Kango hammer. Except it wasn’t noise that brutalised every synapse, it was pain. Searing here, vicious there, throbbing everywhere. Funny was the last thing I needed. What I needed was a syringe full of the purest smack to wrap me in a cotton-wool cocoon.
Dutchie dabbed at the open cuts and grazes with the Dettol-soaked tissues. Compared to what the rest of my body was feeling, the stings were fluttering kisses. When he was finished he collected the tissues, dumped them in the bin. He came back with a bottle of brandy, poured a couple of large ones.
“Get that into you. Any time you’ve brandy inside you, things could be a lot worse.”
I hate brandy but the double went down the hatch like it was suicidal. Dutchie poured another, kept pouring, and after I’d lost count of exactly how many brandies I hated, the pain started to subside. Dutchie watched me drink, sipping his own. Eventually he said, in a neutral tone: “You were lucky, Harry.”
“I’d come out of a barrel of tits sucking my thumb. Luck had nothing to do with it. They knew exactly what they were doing.” I grimaced, shook my head, which only caused me to grimace some more. “Bastards,” I whispered. “Fucking bastards.”
“Without doubt. Any fatherless fuckers in particular?”
I shook my head again, gently this time.
“One of them sounded northern.”
“Those fuckers never need an excuse.”
“They had one.”
“You got verbal with northern cunts?” He pursed his lips. “Not like you, Harry.”
“I never said a fucking word. They jumped me from behind. Never even seen them coming.”
“So why?”
I drank the rest of the brandy, pushed the glass forward for a refill.
“He told me to stay away from her.”
“Her? Who her?”
“He didn’t say. All he said was, stay away from her. Otherwise it’ll be Ben next time.”
“Scumbag.” He drained the dregs of the bottle into his own glass and said: “Katie?”
“I doubt it. She used to be engaged, some bloke who did a runner. He’s hardly following her around, knocking lumps out of every bloke she meets in a pub.”
“So – who her?”
“Who else? Helen fucking Conway.”
“You were seen? Today?”
“Maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am.”
“No one’s that smart, Harry. Think it was the bloke or her that sent the lads?”
“Does it matter?”
“Depends on whether you’re taking it any further.”
“With the Dibble?”
“It’s what any law-abiding citizen would do.”
“That’d be right, give the boys on the nightshift a laugh.”
“Give them something to do, at any rate.”
I