Eight Ball Boogie - Declan Burke [67]
“Well?” Her face was pale, and she hung from her shoulders like a sail after a storm. “What’s going on?”
I swallowed half the coffee, took a deep breath.
“Gonzo’s dead.”
It came easier every time I said it and I guess I could’ve said it easier because her face just folded. She shook her head, horrified. I nodded, grim.
“Last night. On the way home.”
“What… what happened? Jesus, Harry!”
“Ssshhhh. Ben’s in the living room.” I got up, closed the kitchen door, went back to the table. “We went to a club. Gonz wanted a few late ones.”
“You were drunk?”
“No more than usual, couple of pints, seven or eight. Gonz was popping E all night, though. We left and went on for a kebab.”
“There was a fight?”
“There was no fight.” I knew Dee was going to blame me, I just wanted to be blamed for the right reasons. “We were ready to leave when Dutchie found Gonzo in the toilets, having some kind of fit. We found some dodgy E in his pockets – Flatliners, the Dibble called them – before they whisked him off to the hospital.”
“You didn’t go with him?”
“Dutchie went. I was taken to the station.”
“The station?”
“The cop shop. They wanted to book me for possession with intent. I was still in the cop shop when Dutchie rang. They were pumping Gonzo out when he went into arrest.” I grinned her one I didn’t feel. “Me in the cop shop and him in arrest. Funny, isn’t it?”
She laughed, a nervous giggle pitched one octave below hysteria. Her wet eyes sparkled. I gave her the second barrel.
“Then the Dibble let me go and someone shot me.”
“What?”
Her eyes bugged out like a frog on a promise.
“I was on the bridge. He hit me in the side, knocked me into the river. When I got back out I rang you. The rest you know now.”
“You’re having me on. Gonzo’s outside, isn’t he? Having a laugh. You’re a sick fucker, Harry.”
First anger, then denial – she was ploughing through the classic symptoms at a rate of knots. I pulled the fleece over my head, unbuttoned the Puffa, hauled my sweater and shirt off. The blood on the edge of the bandage was dry and crusty but there was still a dark pool of thin raspberry jelly at its centre.
She stared at me for a long time, forehead furrowed, searching my face for the tic or tremor that might suggest I was playing a bizarre joke. I shrugged.
“I’m sorry, Dee. That’s the way it happened.”
Her shoulders shook, then the sobs ballooned their way to the surface and she bawled like a stubborn calf. I went around the table, put my arm around her shoulders but she shrank away, folding her arms, cradling herself. Then the shock hit, a runaway train. She put her arms on the table and cried into them until the nervous energy finally evaporated. She sat up, her face the colour of raw liver, snuffling and tugging at her sleeve for a non-existent paper tissue. I gave her a sheet of kitchen towel and she buried her face in it. Finally, nose blocked and voice muffled, she asked: “Why?”
“That’s what I don’t know.”
“Well… who?”
“That’s what I don’t know as well.”
“Do you know anything?”
“I know we have to keep a cool head and dry trousers until we figure out what’s going on.” I handed her a dry sheet of kitchen towel. “No sense in us bitching at one another. We have to think of Ben.”
She took a deep breath, let it out slow, dabbed at her eyes.
“Okay, okay. Christ.” She thought for a second. “What do the Guards say?”
“They’re following a couple of leads.” I softened my tone. “Hey, Dee?”
I reached out, took her hand. It was shaking. She didn’t pull back, but she didn’t respond when I squeezed it either.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “All we have to do is sit tight. We don’t go out, we don’t answer the phone. We don’t even open the curtains.”
“Jesus, Harry.” She sounded helpless, the kind of lost they don’t have maps for. “Gonzo’s dead.”
“We can deal with that later, Dee. Nothing we can do about it now.”
Her lip curled.
“You’re a cold bastard, Harry,” she said. “A cold and crippled bastard. You know that?”
“I do now. Can you hear Ben?”
Her eyes widened.
“Ben! Jesus!