Eightball Boogie by Declan Burke Read Free Book Online

knows I’ve been here. The Gardai brace you, make like I’m Lord Lucan.”
    “ Working a little freelance yourself, hey Brady?”
    “ Something like that, yeah.” He blasted me the evil grin, full wattage. “Be seeing you, Rigby.”
    He left, shoulders brushing the doorframe. I heard him again – ‘I’m a cop, yeah, but you can trust me.’ I laughed so hollow I heard it echo and went back to staring at the wall.
     

6
     
    Conway rang as I was about to start checking out the near wall, just for a change of pace. I rang Herbie and gave him Helen Conway’s details.
    “ Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.
    “ Just the usual, much as you can get.”
    “ Sound – when’d you want it?”
    “ Yesterday.”
    “ Alright. I’ll buzz you later.”
     
     
    I choked down the last of the coffee, thought about cleaning the office, and it was such a good idea I kept on thinking it, feet up on the desk, twitching the blinds.
    It was Christmas week and the town belonged to the farmers. They lumbered up and down the streets, sailors on shore leave, grim and determined. Parcels stacked in elastic arms, necks craning around the piles. Tinny hymns drifted out of shop doorways. High above the streets the coloured lights danced a hanged man’s jig on the breeze.
    I popped another pill. Three in one day was two too many but they were only twenty-five mill, summer breeze, and I need horse tranks to beat the festive funk. The light pills were another of the Doc’s bright ideas, to wean me off the tranks in time for New Year, sound advice from a man whose veins had more holes than it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
    I took a deep breath and slapped myself hard across the face, followed it up with a right cross that didn’t quite connect. Closed my eyes, conjured up the face of a tow-headed thug, the hooded sleepy eyes, the chipped teeth, the guileless grin, the unruly mop of blonde hair. I factored in Christmas morning, a gleaming new bike and imagined the grin spreading across Ben’s face to adopt his ears.
    The weight evaporated from my chest. I breathed out again, locked up the office and drove the five miles out of town to The Bridge.
    I talked to the barman in the Members Bar, no apostrophe, dropped a few openers about Helen Conway, but the barman stayed polite, eyes fixed on my breast pocket, where it didn’t read Pringle. I sat in the bay window overlooking the eighteenth green, drinking coffee, chewing a plastic cheese-and-tomato toastie. The gale brewing up over the Atlantic was the colour of old gravy and the golfers leaned into the wind, three steps forward and two steps back.
    Back in town I swung around by Clark’s Toyshop to pick up Ben’s bike. Added a couple of accessories, including a rubber bulb horn I knew he’d get a bang out of. It was almost three when I got back to the office. I stowed the bike behind the desk, checked the answering machine for the thrill of hearing my own voice and smoked for half-an-hour. Then I smoked some more and tried to make giraffes out of the cracks in the ceiling plaster. In the end I gave in, rang Conway to make an appointment.
    “ No can do,” he rasped. “I’m out of the office from four on. Business that can’t wait.”
    “ Perfect. Make sure your mobile is off too. I don’t want anyone contacting you.”
    Conway lived about two miles north of town, the house only three drainpipes short of a mansion. It was a square, stolid affair, in the way Edwardian Protestants built their homes to reflect their personalities, with thick ivy on the redbrick gables, a white soft-top Merc at the end of the gravelled drive and a bedroom for every night of the week. Off in the distance a stooped gardener was raking the last leaves off a vast lawn and raking fast enough to be finished in time to weed the daffodils. I parked my battered Volkswagen Golf beside the steps that swept up to the front porch and started climbing. Mulling over the new expletive I’d learned when I