The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney

Author:Lisa McInerney [McInerney, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2017-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

It’s early afternoon, Saturday, hours yet to go to the latest Catalyst outing, where Ryan is to direct and humour a deep house doyen before counting the takings and transporting them to Dan’s gaff. He sits at home on the couch, watching his phone but otherwise engaged in nothing more stimulating than arguing with himself. I’m going to tell him about Natalie and me. I’m going to ask him. Naw, fuck that, I’m going to tell him. He’s been composing such gambits all week.

There is a thud on the door that leads from the kitchen to the yard at the back of the house.

Ryan startles. There is another thud. He jumps off the couch and as he does so he begins to cycle through an inventory of what he has on his person or in his room or in his car out of panicked habit; he goes to the kitchen; another thud. This is someone getting in whether or not Ryan lets them in, but the door would be flat on the floor already if it was the guards.

Ryan opens the door and is pushed back by a broad and dour creature, grey-haired and red-faced, well into middle age, so fearless and presumptuous and sharpened by his own longevity. Ryan trips over his own feet and falls against the worktop and stays there as this man, whom he knows, oh knows too bloody well, stops in front of him, puts a thick hand on the worktop either side of him, and keeps him still.

Jimmy Phelan walks in behind him and Tim Dougan, his stalwart, doesn’t move for four or five seconds after Phelan touches his shoulder.

Phelan goes towards the sitting room. Dougan falls back and nods after Phelan and then pushes Ryan after Phelan, so Ryan follows as directed. Dougan stays where he is.

In the sitting room Phelan takes a satisfied breath and looks around. He seems to grow in this small space and Ryan feels the skin around his Adam’s apple contract.

‘Y’know you could have just called me,’ Ryan says.

‘I don’t trust you enough to wait for you to come to me,’ Phelan replies. ‘Luckily, Ryan, a man like me never has to wait. I was just that excited about the buzz around your latest catalogue.’

When Ryan doesn’t reply he rests an elbow in its opposite palm and taps his knuckles against his chin. The action only partly obscures his neck. J.P. has some neck: a squat square of bristle and muscle protecting a windpipe so many men before Ryan have wanted to crush. You need some neck in this line of work.

‘When do you launch?’ he asks. ‘The new range of empathogens?’

‘Where’d you get that idea?’

‘Ah, Ryan. I do nothing all day but tend my grapevine. I hear everything so I can choose for myself what to look at – I’m the closest thing to a psychic you’ll find, if you’re into that kind of thing.’

He tries out a spiteful pout.

‘The shapes Kane’s throwing have gotten all the urchins excited.

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