The Butchers' Blessing by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Tin House Books

CHAPTER NINE

Fionn

County Monaghan, June 1996

“Fergus, it’s Fionn. Fionn McCready. It’s just gone half past seven on Saturday evening. Or I suppose at this stage, Saturday night, depending on your particular persuasion. I was just calling to see how you were getting on. It’s been over a week now and I was wondering . . . I appreciate the last border run was a messy business, but you will let me know when the next one is happening, won’t you? Or frankly, if there are any other jobs the Bull might be needing a hand with. It’s just . . . anyway, look. Speak soon, OK?”

Fionn nestled the phone into its cradle and waited as if it might suddenly jolt back to life, Lazarus from the dead. The cord loop-the-looped down to his knees and back again. He was trying to limit himself to three phone calls a day—he was familiar with the concept of “overkill.” He was also familiar with the concept of “laying low.” He knew last week’s operation was, all things considered, a spectacular fuck-up; knew just how tickled pink the Gardaí were when they threw him and Fergus into the piss-dingy confines of that station cell. And he knew how fuming they were when they appeared the following morning to say there had been a “change in circumstance.” Never mind how much the Bull had slipped into the back pocket of their bosses’ uniforms, it clearly pained the honest lads to see them walking free.

So of course, those wankers from Operation Matador couldn’t be given an opportunity to catch them out again. But even apart from the border antics, Fionn knew the Bull had other moneymaking tricks up his bespoke tailored sleeve. So he just needed to get through to Fergus Hynes and make it clear that he was willing to do whatever it took; just needed to get that kitty topped up all the way before everything else was spectacularly fucked up too.

“I thought I heard you talking to someone?”

Fionn jolted back to life. “Jesus.”

“No, just me.” Eileen’s laugh was a gentle thing. “Guilty conscience?”

Fionn was aware she was only teasing, and yet.

She wore a matted dressing gown and a towel wrapped around her head like some queen from a faraway land. The arrangement at least hid how little hair there was underneath. Fionn caught a heady waft of lavender. “Nice bath?”

“Fionn, we wouldn’t happen to have any maps?” If she heard his question, she was ignoring it. She hadn’t commented on his absence the other day. She had probably assumed he was just so busy mucking the fields he had decided not to come in for lunch. Inside the cell, his biggest fear had been that—Murphy’s Law—that would be the day Eileen’s brain would finally decide to glitch and throw a seizure. He had pictured her lying there, twitching like a moth around a bulb. God knows her wings were as delicate.

“Maps?” But even if his nightmare hadn’t been realised, here was more proof that her brain was still awry.

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