Staying Out

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3Paddy McIllvaney hefted a twelve bottle crate of Warninks Advocaat on to the bar counter. It was early. The Briar’s Club doors were not scheduled to open much before 11.00am.

“Looks like you got a visitor, Paddy.” Ronnie Masters remarked, prodding Paddy on the shoulder in an endeavour at grabbing his attention. The Irishman was able to make out the angular frame of the policeman with his back turned away, trying his luck at the one-armed bandit in the corner. Paddy, tensing instinctively, every nerve fibre straining in his lean hard body, distractedly rummaged a hand through his thick profusion of tawny curls.

“Sure, I see him. The bastard.” Paddy dealt Masters a narrow-eyed look. “It’s the f*****g Auld Bill! What does he want?”

Masters lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug, smiled crookedly. “All I know is he says he wants to talk to you. You ain’t been up to something’ you ain’t supposed to, ’ave you?”

“Jesus, I hope not” The Irishman addressed himself.

Although he was aware of the other man’s approach, Vic Simmons continued playing the one-armed bandit with disregard.

“You wanted to see me?” The accent was reedy Northern Irish, the voice uncomfortably apprehensive. Simmons turned slowly to confront the lean pale features and darkly brooding eyes.

“That’s right. Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”

Paddy was 28. He had been residing in London for the past five years, since crossing the water after a spot of bother in the Auld Country and a four year stretch in Crumlin Road jail for illegal arms dealing. On his release, unable to obtain little else but taxi work in Belfast, he decided to move on. He landed the job as barman in the Briar Club in Soho. It didn’t pay much, but was eminently safer that what he had been used to. Notwithstanding, Paddy McIllvaney was soon back to moonlighting in his old familiar trade, that of selling arms. Not to the Republicans this time, but to the London crooks that required hot shooters, no questions asked.

So for what purpose then was the Old Bill, in the shape of the conniving bastard Vic Simmons, snooping around the club than to get him, Paddy, lifted? Maybe they’d throw him into jail in England, or extradite him back to the Ireland. Paddy realised his hands were beginning to shake about the Ronson he attempted to flare to his cigarette.

The small back room adjacent to the main bar acted as a private office used by the temporarily absent owner, Reggie Liphook. Simmons pulled up one of the wooden chairs as if he owned the place, inviting Paddy to do the same. Paddy expressed a wish to remain standing. Leaning his back against the pastel painted wall, the Irishman waited, heart thundering, for Simmons to recite the old familiar line, ‘I’m here to arrest you, McIllvaney, for possession of firearms. Anything you say may be used in evidence against you…’

“I suppose you heard Christina O’Donnell was released from Holloway prison yesterday?” Simmons disrupted his uneasy retrospection, enviously regarding the handsome Irishman’s tall athletically built frame, the shock of tawny curls, solid gold earring dangling conspicuously from his left lobe. He spied the tight black jeans moulding his narrow hips and close fitting shirt. The bastard was a poser, a f*****g playboy. Simmons would have given a month’s wages to get the cocksure paddy arrested on something at least. Like a computer evaluation, Simmons recollected from memory the fact that Paddy, real name Brendan McIllvaney, had served four years in Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail for dealing illegal guns to the Provisional IRA. McIllvaney was a staunch Republican and Catholic with known connections across the water. He was a potentially dangerous bastard to have working in an exclusively select London club such as The Briar, putting even Simmons on his guard.

The question, coming as it, did stunned the Irishman momentarily. A dimly remembered recollection of Christina and himself, of her shapely white body covering his own nakedness. He remembered her n*****s bared, erect, descending towards his lips, his mouth passionately crushing hers, their making love in his flat. Hitherto what he had mistakenly believed was a genuine affection on her part turned out to have an ulterior motive.

“You know we can’t afford to pay for the shooters straightaway, lover boy,” she cajoled, lulling him into a false sense of security. Ricky’s been having an ’eavy time at gambling lately” cajoling once more. “So are you gonna give us the guns anyway?”

He recollected with a pang the terrible ache and loneliness after she left him. He had pushed her away angrily. She had pulled on her clothes spitting like a she cat, yelling ‘bastard!’ at him. No-one called him that. He had started slapping her around in his hot temper. Christy swung her knee into his balls before slamming the door on him, making him double up in pain. He had been almost on the point of collapse when his doorbell rang. Half naked he went to answer it only to discover Christy standing there on the threshold looking suitably apologetic.

Obviously they both knew she could not allow things to remain the way they were between herself and the Irishman, especially when Rick Morelli had expressly requested she f**k him in exchange for the shooters they needed for the raid. He was unable to pay the exorbitant prices Paddy charged for them.

Capable of altering his accent, becoming anything he wished to become, Paddy McIllvaney befriended security guards, jewellers and the like. He worked out the routes, the times, and obtained the shooters. In short, Rick Morelli could not afford to lose such a valuable man. Christy was aware of that. Her only reason therefore for eating humble pie. Apologising! The b***h! But a fascinatingly beautiful b***h nonetheless.

“Sure, I did hear somethin’,” he said at length, unable to suppress a tremendous relief that Simmons had not come to the club to arrest him. Simmons, making a mental note of the Irishman’s reaction, wondered what he might just have gotten himself mixed up in now. “What’s that to do with me?”

Simmons regarded him squarely. “I just thought she might have made an attempt to contact you.”

Paddy pretended to be baffled by the assumption. “Why’d she do that now?”

“You knew Morelli, and the other members of Morelli’s team. Her brother Steve.”

“Sure, but there’s no reason on earth why she should contact me now,” Paddy lied. It was himself who held the key to the safe deposit box. For that alone Christy O’Donnell would have to contact him. Was Simmons already wised up to the fact that he had been keeper of the key all along? He could have opened the box and done a runner. The girl, in spite of being such a b***h, was also half Irish. A Catholic. One of his own. And in the Irishman’s book you just didn’t pull a fast one on one of your own. Alternatively, there was still the remotest chance, with Morelli being dead, of Christy being interested in renewing their relationship. He still fancied her and had not taken a woman since, despite having innumerable offers whilst working behind the bar. Plus he had received the news of Christy’s release with a mixture of both delight and apprehension.

Paddy dragged ruthlessly on his cigarette, exhaling vacuous blue smoke trails through both nostrils. “Well she ain’t, Mr Simmons, and I don’t see any reason for her to contact me now, for sure. Christina O’Donnell and me went our separate ways long before she went to jail.”

Christy O’Donnell reached for her mother’s hand across the kitchen table. Lou snatched it away before her daughter could even make contact. Christy had taken it upon herself to pay her mother a visit. The law were still watching Barry’s house but she, as only she remembered how, managed to elude them and catch a bus. Linda and Barry were both at work at that time of the afternoon. Christy needed to get away.

She paled. Suddenly feeling close to tears, she recollected the promise she had made to herself not to allow anything to reduce her to tears again and quickly composed herself. Her mother, attired in a blue polka dot dress, poured tea from a delicate china pot into two equally delicate blue china cups that Christy couldn’t remember having seen before. At least her mother had condescended to offer her tea, however grudgingly.

“Look, Mum. It needn’t be like this,” Christy began uncertainly. “You know how sorry I am for what I did. It seems that since I got out no-one’s gonna let me forget, are they?” Bitterness filled her words. “The Old Bill’s been watching Barry’s house. Mathers and Ross. You remember them, don’t you, Mum?” Lou nodded weakly, refusing to comment. Her thoughts were preoccupied momentarily with ways of ridding herself of her daughter’s unwelcome company in case Tom should happen to drop in unexpectedly.

“I had to see you, Mum. Alone. Barry told me about you and that copper. I’ll play along with the bit about me and Steve in the States. I’ll even keep out of your way when he calls. But at least let’s be friends if nothing else.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I washed my hands of you the night they arrested you and your brother. And I’m hardly surprised people won’t let you forget what you did, my girl. It was a despicable thing. Even if you didn’t kill that guard, you as good as did by siding with the murderer. And there’s folk in this street now who still go out of their way to avoid me. They whisper that I brought me kids up to be downright bad ’uns because they didn’t have a father to keep’em in ’and.”

Christy dropped her gaze unwillingly to her badly scarred wrists. “I’m sorry for what I did, Mum. Honest. And I want to make amends…”

“It’s no good being sorry, Miss. And it’s far too late for making amends.” Lou interrupted fiercely. “From where I’m sittin’ the damage has already been done.” Lou leapt to her feet instantly, tears welling up in her eyes. Christy, too, vacated her chair, moved to slip what she hoped was a comforting arm about her mother’s shoulders. Swiftly Lou pulled away. There was a terrible look of recrimination etched in her faded blue eyes when she looked at her daughter.

“I don’t want you to come here anymore, do you understand? And me reasons for saying it ain’t got nothin’ to do with Tom! Perhaps it would be better for us all if we keep up the pretence. You and Steve in America, neither of you likely to set foot in London ever again. ’Cos there’s no way I can welcome someone with blood on their hands into me ’ouse.”

He needed to escape from the cramped little flat. Away from Sharon’s eternal bleeding nagging. Since she had found out she was pregnant again, she had grown steadily worse. And to cap it all, Jimmy had pawned the Kawasaki. The money, two hundred quid, continued to burn a hole in his jeans pocket. He was all too well aware that the solution to his dilemma would be to hand it all over to Big Ed Dewar in part payment of the loan.

Jimmy Lascar stared down from the bridge into the stagnant waters of the Thames. He was 25 years old. Much too young to even consider killing himself. Was it true what they said about your whole life passing before your eyes if you did? He was prepared to find out. What a f*****g mess he had made of his life anyway. No money, living in that rundown flat with a fat b***h he had once imagined himself to be in love with. Since she had confessed to only pretending to like bikes because she wanted to be on his good side so that he would start dating her. Whatever little regard he had once entertained had instinctively flown out of the window.

A grizzly 18 month old kid. Another in the oven. A crippled left leg continuously giving him gip in the bad weather. A pronounced limp for most of the time and particularly when he felt tired and miserable, as he was now.

Jimmy dug out his last cigarette from a crumpled packet in his leather jacket pocket. He flared a match. Inhaling deeply on the lit cigarette he weighted the empty packet with a stone before tossing it into the water below. He listened for the echo as the packet hit the water but it was much too far down and he heard nothing.

Her brother Barry had stuffed forty quid into her hand that morning before leaving the house, unbeknown to Linda of course. With the money Christy bought herself a pair of skin tight jeans, a plain black sweat shirt plus a couple of leather studded wristbands, to hide the scars. Despite the clothes and the money, nothing lessened the heartache of her mother’s rejection of her. Her own mother disowning her. She had left the house in a huff, and her mother in tears.

At first Christy contemplated calling on Paddy. She even caught a taxi out to the Briar Club but she caught sight of Vic Simmons vacating the place, and himself not drunk for once. If Paddy was in some kind of trouble she did not want to add to it.

With the remaining cash she had purchased a packet of cigarettes and an ice cream. The ice cream was delicious. After polishing it off with relish, Christy was in the process of lighting a cigarette, one hand cupped about the flame against the unexpectedness of a light breeze, when she caught sight of a grey Mercedes ponderously inching its way down the alleyway towards her. If it was the Old Bill again, she would give the bastards a piece of her mind. From the corner of her eye she was instinctively aware of the passenger side door cracking open slowly, of a man with a shimmering bald head and scrubby beard emerging from the car. Ed Dewar moved into her field of vision.

Christy swirled round, heart thundering alarmingly, to clock the remaining occupants of the Merc. Dewar, mistaking her action for being about to make a run for it, grabbed her right arm in a lashing vice like hold. “No you don’t! Mr Chadwell wants a word, darlin’.” Dewar feasted his hungry gimlet eyes on her body in the tight jeans. “Seems he’s interested in your welfare since you got out!”