Aloysius Tempo Read online

  And I say nothing.

  She goes, ‘Say yes, Aloysius. Just say yes. One word and you will start to unlock this whole thing. Say yes.’

  And she stops, this pensioner girlfriend on my arm, this somehow scandalous woman. And she tugs me to stop, and she is staring up at me, staring at my mouth from six inches below, and I feel like smiling.

  And I know in my heart there is so much weight around all of this, so much hanging over me. I know how it is all so heavy that I sometimes wonder if I can carry it, yet I know that if it all ever crashes down I will not survive it.

  I think how I have a solemn promise to myself, one among many, that I will not tell a living soul about this thing.

  She’s tugging my arm now, pulling me away from my own comfort zone, and she goes, ‘Aloysius, just say yes and I will tell you I’m on your side and we can move along.’

  And I would love someone on my side. But my side is so fucked up that I don’t know if anyone else could handle being on my side.

  She goes, ‘You know I am not police. You know my interest is more complicated than black or white. You know I am serious and well-informed. It’s time to engage with me.’

  I go to open my mouth, still not fully sure of what it is going to say, and nothing happens. I don’t know what the next thing is, I don’t know now where I’m going. My gut is divided, my instinct torn in two.

  How does she know what she knows?

  Imelda tilts her head that way she does, looks as if she is straining to hear me, and her blue eyes – almost navy, always shiny – are like weapons, truth machines designed to make me talk.

  ‘I’m maybe a little hard of hearing,’ she says, ‘but I saw the lips move on that inscrutable face.’

  And she’s good. She’s good because I am starting to like this moment, this terrible leap-in-the-dark minute that seems like she is offering light, that seems like she is offering everything she has in her soul.

  Somehow, from somewhere, my mouth opens and breathes in and says, quietly, ‘Yes.’

  She nods matter-of-factly.

  She goes, ‘Yes you do these things, yes you are planning this thing? Yes you are for hire to hard solve, yes? Spuds, veg and beef is what I said it was, yes?’

  And I go, ‘Yes’, and nod at her. ‘Yes, Imelda. I am these things. Yes, it is what you said it was.’

  Now she watches me, looks all around my newly clean front, at the happy, scented hair falling around on my head, at the man she has somehow caught and washed and dressed and broken today, that she has upgraded and reworked so very quickly on this salient date.

  I don’t move, don’t speak and I think of what I have just done.

  And I wait, part of me braced for the hand on the shoulder, the thud to the back of the head, the stab of regret to cut through me.

  But we just stand there, in the tiny wind, the accuser beginning to beam at the confessed killer.

  ‘Good,’ she says.

  She tugs and we move on, turning left, down narrowing, packed, colourful, clean, dirty streets. She talks in underdone sentences about the layout of the city, about how, when she was a newspaper editor, she used to come here with her staff, get them stoned, get them laid, and they loved her for it.

  She says she was so proud to travel with a bunch of happy, partying Irish people, the collective fizz of the Celts fired her up with joy, yet how she was always so happy to get back home to Ireland, even from a city she loved so much.

  ‘I cannot be without Ireland,’ she tells me, and I know she means it from deep inside. ‘We are so good,’ she says, ‘so fucking good that when we produce one complete bastard, it brings us all down.’

  One time, she says, she came with her husband, that he had been so embarrassed when he asked about hiring a prostitute for a threesome. And she laughs to herself, leaves the idea hanging, and I won’t ask.

  ‘Let’s get stoned,’ she says, and it’s an interesting idea.

  We smoke a fierce joint in a soft coffee shop with big beanbags for chairs, with pop art images of Bob Dylan and Sean Connery on the walls. It takes two minutes before I’m not sure if I will be able to stand up again, and it doesn’t feel right to say to the ageing woman opposite me that she may find herself sunk into that beanbag for the rest of her days.

  ‘Beanbags are the right thing and the wrong thing for a coffee shop,’ I say, and she takes a deep draw.

  ‘Well said,’ she says, holding it in.

  I go, ‘So is this an interview?’

  She goes, ‘Yes.’ And laughs, running a hand through stray, mad, silver-grey hair.

  And I feel my head falling back and I laugh too, laughing too loud as some bass-based music begins surrounding us, pounding softly, kindly in our ears.

  Some others, some younger people, look at us and we are making them laugh and wonder.

  She puts her nice eyes on me, nice and wide, and we have a warm, easy contact.

  I’m weirdly happy with how this crazy day has gone, how it is going.

  She says, ‘Did you google me?’

  I go, ‘I googled the shit out of you. Didn’t really answer anything though.’

  She rolls the joint around in her hand and smiles.

  ‘I’ve had,’ she says, ‘both a terrible time and a wonderful time in my career, in my life.’

  I ask, ‘What was terrible?’

  She goes, ‘All in good time, Aloysius. And I’m sure you’d say the same to me.’

  I say, ‘You said you already know everything about me. Maybe what you picked up from a hacked call or two, from one of your rented drones, but no more than that.’

  She nods, looks away.

  There’s thirty seconds of silence, of packed, stoned emptiness.

  I go, ‘You know, if you’re setting out to set me up, for whatever reason, I’d have to say you’re doing a very good job.’

  She looks at me, smiles, ‘Could you please stop suggesting I am being underhanded. That’s not what I’m about.’

  I say, ‘Seriously? There has never been a hand more under than what is going on here, fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ she says, taking another draw. ‘I’d say it feels like that from your side.’

  She rubs her face now, checks her phone. It seems inappropriate that she breaks off, starts checking it for emails, for texts, for missed calls.

  I watch her and it annoys me.

  I take out my phone, do the same, pretend I have something going on in my life other than this high, beanbag meeting.

  She looks up and a big smile works across her face, causing my face do the same. We nod at each other in silence, two people who have made a connection, who have started something.

  But still there are no answers.

  She goes, ‘Take my calls, okay?’

  I’m about to nod and she says, cartoonish Wild West accent, ‘I gots to go.’

  I watch as this woman takes one last draw. She blows the smoke out, pulls her arms in and, captivating the whole shop, rolls onto one side and pushes herself gracefully up in some almost-gallant move, some powerful yoga move. She stands tall, exhales some more, brushes herself down, pulls on her coat, and I feel like clapping.

  She nods again, nods to others in the shop who are watching her, spellbound by her, and she collects her bag, walks out.

  This woman has, on this day, killed my head.

  And I let some words roll around my killed head as the door closes, as I see her confidently, albeit completely stoned, head off back to whatever it is.

  My killed head spills back and my eyes slide closed and I feel baffled, euphoric, safe.

  And I wonder now why she doesn’t just say it, why she is so direct and indirect at the same time. I figure I have at least one thing on her, one thing I know now that she cannot know I know.

  My head all heavy, all hanging upside down, I say in a full whisper, ‘She wants me to kill Irish people.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Amsterdam

  October 201
6

  ONE MONTH and nothing, no communication of any kind from Martin or Imelda.

  I’ve spent too long wondering what the hell all that was about, wondering why I said yes to her, why I confessed. It allowed her to walk away knowing too much, yet I still know too little.

  To be honest, it’s left me feeling flat, low. It’s the sadness of an unimportant loss, it’s the small disappointment of being followed then unfollowed, it’s the secret disappointment found in a ceasefire, in the end of a siege.

  I’ve done very little since, nothing at all really. I’ve looked at Van Goghs and tourists, I’ve had a handful of Belgian beers in Dutch bars, I’ve sat in my part of Amsterdam counting the seconds between the beeps, I’ve got my tooth fixed and I’ve often looked up and wondered if there are silent machines watching me from the sky.

  Yesterday I held the door open for the lunatic who lives downstairs, the old fool who has taken now to punching herself when she opens the window and shouts at the city. She was with her carer, and finally I got to see which one is which. The carer said to her client in Dutch, ‘Say hello to your neighbour’, and the woman looked at me, spat in my face, called me a ‘kut’, which sounds more or less the same in English.

  I wasn’t even mildly surprised. The carer, who has the same face as the crackpot, wasn’t either.

  ‘She is in a bad way today,’ she told me. ‘She finds it hard to sleep at night and has done too much hitting herself in the face.’

  I said, ‘I know the feeling,’ and scooped saliva out of my eye.

  ‘Diane has Tourette’s,’ she said, ‘a very disabling and complicated case of it, makes her appear very intolerant.’

  ‘It’s just a label,’ I said, ‘we’ve all got a few labels stuck to us. She just is who she is.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she is. Labels are how we make sense of life, I think. I’m diabetic, brittle-boned and a haemophiliac.’

  I nodded, reckoning these two ages are going to be hell to really pin down.

  There was some silence, maybe a little grumbling from Diane, maybe some swilling around in the mouth so she could gather up some more gob for me. I was sure she was about to let rip again.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, still holding the door, ‘I’m much worse.’

  ‘Are you ill too?’ she said happily.

  ‘I think so,’ I said, ‘but not in a debilitating way, in a stronger way, negative strong. I feel good and avoid diagnosis. I let the world just suffer me instead.’

  The carer smiled. ‘Medication comes in many forms,’ she said. ‘Press on, Mr Irishman.’

  ‘You too,’ I said, ‘both of you. Press on.’

  And she had said to me exactly what I was thinking, exactly the sentiment that had been going through my head as I came down those stairs.

  Press on.

  I re-engage with the most recent client, firm up the details, buy some heroin from a friend of Tall Marianne’s in the Red Light District and go to Munich.

  I cycle into the north of the city, pulling in at a lay-by used by people with full bladders, empty stomachs, tired eyes or roadside sexual fantasies.

  I park up the bike, sit at a picnic table, drink water.

  A German woman, forty-five, head down in a black overcoat and cream beanie hat, gets out of a mud-caked yellow Mini and walks towards me. She puts on some kind of fake tone, fails to make eye contact, asks if I like to eat spuds, vegetables and beef. I take off my sunglasses and I tell her I do. I say the textures all complement one another and she nods, acknowledging our understanding.

  Her eyes flick to an insignificant looking tree on her left, to some stones gathered around its base.

  She says, ‘Hofbräuhaus, then this address at Eurobizpark. Tonight.’

  She gives me a folded squared of paper, hunches her shoulders, turns.

  I say, ‘Dead on. Remember the stars.’

  She nods, not looking back, hands shoved into pockets, never wanting to see me again, walks to her car. I see someone else in there, someone else in the car, their shoulders hunched up. The engine starts, they indicate, drive off.

  I drink more water and wait, watching the cars go by.

  Five minutes later and another car in the lay-by pulls away, leaving me alone. I go to the tree, as if to take a slash, and pull a plastic bag from under the stones. I tuck it into my shorts, get back on the bike.

  In minutes I’m back in the city, among the busty, frothy signs for Oktoberfest, soon moving in among the early starters, the early singers, into the early strains of the ooom-pa-pa of the smart, mighty beer-bucket binge that is Oktoberfest.

  I get rid of the bike, change my clothes in a pub toilet and check the bag the client left. Six thousand euro, used notes, tightly coiled in an elastic band. It’s my rate; it’s high, but it’s a premium service. It’s a service where police can’t even be sure they’re looking for a killer or not, one where suspects don’t need to feel their lives falling apart as they think up excuses. The law needs a murder before a motive. My work cuts the truth in half, into quarters, slides it all away to places where it’s too expensive, too pointless to look.

  My targets are the personal, the people behind the private grief, pain or plain old monumental annoyance. They don’t make headlines, don’t create pressures, just make for catchy stories on websites. Their deaths are certain but the cause is blurry, freaky, even funny. Their deaths are little more than comment pieces, pub chats. Their deaths don’t easily get linked to anyone, and if they do then that person has an unbreakable alibi because they really were not there.

  I insist on one tiny meeting and one phone call, which must include three clear words, two months after we email. It builds trust, ensures that the person has the commitment to press ahead, gives time and reason for hot tempers to die down.

  I want 100-percent payment in cash up front, close to the time of the job, the safest deal for everyone. That way, when the job is done, people – whoever they are, whatever their names – feel as if they’ve got more than they expected to get, feel like they weren’t taken for a ride. They had to show themselves to a man they didn’t want to see, but in the end they didn’t really risk anything to get what they wanted.

  If I rip you off, you get to comment below my advert and pick how many stars you give me. Twelve jobs now and no one has commented below my advert. Just twelve sets of five stars from twelve happy customers and not one mention anywhere of what was ordered, what went down, what came to a terrible end.

  I do think sometimes, though, that no one really wants to piss off a man who does murder for a day job. And how no one now wants to break that five star chain, to be the one client I remember. Our details are unknown to each other, but still no one wants to play games with a gruesome death hidden around some future corner.

  My phone in my hand, I stop at the door of a big pub before heading to my hotel. The thick, rich din of indoors is behind me, the thin, wild shouts of the outside are in front. The bladed edge of the language, of even that Bavarian-accented laughter, slices the air all around.

  The thing is, though, this is different, isn’t it? The thing is, this time I don’t know how much I am being watched. The thing is, this is the first time I have done this in the knowledge that there are people outside of myself and the client who know what I do, who may even know where I am right now.

  I’ve taken all the precautions I can take, done all the ducks and dives I can do. We’ll just have to see if I ever hear from Imelda or Martin again, and if I do I’ve a feeling they’ll update me on my business.

  I sway a little, act a little pissed now as a king-size barmaid comes my way, her arse so full-on it’s visible from the front, her strong hands gripping steins of slopping beer. I take her picture as she offers me one.

  Risk assessment?

  I don’t have a department for that. I don’t have a fact collector, an up-to-the-minute researcher.

  Risk assessment?

  Does it count that an old Russian
contact helped me make sure I bounce myself and my emails around the online world leaving no trace at all?

  Risk assessment?

  I’ll take my chances. I do what I can, but, as for the rest of it, I’ll take my chances. Risk assessment can cause overconfidence, an overreliance on circumstances that were assessed when they were not in front of your face, and I figure that can be a bad thing.

  Risk assessment?

  No risk assessment would have told me that someone, somewhere, knows who put that ‘hard solve’ advert up. No assessment would have stopped Imelda and Martin getting to me, by whatever craft and guile they used.

  No assessment tells me right now that they pose a danger, that I should already be running. My gut is telling me not to worry, to go back to where I was. My gut is telling me that they will come back to me, that they wouldn’t expect me to stop.

  And, anyway, fuck it, I’ve got my wits about me.

  You want to stop me doing this? Come on ahead, put your foot out, trip me up. Come on, stand in my way see how you fare with me as your opponent. You want to see me in court? Come on ahead, roll up all your evidence and send the cops round. You’ll find you have got fuck all my friend, fuck all hard evidence. At best there’s a non-specific confession made under duress on the streets of Amsterdam, so I wish you good luck.

  I take more pictures, make more reasons for being here, start confirming that I will not become a formal suspect for what is about to happen. And I take a big bite out of this beer and start laughing now about being sad about not getting more contact from Imelda, from Martin.

  And I’m laughing because my thinking has a different tone, is going into a different mode. I’m laughing and taking off some figurative coat, laughing and tucking my wheels in, taking wing on this strangely life-affirming bloody journey once again tonight.

  *

  I make up a syringe of heroin in the hotel and pocket it, half a cork on the end, pull on a second-hand tweed jacket and scarf and leave for the Hofbräuhaus.

  It’s 21:07 and two hundred are drinking at the tables outside, clinking glasses and chugging down full mouths of joy.