Читать книгу Sad Song - Vincent Banville - Страница 4

Blaine was all done up like a dog’s dinner. He was wearing his tan suit, with a lime-green shirt. A purple handkerchief flowed from the top pocket. His shoes were black and laced, his chin was shaved, his hair combed. He was neat, clean and well-shined. He was calling on one million pounds.

More than a million, if the truth were told. James J. Carey was a “cute hoor” from the West of Ireland. He had started in the building trade in a small way. First a wheelbarrow. Then a pushcart. Then a lorry that wouldn’t start when it rained. In the 1960s he had moved to London. There he joined up with another Mayo man called McMullen. They laid tar in peoples’ driveways. They built sheds and cut corners whenever they could. The business went well. They began to make money. Then McMullen fell – or was he pushed? – into a giant cement mixer and became part of a pedestrian crossing in Earl’s Court.

Carey married his widow and took over the running of the entire business. Things went so well that in the 1990s he was able to come back to Dublin and run his empire from there. Now he was one of the richest men in Ireland. When he sent for someone, that someone broke into a gallop to come and see him.

So Blaine moved fast. Since he had set up as a private detective, work had been scarce. Before that he had been in insurance, but the job bored him. His hurling career with Wexford had not gone well either. Three All-Ireland finals and each of them lost. Also, his wife Annie had left him for a body-builder called Harold. It would be true to say that he was a bit down. But when the call had come from Carey, he thought he might soon see light at the end of the tunnel.

It was a beautiful June day as he hurried along the quays. The smell from the Liffey was awful. The Carey building was huge, like a giant mushroom against the sky. Twelve steps up, swing doors. A porter with a stare like a red-hot poker. A girl who looked as if she had been shined all over sat behind a desk. Blaine spoke to her in hushed tones. She had nails long enough to slice a loaf of bread.

“Mr Carey is expecting you?” she asked, as though she didn’t really believe him.

“At sixteen minutes past the hour,” Blaine said. “I was told to be on time.”

The girl pressed a button set into the desk. A minute went by, then another female, who could have been the girl’s twin, appeared.

“Follow me,” she told Blaine, and led him down a corridor.

At the end was a large double door. She pushed one side of it open and waved to Blaine to go in. He moved smartly inside and the door whispered softly shut behind him. If she locked it, he would need a sledge hammer to get back out again.