I thought that Larney had retreated to his den and I was some distance up the avenue having more or less forgotten him, being embroiled in black riddles of my own, worming seething ciphers, a stew of deformed faces, or maybe it was just one face — yes, it was just the one face, but a face that I had seen more than once, a face that had baited me throughout the days of my drunken iniquity and which had of late resurfaced in my peripheral vision — when Larney shouted the answer again: ‘Nothing is greater than God, young master. And Nothing is more evil than the Devil!’
~ ~ ~
‘Where does this Larney individual fit in to all this?’
~ ~ ~
Is that a riddle? There’s no straight answer. It seems very dark in here all of a sudden. Does anyone else think it’s very dark in here all of a sudden? Or is it just me?
~ ~ ~
‘I’m afraid it’s just you, Mr St Lawrence.’
~ ~ ~
St Patrick’s Day
National day of mourning
Sixth day of evidence, 18 March 2016
~ ~ ~
‘And so, returning to the Claremont development, according to the file, it was launched in…’
~ ~ ~
April 2007, Friday the 13th. Hickey wanted to make a big splash. That’s what I heard him blathering down the phone to the various parties involved in the launch — the publicists, the estate agents, the interior architects, the landscape technicians, the colour specialists, the fabric engineers, the carpet consultants. There were no gardeners or painters and decorators left in the country any more. You could get a degree in Lego.
Hickey was audible from outside the Portakabin, even over the racket of the construction work. He had the kind of booming voice that carries across rooms, across oceans, across the waking world into sleep. I don’t need to tell you this — you’ve endured his garbled deposition.
‘I want to make a big splash!’ he’d be declaring inside the prefab while I’d be procrastinating outside, one foot on the beer crate. This stance sums up my life. ‘Lookit lads, give us a big splash!’ ‘I’m after, like, a big splash!’ As I say, he was troubled with so few ideas that he had learned to pound the living daylights out of each one.
He appointed a top London PR company, and the publicity machine had kicked in by February. The old ply hoarding was replaced by twenty-foot-high glossy boards reading Join the jet set! Register your interest now. Two-page-spread advertisements were placed in the national papers, and feature articles were published in the Sunday supplements. The property pages tripped over their adjectives. Profiles of Hickey appeared in various business sections, many accompanied by photographic portraits of him gazing off into the distance with Ireland’s Eye in the background and a sea breeze in his hair. He had grown it long over the winter for this purpose. Long hair was required now that he was moving in different circles, or intending to. It signalled that he was a mover and shaker.
We were in the Site Office with the newspapers spread out on his desk, one headline more fatuous than the next. ‘Bag Yourself a Little Piece of Paradise!’ ‘Live the Dream by the Marina!’ ‘Join the Millionaire’s Circle with This Exclusive Beachfront Development! Prices starting from an unbelievable €379,000 for a one-bedroom apartment.’ The prefab smelled of sour milk and rashers.
‘“An unbelievable €379,000 for a one-bedroom apartment?”’ I read out. ‘They’re right. That is unbelievable.’
Hickey swung his steel-toed, mud-caked builder’s boots up onto the desk. He slurped his milky tea and did his post-pint sigh, Ahhhhh. ‘Starting from,’ he said. ‘Read the small print again.’
I read the small print again. Starting from an unbelievable €379,000. ‘Come on, Dessie. Who in their right mind is going to part with that for a one-bed flat?’
‘There’s only one apartment going on the market at that price an it’s a single-aspect, ground-floor, 440-square-footer facing the bin store. The rest a the one-beds clock in at around 400 grand. The two-beds are over the half-a-million mark. An the ones with the views…’ He winced at the price and reached for his hard hat. ‘Wait’ll you see,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘There’ll be a queue at the gate, so there will.’
He opened the door onto a furnace roar of activity. Out on the site, everything was in flux. Cranes swinging, hydraulic arms pistoning, diggers milling back and forth. It wasn’t going to be finished in time for the launch. ‘Doesn’t have to be finished,’ Hickey said without breaking his stride. Again, the problem of keeping up with him across muck. ‘We’ll be selling most of it off the plans. Just so long as the show apartments are ready to give the punters the general idea. Come on an have a look.’
We walked past the hulk that would one day become the landmark hotel. It was now visible from the castle, its square head gazing sadly in the window like Frankenstein’s monster. Open autumn 2007! the brochures promised, but I didn’t see how that was feasible. A digger had finished backfilling the section of trench housing a pipe. I paused to watch it pound the ground with its metal head like an animal gone berserk before realising that Hickey was shouting at me again. ‘Go back an get a fucken helmet! Before we’re fucken shut down!’
By the time I returned with a helmet, Hickey was laying into another patsy, a man with a suit under his high-viz jacket. The road couldn’t be finished in time for the launch, the man was trying to explain to Hickey, because the pipes—
‘Jesus wept, just lurry the fuckers in. That’s what I’m paying you for. Nobody gives a shite if they’re not perfect — the effing things are going to be buried — but we’ll all give a major shite if there’s no road on launch day an me clients have to stagger across planks in their Gucci heels.’
‘Who was that?’ I asked when the man had been dispatched. ‘What was he saying about leaking sewage?’
‘That dope?’ Hickey spat on the ground. ‘He’s me supervising engineer. Moaning again about pipes getting broken an misaligned if they aren’t encased in a protective structure before being backfilled what with the heavy construction machinery driving up an down over them while the rest a the apartments are being finished, blah blah. I don’t know what that fella’s problem is. Nobody gives a flying fuck about pipes an tanking an pressure tests an what have you since the Building Control Act of 1990. The Building No Control Act, more like. It’s all self-certification now — you’re basically correcting your own exams. Give yourself 100 per cent, I keep telling him. Who’s going to check? The County Council? Ask me hoop. They’re only obliged to inspect 15 per cent of all sites so they’re not going to go near the big ones, are they? That’d be too much like doing a day’s work. They’ll inspect Missus Murphy’s new granny flat instead. I’m not asking him to put his head on the block. He only has to state that the work complies with the building regulations to “a substantial extent”.’
‘Really? That can’t be true.’
‘Are you calling me a liar? That’s the law in this country. That, an wearing a safety helmet.’ He signalled to a roller to compact the soil over the sewage pipes, to compact the pipes themselves. I caught sight of my reflection in its approaching windscreen, just standing there in my yellow dunce’s cap, letting it happen. Then M. Deauville rang. I plugged my ear with my finger and shouted to him that it was fine, it was grand, everything on site was dandy, not a bother.