Page 94

He went back to pounding on the door and yelling for someone to come. When no one did, he stepped back and looked up at the camera.

“Is someone there? Like, monitoring this? If you are, please come and let me out. I believe you’ve dropped a bollock. You want the other fella.”

There was no response for almost a full minute. Finn was walking back to the cot, having decided to lie down until someone came to rectify what was obviously a mistake, when the speakers blared again. Finn liked the Ramones, but not at such apocalyptic volume in a closed room. This time the sonic assault went on for about two minutes before cutting out just as abruptly.

He lay on the cot and had just begun to drift when Cheap Trick roared down. Twenty minutes later it was Dexys Midnight Runners.

It went on that way for quite some time. Probably hours. There was no way Finn could tell for sure. His captors had taken his watch while he was unconscious.

He was dozing when the door opened. Two men came in. Finn wasn’t sure they were the ones who had grabbed him by the arms, but pretty sure. One of them had a droopy eye. He said, “Are you going to be troublesome, Bobby-O?”

“Not if you’re going to make this right,” Finn said. He took little notice of being called Bobby-O, thought it was just some kind of nickname, like Daddy-O, or how if his father had seen a drunk staggering up the street, he’d always say, “There goes Paddy O’Reilly.”

“That’s up to you,” the other said. He had a narrow face and black eyes, like a weasel.

They went out the door, Finn between the two men, who were both wearing chinos and white shirts. Neither of them had a gun, which was a bit of a comfort, although Finn had no doubt they could handle him easily if he decided to make trouble for them. They looked fit. Finn was tall but weedy.

The room they came out in was lined with shelves, all of them empty. To Finn it looked like a pantry, or maybe, given the size, what his grandma would have called a larder. As a young woman, she’d been “in service.”

From the pantry they entered the biggest kitchen Finn had ever seen. There were a couple of empty bowls on the counter with spoons in them. Judging by the scum inside, he guessed they had contained soup. His belly rumbled. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d eaten. Ellie had made him some scrambled eggs before the necking started, but Finn had an idea that was long since digested. If digestion continued when you were unconscious, that was. He thought it must. A person’s body just went about its business.

Next came a dining room with a shining mahogany table that looked long enough to play shuffleboard on. Heavy plum-colored drapes had been pulled all the way closed. Finn strained his ears for the sound of passing traffic and heard nothing.

They went down a hall and the droopy-eye man opened a door on the right. The weasel gave Finn a light shove. There was a fancy desk in the room. The walls were lined with books and folders. More drapes, a deep dull red, had been drawn over the window behind the desk. A man with white hair combed back like the early Cliff Richard sat behind the desk. His tanned face was scored with lines. He looked not much older than Finn’s father had been when he died.

“Sit down.”

Finn sat down across from the white-haired man. Mr. Droopy Eye stood in one corner. Mr. Weasel stood in the other corner. They clasped their hands in front of their belt buckles.

There was a folder in front of the white-haired man, thinner than the ones crammed in helter-skelter on the shelves. He opened it, lifted a sheet of paper, looked at it, and sighed.

“This can be easy or hard, Mr. Feeney. That’s entirely up to you.”

Finn leaned forward. “See, that’s not my name. You have the wrong person.”

The white-haired man looked interested. He put the sheet of paper back in the thin folder and closed it. “Not Bobby Feeney? Is that so?”

“My name is Finn Murrie. That’s Murrie with an ie at the end, not ay.” He felt that this detail alone should be enough to convince the white-haired man. It was so specific.

“Is it now?” the white-haired man said. “Will wonders never cease!”

“I’ll tell you what happened. What I think happened. When I came round the corner into Peeke Street I ran into a fella running the other way. We knocked each other down. He got up and ran on. I got up and ran on. These fellas…” He pointed at the men in the corners. “… must have wanted that other fella, Bobby Feeney. He was dressed the same as me.”

“Dressed the same, was he? Cabinteely cap? Nazareth tee-shirt? Leather jacket?”

“Well, I don’t know what was on the shirt, but I remember the cap. It all happened fast, but it’s sure that’s who you wanted. This happens to me all the time.”

The white-haired man leaned forward, his hands (scarred, Finn saw, or maybe burned) clasped on his thin folder. He looked more interested than ever. “You are taken into custody all the time, are you?”

“No, bad luck. Bad luck happens to me all the time.” He told the white-haired man about being dropped at birth, and the cherry bomb, the broken arm because he let his grandma coax him off the Twisty, the lightning strike. There were other things he could have added, but he thought the lightning strike and resulting concussion made a good place to stop. Like the climax of a storybook story. “So you see, I’m not the boyo you’re looking for.”

“Huh.” The white-haired man sat back, pressed a hand to his belly as if it pained him, and sighed.

Inspiration struck Finn. “Just think about it, sir. If I was running away from these fellas of yours, I’d run away. But I didn’t, did I? I ran right into their outstretched arms, so to speak. It was the other fella, this Bobby Feeney, who ran away.”

“You’re not Bobby Feeney?”

“No, sir.”