The Dead

13

The Cauldron wasn’t open to the public but the lads were lounging about in the bar. Soon they would have things to do and debts to call in. This was the calm before the daily storm.

Peter Kinane is a nice enough bloke, for a thug, and he’s bright too, despite inheriting the brawn of his dad, but sometimes I think he’s too sensitive to operate in our world. Peter had just been dumped by some lass he’d been shagging for a while and he was gutted. He’d been stupid enough to admit it too and the lads began to taunt him mercilessly. He hadn’t yet learned the golden rule about our world. You’ve got to be able to take it, no matter what they say to you.

‘I’m telling you man, she was a munter,’ Kevin Kinane announced when the subject of his brother’s ex came up in conversation again.

‘No she wasn’t,’ Peter protested weakly from a seat in the corner of the bar. Joe Kinane was watching it all with detached amusement, his other son Chris, the quiet one, sitting next to him. Palmer, Vince and some of our more established faces were all enjoying the sledging.

‘She had a canny pair of tits on her,’ conceded Kevin, ignoring his younger brother. ‘If you could have transplanted them onto a skinny bird, Keira Knightley maybe, then they would have looked good, but on her, well, they were a waste of a nice pair of puppies, if you ask me.’

‘Oi!’ warned Peter, ‘I am in the room!’

‘BOBFOC,’ said Palmer quietly.

Peter rounded on him and demanded, ‘What’s that supposed to fuckin’ mean?’

Palmer shrugged, ‘body off Baywatch, face off Crimewatch.’ He then repeated the word, ‘BOBFOC’, to ensure Peter took in his meaning. Peter Kinane looked like he was about to start throwing punches.

His elder brother Kevin was gleeful. ‘He’s been upstairs in his room for weeks now, wank-stalking his ex on Facebook.’

‘No I fucking haven’t!’ replied Peter Kinane, seriously flustered now.

‘I caught you looking at her pictures on your laptop the other day, admit it man.’

‘So what,’ said Peter, ‘I was only bloody looking. It’s not a crime is it?’

‘No Peter, to be fair it’s not,’ I assured him because I was thankful for the distraction of this banter and when his face brightened a little I added, ‘it’s just a bit pathetic.’

‘Hey, howay man, don’t you start an’ all,’ he told me.

‘How long’s it been Peter? Since the break up?’ asked Palmer rhetorically, ‘three weeks? Oh well, never mind eh, because three weeks is the critical point.’

‘How’s that like?’ asked Peter, as Palmer reeled him in.

‘Well, if she really wasn’t shagging someone else behind your back when she dumped you…’

‘She wasn’t,’ Peter assured him.

‘She will be by now.’

‘Fuck off! Will she shite. She’s not like that.’

‘Yes she is Pete,’ said Vince, playing along with it.

‘They all are,’ announced Palmer solemnly, playing the wind-up to perfection, ‘you might think your lass is made of sugar and spice and all things nice but right now, even as I speak and you’re fretting about her, some big, hairy-bollocked bloke is up to his nuts in her.’

Peter launched himself at Palmer then, knocking the table between them to the ground, upending our beers in the process. We were creased up and we carried on laughing as an enraged Peter Kinane chased Palmer round the room, throwing haymaker punches that my bodyguard would have dodged easily if he hadn’t been laughing so hard himself.

In the end Peter managed to connect with one and Palmer was knocked off his feet. I’d never seen that before. Peter moved in to give Palmer a proper kicking and we all jumped in to restrain him, but Palmer was back on his feet already and he hit Peter Kinane with a supreme upper cut that rocked the younger man back on his heels and followed it with a martial-arts-style kick to the belly.

They both had venomous looks in their eyes now, so I shouted, ‘Pack it in, you two fairies!’ as the rest of the lads grabbed them and pulled them apart.

Palmer swore at Peter Kinane and I shouted at him, ‘shut the fuck up Palmer! You deserved that smack in the mouth, so take it like a man!’ and he gave me a sheepish look that seemed to acknowledge I might be right. Then I turned to the younger man, who was red in the face and panting, like he didn’t know how to even begin to quell his rage.

‘Calm down Peter,’ I told Kinane junior, ‘it’s just banter. Learn to dish it out and take it, if you want to stay up late with the grown-ups.’

‘Aye, aye, alright,’ he said, brushing away the arms that were restraining him. He took a moment to calm himself, ‘but he knows he was out of order. If he had said that about your lass, you’d have bloody punched him.’

Everybody went quiet then and Peter Kinane instantly realised he was out of order for daring to equate a lass he had been shagging for three months to my long-term partner, the daughter of the legendary Bobby Mahoney. I could see in his face he immediately recognised that fact and was worried.

‘No I wouldn’t,’ I assured him solemnly, ‘I’d just have him killed.’ And everybody fell about again.

My mobile rang then and someone said ‘saved by the bell’. The tension broke and everyone started to get their crap together and move away. I took the call.

‘I found him,’ said Sharp, ‘the man you’ve been looking for.’