Down the corridor I heard footsteps. I panicked and tried the handle. The door opened, surprising me. Luke sat in that same chair, facing the window with his back to me. A walkman was over his head and he was absorbed in whatever was playing. His hands were out of sight on his groin. It’s a dirty tape, I thought, he’s masturbating. I had turned to go when he lifted his hand, which held a small tipped cigar. He took a pull, then slowly released smoke into the air.
Liam Darcy’s description came back: the biggest shower of thugs in Dublin. In the taxi home he had been more expansive, detailing the armed robberies for which the most famous of them, Christy Duggan, had become a national figure, after the IRA showed how easily it was done. When robberies became common in Dublin and security tightened, Christy Duggan had orchestrated bank raids which paralysed isolated country towns. The police could never prove anything despite twenty-four-hour surveillance for two years, but, according to Liam, everything about the Duggans was common knowledge. People even knew when Christy’s gang were making a hit because he would drive up and down outside police headquarters. Libel laws meant his name never appeared in the papers, which referred to him as ‘The Ice-man’.
I wasn’t sure how much of this was the Jack Daniels talking, but Liam had kept us in stitches with the bizarre nicknames by which, he maintained, Dublin criminals were known: the Wise-cracker, the Commandant, the Cellar-man. The aliases had turned them into comic book characters, but now, watching Luke, their names and crimes became flesh and blood. He had no idea I was there. I liked the sense of power that gave me. I could watch or leave. If I were his wife I could plunge a scissors into his neck. His jacket lay on the bed. I could steal his credit cards or car keys. Or, if I had any sense, I could turn and run, leaving the door ajar so that he’d suspect someone had stood there, but would never know whether it was me.
There was a click as the tape ended and Luke stirred. This was the moment to slip away. But I stayed there until he turned, slowly as if sensing someone. He seemed neither surprised nor pleased to see me. If any emotion showed it was a relief he tried to cloak. Perhaps it was my imagination gone wild, but I got the impression that he had half thought he was about to be shot.
‘You’re a week late,’ he said quietly, drawing the headphones down. A woman’s voice, in a language I couldn’t understand, drifted along the corridor. Her closeness might have reassured me, only I found I wasn’t nervous. ‘Still, you’re worth the wait.’
The bed was made up this time. A sink in the corner had a cracked mirror above it. I had shared such a room once, running away with my mother.
‘How did you know I’d come?’
‘I didn’t.’ He watched me closely. ‘Last week I held out some hope, but this week I’d none at all.’
The window pane rattled as a truck passed. There were footsteps on the ceiling and hot-tempered voices.
‘Then what are you doing here?’
Luke rose to put his jacket on, slipped the walkman into the pocket, then shrugged and sat on the bed.
‘Why shouldn’t I be here?’ he said. ‘It’s as good as anywhere else.’
‘What’s wrong with staying at home?’
He scrutinised me and I stared back, feeling this was a contest of wills. ‘That’s complex,’ he said, ‘private.’
‘Poor little you.’ I tried to mask my elation behind mockery, not wanting to admit to myself how much I had hoped he’d be here.
‘We married young,’ Luke said, so openly that my jibe sounded cheap. ‘A shotgun job, a miscarriage and then a child on top of us before we knew who we were. I kept growing and she didn’t. Maybe she’d see it different, but either way there’s not much left in common.’
‘Where does she think you are now?’
‘Stock checking, doing the books. All the things I’ve no time for during the week.’
‘She must think you’re a great provider. The businessman who never stops.’
‘She wants for nothing and I’ll make sure she never does.’ Anger entered his tone. I knew he wouldn’t be ridiculed. In truth I’d simply been buying time.
‘If I hadn’t showed up would you have come next Sunday?’
‘I don’t know.’ Luke looked around. ‘Last week I found I liked it here. I could hear myself think. It holds good memories, this room.’
Everything looked cheap and worn. Television stations blared through the walls on either side of us.
‘Not for many people it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s a kip.’
‘That depends on who you shared it with.’
‘I didn’t come for that,’ I said sharply. There were footsteps on the stairs. I stepped back into the corridor so I could be seen.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ Luke said.
‘I’m not frightened of anyone.’
‘We were both very drunk,’ he went on. ‘I’m afraid I don’t even know your name.’
‘I know yours,’ I said. ‘The Duggans are famous.’
He relit his cigar, tipping away dead ash. ‘An anonymous fucking hotel,’ he said, with quiet resignation. ‘You’d think at least here I might be known for myself.’
‘That’s the problem with infidelity, things always come out.’ My defensive mockery was replaced by a relaxed teasing. ‘All your family are the same, I hear. Cut-throats, with more nicknames than convictions.’
‘We specialise in the white slave trade,’ he replied, straight-faced.
‘Drugged virgins shipped off in crates of wall tiles.’
‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘There’s an EC moratorium on virgins so we’re branching into more experienced types.’
His assertiveness was gone, but a sardonic watchfulness remained. I was surprised by how attracted I felt to him as we toyed with each other. It felt like foreplay, except that I was never going to enter the room. Even when he smiled I sensed his sombreness. The image of him dead in that chair had a prophetic feel. I wondered if I had been an assassin would Luke have greeted me with the same resigned shrug? Yet he gave no impression of being anything other than a small-time businessman. He even seemed to delight in shrinking his world down to two stores in rundown London suburbs. I remembered how he stood out from his family that first time we’d met.
‘I want to show you something,’ he said.
‘What?’
He arose without replying. We walked downstairs. The receptionist was the same age as myself. She lifted her gaze from a magazine to scrutinise us, trying to make Luke feel older.
‘She’s my daughter,’ Luke said, deadpan, returning the key. ‘I can never deflate those dolls by myself.’
We reached the street before starting to laugh. Inside his car I asked him to play the tape he had been listening to.
‘You won’t like it,’ he said.
‘Try me.’
It was Irish fiddle music from somewhere called Sliabh Luachra, recorded live with bodies moving about and background coughing. Luke had taped it off an Irish radio programme.
‘What do the names mean?’ I asked. ‘The Rambling Pitchfork or Boil the Breakfast. They