The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Page 11

  Some people say, spending time with a loved one when you know they have limited time left to live is rewarding. I think that’s bullshit. I loved Karyn dearly, but the pain it caused my heart to leave the hospital every night feeling that I’d said my final goodbye was monstrous. The doctors told me one afternoon in late June 2005 that my wife would only last another three months. She shocked them by staying alive for another half a year. But from that day up until the night she passed away, just two days into 2006, was torturous for me. I felt really selfish for feeling such pain when it was Karyn who was dying, but I couldn’t help it. I hate saying goodbye. I must have said at least a hundred goodbyes to Karyn. A part of me wished that she had died in a car crash and I just had to receive a terrible phone call. It would be shocking and painful in other respects, but losing my wife in that way wouldn’t have been as mentally challenging and exhausting for me. The whole process was very hard on poor Frank who really didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t fill him in on every detail but he knew his mother was close to death. He wasn’t stupid. She looked like she was close to death. Karyn decided to take a large course of chemotherapy in the hope that a miracle would occur, which made her face appear gaunt in her final months. I remember being angry that she chose to have the treatment. It prolonged her passing. Selfishly, I just wanted her to die so Frank and I could move on with our lives. Her family were very supportive. They really are a super-tight bunch. Harry and his third wife, Yvonne, visited the hospital almost as often as I did. I used to hear them praying in the ward. That always amused me. These guys had no problem ordering people to be murdered, yet they somehow still believed there was a God up there who would answer their prayers. On the day Karyn finally passed, Harry sat me down and told me he considered me as part of the family still, and he would look after me in any way I sought. I thanked him but insisted I’d stay away from organised crime for Frank’s sake.

  ‘You made my daughter very happy for nearly twenty years. So I will make you happy in any way you want. If you ever need me, you just call, okay?’ he said before hugging me and walking away. But I knew that wasn’t the end of the conversation.

  I’m finding myself clicking through this old phone. I miss my iPhone. I left it at home for a very valid reason. Mobile phones can be easily traced. It amazes me the amount of times I read about idiots being found guilty of certain crimes because their phone was traced to the scene. How stupid can you be? There is nothing on this cheap phone except today’s call history and a game called Snake. It’s a boring little graphic but it beats staring at the doors of ACB across the street. I finish a couple levels of the game before staring at the time on the top of the phone again. It’s nine thirty-one and there has been no movement out of the bank. I know I’m impatient, but I feel like I have to ring Darragh to get some information.

  ‘Have you not got your phone right beside you?’ I ask when he finally answers. He has annoyed me again by taking his time picking up. ‘Any word from Vincent?’

  He hasn’t heard a thing. I’m not surprised. It’s literally one minute past the time we thought Vincent would exit. But that doesn’t stop me from acting the hard man.

  ‘Listen, I’m worried about him. Give him a call for me, will ya? Tell him he shouldn’t be messing about or you’ll kill that little darling of his, alright?’

  09:30

  Ryan

  As I lean slightly forward, allowing my toes to take most of the weight, the two hind legs of the chair lift up. I play the jump forward in my head. I figure I will make one giant leap that will leave me about four feet from the gun. From there, I should be able to pull myself up on the edge of the glass table and grab it with my right hand. I puff out my cheeks three times fast and count myself down in my head. Three … two … The noise of his phone rattling off the glass table scares the shit out of me. The legs of the chair immediately fall back down to the carpet and I look backwards to see if my captor is coming from the bathroom to answer the phone. I shake my head in amazement at the timing of the call.

  ‘That my phone?’ he shouts out as I hear him turn the tap off.

  I sigh. ‘Yeah.’

  Why the fuck am I helping him?

  He sprints out of the bathroom and scoops the phone up as quickly as he can.

  ‘Hello? Yes, I have the phone here beside me all the time,’ he says after a pause. Seems like his partner in crime is ranting at him again. They’re like fuckin’ Laurel and Hardy. ‘No, he hasn’t been onto me yet. It’s just gone half nine now, he shouldn’t be too long.

  ‘Okay, I’ll give him a ring now,’ he says, sounding exhausted after another pause.

  They’re getting worried. But it should be me who’s most worried. It’s my life at stake, after all. I notice my captor fumbling at the phone to make an outside call. He’s obviously trying to get onto Vincent, but he doesn’t seem to be able to get an answer. Vincent is at the bank with colleagues. Why would he answer that cheap-ass phone you gave him in front of them? Idiots! Vincent would hate to be seen with such a cheap mobile phone. He’s a bit of a snob in those respects.

  The pain of seeing Ruairi almost every time I went into the office proved too much for me in the end. Vincent could see the depression etched on my face. I had to tell him that I hated being in PR and I hated the people I worked with. He bought it. The fact that I’d been bitching to him about my colleagues over the years paid off. He had insisted for a long time that I should write a novel. I always have ideas for stories, but I totally lack the discipline to be that kind of writer. Even before I handed in my notice at Wow I knew all too well that I wouldn’t get up in the mornings and motivate myself to write a few chapters of a book. Vincent set out a plan that meant I would have to wake up with him when his alarm went off at seven o’clock every morning. And after he headed to his office, I would open the new MacBook Air he bought for me to work on my novel. A few ideas that I had in my head for years made it onto a Word document in the early days of my working from home, but that was literally it. Ideas. I had one story concept in my mind about a celebrity paparazzo, which had a chilling twist, and another one about a stunning blonde bombshell who was also an amazing slutty private investigator. She would sleep with all the men she was investigating to get the details she was looking for over pillow talk. I wasn’t bad for ideas, but I was pathetic when it came to work ethic. PR doesn’t help you become a good writer. In fact, it does the opposite. It teaches you how to write shit formulaic copy as quickly as you can. The creative promise I had before I joined Wow was wiped out within a couple of months of working there.

  It’s just over nineteen months since I left media to write a book. I have added little to those two story concepts on that Word document since. That’s pathetic in its own right, but it’s not as pathetic as the reasons for which I now use that MacBook Air. I have zero career ambition. I feel like my old twenty-year-old self again. A no-hoper. Only this time I’m lacking hope in the more comfortable surroundings of a glorious penthouse as opposed to a tiny, untidy bedsit.

  He looks a little frustrated that he can’t reach Vincent on the phone, but he also seems a bit lost. He’s scrunching his nose up again, a habit all coke users have after snorting a line.

  ‘Where was I?’ he asks himself before spinning around. He looks over at me before picking up his gun and placing it in the band of his jeans. He then makes his way back towards the bathroom. I hear the tap turn on again and curse to myself.

  How the fuck did that other cunt happen to ring at the exact moment I was about to leap for the gun?

  Staring over at the television, I continue to watch the match before remembering what I had been up to. With my captor out of the room, I can work on my right ankle with more vigour. I reach down and begin to tug really hard at the tape. It’s loosening its grip of my ankle to the leg of the chair but I still can’t remove my foot fully. I pick away at the tape with my nails as quickly as I can. Doing this without fear of making any noise is much more effective. I s
eem to be making huge progress when I hear the tap turn off. The bathroom door closes and I feel the presence of my captor back in the room. He lets out a satisfied yelp before throwing himself back on the couch, placing both the phone and the gun down on the glass coffee table in almost the exact same positions they occupied a minute ago. I stare at him but he hasn’t even noticed me. He’s now watching Paul Pogba running one-on-one with Bayern Munich goalkeeper Manuel Neuer and smacking a ten-yard effort off the inside of the post.

  ‘Ouch,’ he says while still staring at the screen. ‘I would have scored that.’

  The atmosphere in the Old Trafford stadium rises in volume and, as it does, I allow myself a strong tug at the remaining thin sliver of tape until finally I feel it snap. Relief fills my whole body as my foot releases. My whole right side is now free. I’m halfway to getting myself and Vincent out of this mess.

  09:35

  Vincent

  Neither Chelle nor I want to read through the paperwork, but it’s a legal requirement. We’ve read through this jargon thousands of times over the years. But Chelle knows that I would demand she follows protocol at all times. So rushing her through it today would look suspicious. The fact that I’m taking out two million euros is suspicious enough. We flick over page after page as Chelle mumbles through the contents and then we each sign on the dotted lines at the bottom. There are eleven pages in all and each of them must be signed by both of us. To be fair to Chelle, she is getting through it as quickly as she can. She’s still cringing about the ink.

  ‘… to extract two million euros,’ she reads with emphasis while raising an eyebrow at me. She keeps mentioning this, but then again, she should. This is a hell of a lot of money to be transferring from one branch to another.

  As she twirls the paperwork towards me for another signature I feel the cheap phone vibrate in my suit pocket. There’s no way I can answer it. Chelle would piss herself laughing if I took out an old Nokia phone to take a call. Besides, if I did answer it, what sort of conversation could we have in Chelle’s company? I’ll have to excuse myself later and pretend to go to the bathroom or something and call this prick back. I try to calm down after the vibrating stops but it doesn’t last long. The gobshite tries to ring me back straight away. He really is one thick fuck.

  Although my professional life had taken off, my personal life had taken a bit of a step backwards. I had frequented the gay bars around the city for a full six years but I had to force myself to stop going out after I’d become manager of the Drumcondra branch. It wasn’t just the responsibility of the new job that made my mind up for me. I genuinely couldn’t cope with the hangovers anymore. Something chemical happens in your body after you get into your late twenties when it comes to alcohol. Suddenly hangovers, which used to last a morning, start to stay with you for two or three full days. But that didn’t stop me getting back on the party bus after I met Ryan. We were both just high on life in those days. I’d had two semi-serious boyfriends in my twenties. I dated Seamus Gaughran for all of a year before I found out he was fucking as many blokes behind my back as he possibly could. Then there was Simon O’Dea. I met him on a trip to Sligo. We stayed close for a couple of years but it got tiring for the two of us. The west of Ireland is a great place to travel to, but it’s a pain in the ass to drive there. That trip on a regular basis is so monotonous. After Simon, I was celibate for almost three years, bar four guilt-riddled one-night stands. I’m not sure why I felt so guilty about having sex with strangers. I was free and single. But one-night stands – which I had been fond of fifteen years prior – just seemed so juvenile to me. I knew I’d be a great catch for somebody but I couldn’t seem to find any man I’d like to live with. I was earning over €250,000 a year and was just about to complete the purchase of one of the trendiest penthouses in the whole of Dublin, yet I had nobody to share all that with. There was one guy who interested me, but I was afraid to ask him out. He’d been in and out of my bank on a few occasions to discuss a possible loan. I could see an awful lot of potential in his look, despite the fact that he had the appearance of an early nineties boy band member. His curtains-style haircut was so wrong in 2002. But under his hanging fringe beamed a really cute smile. He had dimples that sunk into his cheeks when he smiled, but smiling seemed like an irregular occurrence for him. He had heavy eyes. I felt straight away that he came across as if he wasn’t enjoying his life. That part of it was actually a turn-on for me. The opportunity to kick-start this guy’s life really was quite fascinating. I started to become a little infatuated with him. There’s little more exciting in life than really fancying somebody. I knew by his manner that he was gay. You wouldn’t place Ryan in the ‘camp’ category but you wouldn’t have to possess the greatest gaydar on the planet to recognise his sexuality.

  ‘Would you be interested in discussing this over dinner some evening?’ I asked him while checking over my shoulder one Wednesday afternoon. I knew I was taking a risk. It was a totally unprofessional thing to do, especially for somebody like me. He looked at me as if I had two heads. He’d later tell me that he didn’t realise I was asking him out on a date. He genuinely thought it was a service I was offering as a bank manager.

  ‘… and last one,’ Chelle says, spinning the paperwork back over to me. I sign it with extra emphasis on the cross of my ‘t’ before grinning at her. She tidies the paperwork with a quick bounce of the sheets off her desk before standing up. She then leads me out of her office towards the back of the building.

  ‘You got your key, Vincent?’ she asks as we stand either side of the vault door. I answer her by waving my card at her. ‘Three, two, one,’ she counts down, just before we swipe at the double lock entrance.

  As the vault door opens I take another look at my watch. It’s twenty to ten. I can feel my phone buzzing again. I think about dismissing myself to ring that asshole back but I’ve gone too far now. He’ll have to wait. Chelle and I came straight to the vault after completing the paperwork so I think it would look rather odd if I headed off to the toilets now. I’ll only be in here for another ten minutes or so. The prick will be happy enough when I ring him back. I’ll have the first two million with me in the car. The first vault door brings us into a small corridor that holds a lot of the bank’s paperwork. There are six shelves on each side filled with heavy files of stuff nobody will ever read. There’s a small steel door at the other end of this corridor that will lead us to the cash. Chelle keys in a five-digit code that allows the door to click open. You can smell the banknotes as soon as she pushes through. It’s a scent I’ve never become immune to. There are all sorts of bonds and notes neatly packaged in eight large vaults but it’s the vault at the front right corner of this heavy-lit room that I need to make my withdrawal from today. This vault houses the cash that the bank uses on a daily basis. Used notes.

  ‘You wanna do the first count?’ Chelle asks as she turns to a computer screen on the right side of the small room.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Will that take long?’ I’m asking about the computer system. I know it only takes a few minutes but I’m really suggesting she works quicker than normal. She gets the gist.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she answers.

  You would think counting out two million euros would take a fair bit of time, but when the notes are neatly packed into ten-thousand-euro piles already it’s quite a straightforward task. I just need to pull two hundred of these packs out of the vault and place them on the countertop beside me. I’m done counting the money before Michelle has updated the database.

  ‘Jaysus, two mill doesn’t look that much when it’s laid out like that,’ she says turning to me, laughing. ‘Now, let’s see. There should be two hundred packs, right?’

  ‘Yep,’ I answer with a sigh.

  I know we have to do this two times each as part of the protocol. On Chelle’s second go, we count the notes into my cases. On each of the four counts we manage to make up the two million without any errors. You’d want to be fucking
stupid not to be able to count to two hundred, after all.

  ‘It’s all there,’ she says as I pack up the second case before tightening the handcuff around my wrist.

  ‘Chelle, it’s been an adventure,’ I say sarcastically.

  ‘I’m so sorry about the ink,’ she says. ‘I feel awful about—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I interrupt, then kiss her on both cheeks. ‘I really need to get going to Jonathan. I’ll call you later, okay?’

  I don’t hear her answering. I’m too busy rushing out of the vault and through the large steel doors before pacing onto the bank floor. A couple of employees wish me goodbye. I only offer a fake smile in return. As I stand in the glass hallway between the two exit doors I can see John reading his newspaper in the driver’s seat of the car. I let out another big sigh before murmuring to myself, ‘What the fuck are you doing, Vincent?’