The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Read online

  Waves flow through my stomach as I watch the sunshine beat down on strange faces in the Green after I hang up. Dubliners of all ages are taking strolls around the pond. Wow. We already have two million euros. The morning has gone perfectly so far. I’m aware we’re literally only one-quarter of the way through this process, but the fact that Darragh seems to have Ryan under control fills me with so much confidence. We’re gonna pull this off! I whistle along to the tune of ‘Let’s Go for a Little Walk’ yet again as I pass over the tiny O’Connell Bridge. I’m only about ten minutes away from the next bank. Vincent’s driver should be pulling up outside there any second now.

  09:50

  Ryan

  He’s had the phone up and down to his ear for the past couple of minutes. After hanging up on Vincent a few seconds ago he’s now onto his partner in crime. Vincent has robbed one bank of two million euros. That’s insane. The reality of the whole ordeal has been trying to take over my mind, but I won’t let it. I have to stay focused on this one task – getting free. The tape is so fucking hard to rip off in a discreet manner, but I’ll get through it before this dumb fuck notices.

  ‘The little fag is helpless,’ I hear him say as he stares straight at me with a straight face. ‘He’s just watching some poncey football match now. He knows there’s nothing he can do but wait.’

  He grins at me while he’s hanging up.

  ‘Pogba miss another chance there, yeah?’ he asks, straight as a die.

  What a dumb-ass prick! He didn’t even have the decency to laugh after saying that. Was he trying to be funny or is he just that fucking stupid that he didn’t realise he just called the game ‘poncey’ ten seconds ago? This guy is a fruit loop. But I’m confident I’ll get the better of him once I’m free. I take a peek at the microwave clock. 9:51. There’s just over two hours left. The maths isn’t looking that great for Vincent to get to three more banks and back before midday. I wonder how he’s feeling right now. I bet he’s still playing it cool. So many things could go wrong his end. I need to get myself out of this situation. I need to be the hero. At least I’ve got something to do today.

  It’s amazing how doing nothing breeds into more doing nothing. You would think that the less you have to do, the more inclined you would be to do something. That’s not true at all. The less you do, the less you want to do. It’s staggering how addictive doing nothing can become. I have three pairs of what I call apartment pants. They’re not apartment pants at all. They’re just pyjama bottoms but I don’t want to call them that. Pyjamas sounds a little bit more pathetic than apartment pants. I wear at least one pair of them every day sitting on that big-ass L-shaped couch. For some reason the TV’s always on – I don’t know why. I barely watch anything on it. I spend a bizarre number of hours each week clicking through each of the hundred odd channels we have. It’s the same mid-morning bullshit on every bloody channel. Well, in fact there are two kinds of programmes on TV during the first hours of the day. There’s either a live show being presented by a couple of dicks like Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid beaming their fake smiles into our living rooms. Or else there are straight news channels. And news channels only offer up bad news. They thrive on bad news. War and worry is big business for the media. So, there’s an option of either sickening positivity or dour negativity on our screens every morning and afternoon. I can never decide which one I want to watch. That’s why I keep changing the channels. I guess it reflects real life in some way. Life is either rosy or it’s downright shit. I’ve only ever been really high or really low in life. I’m not sure a happy medium exists. Same as TV – there’s just nowhere else to turn to. I guess that’s why I spend so much time on my laptop. And that’s what has me depressed the most.

  I have a routine for surfing the web that’s rather sad. It even saddens me. As soon as I open the lid of my laptop I search for sports news. It’s an old habit I can’t kill off. Why would I? Just because I’m no longer in sports PR doesn’t mean I can’t be a fan. But searching news updates doesn’t take that long and I inevitably end up using the Internet for the same reason most people do – porn. The amount of porn, and different types of porn, I see on the Internet continues to astound me. People really are into all kinds of sick shit. From dwarfs fisting each other’s assholes, to men shitting in women’s mouths, you really can search for anything you want, whenever you want. Imagine that. Somebody invented a window to the world where we could access any information and entertainment we could possibly ever think of. And what do we do? We watch porn more than anything. I’d only ever been interested in regular intercourse. I’d watch videos of handsome men fucking for hours until I felt the need to orgasm myself. Everyone has their own fantasies. I always loved rugged, handsome faces. That’s all. If a porn video included a really good-looking guy, that would do for me. I like dark hair and cute faces. John Stamos would be my ideal man. Vincent thinks my celebrity crush is Piers Morgan. I’ve no idea where he got that from. I think I said Piers looked well once. Vincent took it as a compliment, because he thinks he looks like him. There is a resemblance. They’re both blotchy and bloaty. Vincent has never really been my ‘type’ but I love him so much. I used to type ‘Italian men’ into the search menu on porn sites. That’s just genuinely what I was into. But it’s easy to get dragged into the murkier world of porn online. There are so many hidden links that drag you down trapdoors. I wonder what sort of sick shit this spotty prick is into.

  He’s sat still staring at the game. I can see him glance towards the coke every now and then. He’s dying for another line. I don’t blame him. I know how he feels. One line should always be enough but it never is. I’m glad I know this match goes into extra time because it’s keeping his attention away from me. Getting my free hand across to my left leg is a bit more difficult, but I’m pretty certain I’m being discreet. The arm of the couch is blocking his view to me somewhat, so I continue to scratch away at the tape. I try to play out the eventual scenario in my head but it all depends on where his gun is placed once I peel myself free. It’s currently back on the glass coffee table but it’s been in and out of the waistband of his pants on quite a few occasions. I guess that’s down to his anxiousness. If the gun is on the table when I’m free from the tape, I’ll get to it first.

  A plucking technique, rather than the scratching I was using earlier, seems to work better. Tiny fragments of the tape are peeling off into my fingernails. I look at the time again. 9:58. I give myself a time frame. I want to have this left ankle free by half ten before I begin to work on my left wrist. All going according to plan, I should be shoving the gun into that dumb ass’s face before eleven.

  09:55

  Darragh

  ‘Pogba miss another chance there, yeah?’ I ask the fag after I hang up the phone.

  He sniffs an answer – almost as if he’s laughing at me. Little cunt! I thought we were getting on just fine, too. He seems to be getting a little too quiet for my liking. But he can’t get up to anything. He’s just sitting there helpless. A rush fills my mind as I take in the fact that Vincent now has two mill in the boot of his car. Half of that is mine. That’s unreal. I never thought I’d have that much money in me life. I’m literally a millionaire right now. My money just happens to be sitting in the trunk of a chauffeur-driven car rather than sittin’ in my own bank account. But it’s all fuckin mine. I think of that brilliant scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta opens his wardrobe to a fuck-load of designer suits. I guess that’s what a millionaire gangster’s life looks like. I think I’ll buy one of those huge wardrobes and fill it with suits meself. I don’t wear suits, but that doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll start wearing ’em. I’ll be a multi-millionaire, after all. I’ll have to wait a while though. JR has told me I shouldn’t flash the cash so soon after getting’ me hands on it. He said we should both wait it out for around six months before spending. He knows his stuff. He has figured out every tiny piece of this jigsaw. He has both the brains and the brawn to be a perfect mob boss. I wish I
was more like him. I hope he continues to teach me. By the time I’m his age, I’ll be a fuckin mastermind in the criminal underworld. I wonder how old JR actually is. It’s hard to put a number on him.

  The Guards released a photofit of what the newspapers labelled the ‘One-Punch Killer’. It looked nothing like me. I’m not sure if witnesses sent cops in the wrong direction in fear of The Boss; but surely the girl who was at the scene of the crime must have had a say in the image the police were putting out there. Perhaps it was too dark for her to remember what I looked like. The man in the photofit had the same colour hair as me but that was about it. I was so fuckin relieved to find out the cops had nothing to go on in their investigation. The Boss told me they were chasing shadows. He had a few contacts on the inside. He wasn’t happy with me at all though. He didn’t mind that I’d broken me duck but he was disappointed in how I did it. He kept saying I was really immature. And that accusation annoys me. It would annoy anyone. I kept apologising to him, but I wasn’t even sure he was ever listening to me. I think the adrenaline I drowned in after the murder flicked a switch in me. I began to envisage killings almost every day. As I watch people, I can imagine I’m battering them to death. Not everybody I see, just when the moment takes me. It’s normally men I imagine killing. Mostly smug men. But I never planned another murder for real until I met JR. The Boss told me to stay out of trouble for a while, so I kept meself to meself for a bit. My fascination with Netflix helped. I watched all five seasons of Breaking Bad in less than a week. I think there’s over sixty episodes in that show. It was fuckin deadly. Aaron Paul’s character is the bomb. I’ve never tried meth. It was never offered to me. I guess I probably would have tried it if someone did have some. All the boys I was hanging around with drank beer and snorted coke. That’s all I’ve been introduced to over the years. It’s fine by me. I love coke.

  I’d fuckin love another line of Ryan’s shit right now. But there’s no need for me to do any more. I’ve done enough. I’ll celebrate later. Ryan probably thinks I haven’t noticed, but I can see him looking over to the clock on the microwave every few minutes. I don’t mind. It’s probably making him panic even more. I envisage blowin’ his brains out yet again. Even if I was to do it now and walk away, I’d be a million euros richer. But there’s more of that to come. Besides, I have no intention of swerving off course from JR’s plan. I wonder what he’s up to now. He never really told me exactly where he’d be for each bank robbery. I wonder how close to Vincent he’s actually getting. I’m sure he’s all okay. He knows how to swerve all the CCTV cameras. He even has an alibi. He sorted one out for me too. It’s brilliant. I’ve left me mobile phone in me bedsit and my laptop programmed to log in to certain websites at certain times of the morning. JR is some genius. If we are ever caught for this in any way, shape or form then I can easily show proof I was at home all morning. The alibis are just a backup to the backup of a backup. They won’t be needed at all. JR and me have this totally under control.

  I take a look at the microwave clock meself. 10:03. I need to get this straight in me head. Vincent has three hours to rob four banks, yet one hour has passed and only one bank has been hit. That doesn’t sound right. I wonder why JR hasn’t mentioned this yet or why he hasn’t been getting on at me about it. Surely Vincent is getting close to Camden Street now. The next I’ll hear from him will be when he exits there. He’d want to hurry the fuck up. Time is ticking. I turn my eyes to look at Ryan sittin’ in his chair like a pussy. Bang! I imagine his brains splat all over the window behind him again. This is really gonna happen. I can feel it. It’ll be my third murder. I guess that’ll make me a serial killer.

  10:05

  Vincent

  I turn the air conditioning back up to full again just as John turns into Camden Street. I don’t fell as panicky anymore, but I just fancy one last blast of cold air before meeting Jonathan. I look calm in the reflection of the car window. I can see the ugliness of Camden Street behind my reflection. Camden Street is a typical example of tradition meeting contemporary to create ugliness. That mess of architecture is ripe around Dublin city. Some people love it. I don’t. I love old-school Dublin. The city used to be full of character, but these modern buildings take some of that character away. I mean, it’s fine around Sir John Rogerson’s Quay where I live because it’s full of modern buildings, but here, on Camden Street, they look out of place. The ACB branch on Lower Camden Street is almost directly across from Cassidy’s pub, right next to Concern Charity’s headquarters. The board of directors for some reason leased half of that new building and then replaced the clear windows with blacked-out glass. Their reasoning behind it was so people couldn’t see inside from the outside. But you also can’t see the outside from the inside because the windows they ordered were too dark. Fuckin’ idiots! That was the decision of these young board members who earn a combined annual salary of almost a billion dollars. I genuinely think most of the multi-millionaires I’ve met through my life, and there’s been a few, have all been a bit thick. Maybe they’re good at playing thick and that’s why they’re so successful or maybe, as I suspect, they’ve just been fuckin’ lucky.

  The board of directors used to be perfect at ACB. They ran all the banks like clockwork and they had a real eagerness to agree on decisions. That was their best asset. But the current board take an age to make any decision at all. And they keep me at a huge distance. I used to be more involved with the important decisions made over in the States, but not anymore. There’s one little spoilt prick on the board, Clyde Sneyd, who is only twenty-eight years old. I used to be close with his old man, Bernard. But Bernard’s offspring has no respect for me whatsoever; I’m not sure he even has respect for himself. It seems he lives a very eccentric life in New York that I’m not sure even he’s happy with. He brings that depressive attitude to his work. Sometimes it has taken the board over a week to even get him by phone. It’s not just him, though. None of ’em seem to give a flying fuck. They think they’re all heroes for taking the bank through the economic crash. It’s a bit sad, really. Everyone else knows I’m the reason ACB pulled through in Ireland. They’re a mismatch of spoilt personalities. It’s such a shame. I genuinely couldn’t give a shit anymore.

  John doesn’t always get a parking spot right outside the Camden Street branch but there’s one available today. It allows me to take in the sorry building as we come to a stop. I often chuckle to myself looking at the blacked-out glass with the ACB logo flying proud above it. How the fuck can they be proud of this shit hole? Jonathan won’t have known I’ve pulled up. He can’t see out of the building! I need to head in as quickly as I can. My palms aren’t even sweaty about this one. Tchaikovsky’s been a big help. I’ve barely thought about reality on the way over here.

  Ryan said he fell in love with me when I sorted out his career path, but I’m pretty sure the fact that I moved him into my brand-new penthouse helped too. We were both high on love and cocaine for the first two years we were together. I bought the penthouse from the building plans but not on a whim. I’ve never regretted it. ACB’s mortgage expert, Dave Cauley, put me on to it. He said the area it was being built in was an up-and-coming trendy neighbourhood. His estimation then was that the penthouse would be worth almost two million in ten years’ time. That was a bit inaccurate. The value of the penthouse was €1,100,000 a decade on. It’s worth €1,200,000 now. It’s still a great investment. I bought it for €650,000 and now only owe the bank a little over two hundred thousand. Nice. I guess that makes me a millionaire, in bricks and mortar at least. But nobody’s told my bank account. I earn a quarter of a million a year, but you wouldn’t think it because my money somehow seems to drift in and then quickly out of my bank account every month. All I’ve really got from all my years of hard work is the penthouse. I allowed Ryan to have a tiny bit of input into the finishing touches, but it is, and always has been, my design. I’ve got better taste than Ryan. He’s not really into that sort of thing anyway. As long as he has a large
TV screen, he’s happy. I don’t know why he insisted on a massive TV, though. He spends most of his time looking into his twenty-one-inch laptop screen. We used to host mammoth parties when we first moved in. I probably got carried away with the socialising aspect of life back then. Maybe I was a bit too old for it. But I wouldn’t swap those days for anything. I’m sure there were lots of people who turned up for sessions at our place that neither I nor Ryan knew. The penthouse would be crammed some Saturday nights. Ryan often rounded up dozens of students from DCU and I’d invite some of the bank staff over on the odd occasion. The students used to bring the greatest cocaine anybody could ever have snorted. Not even Colombia could manufacture a purer dose. Three of them had set up a lab in their cheap student accommodation and were cashing in big time. They had their student loans paid for within two months of creating and selling their own coke. It was great while it lasted. But after a couple of years I started to feel a little down. It wasn’t depression or anything but I knew I had to give up the partying lifestyle. I’m proud that I made a quick decision to cut down on the drugs and alcohol cold turkey. Ryan didn’t seem to mind too much either. I think it was getting on top of us both. He had just got a job at Wow PR and wanted to take his career seriously. I was very proud of him, if a little fearful. We were finally two grown-ups in a serious relationship. Our lives became less fun, but boring can be rewarding in its own way.

  I can see my own reflection in the bank’s dark windows as soon as John lets me out of the car. I stare at myself walking towards the entrance, the two briefcases hanging from my arms. Somebody’s just cut the grass on the small lawn in front of the building. That smell’s eternal. The scent of freshly cut grass takes everybody back to their childhood. I let out a small sigh of warm air as I wait to be buzzed through the first door. The glass in the small entryway is clear, so I can finally see the staff at work. They’re certainly not hard at it though because there are currently six members of staff and only two customers inside. I stare down towards the back offices to see if I can spot the seventh member of this team. Somebody must have told him I’m coming through the second door because Jonathan wheels out of his office on his chair to offer me a big smile.