The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Read online

  I pick up the phone and dial two. That’s the quick way to get hold of John. He is the most loyal man I know. We share the same sense of humour. He’s been chauffeuring me for the past decade.

  ‘You’re gonna be busy this morning, John boy,’ I inform him. ‘I’ll be visiting every branch. I’ll head down to the car park around ten to nine-ish and we can head straight to Nassau Street. Is that okay?’

  ‘No problem, boss,’ he says to me. ‘I’m just arriving at the offices now. I’ll give you a call in about fifteen minutes and you can come down to the car.’

  My heart rate quickens up. Fifteen minutes. Wow! In fifteen minutes’ time I’ll begin a robbery that will be all over the news tomorrow morning. According to the spotty little shit who broke into my penthouse this morning, I have a little over three hours to get back and save my boyfriend’s life. I stare at my iPhone after taking it out of my pocket and think about leaving it here throughout the day. I can’t be distracted. I suck on my teeth while I stew the thought over in my head before deciding to just turn the power off and bring it with me.

  Then I take out the cheap-ass mobile the ugly prick gave to me this morning and ring him with the good news.

  ‘All is in order,’ I tell him.

  ‘Good little fag,’ he snarls back. That was it. He hung up.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Vincent, are you okay?’ Belinda asks as she enters my office. I hope she didn’t hear me on that last phone call. But then again, I didn’t say much.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ I say, smiling back at her.

  ‘You’re white.’

  ‘It’s the blue suit,’ I reply. ‘I shouldn’t wear it. It flushes my colour out.’

  ‘Will I make you a coffee?’ she asks, fake laughing at my retort. ‘It might redden those cheeks a bit.’

  ‘A quick one, please. I’ve to head out in a few minutes.’

  ‘Oh yeah, Jonathan said you were calling over to him in an hour so, you want to take two million from him to transfer?’

  The sneaky prick. He got on to my secretary to make sure everything was legit? He shouldn’t be discussing any bank business with Belinda without my saying so.

  ‘Belinda,’ I say, agitated as I stand up. ‘I need you to stay off the phones today. My office is a mess and I’ll be out all morning. Could you organise these files into alphabetical order for me and clean up my emails? It won’t take long. Just up until lunchtime.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ she replies as she walks back out of my office to put the kettle on. I lift up a number of paper files from the shelves behind my desk and shuffle them around. I always have everything in perfect working order so messing these up causes my temples to sting slightly. But I need to keep Belinda away from Jonathan while I visit the banks this morning. When our apartment was broken into just over an hour ago and this robbery was forced on me, I had a number of reservations about how it would go down. But Jonathan Reilly fucking it up never crossed my mind.

  08:35

  Darragh

  It was only a short conversation but I could feel JR wasn’t his usual self. He seemed quite nervy or somethin’, almost as if he wasn’t listening to me. Everything is goin’ as planned. Vincent has got the green light from all four banks to take the cash so I’m not sure why JR would have been off. He kept askin’ me to repeat meself. His nervousness is making me a bit tense now. I’d been doing okay up until that call. I’m sure he’ll be alright. JR knows what he’s doing. I pick up the TV remote control and start flickin’ through the channels. There’s fuck all on to watch. These pricks have the full deal – around two hundred channels in all. I didn’t know fags were into sports, but they must have every sports package ye can get. I manage to click through each channel twice before blowing out me cheeks. I’m bored already. I’ve only been here about an hour and a half but it seems a lot longer than that.

  Suddenly the apartment doesn’t seem so big anymore. Ryan hasn’t lifted his chin from his chest since he caught me whacking one off to Susannah what’s ’er name about twenty minutes ago. I think about removing the tape from his mouth so I have somebody to talk to. At least it’ll keep me entertained for the morning. But I know it’s not the right thing to do. I’m desperate to not reach inside me jacket pocket. I promised meself I wouldn’t, but I just don’t think I can get through the morning without doing it. I obviously brought it with me for a reason. I knew in the back of my head that I’d want it. Ryan’s eyes almost pop out of his head as I brush by him to make my way to the kitchen table thingy where I’d tossed me jacket earlier. Me fashion choices, if you can call them that, haven’t changed since I was twelve years old. I was wearin’ a very similar black leather bomber jacket the day I arrived in Dublin.

  I miss Cork a little bit. Everyone keeps telling me West Cork is the prettiest place in the world, but I don’t remember it that way. I grew up in a red-brick estate. Maybe me memories of the whole area are sketchy, but I remember the neighbours really well – Cork people genuinely are a more straightforward bunch. I had some great friends when I was younger. I would have even considered me da to be one of me best friends until I walked in on him beatin’ me ma to a pulp one Friday afternoon. Despite protests from me ma I didn’t hesitate in ringing the cops as soon as me old man left the house to go back to the pub. I learned over the next few weeks that beatin wasn’t a one off. Me ma pressed charges under pressure from some family members and me old man was sentenced to fifteen months in prison. Within a matter of days of him going behind bars me ma had all our bags packed. We were off to Dublin. Me Uncle Mick had organised everything. He’d been living in Dublin since I was one, and looked after his little sister by arranging’ work and a small flat for her and her three kids. It was just off the main Cabra Road. Me ma, me two sisters and meself were cooked up in a tiny two-bedroom flat over a newsagents on the Fassaugh Road. I liked the fact that we were livin' in Dublin for about two months before boredom set in. I had no friends. I hung out with me older cousin, Michael Junior, and his gang of fuckwits for the first few weeks but they soon lost interest in me. The novelty of me Cork accent only bought me so much time with them. They were fifteen and sixteen years old and were too cool to hang around with a kid like me. I didn’t make friends in school. I was too new to join any gang. I know most kids say they don’t like school, but I really fuckin hated it. I used to ditch it on regular occasions to sit at home watching movies while me ma was out working in a launderette in Glasnevin. Goodfellas is two and a half hours long but I learned every single bit of dialogue in that film within a couple of months of being in Dublin.

  I’ve only really had one friend in my nine years in this city – Piotr Simienksi, who I met about four years in. I think we found comfort in each other having gone through similar stories. Me family and me arrived in a car from Cork to escape our past life, Piotr’s family arrived on a plane from Poland to escape theirs. As luck would have it, me only mate in the world could barely speak a word of English. He had learned enough to get by, but his accent was so thick that we ended up communicating through actions most of the time. We had our own language, I suppose. When we were both seventeen we managed to get our hands on some really good fake IDs and after a day spent knocking door to door in the estates close to where we lived, offering to do odd jobs around people’s homes, we would spend our evenings and the money we earned knocking back warm beer in The Hut on the Phibsborough Road. We used to laugh a lot but I didn’t know what we were laughing at most of the time. Neither did Piotr. I think we were just both relieved to have a friend. I sometimes miss those days.

  I reach inside me jacket pocket and pinch at the small plastic bag. I fuckin love cocaine. Piotr gave me me first line of the stuff about five years ago and I can barely get through one day without getting high now. I thought I might have the patience to get through this morning without it as I need a clear head, but the boredom coupled with the nervousness is proving too much for the sober me. I grab one of the sports magazines scattered on the ki
tchen table thingy and bring it over to the couch with me. Ryan’s head cocks up when he hears me choppin’ at me coke. Choppin’ coke is the only reason I have a library card. But just as I’m about to roll up me five-euro note to snort the line, Ryan starts making bizarre noises. He’s fuckin shaking. It looks as if he’s havin’ a fit.

  08:40

  Ryan

  I only move my eyes to catch the time. 8:40. I’m not sure if the morning is going really slow or really fast. I seem to look at the clock every two minutes to subtract the difference between what it says and midday. Three hours, twenty minutes is the current calculation. I puff out my cheeks quietly and rest my chin further into my chest. I’m not the only one in the room puffing out their cheeks. This little prick’s been agitated ever since he made that phone call a few minutes ago. I wish he’d stop flicking through the channels. It’s so bloody torturous hearing one-second snippets of TV shows. He’s just skimmed by the start of an old Champions League match that I’d love to watch again. It would help pass the time. He leaves the TV on a music channel that’s blaring out one of the most ridiculous songs I’ve ever heard by a female artist I’ve never seen before. Then he abruptly stands up. I feel a waft of dread shoot through my body as he brushes by me. He paces over to the kitchen where I hear him fumble around in his jacket. What are the chances he’s packing it in and going home? Zero. He just got a phone call from Vincent ten minutes ago saying everything is on track before ringing his partner in crime to inform him of the good news. I wonder what Vincent is up to now and how much he’s worrying about me. I get distracted when my captor sits on the couch and begins pouring what I can only describe as the lumpiest looking line of cocaine I’ve ever seen onto one of my sports magazines. There can’t be much money in kidnapping thefts. That is nasty, cheap-looking coke. I should know. In PR you need three things with you at all times; a notepad, a phone and bag of coke. Every PR representative and journalist I know snorts a line or two to get them through the day. PR reps have the biggest egos. They’re all like Patrick Bateman from that movie American Psycho. They think they’re much more important than they actually are. It’s cringeworthy.

  I tried to get into most newspapers when I graduated from DCU but it was difficult to find employment in that specific area. I wanted to work on a sports desk, but so did the other thousand journalism graduates from that year and every other year before that. I did the odd shift at the Evening Herald, but I could never nail down a position. That’s when I decided to turn my attentions to PR. I harassed the MD of Wow PR in Harcourt Street until he eventually invited me in to talk to him. I began as an intern but soon found myself climbing the ladder somewhat into an account management position. Wow PR specialised in sport so I felt I’d reached my goal in some way. It was great hanging out with people such as Brian O’Driscoll and Robbie Keane for press calls in the early days, but that soon lost its charm. I was earning little or no money at the beginning but Vincent didn’t seem to mind. He moved me into the apartment he was renting in Ringsend while the new penthouse he had just bought from the plans was being built. PR – as I began to find out after a few months in the industry – is full of arse lickers. I can’t be that kind of person, my sexual activity aside. The industry is full of pretty little people who will fuck anything that moves – sports stars, sports journalists, other PR staff. It’s a horny industry. That wasn’t necessarily the part about it that bothered me. I just couldn’t stand the fact that PR is full of self-centred pricks. You are either hanging out with PR reps who are too full of their own importance, or worse, journalists. Journalists are a law unto themselves. I swear most of them think they’re celebrities in their own right. I found it all a little bit mortifying to be honest. Though I have to say, the one good thing about working in media is the fact that the social life can be pretty epic. I didn’t get along with most of my colleagues but that didn’t stop me snorting line after line of coke with them in almost every nightclub Dublin’s city centre has to offer.

  As I watch my captor roll up a used five-euro note to do a line of his own, an idea crosses my mind. I call out to him as loud as I can, mumbling through the duct tape. I manage to lift the chair up and stamp it to the ground. I catch his attention in seconds and flick my head as if calling him over.

  ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you, fag boy?’ he asks, lifting my magazine from his lap to head towards me.

  I eyeball him and mumble further in the hope that he’ll remove the tape. It works. He yanks at it, taking most of the facial hair from my cheeks with it. The loop of duct tape loosens and falls around my neck. It allows me to breathe properly for the first time in over ninety minutes. I pant heavily before speaking.

  ‘That’s cheap-ass bullshit coke you got there, man. Go into the bedroom and bring out the silver box from the bedside drawer. The one on the far side of the bed. I’ve got some proper powder for ya.’

  08:40

  Vincent

  I’m rarely stern with Belinda but, as she places a mug of coffee on my desk, I give her a look that I hope suggests I’m deadly serious.

  ‘Be, I really need these files in alpha order by lunchtime today. It’s imperative. I just haven’t been keeping them in file order these past couple of weeks and I need to use them for reference later today.’

  ‘Sure, that’s no problem,’ she replies as expected. Belinda has always been a very professional secretary. I’ve managed her really well. I’ve nailed that fine line between fear and fawning. It’s called respect. She has a ton of respect for me.

  ‘Don’t worry about the phone. Let everything go to voicemail and we’ll go through any outstanding work between us when I get back, okay?’

  I’m concerned that she’s aware I’m taking a huge sum from Jonathan’s branch. If she gets one more phone call about the withdrawals from any of the other assistant managers she would have every right to be suspicious. It’s important she stays away from the phones. I do worry that Jonathan can reach her through her personal mobile phone. He’s a happily married man, but he’s had a huge crush on Belinda for years. She’s way out of his league, of course, but she seems to enjoy the fact that he drools over her. I hope their flirtatious relationship doesn’t fuck all of this up. Their immature dalliance could be responsible for Ryan having his brains blown out before midday. I emphasise to Belinda what I expect from her over the next few hours before I head out of my office door, leaving the mug of coffee she poured for me cooling on my desk. She knows what I’ve asked her to do is unusual, but she’s in no way suspicious that anything extraordinary is going on. I take a moment to refocus when I’m in the lift. I have to act normal when I see John. He probably knows me better than anybody at ACB. But acting comes easy to me. I thought I was coming out to my parents when I told them I wanted to be an actor, having achieved mediocre Leaving Cert results from Saint Brigid’s National School, but they didn’t quite understand my ambition.

  ‘Acting? That’s not a career,’ me da would tell me over and over again. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of actors are unemployed right now.’

  I knew he was right, but I felt I was so talented that I would ease into the one per cent without much bother at all. Neither of my parents had one iota of a clue that I was gay. Nobody really did. I am as straight a gay guy as you could meet. I always have been. I loved acting as soon as I took my first drama class in school. During the final year of school, I used to stay back two days a week with Mr Hanrahan to perfect my acting techniques. He had praised me for my lead performances in some of the school plays. I even landed a professional role in a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the Pavilion Theatre within months of leaving school. Mr Hanrahan had arranged an audition for me and I nailed it. I had decided I was a method actor and took my role as Nick so seriously that I lived as the character for the full eight weeks of the play’s run. This annoyed my folks somewhat as they now had a stranger living with them, but I didn’t shrug Nick for one whole minute of those two months. The local newspaper’s
review was admittedly average but everyone I knew was largely complimentary of my performance – except me da of course.

  ‘You were decent, but can’t you get a good steady job like your old man?’ he said to me. ‘I can get you a job in our bank.’

  I had zero interest in working in banking for the rest of my life. I was a method actor. The planks of Broadway and the hills of Hollywood were waiting for me.