The Glorious Heresies Read Online Free Page B

analysis today.
    Back when Jimmy was in Iron Maiden T-shirts, Tony Cusack had been the useful kind of scamp, eager to prove he could hang around with the big boys by virtue of his keen eye and malleable morals. He’d been Jimmy’s messenger when he was small enough to be fleet, but as he got bigger they’d drink together, or get stoned, and shoot the breeze about easy women and anarchy. When Jimmy was twenty-four, a coagulation of bad luck convinced him to head to London for a while, where he could carry on as before only with a shiny coat of anonymity, and, having fuck all else to do, Cusack had gone with him.
    London had been good to Jimmy. It had given him cause to aim high. London had been good too to Tony, in its own way. He’d met a beour, impregnated her and brought her home with him, instead of staying put where the sun was shining.
    His path had seldom crossed Jimmy’s since. Christmases, here and there, they’d spotted each other in pubs. Jimmy had been known to send over a drink, but he’d taken care not to be too inviting. The charming laziness that had once defined Tony Cusack had morphed into dusty apathy; as a thirtysomething he was clumsy and morose, taxidermy reanimated. It was no secret that Cusack had pissed away what good London had given him. Even while his wife—had he even married her?—had been around, he had been steadily eroding his liver and the goodwill of every vintner in the city.
    Which made him a good man for secrets, for who’d believe him if he talked? Who’d even listen to him?
    “Are you busy?” Jimmy asked, though he’d already anticipated the answer, and had already settled on the bribe.
    Cusack wasn’t busy. He wasn’t a man used to being busy, and took the detour as a short holiday from whatever freeform tedium was routine to him. Jimmy gave him the bones of the brief—frightened woman, dead burglar, no suitable hands to complete the deed—and Cusack flinched, and puffed out his cheeks as if he was considering bolting, but Jimmy was OK with that. Fear was a quality he looked for in part-timers, though it was strange to encourage that attribute in a man he might once have called his friend, back, way back, when Jimmy had neither mother nor need for one.
    When they got to the flat Cusack needed a minute on his haunches with his back turned, but after the rebellion inside him had been quashed, he dutifully found a ratty carpet on one of the upper floors, pulled up as part of the redecoration project, and helped Jimmy roll the dead man like a cigar. The tradesmen had left behind some cleaning tools; Jimmy and Tony scrubbed up as best they could, given the length of time the stranger had had to tattoo the floor. Maureen was right; they’d need to lay a new one. There was more to this job than the lick of a mop.
    “How are you with tiling?” Jimmy asked.
    “I did the bathroom of my own gaff,” said Tony. He’d sobered up, of course. “Floor to ceiling. Put down tiles in the kitchen too, but that was a while ago.”
    “Do a job here for me and I’ll give you a few bob. I don’t want to have to bring anyone else in on this now. What are you at tomorrow?”
    “Nothing.”
    “I’d a feeling you’d say that.”
    In the absence of another vehicle, Jimmy drove his Volvo around to the back gate, at one end of a weathered brick alley garlanded deliberately with creepers and weeds. They flattened the back seat and lay the carpet cigar on a diagonal line: what once had been a breathing, thinking head to the back of the passenger seat, what once had been trespassing feet to the opposite corner. They arranged empty paint cans and a ladder on one side, and on the other the double-bagged rags and brushes they’d used to clean up the blood.
    Jimmy handed Tony a set of keys and notes enough to buy tiles and bleach.
    “You’ve a car?”
    “I do,” said Tony.
    “Go with quarry tiles.” And then, because custom suggested, he said, “What have you been up to anyway, Cusack?