Falling Glass Read online

  Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied philosophy at Oxford University and then moved to New York City in the early 1990s where he found work as a security guard, door-to-door salesman, construction worker, barman, book-store clerk and librarian. In 2000 he moved to Denver, Colorado where he became a high school English teacher and began writing fiction. His first full-length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the Steel Dagger Award. Serpent’s Tail also publishes the second and third parts of the Dead Trilogy: The Dead Yard and The Bloomsday Dead as well as Hidden River. His last novel, Fifty Grand won the 2010 Spinetingler Award for best novel. In 2009 Adrian and his family moved to Melbourne, Australia.

  Dead I Well May Be

  “A darkly thrilling tale of the New York streets with all the hard-boiled charm of Chandler and the down and dirty authenticity of closing time… Evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch” Guardian

  “The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller – betrayal, money and murder – but seen through here with a panache and political awareness that gives Dead I Well May Be a keen edge over its rivals” Big Issue

  “Adrian McKinty’s main skill is in cleverly managing to evoke someone rising through the ranks and wreaking bloody revenge while making it all seem like an event that could happen to any decent, hardworking Irish chap. A dark, lyrical and gripping voice that will go far” The List

  “Adrian McKinty is a big new talent – for storytelling, for dialogue and for creating believable characters… Dead I Well May Be is a riveting story of revenge and marks the arrival of a distinctive fresh voice” Sunday Telegraph

  “A pacy, assured and thoroughly engaging debut…this is a hard-boiled crime story written by a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips” Sunday Independent “Careens boisterously from Belfast to the Bronx…McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blurs the line between genre and mainstream. Top-drawer” Kirkus Reviews

  “McKinty’s Michael Forsythe is a crook, a deviant, a lover, a fighter, and a thinker. His Irish-tough language of isolation and longing makes us love and trust him despite his oh-so-great and violent flaws. When you finish this book you just might wish you’d lived the life in its pages, and thought its thoughts, both horrible and sublime” Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead

  “If Frank McCourt had gone into the leg-breaking business instead of school teaching, he might’ve written a book like Dead I Well May Be. Adrian McKinty’s novel is a rollicking, raw, and unsavoury delight – down and dirty but full of love for words. This is hard-boiled crime fiction with a poet’s touch” Peter Blauner, author of The Last Good Day and The Intruder

  “McKinty has deftly created a literate, funny and cynical antihero who takes his revenge in bloody and violent twists but at the same time, methodically listens to Tolstoy on tape while on stakeouts. He rounds out the book with a number of incredible fever-dream sequences and then springs an ending that leaves readers shaking their head in satisfied amazement” San Francisco Chronicle

  The Dead Yard

  “Adrian McKinty has once again harnessed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge a sequel to his acclaimed Dead I Well May Be” The Irish Post

  “McKinty’s literate, expertly crafted third crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation’s leading talents…McKinty possesses a talent for pace and plot structure that belies his years. Dennis Lehane fans will definitely be pleased” Publishers Weekly

  “The Dead Yard is a much-anticipated sequel to Dead I Well May Be and every bit as good. McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seamless. He also writes with a wonderful (and wonderfully humorous) flair for language, raising his work above most crime-genre offerings and bumping right up against literature” San Francisco Chronicle

  “Expat Irishman Adrian McKinty has just put out his fourth terrific book…and he keeps getting better. He melds the snap and crackle of the old Mickey Spillane tales with the literary skills of Raymond Chandler and sets it all down in his own artful way. This is a writer going places. Hop aboard” Rocky Mountain News

  The Bloomsday Dead

  “Those who know McKinty will automatically tighten their seatbelts. To newcomers I say: buckle up and get set for a bumpy ride through a very harsh landscape indeed. His antihero Michael Forsythe is as wary, cunning and ruthless as a sewer rat…His journey in some ways parallels that of James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom on one day in Dublin, but – trust me – it’s a lot more violent and a great deal more exciting” Matthew Lewin, Guardian

  “A pacey, violent caper…As Forsythe hurtles around the city, McKinty vividly portrays its sleazy, still-menacing underbelly” John Dugdale, Sunday Times

  “Thoroughly enjoyable…[McKinty] maintains the bloody action all the way from Lima to Larne with panache and economy. His hero, the ‘un-f***ing-killable’ Michael Forsythe, is a wonderful creation” Hugh Bonar, Irish Mail on Sunday

  “Packed with sharp dialogue and unremitting action” Marcel Berlins, The Times

  “Compelling thrillers written in a hard-bitten, muscular style, the novels are given an unconventional twist by virtue of Forsythe’s unusually perceptive insights…a fascinating blend of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne and Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley…McKinty is a rare writer” Sunday Business Post

  “A tangled and bloody odyssey through Dublin and Belfast…[a] well-paced, edgy thriller” Terence Killeen, Irish Times

  “A gut-punching gangster story…this illegitimate spawn of a book, with Tony Soprano morality and James Joyce literary weight, ends the Michael Forsythe trilogy” Gerard Brennan, Belfast Newsletter

  Hidden River

  “McKinty is a cross between Mickey Spillane and Damon Runyon – the toughest, the best. Beware of McKinty” Frank McCourt

  “A roller-coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds… Once you step into Hidden River, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty’s talent will swiftly drag you away. Let’s hope this author does not slow down anytime soon” Irish Examiner

  “[A] terrific read…this is a strong, non-stop story, with attractive characters and fine writing” Morning Star

  “This is genuinely hard to put down” Buzz

  “Fast-paced thriller…McKinty’s short, sharp delivery manages to make Hidden River an engaging read” Big Issue

  “A dark, lyrical and gripping voice that will go far” The List

  “An outstanding and complex crime novel that should appeal to fans of hard-boiled Celtic scribes such as Ken Bruen and Ian Rankin…This is not only an expertly crafted suspense novel but also a revealing study of addiction” Publishers Weekly

  Falling Glass

  Adrian McKinty

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  www.serpentstail.com

  This eBook edition published in 2011

  Copyright © 2011 Adrian Mckinty

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real

  persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced,

  transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in

  any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as

  allowed under the terms and condition
s under which it was purchased or as

  strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised

  distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s

  and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN 978 1 84668 322 2

  It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;

  Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.

  The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,

  But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.

  Louis MacNeice, “Bagpipe Music” (1937)

  prologue

  on 238th street

  “MY POINT, FRIEND, IS THAT THIS IS NOT AN AFFECTIONATE homage. This is not an interior critique. This is not Jay-Z using, what I advisedly call, the N-word. This is a collection of clichés that actually undermines what it is supposed to be celebrating. This whole ethos is a paradigm in need of shifting. And the fact that it is generated by people, no offence, with only a tangential connection to the ur-source of that culture makes it all the more embarrassing.”

  The barman nodded. “So do you want another pint then? One without a shamrock on the head?”

  Killian sighed. “It’s not even about the shamrock is it? It’s the entire ‘vast moth-eaten musical brocade’. The whole shebang. This entire scene, brother, is, at best, a pastiche. But while we’re on the subject of the shamrock, what’s with the four leaves? Nothing could be simpler to remember. The Celts are polytheistic, they have many gods, Saint Patrick wants them to worship one god so he employs the shamrock to represent the Trinity: God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Trinity. Three leaves. A four-leaf shamrock isn’t a shamrock, it’s a four-leaf clover. Do you see? I mean, at the bare minimum we should both be able to agree on that?”

  The bar man – bar boy really – nodded more firmly this time. “I’ll get you another pint, without the shamrock. I didn’t know you was from the old country itself so to speak.”

  “Thank you,” Killian said.

  “Although,” the kid added, with a twinkle in his eye which Killian might have caught if he had been paying attention, “You’ve got to give him credit for the snakes.”

  “Who?”

  “Saint Patrick.”

  “You’re Irish?” a voice asked from behind him, in the blind spot – a dangerous place for anyone to be. Killian flinched and turned, his hand reaching inside his pocket for a ghost piece.

  A big guy in a Rangers shirt. NY Rangers that is. Not Glasgow. Different thing all together.

  “Yes,” Killian said.

  “Your accent’s not Irish though is it?” the man said sceptically. His voice had a hint of crazy and his eyebrows were madder than Freddie Jones’s in David Lynch’s Dune.

  “I’m from Belfast,” Killian said slowly.

  The man nodded slowly. “Oh, I see, so not Ireland, Ireland. Have you ever been to Dublin? That’s a real Irish city.”

  Killian’s fresh pint of the black stuff appeared on the bar in front of him a mere forty-five seconds after he’d been promised it – not a great sign. The barman however must have had concentration or even psychiatric problems because there on the top was another four-leaf clover masquerading as a shamrock.

  Killian knew it was time to hit the exit. But before he did: “Dublin’s a nice place but you have to remember that it was a Norse settlement for three centuries before it became an English town for seven centuries more. It’s been an Irish city for ninety years. Are you familiar with the Aboriginal concept of The Dreaming?”

  “The Aboriginal what of the what now?”

  “The Aboriginals believe that we live two lives. A life here on Earth in what we call the real world and a life in The Dreaming which is really the real world, where everything has a purpose, where we are more than thinking reeds, are part of some great scheme of things. And in The Dreaming certain places are special, certain landscapes, certain settlements. Belfast is one of those places. The neolithic people thought so. To them it was a holy site. Pristine birch woods in a river valley only just freed from a retreating ice sheet a mile thick. The Celts weren’t interested in Dublin – it lacked a significance in their cosmology which is why they let the Norwegians have it. Belfast lies at the confluence of three holy rivers. In Irish it means Mouth of the Farset, one of those sacred streams. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  The man in the Rangers shirt nodded sagely, “So, you’re Australian then?” he asked.

  Killian sighed inwardly. Some instinct had told him that this was going to be a mistake. Even before the plane had entered the airspace of Newfoundland he’d begun to have doubts. You can’t go home again and the New York of crack wars, quadruple-digit homicide rates, David Dinkins, Mike Forysthe and 50,000 illegal Micks was long, long gone.

  He abandoned the pub, the pint and the man and hoofed it downhill to the subway stop on 242nd Street.

  He found a Daily News that had a picture of Dermaid McCann, Gerry Adams and Peter Robinson having a pint with the President.

  They were drinking Guinness.

  Obama’s grin had Get me the hell out of here written all over it.

  Killian yawned. He was dog-tired and in the morning he had a job to do in Boston that could well be the death of him.

  The train finally came after an epic wait.

  It was now after midnight.

  “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day,” the driver said on the intercom.

  “Aye, I suppose we’ll see about that,” Killian muttered to himself.

  Chapter 1

  go down fighting

  CURSING THE DOG’S NAME, SHE TOOK THE GUN BARREL FROM HER mouth and set the 9-millimetre on the kitchen table.

  The metal had felt good. Like it belonged there. A cold, perfect piece of engineering.

  She sat on her trembling right hand and stared at the weapon.

  Ice crystals were melting on the Heckler and Koch’s polymer grip and running over the magazine as it lay on the yellow and green Formica, waiting.

  Seconds ticked past in long increments of raw time.

  She found herself fixating on the disarmed hammer safety and trigger lock, imagining the terrible power of the chambered round. In an instant it could all be at an end. Click. A chemical reaction. An expanding piece of molten lead. Big Dave would kick in the door and take out her kids, the peelers would arrive from Coleraine and find her note, Tom or Richard’s lawyer would wake him with the good news, hacks would drive up from Belfast and someone would put that stock photograph of her with the blonde hair on page one of the bloody Sunday World.

  But she’d be out of it.

  To be dead in the black earth, to be alive only in yesterdays…

  The P30 had eight in the magazine, one in the breech – that was the one she could ride into nothingness.

  Thresher barked again. If it had still been raining, of course, she wouldn’t have heard him at all. Tonight she might really have done it. Wouldn’t have thought so long and hard and let the barrel slide off her tongue.

  But not now, now she was on alert in case this really was something. Someone.

  She killed the lights, picked up the gun and went to the door.

  She cracked it open and listened.

  Surf in the distance, cars on the road, a football match on a distant radio.

  “Thresher?” she whispered but he was quiet now. “Thresher, where are ya, ya big eejit?”

  She breathed the night air. It was damp, cold. She looked up. The clouds had blown through and the star-field was rich. The Milky Way, the crescent moon, Orion.

  She knew about the stars. She’d taken astronomy at Queen’s for a year before dropping out. Of course none of Richard’s lawyers ever mentioned that in their depositions. They preferred to paint her as the gold-digger, the cultchie, the junkie…


  Her nails were digging into her palm. She unclenched her fist.

  She closed the caravan door and went inside. Sat back down at the kitchen table. The P30 was still in her hand. A microsecond. That’s all it would take.

  She reconsidered for one beat, two…

  She shook her head. “No,” she said aloud. She safetied the weapon, put it in a plastic bag in the freezer, closed the fridge door.

  Ended her conversation with death.

  She walked the length of the caravan to check on the girls.

  The nightlight was casting a pink glow over the buckled aluminum walls. Sue’s blanket had fallen to the floor. She picked it up, replaced it. Claire was sleeping like a rabbit, curled on all fours, hunched. The barking dog hadn’t woken either of them.

  Rachel stared at them, trying to feel love rather than resentment.

  But she was so damn tired. Tired of lying, hiding, running.

  “Good night,” she whispered and went back to the front door.

  She opened it and took a last look out. “Go ahead, Richard. Send your men, I don’t think I even care anymore,” she whispered sadly.

  She locked the door and put the chain across.

  She tiptoed to her room – the only real bedroom in the caravan – and sat on the fold-out bed. The blankets hadn’t been tossed in a week. They gave off an odour.

  She reached for her fags, opened the box, discovered that it was empty.

  Rain began to fall on the metal roof.

  Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding…

  “Christ,” she muttered.

  Surely the girls would be better off without her. Rachel looked about her – this, this was madness.

  She fished in the ashtray and found a ciggy with an inch left in it.

  She flipped Big Dave’s Zippo. The tobacco tasted of sand. She blew smoke at a midge and lay back on the sheets.

  The roof dissolved.

  Pine trees. Constellations. An arrow of cloud intersecting with the moon. There were poppies along the granite wall and a wind bringing the smell of fennel, saffron and boggy emptiness.