ACROSS THE LINE (2007)
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Chapter 1
Diarmuid ‘Dee-Dee’ Dunne was arguably the finest ball-player the city had produced since Jobby Crossan way back in the fifties. But Dee-Dee, no matter what Jobby would tell you, had better hair. Still only 27, he’d already won three GAA All-Star awards, two Eircom League soccer championships with Derry City, and had led a team of juniors to victory in the Irish Cup – becoming the first man ever to score five goals in the final in the process.
He’d also been Northern Ireland Footballer of the Year three years running. And while serious pundits would suggest that this ranks right up there with being Prettiest Drummer in the Orange Parade, there’s no doubt Dee-Dee was the most sought-after centre-forward on the island.
His talents didn’t stop there however. When you got up close you couldn’t help notice that Dee-Dee looked like a Greek god, only with whiter teeth. Tall, broad, dark and, very, very furry, he’d also been blessed with an easy, self-puncturing charm that had every woman he’d ever met flicking her hair back over her ears within 20 seconds of saying hallo to him. But Dee-Dee, God love him, was so oblivious that he thought nothing of smiling at the ugly girls as well.
He was, in the words of his uncle, a “regular fucking Roy of the Rovers”.
Life, however, always gives one back. And Dee-Dee was given a doozy. His uncle Harry. Better known to you, me and the prosecuting authorities as Harry the Hurler.
Harold Hurley, for those who live in Ireland or Britain - or indeed anywhere with semi-decent anti-terrorism legislation - needs little explanation. The former Managing Director of The Boys Inc, in his heyday Harry was reported to be responsible for more bullets in the ear than Foot And Mouth. A burly, balding giant of man, his immense physical presence disguised one of the sharpest minds in the country - a mind you’d never want to underestimate for all its tough-guy diction and flyaway grammar.
Even today, now he’d retired into mostly legitimate business, the eldest Hurley child was still a man whose phone-calls you did not duck. Not even after you’d moved 3,000 miles away to America. Not even when you were putting the pieces of your life together after your marriage had fallen apart. And particularly not when you were his godson.
For all that, Dee-Dee wasn’t going to roll over. “Are you mad, Harry?” he snapped, slightly steeled up by his year’s absence. “You want me to give up the highest-paid player-coaching job in Boston to come back and run Muff United? I don’t mean to sound precious here, but I’m top scorer in the New England Soccer Federation. My picture is on the back of pretty much every sports paper. I’ve got a sponsorship deal worth five hundred thousand dollars a year - that’s over three hundred of your money. And you want me to give it all up to manage a village team? Christ, Harry, I thought Jimmy was the crazy one.”
Jimmy ‘Fidget’ Hurley, as even the most sporadic reader of the press will recall, was Harry’s youngest brother. A card-carrying sociopath, he’d once been described by the Chief Constable as “the loosest cannon in a family of primed and loaded missile launchers”.
“Jimmy’s doing just fine, Dee-Dee,” replied Harry, chuckling down the phone. “I’ll tell him you’re asking for him.
But no. To answer your question, I’m deadly serious. I now control 51 percent of the shares in Muff – and have persuaded the other directors to enter the team in the first All-Ireland Challenge Cup. If we win it, we’d lift half a mill in prize money – plus whatever gate-shares we’d get. And we’d qualify for Europe.”
“And?” asked Dee-Dee, waiting.
“Oh, yes,” laughed Harry, “and I’ve a small bet on – on the side...”
“’Course you have,” sighed Dee-Dee. “Please tell me it’s not first-to-score again?”
“’Fraid so,” said Harry. “Paddy Coyle Bookies in Dublin gave odds of 1,000 to one against me getting the first goal in the final.”
“Only a thousand?” retorted Dee-Dee. “It should have been tens at least. You’re nearly fifty years old, for God’s sake. What happened?”
“Ach,” replied Harry impatiently. “They heard about the last time…”
Dee-Dee laughed in spite of himself. “So how much did you get on?”
Three thousand miles away, Harry shook his head sadly. “Bastard would only take a lousy five grand,” he grunted.
*
Gigi McCormick had walked out on Dee-Dee the day he announced they were leaving Detroit. They’d been married just under a year, and it was the first and only time he’d put his foot down.
Detroit had been her idea. Before they’d even landed in the States, she’d sorted out a physio’s job with Motown Ladies courtesy of a soccer-playing cousin. But after three months, Dee-Dee couldn’t get any real work and was going out of his mind answering phones in a call-centre. So when the job offer came up in Boston, with the guarantee of a post for Gigi with the women’s team, he’d signed up for both of them. When he broke the news, later that evening, however, Gigi lost her famous Spanish temper one last time and flew home to Daddy.
Daddy, in Gigi’s case, was Victor McCormick, one time loyalist posterboy and latterday owner of the Sash & Drum pub in Derry’s Waterside. ‘Switchblade Vic’, as he was known in the media, had been one of the panel who’d negotiated the bilateral truce with Harry the Hurler’s outfit a decade ago. No mean feat given that he’d spent the previous twenty years trying to empty Harry’s brains out of the side of his head.
Like Harry, Vic was one big customer – and possibly even more frightening-looking. An ex-rugby prop, Vic’s nose had been broken more times than a Chinese puzzle. And the overall effect wasn’t helped by the bottle scar on his left cheek, the spider tattoo on his neck and the permanently confused stare from his dim eyes. When God was giving out looks, as the old joke went, Vic was sure he said ‘books’ - and insisted he’d already got one…
Thankfully, Gigi had been genetically protected by her mother Maria, a former Catalan model. Indeed, the only thing suspect she’d inherited from her mother was her short Latin fuse. The rest you couldn’t have argued with – dark brown eyes, olive-skin and black, black flamenco-dancer’s hair. Not forgetting, of course, the lovely, long athletic legs, which the Huns’R’Us website had recently voted the finest in all of Protestant Ulster.
Gigi’s mother had also passed on more than a little of her intelligence to her daughter. Maria had established a very solid property portfolio for Vic, despite his better efforts, and had moderated most of his worst business excesses. Most importantly of all perhaps, she’d taught him that there were much easier ways to turn over a bank than walking in the door with a pistol in your hand. Yes, Maria was nobody’s dope. When she talked, people - even Vic - sat up and listened. And now, she was telling her only daughter to call home her petted lip and get back on the plane to Boston.
The pair were sitting at the big oak table in the kitchen of their Drumalley home, tallying the accounts for the bar. Maria was filling in one book for the taxman, Gigi the other for her father.
“You’ve been home six months, and you’ve only smiled once, ” Maria told her. “And that was when he sent you the birthday card. I am telling you, that unless you fly out there quick, he’s going to walk off with some Miss America guarra, and Victor will have you fixed up here with Johnny No Teeth or some other cabron. And trust me, we’ve enough of them in the family already.”
“It’s not that simple,” replied Gigi, cagily. “Dad might want me to stay a couple more months. He’s a project he needs help with. Totally above board, mind.”
“Go on,” said her mother, suspiciously.
“The new All Ireland Challenge Cup,” explained Gigi. “He wants to enter a team. There’s quite a bit of money for the winner – and a chance of a place in Europe. And…”
“And what?” pressed her mother.
“Harry the Hurler might be putting in a team,” grinned Gigi. “And Dad’s still sore as hell about the last time. There might be something about a side bet as well. I’m not sure.”
“Puto a del orto,” swore Maria angrily. “I should have known. Gigi, do one thing for me now. Please. Go up the stairs now and pack your suitcase. When you’ve done that, there’s five grand in the safe under the utility-room floor. Take it and get out of here. Esta noche. Tonight. Either that, or take out the gun that’s in there and shoot me through the heart with it. Now. Because either way, I’m damned if I’m going to watch you throw your life away for your father. Hijo di puta.”
Gigi bit her lip at her mother’s histrionics. “I didn’t ever see you running away from him,” she grinned.
“True,” nodded Maria, calmer. “But what you’re forgetting, princesa, is that Victor was my Dee-Dee…”