Lock Man pressed his fingernail deep into his thumb. He stood in front of the fireplace, grimacing at the sight of it. The white marble monstrosity jutted out from the chimney and invaded the sitting room. Tina had insisted on it.
He placed his beer on the gleaming mantelpiece, in between the neat line of four family photographs, equally spaced apart and each in matching Waterford glass frames. They sparkled as a slate of sunlight cut across them. Lock Man glanced at the images to his right: Las Vegas, Florida, Torremolinos.
He touched the final picture: his daughter, Shania, at a gymnastics competition, beaming at the camera.
He ran his finger along the top of the mantelpiece. Not a speck of dust. The noise from the hoover upstairs moved across the floor: from the bedrooms towards the landing. Tina had reached the stairs. She was going over the cream carpet, making her way methodically down to the porch.
Lock Man shifted his feet in his slippers and looked at his watch. Slammer should have called round by now.
Better not have been some cock-up. I’ll fucking take a pliers to someone if there was.
He turned around and looked past the red leather sofas at the dining-room table. His nerves were all jangled and the whole place was pricking at him. Tina had the bottle of wine in its usual place, in the exact middle of the mahogany table, on top of a silver coaster. She insisted on having a bottle of wine there all the time. Not for actually drinking. No. It fitted in with the area, she said. Which she said was Terenure. But it wasn’t. It was Walkinstown. It said it clearly on the map. No, it was Terenure, she said. When he showed her it was fucking Walkinstown, she folded and contorted the map into all sorts of shapes to disprove him.
He turned back around and reached for his beer. The fifty-inch television, bolted to the wall, was his sole stamp on the room – in the whole fucking house, the more he thought about it. She said it was too big. Vulgar, she said. Didn’t stop her from watching all her fucking soaps though, he thought. He could see the red light on the box, glaring at him as it recorded.
Where the fuck is Slammer? What the fuck is going on?
He flexed his arms as the sweat massed. He reached for the glass and emptied it.
Tina and the hoover were getting closer. He could hear his wife humming each time she turned it off for a second as she pulled it down the stairs. He felt like grabbing the hoover and fucking it out the door.
He walked through the ‘music room’ as Tina called it, complete with a piano that no one played, into the sparkling kitchen to grab another beer. The hoover erupted in the front room. He could see his wife’s eyes surveying the carpet, brandishing the hose of the hoover like a half-cocked shotgun. Adjusting the power level, she began the swoop.
Lock Man leaned back against the island, which was the size of a giant concrete slab, and pressed the cold bottle against his forehead and the back of his neck.
Slammer was never late. If it wasn’t safe for him to come he’d have some kid drop by or something. Slammer knew no mobiles on a day like this, not until they knew it all went to plan. He felt in his bones it hadn’t. He gulped, and grimaced as the hoover closed in on the music room. He was gearing up to let rip at Tina. He couldn’t fucking think with the racket. But he stopped himself, given the row after lunch, when she did round two of cleaning. He’d told her she was a fucking cleaning freak, spending more time with that fucking hoover than at her own tanning shops. He’d told her she was ‘obsessed with bugs’.
That was where he’d made the mistake.
‘Yer the one who does be obsessed with bugs,’ she said. ‘How many sweeps have ya done, guys trampling all over the place trying to find them? Ya won’t allow any cleaners in here cos ya think they’ll plant bugs for the garda.’
She was right there. He did. He looked at his watch again: 8.30 p.m.
He turned on the radio.
The presenter’s sombre tone sent a bolt up through him. ‘Turn off that fucking hoover!’ he roared in at his wife, who looked up at him, her orange face wrinkled with annoyance.
‘A shooting incident in Dublin . . .’
He pointed at the hoover. ‘Off.’
The hoover whimpered to silence.
‘We are getting unconfirmed reports of multiple injuries on MacBride Road. A massive operation is underway. Gardaí are not commenting at the moment.’
Lock Man grabbed the bottle and fucked it against the wall.