“I’m not going with you!” shouted Ignac, looking young and sounding terrified as Smoot disappeared back into the kitchen behind him. His father just laughed and reached one arm out, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and slapping him hard across the face, knocking him off his feet, before picking him back up and slapping him again.
“You’ll do what I tell you,” he said, dragging the boy through the living area, and when Bastiaan tried to pull him away, he simply swatted him away with his free hand. In the corner of the room I saw a hurley stick, a red and white sticker affixed to it showing two towers and a ship sailing between them, an unexpected reminder of home that Smoot must have brought with him when he left Ireland. I grabbed it and ran for Damir now, holding the hurley in a lock position, and as he turned to me, his teeth were bared like an animal and he pushed his son to the ground. “Come on then,” he said, beckoning me forward. “Hit me with it if you dare.”
I raised it, doing my best to appear threatening as I struck an ineffective blow across his arm, but he lunged at me, pushing me to the floor and grabbing the stick, snapping it easily across his knee and tossing it across the room. For the first time, I began to panic that he would take out his anger not just on Ignac but on the rest of us too. Even though he was outnumbered, he was so big that I wasn’t convinced we could fight him off. But I could not allow Ignac to be taken either. As he turned around, Bastiaan was standing before him, his hands clenched into fists.
“Don’t,” I cried, for as strong as Bastiaan was I did not rate his chances against this giant. The man barely hesitated, rushing at him with such force that Bastiaan toppled backward and when Damir kicked him on the ground I could hear what was obviously the sound of ribs cracking. I called out his name, but before he could answer Damir had dragged him to his feet and thrown him back down the stairs toward the bar.
“Enough!” he cried, when he turned around. “Ignac, you’re coming with me. Do you understand?”
The boy looked across at me but nodded sadly. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come. Just don’t hurt anyone else.”
Damir walked toward me and looked down to where I lay on the floor. “That’s the end of this,” he said quietly. “If you come near my boy again, I will cut your head off and throw it in the canal, do you understand me?”
I swallowed, too frightened to say anything, but the way in which his expression suddenly changed baffled me. The anger was gone, as was his threat, replaced by pain and disbelief. I stared at him and then toward Ignac, who was holding both hands across his face in fear. Damir reached his arms around his body, trying to grab at something and then his legs went from under him as he slipped, trying to catch hold of the living room table but instead falling to the floor next to me, groaning. I staggered away, crawled to my feet, and looked at him. He was lying facedown with a knife in his back. When I turned to my right, I saw Smoot standing over him.
“Go,” he said calmly.
“Jack!” I cried. “What have you done?”
“Go, the pair of you. Get out of here.”
I made my way toward the door and looked down the staircase toward Bastiaan, who was struggling to his feet and rubbing the back of his head. Ignac reached down and looked at his father’s face. The man’s eyes were wide open and staring. One firm stab had been all it took; he was dead.
“I couldn’t let it happen again,” said Smoot quietly, and I turned to him in confusion.
“Let what happen again?” I asked. “Jesus Christ, you killed him. What will we do?”
Smoot looked around and, to my astonishment, seemed to be perfectly calm. He was even smiling. “I know exactly what to do,” he said. “And I don’t need any of you here to do it. Just go, all right? Here’s the keys of the bar. Lock the door behind you and throw the keys back through the letter box.”
“We can’t just—”
“Go!” he roared, turning on me, spittle flying from his lips. “I know what I’m doing.”
I could think of no alternative and so I nodded and took Ignac by the arm and led him downstairs. Bastiaan was sitting on a chair, wheezing.
“What happened?” he asked me. “What’s going on up there?”
“I’ll tell you afterward,” I said. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”
“But—”
“Now,” insisted Ignac, turning to him and helping to lift him. “If we don’t leave here now, we never will.”
And so we left. We went out on the street and did as Jack Smoot had instructed us, locking the door behind us and throwing the keys back inside. We were home within twenty minutes and sat up half the night, torn between guilt, hysteria and confusion. When Bastiaan and Ignac had gone to bed, I found myself unable to sleep and so I made my way back across the river and bridges and toward the canal, where I watched as a car pulled up outside MacIntyre’s, a rental car from the ads on its side, and in the moonlight I watched a dark-cloaked figure stepping out of it and opening the boot before knocking three times on the bar door. When it opened, Smoot gestured the person inside and, a few minutes later, they reappeared on the street carrying what seemed to be a heavy rolled-up carpet obviously containing the body of Ignac’s father for they struggled to hold him. They threw it in the boot before slamming it shut and both climbed into the front seats.
Before they drove away, however, the moonlight caught the face of the driver. It was too quick for me to be absolutely certain, but in that moment I was certain that Smoot’s accomplice in the disposal of the body was a woman.
1987 Patient 741
Patient 497