The Final Game Read online

  DECCIE MUST DIE

  MCM INVESTIGATIONS – BOOK 2

  CAIMH MCDONNELL

  CONTENTS

  Author’s note

  1. Say My Name

  2. The Distressing Things People Do for Distressed Wood

  3. Please Leave a Message

  4. The Sacred Art of Lesbian Juggling

  5. Sacrilicious

  6. Are You Sitting Comfortably?

  7. How to Win Friends and Infuriate People

  8. Fraternising in the Workplace

  9. Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless

  10. Recreational Darts

  11. Baby Names

  12. No

  13. Nobody Reads Any More

  14. Congratulations if You Get the Reference

  15. Clubbed to Death

  16. Oh, Deccie, Oh, Deccie, Oh, Deccie!

  17. Taking Out the Trash

  18. Pandamonium

  19. Damage Assessment

  20. The Traffic is Murder

  21. Smithfield’s Other Horse Market

  22. They’re Not Allowed to Print it if it Isn’t True

  23. Title Fight

  24. Kübler-Ross Remodelled

  25. Trying Times and Victimless Crimes

  26. Meat Meet

  27. One Way or the Other He’s Getting Screwed

  28. Twenty-First-Century Rear Windowing

  29. The View is Nice, the Fall is Not

  30. Three and a Half People

  31. Inevitable Gorillas

  32. It’s the Quiet Ones You Have to Watch

  33. Endangered Species

  34. The KLF

  35. Fallen Heroes

  36. Dented Hopes

  37. Penguins to the Slaughter

  38. It’s a Lot Easier to Get Down than to Get Up

  39. The Golden Boy

  40. Equidistant Triangles, Fucknuggets!

  41. Bus Lane Diplomacy

  42. La Reveal Magnifico (This is a Dan Hanzus Shoutout!)

  43. An Eerie Silence

  44. Surprise!

  45. The Traffic Really is Murder

  46. Told You – It Really is the Quiet Ones You Have to Watch

  47. A Bad Day to Die

  48. Fraternisation with the Criminally Insane

  49. Ah, Might as Well Jump!

  50. Partners in Crime

  51. Dogged Determination

  Epilogue – In Case You Were Wondering

  Free Book

  Also by Caimh McDonnell

  The Stranger Times: C.K. McDonnell

  Eagle-Eyed Legends

  Copyright © 2022 by McFori Ink

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Caimh McDonnell

  Visit my website at www.WhiteHairedirishman.com

  First edition: August 2022

  ISBN: 978-1-912897-38-4

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Hello Dear Reader,

  And thank you, as always, for buying/borrowing/stealing my book. Your continued patronage/appropriating/larceny is much appreciated.

  Previously, I have used these author’s notes to prepare North Americans for the trauma of seeing things spelled correctly, or to explain how a prequel can have a sequel. I’ve possibly even just rambled on about my dogs, which I would do twenty-four-seven, if allowed. This time though, I wish to discuss with you the nature of time and in particular, the effect of its passing on characters.

  You may have read Angels in the Moonlight, the prequel to the Increasingly Inaccurately Titled Dublin Trilogy, or indeed, one of the two sequels (so far) to that prequel. All of which feature a YOUNG Deccie Fadden. I emphasise the word young there. Those books take place in 1999/2000. This book, however, takes place in ‘modern times’, and yes, I made all of us feel horribly old there, but it had to be done. It’s 2022, or later, and we’re all going to have to deal with it. At the time of writing, the dreaded pandemic is in the tricky the-worst-is-over/lull-between-the-worst-bits/pre-zombie stage and Deccie Fadden is a full-grown man. I point that out as, if you the reader, go into this still thinking he’s the little fella standing on a sideline beside Bunny, the opening chapter is transformed from an amusing introduction to a rip-roaring tale of high adventure, to the reason you will be burning me in effigy as a monster.

  Again, he’s a full-grown man. As anyone who has met a man will know, that doesn’t mean he’s matured, but he’s allowed to drink, drive (not at the same time – that’s a no, no, for everybody), join an army, see RoboCop in the cinema and do ‘other things’.

  Consider yourself duly warned.

  1

  SAY MY NAME

  Deccie Fadden stared hard at the ceiling and racked his brain. Yvonne? Yvette? Lynette? No, none of those seemed right. The woman asleep beside him must have a name, and Deccie, as he had solemnly sworn to his dearly departed grandmother, was not the type of man to sleep with a woman without knowing her name. She hadn’t made him swear to that precisely, more that he would stick to a general gentlemanly code of conduct. You know, hold doors open, don’t make lewd remarks, don’t tell tales out of school, don’t get caught in the Tesco car park shagging that strumpet from the deli counter in the back of a Ford Cortina.

  That last one related specifically to Mr Harper from across the road. Deccie’s granny had been great friends with Mrs Harper. Being good Irish Catholics, the Harpers didn’t divorce after the incident; instead, they stayed together and provided an invaluable revenue stream for the Irish crockery-manufacturing industry – every couple of weeks the neighbourhood would listen in as the wronged woman hurled plates at the right man.

  Pam? Was she a Pam? Was anyone called Pam these days? Oh God, now he was losing faith in the theory he’d developed over the last hour that her name contained a Y and an E. He was screwed in every sense of the word.

  In his defence, he’d been drunk. As soon as that justification occurred to him, however, Deccie unhelpfully remembered his grandmother’s face as she did her knitting and listened to Mr Harper shouting that very same excuse while ducking airborne items of crockery. It didn’t make it any less true, though – both Deccie and [insert name here] had been drunk. Very drunk. Free-bar drunk. He’d been invited to one of those celebrity things – the opening of something or other – which had been held in a nightclub-type place. Come to think of it, it might have been the opening of the nightclub. Over the last few months, he’d been to several of these events, and they were beginning to blend into one. He was drinking a fair bit, but not because of an alcohol problem, rather because of a holy-shit-this-is-free problem. He realised that he’d better cop himself on before he drank himself into an early, albeit freely acquired, grave.

  He could remember thinking the girl’s name was quite unusual; not unusual enough to stick in the mind, but unusual enough that you wouldn’t be able to risk a Fiona or a Helen and have any shot at being accidentally right. Hang on, how could he remember thinking that her name was unusual but couldn’t remember what it was? The human mind was an incredible thing, and not in a good way. Deccie’s brain might be exacting its revenge for all the grey matter recently sacrificed at the altar of a complimentary bar.

  His life was changing quickly and in a multitude of ways. This was his first one-night stand. Technically, it wasn’t a o
ne-night stand yet. It might be the start of something more. Maybe he and [insert name here] were destined to be together for ever? Soul mates? Admittedly, the name thing wasn’t the greatest of omens. On second thoughts, while they were “at it” earlier on, she had, ironically, kept asking him to call her all manner of names, most of which he felt very uncomfortable uttering.

  Why did people get so excited at being told they were naughty? In his less than illustrious academic career, Deccie had been sent to the principal’s office countless times, and at no point had it made him horny. As luck would have it, he had been part of one of the first generations of Irish schoolchildren the staff weren’t allowed to slap, no matter how annoying the kids were. He knew that for a fact as Mr Dempsey, his ex-headmaster, had spent a great deal of time wistfully explaining it to him while they waited for Deccie’s grandad to arrive for yet another “little chat”.

  Mr Dempsey and Granda had an understanding that it should be Granda, and him alone, who dealt with Deccie’s run-ins with the authorities. The one time his granny had shown up, she had instigated a one-woman attempt on behalf of legions of Irish schoolchildren to redress the balance in the smacking stakes. Mr Doyle, the bastard of a religion teacher, had dared to suggest that Deccie was going to end up in prison, and Granny had lost it. She had gone for him as if he were on fire and only she could put him out.

  He had wanted to press charges until Dempsey had talked him out of it. Doyle already hated his nickname of Sprinkler, bestowed upon him as a result of his propensity to spit profusely. They could only imagine what his new one would be if it became widely known that a grandmother had bitch-slapped him. Children can be so cruel – especially to those who are cruel to them.

  The thing was, Deccie only ever got into trouble for talking. Teachers give out about kids not listening but, in his experience, they got even more annoyed if you did listen and asked a few questions as a result.

  So no, the odds of this “romantic coming-together” with [insert name here] being the start of a long-term relationship weren’t great.

  Deccie glanced to his left at the woman who was asleep on his arm and drooling on his pillow. As if on cue, she spoke in her sleep.

  “Disneyland.”

  Her breath was of the kind several free cocktails thrown into an empty stomach will leave you with. What grown woman dreamed of Disneyland?

  Another memory from last night popped into Deccie’s head – Bono! Had he really met Bono? Not only that, had he kissed him? Before last night, Deccie, like everyone else in Ireland, had slagged off Bono. Damn bleeding-heart do-gooder. Tax-dodging so-and-so. He didn’t do enough; he did too much. The new music was shite; the old music was shite. The new way they played the old music was shite. Say what you wanted about the fella, he provided an invaluable service in being somebody everybody could hate, even if it was for reasons that were diametrically opposed.

  While the idea of the man was one thing, the reality was something else. The experience was akin to turning around to find the Sydney Opera House standing beside you at the bar – he was an historical landmark, a cultural touchstone. He was one of the most recognisable people on the planet, even if the recognition was often accompanied by a stream of emphatically-delivered expletives. And Deccie had slapped a big kiss on him? He must have imagined that. It must have been a bloke who looked like Bono. Jesus, that was worse. If there was one thing worse than Bono, it was someone trying to be Bono.

  Deccie’s memory moved on to a vague recollection of Bono and a giant gorilla. That couldn’t be right. While these launch events were always trying to outdo each other in the publicity-stunt stakes, you couldn’t have a real gorilla making an appearance. There were rules – actual laws – and there was every chance Bono had campaigned for them to be passed.

  The only reason Deccie hadn’t dismissed out of hand the idea of it having happened was that recently his life had become all kinds of weird. He was now a “celebrity”. People shouted things at him in the street – not always very complimentary things, but still, it beat being ignored. He had been ignored his entire life, and now, suddenly, people were paying attention. Case in point – he was in bed with a girl he was pretty sure was a model and whose name he couldn’t remember.

  If his gran could see him now. Not right now, obviously. In fact, any other time but now. If she were to see him now, she would drag him out of bed and hose him down like a new inmate in a prison movie. There was nothing hypothetical about that scenario, though. She’d done it before – when she’d discovered him intensely perusing the ladies’ underwear section of a mail-order catalogue when he was fourteen.

  He was a grown man now – thirty-three years of age. Same as Jesus when he’d reached his grand finale. Much like Jesus, Deccie had found fame in his thirties, and was dividing opinion in a similar fashion – with some people loving him, others not so much. Deccie had kept that comparison to himself, obviously, as even he knew people would take it the wrong way. He had considered trying to grow a beard, though.

  Deccie looked around the bedroom. The girl’s purse was over on the dressing table. There had to be some ID in it, didn’t there? He wrote off the idea almost immediately. Not being able to remember somebody’s name while you were waking them up to usher them out of your apartment because you had a busy day ahead was bad; them waking up to find you going through their purse was way worse. Judging by her snoring, the girl was a heavy sleeper, but Deccie still wasn’t prepared to take that chance. She might come to suddenly when one of the rides on her imaginary trip to Disneyland became too exciting.

  She spoke again. “That’s not a walrus.”

  Deccie agreed. He was pretty sure they didn’t have walruses at Disneyland.

  A thought struck him. “Hello,” he whispered softly. No reaction. “What is your name?”

  The girl stirred slightly, smacking her dry lips.

  He tried again, leaning in to murmur in her ear. “What is your name?”

  She turned her head and moved her face as if she were definitely about to speak.

  Deccie held his breath.

  “That wasn’t offside, Lou Diamond Phillips.”

  Deccie had no idea what that meant, other than it was entirely useless to him.

  As the dawn light peeked through the curtains, he had a brainwave. The venue would have taken pictures of everybody at the party last night and, by now, those images would be all over their social media accounts. He would check Twitter and Instagram, find a picture of the woman currently in his bed, and that would hopefully give him her name. It made perfect sense and he was rather pleased with himself for coming up with it. Now, where was his phone? He must have left it out in the living room, along with most of his clothes.

  He slid his arm out from under the girl and tried to get out of bed without disturbing her. Despite his best efforts, she turned over in her sleep and said in a loud and clear voice, “Bastard donkey chiropodist.”

  Deccie really, really wanted to know what kind of dream this was. Maybe he would ask [insert name here] when he woke her up with breakfast, and her name.

  He walked towards the bedroom door, stifling a yelp as he skewered his bare foot on what must’ve been a piece of jewellery hastily discarded in the throes of passion. He bit down on his lip and, in an act of true bravery that tragically would go unappreciated, managed not to scream. He limped out the door and closed it behind him.

  The living room was in near-total darkness, thanks to the fancy blackout blinds he’d installed to maximise the effect of the massive TV he’d bought on hire purchase. He might be famous now, but because Oliver Dandridge, his agent, kept turning down contract offers as he thought they could get a better deal, the reality was that Deccie had little money.

  Still, it didn’t matter if everyone kept giving him stuff for free. The swish apartment was free, and it was the fanciest place he’d ever set foot in. Lansdowne Towers – fourteen storeys of luxurious existence. Deccie appeared in the marketing brochure as part o
f the deal. They’d even hired someone to airbrush his image, so he looked less like a tubby chancer who would normally never end up in such opulent surroundings unless he were there to unblock the toilet.

  The only light in the room came from the clock on the oven as it flashed 00:00 because he’d never figured out how to set it. It was also the only use he’d got out of the oven so far.

  Deccie turned and did let out a yelp this time as the outline of an enormous figure reared up in front of him. He flailed about and eventually found the light switch. The downlights illuminated the spectacle of a huge gorilla in the middle of his lounge, wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses and holding a cocktail. It wasn’t real in the sense that it was alive or had been formerly alive, but it was about six feet tall and was also wearing a pair of women’s knickers on its head.

  Had he stolen or won the large not-real gorilla? Were those Bono’s sunglasses? Deccie shook his head. His life was becoming weirder than he ever could have dreamed possible. Speaking of which, he still needed to find out the name of the woman in his bed, and for that, he needed his phone.