The Going Rate Read Online Free PDF Page A

all right, Memory: the bloodied head, the stone. Sure enough, he saw it was Mick Lally’s outfit – doublin.com . Talk about coincidence.
    He hadn’t spoken to Lally in five years. Mick Lally, the great Bohemian, slagger and friend all through university and beyond, had gone into multimedia. Every time that Fanning had seen mention of Lally’s company, he was reminded of their endless arguments about Fassbinder or Antonioni and Foucault – everything and anything, for God’s sake. It was Lally who had been his partner in the first screenplay he’d ever done, made in pubs and flats, often stoned and more often half-drunk too.
    He turned away. Breen was standing in the window, waving, with that hang-dog look. He made a big issue of powering off his mobile, and winked. Fanning took in the shirt collar opened the regulation two buttons, the straining belt turning down on his hips. As he made his way over to the restaurant door, he tried harder to smile in return.

Chapter 4
    T RAFFIC ON THE N11 WAS SLUGGISH , with a lot o odd, clumsy driving. To Minogue, it seemed as if every driver driving this main road south out of the city was clumsy or distracted today.
    Kilmartin eyed a Porsche passing another car with a few feet only to spare, and then racing toward the next back bumper.
    â€œThat goddamned recession can’t come soon enough,” he said, mildly.
    Red lights dogged them past Foxrock. Things only got worse by Cabinteely, with traffic lights on the blink, and a flustered-looking Guard on point duty directing stop-and-go traffic. Gámóg, Minogue heard his friend whisper almost fondly when they got by at last.
    Kilmartin craned his neck to look up through the steeply raked windshield at the sky over South County Dublin.
    â€œA drop or two on the way,” he said. “A day for the old umbrella.”
    This made no sense to Minogue. All an umbrella would do for a man up on Calary Bog on a day like today would be to pitch him airborne, and to fling him to hell back down to the coast.
    They got a good stretch of open road, and were soon in sight of the roundabout at Shankill. Minogue drove hard through the curve. The Peugeot settled back on itself with ease on the far side.
    â€œA fair bit of go in it,” said Kilmartin. “For such a dainty little car.”
    He tried the radio then, but seemed to have little appetite for figuring out the buttons or the sophisticated display. He turned it off almost after a few moments.
    â€œIt’s always that one on anyway,” he said. “She drives me up the walls with that voice of hers. A real bitch. Like a teacher I had back in the Primary.”
    Minogue eased up at seventy, and listened to the faint whirr of the tires and the wind rushing by. He pretended to check traffic in the mirror so he could steal an occasional glance at his passenger, the new James Aloysious Kilmartin, this familiar stranger with a beard, a suit, and an odd stillness about him. Minogue wanted to believe that any return of Kilmartin’s mocking ways was good news.
    Kilmartin had gone quiet since his suspension back in October. Persuaded to talk about anything in the news, he usually spoke in a tone of gentle contempt. Minogue missed Kilmartin the exultant cynic more than he would ever admit, even to himself.
    Kilmartin had lost weight – maybe too much. Could he have even shrunk a little? He seemed to be using air-quotes a lot, as though nothing was to be taken at face value anymore, and more than a few times, Minogue suspected that Kilmartin had a wandering head.
    There were too many topics of conversation out of the blue. Did Minogue know that Irish sailors had given Columbus the know-how to get across the Atlantic? Had he noticed the word scenario cropping up everywhere? Did he notice that no-one spoke in sentences any more? And what did Minogue know about the Culdees, the old Irish Christians who ignored Rome? Global warming, WiFi networks,