Seven in the morning. They always come at seven. It was always a raid or an ambush. Isn’t that what the papers call it? “The forty two year old man was arrested in an early morning raid by Gardai.”
He looked at the bedside clock. Its red numerals boring out at him like the angry eyes of Beelzebub.
They’ll be here in less than two hours, they taunted. Two hours before you go to the big house.
They always come at seven. Or sometimes half six. Wasn’t there some T.D. a while back arrested over water charges or something? He was a real rebel. Maybe that’s why they came the half hour earlier. They were afraid he’d be ahead of the game. No, there was no conning these buckos. Seven o’ clock and it was curtains.
He looked at his own curtains. The spring light was starting to break through. The Sun wasn’t up but there was a lightness. Wasn’t it funny how Winter and Spring changed hands so quickly? Like a relay team. His race would be run soon he thought, turning over to his other side. Frowning, as if the turn would make everything go away, and this side of the bed, this cooler side would be free from all worry and angst. It didn’t work that way though. Soon it would be seven.
His musings were broken by a robin’s song. Jesus, he’d never get back to sleep now! Any chance of a respite forever lost. By the time he nodded off, which would take a good half hour given the current stresses racing around his head, and them calling at seven, (or half six if they thought he was as savvy as that minister, was he a minster or a T.D? What matter…) They were coming and that robin was going billyo! Sure he wouldn’t be able to answer their questions now would he?
Street lights someone had said. Was it one of the neighbours? Oh don’t mention the neighbours. But he was sure Mrs. Madigan in number forty seven had said the birds are fooled these days by the new L.E.D lights into thinking it was morning and it still the middle of the night. The corporation had a lot to answer for. The godforsaken bird singing at this hour.
Yet… maybe he would be a friend at his cell window? A daily visitor to help him wade through the years of solitude. Burt Lancaster would have nothing on him.
And as for Mrs. Madigan and the neighbours. ‘God save us,’ he groaned.
Ten to six. And them here at seven or six thirty if….
His nose was blocked. The stuffy room, clogging up his airways. Did they still have the open bars on the cell windows? He wondered. Good for the airways but shocking cold in February he imagined. Handy for the robin dropping by, he argued with himself, nodding in agreement as he stared at the ceiling.
Even in this light he noticed how it could do with a lick of paint. Would it be better to get it done now or when he got out? Depends on what the judge thinks. But it really is starting to chip. He would call that painter from the pub tomorrow.
You were allowed one call weren’t you? Or was that just what they said in the movies? And more to the point when did we start calling them movies instead of films? The Americans had a lot to answer for. He wondered was there many Americans working in the corporation?
Folding his arms, his face wincing, and that spring light that brought hope, made him think was it really as bad as he was making out?
Not trying to shy away from his responsibility, or the crime committed, Oh No. For God knows it was a crime or...well…was it really?
Some would say it was. But would level headed people, people with a strong moral compass consider it the type of crime where they came for you?
Granted they always came at seven or half six if you were a real villain, but could he consider himself to be categorised so?
In his mind, he imagined himself as a defence lawyer now. Oh yes! Lapels were being held onto, by big confident hands, displaying a broad chest to a jury of his peers captivated by every word he said. His deep voice bellowing out his argument of innocence:
“They stole into this mans house, like a band of grim reapers! So early was the hour to take this man into captivity, for a crime so meaningless and petty, that you would have to determine these vultures as criminals themselves! Is six fifteen in the morning any time to take a man from his bed, so evil is his crime? Be he guilty or not?”
It had started to rain. The leaking gutter tapped drops onto the windowsill below. Torturous at first, but turning melodic, almost hypnotising, causing his eyes to droop again. Drip…drip…falling….
His arm, lying outwards from under the covers, resembled a diving board in a swimming pool. Equally as wet, for the dog had positioned itself beside the bed, and due to the late hour had started to lick his hand in search of sustenance. Sustenance that had not been provided in the form of a breakfast. His damp fingers started to trigger him to life like a recalibrated current of electricity. The wave travelling to his brain and in the resulting realisation of where he was, his eyes shot open to see the devil’s clock radio telling him it was eight twenty three!
He leaped from the bed, almost pulling the curtains from their hooks, and the window pole from the wall. What would the army of reporters and the Garda armed response unit think of him standing there with just a pair of striped pyjama bottoms, bought in Guineys on Talbot Street, just two Januarys ago and not a screed of clothing on his torso. Sure it was enough to have him taken away on this criminality alone!
But no. There was no one. No reporters. No guards from the response unit, emergency or otherwise.
It was nearing the hour and a half mark now. They wouldn’t be coming.
That ship had sailed and if they did it wouldn’t be a raid. It would be a slap on the wrist from a detective at lunchtime. The seven o’clock brigade would never show and blow their cover ( or their reputation) at that hour.
It was an anti-climax really.
Bleak.
There was nothing to see, and the neighbours houses were all as they should be. The wind was the only distraction now, even that was a half hearted effort as some garden trees swayed slowly, not caring if they were to stop or not. All in all, it was a mundane Sunday morning.
What he had done had been forgotten. Or had even gone unnoticed it seemed. For life was now carrying on as normal.
A swoop. Now that’s the real word he was looking for!
“The guards swooped in to the forty two year old man’s house in the early hours of Sunday morning…”
Yes! That’s what they would do. Swoop in.
He lay back in bed and lit a cigarette. It helped him to relax. Yet there was still some anxiety curdling around his stomach, like a butterfly on speed. These fellas could swoop at any time tomorrow, that was the problem.
Seven o’clock was when they came, for the element of surprise or half past six if they thought you were wily enough. There was a minister once, or was he a T.D?.........