MORNING SERIAL
“NEVER f***ing heard of him, mate, but I guarantee he’s f***ing Mafia if he’s out here.”
He was serving someone else now, and trying to keep his voice down through two yards of blasting music.
“I hear the Russians bring their own girls over with them,” I said. “Seems an odd business decision when there are so many already out here.”
The connection between us changed at that moment. He sighed and his shoulders broadened and he finished up serving his customer and sidled toward me.
“I get it,” he said. “You’re looking for someone. A relative? Maybe even your f***ing daughter? Well, let me tell you something for no charge: I wish you all the luck in the world, but you need to shut the f*** up or get out of my pub.”
He was close to me, leaning across my pint, close enough to see the reds of his eyes and smell the smoke on his breath, and his eyes were a strange mixture of soft and hard.
“You’ve got me wrong there,” I said. “But consider the matter closed.”
“Good,” he said, and straightened up and the mood lifted. “I’ll tell you one thing though, before we do move on and forget you ever asked: Furkan Balaban won’t have any answers for you if it’s girls you’re looking for; I mean I’ve no doubt he can introduce you to some very nice ladies because he moves in those kind of circles, but he’s not the guy you think he is if you’re after him for all that shite.”
I looked the barman up and down: his green tied shorts, his white T-shirt with faded Pogues album cover pulled taut over his beer belly – he was making clear that whatever circles Furkan mixed in they were not his circles. But an Irish barman in his fifties in Ayia Napa knows everyone twice.
“You staying in Napa?” he went on.
“Protaras,” I said.
“At least you’ll get some sleep,” he laughed.
“I need to eat,” I said and he pointed readily with a sausage of a forefinger to a bar across the street.
> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW