I’m excited to be kick of the blog tour for Black Water by Cormac O’Keeffe today.
Black Water will be published on the 19th of April 2018 in ebook and paperback but you can pre-order your copy here.
I have an exclusive extract to share with you but first here is a little bit about the book.
Book Blurb:
I killed the boy . . .
Jig loves football and his dog, hates school, misses his dead granda and knows to lie low when his ma’s blitzed on the vodka.
He’s just an ordinary boy on the brutal streets alongside Dublin’s Grand Canal. Streets that are ruled by Ghost and his crew. And now Ghost inked, vicious, unprincipled has a job for Jig.
A job that no one can afford to go wrong not the gangs, the police, the locals, and least of all not Jig.
Extract:
PROLOGUE
I’ve killed the boy.
Shay ground his teeth at the realisation.
The side of his head throbbed from the impact of the explosion and, with his nose split and swollen, he struggled to breathe as he ran.
Orange flames danced against a canvas of black. On the other side of the perimeter wall, he heard the canal waters hiss as crack- ling debris hailed down.
If the gang was inside the building they were blown to pieces, Jig with them.
A sheet of corrugated roofing slammed down in front of him, searing his shin. He winced, but forced himself on.
So, this is how it fucking ends: risking my life searching through rubble for bits of the boy. After everything I’ve sacrificed.
Somewhere behind, the detective shouted at him to come back. But, ahead, Shay thought he could make out screams. Distant sirens echoed along the warren of Dublin’s streets.
The remainder of the warehouse heaved and groaned. He was out of time.
Fuck it, I’ve nothing to lose.
He stumbled forward, his face bubbling with the heat. His ankle twisted over something loose on the ground, tipping him off balance. Spitting blood from his lips, he looked down and followed the forks of yellow light.
Something small was smouldering. It looked like a runner.
A child’s runner.
1:
Jig liked the word SNAP. The sound the wipers made when he
ripped them off the car. And when he wrote the letters on the page, his tongue curled against his lips.
He took the path in jumps, inches from the canal’s black waters. But when he saw the swans, he stopped. They were clustered here and there, asleep, their long necks curled into their backs, their heads buried under layers of thick white feathers. Like little soft icebergs, lit up by streaks of yellow from overhead lights and the silver haze of the moon.
He had slipped out of his gaff no bother. When the bottle fell from his ma’s bed onto the floor, and the snorting started, that was the green light. He had kept on his tracksuit and runners so he was ready to go. He remembered to put on his gloves before taking the wipers and the note out from under his Man U pillow.
The canal was still. A gust of wind wrapped around Jig’s face, carrying a waft of roasted sweetness from the brewery. He checked the time on his phone: 2 a.m.
He ran, the wipers in his gloved hands and the note in his pocket.
He had a job to do for Ghost.
Mary heard a noise at the front door, then footsteps running off,
light, like that of a child. She swung her arm to turn on the bedside
lamp and knocked something over. Easing herself out, she placed
the double picture frame back up, her eyes drawn towards the old photograph on the right. A fine big man, chest puffed out, a mop of black hair brushed to the side, eyes looking into the distance. It was her favourite of James.
She couldn’t help but glance at the photo next to it, taken years ago. Leo leaning forward, grabbing a friend’s head at his nine- teenth birthday party, beaming a wide and wet smile.
Frozen images melted in her mind. James, sitting at the front window, watching and waiting for Leo to come home. James, on his deathbed in hospital, refusing to let the cancer hollow him out without seeing his son one last time. And Leo, when he did visit that time and looked for ten thousand euro.
‘Da, I need it, Da. They have a bullet for me . . .’
But James was lost in a nightmare world of pain and sweeping tides of morphine. Mary had roared at Leo to get out. It was the last time she heard from him. But not the last time she heard from the lowlifes who wanted their ten thousand euro.
She put on her slippers and reached for the dressing gown. At the tiny landing, she turned on the light for the bottom of the stairs and peered down. There were long black rods or something inside the door.
Instinctively she went to grab the railing, but stopped, remembering the top fitting had come out completely from the crumbling wall. She pressed her two hands against the walls either side and stepped down.
The black things were wipers. Her heart jumped.
Oh God, they must be from the car.
As she neared, she could see a piece of paper on the ground. A voice inside told her not to, but she picked it up, her hands shaking. She dragged a short breath.
SNAP. TALK TO COPS AGAIN UR NEK WIL B NXT. Blood drained from her body. Her legs buckled.
As she fell, her head smacked against the edge of the hall table. The force of the blow twisted her head and shoulders around and
she went crashing onto her back.
The note sailed into the air.
Her eyes fixed wide open, blinked once, then twice.
Jig ran his hand through the reeds. They were swaying and rustling now. He tingled at the sensation. The wind had grown teeth.
Lampposts rattled as he sprinted. The water was flowing stronger, spilling over the locks onto the chambers below.
He wondered what Ghost would say about the job. He imag- ined bony fingers tossing his hair and Ghost saying, ‘Good job, little man.’
I’ll be in big time with Ghost now, I will.
A swan stirred. It unfurled its neck and shook its tail.
Jig knew from the brown feathers it was a young swan. That was what his granda had said. A cygnet, he’d told him, was what they were called. He thought he could see a sprout of white feathers. Jig stopped and stared for a moment.
Then he karate-kicked the air and ran.
2
The blows rained down. White fists and red-raw knuckles crunching on bone. Shay shuddered at the pummelling to his arms and hands, tossed at his moans for mercy.
Noise was dragging him away from his dream.
Bang. Bang . . . Yang. Yang.
Shay peeled back the sheets and flexed his wrists. They often throbbed with the memories.
The intrusion was the scream of an alarm from outside.
He eased himself out of bed and shook his head, the racket aggravating his tinnitus. He stood up, his feet arcing at the touch of the cold floorboards. He loosened his tight boxers and stepped silently to the window. Opening a blind, he tried to pierce the darkness, but he couldn’t determine the source of the siren.
He curled back into bed behind Lisa, warmed his feet and fixed on her hair. For a moment he expected to see the ripples of long blonde curls. He moved to push them out of his face, away from his nose, like he used to, a few years ago. When his vision focused, it revealed short straight brown hair and a pale thin neck. He remembered the day she arrived home from the salon. He knew why she did it, but never brought it up. Nor did she.
The scumbag grabbed her hair and licked her neck, the fucking animal.
That, and what Shay did afterwards, had landed them here. To this life.
The sense of being fucked over, of being trapped, of trying and failing to get his life – their life – back, scratched at his skull and
clawed at his stomach.
The walls and windows began to shudder. The Garda helicopter must be overhead, he thought.
Red lights flashed behind the blinds. He got up and looked out again; a fire tender was coming to a stop. Away to his right was the source of the noise: a car, now ablaze. Thick yellow flames curled into the night.
Ghost and his crew at work again, he thought.
He would see Ghost at the next match, as usual. The boys nearly shat their arses if he even looked at them, they held him in such awe.
I know what Ghost’s game is. Digging his nails into some of the boys. Like Jig.
He strained his neck to try and see the helicopter, it seemed that close. But then the vibrations subsided as it pulled away, towards the canal.
The noise from the car became more tortured, screeching one second, then receding. Two firemen pulled hoses, like long, bulbous snakes, and extinguished the flames with bursts of foam. Massive plumes of smoke puffed up.
Upright on the edge of the bed, he pulled at the skin under his eyes, then glanced down at the thin frame curled tight under the sheets.
He fretted over her reaction, once the sleeping tablet wore off.
‘You see that?’
The morning light pained Shay’s eyes as he blinked them open. Lisa had her back to him, hands pressed hard against her hips.
‘Yeah, a car went up on fire,’ he said, keeping his tone measured and slipping out of bed. ‘You were out for the count.’
He started at the sight of the smouldering shell, bare and black in the bright morning sunshine.
‘What a lovely thing to have on your doorstep,’ Lisa said, casting a look in his direction. ‘I bet you it will be there into next
week before those useless lumps in the council remove it.’
She scrunched up her nose at the smell of molten metal which
had infected the room. Shay knew she was being pulled down. His stomach tensed.
‘Brilliant,’ she said.
Shay watched three kids running from different directions to the car, whooping with delight. They circled the wreckage, kicking at it. Another boy, around six or so, emerged screaming, dragging a golf club behind him, the head of it scraping and slapping off the road. As he neared the car, he arced it up over his head and slammed it down on the bonnet, greeted by hoots.
Lisa recoiled at the noise, her face tightening.
‘Why car all burnt, Daddy?’ came a little voice from below. Charlie had crept past them. Molly followed. They put their
hands on the window sill and stood up on their tiptoes.
‘They’re bold boys,’ Molly scolded, pointing her finger at them,
‘they shouldn’t be doing that.’
Lisa turned her back on the window, and the kids. Shay saw the moistness in her eyes as she shuffled towards the door.
‘Listen, Lisa . . .’
Shay wanted to say something more, but couldn’t find the words. Lisa turned, her features tight against her pale skin.
‘What?’ she said.
Shay sensed the kids stiffen, looking up at them.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘What were you going to say? That we’ll be out of here soon?’
‘We will, Lisa. It can’t be much longer, won’t.’
‘Can’t or won’t? Which?’
Shay moved forward to hold her shoulder, to reassure her, but she shrugged him away. The kids jumped now at the banging outside. The hammering was getting more frantic.
‘You’ve been saying the same thing since we were dumped here,’ Lisa said. ‘A lot of our stuff is still in boxes. We’ve nothing up on the walls,’ she said, swinging her thin arms around. ‘We barely have any shelves. We’re half-living here.’
She paused. But he knew what was coming.
‘You said it’d be a year.’
‘I know,’ Shay replied, his stomach clamping. ‘But what can I
do? It’s not my fault.’
Her face strained again at the clang of metal on metal.
‘Isn’t it?’
About The Author:
Cormac O’Keeffe is the award-winning Security Correspondent for the Irish Examiner, where he has worked for nearly 20 years. His work has given him unique access to contacts both in the police and the community. Cormac has lived in gangland communities near the Grand Canal in Dublin for many years and his professional and personal lives have informed and fuelled his novel, giving it an intensity, authenticity and originality which can only come from personal experience. Cormac O’Keeffe runs a regular blog about his writing, is a respected book reviewer and appears frequently on national radio and television.
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