‘Is there any chance it’s the same gun?’
‘Ah now, what I think and what I’d be able prove is a-whole-nother story.’
‘Look,’ O’Keefe says, taking another pound note from the roll, ‘I know we’re putting you in a hard place. We need five minutes is all, to ask this lad a few questions.’
‘And you thought this was a good place to do it?’
O’Keefe shrugs. ‘You never know what seeing his pals laid out under a sheet might do to motivate a lad towards the truth.’
The attendant takes the note, reverting back to the compromised morgue sentinel that he is. ‘Now be quick about it, Mister. Two quid’s grand for a piss up or a fortnight’s grub and rent, but it won’t feed the family come winter if I’m out a job.’
‘That won’t happen if you keep proper sketch, right?’
The attendant leaves and O’Keefe crosses the room to where Just Albert stands with Jeremiah Byrne before the two sheeted forms on the trolleys. He nods at Ginny’s man and receives a nod in response. Without pausing he whips back the sheet from the first body, the sheet billowing and wrapping itself around Jeremiah, the sour, sweet scent of decay wafting forth like Dublin fog. O’Keefe had not intended for this to happen but it has the desired effect of shocking the boy, who begins a panicky flapping of his arms in an attempt to shrug free from the sheet. Just Albert grabs Jeremiah by the back of the neck and forces him down until his nose is nearly touching the corpse’s cheek.
By chance, it is the body of the boy found wearing Nicholas’ jacket, the rough skin of his feet marking him for Jerry’s friend. Visible now on his skin, running from his sternum to pubic bone, is a thick, forked trail of stitching from the post mortem. Under the dead boy’s hairline, O’Keefe can just make out the stitching of the cranial cut, where the skin of the boy’s face had been peeled back and the top of the skull sawn off to reveal the desecration the dumdum nine millimetre had done to the boy’s brains. Thankfully, the corpse’s eyes are closed, but the cigar burns and terrible bruising are still evident.
‘Your mate, is it?’ Just Albert says, and Jeremiah nods, still trying to work himself free from the sheet.
‘Why was he wearing Nicky Dolan’s jacket?’
‘Whose jacket?’
‘Nicholas Dolan’s jacket,’ O’Keefe says. ‘A black schoolboy’s coat. Where did he get it?’
‘I don’t …’
Just Albert presses down on Jeremiah’s neck, burying the boy’s face underneath his dead friend’s chin, his lips pressed tight to the stitches. Jeremiah struggles but Just Albert’s grip is too strong.
‘Take a good sniff, young Jerry. You smell that? That’s what you’ll smell like by morning if you don’t start giving me answers.’
The boy grunts and yelps, the sound halfway between a sob and a shout, and O’Keefe begins to wonder are they are being too hard on the boy. He has given his share of slaps as a copper, has taken the hard line once or twice, but rarely with someone so young. And a slap was one thing. Pressing a boy’s face into the corpse of his friend another.
‘Tell him, Jerry. Where did you get the jacket?’ O’Keefe asks, his voice softer and more reasonable than the doorman’s.
‘Let me up, jaysus fuck. Let me up an’ I’ll tell you for the sake of holy God.’
Just Albert lets him up, keeping a firm grip on the back of his neck. ‘Well?’
‘He stole it.’
‘Stole it from Nicky?’
Jeremiah nods, and looks to O’Keefe as if for mercy. There is a pleading in his eyes that moves something in O’Keefe.
‘And when was this? Where?’ O’Keefe says.
Before Jeremiah can answer, Just Albert leans into the boy’s ear and says, ‘Did yis hurt Nicky? If yis hurt our Nicky you’re a …’
‘Albert, leave off him.’
‘We didn’t hurt him. We only wanted his shoes and jacket.’
Just Albert tightens his grip on Jeremiah’s neck.
‘And any shrapnel, any coin, he’d on him. I swear on the life of me sisters, I do.’
‘Let the kid go, Albert. For fuck sake.’ O’Keefe and Just Albert lock eyes for a long moment before the doorman reluctantly releases the boy.
‘Look, Jeremiah,’ O’Keefe says. ‘We’ll not hurt you, but we need to know what happened. How’d your mate end up dead here? And this other boy.’ O’Keefe removes the sheet from the second body, but gently this time. ‘Do you know this lad?’
Jeremiah looks down at the second corpse and nods. ‘I think … I think he was with the other one who went in the hotel, the one whose jacket we … Tommo nicked. They must have lifted him as well.’
‘The other lad … Nicholas, you mean? He was in the hotel? Show him the photograph, Mister O’Keefe,’ Albert says.
O’Keefe takes the photo from his jacket and hands it to the boy. ‘Who lifted him, Jerry?’
Jeremiah looks back up at O’Keefe. ‘You know the man he battered back in the baths there, at the Achill?’ He indicates Just Albert with a nod.
O’Keefe tells him he does.
‘Well, I think it was his mates lifted him. They wanted all four of us.’
‘But they didn’t get you?’
‘Nor the other lad.’
‘Nicholas?’ Just Albert asks again.
‘Sure, how to fuck would I know his name? I was robbin’ him not ridin’ him.’ Some of the brashness of the streets, along with colour to his face, has returned to Jeremiah Byrne.
‘Mind your tongue, youngfella, or I’ll cut it out,’ Just Albert says, and O’Keefe frowns at him and signals to go easy.
‘And what, did these men come up on ye when you were robbing this boy and his friend?’ O’Keefe taps the photograph in Jeremiah’s hand. ‘This boy?’
Jeremiah studies the picture. ‘It was dark. It could be him but I don’t know. Sure, it wasn’t him I was worried about once I stabbed …’
‘You stabbed Nicholas?’ Just Albert’s voice is a low rasp that sends an icy dagger of panic up O’Keefe’s spine.
‘No, no. I didn’t stab no youngfella, no fuckin’ jaysus way I didn’t not! I swear on me sister’s eyes. I stabbed one of the trenchcoats, I did. I’d say that’s why yer man, the man he bate,’—Jeremiah indicates Just Albert with another tilt of his head, still afraid to look at him—‘is lookin’ for me. And why, I’d reckon, they’re lookin’ for your lad as well. I done the stabbing, but sure, they might think the four of us was together. Maybe that’s why Jerry and this lad are dead, but. I’d say it is.’
O’Keefe thinks for a moment. ‘Stand over there for a tick, Jerry. I need talk to my friend. And don’t think about legging it, right?’
‘I won’t. Any chance of a smoke?’
Jeremiah takes O’Keefe’s proffered Player’s Navy Cut and a light and steps over to the sink, some feet away from O’Keefe and the doorman but farther still from the exit. He takes in the welcome burn of smoke and turns, the cigarette pinched between his lips, to the sink to scour the smell of death from his hands and face. He turns on the water and looks down into the deep basin, and for the first time in several days, smiles. Miming his ablutions, his back to the two men, he reaches down and slips the long surgical scalpel into his trousers, covering the handle of it with his shirt.
Across the room, Just Albert says, ‘Nicholas went into the hotel. He was running messages and that fucker Murphy knows who for and how to contact him. He has to.’
O’Keefe considers this. ‘It seems likely all right.’
‘Then why are we still standing here? The hotel’s a five minute walk away and we need to have another chat with Mr Murphy.’
‘Remember his minders, Albert. They’re not men to be trifled with.’
‘Neither am I, am I?’
‘No, you’re not, but I’m asking you, right? No more violence, A
lbert. We’ll not be lucky every time.’ O’Keefe points to the angry welt the CID man’s bullet had carved in Just Albert’s skin.
‘Luck’s nothing to do with it,’ Just Albert says for the second time this night before turning, pushing through the swing-doors, leaving O’Keefe with Jeremiah in the morgue. O’Keefe covers the two bodies with their sheets.
Jeremiah takes a final pull on the cigarette and drops the end on the floor.
‘You’d better go,’ O’Keefe says to the boy. ‘Now, while he’s forgotten about you. And stay away from the lanes. Those boys want your blood and won’t be as gentle as we were.’
The boy sneers and laughs. ‘That sorry fuckin’ gaggle? Once they don’t cough on me I’m not afeared of them, I’m not.’
O’Keefe shrugs and crosses to the doors, holding them open for the boy. ‘Suit yourself, so.’
‘I always do, don’t I?’ the boy says, passing through the doors, the blade of the scalpel warming to the heat of his skin under his shirt.
40
They take the Bentley, Just Albert driving. A short jaunt, four streets away to Burton’s Hotel.
‘These fellas are armed, Albert. You remember that.’
Just Albert looks at him.
‘They are professionals and they’re armed. We’re not.’
‘Fuck them,’ Just Albert says, stepping out of the car, leaving it parked at the curb in front of the hotel’s entrance. ‘Are you coming or not?’
O’Keefe gets out of the Bentley. ‘Let me do the talking, Albert. Will you let me do that at least?’
Just Albert cocks his head and squints in the lamplight. ‘If there’s any call for talking, you can do it.’
They enter the hotel and are greeted by a young man in his twenties at the reception desk. O’Keefe thinks of Nora Flynn, tucked up at home, a book on her lap, tea on a side table, her fags within easy reach. He wonders will this desk man remember their faces and will Nora learn that he has been back to her place of work. How long ago it seems since he kissed her, there on the footpath in front of her digs. He licks his lips, as if he can taste the memory of her, his tongue finding only the tinny essence of fear and flooding adrenaline.
‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ The night man has a smattering of acne on his chin, bright, trusting eyes, sleeves rolled up over thin, pale arms in the heat of the hotel lobby.
‘Mr Murphy, the Englishman. What room number is he?’ O’Keefe says.
‘It’s quite late, gentlemen. Is he expecting you?’ As he speaks, the telephone in the small closet behind the desk begins to ring, small lights on the switchboard igniting to indicate calls coming in from several rooms simultaneously. The night man glances over his shoulder at the switchboard and frowns. ‘If you’ll excuse me for the moment while I …’
Just Albert ignores the night man, the squawking phone and switchboard with its blinking lights, and walks behind the desk and through to the small closet housing the switchboard. There he rips a fistful of connection plugs from the board, silencing the ringing and extinguishing the lights. As Ginny’s man wheels around, the ends of the cables in his hand lash out at the young night man’s legs, forcing him back against the reception counter, fear in his eyes now, hands out, palms raised.
‘Sir! Sir you can’t!’
‘The room number,’ Just Albert says. ‘Now.’ He does not raise his voice, moving in on the young man, leaning into him and crowding him against the reception desk.
‘Stop,’ O’Keefe says.
‘The room.’
The night man turns his head away from Just Albert, his back arched away and over the desk. ‘Thirty-four. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s thirty-four, for the love of …’
Just Albert grabs the night man by the shoulders and spins him around, pushing his head down on the desk. He takes up one of the loose phone cables and wrenches the young man’s wrists behind his back, looping the cable around them and jerking it tight. He kicks the legs out from underneath him and ties another cable around his ankles, then pulls the night man’s tie from his collar and over his head. Taking a handful of hotel stationery from a shelf under the desk, he crumples several sheets into a ball and says to the young desk man, ‘Open your mouth.’
‘Leave off, Albert,’ O’Keefe’s voice is hard as he leans across the reception and grabs Just Albert by the arm. ‘Leave off him.’
Just Albert shrugs free of O’Keefe’s grip and leans down to the night man, shoving the wad of paper into his open mouth and securing it there with his necktie. ‘Don’t you so much as move a finger for ten minutes. If you wiggle free before that and ring up and warn them, I’m coming back. You understand me, youngfella?
The night man, face down on the ground, nods, terror in his eyes.
O’Keefe circles behind the reception desk, takes out Ginny Dolan’s roll of cash, crouches down and stuffs a pound note into the young night man’s pocket. He is about to rise and follow Just Albert when he stops and takes out the photo of Nicholas Dolan, holding it front of the night man’s face.
‘Have you ever seen this lad? Delivering messages, anything? Looking to visit Mr Murphy?’
The night man shakes his head in the negative. O’Keefe is tempted to take the gag out of his mouth but does not, thinking that there is no gain in a small kindness if it results in dead men.
He follows now, taking the stairs two at a time, and he is halfway between the first and second floors, Just Albert one flight above, when the door leading to the second floor hallway slams open and a young couple hustles out into the stairwell. The woman’s hair is in disarray and the man’s head is bare, his tie and collar loose. Panic is alight in both their eyes, though the woman turns hers to the floor as soon as she sees O’Keefe below her on the stairs. O’Keefe’s heart is pistoning in his chest and his hand instinctively goes to his hip for a side-arm that is not there.
‘Did you hear the racket of the …’ the young man begins to say, but stops when he gets a closer look at O’Keefe. He puts a protective arm across the young woman’s stomach and presses her back against the wall of the stairwell, pressing himself in beside her to let O’Keefe pass. Terror blanches the man’s face, though whether at the sight of O’Keefe, or at whatever has driven them out of their room in such disarray, O’Keefe does not know. What racket? O’Keefe wonders and considers turning back to ask the man, but as soon as he passes the young couple begin to skip down the stairs as if in flight. He continues on up after Just Albert, stopping with him on the landing outside the door that opens onto the third floor hallway.
‘Thirty-four,’ Just Albert says.
‘Let’s not get ourselves killed this late in the game, Albert, is all I’m asking, all right?’
Ginny Dolan’s man turns and squints up at him. ‘I’ll not let anything happen you until you find our Nicky, Mr O’Keefe. Then you can die or shite for all I care.’
‘Thanks, Albert. You’re a gentleman.’
Just Albert opens the door onto the hallway. He begins to walk, his footsteps silent on the carpeted floor. Thirty-eight, thirty-six. Beside thirty-six there is an unmarked door before the numbering resumes again at the door they seek. Thirty-four. O’Keefe grapples Just Albert’s forearm and hauls him to a stop in front of thirty-four.
He whispers, ‘Do you smell that?’
Just Albert frowns and sniffs the air, the smell of it reaching him but elusive.
‘Cordite,’ O’Keefe says. ‘And that couple on the stairs … they were running from something.’
Ginny’s man goes into his jacket pocket and comes out with the Mauser he’d taken from the CID man in the doss-house baths.
‘Have you ever fired a handgun, Albert?’
‘I’ve done things you wouldn’t like to think on much, Mr O’Keefe.’ Just Albert steps closer to the door. He is about to grasp the door knob when O’Keefe stops him, one hand on his forea
rm, and points to the door jam. The door, Albert sees now, is not firmly shut. He turns to O’Keefe and shrugs.
‘Gently,’ O’Keefe says, and Albert eases the door part way open until it meets an obstacle and stops. Just Albert turns sideways, and leading with the Mauser, enters the room. O’Keefe waits for a moment and follows. An upended table lamp on one of the bedside tables casts the room in a harsh puzzle of shadow and light. He looks down behind the door in search of the obstruction and it takes his mind a moment to register the body of one of the gun dealer’s guards. The tall, blond one. The one with the smirk, dressed only in undershorts and a white vest saturated with fresh blood. He scans the room, spotting the other guard, a bloody mass in a tangle of bedsheets on the floor beside the bed, part of his skull missing and a spatter storm of brain and blood on the bullet-pocked wall behind the bed.
Just Albert steps farther into the room with the gun raised, the same vigilant calm about him that O’Keefe has come to expect. O’Keefe looks back to the body behind the door and sees the Colt 1914 automatic in the dead man’s hand. He crouches down to take it, smelling its barrel, noting that the gun has not been recently fired. He draws back the gun’s slide and finds, as he’d expected, a round in the breech. Releasing the clip he finds eight more rounds. He thinks to replace the gun, but a dark part of him holds on to it, feeling a certain comfort in its heft and weight. Out of habit more than anything, he places his fingers at the man’s neck and finds no pulse. Dead before he’d got off a shot. He considers the pock-marks on the wall and the grouping of wounds on the dead man’s chest. Grouped and ascending like bights of a chain. Like machine-gun fire. He rises with the Colt, noticing another door ajar beside the second dead man’s bed. Adjoining room, linking rooms thirty-four and thirty-six.
‘Albert …’ he whispers.
Just Albert turns to O’Keefe, and there is a flash of movement in the adjoining room. Albert senses it and swings the Mauser around, drawing a bead on a young man in the doorway, eyes wide with surprise, a leather satchel in one hand, a Thompson sub-machine-gun in the other, barrel pointed at the ceiling.
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