A Carra ring imm-6

by John Brady

  The cold metal pressed against his head made him stop. He held his breath. The hand ran under his arm, pushing at his armpit, tugging at his coat. The pressure of the muzzle began to ease.

  “Where’d you put it then?”

  Minogue started to talk but couldn’t.

  “You’re a fucking iijit, Matt. Where’d you put it?”

  “Locked it up. I didn’t want to — ”

  “Put your hands on the back of your head — that’s it, close your fingers. Now, roll over. Nice and slow.”

  Minogue used his elbows to maneuvre. Little kept circling him, doubling back, stopping, walking again.

  “We have to do some business, Matt. The timing’s not the best, I know. But you have some deciding to do. And you’re going to do the deciding for himself there in the boot too.”

  The breeze made Minogue’s eyes water. He’d been trying to keep Little in sight as he walked.

  “You’re too much, Matt. Things’d still be shaping up grand if Kilmartin wasn’t away on his bloody jaunt. What made you decide to come down here?”

  “We’d lost the van.”

  “You’ve got squad cars at both ends, haven’t you?”

  Minogue said nothing.

  “Tell them to walk, Matt, the one at Dollymount only. The walkie-talkie’s on the front seat. You and me and Tommy are heading back to civilization.”

  Minogue took a breath. He spread his hands. The sand was like wet cement. “I want to see Tommy first.”

  The flash and thump of the bullet as it tore into the sand beside him made his arms buckle. The ripples in the sand were like bones pushing up at his own. He covered his head with his arms. He felt Little’s weight move the sand near him. The voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.

  “You’re not doing so hot here,” Little said. “Don’t be leaning on me. By rights you and your pal should be out there floating by the van. Up.”

  Minogue stumbled once near the Opel.

  “Wait a minute,” Little called out. Minogue watched the boot lid fall, heard it catch. Little shoved the lid again to be sure.

  “Take the walkie-talkie out the window,” said Little. “Tell them.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The light didn’t go on when Minogue opened the door. He hesitated.

  “On the driver’s seat,” Little said. “Take it out with you. Go on.”

  “Mazurka to Alpha Bravo One. Over.”

  “Go ahead, Mazurka. Over.”

  Alpha Bravo One didn’t sound impressed. The slagging would filter back soon enough: now they’d screwed up, the glamour brigade in the Murder Squad couldn’t make up their minds what way to look.

  “Okay,” said Little. “Put it back. You’re driving. Go on in.”

  Little had the passenger door open already. The smell of the upholstery came to Minogue over the smell of the strand and sea. His pistol was an arm’s length away. He imagined its weight in his hand.

  The Opel felt sluggish, too much travel in the clutch. The steering wheel wobbled as he crossed a patch of wetter sand. He turned away from the dunes.

  “Do you know your way?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Keep to the right of that light there ahead of you. That’s the way through the dunes.”

  Minogue geared up to third for traction.

  “What about your fella back there,” he said. “The van?”

  “He’s not my fella,” said Little. “And it was his lookout. He would’ve jumped ship sooner or later anyway.”

  Minogue tried to set the wheels back into the tracks ahead.

  “Don’t come the high and mighty here,” Little said. “They’re all bent, they’re all gougers. You know that. I just hope you see a bit of sense. For Tommy too.”

  “As long as I know he’s — ”

  “Don’t start,” Little snapped. “You don’t even know how close you came. It was me kept you and that bullet-headed gobshite in the back in one piece, so don’t start on me. Kathleen’s the widow who’s going to be in bits at the funeral, with the Killer and Tynan and all the fucking hoi polloi standing there — all because you couldn’t see straight! Christ, Kilmartin and his big mouth.”

  “What does Jimmy know?”

  “He doesn’t know a damned thing! Jimmy’s a gobshite. Blathering on there and making an iijit of himself there in the bloody papers. But you — I told them you could be trouble.”

  Minogue grasped the wheel tighter. Lights appeared in a gap in the dunes.

  “I couldn’t have stopped that mess this afternoon,” Little went on. “Even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t. I didn’t know about it until later.”

  The line of sand looked like a sizeable bump. He let the wheel slide under his fingers. The car thudded as they hit. There was a squeak from the springs, a shuffling in the boot. He wondered if that had been enough to slide the gun back.

  “Back over there,” said Little. “Stick to those tire tracks there.”

  The dunes opened and streetlamps began to slide into the widening gap. The yellow glow from the center city grew brighter. Little shifted in his seat. He was soaked, Minogue realized.

  “So, nice and easy, there. Get us out onto the Howth Road and we’ll see what’s what.”

  There were two cars parked by the wall. One had fogged windows.

  “Same as ever,” said Little. “Like rabbits. Tell me something.”

  Minogue’s neck was beginning to cramp. He tried to ease it but couldn’t. Had the bumpy drive across the strand done anything for Malone? He looked across at the lights of the cars on the Clontarf Road. He couldn’t see any cars near the bridge.

  Minogue let his hand rest on the gearshift. Not three feet away, he thought, but it might as well be three miles.

  “Did you have any idea that there could be an insider?”

  “I was sort of wondering,” he said. “There were a lot of closed doors.”

  Little shoved the gun under his coat.

  “Closed doors,” he said.

  Minogue slowed for the light. No patrol car by the end of the bridge.

  “You ever get locked out, Matt?”

  “I, well, I lost the keys of the car a few times.”

  “Not your car. Your house, your marriage. Your job, even.”

  He let the Opel roll to a stop. He pushed it into neutral and pulled up the handbrake.

  “I’ve put away some real gougers, Matt. I don’t mean just Saturday night pub champs, armed robbers even. I mean McGrane. Kennedy. Remember them?”

  Minogue nodded.

  “I wasn’t looking for glory either. It was pretty simple. They were a threat to the state. I swore an oath, Matt, so did you. But Smith and his crowd were mental. We got phone calls at home. I’ve had a half-dozen numbers in one year — that’s at home. She said it was for the kids and that we could talk about it. How can you talk when you’re not even allowed in the door of your own house? The guns, says she. The atmosphere. Well she fucking conned the JP into getting the barring order. For about ten seconds I wanted to kill her. Right then, right there. But then I got real, I don’t know, tired or something. I just walked away. And we haven’t had a cross word since, the two of us. I meet her a couple of times a week. The kids, I see them every weekend. They’re coming around. I knew they were frightened of me, I knew that. In a weird way it’s worked out. Here — there’s the light.”

  Minogue shifted into first and released the handbrake. He let the clutch in quickly. The car lurched.

  “Hey,” said Little. “Take your time.”

  There were no cars waiting for the light by the bridge. Minogue held his breath.

  “You knew about that,” Little said. “The wife and kids?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Little sighed

  “I wonder… Then there was the heat from some of the operations. Remember that?”

  Minogue nodded.

  “You know how they treated me with that bit, don’t you? It was g
et out of active operations with the response crews or take a walk. Right?”

  “I’d heard.”

  “Just because of a screwup on one job. One job. ‘The public’ they told me — ‘the public can’t countenance this.’ Jesus. The public? Ah, what’s the use…”

  Minogue steered onto the bridge. The front wheels slapped on the edge of the planks. He let his hand slide down the handbrake.

  “We’re going to try Oz,” Little went on. “The kids know. I wouldn’t go to the States. I have a brother in Sydney. He has an in with a security crowd. Corporate business. It looks good.”

  “What else did Daly get you to do?”

  Little looked over.

  “Are you going to talk your way into the fucking grave, Matt? I have a lot of respect for you. That’s why Head-the-Ball is in the boot, and not out there floating around belly up in Dublin Bay. What, you want to ask about the fella in the van?”

  Minogue said nothing.

  “Let me guess: you want to but you don’t want to, is that it? ’Cause you’re in too deep. Well he’s dead. And yeah, I shot him. He was a gangster. Remember those guys, Matt? The bad guys, the gougers, ‘the crims’? What else do you want to know? That I parked a robbed car the far side of the rocks? That I’m covered?”

  The lights onto the Howth Road were red.

  “Where was he taking the statue?”

  Little’s eyes were boring into him.

  “Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, is it? That’s a dangerous fucking game, Matt. Well I’ll tell you then. But consider this proof of what I’m going to offer you here when we get a bot of breathing space. You’re going to get a deal you can’t say no to. And you’d better do some quick thinking here for you and Tommy. Turn right here when you get the green. Out to Howth.”

  Minogue let out the clutch.

  “To finish the job,” said Little. “Delivery guaranteed. I want him to see what the sharp end of business looks like. The dirty work.”

  Little’s voice had fallen to a murmur. Minogue glanced over.

  “So’s he doesn’t forget, and so’s he can express his damn gratitude in the appropriate manner. I’m going to dump it all in his lap, just like this bloody statue. And then we’re going to discuss the future with him. Yours, mine, and Tommy’s. Here, you’ve got the light.”

  Minogue searched the road ahead as he turned. No Garda cars.

  “And Matt?”

  He waited until Minogue looked over.

  “There’ll be no going back. For me, for you. O’Riordan knows that. Larry Smith knew that too, for about ten seconds, I’d say. He was headed up the same road, looking for his jackpot when he found out.”

  Minogue searched Little’s face.

  “That’s right, Matt. When you do a job, you do it right. What, Smith? Smith was a lying, thieving little shite. He sold amphetamines to kids. He beat up women. He hurt people because he liked to, more than for money. He tried to put the heavy hand on Guards like me. He helped to fuck up my family. Then he thought he’d hit the big time because he had a hook on that moron, Byrne. Whatever his name is, I can never get the nickname right.”

  “Cortina?”

  “Him, yeah. Smith thought he could put the fix in there. Blackmail. A piece of the band, he wanted, if you don’t mind. Delusions of fucking grandeur or what. Not just a payoff, oh no. Or even a wage out of it. He thought he was a businessman. There’s big money here. You wouldn’t know how much. That’s another story. Hey, you probably want the basics, am I right?”

  Minogue looked over again.

  “The basics are that I kept that prick Byrne out of jail. How about that. What he really needs is someone to take him out the back of his bloody mansion and give him a good hiding. Break his jaw for him. See if he can sing for a while.”

  “Smith went to O’Riordan, then.”

  “No. He went to Daly. Daly went to O’Riordan. And then… that’s where I get hired.”

  Minogue strained to listen for sounds from the boot, if the motion of the car would bring Malone around.

  “Come on, now,” said Little. “Tell me you’re not surprised. What, you think Smith didn’t deserve what he got? It was a win-win thing. Dance on his grave.”

  Minogue waited for several moments before he spoke.

  “What about Shaughnessy?”

  “Ah, don’t bring that up. That bloody — it came out of the blue. O’Riordan got this phone call. Do you know anything about him? That he was a headcase? An addict, he was. He was chasing some statue to give to his oul lad. Leyne. I don’t know who put him on to this statue thing, but he ended up killing that woman out there in some godforsaken bog hole.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Ah, he airs it all to O’Riordan. Phones up in a panic. This woman has put the arm on him, he says. She wants something out of him, to get his oul lad to do something. I don’t know, some history thing. To set up an outfit here she could run. Computers, history, museums, I don’t know. He made her these bloody promises he could never deliver on, that’s what.”

  Minogue’s fingers were down the side of the seat now.

  “History?” he tried.

  “History, right. Like we don’t have enough. Like it matters a damn anymore.”

  His fingertips traced over grit trapped in the carpet, collided with the seat rail.

  “All I know is there’s some priceless rock out there under about four foot of water. A king something. Christ, there I was there by those big boulders waiting for this fella. I used to train out here for years, did you know that? In the sand. Endurance runs, you know? Conditioning. Anyway, there I was thinking: what’s going to come out of all this tonight? The Battle of Clontarf was here, then I remembered — the Vikings. Brian Boru? The last high king wasn’t he, finally putting the boots to the Vikings here, wasn’t it? The Viking hordes. The barbarians, that robbed the monasteries. Plundered, all that stuff we learned in school…”

  The Opel was gaining on a cluster of cars. Minogue didn’t want to have to change gear. He let up on the accelerator.

  “What about Shaughnessy, then?” he asked.

  Little gave a short laugh.

  “God, the things you ask. And me telling you, what’s worse. Did you do those courses up at the Park, the Techniques course?”

  “Back years ago,” Minogue replied. “When they were starting out.”

  “One of the Interview ones, I’ll never forget it. About an unconscious thing: wanting to unburden yourself. Wanting to tell, needing to tell, like the punishing parent thing. Guilt. Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well just remember this, Matt: there’s two sides to it. The more I tell you, the more hangs on your decision. You aren’t going to walk away from this tonight if you can’t persuade me. And you’re deciding for him there in the boot, you hear?”

  Minogue let his hand rest, but Little was suspicious now.

  “Get your hands up there on the wheel where I can see them.”

  Minogue geared down instead of braking for the traffic ahead.

  “Shaughnessy: O’Riordan dumped it down on Daly. Tit for tat: after all, Daly owed him one for taking Smith out of the picture, didn’t he?”

  For a moment, Minogue was back at the scene by the Strand Road all those months ago: the Fiat van peppered with automatic fire, the gray and crimson bits of Larry Smith’s head across the roadway.

  “Daly knows everything about coming and going with the band,” said Little. “This Shaughnessy is going to drop the works on O’Riordan, because…?”

  “O’Riordan and Leyne were partners in the old days,” Minogue said.

  “You’ve got it,” said Little. “I told them you were going to come really close, Matt, to be ready. Christ… How things turn out. Yes, O’Riordan and Leyne were dealers. Years ago, but still too. There’s high finance and something to do with O’Riordan moving stuff for this fella. I wasn’t told exactly, but put two and two together and you
can figure that O’Riordan had done stuff for Leyne under the table. The basics were that O’Riordan would be up the creek if the son started blathering. O’Riordan tells Daly to talk to him, see what can be done. At least buy time. But it looks bad. This young fella’s off the wall, he’s going to do anything. He puts the heavy hand on O’Riordan pretty quick, it ends up with me. So, it suddenly gets very simple. There’s a conversation to which I am party to. if O’Riordan goes, everything goes.”

  He tested the elbows of his jacket. Minogue gripped the wheel tighter.

  “You know what that would mean, do you?”

  Minogue shook his head.

  “I doubt that,” said Little. “Whether you do or not, it was O’Riordan got that crowd of wankers started up, Public Works. He was the money man. He’s in for half of them, what they make. Did you know that?”

  “A half?” was all Minogue could think of saying.

  “And here’s you and me holding the fort for people like that. So they can do their thing. So that crowd of scumbags can do whatever comes into their addled little minds to do. Millionaires. While me and you, and that gom in the back, walk the streets, or argue with our kids why they shouldn’t pay twenty quid to go to a concert where they’re going to be hanging around with ten thousand other iijits who’ll shove drugs their way. Ever thought about that, have you?”

  “I’m not sure — ”

  “Ah, quit the pretending, Matt! The whole duty thing, the decency thing — what you and me grew up with as part of our bloody genes — the pay-your-way, rear the family, save your money, be polite — that it’s all a fucking con?”

  Minogue glanced at him.

  “Keep going there. Yeah, through Sutton Cross. O’Riordan’s is up Thormanbury Road there. His palace. Where was I? Shaughnessy. So yes, if that’s what you’re asking. I went out to get him. Outside of Lacy’s Pub there in Kinnegad. He’d had the sense to lay low awhile there, but was up in a heap when I got there. He actually asked me if I could put him in touch with someone who’d sell him coke. Me, a policeman…! And I knew this prick had murdered a woman. He’d promised her the sun, moon, and stars to get ahold of this rock. His da would pay this and his da would do that — and then he starts in on me, what he’d pay, what his da would do for me. I just about nailed him then. I got him out to a place the far end of Inchicore. A lockup there. Told him we had to hide it until I took care of his car and everything. That I had a fella waiting to bring it into the airport. I don’t know if he believed me or not. Look: he didn’t know what hit him. And the airport? I’ve been in and out of there a half a dozen times since Christmas. Training runs, we have to work up to the standards coming in from Brussels now, the new standards. Thank you, Eurocrats. Can you credit that, they have regulations on Civil Defense emergency communications, and we fall under that too. Anyway. I know me way around the airport. Happy?”