The Murk Beneath

by L. D. Cunningham

  “You seem to be taking this in your stride. I mean, what I told you about your father …”

  She laughed. “My father. Yes, my father.”

  I don’t think she needed to elaborate. She had been making allowances for him for years. I wished I knew what that was like – having a father to make allowances for. I think I’d have tolerated a lot just to have mine around for one more day.

  “Like I said … you shouldn’t be around me. I’m like a freshly painted fence – you lean on me, you’re going to get paint on your dress.”

  She sighed. “Enough with the metaphors, Michael. My father got you into this mess, he damn sure better get you out of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we are going to drive out to Killeagh right now and sort things out. Everything. I know what he says to people, about everyone being on their own when it comes to the Guards. Well, I’ve had enough of his bunker mentality. We’re going to Killeagh and we’re going to sort it.”

  She got up from her seat. I didn’t.

  “Michael … up you get.”

  She held a hand out to me. I hesitated before taking it.

  “Your father isn’t a man to be trifled –”

  “Ah, trifle, schmifle. I’ll put him straight. In case you didn’t know it, he listens to me. I mean, he doesn’t have anyone else. He’s so paranoid that he’s shut everyone else out. That’s why I think he reached out to you. I think he craved a kindred spirit of sorts. Someone he could respect enough to be himself with.”

  “He did seem rather disappointed I let him down.”

  “You see? He doesn’t get disappointed by people. They simply live up to his expectations, or lack thereof. He talks about you differently. Maybe … maybe that’s the real reason he doesn’t want to see us together. Because if it didn’t work out, he could lose the both of us.”

  “You better be right, Grace. Because if you’re not, he has a private army that can make me disappear.”

  “Just trust me.”

  Jordan said that a lot too. The other Jordan. I had to remind myself that she was a Jordan. She was his heir, his only child. But what if it really did come down to a choice between Jim Jordan and me? A gun to the head kind of a choice. I didn’t know the answer.

  She held my hand all the way to her Volvo outside.

  “Are you sure about this?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said with a certainty that put me at ease.

  We got into her car and she drove down Blarney Street and on towards Killeagh.

  When we arrived at Jordan’s bungalow, O’Keeffe got out of his car.

  “It’s OK, William. Michael and I are just going in to have a civilized chat with my father.”

  He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. I don’t think he bought the civilized part of what she said. All the same, he didn’t get in our way.

  Jordan was still inside. He was sitting at the kitchen table reading The Irish Times. When he looked up from his paper, for the first time ever I saw surprise in his eyes.

  “Daddy,” Grace said. “We need to talk.”

  “Then you’d better sit.”

  Grace sat opposite her father. I sat next to her.

  “Michael has told me everything.”

  A look from Jordan that said I was dead meat.

  “Stop it,” Grace said. “I’m tired of all these secrets. Stop being so fucking paranoid.”

  Even the second time she cursed I was shocked. I mean, the F word coming from her usually cultured mouth!

  “I have every reason to be paranoid,” he said. “Have you any idea how many have lined up over the years to take a pot shot at me? Do you know how much of a struggle it is to maintain a sunny disposition with all of that heaped on top of me?”

  “I know, Daddy, but you’ve got to let me in at some point. You never let Mum in. And look what –”

  Jordan quickly put up a hand to stop her. I held Grace’s hand under the table out of his view.

  Jordan said, “I know what happened to your mother. It’s been eating away inside of me. I’ve never been able to trust anyone since. But look at me, Grace … I’m still here. I have the Guards running around in circles.”

  I chipped in. “What about O’Brien?”

  He looked displeased with my interruption. “O’Brien is small beans, as you like to say. Leave him to me.”

  At this point, I decided Grace and her father needed some sorting out time. Besides, my bladder was fit to burst after the pint of Howling Gale and the drive to Killeagh.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I need to visit the little boys’ room.”

  Along the hall to the bathroom, I could see pictures on the wall. Jordan, Grace and another woman, obviously her mother, were in them. Some were taken against the backdrop of famous monuments: the leaning tower in Pisa, the Colliseum in Rome, the Acropolis in Athens. It made me wonder why Grace’s skin was so alabaster white, while Jordan’s glowed like Sunny Delight. In the bathroom I could hear the conversation continue in the kitchen. It seemed to get heated, then quietened down again.

  When I went back to the kitchen, both were smiling.

  “Michael, Michael,” Jordan said. “You have been too quick to judge me. Grace tells me you think I’m going to feed you to the wolves. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

  I looked at Grace. She nodded.

  Jordan continued. “I have a plan, you see. A plan. Not just for O’Brien, but one to solve your own little problem with the Guards.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Patience, Michael. Let’s go outside for some fresh air. I always find it brings new perspective on things.”

  He got up from the table and ushered us out into the garden.

  It was bitterly cold and our breaths were so foggy that we would disappear from each other’s view momentarily. Jordan walked towards a tree in the middle of the back garden.

  “My wife planted that tree,” he said. “I think it’s supposed to be an apple tree, but I’ve never seen it bear fruit.”

  “It did one year, Daddy,” Grace said. “I remember Mum cut down an apple and gave it to me. All I can remember is how bitter it was.”

  “Must have been a cooking apple so,” Jordan said. “Happy times. But only inside that bubble we created.”

  “You mentioned the stash,” I said, attempting to get the conversation back on the plan.

  “Always the pragmatist, Michael,” Jordan said. “Always with the eyes on the prize. Much like the bare-knuckle fighter.” He stopped under the tree where the leaves had browned and some littered the grass. He looked down. “These need raking.”

  “The plan, Daddy,” Grace said.

  “Yes, the plan. The stash is hidden in the Cardoso banana wholesaler down by Tivoli docks. Let’s just say that it wasn’t only bananas we imported back in the day, so we have our little hidey-holes.”

  Jordan kicked at some of the leaves.

  “Where do I come into the plan, Jim?” I asked.

  He looked at Grace, then back at me.

  “You will stay with us. Hognatt will get in touch when the operation is complete.”

  Grace seemed calm. I wondered if she had spoken to Jordan about keeping me out of harm’s way. She would have had the opportunity when I needed to go for a piss earlier.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Savage might be there. He’s trying to frame me. Do you really think I can stay here and just hope for the best?”

  He looked at his daughter. I sensed some resignation in his eyes. But Grace was having none of it.

  “Michael. Are you mad?” she said. “Hognatt and his men are trained for this kind of thing. You could –”

  “You’re forgetting I was a Guard, Grace. I can handle myself.”

  It didn’t seem to reassure her. She turned to her father.

  “Talk some sense into him, Daddy. He could … he could get himself killed.”

  Jordan sized me up. He obviously made the judgement that I wa
sn’t going to budge. I think maybe he respected me for it.

  “I’m sorry, Grace,” he said. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, as I often say.”

  Grace gave me a cold look that warmed up as she spoke to me. “You better not take any chances, Michael Bosco. Or you’ll have me to deal with when you get back.”

  I smiled. “I’ll just stay behind Hognatt and his MP7.”

  The van could be heard arriving out front.

  “That’ll be Hognatt. Let’s go over the finer details with him, Michael.” He turned to his daughter. “You don’t need to be involved in this. Why don’t you go inside and prepare lunch?”

  Grace pondered what he said for a moment. “No. I’m done with you shielding me from the business end of things. I need to know more than just the numbers.”

  Jordan took a little time to consider what she said. I guessed he’d kept her at a distance from the compromises that needed to be made when running such a large business empire.

  “OK,” he said.

  We walked around to the front of the house. Hognatt was standing next to a white van. Another new one. He was dressed in dark clothing – black leather jacket and dark grey camouflage cargo pants. He wore black Doc Martens, of course. He wasn’t carrying a weapon, but I assumed there was an arsenal in the back of the van.

  “Hello, Matt,” Jordan said. “Let’s go over the plan again for Michael and my daughter’s benefit. And, by the way, Michael will be going with you. But for God’s sake make sure he stays well behind you.”

  Hognatt gave Jordan another of his questioning looks, then looked at me.

  “He’s dead weight, Mr Jordan. What if things go south?”

  Jordan chuckled. “Just make sure they don’t then. Besides, he can – how did you put it, Michael? – handle himself.”

  Jordan gestured for Hognatt to open the side door of the van. Hognatt slid it back. Inside was a holdall and a small rucksack.

  Hognatt nodded towards the bags. “MP7s, goggles, walkie-talkies and flashbangs. Crystal in the rucksack.”

  “Good, good,” Jordan said. “Then let’s go through the finer details.”

  “Moose has arranged to meet O’Brien at nine to collect two kilos of ice. What O’Brien doesn’t know is that we’ve offered Moose five kilos just to draw O’Brien out into the open with his stash. Moose said he wanted to meet with O’Brien personally at the handover, so it gives us the perfect opportunity to set him up.”

  It sounded like a decent plan, but I wondered if Moose could be trusted.

  “How do we know Moose won’t double-cross? Maybe he fancies seven kilos and the continued supply of meth from O’Brien.”

  Jordan nodded. “Like I said, Michael, you are a canny man. I can’t give you a one-hundred percent guarantee. But I trust Morrisroe. I’ve explained to him that, one way or another, O’Brien is going down.”

  “The other way being a hole in the ground?” I probed.

  Jordan shook his head. “That’s not how I operate anymore, Michael. Let’s just say that O’Brien would have gone to sleep in his bed one night and woken up somewhere in Eastern Europe the next morning. With a bundle of cash and a note telling him that it was in his family’s interest that he enjoy an extended holiday.”

  It seemed Jordan would go out of his way now to avoid murder. But the threat of thuggery was still thuggery in my estimation.

  “What happens when we have O’Brien and the drugs together? And what about Savage?”

  I’d used the word we. I was part of this now. And the last time I had felt part of anything bigger than myself was in the Guards.

  “Go on, Matt,” Jordan said.

  Hognatt continued with the plan. “Let’s deal with O’Brien first. And this is where you come in, Bosco. I believe you are friendly with a Guard named Barry Cotter? He’s an organized crime cop, right?”

  I nodded.

  Hognatt went on. “You’ll tip him off about a time and location. But we’ll already have suppressed the site. They’ll be presented with O’Brien on a plate.”

  I wondered whether it would work. Cotter knew I was up to something. The photo of Moose was proof enough of that. I guessed – no, I knew – that Cotter would come good if I gave him what I said was solid intel.

  “The MP7s, the flash grenades … are they strictly necessary?”

  Jordan added his two cents at that point. “Fail to plan, plan to fail, as I like to say. There’s no way O’Brien is walking away tonight. If O’Brien smells a rat, takes an early bath, then we’ll take him and carry out plan B.”

  I assumed plan B meant shipping him out in a container or something. Using his contacts in the Tivoli docks, no doubt.

  “And Savage?”

  “There’s a chance he might turn up at the meet, but I doubt it. We’ll get to him beforehand.”

  “How?”

  Hognatt spoke. “Jimmy Dorgan – I believe you know him as the Eel – has been on his payroll for years. He tipped off Savage about Doolin.”

  I nodded. That more or less confirmed to me that Savage had gone so far to the dark side that he was willing to kill with his bare hands to fit me up. And likely his intention was to implicate Jordan to give the NBCI and the CAB every opportunity to take him down.

  Hognatt continued. “Dorgan will plant some information for us. Something that will get Savage to a location of our choosing.”

  “What information?” I asked.

  “That you are meeting with his pal Sham to pick up an assault rifle.”

  It made sense. I’d graduated from fist to gun and gotten nowhere. Graduating from handgun to assault rifle was a natural next step. For the Batman of Cork, anyway.

  “Again … how can we trust Jimmy?”

  Hognatt smiled. “A bag over the head can be very persuasive.”

  The bag. The pistol. The threat of a swim with Davy Jones.

  “So we get Savage to a location … then what?”

  “We grab him. We take him to the meet in Charleville with us. We literally tie him to the drug deal.”

  It would tie him to the drugs, get him arrested, but the planted evidence was still out there.

  “What about Doolin? What about the DNA?”

  Jordan spoke. “Goulding is a master of the dark arts. I’ve no doubt he’ll have you out on bail at the very least, if it comes to it. Remember what I said about everyone for themselves with the Guards?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m suspending that indefinitely. That was the old me talking. Remember what you said the first time we met about not having that trust gene in your DNA? Well, I’m trying to discover mine. Grace will help me find it.”

  We went over some more details. About nabbing Savage. About the meet near Charleville, the roads in and out, the specific instructions for the crew members such as positions to take up when the van door opened. It was a thorough plan that I believed had a good chance of success.

  All that was needed on my part was to play the role of bait for Savage and then call Cotter to tell him where to pick up the pieces at the end of the night operation.

  14

  Two Syllables is One Too Many

  The hours before the Savage op started were excruciating. There was very little conversation among myself, Jordan, Grace, Hognatt and O’Keeffe.

  At about twenty minutes past one, Hognatt made the call to the Eel. He gave the time and location where I was supposedly collecting an assault rifle from Sham – five o’clock in the blocked lane to a demolished factory in Little Island.

  Finally at four, Hognatt gave the go ahead. We went to the van outside and I got in the passenger seat. The location was only about a fifteen-minute drive. It would only be myself and Hognatt for the first operation.

  “What if there’s more than just Savage?” I asked.

  “There won’t be.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Jimmy told him that he’d get no more intel if Sham was nicked by the Guards. What Savage thinks
is going to happen is that Sham will turn the weapon on you and wait for him to arrive. He arrests you for possession of a deadly weapon and sends Sham on his merry way with some cash for his trouble.”

  “And you get to play the part of Sham?”

  He nodded. “It’s simple really. I turn the MP7 on him and unless he’s lost his marbles, he should surrender.”

  “There’s a lot of ifs and maybes about tonight, though?”

  “You always allow a margin of error on any operation. You always need an exit strategy.”

  “And you have those?”

  Hognatt just grunted as if my question was an insult to his years of training and combat experience. But I wondered if any of the exit strategies involved shooting his way out of trouble. Killing a Guard, dirty or not, was liable to get you put inside a prison for the rest of your days.

  We arrived at the old lane with twenty-five minutes to spare. We drove by to ensure Savage wasn’t already there. It looked clear. We turned around and drove up the lane. It was lined with thick hedging and would make a good funnel.

  Hognatt said, “There’s a nice hoodie in the back. By Mantaray, I think. Just in case he knows what Sham looks like.”

  “And if he suspects something’s up?”

  “It’ll be too late anyway. I’ll have the gun pointed at him with the scope to my eye. And I don’t miss.”

  We got out. Hognatt went to the back, donned the hoodie, and took an MP7 from the holdall bag. He pointed it at me.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “The safety’s on. I’ll only take it off once Savage arrives.”

  We stood like that for twenty minutes.

  “Your arms must be tired,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I can hold this up for hours.”

  A minute or so later a car passed by the lane.

  “Someone had a good look up here,” Hognatt said. “Get ready.”

  The car came back and drove part-way up the lane before stopping. A man got out of the car and approached.

  “Sham?” he said from about fifty yards away.

  I was caught off guard. It wasn’t Savage. But I knew the voice. I’d heard it that night in Churchfield. It was Dominic.