Again, Mackendrick tapped out Karl Prowse’s number. Again, the barren sound of the engaged signal made him frown.
‘Well? Have you got it?’
‘I’ve got it.’
Got it.
Walter Bennett tried to keep the hope out of his voice. He gently swayed forward and back, his stare fixed on the ground at his feet. ‘Great. I can meet you now.’
Dessie Blue said, ‘Not now. Tonight.’
‘Now.’
‘Tonight.’
‘This afternoon, then.’
‘Tonight. Maybe first thing tomorrow – at the latest.’
Shit.
‘You don’t have it.’
‘I have it. I just need to get my hands on it – just a matter of arranging things.’
‘Arranging things?’ Walter’s voice was tighter, the pitch higher. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Getting the money actually into my hands.’
‘You’re fucking me around.’
‘I swear.’
‘This is important to me! I need it, you owe it to me, you bastard!’
Dessie Blue broke the connection.
Shit-shit-shit-shit.
Shit.
Walter ground his lips together. After a few seconds, he hit the buttons on his phone.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Please, Dessie – you’ve no idea, man, this—’
‘You call me a fucking bastard, then you—’
‘I’m under pressure, Dessie, the worst kind.’
‘Tonight, then.’
‘Thank you – thanks, Jesus, man—’
‘Half.’
‘Half what?’
‘Half the money.’
‘Ah, fuck that, Dessie, please, please.’
‘I can get you half – you want to take half, or you want to wait a while?’
‘Half now, half later.’
‘You want this in a hurry, Walter, you take half. Finito.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Whatever.’
Silence.
‘You settle for that, Walter, right? Half?’
‘It has to be tonight, though.’
‘You working tonight? Anthony’s place?’
‘No.’
‘Be there. Nine-ish.’
‘Dessie—’
He was gone again.
This time, no engaged signal from Karl’s phone. Lar Mackendrick was standing by his dining-room table. One hand holding the phone to his ear, the other silently tapping the table top in time with the distant ringing.
Come on.
‘Yeah?’
Mackendrick said, ‘It’s me.’
‘Everything okay?’
‘You’re free today?’
‘I’m busy this afternoon,’ Karl Prowse said. ‘Family stuff. Free this evening.’
‘Good.’ Mackendrick spoke evenly, as though passing a comment on the weather. ‘I’ve talked to our friend. He insists on staying out of touch. I spun him a yarn, but I don’t think he’s buying. So we’ve got to find him, urgently.’
‘Any idea where he’s staying?’
‘Probably a B&B, maybe he’s got family.’
‘Okay.’
‘Use your initiative.’
Chapter 11
This was the time Danny Callaghan liked best. Alone in a car, a straightforward task to perform, no time pressure. The motorway was busy – the afternoon light fading, endless streams of cars mostly driven by tired, edgy people, in too much of a hurry to get somewhere that might make up for the long hours of work they didn’t much enjoy. But Callaghan liked the calming effect that came with emptying his mind of everything except the mechanical routine of calculation, adjustment and response involved in driving on a busy motorway.
The drive to the airport, in the early afternoon, had been mostly silent. He gathered from their infrequent remarks that Rowe and Warner weren’t too confident they could offer a cure for the problems of 257 Solutions. Rowe suggested a holding memo, as soon as they got back to London. Before heading home they were off to another job, this time in Frankfurt.
On the way to the airport, Callaghan caught himself yet again glancing in the mirror, not just routinely checking traffic but scanning the road behind for a glimpse of blue.
Stupid.
Once, he caught a hint of something blue and looked again but couldn’t see it. When he got too close to the hatchback in front he gave up the vain search in the mirror.
Stupid. The notion of looking for a blue Ford van. Whoever it was – if there was anyone to worry about – could be driving any kind of car.
He glanced in the mirror again.
If it was just about the blue van he could write it off as paranoia. But this afternoon, an hour before he was due to pick up Rowe and Warner at their hotel, Callaghan had been getting ready when the doorbell rang.
Shit.
The police did things like that. Figured the time most likely to mess you up, then came to collect you for a wholesome chat down the station, and you didn’t get to leave until they’d screwed up your day.
His hand on the lock, Callaghan drew back.
Don’t assume it’s the police.
He fetched the hammer from under the bed and when he opened the door the kid from two floors up was standing there.
‘Someone’s looking for you.’
The kid, name of Oliver, was wearing the same hoodie outfit he’d been wearing when he’d nodded to Callaghan a couple of nights back, out on the green in front of the Hive.
Callaghan waited.
‘Couple of fellas, they were asking around last night.’
Callaghan said, ‘The police. They were here this morning. It’s nothing.’
‘Not the cops. I saw these guys. These weren’t cops.’
‘These days, they’re recruiting all sorts. It’s not just mountainy men in long overcoats – long-haired men, little chirpy women.’
The kid said, ‘I know cops. These weren’t cops.’
Callaghan said, ‘Two fellas, right? Both of them wearing anoraks. One was fat-faced, the other—’
‘No.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘Nothing special – jeans, I think, heavy jackets.’
‘Fat-faced fella, big?’
The kid shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. These weren’t cops,’ he said for the third time.
After a few seconds, Callaghan said, ‘Okay.’
The kid pointed to the hammer. ‘You expecting trouble?’
‘I don’t know. Thanks.’
The kid nodded. He said, ‘See you, then,’ and he turned and left.
Callaghan was south of the airport on the M1, having dropped Rowe and Warner at Departures, when his phone rang. It was Novak. ‘Any chance you could handle another job?’
‘That’s fine. I’ve just dropped – I’m free for the day.’
‘It’s way out west?’
‘No problem.’
‘From there on to Celbridge?’
‘No problem.’
‘Thanks, Danny – we’re stretched this afternoon.’
Novak said the job came from a larger transport firm, embarrassed by a limo breakdown that threatened to leave three clients stranded at the Citywest Hotel.
‘I’m on it.’
There were a lot of SUVs in the car park of the Citywest, and helicopters lined up in the grounds. Legions of primped and burnished middle-aged men hanging about in expensive casual wear. The three clients were from that tribe, and they talked about golf all the way to Celbridge. Danny Callaghan tuned them out. The last time he’d held a golf club had been almost a decade earlier and there’d been blood on the clubface then.
At Celbridge the three golfers asked to be dropped at their local pub, where they gave Callaghan an extra-large tip.
On his way back now, Callaghan was in no hurry. His glance instinctively found the mirror again, and he cursed himself.
Do something.
Find out.
It had become too much of a habit, this checking the mirror and expecting the flash of blue. The blue van might have something to do with what had happened in Novak’s pub. Or maybe Frank Tucker was finally looking for payback for his cousin’s death. Perhaps it was the police, still looking to link him to whatever Walter was into.
Or maybe it was nothing at all – just two blue Ford vans with white writing along the side. A coincidence, and not all that big a one.
Find out.
Kill the fear.
All around him drivers radiated intensity from within their speed-pods, every one an isolated unit in a regimented herd, aggression sustained by anonymity. Behind and to Callaghan’s left a four-year-old 1 Series BMW, the cheapest in the range, was playing silly buggers. In the mirror, he’d watched it jigging from lane to lane, the driver pushing the nose of the car into lane gaps, laying down the challenge – Hit me or fuck off – and always getting what he wanted, surging across the line, into the new lane, immediately searching for the next gap. Callaghan glanced across at the BMW, now passing on his left. The driver was in his thirties, shirt-sleeved, leaning forward, his lips tight. Whatever the rest of his life was like, out here in his speedy bubble on the M50 he knew himself to be a Spartan engaged against terrible odds in a fight for all that mattered. As the BMW surged forward again, Callaghan eased back. The best place to be when that type was around was anywhere else.
His life was like that now – quiet, limited, safe. His irregular work kept him well within the borders of his small ambitions. In his earlier life such limitations would have chafed. When he’d met Hannah, a dozen years back, he was exuberantly open to whatever life brought along, whether business or personal.
‘You don’t recognise me, right?’
When Hannah asked the question, Callaghan was in her kitchen, measuring an oven housing that turned out to be an eighth of an inch too narrow for the oven it was supposed to house. A nuisance, but not a problem.
‘No,’ he lied, and the way Hannah smiled told him she knew he was lying.
‘The face is familiar,’ he conceded.
‘I was a year ahead of you – UCD,’ she said. And he said, ‘Really?’
What he remembered was a woman with swaying dark hair, the centre of a crowd of loud types, mostly male, always boisterous at social or sporting occasions. Collectively they made the kind of noise that told the world to stand back and pay attention. A woman he’d watched from a distance, acknowledging to himself a mixture of interest and desire, but disinclined to do anything about it. Her smile, her bursts of enthusiastic chatter, the intensity she exuded, usually seen from across a bar or a canteen, at a debate or passing in a corridor.
Callaghan was wrestling with a decision at the time, having long decided that university was a mistake. He knew what he wanted to do and he wanted to do it now. And that meant he needed to smother the assumption his father had drummed into him – that to get anywhere you needed a passport in the shape of a degree. At that time, his pull towards a woman he didn’t know was a distraction he couldn’t handle.
‘You disappeared.’
Callaghan was surprised that she’d noticed.
‘I dropped out. Got into this game.’
He hadn’t seen her again until that day in her new apartment. By then, his small custom cabinet-making business was motoring merrily along. Hannah was recently graduated, working part-time with a PR firm set up by a friend. Callaghan had installed a kitchen for a colleague of hers, who’d passed on his number.
‘I knew you as soon as I saw you,’ Hannah said. It was a couple of weeks later and they were lying in bed. Callaghan grinned. ‘Obviously I made a big impression.’
It was dark now, so when Callaghan glanced at the mirror all he saw behind was the array of headlights on the motorway. No detail. Still, looking for a glimpse of a blue van was now a habit.
Do something.
He fished a Bluetooth headset from his pocket, adjusted it on his ear and hit Novak’s number.
‘Yeah?’
‘You doing anything tonight?’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘No problem. Just, you know, you busy?’
Novak laughed. ‘You want to take me bowling, right?’
‘I need you to do something, set something up. I want to talk to you about it.’
‘Okay.’
‘There’s something – there may be something happening, whatever, I need to check something out.’
‘This about what happened with Walter?’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’
‘Drop by later.’
Chapter 12
Right mess, this is.
Pamela took two handfuls of shredded cheese, scattered them across the pizza base, checked the order and reached for a handful of pepperoni. She worked at her usual snappy pace, but tonight there wasn’t much point.
The trouble with this place – no coordination.
Tonight, for instance, there were plenty of staff to put the pizzas together, not enough delivery people. Two guys had quit yesterday, another was out sick, everything was backed up. The orders came in, the pizzas got made, everyone was waiting for the two delivery guys who’d turned up tonight to get back, but they were each working two vectors instead of one, so it was twice as long before they returned to collect for the next run.
The shop was called Anthony’s Pizza Place and the guy who owned it, Anthony Mohan, was spending half his time tonight on the phone, having no luck rustling up some more delivery guys. He considered shifting some of the pizza makers into delivering, but most of them were too young to have driving licences – the one who had a licence couldn’t find his arse with both hands and a mirror.
The shop looked like a cartoon version of old Chicago, the pizzas had gangster names, and the delivery staff wore silly gangster uniforms. ‘Nice guy, Anthony,’ Pamela told her boyfriend. ‘Pays more than the minimum wage – never pushes anyone around. Just hopeless at organising.’
‘Hey, Walter!’
Pamela looked up and saw that Anthony had a big smile on his face, his voice with an edge of pleading. ‘An answer to prayer, that’s what you are.’
Rubbing his hands from the cold outside, Walter Bennett shook his head. ‘Sorry, Anthony, the reason I’m in—’
Pamela liked Walter. Little old guy, a gloomy look about him, but he called her ‘dear’ and he never leered at her tits, not like some his age.
‘Come on, man, it’s an emergency.’
‘No,’ Walter said.
And, from the other side of the open kitchen, sprinkling cheese across the twenty-third pizza she’d handled since her shift started, Pamela could tell he meant it.
Okay, so Anthony Mohan was a nice guy, but Walter was buggered if he was going to waste one of his last evenings in Dublin delivering pizzas for loose change.
‘Where’ve you been the past few weeks?’
‘Busy,’ Walter said. ‘Anyone asking for me tonight? I’m expecting—’
‘Two hours,’ Anthony said. ‘That’s all, just to get us out of a hole.’
‘Sorry, Anthony, no can do.’
Anthony’s Pizza Place meant handy pocket money on a slow week, but Walter reckoned it was demeaning, a man of his age. Work like that was for students or Chinks. He did it when he was especially short of the readies, but just about anything else was preferable. Which was how he’d got into that thing with Dessie Blue.
It’d been a month, now, waiting for Dessie to come through. Dessie ran a small rental business on the fringe of the music industry – amps, mikes, that sort of thing.
Mean bastard.
Could have come up with the money straight off. It wasn’t like that kind of money was a lot to Dessie. It was like he enjoyed being a mean bastard.
A month back – Walter’s phone rang. Dessie Blue said he knew that Walter knew people who could get him what he needed. That time Dessie paid upfront and gave Walter two hundred just for making the c
onnection and bringing the stuff round. Two hundred on top of the grand the stuff cost from the wholesaler.
Walter wasn’t personally into nose candy, had never even tried it. And he’d never got into moving it in a serious way – but he knew people and this thing with Dessie Blue was just about making a connection.
Two days after that, Dessie Blue rang again.
‘Something similar.’
‘Come on, Dessie – you got enough marching powder to keep a regiment going for a month.’
‘Some people I know. How about it?’
Dessie was a consumer, now he wanted to distribute, that way he could subsidise his own use.
Walter said, ‘Same deal?’
‘Half – five hundred’s worth. And a hundred for you.’
‘Two hundred, same as before.’
‘One-fifty, and they want it tonight.’
‘Bring the money around.’
Which was when Dessie Blue had said it’d be quicker if Walter financed the deal himself. ‘You can put the five together – for a start, you’ve got the two hundred I gave you for the last deal. Bring the stuff here, I pay you the five, plus your one-fifty.’
Walter thought for just a second, then he said, ‘For that service, two-fifty’s my price.’
Dessie Blue said, ‘That’s fair enough.’
And the fucker said, when Walter brought the stuff around, expecting his two-fifty fee and the five hundred for the product, ‘This is embarrassing, Walter. The people I’m talking to – they came to me, it was their idea. Now the bastards say it’s okay, someone’s made them a gift of a goodie bag, they don’t need any more right now.’
‘That’s not my problem,’ Walter said.
‘Don’t worry, Walter, I can shift the stuff – these days, no problem finding buyers. What I’m saying is, I can’t pay you tonight, it’ll take a day or two.’
‘Fuck that.’
Which was when Dessie Blue had said that was okay – if Walter wanted to hold on to the stuff, retail it himself, that was fine with Dessie. But if he wanted to offload it right away and he was willing to wait a day or two for payment – certainly by the weekend – Dessie would have no problem finding a market.
‘I’ll round it up, your fee, from two-fifty up to three, to make it up to you. Wait a day or two, I give you an even eight hundred.’
Dark Times in the City Page 7