Dark Times in the City

by Gene Kerrigan

  ‘That fucker!’

  Across the road from the church, an end house on a street of small council houses was ablaze with coloured lights. Santa sat atop the roof – his reindeer were on the side of the house and also lined along the front gutter. The legs of an upside-down Santa stuck up from the chimney. Another lit-up Santa tirelessly climbed up and down a short ladder. A blow-up snowman swayed between a blow-up Santa and an under-dressed Angel of the Lord. Christmas stars of assorted colours blinked from all sides. There wasn’t a surface left undecorated. Before Callaghan went to prison, Christmas lights were an indoor thing, draped on the Christmas tree, with maybe a few lights around the front window. Now, on estates all over Dublin, the competition to see who could publicly hang the most bulbs per square foot was relentless. This house had to be the champion.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Novak said.

  Callaghan told him that Frank Tucker seemed to have genuinely forgotten about his threat. He considered Danny Callaghan dealt with long ago.

  ‘And you’re pissed off why?’

  ‘It wasn’t manly fisticuffs, the judge said. What made the difference was whether I brought that golf club.’

  He told Novak what Tucker had said about the club.

  ‘Eight years, he said, just about the right tab for killing my cousin.’

  ‘It’s done now.’

  ‘Eight years. And those years – if I hadn’t been sitting in that shithouse – my whole life might – fuck it!’

  Callaghan’s eyes were closed, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Let it go,’ Novak said. ‘It’s all done now – the good of it and the bad, the right and the wrong – all set in stone, no way of changing any of it.’

  ‘I deserved it.’

  ‘What’s done is done.’

  Callaghan was calm now. ‘That night, I hit him – he came at me with the knife and I saw the golf club in the corner and I went for it and I hit him once and that should have been enough.’

  ‘Look—’

  Callaghan held a hand up. His voice was low, he spoke quickly. ‘I’ve never told anyone this – not the lawyers, not Hannah. After I hit him with the club, it just felt right. Big bad Brendan, the heavies at his beck and call, he could stomp on anyone, as the mood took him. No fear at all, just contempt. So I hit him again with the club. Because I wanted to.’

  ‘Danny—’

  ‘He’d already dropped the knife – no need to hit him again, but I did. Because it felt right.’ Callaghan paused, then he said, ‘Maybe because it felt good. I hit him again and he screamed, and I knew right away I’d done damage, and I threw the club down and I walked away.’

  Callaghan’s head was low, he was looking straight down at his feet.

  ‘Danny, let it go. Chance and impulse, that’s what it’s mostly about – people act on instinct, do what they think is best at the time. Let it go.’

  They sat in silence for a while, then Callaghan sat up straight, his head back against the headrest. ‘Frank Tucker’s changed. Used to be a small-time thug, now he’s Mr Cool.’

  ‘They all want to be Al Capone, those guys, or Don Corleone or Tony Soprano. I’ve met that sort, down through the years – through Jane’s job. She dealt with a lot of today’s hard men back when they were teenagers. She still goes to the occasional funeral when one of them’s found toes-up in an alley. And they’re all nice guys, they love their grannies and they’re mad about their kids. Get in their way, they’ll nail you to the floor and then complain you spoiled their evening.’

  Across the road, in front of the Christmas house, a couple of kids had linked arms and were twirling in a circle, singing about Rudolph’s nose. Their parents, all woolly hats and scarves, smiled and stamped their feet against the cold.

  Callaghan sat there, his head back, and Novak sat beside him for about twenty minutes, by which time the dancing kids had gone and been replaced by new waves of sightseers come to visit the glowing house. Finally, Novak said, ‘You ready?’

  Callaghan nodded.

  It took just a few minutes to drive to the Blue Parrot, where Callaghan had left his car.

  ‘You going home to mope all evening?’

  Callaghan smiled. ‘No, I’ve got to do some grocery shopping. Then I’ll go home and mope.’

  ‘Drop down later for a drink.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I need the business.’

  Callaghan held out his hand. ‘Thanks again.’

  Novak shook his hand. ‘No problem.’

  ‘All those years, I should have told you how it happened, what I did.’

  ‘None of us is going straight to heaven.’

  He watched until Danny Callaghan had driven away.

  His name was Stephen. It was cold inside the car, he was wearing just his jeans and a T-shirt and a thin Hugo Boss jacket, but he was sweating.

  Get it right.

  He liked this part of it. The anticipation was almost as—

  But right now there was something—

  Could be important, might be nothing—

  He couldn’t remember.

  A thought, sliding, like it was a picture falling through his head, and it wouldn’t stay still long enough for him to—

  Gone—

  And then there was another one, sliding down behind it, and he tried to get hold of that – shit, gone.

  Zippo said, ‘You ready?’

  Stephen said, ‘Just a minute.’

  Sweat trickling down the side of his face, sweat on the back of his neck.

  ‘Come on, let’s get it over.’ Zippo was a nervous type, never seemed to enjoy his work.

  Fuck him. Get the feeling right.

  When there’s a job on, you need a few lines of blow – it clears all the shit away so the inside of your head is clean, everything’s got a sharp edge to it—

  Sometimes, though, it was like this. Things sliding, things—

  Stephen shook his head violently, took a long breath and used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his cheek.

  He reached down to the floor of the car and picked up the big black automatic. In his hand it was massive and it weighed nothing. Smooth, hard.

  Yes.

  He was out of the car and walking, Zippo ten paces behind, watching his back.

  Left the car unlocked.

  Minute from now, don’t want to be fumbling with keys.

  That’d be fun – come back, car’s gone.

  He made a small hooting noise.

  The sweat on his forehead was icy cold.

  He could feel a single drop of warm sweat running down his back.

  Everything clear, everything sharp.

  Clear sky.

  Stephen could see the craters on the moon.

  Everything around him.

  Sharp, every edge.

  Smooth, every surface.

  Nothing sliding now, nothing falling inside his head.

  His pace regular, in time with the beat he could feel in every part of his body.

  Me and him.

  It was like there was no one else in the world, just Stephen and his target.

  Almost there.

  Nothing else on the Earth. No buildings, no mountains, no seas, no other people. Nothing. Not even Zippo. Just a big, smooth ball turning in space, Two little dots – Stephen and the loser he was about to kill, the distance between them closing down.

  Him and me—

  Clear as that, sharp as that. Two people on a big, smooth ball in space. One living, one dying.

  The big gun was a feather in his hand.

  Two in the chest, one in the head.

  This machine, this big fucker – you put two from that in an elephant’s chest and down it goes.

  Then one in the head, for keeps.

  Two in the chest, one in the head.

  Mozambique Triple Tap.

  Closer, steady stride. Any second now, his victim would turn and see him coming.

  Big boys’ rules.r />
  *

  ‘Arogancki bestie.’

  The first time he’d heard the words was the afternoon all those years ago when his father came home early from work and announced that he’d been fired.

  Novak slipped into his leather swivel chair, behind the oak desk in the back office of the Blue Parrot. Another hour before business got heavy. About the time he usually poured himself a coffee and came back here for a break. Stay away from caffeine, his doctor told him. Novak figured an evening without the respite of his ten-minute break and his mug of coffee would be far more damaging than anything the caffeine could do.

  ‘Arogancki bestie.’

  That time, towards the end of the 1950s, Novak had been approaching his teens, his father had been in Ireland for a dozen years and only when he was angry would he lapse into Polish. There had been problems at the furniture store where he worked. One of the four dispatch workers had been let go and the other three would have to work extra hours without overtime. Bad times, few jobs, waves of emigrants leaving for England. Of the three remaining workers, only Novak’s father made a token protest about the buckshee overtime. Then he joined the others in doing as he was told.

  Two weeks later, his boss called him in, told him to fuck off.

  ‘What have I done?’

  The boss’s face was blank. No anger, no gloating. He was doing what he had the power to do. There was a price to extract for the momentary rebellion and now it was safe to use his strength.

  ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you. Get out.’

  At home that afternoon Novak’s father spent an hour in the front garden, on his knees, using a shears to trim the grass, the repetitive labour helping the anger seep away. Sitting at the kitchen table, he poured Novak a glass of Taylor-Keith. ‘Arogancki bestie.’ His tone was mild. ‘That’s how I think of such people – arrogant beasts. The strength of the beast and the arrogance of the man. People with position, people with guns, people with the power of the state behind them, people who wield power over others – in business, in war, in the home, wherever. They feel the strength of the beast, they taste the arrogance of the man, and the sickness takes them. All my life I’ve seen it, everywhere I’ve been.’

  Novak’s father had been 22 and a merchant sailor, his ship docked at Liverpool, when the Germans invaded Poland from one side and the Russians went in from the other. He didn’t return home for over fifty years. After fighting with Sikorski’s army in France, he escaped to England and was reorganised into a Polish rifle division under Allied command. ‘Butchery on a grand scale, all sides, all the time. In those years, the arogancki bestie struggled to own the very world we stand on.’

  Badly wounded, he sat out the last year of the war, then he married an Irish nurse and they came to Ireland. He didn’t visit Poland until 1995, two years before he died. Most of his immediate family were among the country’s five million casualties. There was a dispute about which side, the Germans or the Russians, exterminated which members of his family.

  ‘The Cardinal Sins you learned in school – lust and gluttony, greed – just human weakness. But the real sins, they come when you surrender to the power of the beast.’

  Shortly after he took over his pub, Novak opened up one morning and two men in cheap suits came in and told him they were there to help. ‘Bad neighbourhood – lots of tough bastards.’ The taller one made little effort to hide his sneer. ‘The kind of people who’d set fire to a pub just to warm their hands on the flames, you know what I mean?’

  He leaned across the counter, big smile on his face. ‘Know what I mean?’ he said again. His shoulders were broad, his hands big, and when he put his elbows on the counter and leaned towards Novak he casually coiled his fingers into fists.

  ‘How much?’ Novak said.

  ‘Two hundred a week,’ the smaller man said, and Novak hit the bigger one in the face with a beer glass. They both started running – Novak was slimmer then, fitter, and he caught the bigger one before he’d gone fifty yards. He went through his pockets and found a name and address on a doctor’s prescription.

  ‘Anything happens, I know where you live.’

  Nothing happened. Fifteen years had passed and Novak wondered if he’d have the nerve now to fight back. These days, the arrogant beasts had guns, and they were usually high on something or other.

  After his meeting with Frank Tucker, it seemed like Danny Callaghan had nothing to worry about from that quarter. But something was stirring and Callaghan had been drawn into it. The arrogant beasts that slaughtered Walter Bennett, whoever they were, were still roaming. Since the shooting, Novak had hidden an extra three hammers at strategic points around the pub. He wondered if he should have something more lethal within reach. He pictured himself those years back, angered as he had been by the two thugs, this time with a gun in his hand. No, he decided. There were enough arrogant beasts around.

  Danny Callaghan parked in his usual spot across from the Hive and took two bags of groceries from the boot. He’d read for a while. Eat, then maybe go down to Novak’s place, finish the day off with a couple of drinks.

  To his right, from the corner of his eye, someone moving fast. He turned and saw Oliver’s grandfather, running. Away from the Hive, out onto the green, his step irregular and ungainly on the uneven ground. In the middle of the green, lit only by sparse light from distant lamp-posts, half a dozen people gathered. Before Oliver’s grandfather reached them he gave a harsh, despairing cry that echoed across the green. A woman moved towards him, attempting to hold him back, but he brushed past her. After a few more steps he bent over, then went down on his knees, a young man reaching out to help him.

  Danny Callaghan stood there, staring out across the green, until he heard a siren in the distance. Then he went upstairs to his flat.

  Day Eight

  Chapter 22

  Of the forty or so police officers in the room at Garda HQ in the Phoenix Park there were half a dozen uniforms, the rest were plain-clothes detectives. All but three of those attending what had been labelled the ‘special incidents conference’ were men. Tables had been arranged in a rectangular shape around the periphery of the room, with the police officers facing one another.

  Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey nodded to a colleague across the room, a detective sergeant with whom he’d worked a couple of years back. Some of the faces were familiar, most were strangers. At the top of the room, instantly recognisable to everyone present, Assistant Commissioner Colin O’Keefe was getting to his feet. To O’Keefe’s right, three chief superintendents. To his left, a young woman garda taking notes.

  ‘Sit down everyone, let’s not take all day.’

  Bob Tidey found one of the last empty chairs. Those left standing clustered near the door.

  O’Keefe sat down, tapped the table with the butt end of his pen and waited for the incidental noises of shifting chairs and tailing-off conversations to end. Then he said, ‘As you know, this special incidents conference was scheduled in advance of what appears to be the latest gangland killing. The function of the conference was to pull together the members involved in the various threads of recent gangland investigations. We’ll have a report on this latest murder presently.’

  Each detective had been given a blue cardboard folder on entering the room. Bob Tidey opened his and found that it contained several sheets of A4 paper, blank except for the Garda Siochana letterhead at the top of each page.

  That’s helpful. He closed the folder.

  Assistant Commissioner O’Keefe continued. ‘This morning, the aim is to familiarise ourselves with the totality of the various cases under investigation – if anything rings a bell, any linkages, any patterns, speak up. The minutes from this conference will be circulated later today – discuss it with your fellow officers back at the station. If any two pieces of information look like they might fit together, if you need further detail – there’ll be a sheet going around. I want names and stations from you all, along with mobile numbers and email
addresses. Don’t be shy, keep in touch with one another – that’s what these meetings are about – ask questions, share information.’

  O’Keefe leaned forward and ticked off a line on a sheet of paper in front of him.

  ‘Let’s go over the details of the current incidents. For the benefit of any member who doesn’t know you, begin with your name, rank and station.’

  Member.

  After twenty-six years in the force, Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey still found the use of the word silly. Over the years, the in-house term member had derived from Member of the Garda Siochana. New recruits, back in Templemore, not yet used to referring to one another as members, used to joke about members rising in the morning or members waving from trains. They perpetually promised to introduce members to their girlfriends. Even now Tidey never heard the word in a police context without thinking of his colleagues as pricks – which, in the case of some of them, was fair enough.

  ‘Conor?’

  A detective inspector from Finglas nodded to Assistant Commissioner O’Keefe and began outlining the details of the four gangland killings, much of which was already known to most of those in the room. ‘Murders one, two and three came out of a business deal that went sour – the Colleys and the Molloy gangs, all locals. We’re expecting another one or two before they call it quits, but hopefully it won’t spread beyond that. Victim number four was an idiot who pulled out of a plan to shake down a racehorse owner – and then went ahead and did the job on his own. His former partners caught up with him.’

  Assistant Commissioner O’Keefe said, ‘As we thought, it looks like it’s just a localised spasm – two minor sets of headbangers.’

  The Finglas detective said, ‘It’s simmering. There’ve been several beatings, a number of death threats, three people have gone out of circulation – we assume they’re lying low, probably outside the country.’

  Colin O’Keefe said, ‘Given that there’s a dozen or so heavyweight gangs in the city, a lot of their people permanently coked-up, occasional bloodshed is to be expected. The lesser incidents – they don’t make as big a media splash, but they may be a symptom of problems to come.’