Dark Times in the City

by Gene Kerrigan

  ‘Here.’

  When Callaghan pulled in to the kerb behind a light grey Toledo the young man said, ‘Kill the engine.’

  The driver’s door opened and fear jerked Callaghan’s head around. For a moment he couldn’t place the face of the man who stood there, a small pistol down by his side.

  ‘Last time we met,’ the man said, ‘what you told me was if you ever saw me again I’d get my pimply arse kicked. That still the case?’

  The houses in the cul-de-sac were mostly boarded up. The street was worn and dirty, as if it had been carelessly used for a long time, then abandoned. ‘Get out, get into the back of the car in front.’ Karl Prowse stood back as Callaghan got out of the car. His partner got out the far side and climbed into the driving seat of the Toledo.

  Karl said, ‘Give me an excuse and we can end it right here.’ He followed Callaghan into the back of the Toledo.

  He used a plastic strip to tie Callaghan’s hands and put a black hood over his head. He patted him down, found his mobile and switched it off.

  ‘Why don’t we see how far down you can crouch?’ For encouragement, he used the butt of his gun to hit the smart bastard on the side of the head, just above the ear.

  As the car moved forward, Karl told Robbie, ‘We’re in no hurry – rules of the road all the way.’

  When they took off the hood Danny Callaghan found that he was standing inside some kind of warehouse. It was Karl who took off the hood. The other guy, standing off to one side, had put away his gun. There was a man in his early sixties standing in front of Callaghan. Short grey hair and a face with as many creases as a crumpled paper bag.

  ‘Bit cold in here. Sorry about that, but I needed somewhere quiet for a chat.’ His hands were in the pockets of his bright red anorak. ‘My name is Lar Mackendrick.’

  There were empty steel shelves running along both walls, steel pillars at intervals down each side. The floor was bare and dirty. A couple of rickety chairs and a dirty table. In one corner, a makeshift canteen – a sink, a counter with a dusty camping cooker.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  Mackendrick gestured. ‘Look around you – a bit of a dump, this place. It’s a has-been industrial estate, mostly closed down. The kind of place where no one would hear you scream.’ He smiled. ‘But you don’t want to find that out the hard way.’

  Callaghan stared at the man’s lined face. Mackendrick spoke of violence in the calm tones of someone musing over the choices on a menu.

  Mackendrick said, ‘Talk to me about Frank Tucker.’

  ‘What about him?’

  The young man who had the gun said, ‘He told me Frank Tucker said everything’s cool.’

  Mackendrick said, ‘Is that right?’

  ‘What’s this got to do with Tucker?’

  ‘You went to see Tucker recently. Are you working for him?’

  ‘I killed a cousin of his, a long time ago. Went to jail for it.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I just got out a few months back. I went to see him, to clear the air. He told me he doesn’t hold a grudge.’

  Mackendrick smiled. ‘Frank’s a forgiving kind of guy.’ He looked down at the floor, kicked idly at a pebble. ‘Tell me why you interfered when my good friends here went about their business with Walter Bennett?’

  The plastic binder around Callaghan’s hands seemed suddenly to tighten.

  ‘These two, they came into a pub, waving guns – people having a drink. I did what I did, it was instinct.’

  ‘We had business with Walter, you interfered.’

  ‘This hurts.’ Callaghan held up his hands. ‘Could you at least loosen it?’

  Mackendrick said, ‘I’ll be honest with you – the way it is, someone sticks his nose in, screws up something important – normally you’d have been stiffed by now. And Karl here would’ve been delighted to oblige.’

  Karl Prowse’s voice was harsh. ‘Not such a big guy now.’

  Mackendrick said, ‘You’ve already met Karl Prowse. This other young chap – Robbie Nugent. Last time you met he was carrying a shotgun. These lads were just doing a simple job – you fucked it up. Maybe we’re entitled to some kind of compensation.’

  Callaghan wondered if he should say he was sorry, make some gesture of submissiveness.

  A bad move.

  There’d been a lot of this type in prison. You grovel, it brings out the contempt, they enjoy seeing you hurt and they want more of it.

  Perhaps he ought to put up more of a front? His hands bound, that wouldn’t be very convincing.

  Mackendrick said, ‘Your ex-wife’s name is Hannah. You’re still close with her. Her new husband’s name is Leon.’ He was ticking points off on his fingers. ‘Your girlfriend’s name is Alexandra Kane. We know all about where these people live, where they work.’

  Callaghan stared at him.

  ‘Your girlfriend, for instance, has an apartment down by the waterfront, fifth floor. She—’

  ‘She’s not my—’

  ‘—took you home Saturday night. Your ex-wife—’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘What I want you to understand is this – at any time, I lift a finger and someone close to you is stiffed. One or two of them, or three. And you too. We do who we can immediately, and when everything calms down we wipe up whoever’s left.’

  ‘This is—’

  Mackendrick put a finger to his lips. ‘Pay attention. Your ex will get preferential treatment. First on the list.’

  ‘For Christ sake!’

  ‘It’s not just Karl here you’ve to worry about – there’s a whole army of people I can tap into. One word and she’s in the boot of a car, and the last thing she’ll do before she dies is curse your name.’

  ‘This is crazy—’

  ‘What I want you to say is – yes.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To everything. Anything. Whatever I want from you. Before we go any further, I want you to say yes.’

  ‘You can’t just—’

  ‘Oh, I can.’ Mackendrick came closer. His left hand held Callaghan’s chin. His touch was gentle. He moved his face to within inches of Callaghan’s. ‘Think of ten years from now. Coming up to Christmas. You’re what – what age are you now?’

  ‘I’m thirty-two.’

  There were tiny hairs at the corners of Mackendrick’s mouth, where he’d shaved carelessly. The skin on the bridge of his nose was dry and rough.

  ‘Imagine you’re forty-two. Can you do that? Fifty-two. Sixty-two. Ten more years. Another ten. Imagine you’re eighty-two. Imagine the next fifty years. All the Christmases. All the meals you’ll eat and the booze you’ll drink, the places you’ll go, the things you’ll see. Imagine the women you’ll ride. The children – you don’t have children, right? – imagine the children you’ll have, the grand-children.’ He snapped his fingers close to Callaghan’s face.

  ‘Gone. Snuffed out. I click my fingers and it disappears. Never happens.’

  He snapped his fingers again.

  ‘Bit of a waste, right? I’ve nothing to gain from killing you. What I need to do is show you how important it is to please me. You please me, I don’t click my fingers. I don’t send Karl to kick in your ex-wife’s ribcage before he cuts her throat. Your girlfriend gets home from work and she finds Robbie lying on her bed, waiting to show her what he can do with a knife – no need for that to happen.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Say yes.’

  Callaghan said, ‘Yes.’

  Lar Mackendrick nodded. ‘Walter let us down. We needed Walter for some routine jobs, nothing too heavy. Then we found out Walter was a bit of a mouth. I had to click my fingers. You got in the way, but that’s been put right. What we need done, you’re well able for it, a man with your record. Do it, and you and your ex-missus and your friends, you stay healthy. And I bung a couple of grand in your pocket.’

  ‘I don’t want money.’

  Mackendrick smiled
. ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing too difficult. Driving, mainly.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Mainly.’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘The reason Walter died, he had a mouth. What I’m about to tell you – it could make you die, if you get talkative. Maybe your ex-wife, your girlfriend too, whoever we can reach in a hurry.’

  ‘I don’t gossip.’

  ‘I have a project that needs someone who can get me a car when I need it. No questions asked. And do some driving. And since Walter’s out of the picture, you’re elected as my little helper.’

  ‘If I get caught doing anything illegal – I’ve got four more years in jail hanging over me.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to make sure you don’t get caught.’ Mackendrick raised his eyebrows, tilted his head, inviting a response.

  Callaghan said, ‘I’ll do it.’

  When they took him from the warehouse, Callaghan had a panicky moment. The urge to run surged through him and walking the ten or so feet to the car his eyes jerked this way and that, in search of a way out. A couple of hundred yards away someone was loading boxes into the boot of a car. A guy in yellow overalls. No other sign of life on an industrial estate that seemed forsaken. Everything looked like it was closed – a tyre importer, a warehouse with Peterson Desks stencilled in white on the dark green door, a barred window below a shabby plastic sign that said McCall’s Interiors. Mackendrick was right – it was the kind of place where screams wouldn’t bring anyone running.

  In the car, Callaghan bent to allow Karl to pull the hood over his head. At first he sought to remember the twists and turns of the car, but within minutes he’d lost track.

  The last thing Mackendrick said before they left the warehouse was, ‘We know everything the police know. We know everything about your life – there’s no stroke you can pull that we won’t know about. We’re replacing Walter, and we can replace you just as easily.’

  ‘I’ve agreed to do what you want.’

  ‘The first thing I want you to do is nick a car. You’ve done it before.’

  ‘That was when I was a kid.’

  ‘Walter was good at that kind of thing. If I left it to these two, they’d smash the car window, then wreck the wiring trying to get the fucking thing started. I expect you to do a professional job. New plates, the whole thing shipshape.’

  ‘What kind of car?’

  ‘First time out – something roomy, newish, with a bit of power. I want you to do that tomorrow afternoon and I want you to bring it to the shopping centre at Dunmanlow. The car park. I’ll give you the details before you go.’

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘You heard me say no questions asked, right?’

  ‘And that’s all you want?’

  ‘That’s the kind of thing I want from you – I’ll be in touch from time to time.’

  ‘Tools, the reg plates – I’ll need money.’

  ‘No problem.’

  When Karl pulled off the hood they were driving through Phibsboro. He used a knife to cut the plastic tie. Callaghan rubbed his wrists.

  ‘This’ll do,’ Karl said, and Robbie slowed down, pulled in and stopped with two wheels on the pavement.

  ‘I’m not near home,’ Callaghan said.

  ‘This isn’t a fucking taxi. Get out.’ He handed Callaghan his mobile.

  Standing on the pavement, watching the car drive away, Callaghan powered up his phone. There were texts from Novak, all demanding that Danny call him.

  ‘Christ sake, where’ve you been?’

  ‘I’m sorry, something happened.’

  ‘The Mater had a conniption – I had to pull someone off another job to make that delivery. Then you had—’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Jesus, Danny.’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’

  ‘You okay? What happened?’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ Callaghan ended the call.

  Day Nine

  Chapter 25

  The street was empty, a long, straight valley of middle-class houses, with pavements decorated with trees. Lots of greenery in the front gardens to protect the residents’ privacy. That kind of street, once you went into the driveway you were close to invisible. It was late afternoon, already getting dark,

  This looks like a possible.

  Neat garden. Everything in its place.

  There was a maroon Toyota 4×4 in the driveway. The burglar alarm high on the wall above the door was a cheapie, strictly ring-a-ding, without remote monitoring. If the house was empty, Danny Callaghan had a possible target.

  He’d thought of telling Novak about Mackendrick, but he didn’t want to drag his friend into this. He had the card the police had given him – Detective Sergeant Michael Wyndham – but Wyndham’s instincts first and last would be to make an arrest. Besides, Lar Mackendrick probably wasn’t bluffing – ‘We know everything the police know.’ The consequences of crossing him would be deadly for Callaghan, and perhaps for Hannah, maybe for Leon and for Alex.

  Best to do what Mackendrick asked – steal a car for him. If it ended there, Callaghan could swallow it.

  If all that was needed was wheels, the simplest thing would be to take a car from a quiet street – and there were a few ways of doing that. If the demand was for a new model, which might have the latest immobilising gadgets, the most reliable option was to get hold of the keys.

  Sometimes you could tell a lot just by the way a house looked – which lights were on, the way the curtains or the blinds were arranged. The best way to check if anyone was home was to ring the doorbell.

  Walking up the driveway, Callaghan resisted the urge to glance around. Best to make like Mr Innocent, calling at the house on business. It was people with something to hide who checked out their surroundings. Callaghan involuntarily tapped his jacket’s left pocket, although he knew the set of bump keys was there.

  ‘It’s all about the basic skills,’ Jacob Nash used to say. ‘Once you’ve got the basic skills and the tools – open a lock, climb a wall, find a weak point – you’ll never go hungry.’

  Nash got out of Mountjoy four years before Callaghan, after doing almost two years for a series of breaking and entering jobs. A few hours after receiving his orders from Lar Mackendrick, Callaghan drove out to Nash’s house in Skerries with enough money to buy what he needed. He found Nash up a ladder at the side of the house, fixing a leaky gutter.

  Nash came down from the ladder. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Slim jim, jiggler set, bump keys and a shim – and I need some plates.’

  ‘You’re going into business, then?’

  ‘Just keeping my hand in.’

  The house with the Toyota 4×4 was the fourth one that Callaghan had tried in this area in the last forty minutes. At each of the other promising targets he rang the bell and a woman answered. Callaghan said he was from the cable television company and when the woman said there must be a mistake he asked if this wasn’t the Riordan household.

  No.

  Oh, sorry – I’d better check they’ve given me the right address.

  Fourth time lucky.

  He pressed the bell and waited.

  After a minute he pressed again and after another minute passed Callaghan took out a keyring with half a dozen bump keys on it. He chose one, much like an ordinary front-door key except that the teeth were filed into a series of five regularly spaced triangles. When he inserted it in the lock, Callaghan used a thumb to apply minimum sideways pressure to the key. He took a small block of wood from an inside pocket and hit the key with it, like a hammer hitting a nail. The force should have caused the triangular teeth to jerk forward, jolting the pins out of place, the sideways pressure of his thumb forcing the cylinder to turn.

  The lock stayed locked.

  It was the timing that mattered, twisting the key – not too soon, not too late – in the fraction of a second after
the whack of the bump key’s teeth bounced the pins upward. The trick was to get it turning before the pins fell back into place. Too soon or too late, nothing happened. He did it three more times and got the same result. The fifth time, the key turned, the lock opened and Callaghan stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

  He had probably twenty seconds before the alarm went off. He glanced around – saw a key box on the wall, black with a colourful butterfly picture on the front. He opened it. Three keys, none of them a car key.

  There was a hall table with a lace runner and some pieces of paper held down by a glass paperweight with a 3-D image of the World Trade Center. At the far side of the table, a shallow dark blue bowl with hair clips, safety pins, a small roll of Sellotape and a car key.

  Just as he took the key the alarm went off.

  No panic.

  No problem.

  Not yet.

  Mostly, neighbours assumed that a ringing alarm meant a false alarm. Only when the noise had had time to become a nuisance did they look out of their windows to see if there was something wrong. Lots of time to start the engine, back out and be gone.

  Callaghan forced himself to stay well within the speed limit for the ten minutes it took him to drive to the Dunmanlow shopping centre. He stopped in the corner of the car park furthest from the shopping-centre entrance. The false number plates were in a deep inside pocket of his overcoat and it took him just a couple of minutes to swap them for the originals.

  He walked away from the Toyota, towards the O’Brien’s sandwich bar that looked out onto the car park. He bought a coffee and sat near the window. He’d been there ten minutes when Karl Prowse and his sidekick came in and sat down across from him.

  ‘Maroon Toyota, four by four,’ Callaghan said. He passed over the keys.

  Karl said, ‘Well done, Junior.’

  Callaghan didn’t reply. He stood up and left the cafe.

  ‘We’ve waited long enough,’ Robbie said. They’d been sitting by the window of the sandwich bar for almost an hour and Karl too was impatient. But he didn’t want Robbie making decisions, so he said, ‘Another few minutes, just to be sure.’

  Not a hint of any cop activity around the shopping centre. The car park was filling up. A van had parked beside the Toyota, blocking their view, but the driver went into the shopping centre and was back out within minutes and drove away.