by L. Danvers
“There’s great credit due to Hognatt for the precision of the operation,” Jordan said. “He assured me that they could get it done in less than four minutes.”
After the crack on the skull, my command of time awareness had been unreliable, but I could well believe it had been done in that time.
“We didn’t mess around,” Hognatt said. “As soon as the unmarked car was out of sight, I cut through the fencing on the eastern side to distract you, Bosco. So that Crowley could stop you raising the alarm. The others came through the gate in the van.”
Jordan chipped in with an impish wink. “A little inside knowledge helped with the keypad on the gate.”
Hognatt finally had a chance to properly tuck into his eggs, which he did with gusto. The smell of his ultra-strong coffee nearly knocked me out. African beans, no doubt.
Jordan had admitted to taking the drugs. What I needed to know was if he had done so for profit. At the expense of the tweakers on the street for whom meth was a scourge.
“What happened to the TVs and their contents?” I said, directing the question to Jordan.
“I’ve got them in a safe place. But don’t worry, Michael, I have no plan to gain from them financially. Let’s just say for now that they are part of a larger plan. And before you enquire any further, I plan on involving you in my plan, so you’ll have all the details in due course. But things are strictly need to know for now, as I’m sure you’ll understand.”
I did. But I could feel my veins hardening again with the frustration.
“You’re asking me to take a lot on faith here, Jim. Up to now I’ve been a pawn in your megalomaniacal fantasy. Now I’m going to be what?”
“Once again, Michael, patience, patience. I said you’ll have all the details in time. I didn’t say I wouldn’t give you any details now. I can tell you that Morrisroe, despite appearances, will be an asset. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“And the drugs you kept are your leverage?”
“Need to know, Michael. Need to know.”
Jordan’s mobile phone rang. His ring tone was the Rocky theme tune. I wasn’t surprised.
“Terence,” Jordan said. He listened intently to what was obviously Goulding on the other end. “Uhuh. Uhuh.”
Hognatt sat calmly by eating his eggs. He took a slice of toast and cut it into strips. Into soldiers. I thought things couldn’t get any more surreal, but then I reminded myself that they most certainly could.
“Oh,” Jordan said. “Uhuh. They found what?”
I looked at Jordan. There was concern on his face. It worried me.
Jordan held up a hand to me or Hognatt or both of us, I couldn’t quite tell. Be with you in a minute, I assumed it meant.
I got some more fragments from Jordan’s end: “By the marina”; “When do they think it happened?”; and then the one that made my back straighten up, “And cause of death?”
Jordan finally thanked Goulding for the call and hung up. Hognatt had sat there for a few seconds with a forkful of egg halfway between his plate and his gob. I felt like a statue again, my legs somehow growing into the chair.
“There’s been a development,” Jordan said. He looked at me. “Michael, would you mind waiting outside for a minute while I talk to Matt?”
I stared at him for a moment. Then I thought, what with Hognatt and his gang of mercenaries, that I’d sod this for a game of soldiers.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said. “There’s no way I’m going out that door, so you better tell me what the fuck Goulding was telling you about. Who’s been killed?”
Hognatt looked down to his plate to avoid eye contact with anyone. Jordan gave me a look that suggested I had crossed a line, but only by a small enough amount that I could move the line with me.
“OK, Michael. Let’s go with the unedited version. But you’ve a habit of jumping to conclusions, so please keep your counsel like a good man. Like a good man.”
I nodded.
“Terence has just told me that a body has been found by the boat club on the Marina. A dog walker came across it yesterday evening. The ID has been confirmed as Brendan Doolin.”
Hognatt looked up from his plate suddenly. Doolin. The red-haired card sharp. He’d been threatened by Hognatt less than half a day earlier.
“And the MO,” I asked.
Jordan just shook his head.
“The MO, Jim,” I said.
Jordan took his time about speaking. “According to Terence, the cause of death was strangulation.”
I’d have been lying if I said I was surprised. First Moolah, then Brick, and now Doolin. I knew there was a connection from Jordan to Moolah and Doolin, one way or another. But Brick? I didn’t think there was. Strangely enough, Jordan attempted to answer the question for me.
“You came across a gentleman by the name of Alan Brick before, didn’t you, Michael?”
This is it. The moment Jordan reveals Brick as a piece on his crooked little chessboard.
“I wouldn’t call him a gentleman. He’s small beans. Prescription pills, ecstasy.”
Jordan nodded. “Yes. Of no concern. But odd that he was strangled also, don’t you think?”
Now things were beginning to click into place for me. Somehow Jordan was going to hang me – in the sense that I was to be his fall guy to take heat off him.
“Look, Jim, there’s obviously some attempt to try and fit me up. I know how it looks, but –”
“I know”
“What?”
“I know you are being made a patsy.”
Was he admitting to being the one behind the fit up? The puppet master pulling his strings?
“How do you know?”
“Call it intuition. I’ve gotten to know you, Michael. And I’m a good judge of character. Besides …” He took a sip of orange juice. “The evidence collected from the latest murder is too convenient.”
“Evidence?”
“Hair between the man’s fingers. Dried blood under his fingernails.”
I didn’t follow.
“Stand up, Michael.”
I didn’t. I just stared at him.
“Please, indulge me. Trust me.”
He stood. I decided I would trust him and stood up. My knees ached again.
Jordan went behind me and I had a clear vision then of my demise at the hands of The Gentleman. He would throttle me, cut the blood supply to my brain. Maybe put me in a bed next to Chambers.
Instead he examined my head, parted the hair.
“Savage had a good go at you, didn’t he? Drew blood from you.”
I nodded as he came back to face me. I remembered the pain in my jaw and spitting cheek blood on the ground.
“And Dominic, his eager sidekick, held you?”
Again I nodded.
“He pulled your hair?”
I was too stunned to nod. He’d grabbed a good hold of it. Probably took a chunk of it with him.
Jordan said: “And now hair and blood at the Doolin crime scene. Evidence when there had been none before.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“When exactly were you going to tell me about Sergeant David Savage?”
“I don’t see –”
“Come on, Michael. You’ve been holding things back from me since the beginning. Savage, Moose, Doolin. What was your plan?”
I looked at him. I didn’t have the wherewithal to form an expression.
“I don’t believe you had one, did you, Michael? You’ve been making it up as you go along. I mean, you can’t arrest them. Were you going to shoot them?”
He had my gun. How could he have concluded any different. And maybe he was right. Maybe I was so thirsty for vengeance that I would have fired the damn thing, gunned someone down that I felt deserved it. Maybe Halloran was right: I wasn’t just the Bruce Lee of Cork, I was the Batman of Cork, a vigilante bent on mayhem.
“Well I can’t shoot them now,” I said.
Jordan sighed.
“I thought you were a man of subtlety. Isn’t that what I said when we first met? That I didn’t have such men in my employ. I’m disappointed, Michael, really disappointed.”
Hognatt left the table and rinsed his plate under the tap. Like O'Keeffe, Hognatt was a speak when spoken to type of guy.
“I’m sorry to disappoint, Jim, but I wasn’t exactly a willing employee, was I? You inveigled your way into my brain, planted the seed of revenge. I wanted to mind my own business, had done for a couple of years, planned to for the rest of my days. It was pitiful, but I was only of harm to myself, no one else. But you fucked all of that up for me. You’re responsible for all of this.”
Jordan seemed taken aback by what I said. “I gave you a second chance, Michael. A second chance. I had such plans for us. You have no idea.”
He got up and took his plate and glass to the sink, then returned for mine. He plugged the sink, turned on the hot tap and reached for the Fairy liquid.
“I have some thinking to do, Michael. If they can link you to the murders, then they can link me by extension. They can play the conspiracy card.” He turned his back to me and began to wash the dishes. “Hognatt will take you home. Wait for my call. I’m not done with you yet.”
I thought better of speaking. I followed Hognatt to his jeep. I noticed O'Keeffe sitting in a car. When he saw us getting into Hognatt’s jeep, O'Keeffe got out of his car and walked towards the house to take up his position as Jordan’s bodyguard.
Hognatt drove me back to Blackpool with not a word exchanged between us.
13
Apples and Bananas
There were no Guards waiting for me at home. But Savage and Halloran would be biding their time gleefully. It took time to process evidence for DNA, then to match it and get a warrant. However, I knew time was running out.
I had felt for just a brief while, just a couple of days really, that things were in my own hands. That I’d wrangled them like wild horses until they had been tamed. But I’d only held a gun to the horses’ heads, forced their compliance. Now the gun was gone and the horses were stampeding.
My DNA would probably be available from evidence in the Chambers inquiry to match to the new evidence. If my hair and blood had been planted at the Doolin crime scene, it would be hard to deny that it was at my hands. There was no one to alibi me. I had been following Hognatt and his crew in my car. There would likely be CCTV footage from the area showing me driving around. The Transit van would have been of no consequence in that footage. There were also witnesses that could put me with Doolin at the card game not long before he was killed.
I felt very alone then. Felt that I had no one to turn to. Cotter would no longer be able to shield me from the other Guards if there was evidence linking me to Doolin. Mogs was still in hospital. I wasn’t going to put my mother in harm’s way. And I didn’t even have my gun for company.
I knew there was one person I had been able to open up to like I had never done before. Someone in whose company I felt very comfortable. That was Grace. It didn’t seem so important then that Jordan might end me for getting involved with his daughter. For dragging her down into my murk. He had other reasons to do that now.
I took out my phone. I looked in the call history for her number and moved my index finger to the call button. I paused. This was madness. It was selfish. But I hit the button anyway.
“Michael?”
Hearing her voice was like ten doses of Valium.
“Hi Grace. I’m sorry for calling.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I’m trouble, Grace. I’m bad news. You can do well without the likes of me calling you up.”
“What are you talking about, Michael? Are you OK?”
I thought for a moment. Open up or shut down?
“Actually, I’m … I’m not OK. But I’m better now that I can hear your voice. Have you spoken to your father?”
“Not for a couple of days. He’s been pretty busy with the new academy. What’s wrong? Why are you not OK?”
“I don’t want to involve you, Grace. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“You’re starting to scare me, Michael.”
“Don’t be scared. I’m going to be just fine.”
“Does this have something to do with my father? Because if –”
“No, Grace. Your father is actually a pretty decent man under it all. He’s seen right by you, you know.”
“Then what is it?”
“This isn’t a great idea, Grace. They might trace the call back to you. And I don’t want you to get caught up in all of this.”
“All of what? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“Because …” I love you. “… you’re a good person. Too good for the likes of me.”
“Michael –”
“Goodbye, Grace.”
I hung up before the pain in my throat took my voice away, before the tears came. I turned off the phone and gave myself a minute to finish crying before wiping my eyes and steeling myself. Talking to Grace was just the fillip I needed. It was high time I copped on to myself and started acting rationally. Having a gun had made me feel invincible. But Grace had highlighted my vulnerability and it made me think straight again.
I was being framed for something I did not commit. I would have to do my damnedest to ensure that the culprit was revealed. Somehow Savage’s actions had to come to light. But how? I had no evidence. All I had was hearsay, the conversation in Carrignavar, which from the mouth of the accused would seem like desperation.
I didn’t feel like waiting around to be arrested. I decided a trip to the local was a good idea. I’d drown my mental hurt with drink, I decided. If I was to go down, it was down into oblivion I would go.
I sat at the bar in An Capall Bán. I ordered a Howling Gale. I was given a fresh pint, the head nice and white and frothy. I sipped it and closed my eyes. Heaven. It would be the first of many, I resolved.
I turned the phone back on. There were three missed calls and one voice message from Grace. I decided the time wasn’t right to listen to it. I decided that if an arrest happened and I was thrown in jail, that I never would. I’d refuse her visits. I’d tear up her mail. It would be too painful. A reminder of what I could not have. Besides, I didn’t deserve a happy life. I was no less a piece of dross than Savage.
Jordan had asked me to wait for his call, so I left it on. I mulled over this point. Jordan still wanted to talk. But about what? Surely at this point I was dead to him.
“Are you well, Mickey?” the barman said absently as he dried pint glasses.
I thought about his question. I considered telling him about the hurricane of hurt I had endured. Poor me, I would say. I’m to be pitied. The world and his granny have it out for me. Instead I did the opposite.
“Fantastic, Willy. Just fantastic. I’ve chased villains, been a high roller, and met the girl of my dreams. A girl as beautiful inside as she is out. A girl who would make me happy even if the entire world was desolated by a zombie apocalypse as long as she was still in it. A girl I … I have fallen in love with.”
Willy raised his eyebrows and eased back from the bar. He wanted no part of my mania.
A voice from behind: “In love with?”
Holy Christ in Heaven. It was Grace. I turned around. She stood there with a look of anger.
“Grace … my God, what are you doing here?”
But I knew. I had turned off the phone. She was worried. She knew where I was because I had joked about An Capall Bán over dinner. About how despite it being full of the Northside’s detritus, I was still proud to call it my local.
“You said in love with. You barely know me, Michael.”
There was truth to that at a surface level. But I’m a believer in soul mates. It took Grace for me to believe it, but I was certain of it then. There was a harmony between us that couldn’t just be pure chance. I was like a planet orbiting around a star. I felt like I knew her.
“I’m sorry, G
race. I didn’t mean for you to hear that. It was just … it was just the ramblings of a washed-up loser.”
She grabbed a stool and sat next to me. She nodded to the barman. “G and T, please.”
“Look, Grace, you’d be better off just going before –”
“Before what? And you better start talking, Michael. I don’t want any of this closed-book shit.”
She cursed. I’d never heard her do it before. It shocked me more than when Hognatt put the bag over my head.
“You don’t –”
“I do. Start talking or so help me God I’ll walk out that door and you’ll never see me again. Tell me what’s wrong.”
I looked at Willy. He may have caught some of the conversation. There was to be no shaking Grace, so I would give her the full story. Damn and be damned. Lay it all on the line and see if she was still sitting there by the end. And if she was, maybe then we had a chance.
Willy served Grace’s G and T and we took our drinks to a quiet corner. A fire was lighting and smoke billowed out now and again as gusts came down the chimney.
“I’ll tell you all, Grace, but I don’t think you’ll like it. I don’t think you’ll like me after the story either.”
So I told her everything. The robbery in Churchfield. Her father’s mercenaries and how they had ripped off O’Brien and terrorized Doolin. The tailing of O’Brien and how it had revealed Sergeant Savage as corrupt. My encounter with the Eel and how the gun changed me. How Moolah, Brick and Doolin had all been murdered by strangulation, the same method I’d used on Chambers to put him in a coma. About the likely fit up for the murders – about the fight, the tearing of my hair, the drawing of blood and the planting of evidence. I told her about taking Crowley and his girlfriend hostage, about tracking down Hognatt, how he had blindsided me, bagged me and taken me to her father. I told her about her father’s admission that he had beaten up my Dad and as a result had a soft spot for me. Lastly, I told her I had been warned off her. That I was a lame horse fit for termination.
“Is that all?” she said. I thought I might have detected the merest smile.
“You want to hear how I shot JFK too?”