‘Seemed genuine enough.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Will someone please—’ Brendan Sweetman looked at Dolly Finn, made an enquiring gesture with his open palms, and turned to the others.
Martin Paxton said, ‘Take a banker, you have a direct line to the money, it speeds things up. Now, the guy says he’s not a banker.’
Frankie Crowe wasn’t listening. He opened one of the holdalls and found the suit he’d changed out of. From an inner pocket he took one of the magazine clippings about the target, the one with the photograph. He’d brought this in case he needed a photo of the target and had brought neither of the other two clippings. One of those referred to ‘his Bryton Bank triumph’. The other quoted a friend saying, ‘When Justin brought Bryton to the table he became a player.’ Further down it said, ‘Acquiring Bryton Bank was the cherry on his cake.’ Frankie read again the clipping he’d brought. It explained how Mr Fucking Wonderful had prospered in property deals, and how his breakthrough came ‘when he landed Bryton, a small private bank’. Fucker was trying to pull one.
Frankie put on his balaclava and headed towards the kitchen door.
The Kennedys were sitting in the living room, in the armchairs flanking the fireplace. After the tour of the house, the leader’s sidekick had brought Justin back to the living room and the tall, skinny gunman, the one who’d shown them the knife, had used thin plastic strips to tie their hands in front of them. The sidekick told them, ‘Just sit there, OK? We’ll be back in a minute.’
Then the two gunmen left the living room, taking the cordless phone away with them. Justin heard the click of the kitchen door opening.
‘Are you OK?’
Angela nodded.
Justin said, ‘When I saw the guns, Christ, I nearly lost it. I thought they’d come to shoot me.’
Angela said, ‘Is there anything you’re involved in?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A deal, a client—’
‘Christ, no. Jesus, nothing that could possibly – this is—’
‘Do what they say, then. They mean it, it’s money they want. Let them take whatever they want, as long as we all—’
‘Of course, of course. I think it’s going to be OK. This is a mistake, they know that now, I think they’ll just leave.’
‘What happened upstairs?’
‘They think I’m a banker.’
Angela stared at him.
‘The fellow who took me upstairs, I told him there was a mistake, and he brought me down, back here.’
‘They’ve come to the wrong house?’
‘Something like that. I suppose he has to consult with the others, that’s why they tied—’
The door opened. The leader came in with his sidekick trailing behind. The leader said, ‘Bryton Bank, right?’
‘Look, there’s been a mistake,’ Justin said.
‘In a magazine last year, it said Pemberton Road, Ballsbridge. Justin Kennedy, big-shot what-the-fuck entrepreneur. Dublin’s upmarket Pemberton Road, that’s what it said. I checked the voting register. Justin Kennedy.’
Angela said, ‘I assure you, Justin is not a banker.’
‘Bryton Bank, right?’
Justin said, ‘I’ve nothing to do with Bryton, I swear.’
‘You’re lying.’ He fumbled in a pocket and held up a page torn from a magazine. Justin could see his own face staring out from the page. ‘“When he landed Bryton, a smile private bank.” That’s what it says.’
The target was shaking his head. ‘You’ve got hold of the wrong – Jesus, I see, look – let me explain.’
Jesus Christ. Sitting here, fucking handcuffs, giving lessons in capital finance to a stupid thug in a balaclava.
Bryton was almost two years back. With the Dublin property market oversubscribed, increasing numbers of investors were buying in Britain. Justin was managing the smallest of three consortia manoeuvring to clinch a city-centre development in Edinburgh. The business pages depicted his syndicate – mostly barristers looking to put tribunal money to profitable use – as ‘quixotic’, which in business journalism roughly translated as losers. Then, approached by Bryton for advice on securing a new headquarters, Justin instead convinced Bryton to come into his consortium and take on the Edinburgh project. It immediately changed the dynamics of the deal and within a month the losers had clinched the development.
‘I brought them into a consortium – there was—’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m a solicitor. I mostly, these days, organise property deals. I persuaded the owners of Bryton Bank to join a consortium – a group of investors – and because they did we beat a couple of bigger outfits to a deal. And I got the credit. That’s it. We made money from it, but I swear – beyond that I’ve nothing to do with Bryton. Jesus, that was nearly two years ago, it’s probably eight, nine months since I talked to anyone from Bryton.’
The gang leader stood there, unmoving, for the best part of a minute. Then, Justin Kennedy said, ‘It’s true,’ and immediately felt like a schoolboy offering an implausible excuse.
The leader turned sharply and walked out of the room. The other gunman said, ‘Look—’ He had a soft voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’ll be all right.’ As he moved past her, towards the door, Angela caught a whiff of a musky aftershave. When he left the room, the gunman closed the door quietly.
*
When Frankie Crowe and Martin Paxton came back into the kitchen, pulling off their masks, Brendan Sweetman was agitated. ‘What the fuck, Frankie? What’s the story?’
Frankie Crowe said nothing. He stood, hands gripping the countertop, staring down at the dark marble, as though he could see something scrawled there. Dolly Finn looked at Martin Paxton and raised his eyebrows. Paxton shook his head.
‘We calling it off, Frankie?’ Brendan Sweetman said. ‘Cut our losses?’
‘He convinced me,’ Martin Paxton said to Frankie Crowe. ‘Whatever else he is, he’s not a banker. But, maybe we shouldn’t get hung up on that? There’s an option, Frankie.’
Frankie Crowe didn’t say anything.
Martin gestured. ‘Look around you. You don’t buy a place like this with loose change.’
‘Ready money,’ Frankie said, quietly. ‘We take a banker, we squeeze his people and they can reach out and grab a bundle of money right away. That was the plan. Solicitor, it’s not like that.’
Dolly Finn said, ‘I don’t see the problem. Rich fucker, he has money, doesn’t matter what his job is.’
Martin said, ‘It’s a point, Frankie. Kind of money we’re talking about. So, it takes an extra couple of days—’
Frankie Crowe said, very quietly, ‘There was a plan’. He reached up and opened the cabinet door in front of him. It had a double-doored glass front, and glass shelves, and an array of little halogen bulbs lighting up a whole cabinet full of Waterford crystal. Frankie took down a heavy piece, a brandy glass, and held it for a moment. Then he dropped it on the slate floor. It broke into a number of pieces. He took down another glass and did the same. And another. He kept dropping glasses – brandy, whiskey, wine, whatever – and the top two shelves were cleared. By then, Martin Paxton had left the kitchen. Dolly Finn and Brendan Sweetman followed him out. They stood out in the hall, not talking. Dolly Finn finished a cigarette and ground it out on the dark wood floor. The sound of breaking glass began again.
Martin Paxton donned his mask and went into the living room and checked on the Kennedys. They looked frightened. Paxton said, ‘It’s OK,’ but he could see that didn’t help at all.
He went back and stood with the others and after a while there was silence from the kitchen.
Inside, Frankie stared at the bare shelves, a glaze of sweat across his forehead. The soles of his thick black shoes made crunching noises on the snowdrift of broken glass. He kicked at the shards and they made a sound like small bells tinkling.
Crowe stood there a moment, breathing hard. Then he closed the cabinet doors and took a heavy blue mug from a rack o
n the counter and used it like a hammer to smash the glass in one of the doors.
Outside in the hall, Paxton, Sweetman and Finn stood silently, not looking at one another. After a while, Frankie came out. There was a cut on his right cheek, a trickle of blood oozing down. Frankie pulled on his mask. He said, ‘We take the lawyer.’
In the living room, the leader said to Justin, ‘We’re taking you.’
Angela said, ‘No, please—’
Justin said, ‘Look—’
‘Give me the name of someone we can talk to, someone who can get their hands on your money. You have partners, accountants, what? Your wife, can she handle it?’
‘It isn’t like that—’
‘Tell me what it’s like.’
‘Look,’ Angela said, ‘we can give you money, right now. There’s a couple of thousand in a safe, there’s jewellery, there’s Justin’s watch, it’s a Rolex and it’s brand new.’
‘Let’s see,’ the gang leader said. He held up Justin’s bound hands and examined the watch. There was a click and the watch came off Justin’s wrist. The gang leader took off and pocketed his own watch and put on the Rolex. He held out his arm, admiring the watch.
‘The jewellery is worth a few thousand,’ Angela said.
The gang leader spoke to Justin. ‘We’re taking you.’
There was a silence, then Justin nodded and said, ‘OK, we need to work out the details.’
The gang leader took a leather-bound notebook from inside his jacket. ‘A name, give me someone reliable who can handle the ransom.’
Angela said, ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’
The leader turned to her, his head jerking in annoyance. He went to the door and called out to one of the others. ‘Take her to the toilet.’ Angela held up her hands, showing the plastic binding. The leader jerked his thumb towards the hall. ‘They’ll untie you, just go.’ He watched as Angela crossed to Justin and kissed him on the cheek. Justin arranged his face in the shape of an encouraging smile. The leader stood aside as Angela quickly left the room.
Then the leader said, ‘We want a million.’
Justin said, ‘Holy Christ, how can I—’
‘That’s peanuts for someone like you, fucking peanuts.’
‘I assure you—’
‘I’m not negotiating. A million. That’s half what we figured when we thought we were getting a banker. This is a compromise, OK? We keep it down to that, your mates can cough it up quick enough, we get this thing over with.’
Justin said nothing for a moment. Then he nodded. Resistance was pointless, and these people had too much of an edge for any negotiations to be worthwhile. Work out the terms, agree the deal, get it done.
‘Here’s how we can do this—’
The leader’s fist shot out and punched Kennedy on the shoulder. ‘The fuck you think you are? You’re telling me how we can do this? You – you’ve got no say in anything right now, fuckhead. You got that?’ His finger poked Kennedy in the chest. ‘You got that, fuckhead?’
Kennedy held up his bound hands in a gesture of submission. ‘Look, I’m not telling you anything. I’m just suggesting how we deal with this.’
‘Suggest nothing. Just—’ and the leader let out a scream of rage and pushed Kennedy out of the way. He darted to the base unit of the cordless phone, resting on a sideboard near the door, picked it up, found the lead connecting it to the phone socket down on the skirting board and jerked it out of the wall. Then he turned and ran out of the room. A physical shudder ran through Kennedy’s chest as he heard the leader scream, ‘Where’s the bitch?’
They both knew where this was going, even before Justin put it into words. ‘They’re going to take me,’ he told Angela.
For a while they hoped that the confusion about Bryton might abort the whole thing, then they heard the sound of glass breaking in the kitchen. The relentless shattering noise baffled as much as frightened them. This didn’t make any sense, even in the extraordinary circumstances in which they found themselves. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then Justin said he knew they were going to take him.
‘It’s what I’d do. I mean, they must have put a lot of work into this. They’re not going to walk away empty-handed.’
‘Can we just give them some money? Jewellery, things – there’s cash in the safe, a few thousand. That and the jewellery—’
‘Listen carefully. Daragh O’Suilleabhain, his home number is in my book. When we’re gone, ring him. Don’t say anything about this on the phone, he doesn’t need to know details. Just tell him you’re speaking for me, he has to do exactly what you say—’
As Justin spoke, Angela remembered the second handset for the cordless phone. She didn’t say anything, just listened to Justin giving her the instructions she was to pass on to Daragh O’Suilleabhain. Daragh would know what to do – Justin could work out the reimbursement once this was all settled. Follow whatever instructions the gang leader gave, do it all through Daragh. ‘It’s the best way, the quickest way to get this over and done and back to normal.’
The gang had disabled the phones around the house, and taken the mobiles. They’d taken the handset of the base unit in the living room. The second handset – Angela had finally remembered where she’d left it – was in the bathroom next to Saskia’s room. She’d used it there, she’d been drying Saskia’s hair after her shower, when her sister rang from Paris. Had the gang found it when they looked around the house, or when they were disabling the phones? If not, did she dare get to it?
Too risky.
Even if she got away with making a call, what if the police came stomping all over the place, panicking the gang? What if the gang started shooting and the police fired back? Maybe there was another way, maybe they could be convinced.
That’s when the leader came in and said, ‘We’re taking you.’
Angela offered them money. It amounted to several thousand, in cash and goods, and they might take it. Not bad for an evening’s work. But the leader just took Justin’s new watch and carried on making his plans.
So, Angela decided, there was no point delaying any longer. Don’t do this and however it works out you’ll for ever despise your weakness.
She said, ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’
The tall, skinny one who had tied their hands used his knife to cut the plastic strip open. He followed her upstairs and stood outside the bathroom. As soon as she went inside, she saw that the small black handset was on the shelf beside the shampoo. She closed the door.
‘Emergency services.’
It was only then she remembered the green light that glowed on the base unit when a call was being made from either of the handsets. She kept her voice low.
‘Police, hurry.’
‘Which service do you require?’
‘Get me the police!’
‘Please hold on and I’ll connect you.’
A few seconds later the line went dead.
Half a minute after that, when the gang leader jerked open the bathroom door, Angela was washing her hands. She had pushed the handset into the middle of a stack of towels on a shelf beside the bath. Screaming that she was a stupid bitch, the leader took her by an arm and pulled and then pushed her out on to the landing and left her there. It took him a very short time, ransacking the bathroom, to find the handset. He brought it out on to the landing and began smashing it against the banister.
A door opened and Saskia’s frightened face looked out. Luke’s door opened, he came out on to the landing.
Saskia said, ‘Mum?’
‘Go back to bed, love, it’s all right.’ Angela turned to the gang leader and said, ‘For pity’s sake, can’t you—’ and he slapped her hard across the face. Luke screamed. The gang leader grabbed the front of Angela’s dress, bunching it in his fist, and dragged her towards him. ‘You want it like this? You want to be a player? OK, you’re a player. Fuck you, you asked for it.’
The other gunmen were in the hall, now, looking up the stai
rs. Saskia and Luke were calling their mother.
The gang leader turned to the soft-voiced one and said, ‘Take care of the kids, Martin, get them to shut the fuck up,’ then he pulled Angela by one arm, moving fast, bringing her down the stairs behind him.
In the living room, Justin was standing, with one of the gang holding him from behind. The gang leader pushed Angela across the room until she stood beside her husband. Then he turned to Justin and said, ‘You’re off the hook.’
For a second, Justin’s face reflected his relief. Then the gang leader said, ‘We’re taking the bitch.’
11
‘It makes sense,’ Frankie told the others, in the kitchen. ‘Take him, we have to work through his missus, or whoever can get their hands on his money. Take her, he can get the money quicker. And that’s what it’s about. Don’t give them time to get fancy on us.’
Dolly Finn was nodding. Brendan Sweetman shrugged.
Martin Paxton couldn’t think of anything else to suggest, so he said nothing.
It’s like every step we take, we’re moving further away from what we planned.
‘Get the car ready,’ Frankie told Dolly.
The woman was allowed to take the children to her bedroom, to speak with them. Frankie took the man out to the kitchen.
‘First things first. You see this?’ He held up his pistol. The man said nothing.
‘What I have here, it’s a Heckler & Koch. German, about twenty years old, maybe more. Takes eight rounds. One of these pieces of lead, I punch it into your wife’s head, it turns her into a sack of waste. Something goes wrong, that’s your best-case scenario.’
He pushed the man back against the counter and put his face up close and spoke in a whisper.
‘Everyone plays ball, it’s over in no time, we take the money and you get your happy little life back. It goes the other way, I’m put in a tight corner, she goes first. No question. So, you do what I say, all it costs you is money. You understand?’
The man just nodded.
‘I swear, any fucking around, I’ll find out and I’ll cut my losses and bury her somewhere and you won’t even get to give her a funeral. You understand?’
Little Criminals Page 10