In the absence of Nicky, Grace silently mocked his own enthusiasm. If he’d been asked, he couldn’t say if it came from a dutiful wish to play a part in getting the victim back to her family, or an eagerness to impress the bossman. He told himself that, whatever his motive, it worked out the same for the victim.
About half of Hogg’s team were already at work in the office – as fresh and peppy as they’d been at the midnight briefing – the rest were out beating the bushes. Grace found a free keyboard and began typing up everything he knew about Frankie Crowe. He made phone calls, mentioned Hogg’s name, and there was none of the usual We’ll do our best. He had the records he needed delivered by garda courier well within the hour.
Halfway through the morning, a gofer from Technical brought in a folder of photographs of Frankie and the other suspects, along with snaps of relatives, associates and known hang-outs. Grace got the job of adding details about the various players. Hogg wanted the completed folder printed off as a kind of match programme for the team of detectives.
It was a surprise to see Brendan Sweetman back in action. Marriage and fatherhood seemed to have made a solid citizen out of him. His wife was an obnoxious woman who had filled Grace’s ear with obscenities the last time he made a routine visit for a chat with Sweetman. Obnoxious, but straight as they come. After years together, Sweetman remained obviously crazy about her. However this worked out, whoever got the job of raiding Sweetman’s home could look forward to a right bollocking from his missus.
John Grace made a habit of keeping in touch with old clients. The last time he’d been in Frankie Crowe’s Glasnevin flat was shortly before Frankie checked out of his partnership with Oscar Waters and Shamie Cox. It was an expensive little dive, one of the thousands of pygmy apartments thrown up in Dublin over the previous decade, built on the cheap and sold at a premium. They were the surest sign of an underdeveloped city, newly affluent, borrowing heavily and impatient to spend its money.
For a while, Grace had great hopes for Frankie. He recognised a type. Ambitious but not making any great strides. That kind, if they’re tapped at the right moment, make the best informers. They’ve been around the scene, they know lots of people and what those people are up to. Not having reached the status they imagine is their due, they’re bitter. A position as an informer gives an opportunity for revenge against those who prospered, and it gives the ambitious type a genuine role as a mover and shaker, which is half of what he’s wanted all along. Their new-found status has to remain secret, but for that kind there’s a pleasure in looking someone in the eye and feeling the thrill of superiority that comes from deceit.
Within ten minutes of making his pitch to Frankie Crowe, John Grace knew his timing was off. Frankie was still convinced of his destiny, disillusioned with Waters and Cox but still confident that his fate involved greater things. He was too upbeat to take the offer seriously.
The hell with it, Grace had told himself. Give him time, he’ll bite.
‘Do you ever feel guilty? The kind of things you do to people, walking into their lives with a gun in your hand?’
‘I’m not a bad person, Mr Grace. Mostly, the things I do, an insurance company coughs up. Big fucking deal. Thing is – look, if you want to do the best for yourself, sometimes you have to do something you know is just plain wrong. You do it because it’s the only way to get you where you want to be. Don’t do it, you stay a loser.’ He paused, like he was about to deliver a polished credo. ‘People with the balls to do what they have to do, they own the people who don’t. So, you do what you have to.’
‘And you can live with that?’
‘It’s a bad thing, but doing a bad thing doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a person doing a bad thing – one bad thing. You do it, maybe you feel bad about doing it, but it’s that or be a loser. So, you do it. You do it and you move on.’
In the report he was typing up for Hogg’s team, John Grace didn’t mention anything about Frankie’s possibilities as an informer. In the time since he propositioned Frankie, the opportunity hadn’t arisen again. Whichever way this kidnap thing went, the chances of Frankie Crowe ever again being in a position to rat on anyone were on the slim side.
Justin Kennedy was slumped in the back of an unmarked police car, one armed garda beside him, two more in the front, speeding through the bus lanes. It was a relief to get out of the house. In the thirty-six hours since this started, there seemed to be something like twice the usual number of minutes in every hour. The very air that he breathed seemed charged with some form of ominous energy.
From the speeding car, he took in isolated images of the city’s daily routine, everything distinct, sharp and cut off from its surroundings. Glimpses of the normal world, operating at its usual pace, emphasised the strangeness of the landscape in which he now existed. An old woman standing at a bus stop, her thinned hair dyed bright red, her face lifeless, like she’d given up on something. A prat in a silver sports car, mobile clutched to his ear, steering one-handed through the traffic, almost clipping a cyclist.
When the police car stopped at a traffic light on Baggot Street, Kennedy watched a tall, thin, grey-haired man in a well-cut blue suit cross the road, placing one foot in front of the other with the care and attention only the truly drunk can bring to the task. Kennedy recognised the type, still clinging to the uniform of respectability while allowing himself the delicious irresponsibility of surrender. For a moment, Kennedy let himself envy the drunk, easing into the comfort of recklessness, letting go of everything that made life complicated and fraught. The joy and the hope as well as the pain, worry and fear. It was a thought that sometimes surfaced during times of stress – he quickly killed it now.
The police car passed through a narrow street of rundown shop fronts. Kennedy recognised the area as one that he and some associates had appraised with a view to development. Some of the shops were derelict, others had been re-opened on low rents and short leases. They were now run mostly by immigrants offering ethnic foods, colourful clothes and hairstyles, expertise in mobile-phone repairs or cheap Internet and phone connections to far-off continents. The boom had suddenly brought a wave of Asians, Africans and East Europeans to Ireland. Apart from staffing the pubs, restaurants and hospitals that found it hard to hire Irish workers, they were spawning old-fashioned commerce in the unlikeliest places. Kennedy had decided against buying up the site, but someone else did. Once the immigrants were evicted from here, they’d as quickly start businesses elsewhere.
Now, as the police car turned out of the street, Kennedy saw two black men standing outside a clothes shop, one rolling a cigarette, the other throwing back his head and laughing. Usually, whenever he encountered immigrants Kennedy wondered what their story was, what dangers they had endured in getting from some distressed country to this one. Now, he was surprised to feel a surge of resentment towards immigrants who didn’t appear all that troubled. He didn’t question or dispute the emotion but found a comfort in yielding to its spite.
The policemen remained in the lobby of the Flynn O’Meara Tully offices while Kennedy went up in the lift. Daragh O’Suilleabhain was waiting when the doors opened on the fourth floor. Daragh was in his forties, and had cultivated a slight Northside Dublin accent and a roughness around the edges, though he was pure Blackrock College. Daragh was known in Dublin business circles as ‘a bit of a character’, which in his younger days had led a lot of people to underestimate him. After a while, his contemporaries began to realise the ease with which he could switch off the joviality and hand them their heads. He was seldom underestimated these days.
His first words on welcoming Kennedy set the tone of the meeting. ‘I won’t waste time on sympathy, Justin. Let’s get this done, give the bastards the money, and get Angela back.’ Daragh had been a year ahead of Justin at Blackrock College, and though they’d had little contact at school they had since developed a durable business and personal relationship.
Daragh led the way to a small confe
rence room, where the occupants stood and greeted Justin with the uneasiness of distant relatives dutifully attending a funeral. There was a senior bank executive, and a Flynn O’Meara Tully accountant that Justin didn’t know. As the firm’s primary mouthpiece, Daragh O’Suilleabhain’s job involved an amount of glad-handing, both inside and outside the firm, and he had developed a style to go with it. This morning, he shed the bonhomie like an unnecessary piece of clothing.
‘To bring you up to speed, Justin, first thing yesterday, soon as you got in touch, I got on to the bank and they assigned two officials solely and exclusively to sourcing the cash, and they’ve done a superb job.’ He nodded to the bank executive, inviting a contribution.
The banker nodded. ‘We’ve got the money assembled, more or less complete at this stage – and given that we’ve got all today to finish the job, I can’t see any problems.’
O’Suilleabhain said, ‘I gather it’s a pretty hefty package, and maybe we’ll need to talk to the bastards about how they want it delivered.’
‘Pretty hefty,’ the banker said, ‘but portable. A million in fifties, we’re talking about 20,000 banknotes, which weighs maybe forty, forty-five pounds. It fits into two rather solid holdalls.’
Daragh said, ‘What about getting the money to the bastards?’
Justin said, ‘I’m waiting – about half eleven tonight – to be told when, where and how.’
‘What about transporting it?’
The banker said, ‘We have several anonymous-looking, secure vehicles that we occasionally use for discreetly transporting large amounts. We’ve not yet talked to anyone about this, but these vehicles are already wired for GPS tracking, if we want to take that course.’
Justin shook his head. ‘I don’t know, maybe the police—’
Daragh cut the matter short. ‘It’s an option.’
The accountant led a brief discussion of the procedure whereby Flynn O’Meara Tully would reimburse the bank but Daragh brushed aside all but the barest details. Justin’s assets, although more than enough to cover the ransom, were tied up in property and stocks. The bank’s role was merely to provide the ransom cash in a hurry. Daragh wrapped up the meeting soon after, and when the two functionaries left he had a secretary bring in a couple of cups of coffee.
‘You bearing up, old son?’
‘Once I get instructions from the fuckers I’ll know how long it’s going to take to nail this down. The forty-eight-hour deadline is tonight, a bit after eleven o’clock.’
‘Angela’s strong, Justin. She’ll come through this.’ He put a hand on Justin’s shoulder and his rough voice softened. ‘Hold on to that.’Justin had seen it done several times, Daragh applying his professional vocabulary of concern. Being on the receiving end, he found himself totally convinced of the man’s sincerity, and grateful for it.
He tried to discuss the mechanics involved in liquidating assets to repay Flynn O’Meara Tully, but Daragh shook his head. ‘Time enough for that. Money’s how we keep score, but right now the game is suspended and money’s just a tool to do a job. When it’s all over, we can shuffle the paper around.’
The best part of twelve hours later, after three further conversations with O’Suilleabhain, by phone, Justin Kennedy knew that everything was in place. Then, midnight came and went, and the forty-eight-hour point was passed, and the bastards didn’t ring with their ransom instructions. Justin’s face had a film of sweat. He was sitting in his kitchen, at the table, house phone in front of him, his mobile too, a couple of bored telephone technicians tweaking the monitoring equipment, and three gardai – including Chief Superintendent Hogg – standing around.
And the bastards didn’t ring.
The gunmen had not only taken the Rolex that Angela had given him, but the watch he wore before that and two others of his that they’d found in a bedroom drawer. Justin checked the watch he’d borrowed from Daragh O’Suilleabhain. Twelve thirty-three. ‘Something’s gone wrong,’ he told the policemen. ‘Wednesday night, they left the house at eleven-thirty, sometime around then. They’re an hour late ringing.’
‘These are not businessmen, Mr Kennedy,’ Hogg said. ‘We can’t expect punctuality. I know it’s difficult, but patience is important in these circumstances if you’re not to wear yourself out.’
It was all very well for the police. They’d been sympathetic, respectful, obviously efficient. They wanted to get Angela back safely, and get their hands on the kidnappers. Just as obviously, for them this was a professional task. The detachment was, he supposed, necessary. But, Jesus, it was like they were plumbers trying to fix a broken pipe.
Justin had done nothing wrong. He’d set about raising the ransom. The gang said it was OK to contact the police, they were expecting it. He’d done exactly as they said. And still the bastards hadn’t called.
It was like every fibre in his body had been stretched, twisted and rubbed raw. He’d hardly slept for two days and yet he felt not tired but electrified.
‘What the fuck are they up to?’ he asked no one in particular.
One of the policemen that came with Chief Superintendent Hogg – they’d been introduced but Kennedy didn’t catch the name – said, ‘I know these people, sir, and believe me, you wouldn’t want to set your watch by them. Men like this, they say forty-eight hours, they mean two or three days.’
Hogg said, ‘Detective Inspector Grace is right, Mr Kennedy. This means nothing. Besides, it may be they’re aiming to stretch your nerves, push you off balance.’
Kennedy didn’t reply. He looked at Daragh’s watch. It was twelve thirty-seven, four minutes since last he checked the time.
*
Poor sod.
Grace reckoned there’d be no phone call tonight. You wouldn’t want to set your watch by them was meant to comfort the hostage’s husband, so it understated his own worries. Could be that Frankie Crowe said forty-eight hours because he thought it sounded good at the time, but he hadn’t meant it to be taken literally. Could be that he’d gone on the piss, celebrating his criminal brilliance, and he’d wake up in the morning remembering there was something he was supposed to do last night. Could be that something went wrong and Frankie disposed of the hostage and was lying low, unaware that the police knew of his involvement.
If that’s the way it’s gone down, most likely Frankie will turn up at his flat one of these days and we’ll take him and he’ll roll over. And before long we’ll be wearing white overalls and digging up a patch of earth in the Dublin mountains, with masks on our faces to filter the stench.
There was something different about this case. There was the possibility of disaster, yet there was also a sense of satisfaction. A sense of responsibility. Almost every case John Grace was involved with, from burglary to murder, required the police to pick over the debris of a crime and try to catch up with the culprit. As likely as not, finding the guilty party involved fairly simple logic. There were other times, when witnesses were too scared or too compromised to give evidence, or when the randomness of the crime made detection unlikely. Whichever way it went, nothing the police could do would change anything, even when the offender was caught and convicted. The deed was done, the damage, the pain and the fear had gone as deep as they were going to go, and the police job was one of clearing away the wreckage. This Angela Kennedy thing was different. What Grace and his colleagues did or didn’t do might determine whether a woman came back to her husband and kids.
Grace recognised the feelings he’d had since this thing began. Excitement, interest, passion. It had been a long time since his work aroused such emotions.
What he’d come to recognise after a couple of years at the policing game was that the crime just kept on coming, and would keep on coming, and what he or anyone else on the force did wouldn’t make a difference worth noticing. They could drive it away from one area and into another. Gangs frustrated by bank security would hijack lorryloads of computer chips. Break a protection racket and watch the gangsters start up a diese
l-laundering scam. The way things were, when people didn’t get the things they wanted or needed, some of them became beaten and sour, others just took what they could, where they could. All of them, whether they lived in ghettos or mansions, had their own vision of the life they were entitled to. And the urge to acquire whatever the vision demanded – money, sex, status, or just a rush of whatever drug best pampered a fucked-up mind. And if getting what they wanted meant breaking a law or breaking a head, so be it.
There were problems out there that no amount of police would solve. And, apart from the odd radical priest or social worker on the way to an early burn-out, no one gave a shit. John Grace sometimes felt like a glorified binman, collecting the week’s rubbish and taking it out of sight. The police couldn’t stop lawbreaking, any more than binmen could stop the accumulation of waste.
No one said it out loud, but there was an acceptable level of crime, maybe even a desirable level of crime. John Grace reckoned he made a better living out of the crime business than most lawbreakers. Only a very few criminals soared to the levels of prosperity enjoyed by the lawyers, the insurance companies, the newspapers, the top people in the firms supplying the alarms and the bouncers, and all the rest of the services that thrived in the hinterland of the crime business. Even if a criminal reached the level of a Martin Cahill or a Jo-Jo Mackendrick, the chances were that he’d rub a lot of people up the wrong way and eventually pay a price.
If they got this Angela Kennedy back alive – and the chances were that they would – the case would then become the familiar hunt for evidence that would store the bad guys away for a few years, with nothing much more at stake than professional pride. In the meantime, the prospect of getting her back safe, saving a family from even worse pain, aroused in John Grace an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt since his early days out of Templemore. Afterwards, he knew, the stagnancy into which his career had drifted would seem less interesting than ever. But, for now, he felt a peculiar gratitude to Frankie Crowe for giving him this opportunity.
Little Criminals Page 16