The window, like the room in the first place she’d been held, was covered on the inside by a sheet of wood. When they arrived here the previous evening, they’d locked her in here with a bottle of Pepsi. It was after midnight when the tall skinny one came in and took her to the toilet. She’d had nothing to eat, and when she woke this morning she felt nauseous and had to bang on the door until the gang leader came and took her to the toilet to be sick.
After she’d written the note he wanted and he’d taken it away, when she was alone, the tears came and she spent a long while in a fog of depression. She hated them for creating her fear, she hated them for the horror they had invented for her family. Mostly, she hated them for saturating her in helplessness.
Fuck them.
The light bulb in the centre of the ceiling was a sixty-watt effort that was just bright enough to add to the gloom of the room. The sheet of wood that blocked the window was framed by a thin line of surging daylight that emphasised the feebleness of the artificial light.
She knew that whatever she wrote in the note to Justin would only add to the pressure on him. That was the purpose of the note. So, she’d kept it as short and as bare as possible.
Dear Justin,
They told me to write you a note. I am OK, but I miss you and Saskia and Luke and love you all very much. I know you are doing everything you can. Take care,
Angela
She felt hungry, but she knew it would be foolish to eat anything heavy so soon after being sick. As the gang leader read the note, she asked if she could have some toast and a cup of tea.
‘Later,’ he said. It was well over two hours before the one with the soft voice brought the roast-beef sandwich.
Angela took small bites from it and chewed each one slowly. The meat tasted better than she expected, and in her mouth the flavours of the processed bread, the butter, the salt and the cold meat seemed both separate and perfectly complementary. She washed the last crumbs down with another mouthful of orange juice, and if she was imagining the physical boost the food gave her, so be it.
Christ sake, do something. Any fucking thing.
She was still wearing the same tracksuit, grubbier than ever. Her hair was stringy, her skin taut.
She’d heard a car drive away during the morning and from the lack of sounds of movement in the house, she guessed that she and the soft-voiced gunman were alone. When he took the empty plate, Angela rubbed her hands on the legs of her tracksuit and said, ‘Isn’t there anything I can change into?’
‘Maybe we can get something. See if there’s a shop.’
‘Can I at least have a shower?’
He said nothing for a moment, his indecision reflected in tentative movements, a step back, a hand half raised, then, ‘I suppose—’
He brought her down a corridor to the bathroom. ‘You’ll have to wear the same things, afterwards.’
There was pebbled glass in the bathroom window. When he left her alone she touched the handle on the window, applied some weight, and it was like it was welded shut. Maybe it was. Anyway, what if this was some kind of test? What if they had one of the others outside, watching the window? She turned on the shower.
For a minute or two her nakedness made her feel vulnerable, then she began to enjoy the energy of the hot shower. It was as though the water was washing away a temporary and exhausted skin, allowing the fresh skin underneath to breathe. Streaming through her hair, down over her shoulders, the water drained some of the tension away. The brisk rubbing of the towel not only dried her body but left her skin flushed and fresh.
She was resigned to the used knickers, having already worn all those available at least once, but decided not to bother with the bra. It was the lacy thing she’d worn under the burgundy dress on the evening of Justin’s birthday, and after four days it was stretched, grimy and uncomfortable.
She put on the trainers without the dirty socks. Dressed again, the tracksuit didn’t seem as soiled, her movements seemed freer, her mind less fogged. The gunman was waiting in the corridor.
‘Feeling better?’
She could see, at the other end of the corridor, past the door to her room, a door ajar. It seemed to lead out into a back garden. When she spoke, nodding towards the far door, she used a timid voice. ‘Could I go down to the kitchen, maybe sit at a table, have a coffee – maybe even go out into the garden, get some air?’
He began to shake his head.
‘Please? It would mean so much.’
He looked down the corridor to the door, back to her face, paused a moment, then shrugged. ‘Five minutes, no more than that. We come back in when I say so, understood?’
She gave him a wide, full smile. ‘I promise.’
She went ahead of him down the corridor and caught a glimpse of a wide living room on the left, cheap furniture and a small television. She went past a kitchen on the right – she could see a draining board stacked with plates and cups – and out the back door.
A patch of yard and sixty feet of grass stretched away from the house. There were bushes along the bottom of the garden and all the way down both sides. A few clouds hovered in the distance, but the sun was bright in a blue sky that was mostly clear. She brushed her damp hair back from her face.
Behind her, the gunman stood just outside the back door, hands in the pockets of his jeans, the brown woollen mask looking even more absurd in the daylight. Angela took deep breaths. She could smell the sea above the scent of the grass. She could feel the weak heat of the sun on her face. As she rolled up her sleeves she could feel the breeze on her arms. She held the front hem of the tracksuit top away from her belly and waved it back and forth and felt the cooling air on her breasts.
The gunman said, ‘Must have been rough, travelling all the way down in the boot?’
She said, ‘Where are we?’
He hesitated, then said only, ‘Outside Dublin.’
‘I heard the sea, when they took me from the boot of the car. I can smell it now. Close.’
Wexford, she guessed, somewhere around there. The sea, two, three hours drive from Dublin. Travelling all the way down, he said. Wexford, most likely.
He asked, ‘You still hungry?’
She looked at his masked face and she could see the eyes. Blue, blinking. Nervous.
‘You don’t hate me.’
He didn’t reply.
‘The fat one, he hates me. Can’t imagine why, but that’s what he gives off. Hate. Like he’s angry at me for something.’
The gunman shook his head. ‘He’s OK. There’s nothing personal. It’s just, for him, for any of us, it’s just a piece of work.’
She kept her face as blank as possible when she said, ‘The tall one, the skinny one – he’ll be the one to kill me, if it comes to that.’
The gunman shook his head.
‘Or maybe your boss will do it himself. Have you talked about that, among yourselves? Have you decided which one of you will do it?’
Still shaking his head, he came closer. ‘Nothing like that, I swear. That’s not going to happen.’
She was surprised at how easily the tears came. Not too much, no hysterics, just a catch in the voice and liquid at the edges of her eyes.
‘Your boss – he told me things that my husband is supposed to have said. That he wasn’t doing anything to get me back. You don’t – is that true?’
‘Look, he’s fucking with your head. This is business. Your husband, big-shot solicitor, probably he’s got insurance for this kind of thing. It’s just a question of arranging things, that’s all.’
Angela was suddenly speaking quickly, urgently. ‘Let me go. Let me make a run for it.’
‘Ah, Jesus.’
‘You can say I knocked you down, took you by surprise, ran away.’
‘Jesus, come on.’
‘I can’t identify you, I won’t identify anyone. I’ll pay you. More than he’s asking for. I’ll get it, I’ll send it anywhere you say.’
‘Come on, that’s e
nough.’ Thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans, his stance awkward and shifting.
‘You know I won’t double-cross you, I’d be too afraid.’ Angela moved a step towards him. He shook his head. She said, ‘Get me out of this, I’ll send the money anywhere you say.’
‘That’s what we’re trying to arrange, a ransom.’
‘Ransom or no ransom, he’s going to kill me.’
‘You’ve got us all wrong. This is business, no personal shit. What do they call you – Angela, Angie?’
‘Angela.’
‘Angela. This is all about patience. This is all—’
‘You’re Martin, right?’
‘How the fuck—’
‘I heard the other man, that first night at my house, I heard him when he went wild, dragging me down the stairs, when he told you to take care of the children. He called you Martin.’
He said nothing for a minute, just stared at her.
‘I just heard the name. I haven’t seen any faces. Listen, Martin, he’s going to kill me! Even if he gets the money, he’ll kill me.’
‘No—’
‘Please. Turn your back for a few seconds, that’s all it takes. Tell the others you tried to stop me – please, Martin.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re not making sense. Things don’t work that way. And how long do you think Frankie would believe a story like that?’
Frankie.
He was agitated now, impatient. ‘Look, this is all wrong, this is fucking silly. Come on, inside—’
‘Could I just—’
‘Inside!’
‘Please—’
‘Stop fucking around. I know what you’re doing. Just stop it, right now!’ His voice was suddenly brisk. ‘Inside, right now, OK?’
In the corridor on the way back to the room she felt an elation. Fucking yeah!
She hadn’t got very far. But, Christ, it felt good to do something, to try something, to be something other than a piece of lucrative meat locked in a small, gloomy room, waiting for that surly bastard, Frankie – Frankie! I know something you don’t know I know! – to do whatever he intended to do.
Behind her, perhaps mistaking her slow gait as a mark of depression, he said, ‘It’ll work out. I promise.’ She didn’t reply, didn’t even look at him as she went into the room and lay down on the mattress, face towards the wall. He waited maybe half a minute before he closed the door. She lay there, eyes open, breathing measured, refusing to look around. Only when she heard the key dick in the lock and his footsteps move away did she turn over, sit up and clasp her knees, rocking back and forth.
The call came on Justin’s mobile. He was in the kitchen, on the landline to Angela’s sister. The kids were holding up, Elizabeth said. Luke was a bit teary, but Saskia was acting like there was nothing wrong at all, like she was on a normal visit to her granny’s home and that was more worrying.
Justin said, The police are here all the time, that would upset them, but maybe it would be better if—’
And his mobile rang.
Without preamble, the voice said, ‘There’s a church called the Predous Blood.’ Justin didn’t say anything to Elizabeth, he just hung up the phone and said into the mobile, ‘Who is this?’
‘In Cabra. Cabra West. There’s a note there, behind the statue of St Theresa. Message from the missus. To prove my credentials.’
‘Please, tell me—’
‘Did you hear me? What was the name of the church?’
‘Precious Blood, in Cabra.’
‘Good man.’ And the phone went dead.
In less than half an hour, the police had collected the note and brought it to the Kennedy house. John Grace and Assistant Commissioner Colin O’Keefe were there when Malachy Hogg pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened the envelope. He glanced at the note and held it out for Justin, who read it and said, ‘It’s her writing.’
Pencilled at the bottom of the note, in block capitals, there was a two-line addendum.
CALL YOU IN A WEEKS
TIME CODE WORD – SUNFLOWER
20
Uncle Cormac’s sofa was damp. A dark wet streak ran diagonally down the light brown material of the back of the sofa, across the seat, looping around itself several times, and ending in a wide dark patch in the middle of the three cushions.
Frankie got another can of Coke from the fridge and swallowed noisily.
In the living room, Frankie unplugged the eight mobiles he’d put on charge when he got up this morning. He put them into his black Umbro overnight bag.
The previous day, having left the note at the church in Cabra, and made the phone call to the hostage’s husband, Frankie needed somewhere to stay. A B&B was an option, but he decided on Uncle Cormac’s place. More potential for a bit of crack. Pity the little tosser wasn’t there. Frankie had been thinking recently about family matters and what with one thing and another Uncle Cormac was well overdue another slap.
On arrival, he found the fridge as well stocked as ever and he made himself a beef sandwich, spent the evening watching shit on TV, then went to bed in Uncle Cormac’s room.
Nice place, Uncle Cormac’s new gaff. Four-bedroom house, halfway down Griffith Avenue, though what the bastard needed four bedrooms for. Proceeds of a lifetime of hard work in wholesale and a six-figure insurance claim when a warehouse went up in a fire that had Maguire & Paterson written all over it.
Uncle Cormac’s was the only bedroom that was furnished. A second bedroom was used as a storeroom, the other two were bare. His uncle’s bedroom was untidy, the bed unmade, clothes discarded across a chair. In a drawer of a bedside table, Frankie found a couple of wank-mags. Under the scented liner of the drawer in the mahogany dressing table, he found an envelope with a grand in small notes. Just-in-case money. Thank you, Uncle Cormac.
There was an Allied Irish Banks calendar on the back of the kitchen door, all the September dates and the first ten days of October filled in with scribbled reminders. Starting the day before, six days were filled in with the same word, London. When Uncle Cormac wasn’t importing something he was exporting something else, usually something with paperwork that was close enough to pass for legit.
Having packed the mobiles, Frankie paused to look at a photo on the living-room wall. An older man and woman and a woman in her twenties, all relaxing on a beach somewhere, smiling for the camera. Frankie didn’t recognise the young woman. The older couple were his parents. His dad, dead these six years, was grinning his old shit-eating grin, his mother displaying her stuck-up smile. His hands on his hips, Frankie stared at the photo and tried to remember a time when he hadn’t seen through the phoniness of the whole fucking thing.
It was Uncle Cormac who made the move that brought everything crashing down, though Frankie had been on the outs with the old man and the old dear for most of his teens.
‘Where’d you get this?’
Standing inside the door of the small living room, his mother held up a briefcase Frankie had left under his bed. The expression on her face wasn’t curious or worried, it was triumphant, like she’d finally cracked a problem she’d almost despaired of. Gotcha.
Seventeen-year-old Frankie, lying on the sofa. Music pulsing from the television, Madonna arranging her arms in a succession of twitchy poses, her face rigid, vacant, staring straight out at Frankie. Frankie ignoring his mother, his father butting in, ‘Your mother’s talking to you.’
Which was when Frankie came off the sofa in a hurry, grabbed the briefcase and screamed that it was none of her fucking business. He tossed the briefcase across the room and his old man jerked his head sideways to avoid getting clobbered.
Frankie had found the briefcase in a car that he and two mates had taken for a ride a few nights earlier. He was getting out of the back seat when he noticed the case on the floor, took it, checked it out – a stack of typed pages, figures and scribbles all over them – useless shite that he threw high in the air, walking away as sheets of paper blew into someone’s garden. H
e kept the briefcase for no reason other than it seemed too swanky to throw away. You never know.
Two days after the incident with his parents, the cops came for Frankie. That was Uncle Cormac’s idea. Bring the briefcase down to the station, he advised Frankie’s dad. Get the gardai to give the lad a scare, frighten the waywardness out of him. Uncle Cormac was his dad’s younger brother. The brains of the family. Bald and skinny and drippy as a soft-boiled egg, prying and fussy and full of big ideas. No wife or kids of his own, but never done sticking his nose in and bleating about black sheep.
And the shades took Frankie down the station, into a room without windows. Two culchie bastards, chins out, showing off what big men they were. Frankie told them to piss off. One of them stood watch by the door while the other gave him a bit of a going-over, but nothing to get worked up about. They didn’t bother charging him.
That night, in the poky little living room, Frankie’s mother told him about Uncle Cormac’s big idea, a grin on her face as if daring him to let his anger take him where it might. Standing by the door, his dad said nothing. As if the room wasn’t small enough – you couldn’t take three steps without having to step around something – his older brother, big fat Seamus, was standing beside his mam, his arms folded, loathing written all across his big pouty face. Now and then, over the years, Frankie caught himself wondering why his mother decided to stir things up, letting him know it was Uncle Cormac’s idea. There was something chronic going on there, his mam and his dad and his Uncle Cormac.
‘My own family – called in the fucking cops?’
His mother enlarged her humourless grin. ‘Give you a taste of the real world, that’s what Cormac said. Actions have consequences, he said. Bloody waste of time, far as you’re concerned.’
Frankie’s dad said, ‘Now, wait a minute—’
Frankie walked out of the house. His dad followed him down the street, telling him not to be a fool. Frankie told him to get the fuck away or he’d get his stupid head opened. Frankie’s dad stopped and stood there in the street.
Little Criminals Page 20