Little Criminals

by Gene Kerrigan

  The farmer shook his head. He grunted, his voice distorted. ‘I swear. Frankie hasn’t been here in two days. There’s no one in there.’

  There was no one in the farmhouse. The ERU smashed in the door and swept through the place. They opened closets, looked under beds and one of them stuck his head up into the attic and gave it a wipe of a flashlight. They went through the outbuildings.

  ‘There’s definitely nobody here,’ the tactical commander told John Grace. ‘Technical are on the way,’ he said. ‘Waste of time.’

  Grace said he’d have a look around the house until Technical arrived.

  The ERU mounted up, with Leo Titley handcuffed in the back seat of one of their cars, and Grace watched until they were out of sight. Behind him, Bonner emerged from the house, taking off the garda ID jacket. ‘Could be this one’s running away from us,’ he said.

  ‘Could be,’ Grace said, still looking off into the distance. He felt like they’d come to the end of something. This was going to be one of those things that never got properly tied up.

  Bonner said, ‘Most likely, Frankie’s left the country by now.’

  ‘It’s possible.’ The victim was safe, that’s what mattered. Catching Frankie – they did or they didn’t. Either way, there’s always a Frankie to chase.

  Bonner said, ‘Hope we didn’t promise Sweetman too much for the tip-off.’

  They went back into the house. Bonner opened a window. The stale air held the scent of too many greasy meals half eaten and left lying overnight. Grace decided to have a look around in case there was something less obvious than a fugitive in a closet, or a foot sticking out from under a bed. Technical would do a proper search, taking photographs and fingerprints, the kind of stuff that might be needed if there was ever a trial. Meanwhile, it was possible that Crowe had left some small pointer to another hiding place. A note, a phone number, an address, a ticket, a receipt, a map. Within ten minutes, poking through the contents of a drawer in one of the bedrooms, Grace decided this was pointless. This was the hovel of a bachelor farmer. Frankie’s stay was short, he left no trace. It’s over, until Frankie turns up somewhere, sometime.

  ‘Boss,’ Nicky’s voice from the living room.

  As quickly as the conviction had come that this was all over, it went. Nicky had found something.

  The first thing Grace noticed when he went into the murky living room was the stillness of Bonner’s posture in the decrepit armchair. The second thing was Frankie Crowe, standing just inside the doorway, casually holding a gun, pointing it into the space between the two policemen.

  There was a long silence.

  Crowe’s eyes were puffy. He looked like he’d slept in his clothes.

  Trying for a conversational tone, Grace said, ‘This doesn’t have to go the distance, Frankie. We can have a quiet finish, everything civilised.’

  ‘If I agree to sit in a cell for the next thirty years.’

  He gestured to Bonner. ‘You got a gun?’ Nicky took off his jacket, turned round. Grace did the same. Neither man was armed.

  Grace said, ‘Frankie, the way things are, we can—’

  ‘You can shut the fuck up.’

  Crowe handcuffed the policemen together, back to back, then made them lie down. Grace, kneeling awkwardly, grunted as he felt a muscle twist in his leg. Rougher than he needed to be, and enjoying it, Frankie searched Bonner and took the policeman’s car keys. He found Grace’s mobile in a trouser pocket, threw it to the floor and stamped on it until it cracked open.

  ‘Where’s your mobile?’ Frankie asked Bonner.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Bonner said.

  ‘Probably in his jacket,’ Grace said. ‘Take it easy, Frankie, no need for aggravation.’

  Crowe found Bonner’s mobile and smashed it.

  Grace was thinking about Technical – they’d be here in an hour, give or take.

  How far will Frankie get in an hour? What direction?

  ‘Traffic’s pretty heavy this time of day, Frankie. You hit Dublin, you’re crawling. Your picture’s all over the place. The ports, the airports, ferries; not a hope.’

  Frankie ignored him. He used a length of wood with a hook at the top to pull down a spring-loaded rectangular panel in the centre of the ceiling. He unfolded the wooden Stira ladder attached to the panel and climbed up into the attic. A moment later he pushed a heavy holdall through the opening and let it fall to the floor. The second holdall hit the side of the table on the way down and knocked a half-empty teacup on to the floor. The cold tea soaked into the shabby carpet.

  Frankie climbed down and left the ladder in place.

  He got the two policemen to their feet, unlocked the handcuffs and cuffed them again, this time face to face, one of Grace’s arms through the rungs of the wooden ladder.

  Frankie grunted as he lifted the first of the holdalls.

  Looking at the solid wood of the ladder, John Grace reckoned it would take a lot of shifting. Both of them working together, he and Nicky could maybe loosen a rung.

  ‘Raping a woman like that, Frankie,’ Nicky said, ‘a woman with connections. Won’t be a station in the country doesn’t get a supplementary budget. All the overtime, won’t be one of us doesn’t have a summer home in Spain.’

  Crowe seemed distracted, and when he spoke it was as though he was talking to himself. ‘Send me a postcard.’

  Bonner said, ‘Up in Dublin, Frankie, your lads are queuing up to sing your praises. Martin Paxton, Brendan Sweetman – it was all Frankie’s idea, Frankie got the money, Frankie raped the woman — how do you think we got on to this place?’

  Crowe turned towards Nicky and he looked as though he was about to say something, but he remained silent.

  Grace said, ‘Nicky—’

  Bonner said, ‘They’ll go down, but they’ll go down easy, that’s the idea. And when you’re living in some squat in Amsterdam, waiting for the heavy gang to come through the door with their guns blazing, they’ll get early parole.’

  Frankie Crowe stared at Bonner.

  ‘What you reckon, Frankie, maybe the lads could take turns seeing if your missus needs a hand while you’re away?’

  ‘Nicky, cut it out,’ Grace said.

  Crowe continued to stare at Bonner.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ Bonner said.

  Crowe leaned over and spat in Bonner’s face. As the spittle slid down his cheek, the policeman wore a broad smile of contempt, as though he’d won a small victory.

  When the money was tucked away in the boot of Nicky Bonner’s car, Frankie Crowe made himself comfortable behind the wheel. He reached down and slid the seat forward a couple of inches and adjusted the rear-view mirror. He started the engine and thought about the safest back-road route to Belfast. Dun Laoghaire, Cork and Rosslare would be tighter than a duck’s arse. Belfast gave him as good a chance as he could expect.

  In the glove compartment he found an opened packet of Scots Clan. He took a toffee and listened to the engine ticking over. A solid car. Better than the piece of shit he’d had to use for the past couple of days. He sat there chewing until the sweet was all but gone. He took another Scots Clan, then he got out of the car.

  Crowe was chewing when he came back into the house. He walked up to the two policemen and Grace didn’t see the gun in his hand until he pointed it at Bonner and shot him in the face. A small dark hole appeared in Bonner’s right cheek, an inch below the eye. It didn’t bleed. He was breathing harshly. His eyes open, he stood there, stunned, staring at Crowe.

  Crowe said, ‘Cat got your tongue, smart-ass?’

  Grace, barely audible, said, ‘Jesus, Frankie—’

  Crowe ignored him. He pursed his lips at Bonner and made a kissing sound. Still chewing, he took his time pocketing the gun, then he turned and walked out of the house.

  Bonner’s legs gave out from under him and he twisted as he fell. Grace’s arms were jerked forward and the metal bit into his hands as Bonner’s weight dragged at the handcuffs. Grace’s face smashe
d against the side of the ladder. Bonner hung there, his arms above his head, his hands held aloft by the handcuffs, his face a few inches away from John Grace’s wide eyes.

  Bonner’s eyes were still open, his face was calm and he wasn’t breathing any more.

  Grace was barely aware that he was making small, incoherent noises. He could hear a car moving off outside.

  28

  From the window of her room on the third floor of the Blackrock Clinic, Angela Kennedy looked down on a car park. She’d been staring at a fluorescent-green Volkswagen, trying to imagine who might have chosen such a silly colour. A giddy young nurse, maybe, full of the joys. Angela decided that if she sat by the window long enough she’d see the owner returning to the car.

  She didn’t turn round when the door of the room made its whooshing sound. A nurse came in, checked the charts and inserted an electronic thermometer in Angela’s left ear. The instrument beeped, the nurse made a note of the reading, said something pointlessly encouraging and left the room.

  In the hours she’d been here, she’d already become used to the whooshing of the door, the beep of the thermometer, the needle pricks, the tablets in the little plastic medication cup and the nurses’ cheery routine. She felt herself to be the nodding, smiling cocoon of calm at the centre of a whirl of activity. If it wasn’t temperature, medication or liquids, it was food, dressings or just How are we feeling? If it wasn’t the nurses it was the doctors, or the police or the counsellor. Justin and the kids had been in and out, the bedside locker strewn with crumpled tissues.

  The medical people were the easiest to deal with. They told her what to do and she did it. Just a while back, a doctor she didn’t remember meeting before came to tell her, ‘I can assure you there’ll be no lasting effects.’

  Angela stared at him. ‘In what—’

  ‘The results were negative. All of them, and you already know you’re not pregnant. All clear for chlamydia, HIV, hepatitis B, all the rest of it. You’ll need a routine three-month follow-up, but I think we can set your mind at rest from that point of view.’

  She nodded.

  The doctor looked slightly disappointed. Perhaps he expected the news to cause some visible lift in her mood. Apart from when she first saw the kids, her emotions didn’t seem to be affected by the things she was told or the things she saw or thought. She wondered if among the cocktail of medication she was getting the doctors had slipped in something to soothe her mind. She hoped that was it.

  She’d lost track of the doctors. Two consultants, for certain, maybe three, and another two or three brisk young men floating in and out. One of them told her about the hy-something that made her eyes red with blood. It would be gone within a week, he said. There was an area of numbness on her cheek. That’ll pass in a few weeks, the doctor told her. ‘Or months,’ he added.

  She had double vision. She found it hard to move her left eye, to look up. After an X-ray and a CT scan, another of the doctors told her there was something called a blowout, callsed by the punches to her face. Fracture in the floor of the eye socket. That was what was causing the double vision, he said. On the back of a sheet of paper from her chart, he sketched something she couldn’t figure out. Trapped tissue.

  ‘It also accounts for the drooping eyelid,’ he said.

  She hadn’t known until then that her eyelid was drooping. She realised that no one had offered her a mirror, and she hadn’t asked for one.

  ‘The surgery is routine.’

  Angela nodded. Just do it.

  There was a period of time to go through, pain and indignity, then she would see where she stood. Justin asked if she wanted to move house, but Angela said no. He told her he had a security consultant designing a new alarm system and it would be installed by the time she came home.

  They spoke in only the broadest terms about what had happened. ‘You poor thing,’ he said. Again and again he said, Those bastards.’ Something like this, she realised, they didn’t share the vocabulary necessary to discuss the emotions she’d gone through. Maybe with her sister Elizabeth she’d be able to talk about the detail of what happened. When this was over, she’d go stay for a while with Elizabeth in Paris.

  When there were people with her, Angela wanted to be alone. And when she had time to herself it went by in great silent, empty passages, her mind fastening on details that seemed worth her attention when she noticed them – like the silly colour of a car parked three floors below – and then left her wondering if there had ever been a time when she wasn’t this woolly-minded.

  ‘Have you decided yet?’

  It was the most cheery of the nurses.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Nodding towards the menu left on the bedside locker. ‘For afternoon tea? Have you decided?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Ah sure, take your time. I’ll be back in ten minutes. OK?’

  As the nurse left the room, Angela turned back to the window. The luminous green car was still down there. She waited and watched.

  Justin Kennedy met Kevin Little in the private waiting room down the corridor from Angela’s room. Daragh O’Suilleabhain made the introductions. Half an hour earlier, Daragh had called with the news that Kevin was in the country for the afternoon for a meeting with the Minister for Finance. He’d heard the great news, was it possible he could drop in on Justin with his good wishes?

  ‘Angela’s not up to—’

  ‘He wouldn’t dream of intruding. He just wants to see you, wish you all the best, touch base. So many people are so pleased it’s all—’

  ‘That sounds fine.’

  ‘Kevin’s an emotional man. It’s like this happened to one of his own.’

  Kevin Little appeared at the hospital at the precise time he said he would. He spent two minutes expressing genuine warmth and concern to Justin, then he was gone. ‘We’ll talk,’ he said as he was leaving. Justin nodded.

  He rang Elizabeth, checked the kids were OK. When he got back to Angela’s room a nurse told him his wife was having a nap – why not take a break, she suggested, maybe drop home and freshen up?

  Justin shucked his cuff and glanced at his Patek Philippe. He shook his head. He’d stay. He wanted to be here when Angela woke.

  29

  At the end of the narrow twisting road from Leo’s Titley’s farm, Frankie Crowe had a choice. Left through Harte’s Cross and take the main road northwards, or right and take the safer but slower back roads. If the cops arrived sharpish at Leo Titley’s farm and found John Grace handcuffed to the stiff, it didn’t matter what route he took. Every boreen in Meath would have a roadblock within minutes. Speed was more important, so the better road was the one to take. Once he was clear of Meath, he could turn on to the back roads and take his time working his way towards Belfast. He turned left.

  Have to find an out-of-the-way farmhouse, pick up a new car. Can’t be sure when this one will turn red-hot.

  The chances of getting out of the country were no more than fairly rotten. All it took was one roadblock, one copper who wasn’t dozy, and it was all over. If he got across to Britain there were people ready to sell the help he needed to melt into a new name, new papers, in Europe. It would cost a bundle to get from England to Amsterdam, and more time to feel out the landscape. Kind of money he had now, there wasn’t much he needed that he couldn’t buy. But it would take time. Wander carelessly into a strange city with that kind of money and some early-morning stroller will find your bones picked clean.

  He glanced at the Rolex. No matter how roundabout the route, he’d make Belfast before nightfall.

  There wasn’t much afternoon traffic in Harte’s Cross. Frankie drove carefully. Stay well within the speed limit, no sloppy moves.

  Shit.

  The petrol gallge showed the needle in the red. Would it last until he found somewhere to pick up another car?

  He pulled into a garage halfway down the main street and filled up. He hadn’t eaten all day. When he came out of the garage shop he was carr
ying two chicken sandwiches and two small bottles of Coke.

  ‘Little fucker.’ The voice was loud but frayed.

  He looked across the street and saw a tall old man, long black overcoat and wild grey hair, standing on the far pavement. There was surprise and anger and confusion on the old guy’s face.

  His voice rang out across the street. ‘You.’

  Culchie gobshite on day release from the local home for the bewildered. The country’s full of them.

  Frankie got into the car and put the food on the passenger seat, aware that the loony tunes was crossing the street towards him. He turned the ignition and reached for the door but the old man was holding on to it with one hand. When Frankie tried to pull the door shut the old man’s grip made it feel like the door was set in concrete.

  The old man said, ‘Get out.’

  Frankie let his hand fall naturally towards the handle of the gun tucked into his belt. He could feel the outline through his leather jacket.

  No.

  No fuss. Brush him off and it’s just an old fool making a nuisance of himself. Pull a gun, everything goes ballistic.

  He looked around to see if there was anyone who’d help him shift the fool. There was a car pulling in behind. He looked at the old man and saw that he was taking a parcel of some kind, a red and white towel, from under one arm.

  ‘No time for chit-chat, pops.’

  The old man was unwrapping the towel.

  Jesus.

  ‘Get out.’

  The old man’s gun was almost touching Frankie’s temple.

  ‘What the fuck’s this about?’

  ‘Get out.’

  Frankie slid out of the car. More freedom of movement, standing up. No way this could be settled now without a fuss.

  Fuck it. Can’t go any distance at all in this car now. Have to find new wheels just to get out of the county, dump that later, pick up another. Stupid old bastard.

  The old man stepped back. Out of reach.

  Frankie took a step forward. When the old man put the gun close to Frankie again, an arm swinging up fast would be enough to put the pistol out of the picture. After that, it was one-two-three. Punch in the throat, kick the legs from under him. Step on him. Whatever this was about, it had to be ended quickly.