by Declan Burke
‘You want me to tout?’
He winced, inhaling in a little hiss. ‘Tout’s an ugly word, Rigby.’
‘It’s an ugly business.’
‘It is that,’ he conceded. ‘Was it any more handsome when you were calling yourself a private eye, got paid to blow the whistle?’ He flicked some ash. ‘Didn’t think so. And anyway, it’s no uglier than a bullet in the back of the head.’
‘And there’s the threat.’
‘Absolutely. Only it’s not coming from me.’
‘So who?’
He jammed the cigarillo in the corner of his mouth, talked around it. ‘Gillick’s lodged a proposal at the Town Hall, wants to build a village down at the docks.’
‘I heard.’
‘From Finn.’
‘Yeah, but he reckoned it was a bust. Five years ago, okay. But now? Who’s going to fund that kind of development? Who’d buy into it?’
‘Finn mention anyone else involved?’
‘Nope.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘I don’t move in those kind of circles, Tohill.’
‘Me and you both.’ A rueful grin as he worked the solidarity angle. I rubbed at my cheek where his snotter had landed. The grin died fast. ‘Look, all I’m asking is if Finn mentioned any names,’ he said. ‘Or anything at all that might help us pull a thread.’
‘What kind of thread?’
‘Gillick’s name is all over the planning applications, but we know he doesn’t have the capital to carry it off on his own. Like you say, he’s into debt collection now, scraping what he can out of the Hamiltons to keep NAMA at bay.’
‘You’re saying, I should nail down the contract on this job he’s offering.’
He scratched his jaw, the fingernails blunt and faintly yellow. ‘Gillick’s pulling strings behind a research-development company set up to pursue the proposal. Said company being the kind, you’ll get a tan if you want to sign the AGM’s minutes. There isn’t a single connection to Hamilton Holdings.’
‘The rat deserts the sinking ship. So what?’
‘Except Gillick’s the solicitor for Hamilton Holdings, covers their whole portfolio. Including the PA building.’
‘Liquidating assets on the sly. Doing NAMA’s job for them.’
‘Sure. But who’s buying?’
‘No one, according to Finn.’
‘No one official, anyway. And Gillick’s a big man, Rigby. Throws a lot of shade. So you tell me why he’d want to keep his backers’ money out of sight.’
‘I’d imagine it’s dirty.’
He grunted. ‘Okay, progress at last. Next question: why’s Finn Hamilton a midget in the morgue?’
I flipped my smoke out the window. ‘Maybe he couldn’t take the pressure of touting.’
‘Finn was remarkably cool about helping us with our inquiries. A model fucking citizen, that lad.’
‘Finn’s the kind, he’d be too lazy to let it show.’
‘You think?’ A careless shrug. ‘Me, I got the impression he liked it. Got off on the kick. You see it a lot, people think they’re playing God. A little power goes a long way.’
Sounded like Finn, alright. Something slimy squirming in my guts as we turned right at Feehily’s Funeral Home, towards the hospital. Tohill cut left for Rasharkin and then we were crawling along in second gear, a funeral at St Joseph’s Church spilling out, more traffic backed up. We inched by, rolled on down the hill to Rasharkin. Tohill pulled up opposite Abbott’s beside the alleyway that cut into the estate. I released the safety belt. ‘One thing,’ he said, his jaw set hard.
‘What’s that?’
‘When you were up there last night, talking about nothing with Finn. You see any binoculars?’
‘The infrareds? Sure. I used them myself after Gillick left. So don’t go trying to nail me for—’
‘They were gone by the time we got up there.’
‘Maybe he’d put them away.’
‘We tossed the place, looking for infrared binoculars specifically. No go.’
‘Why the binoculars?’
‘Because Finn saw something one night through them. The landing, we assume, of what’s known as undisclosed imports. Very probably coke or smack. This being the added bonus,’ he said, ‘to Gillick’s proposal to rejuvenate the docks. They’ll have privately owned facilities, harbour masters recruited for their ability to look the other way. Warehouses guarded by their own security firm. Point being, if there’s no infrareds, how’ll we prove Finn saw what he saw?’
‘How could you prove it anyway? Put a corpse on the stand?’
‘If someone took the infrareds, there’s a reason they took them. If we find out who, it’s a thread. Pull that, things might start to fall apart.’ He closed his eyes, pinched the corners. ‘So that’s where we are. Or were, until Finn went out that fucking window.’
‘I’m still not seeing what it has to do with me.’
‘You were there.’
‘Okay. But Finn told me nothing about any of that shit. All I saw was a guy planning for a big future, then taking a dive.’
‘Maybe, before he went, he told you what he’d seen.’
‘He told me nothing.’
‘Sure. But if you say he did, how can they prove otherwise?’
‘First I’m touting, now I’m perjuring myself. Is that it?’
‘They’d be Finn’s words, your name on them. Confirming his statement.’
‘Fuck that.’
‘Worst case scenario, we get an injunction against Gillick, tie him up.’
‘Stymie the development.’
‘Indefinitely, yeah. We have precedent, so we’re solid there.’
‘Nice job.’
‘Could be, yeah. All we need is—’
‘I mean, your job. It’s a nice job.’
He frowned. ‘Don’t get all fucking moral on me now, Rigby. You burnt that fucking bridge a long time ago.’
‘I’m just saying, you’ve a job. Which is nice.’ I pointed across the road at the Abbott building. ‘Don’t know if you heard, but a couple of months ago those guys announced 175 new jobs in there.’
‘So?’
‘So the last time anyone announced new jobs in Sligo was Queen Maeve, she was short a few spears for her little jaunt to the Cooley Mountains.’
Tohill wearing a poker face now, jaw and lips hard and straight as pokers. ‘This is dirty money we’re talking about here, Rigby.’
‘Tohill, man – do you seriously think anyone in Sligo gives a fuck about who’s investing? Someone wants to create jobs with laundered cash, so what? No Dublin bastard’ll do it. If Sligo drifted off to fucking Iceland next week, it’d only make the news because the deer got frostbite.’
He was chewing the butt of the cigarillo into a soggy mess. ‘Let me clarify where this dirty money comes from, Rigby.’
‘I know where—’
‘In this case, specifically, we’re talking about the boys still fighting the good fight. Y’know, the Socialist Republic lads who knock off a bank here and there to grease the wheels.’
‘Fuck the fucking banks.’
‘Yeah, well, these raggy-arsed philanthropists, they’re socialist enough to want to share the wealth, only they do it in kind, pumping heroin into their own back yards. Or they’ll splash the cash by trafficking in women, spread a little happiness there if you’ve a few quid to spare and don’t mind screwing a zombie. You have a problem with that? No worries, here’s a double-tap in the knees, no charge. Or maybe they’ll bugger you to death with sewer rods and then rape your grieving wife, on the off chance she might get some daft notion about justice.’
‘You’re forgetting the bullet to the back of the head.’
‘You can live with that?’
‘You’d be surprised by what I can live with.’
‘Surprised, no. Disappointed, yes.’
‘That’s cute. A disappointed cop.’
He thought that over. ‘Tell me this,’ he said.
‘How long d’you think it’d take me to have your taxi licence revoked?’
‘Dunno. Ten minutes?’
‘Don’t be daft. It’d take at least a day.’
‘You’re giving me a whole twenty-four hours?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t thank me. I blush easy.’
I thought about that. Not for long, or I’d have laughed out loud at Tohill’s big play, taking away a licence to drive a cab that’d gone up in flames. Instead I thought about how perjuring myself would go on the record, there in black and white should Tohill ever decide he needed another favour from an ex-con.
‘I’m signing nothing,’ I said. ‘And I’ll be wearing no wires.’
‘Your call. But if we do it the hard way, have you up on the stand to testify you saw infrareds in Finn’s studio, actually used them, this to corroborate Finn’s statement about what he saw, then you’ll be stepping down without a friend in the world. So think on about your new friend Gillick, how you might like to have a chat with him in the very near future, reminisce about Finn.’
I opened the door and made to get out, then hesitated. ‘There was one thing,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘This goes under the radar. Call it an anonymous tip.’
He leaned towards me, turning his head away as he put a forefinger behind his ear. ‘It’ll go no further than these four doors,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t be much point in me saying it then, would there?’
‘No, I mean—’
I hawked up a goober, spat in his ear. By the time he struggled out of the safety-belt, got his door open, I was halfway down the alleyway and gone.
17
Sligo gets to call itself a city because it has a cathedral and smack. The sprawling suburbs are just the lily’s flaking gilt. Rasharkin lies to the north-east, a mile from O’Connell Street and just inside the borough boundary, seventy or so three-bed semis loosely arranged around a central green, an estate twenty years old and aging fast. Damp patches discolouring the red-brick facades.
Dee’s tiny lawn needed a trim and a sprinkle, its border beds a riot of dandelions and bindweed, the grass crunchy with tinder-dry moss. Three doors up from where I stood behind her living room window, twitching the curtain, a burnt-out Ford Focus sat skew-ways across the mouth of the alleyway.
No Tohill appeared.
A stupid thing to do, gob in a cop’s ear. But if you sit still for menace, just once, it never ends.
Ben was sitting Buddha-like before the TV, thumbing furiously at the Playstation gamepad, his face a ghastly kaleidoscope of greens, reds and yellows. FIFA 2012, the curtains pulled tight to eliminate sun-dazzle on the screen and the possibility that he might accidentally glimpse real people outside kicking an actual football around. He wore Puma trainers, beige tracksuit bottoms with white piping and an orange football shirt bearing the legend ‘V. Persie’ above the number nine.
I hunkered down behind, tousled his shock of dirty-blond hair. ‘Hey,’ I said.
He wriggled out from under without glancing away from the screen. ‘Hey.’
‘How’s tricks?’
‘Fine.’
‘Yeah? Who’s winning?’
‘Me.’
‘Where’s your mother?’
‘Upstairs.’
Two syllables was progress of sorts and akin to an entire conversation from a twelve-year-old lad. Or my twelve-year-old lad, anyway. ‘Want a coffee?’
‘No.’
‘No what?’
He pfffed his cheeks. ‘No thanks.’
I went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on, slid open the patio doors and stepped out to roll a smoke. Dee was death on smoking in the house. She said a smoker’s house was harder to sell and Dee was always hoping to sell. There were all kinds of reasons, but mainly it was that she didn’t feel right still living in the house we’d bought when she got pregnant with Ben. Said she looked around some nights and felt baby snakes slithering in her pants. Hard to say if she was casting aspersions on my six pounds of dangling dynamite or just being sentimental. Dee can be tough to second-guess.
The garden was small, enclosed on three sides by a high pitch-pine fence that blocked out most of the sunshine and all the neighbours. A wooden shed sagged in the right-hand bottom corner, one of its window panes cracked and lined inside with a Cornflakes box. Flagstones led from the tiny patio to a rotary washing line that skreeed whenever the breeze changed its mind. The grass was lush, ankle-deep and clumping where the dog shit had been left to rot.
Dee came through onto the patio humping a half-full basket of laundry on one hip.
‘Boo,’ I said.
She whirled, clamping the free hand to her chest. ‘Jeesus!’
‘Dee.’
She glared daggers as the fight-or-flight blush spread like bushfire across her face and throat. ‘Will you for Chrissakes knock the next time? No, first ring ahead, then knock when you get here.’
‘Can do, will do.’
She was a good-looking woman, Dee, angry, alarmed or otherwise, although my experience of her was that she was generally angry or alarmed. A sun-rinsed blonde with wide-set eyes, chipmunk cheekbones and Pirelli lips. The white blouse had wide sharp collars and the rest clung to her all the way from the neck to the flared hips, where a hint of flat belly peeked out from above the bottom half of a trouser suit in dark charcoal with a faint grey pin. The ox-blood boots had a two-inch kitten heel and looked like they could kick holes in a bishop’s dreadnought hull. If they didn’t, the eyes could always laser through instead. I balanced the cigarette on the windowsill and took the laundry basket from her, shuffled down the flagstones to the rotary line, began pinning up the damp clothes.
She leaned back to glance into the kitchen, then picked up the cigarette. ‘This is a straight, right?’
I nodded and she had herself a drag, closing her eyes as she exhaled. ‘You got my message,’ she said without opening them.
‘The parent-teacher meeting, sure.’
‘You didn’t listen to it, did you?’
‘Nope.’
Now her eyes opened, found me and bore down. A sizzle in my groin, and not just because I was pinning up a pair of sheer grey lacy panties. ‘How come?’ she said.
‘Because I don’t listen to messages, Dee. Everyone knows this. You listen to a message and you ring whoever left it, and then they tell you the whole story all over again. So neither ear feels left out, maybe.’
‘Or maybe,’ she said, doing something pouty as she tried to pop a smoke ring, ‘it’s just too much hassle, you being permanently stoned or asleep.’ A twitch in the corner of her mouth, something smiley but sad. ‘I swear, one day you’ll ring me to remind you where Ben lives.’
No pain like an old pain.
‘Hey, Dee? You’re the one forgot which brother she was supposed to be sleeping with. So let’s cut the—’
‘Is that all you’ve got?’ She flipped away the cigarette, slid the patio door closed, then advanced down the flagstones with her arms crossed. ‘The only reason I ask is, every time there’s any kind of dispute you bring it up.’
‘You’re the one who brought Ben into it.’
‘Don’t you fucking start on—’ She pulled up short, tilting her head as she peered at me. ‘Oh for Chrissakes,’ she said, ‘do not tell me you were fighting again.’
I couldn’t decide which was more disappointing, that it’d taken her that long to notice the gash in my forehead or that she thought I ever stopped fighting.
Ben’s Sligo Rovers shirt was the last item to get pegged up. ‘It was Finn,’ I said.
‘You were scrapping with Finn?’
She hadn’t heard. ‘Not exactly.’ I rolled a fresh smoke while I told her the story, Finn’s swan dive, keeping it brief, already tired of how pathetic it all sounded, how sordid and final.
Death can be heroic or shocking or at the very least inevitable, but generally there’s a vital one remove, the instinctive disassociatio
n. Nobody ever thinks they’ll get cancer or be hit by a bus, or get so old their brains will melt into mush.
Suicide is different. It lives under the skin, too close to the bone. There’s no comfort in it, no perverse schadenfreude to be mined. It’s in all our gift.
Her eyes gleamed. The words were salt on ice, her rigid stance softening, the arms uncrossing to open into what might have become a hug before she caught herself, remembering. The hand that had launched itself towards my left shoulder, perhaps to pat it, or maybe to cup my cheek, wound up covering the O of her mouth.
‘Crap,’ she said. ‘Harry, I’m sorry.’
But it was there in her eyes. First Gonzo, now Finn.
I was some kind of jinx.
God help me, but for a split-second I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been sleeping with Finn too.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I need to borrow the car.’
The damp eyes froze. ‘The car? You mean my car.’
‘That’ll be the one, yeah.’
‘Not a chance in hell.’
I could tell she was gauging how likely it was I’d invented Finn’s suicide just to soften her up.
‘The cab’s off the road,’ I said, ‘and I’ve a regular looking to be brought to Knock. I can’t afford to turn him down.’
‘You’re not even insured on my car. And anyway, I need it to get to work.’
‘You could always ring a cab.’
A snort. ‘You want me to ring a taxi so you can bring a fare to Knock?’
Dee confused sarcasm with irony. Not a fatal flaw, but still. ‘I’ll pay you back this evening,’ I said. ‘And don’t sweat me not being insured. Nothing’ll happen.’
‘A nothing like whatever it is has your cab off the road, say.’
‘That was Finn. He landed on the taxi, blew it to shit.’
You’d have thought, her eyes being so expressive, that Dee would have made for easy prey at poker. Except she went the other way, piled on the tells, so I couldn’t work out if she was wishing I’d been the one who landed on the taxi or been in it when Finn hit.
Probably, the laws of physics allowing, both.
‘It’ll only take a couple of hours,’ I said. ‘And I need to get the cab back on the road. If I can pick up a fare in Knock for the trip home, I’m halfway there.’