Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery)

by Declan Burke

  ‘That has to be tough.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know if he ever got over it.’

  ‘And she blamed Finn.’

  She looked up at me, taking a second or so to focus. The brandy bedding in nicely now. ‘Who, Saoirse?’

  ‘She told me they were estranged. I thought it was an odd word for a mother to use about her son but I guess it makes sense.’

  A sardonic twitch pulled at the corner of her mouth. ‘Estranged?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘Saoirse fucking Hamilton doesn’t make many mistakes, Harry. If that’s the word she used, then that’s exactly what she meant.’ She hesitated, then slid me a sly look. ‘Y’know, with Finn being there, the only witness, no one could say for sure it wasn’t suicide.’

  ‘Guys driving Beamers don’t generally top themselves, Maria.’

  ‘No one could say it was, either.’

  ‘What’re you trying to say?’

  ‘We were down there one night last summer,’ she said, ‘just sitting on the dock, smoking a draw. Finn was supposed to be up in the studio but he’d left a CD playing, he had the car doors open, the radio on. One of those lovely half-moons up over Cartron … Anyway, out of nowhere he said he’d killed his father.’

  That one hung in the gritty, festering air. She was drunk, cunning and mean with it, lashing out just like Finn’s mother and sister before her. On balance I preferred Grainne’s raking nails. A primitive approach, sure, but at least it had the virtue of being instinctive, honest.

  ‘You said it yourself,’ I said. ‘He was young, he saw it happen. That’s a lot to take on your shoulders, and at that age you think everything’s your fault, wars and famines, the whole lot. And if his mother held him responsible …’ She waited me out, smirking now. ‘I’m guessing,’ I said, ‘that he already had the guilties about not jumping in, trying to pull his father out. Give that kind of shit enough time, enough pressure, and it’s bound to – whoa, point that somewhere else.’

  She was aiming the .38 at my good eye, about twelve inches from my face.

  ‘Finn said he killed him, Harry.’ She lowered the .38, laid in on her thigh. ‘Put a gun against his head, pulled the trigger …’

  ‘And now he’s dead, yeah. Christ, Maria, he was quoting you Bohemian fucking Rhapsody.’

  ‘I got that, thanks. Saoirse say why she wanted the gun back?’

  ‘No, she didn’t. But that’s bollocks. The autopsy would’ve—’

  ‘Autopsy?’

  ‘Sure. There’s always a coroner’s report when—’

  ‘There was no body, Harry. Officially, they reckoned Bob made it out of the car alright, through the open window, and then got swept away.’

  I stared at her, trying to remember exactly what Finn had told me about his father’s drowning. If he’d said anything about their not finding a body. ‘Maria,’ I said, ‘why the fuck would Finn want to shoot his father?’

  ‘Harry,’ she mimicked my tone, ‘why would Saoirse even think about wanting the gun back?’

  ‘It was her husband’s. She’s entitled.’

  ‘Sure, yeah. Except it’s a bit fucked up that the first thing she thinks of when her son commits suicide is the gun that Finn says he used to kill his father.’

  There was something in that, and there might even have been something in it for me if I gave a shit about Finn, Saoirse and Big Bob Hamilton. But I had a job to do. Saoirse Hamilton wanted the gun and was prepared to pay to get it. Story, end of.

  ‘Forget about the gun,’ I said. ‘Forget about Finn and his father. What you need to worry about is that Saoirse blames you for Finn jumping, and was talking crazy earlier on, making all sorts of threats. If you want my—’

  The phone rang again: once, twice. It went dead, then rang again. I reached over and picked up. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I need to use the bathroom.’

  ‘We’re on our way down. Cross your legs and sit tight.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Sit fucking tight.’ I hung up, faced Maria. ‘I’m serious about Saoirse. She could cause you problems.’

  A sardonic smile, albeit a little sloppy. ‘Saoirse’s been causing me problems since I got here, Harry.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m talking about her doing you actual harm. No kidding, the woman’s not well right now. And when she wants shit done, it gets done.’

  ‘She can try.’

  ‘You can take her. Is that it? In a bitch-fight, you’ll slap her down.’

  The shrug was flip, arrogant.

  ‘It won’t be her, Maria. It’ll be a couple of blokes, boozed up and well paid to fuck you over. Maybe all the way.’

  This time she waved an airy hand.

  ‘Sound,’ I said, getting up. ‘If that’s the way you want to play it …’ I stepped around the coffee table balling my fist, leaned in and punched from the shoulder.

  She squealed and shrank away, curled into the corner. ‘Imagine that’s your face,’ I said, pointing at the cushion I’d crumpled.

  ‘You fucking—’

  ‘Pretend I have a knife. Or a chisel. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like women, can only get the horn when a woman’s already screaming and bleeding.’

  She bellowed something harsh and came up fast, hurling the cushion and lunging hard in its wake, wielding the .38 like a small, stubby hammer. I made a grab for her wrists but only caught one. The other fist flailed at the back of my head. I backed away, still gripping her wrist, and bunched my hand again, cocked it high. She flinched and ducked away and her adrenaline rush went south. She sagged, went limp. I hauled her upright again, and we lumbered around the room like the last couple in They Shoot Horses until I got her propped and steady on her feet. I put a finger under her chin and tried to tilt her face upwards, but she twisted away, jerking her head back. I prised the .38 from her fingers, then let her go, stepping back in case she was playing passive as a bluff.

  ‘Pack a bag,’ I said. ‘Put your passport in it. You get five minutes.’

  She gave a defiant sniffle, but she turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. I waited until I heard her shuffling around in the bedroom, then had a quick look at the .38. Found the release and pushed out the cylinder. Five rounds, just waiting to go. I emptied them out, then pushed the cylinder home and slid the safety off, cocked the hammer and dry-fired. Even the dry click sounded lethal.

  I went through to the kitchen and washed the oil off my hands, then wiped down the gun. Wondering why, when he had such a perfectly designed killing machine to hand, Finn had jumped. With such whimsical diversions we fill our days. I swaddled gun and shells in kitchen towel, found a stash of green cotton shopping bags under the sink. Then I followed Maria up the corridor, went into Finn’s study. The folder went into the bag on top of the gun, and I was about to close down the laptop when I spotted my name in Finn’s iTunes.

  Skinny for Harry.

  I clickety-clicked on the listing and away they went, ‘Swingboat Yawning’ booming out, the laptop still set to full volume. I clickety-clicked again and silence filled the room. The kind that echoes.

  It didn’t make any sense. I’d thought it was a mistake that night at the PA, that Finn had burned off the wrong CD and given me Rollerskate Skinny instead of his latest compilation. Except here was his iTunes telling me he’d planned it in advance. But why would he think I’d need a burned copy of HorsedrawnWishes when I already had a perfectly serviceable version at home?

  One last pathetic gesture, maybe. A reminder of how we’d met, and why. And typically Finn, landing somewhere between quixotic and sentimental.

  I closed everything down and was about to switch off the Mac when I remembered something Tohill had said. So I brought up Google, typed in James Callaghan hospital car bomb.

  It wasn’t quite as dramatic as Tohill had claimed, possibly because I had visions of Jimmy detonating a car bomb in the underground parking lot of a hospital, planning on bringing the whole edifice down, bu
t it was there alright, how the upstanding James Callaghan had been convicted, this back in ’94, of planting a bomb under the engine of an Assistant Commissioner’s Ford Sierra while the man was inside Derry’s Altnagelvin hospital, visiting his wife and newly arrived baby daughter. The guy had lost both legs, apparently, but survived, this because the engine block took the brunt of the blast. Jimmy had served four years and then strolled on a Good Friday pardon.

  Which was useful to know. The laptop went into the bag on top of the folder and the gun. Another wonderful swag.

  I watched her pack from the doorway. The bed unmade, floor littered with the shrapnel of a laundromat bombing. She was bundling clothes into a suitcase propped open on the floor, changing her mind, unpacking half of them, packing some more. She had her back to me, bending over, the damp towel clinging to the sinuous curves where her thighs narrowed into her waist and flared again. A faint hint of perfume, all the more seductive for being elusive, undefined. I put down the bag and took two steps forward, placed a hand on her hip. She stiffened, then straightened up. ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said, drawing aside the tendrils of straggling hair and kissing the fine, silvery hairs at the nape of her neck. She shook her head and her hair brushed my face like some subterranean apple-scented fronds and then she was turning into me muttering something crude and for a while, a very short while, we were tensed flesh and thrumming blood and there was no love in it, no love at all.

  30

  Afterwards she rolled away from me and got off the bed and went into the bathroom. When she came back she wouldn’t look at me, just knelt on the ground and resumed packing the suitcase.

  ‘If you forget anything,’ I lied, ‘I’ll come back for it later.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ She gathered two handfuls of pants and bras, dumped them into the suitcase, then half-zipped it closed. When she straightened up to face me, flushed but somehow drained, her expression was a lot like a rusty tuba might sound. ‘Do you think he knew?’ she said.

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘About you.’

  I got up and went to the doorway, retrieved the bag. ‘I wouldn’t think so, no. But even if he did, it wouldn’t have been the me part that bothered him.’

  ‘You’re saying, it’d be the me part.’

  ‘Let it go, Maria. Finn wasn’t the type to die of a broken heart.’

  ‘Something made him jump.’

  ‘It generally takes more than just one thing.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ she said. She hoisted the suitcase, shouldered past me in the doorway. ‘But maybe we were the one thing that pushed him over the edge.’

  *

  There was much weeping and falling upon necks when the sisterhood reunited, the Mini Cooper’s interior dripping humid with professions of undying solidarity. Most of them, as it happened, Grainne’s.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, getting in. ‘Miles to go before I sleep and so forth.’

  Grainne extricated herself from the grapple-hold, knuckling tears up her nose. ‘Where to now?’ she said.

  ‘There’s a gun in there,’ I toed the green cotton bag, ‘and I don’t want to be around it any longer than I have to.’

  ‘You’re still doing it?’

  ‘I am.’

  She twisted around to look back at Maria. ‘Did he tell you about Finn’s email?’

  ‘Now isn’t the time, Grainne,’ Maria said. She sounded like a bank’s answering machine. Metallic, disembodied, heedless.

  ‘But if we give Saoirse the laptop, she’ll know everything.’

  ‘She’s already guessed he was up to something hinky,’ I said. ‘The laptop’ll just confirm the details.’

  ‘I know that. But if we can keep it away from her long enough to—’

  ‘Who’s this “we”?’ I said. I glanced back at Maria. ‘Do you want to tell her, or will I?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  There was a very long moment when it could have gone either way, but then Maria blinked and looked away to Grainne. ‘Harry says Saoirse is making threats,’ she said.

  ‘Threats?’

  ‘So he says.’

  ‘What kind of threats?’

  ‘Your mother,’ I said, ‘isn’t in a good place right now. She blames Maria for Finn’s suicide and she’s looking for proof. So I’m suggesting we get the laptop to her straight away, let her burn out searching for some reason to blame Maria. While she’s busy, we get Maria somewhere safe until we can put her on a flight out of here.’

  ‘And in the meantime,’ Grainne sneered, ‘you get paid for bringing her the laptop.’

  ‘There’s that.’

  ‘Where’s this somewhere safe?’ Maria said.

  ‘Friend of mine. He’ll put you up for now.’ I nudged Grainne’s elbow. ‘Let’s go. Drive.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll put you out and make you walk.’

  ‘It’s best this way,’ Maria said from the rear. Dull, resigned.

  Grainne’s jaw tightened, but she started the car. ‘What about the cops?’ she said.

  ‘The cops want me for a hold-all of coke. I’m guessing they’ll keep the road-blocks to a minimum.’

  Grainne nosed out of the car park, turned right along Kennedy Parade.

  ‘This coke the cops want you for,’ Maria said. ‘Is that what Finn ordered?’

  ‘Different score.’

  ‘But the cops know you were there when he jumped.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But they don’t think you pushed him.’

  ‘Some of them do.’

  ‘Are they right?’

  ‘Nope.’

  The way Grainne had her ear cocked, she might well have been trying to tune in to a satellite orbiting Io.

  ‘You’re sure,’ Maria said.

  ‘I’m positive,’ I said. ‘I was there. If I was the one pushed him I’d have remembered by now. Especially when everyone keeps asking the same fucking question.’

  ‘Why,’ Grainne said, her voice strained, ‘would Harry want to push Finn?’

  ‘No reason,’ Maria said. ‘I’m just asking. No one’s telling me anything, so I’m asking.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said. ‘Only next time, before you open your mouth? Remember you’re drunk.’

  ‘Bite me.’

  ‘Fucking ingrate.’

  ‘Asshole.’

  We kept it up all the way to Herb’s. My strategy was to distract Grainne from asking dangerous questions about why I might want Finn out of the picture. Maria’s ambition appeared to be to maximise her insults using the minimum of vowels.

  Inside, I pointed Grainne at the downstairs bathroom and Maria towards the kitchen, the kettle and as much black coffee as her kidneys would bear. Some buttery toast for yours truly wouldn’t go amiss either.

  Herb watched it all, appalled. Then he took me out to the kitchen.

  ‘The fuck’re you doing, Harry?’

  ‘She needs somewhere to stay for a few hours. Once we get a flight sorted, I’ll drop her down to Knock, put her on the plane.’

  ‘Now? Are you fucking mental?’

  ‘Getting that way.’ I dug out the makings I’d liberated from the coffee table at Finn’s, started rolling a smoke. ‘You wanted to see me,’ I said. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘What I wanted,’ Herb grated, ‘was for you to turn up with Toto’s coke, late being a hell of a lot better than never when it comes to Toto fucking McConnell. What I got was Finn’s tart pissed to the gills and some underage minge looks like Marilyn Manson with a hangover. And you,’ he gestured at the eye-patch, ‘looking like Jolly fucking Roger.’

  ‘Actually, the Jolly Roger was—’

  ‘I’ll fucking Jolly Roger you. Where’s the coke?’

  ‘The cops have it.’

  ‘The fucking cops? How the fuck?’

  ‘Well, I’m guessing here, but I’d say it happened when I was spark out after been run off the road, the car being swarmed by cops and firemen.’
<
br />   ‘Run off the road?’

  ‘Rammed, yeah.’

  ‘But who the fuck’d—’

  ‘Dunno. This guy in Galway, Moore. How well do you know him?’

  ‘I don’t, he’s Toto’s guy.’ He thought about that. ‘What’re you saying, the guy’s ripping off Toto?’

  ‘Could be. Only this way it looks like the rip-off’s coming at your end.’

  He squinted at me. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means our boy in Galway handed over the coke, that’s all he knows. And all Toto knows is there’s no product. So that puts you and me in the middle, the cops holding the coke and needing names to join the dots.’

  He took a half-step back, as if only now realising I was dangerously insane. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘you’re not thinking of giving up Toto McConnell.’

  I closed my eyes, the sun streaming warm into the kitchen, and for a split-second allowed myself to see it all laid out in a perfect daisy-chain. How I’d give up Herb for the coke, and he’d give up the McConnells, and we’d all live happily ever after in a pink palace in the clouds. A tidy little fantasy, sure, even as the iron weight in my gut reminded me I was only indulging it so I wouldn’t have to dwell on Ben lying still as a statue amid the crisp white sheets, a tangerine-size lump bleeding into his brain.

  I tuned back in to Herb’s rant. ‘… how it looks on me, Toto’s thinking you’re playing both ends, laying side bets with the fucking cops.’

  I let my eyes go dead. ‘Say that again?’

  This time, when he took a full step back, he was under no illusions as to how dangerously insane I was feeling. He took a deep breath, let it out slow. ‘I’m just talking through the options here,’ he said.

  ‘Keep talking. Maybe you’ll end up in a bed beside Ben.’

  ‘What’s that, a threat? Jesus, Harry. You lose ten grand in product and you’re the one threatening me?’