by Declan Burke
‘I vouched for Finn that he’d pay for his weed,’ I said, stacking the crutches against the Phaeton’s boot, ‘not that he wasn’t suicidal.’
‘Sure,’ Toto said, ‘only Herb says you got the paying bit wrong too. What’s with the crutches?’
‘They’re for a charity Finn used to run with Maria here,’ I said, nodding back to where she stood rigid with the effort of restraining Bear. ‘They were planning to get married.’
‘Sorry to hear it,’ he said, dipping his head at Maria, a brief bow. ‘Condolences on your loss.’
‘Who’s this?’ she said.
‘Just some business I need to take care of. You get in the car.’
Toto slipped his left hand out of his pocket, held it up. ‘Stall the ball. No one’s going anywhere yet.’ The gesture, his tone, got Bear growling again. ‘Keep a good grip of that hound,’ he told Maria, ‘or I might get nervous.’ He came back to me. ‘So what’s the story? Jimmy being family, you can start with him.’ He saw something in my eyes, stood away from the car. Tightened his grip on whatever it was he had buried in his right pocket. ‘Rigby,’ he said, ‘I got enough problems right now. And the last thing I need is my sister chirping in my ear, wondering where Saint fucking James is, if he hasn’t done another runner, send out a search party. Where’s he at?’
Jimmy, as it happened, was lying prone and semi-conscious about two feet from where he stood. Sweat sliding down the back of my thighs at the prospect of Toto’s sister trying to ring him, Jimmy’s phone sounding from the boot.
‘It’s complicated,’ I said.
‘So give me bullet points.’
‘That, uh, delivery,’ I said, ‘it’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘I got run off the road coming back from Galway, ended up in hospital.’ I shrugged. ‘The cops have it.’
‘They found it in the car?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What’d you tell them?’
‘Said I knew nothing about it, they must have planted it there.’
‘And they just let you waltz out free.’
‘No, I bolted from the hospital when they brought me down for an X-ray.’
‘So they’ll be looking for you right now.’
‘It’s not exactly a manhunt, and no one got around to reading me my rights, but yeah. If they find me, they’ll pull me in.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Toto,’ I said, ‘it’s on me. I know that. And I’m making it good.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I got this gig going on, someone’s asked me to retrieve their personal belongings. Paying me ten grand to do it.’ No point in telling him about the twenty straight away, he’d want the lot off the bat. ‘Soon as I deliver, the ten grand goes to you, leaves us clean on the, y’know, delivery.’
‘First off,’ he said, ‘that delivery was needed for tonight, I was specific on that. And I was guaranteed. So there’s penalties.’
‘I know all that.’
‘Yeah? So how’re you going to pay that off, you’re up the fucking Swannee on ten grand worth of product? And where the fuck,’ he said, ‘is Jimmy?’
‘Jimmy’s guy, Gillick, the solicitor, he’s brokering this gig I have going on. His client being too posh to dirty her hands with cash. So Gillick told Jimmy, seeing as I didn’t have any transport, to lend me his Phaeton to get the deal done.’
‘So why isn’t he answering his phone?’
‘I don’t know. Gillick lives up the back of Lough Gill, out in the sticks. Maybe there’s no coverage, all the mountains.’
The shades made it impossible to read his eyes. ‘When do you kick this ten grand free?’
‘I’m on my way there now.’ I picked up a crutch, hefted it. ‘Soon as I get these loaded up.’
‘So you wouldn’t mind if I tagged along behind, just for the spin.’
‘It’s a free country.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But listen, Rigby, if I get the feeling you’re—’
There came a tinny, muffled sound from the Phaeton’s boot. A mobile phone ringtone. Wings, ‘Live and Let Die’.
Toto’s head turned instinctively, just a fraction, but that was enough. It helped, too, that whatever he had buried in his pocket snagged as he stepped back already drawing. I was only going to get one chance so I swung from the knees, aiming for the bleachers. The crutch smashed into the side of his head, sent the shades flying. He staggered and reeled back, then went down on one knee, toppled over onto his side. I stepped in, Bear snapping and snarling behind me, stepped on his wrist and reached in, eased the gun from his pocket. A Beretta, if the legend stamped on its barrel was any guide, 9mm. The safety off.
I thumbed the safety on, pointed the Beretta at his face. ‘Up,’ I told him.
The crack on the head had been hard enough to put a bend in the crutch. Dazed, blood seeping from a ragged gash over his ear, he dragged himself to his feet, stood there swaying. I popped the Phaeton’s boot, gestured at it. ‘Get in.’
It boasts a roomy trunk, the Phaeton, but Jimmy was a big man. It was going to be a tight fit. Toto, eyes glazed, didn’t move.
‘Get in,’ I said, ‘or I’ll lock you into the PA with the hound.’
‘Rigby,’ he said. Sounding drunk, or delirious. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘I’ll figure it out.’ I stepped in behind him, put a hand on his shoulder, pushed him on. A pity I hadn’t brought the masking tape from Herb’s. ‘Now get in.’
It took him a couple of attempts, but he finally clambered inside. ‘Turn over on your front,’ I told him. Once he was in position I patted him down. Came up with two phones and a four-inch blade he had taped to his right calf. Jimmy’s phone was more of a struggle, it being jammed in his pocket, but eventually I came up with it. He had seven missed calls.
I slammed the boot closed, went weak at the knees. No going back now.
Like the man said, when you’re in, you’re in.
The Beretta went into my belt alongside the .38 Special. Getting crowded back there now, a Gatling gun short of starting a revolution.
I tossed the crutches into the back seat, slammed the door. Bear snuffing at the Phaeton’s boot, intrigued by the scent of blood. I glanced over at Maria to chivvy her on and realised she was staring at me, standing stock still, her expression caught somewhere between horror and disgust.
Nothing new there, then.
‘You can get in,’ I said, ‘or you can try riding Bear all the way to Knock. Your call.’
37
Maria shushed Bear a couple of times when he whined at being forced to lie doggo in the well behind the front seats, but otherwise she didn’t speak again until we’d cleared the town and were heading out along the lake shore, the road meandering through a tunnel of trees. We passed Dooney Rock.
In shock, I supposed. I couldn’t blame her. First I’m cracking Toto over the head and waving his gun around. And then, we open the boot, there’s Jimmy drenched in blood.
I’d never paid much attention in school, but now I was wishing I’d paid none at all. So I wouldn’t know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
I could dump the car, sure, and run, take Saoirse Hamilton’s twenty grand and never look back. No Ben to keep me here now.
Except that’d leave Herb to face Toto. Dee, too.
No. We were playing for keeps now, going all the way.
I reached Herb’s print-out from the dashboard, Gillick’s place Google-mapped, gave it to Maria. Told her we had a pit stop to make before we headed for Knock. I was expecting her to protest but all she said was, ‘He was smuggling those paintings out, wasn’t he?’
Grit under her nails as she sifted Finn’s clay feet.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘they do say it’ll be an export-led recovery that’ll dig us out of recession.’
‘You think he stole them?’ she said.
‘I’d say he was given them.’
‘You mean, like, do
nations to charity.’
‘Something like that, yeah. Keep an eye on the map.’
We came up on Slish Wood, Maria following the red line with a forefinger. ‘Looks like the second left after this,’ she said.
I turned off the main road, up a narrow rutted lane and into a forest of pines. A steep incline. I dropped down into second, then first. Maria balled the map, tossed it on the floor.
‘Don’t get carried away,’ I said. ‘We might need that yet.’
‘We’re going to Gillick’s, right?’
‘Yeah.’
She’d been before, with Finn, a couple of times. Barbecues and long boozy summer evenings on the decking overlooking the lake. ‘What are we doing here?’ she said.
‘Jimmy reckons Gillick was the one told him Ben was in hospital. I want to know how he knew.’
‘What will that achieve?’
‘Depends on how Gillick knew.’
The Phaeton bounced down and out of a pothole and set the crutches a-rattle on the back seat. A dull bellow followed. Toto, feeling his chops. I reached over and punched the stereo on, was more than a little surprised to hear the delicate, unadorned tinkling of a piano. Schubert, I thought. I’d have had Jimmy down as a guitar man, Metallica, maybe some Led Zep if he was going old school.
We crested the summit, a razor-backed ridge in the pines. There the lane branched, the right tine curving away and down through the trees to run parallel with the ridge.
‘Straight ahead,’ she said.
We were high above a lake shaped like a crooked finger, maybe half a mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide, nestled in a steep-sided valley velvet with pine.
I pulled over, put the handbrake on. Found Jimmy’s phone and brought up his list of contacts, scrolled down, jabbed the one called ‘Fat Man’.
It rang twice, and then Gillick came on. ‘Where are you?’
‘It’s Rigby.’
‘Oh?’
‘Jimmy’s driving, asked me to ring ahead. Says we’re coming in.’
‘And not before time.’
‘He says we have the laptop, wants to be sure it’s all clear.’
‘Clear?’
‘He doesn’t want to fetch up with the Mac if there’s anyone else there.’
‘Why would anyone else be here?’
I covered the phone with my hand, repeated the question, then said, ‘He says there’s no harm in being careful.’
‘Indeed. Be so good as to put Jimmy on, Mr Rigby.’
‘Okay, hold on. Jimmy? Gillick wants to talk to you.’
I hung up.
‘This won’t bring him back,’ she said.
I wasn’t sure if she meant Finn or Ben.
‘Not the point,’ I said.
‘But you are going in there to kill him.’
I thought about quoting her some Shakespeare, the bit about how we first kill all the lawyers, but the time for cheap cracks was long gone.
‘I want to know who ran us off the road,’ I said, ‘who made that call. If it was Gillick, then yeah, I’m going to kill him. You want to step out, do it now. But here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘You believe Saoirse’s the one who killed Finn, walked him out onto that ledge, gave him the nudge, okay. But she couldn’t have worked him, had the kind of leverage she’d need, if Gillick wasn’t backing her every step of the way. He’s the legal eagle pulling all the strings. And that night at the PA, according to Saoirse, he was there to tell Finn to kick you into touch.’
Her throat tightened. She chucked Bear under the chin. ‘Drive on,’ she said.
I knocked the car out of gear but kept my foot on the brake as we bumped and jolted down what was starting to look a lot like the dry bed of a waterfall. The pines began to thin out. Soon we emerged into a clearing that sloped down to the edge of a cliff. The lane veered sharply to the right into a sheltered parking area of loosely packed rough stone, where I reversed and turned, pointing the Phaeton back the way we’d come. The only thing to spoil the view was a low wood-frame bungalow squatting near the edge of the cliff.
‘Maybe I should come in,’ she said. A dry rasp in her throat.
‘Hear what Gillick has to say for himself.’
‘See no evil,’ I said, ‘do no time.’
‘I’ll take my chances.’
‘Except you’re taking chances for two now,’ I said. ‘So you don’t have the right to make that kind of call anymore.’
‘I need to know. About Finn, what he was really planning.’
‘I appreciate that, sure. But—’
‘Swear on Ben,’ she said. Husky now. ‘Swear you’ll ask him.’
‘I’ll ask, yeah.’
‘Swear it.’
I swore. Then I gave her the Beretta, on the off-chance Toto managed to kick his way out of the boot.
‘I’m not asking you to shoot him,’ I said. ‘If he gets out, fire off a shot and make for the trees. He won’t come after you knowing you’re tooled up. Okay?’
It wasn’t okay, not by any reasonably civilised standards, but she nodded.
I got out, crossed the parking area and strolled around to the front of the bungalow. Except it wasn’t a bungalow. The house had been built into the hill, its frontage split-level, the upper half all glass. Decking ran the full length of the house and was probably exhausted by the time it disappeared around the far corner.
The sun was warm on my back as I climbed the wooden steps, the smell of fresh pine sharp and clean. Birds chirped and whittered. Below on the lake, two small islands shimmered in the haze. Then I stepped up onto the porch and saw Gillick, a napkin tucked between his third and fourth chins. He wore a pale blue short-sleeved shirt open at the neck, knee-length shorts, a dainty pair of deck shoes. Given the amount of flabby flesh on view, it was akin to arriving at Jeremiah Johnson’s cabin to find Jabba the Hutt claiming squatter’s rights.
‘Ah,’ he purred, ‘the elusive Mr Rigby. Would you be so kind as to join me?’
He beckoned me on and turned without waiting to see if I’d do his bidding. I followed him inside and down a glassed-in walkway that ran parallel with the decking outside, the wall on our right defaced at regular intervals by examples of what can go wrong when a man is given too much paint and not enough sex. At the end of the corridor he turned into an office-cum-conservatory with a large walnut-wood desk near the wood-panelled back wall, a two-piece leather suite angled to face the desk, two filing cabinets standing sentinel either side of the desk. On the desk sat a Mac Pro, a printer and a tidy version of the usual office clutter, loose pens and a block of Post-Its, a yellow legal pad defaced with doodles. A crystal-cut ashtray, on which was perched a cigar the cops would be requisitioning if the truncheon factory ever burned down. The shelves behind the desk were lined with legal tomes bound in green leather and nary a cracked spine to be seen.
‘That night at the PA,’ I said, just to be conversational. ‘What was this favour you wanted to do Finn?’
He held up a hand without looking around, the forefinger extended, beckoning me on again. I expected him to turn into the office but instead he kept going, plodding ahead into the conservatory. There a small dining table sat before the floor-to-ceiling window offering an expansive view of the lake below, the ridge beyond tinged ruddy as the sun dipped for home. He went around the table and eased his bulk down into the chair. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘sit down. Make yourself comfortable.’
The .38 was digging into my spine standing up, so I passed. He’d already eaten, the dirty plate pushed to one side to make room for a couple of smaller plates of grapes and crackers and what looked like a spectacularly whiffy brie. A large cafetière sat filled to the brim with hot nectar, but he reached for the bottle of red, topped up his glass. That he slid across the table towards me, then sloshed some more wine into the coffee cup.
‘No sense in standing on ceremony,’ he said. ‘Will you join me?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said. The howls of protest from my belly were the
screams of the damned. ‘Just tell me about Finn and this favour.’
‘At least have some coffee. It’s freshly brewed.’ He was slathering brie onto a cracker. ‘Colombian, the real McCoy. Have you ever had the pleasure? In Colombia they say it’s a better hit than cocaine. Not,’ he gave a cute smile, ‘that I’d know.’
‘If you’re waiting for Jimmy, he won’t be coming.’
He’d taken a bite of cracker and brie, so his ‘No?’ came muffled. He swallowed. ‘Why so?’
‘He’s indisposed.’
‘Really.’
‘Ring him,’ I said.
His eyes were thoughtful, reassessing, as he stared. Then he dabbed at the corners of his mouth with the napkin, picked up his phone. Pressed a button. After a moment or two, the faint strains of ‘Live and Let Die’ wafted up from under the table. I reached into my pocket, took out Jimmy’s phone and hit the answer button. ‘This is Jimmy,’ I said. ‘I’m fucked four ways to next Tuesday. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you. On Tuesday.’
I hung up and put the phone away. Gillick, nodding, laid his own phone on the table, picked up the other half of the cracker-and-brie, then had second thoughts and put it down again. ‘It would appear,’ he said, ‘that events have taken an unexpected turn.’
‘Jimmy said you wanted a chat with Grainne. She couldn’t make it. I’m here instead.’
‘Indeed you are. Larger than life and twice as resourceful.’
‘Just pang-wangling along, happy as a sandboy.’
He smiled at that, a tired and cynical smile that fumbled for purchase on his greasy lips. ‘Shall we proceed to business, then?’
‘Let’s do that.’
‘Very well.’ He drained the wine and then reached for the cafetière, poured a cup of coffee. This time he made no offers. He got up and carried the coffee through to the office, put it down on the desk and went straight to the framed nightmare on the wall behind, this one an impressionistic take on spaghetti meatballs or a grenade in the guts. I was ready to go, standing sideways on, hand hovering near my hip in case he came up with some hardware, but when he turned he was holding nothing more sinister than a brown envelope.