“Say it.”
She let out a slow gasp of air and then fanned her face with her hand. “Oh. My. God.”
“Say it,” Anto repeated.
“I am not saying it.”
“Say it!”
Brigit looked across the table into his eyes. “Alright. This is a spectacular coq.”
Anto punched the air with delight. “Yes! C’mon! In your face, Jamie Oliver.”
“Seriously, you’ve got some mad culinary skills going on there. I am impressed.”
“Oh, you have only just begun to appreciate my talents.”
Brigit grinned. “Oh really?” Her bag started buzzing and she looked across at Anto.
“It’s OK, take it.”
She took her phone out and answered it. “Hi, Phil, how’s everything going?”
As she listened to Phil, Anto watched the hope drain from her face.
“Crap. How did he know?”
There was more indistinguishable talk from the other end of the line.
“Damn it. Alright. Well, thanks for trying.”
Brigit glanced at Anto and then turned away. “Don’t worry about it, Phil, it’ll be alright. We’ll think of something… Yeah, Merry Christmas to you too.”
Brigit hung up the phone, then she tossed it onto the sofa.
“Shit.”
Anto stood up, not exactly sure what to do with himself. “I take it the plan didn’t work then?”
Brigit shook her head and walked over to the sofa. “No.” She sat down. Anto could see tears in the corners of her eyes. “I suppose it was a long shot. I mean, your brothers knew we were going to try something. How do you rob a bank in broad daylight when they know you’re coming?”
Anto moved towards her.
Brigit looked around the room. “I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a tissue?”
“Ehm, sure, I think I might have some in the bathroom.”
“Failing that, a bit of loo roll. I’m not feeling too proud.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Anto left the room and nipped into the bathroom. He quickly fished his phone out of his pocket and saw the message from Kevin: “Got there in plenty of time. Dealt with!”
Anto had known Kev and Vinny were keeping tabs on Harrison to make sure he didn’t mess anything up, but he had still texted them when Brigit had let slip their little plan, just be sure nothing went awry.
Anto typed out a quick response: “Excellent. I’m moving in for the kill. It’s going to be a damn good Xmas!”
He grabbed the box of tissues from the shelf, took a moment to compose himself and came back into the front room.
Brigit was still sitting on the sofa, looking forlorn. He moved across and wordlessly presented the box of tissues.
“Thanks. Grab us my drink there, would you, please?”
“Sure.”
Anto picked up both glasses from the table and brought them over. Brigit blew her nose loudly on a tissue. Not the most graceful thing Anto had ever seen.
He handed her wine to her and sat down close to her on the sofa, placing a comforting arm around her.
“There now. C’mon, it’ll be alright. Look, I’ve been thinking. I can try and get into Kevin’s flat, see if I can’t get into his safe. That might give you the ammunition you need to get this stupid thing called off.”
She looked up at him, hope in her teary eyes. “You’d do that for us?”
“I’d do that for you.”
Brigit nervously took a gulp of her wine.
Anto drained his near-full glass too; he didn’t want it spilling and staining his carpet. He put it on the back of the sofa, and then he reached across and gently put his fingers under Brigit’s chin, softly raising her face towards his as he moved forward and then…
She stood up suddenly. So suddenly that Anto nearly fell off the sofa. Brigit moved across to the table.
“You see, the thing about Phil – you remember I told you about Phil? Friend of Paul’s – actually, no, friend of ours. I really like him. Sure he’s a bit daft, but he has a great heart and a cracking memory.”
Anto looked up at Brigit. Suddenly he was getting a funny feeling that the earth had shifted in a way he didn’t really understand.
“For example, he remembers you. He saw you last week when you walked me back to the office after lunch, and he remembered seeing you before.”
“Small world.” Only two words, but as he said them, Anto’s mouth had a peculiar feeling, like his tongue was no longer entirely under his control.
“It is that. Thing is, Phil remembers where and when he’d seen you before. The night that Paul got spiked and your brothers took those horrible pictures. You know, when they generally messed up his life and mine.”
Anto opened his mouth to speak but it seemed he had lost the facility.
“Phil remembers passing you on his way out of the pub that night. Imagine having that good a memory?”
Anto put his hands down on the sofa; the room was starting to spin now. “What d… did…”
“What did I put in your drink when you were in the bathroom?” She was smiling down at him now. “Oh, just a little something for the pain. For mine and Paul’s, I mean. Your pain hasn’t started yet.”
“Ahhh… wahhh.”
“Sorry you went to all this trouble, but your little double-agent ruse has been rumbled. Thanks for passing on that message to your brother though – you actually got him right where we wanted him. And I’m afraid what you thought was going to happen tonight definitely isn’t. If I look in your bedroom, would I find a little concealed camera? I bet I would, you sleazy piece of crap.”
Anto looked down in confusion as he felt something drip onto his pants. He realised it was drool coming from his own mouth.
“Actually,” continued Brigit, “that’s not true because you see, though not in the way you intended, rest assured…”
Anto tried to stand. The world tilted on its axis.
Then nothing.
He lay unconscious on the floor.
“You’re definitely getting screwed.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
DSI Susan Burns – or, as her older brother Keith still insisted on calling her, Little Suzie – parked her car up on the side of the cul-de-sac. It’d been a predictably hellish ninety-minute drive out to Maynooth. She had counted forty-seven instances of reckless driving. She could have filled every cell in a five-mile area with people who thought the rules of the road only applied to other people.
She could hear the music pumping out of her brother’s house from here. His was the semi-detached with enough Christmas lights on it to be seen from space. She took a deep breath. She was about to be forced into polite conversation with men who were four drinks ahead of her. Her sister-in-law had made some tremendously unsubtle hints about friends of Keith’s from work being there. They were all engineers at Intel. Invariably she would have to smile at the same tedious gags about bringing handcuffs home with her. Maybe this year would finally be the year where she informed her family that she was a lesbian.
She wasn’t, but the temptation to go with that as a way of knocking this kind of stuff on the head was occasionally overwhelming. She had a theory that more than a few lesbians were just straight and happily-single women who couldn’t face another awkward shove towards Nigel who once went skiing and supports Everton.
She reached into the back seat and grabbed the jumper. She’d found it in a second-hand shop. She couldn’t face buying one of these monstrosities new. This particular monstrosity featured a reindeer wearing a demented grin. If she met such a creature in real life, she would be pulling it over on suspicion of massive cocaine use.
She was halfway through pulling it on when her phone started to ring. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Hang on, Keith, I’m coming!”
She pulled her head through. It wasn’t Keith. Another name flashed up on the car’s control screen.
She pressed the button to answer.
“Wilson, if this is about your holiday plans, then I’m sorry, but—”
“No, boss.”
“OK.”
“I just got a call from O’Mara at Pearse Street. Svetlana Mannis is a woman who works at Charlie’s jazz bar. It was closed today but she went in to surprise Noel Graffoe, the owner, with a birthday cake.”
“Christ, don’t tell me…”
“Dead, guv. They rang me because he had my card on him.”
DSI Burns ran her hand over her furrowed brow. “Natural causes?”
“I’m afraid not, boss. Initially, they were thinking robbery that went wrong but… I’m heading there now, but O’Mara said it looked like the guy had been slapped around a lot. Tied to a chair.”
“Crap. It could be a coincidence.”
There was silence on the other end.
“But,” continued Burns, “when have we ever been that lucky.” She pulled the ridiculous jumper off. “I’ll start making some calls. Let me know what you find at the scene.”
“Yes, guv.”
“I’m going to send a unit to Mr McGarry’s house too, see if he’d like to come in for a late-night chat and some mulled wine.”
“Yes, guv.”
She pressed the button to disconnect the call and then looked at her brother’s house again. With a sigh she restarted the car.
Chapter Forty-Nine
His eyelids flickered open and registered light. Distant light.
It was a road, flanked by streetlights, traffic travelling slowly down it.
Then he noticed the flakes of snow that were meandering to the ground before his eyes.
Then, belatedly, his mind registered the message his body was screaming at him. Cold. Cold. Cold.
His body was shivering.
His teeth rattled in his head, which felt like it was filled with cotton wool.
Come to that, his head felt very weird. Freezing. His skin was…
None of this made any sense.
Then a pair of legs appeared in his field of vision and a head bent down to smile at him. Brigit Conroy.
“There he is. Wakey wakey, rise and shine. You’re missing the magical Christmas wonderland. Don’t you love the snow? It makes the whole place look so clean, doesn’t it? I mean, initially, before it ends up a shitty pile of sludge by the side of the road. There’s probably a metaphor in there but I can’t be arsed.”
Anto’s body was gradually gathering information. The reason it was so cold was because he was naked. Bollock naked. “Where am I?”
“Call yourself a true Dub? You should recognise the Phoenix Park. Although, admittedly, this is one of the less well-travelled parts.”
He was sitting on the ground, the uncomfortable ground. His back seemed to be resting on the trunk of a tree. Things were poking into his arse, his naked arse. Twigs. Pinecones.
“What’s going…” Anto stopped speaking. He had moved his hands to his face. His truly naked face. His beard was gone. He moved his hands to his head. His hair – all of his hair – was gone. He felt something soft on his otherwise bald scalp. He pulled it off and looked at it. It was his Santa hat.
“What the… You shaved me? You mad bitch!”
“Now now. Language.”
“What the fuck are you doing? This is assault.” The rage and the cold were finally clearing his foggy mind. “And you… you drugged me!”
“Really? You’re going to go for the moral high ground on that point, are you?”
He tried to stand. “Give me my clothes. This isn’t funny.”
“Well, that’s a matter of perspective. It’s hilarious from where I’m standing.”
“You mad—”
“Keep in mind, I’m your only way out of your current predicament, so go ahead – use the word bitch again and see what happens.”
“Give me my clothes. You’ve no right to do this!”
“Really? Like you’d the right to try and set me up as your sick little conquest. Like you’d the right to drug Paul and fuck with our lives. Like you’ve the right to try and destroy our business?”
“I’m calling the guards. You’re going to jail.”
Brigit pulled a face. “Oh dear, that’ll really ruin Christmas. Anyway, have a nice time getting in touch with nature.”
Brigit turned and started to walk away. Anto now saw that her car was sitting about twenty feet away in the darkness.
“Wait. Please. I’m sorry!”
He leaned a hand on the tree trunk and managed to stand on his unsteady legs.
She threw a wave over her shoulder. “You most certainly are. A really sorry piece of shit.”
“Look. Can we talk about this? I’ve made some mistakes.”
Brigit opened the front door of her car, which creaked a little in protest. “It’s wonderful that you’re starting to see that. A real Christmas miracle.”
“You can’t just leave me here.”
“Can’t I? Watch me.”
“You bitch!”
“Oh dear, there’s that word again. Just when you were making such good progress.”
He ran towards her, his anger and desperation propelling him forward on his aching legs.
When he’d travelled about six feet, his foggy mind registered the sensation of something attached to his left ankle just a fraction too late. The rope caught his leg and his momentum sent him sprawling to the ground.
Brigit lowered the window. “Ouch! Not a good landing. Your leg is tied to the tree. Sorry, should’ve mentioned that. My bad.”
Brigit started the engine of her car. “You’ll untie it eventually, but it’ll take you some time. I was a Girl Guide.”
With a grinding noise, she released the handbrake of her car and put it in gear.
Anto spat the dirt from his mouth. “Wait. Please. I’m sorry. I can explain.”
“Oh please. Bit late for that. In fact…”
With a thunk, an object landed in the snow beside him.
“There’s your phone. Go ring somebody who cares.”
Chapter Fifty
Jacob Harrison stared mournfully into his drink. Kevin Kelleher slapped him on the shoulder.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Harrison, cheer up. You’re wrecking my buzz here. Today has been a great day.”
“How so?”
“How so?” Kelleher held his drink up triumphantly. “We have vanquished our foe. Foiled their nefarious scheme. Made Paulie Mulchrone look like a clueless dipshit. It’s all good.”
Over at the bar, the redhead was talking too loudly into her phone. “Yeah well, fuck you, Brian. Go back to her, but don’t think I’ll be waiting for you when she kicks you out again. I had plans for tonight, big plans. You are missing out!”
She slammed her phone down on the bar and held up her glass again. “Cheryl, fill this fucker up.” There was now a distinct slur to her voice.
Kelleher nodded in the redhead’s direction. “At least you’re not that sad sack. Nice arse, to be fair to her. Why is it the mental ones are always the best in bed?”
Harrison mumbled something under his breath.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, cheer the fuck up!”
“That’s easy for you to say,” snapped Harrison. “I’m the one who was on to a sure thing, until you messed it up.”
“Jesus, man, you seriously do have a problem.”
“Fuck you, what do you know about it? The wife won’t let me near the house or the kids. My own parents won’t speak to me. You’re not the one that’s going to be all alone at Christmas.”
“Christ, what I wouldn’t give to be alone at Christmas! No kids screaming at each other, wife nagging me, my ma complaining about every bloody thing. You can relax, put your feet up, eat something nicer than dry-as-a-desert turkey. You’re a lucky man. You should come around mine for Christmas dinner.”
Harrison looked up, his face full of hope. “Really?”
“Eh no, not really. I’ve got a sixteen-year-old niece, Jacob, and frankly, you’re a se
x pest. But, on the upside, once we own MCM Investigations, you’ll have a bit of money again. And then you’re not a sex pest, you’re a player.”
“You’re really fucking rude, do you know that?”
Kelleher reached below the table and, with a quick glance around to make sure they were unobserved, grabbed Harrison’s nuts and hence his undivided attention.
“Listen to me, you little creep. You nearly just fucked this whole thing up, something me and my brothers have put a lot of work into. Be very, very happy I’m in a Christmas mood, because otherwise you’d be lying in a pool of your own blood somewhere. Do we understand each other?”
Harrison nodded.
“Good lad. You’re lucky it’s me you’re having this chat with. I’m the softie in the family. One of my brothers would have…”
Kelleher’s phone started to ring and he released his grip. “Oh, speak of the Devil.”
He placed the phone to his ear. “Mission accomplished, Anto?”
Harrison watched as the smile crumbled from Kelleher’s lips.
“What? Where? Hang on, I’m on my way.”
Without another word, Kelleher stood up and rushed towards the doors.
Harrison raised his glass in toast at his back. “Merry bloody Christmas.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Jacob Harrison threw back the last of his cognac and belched. He was starting to get heartburn. Of course he was. What a perfect evening. It was time to go home. Not “home” home – his future ex-wife had made it very clear that he was not welcome there. Even his own parents had backed her up. They always took everyone else’s side. Throughout his childhood they had invariably backed his two older siblings against him. He had never enjoyed their support. He was a truly self-made man. Fuck the lot of ’em!
And fuck Kevin Kelleher too. Wherever he’d gone, it seemed pretty clear he wasn’t coming back. Not that Jacob liked him. Kelleher was a tasteless oik who wore what money he had in a gauche manner, but at least his presence had meant he had someone to drink with.
The two young couples in the corner, all of them looking like they’d just walked out of a Christmas TV ad, laughed uproariously. Jacob noticed one of the women glance in his direction and then look away. Were they laughing at him? The fuckers were laughing at him. Christ, could this day get any worse? Time to go back to his shitty flat and see what immigrants were willing to deliver a takeaway on Christmas Eve.
Last Orders (The Dublin Trilogy Book 4) Page 25