Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Gene Kerrigan
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Part 1: The Smoking Garden
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part 2: The Job
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Part 3: The Calm
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Part 4: The Storm
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
Vincent Naylor is a professional thief, as confident as he is reckless. Just ten days out of jail, and he’s preparing his next robbery. Already, his plan is unravelling.
While investigating the murder of a crooked banker, Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey gets a call from an old acquaintance, Maura Coady. The retired nun believes there’s something suspicious happening in the Dublin backstreet where she lives alone.
Maura’s call inadvertently unleashes a storm of violence that will engulf Vincent Naylor and force Tidey to make a deadly choice.
The Rage is a masterpiece of suspense, told against the background of a country’s shameful past and its troubled present.
About the Author
Veteran journalist Gene Kerrigan is the author of four novels, the most recent of which, Dark Times in the City, won the Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger.
ALSO BY
Gene Kerrigan
Novels
Little Criminals
The Midnight Choir
Dark Times in the City
Non-Fiction
Round Up the Usual Suspects (with Derek Dunne)
Nothing but the Truth
Goodbye to All That (with Derek Speirs)
Hard Cases
Another Country
This Great Little Nation (with Pat Brennan)
Never Make a Promise You Can’t Break
For Pat Brennan and Evelyn Bracken
GENE KERRIGAN
THE RAGE
The law was something to be manipulated for profit and power. The streets were dark with something more than night.
Raymond Chandler,
Trouble Is My Business
His fingers gripped the thick wooden rail, both hands clenching so hard that it felt like he might crush the wood to splinters. His breathing was shallow, the air sucked in and expelled in short puffs, hardly seeming to reach down as far as his lungs. His shoulders and chest were suddenly sweaty. It crossed his mind that something serious might be happening, something more than a panic attack. He was a big man, and fit, but he was a smoker, and at forty-seven he was carrying the consequences of a few failed New Year’s resolutions. There was fear, and there was relief too. Let someone else, or no one else, deal with this – he’d have no choice but to let it all go. The tension of recent days would be swept away as his body shut down and everything evaporated in a smothering rush of mortality.
If that happened, Holly would feel the pain of it, then she’d accept his absence as just another fact of life. Like the creases around her eyes, regrettable but inevitable – and no big deal in the long run. And Grace and Dylan would feel the shock of the loss, but they were already shaping lives of their own. It was the way of things.
And without his protection Maura Coady would die. Sooner or later the lunatic would come out of the shadows and take a few minutes to crush out the small amount of life left to her.
It was towards the end of a warm April evening, a foretaste of summer. Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey was standing on the north bank of the River Liffey, on the boardwalk overhanging the dark water. Upriver, to his right, the sun left a golden glow on the clouds above the Phoenix Park. Behind him, on the quays heading into the city centre, the sound and the smell of traffic.
A city going about its business, getting ready to wind up the day. Smug and oblivious.
Bob Tidey had been born here, grew up here and raised a family, he knew the city and loved it and served it and hated the way it could turn a blind eye. He was gripping the rail so hard his fingers hurt – his arms and shoulders pushed and pulled at the wooden rail, as though he was trying to shake it, to shake the entire boardwalk, to shake the whole fucking city. He pushed himself away from the rail.
The way things had gone, there was no good way out of this, no moral thing to do. The banker’s murder, the Maura Coady situation – Tidey’s last conversation with the brass had shut down the safe options.
He lit a cigarette and tried to still the shaking in his hands. He took a deep drag, let the smoke out slowly, then began to walk up along the boardwalk towards O’Connell Bridge.
No moral thing to do. But something had to be done.
Part 1
The Smoking Garden
1
Lying on his back, Emmet Sweetman opened his eyes.
Everything was familiar, but all wrong.
A dark raindrop—
Falling from the ceiling—
He was lying on the floor of his wide front hallway, the cold, hard marble beneath his back. All around him, the familiar dark green walls topped with the moulded cream cornices that bordered a high white ceiling. To his left, the antique walnut table where he dropped his keys when he came home each evening. He’d never seen the table like this, from below. Underneath, barely visible in the shadows, there was a scrawl in pink chalk – VK21.
Someone did that in the auction room, probably, where Colette bought it.
Falling slowly, from the ceiling, a dark raindrop—
All wrong—
He felt a desperate need for certainties. Time and place and other people, and where he was in relation to it all.
Dark out—
Late, now—
Lunch with—
Then—
In an instant, the day unfolded in his mind, moments emerging one from the other. Afternoon, long meeting – fat fella from the Revenue Commissioners, then more fucking lawyers—
Evening, late home, tired, the sound of his car keys dropping onto the walnut table.
Colette—
There was—
On his
way up the stairs to join her—
Doorbell—
‘I’ll get it.’
Now, watching the dark raindrop, falling so slowly it was still only halfway to the floor, he felt a rush of cold flooding through his body. It felt like his flesh had suddenly fused with the marble beneath him. His mind stretched towards something he didn’t recognise, failed to connect—
Turning on the stairs, coming down again—
Two men on the doorstep—
The one on the left wore a hoodie, a scarf across the lower half of his face. The one on the right, his shadowed face under a baseball cap, had a midget double-barrelled shotgun and it all happened together.
The flash.
The impossibly loud bang.
The incredibly fast movement.
Lying on his back, Emmet Sweetman opened his eyes.
Dark raindrop, falling—
From skull to toes his body was icy cold.
Oh, Jesus—
The one in the hoodie was—
God, no—
Leaning forward, bending down. He looked into Emmet Sweetman’s eyes—
Big black handgun.
No—
The dark raindrop—
Still falling from the ceiling—
Jesus, please—
2
The court opened for business in – Bob Tidey glanced at his watch – fifteen minutes. Lots of time for a smoke. He got out of the lift on the second floor of the Criminal Courts of Justice building, walked through the cafeteria and out into the Smoking Garden. There were four or five others stealing a last few puffs. Bob Tidey preferred the old Four Courts building, where smokers had to go out into the yard to enjoy their vice. The new building was an uninhibited display of affluence, but there was something indecent about splashing out so generously to facilitate a bad habit. The Smoking Garden had several tastefully designed wooden benches, where you could sit and have a puff and a coffee. It was decorated with plants and saplings and a lot of thought had gone into the design of the receptacles for stubbing out your cigarette. Despite all this, the area already seemed a little frayed about the edges – abandoned Coke cans and cardboard coffee cups, carelessly discarded butts.
Bob Tidey’s disposable lighter should have been disposed of a couple of days back. He had to flick it several times before he got a tiny flame. He was leaning forward, hands cupped to light the Silk Cut, when his mobile rang.
Tidey let the flame die.
‘Yeah?’
The voice was raspy, unmistakable.
‘That thing we talked about, Mr Tidey – you said we could, you know, have a chat. See if there’s anything can be done.’
‘That’ll depend, Trixie. The kid’s got to open up, just to me, it won’t go on the record. Get him to—’
‘I told him. I think he’s OK with that.’
‘Good.’
‘We need to talk, Mr Tidey.’
‘Look, I’m at a meeting. I’ll drop by when I can.’
‘That’d be great.’
‘No promises, OK?’
‘Whatever you think – it’s your game, Mr Tidey.’
It took several attempts to get the lighter working. Tidey took a long drag, sucking the shit out of the Silk Cut. Low tar was a scam, he reckoned – it meant he smoked twice as many. Ought to go back on the Rothmans.
The courts had eaten up a significant amount of Bob Tidey’s working life over the past twenty-five years and ordinarily the courtroom routine was something he welcomed and enjoyed. For civilians, the courts were approached reluctantly, as defendants, litigants or witnesses. For the police, they were the goal to which months of hard work were devoted – where you got to bring your case into the winners’ enclosure or watch it vanish down the toilet. Bob Tidey felt at home here.
The shiny new Criminal Courts of Justice lacked the historic heft of the old Four Courts, the higgledy-piggledy layout and countless nooks and crannies where quiet deals were done. Instead, it offered light and space, technology and comfort, all the bells and whistles that the legal community of a proud and prosperous little nation could desire. The building was conceived in the exuberant period when money was plentiful. There was so much of the stuff that the right kind of people earned big bonuses sitting around all day just thinking up new things to spend it on. The tables of the golden circles groaned with the weight of the feast. Their admirers piled into the property gambling game and sufficient crumbs fell to minimum-wage level to keep the skulls happy. Everyone knew the money-go-round would keep spinning as long as two or three bad things didn’t happen simultaneously – then four or five bad things happened at once.
By the time the shiny new Criminal Courts of Justice building opened for business it had become clear that the plentiful supply of money was imaginary. At first it seemed almost a technical hitch, like someone needed to sort out a knotty little arithmetic problem. Then, house prices went through the floor, jobs evaporated, factories and businesses that had been around for decades folded overnight. There were hundreds of thousands of houses and flats empty, hundreds of unfinished estates in which no one lived or would ever want to live, all built with borrowed money to take advantage of tax breaks. The knowledge that all the backslapping and arrogance of the previous decade was nurtured in bullshit made the country blush like a teenager caught posing in front of a mirror.
Bob Tidey was in the law and order business, and whatever else went belly-up there’d always be hard men and chancers and a need for someone to put manners on them. He’d taken wage cuts, but he could live with that. These days his needs were few.
At first he missed the make-do atmosphere of the Four Courts, now used solely for the lucrative civil law end of the business. But wherever the legal tournaments might be held, Tidey felt at home with the intricate preparation of cases, the tension, the post-trial comedown. Do the job right and it wasn’t often the villains managed to slide out of the handcuffs. And on the rare occasion they did, he could bide his time. The thing about criminals, they usually give you a rematch.
This, though, was the first time he’d come to court in a role other than that of investigator. In a few minutes he’d be in a courtroom on the fourth floor, preparing to commit perjury.
Fuck it.
Made your bed, don’t complain about lying on it.
Once you make a witness statement, in the aftermath of an alleged offence, that’s that. Go on the stand and deviate from the written word and the defence barrister will spend the next half-hour dancing on your bones.
Tell me, Detective Sergeant, were you lying then or are you lying now?
Answering questions about that evening in Brerton’s pub, after the hubbub died down, he’d kept it simple.
‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘We’d better take a statement, anyway, just for the record.’
‘No problem.’
I heard a commotion somewhere behind me and I tried to ignore it. I thought it was just someone being loud, the way it is in pubs sometimes. By the time I turned round it was all over.
End of story.
Nothing in that to help or harm either side.
That evening, when he turned round from where he was sitting at the bar of Brerton’s, the batons were already swinging. Two gobshites ended up in handcuffs, followed by a trip to Beaumont A&E and a night in the cells at Turner’s Lane.
Asking for it.
The gobshites, late teens, maybe twenty or so, were brave with drink. Loud, playing tough guys, throwing unfunny and insulting remarks around the pub, then laughing and staring down the regulars. A nervous young barman who asked them to cool it was told to fuck off. The gobshites laughed so hard they squeezed their eyes shut and rocked in their seats.
Bob Tidey was having a quick bite to eat, after a long, lunchless day, on his way back from a fruitless journey to see a potential witness in an insurance fraud. When two uniforms arrived at Brerton’s, looking pissed off, like they’d had to interrupt a tea break, the g
obshites quickly sobered up. Just what you need, when there’s dozens of people chasing even minimum-wage jobs – a court appearance and a yob conviction on your record. They suddenly looked like the dim-witted boys they were. It should have ended there, with a warning, and an order to leave the pub. Instead, just as the gobshites moved towards the exit, their exaggerated swagger implying that leaving was their own idea, one of the uniforms crooked a finger, beckoned and called after them. ‘Let’s hear an apology to the customers, lads. And make it sincere.’
The two gobshites stood awkwardly, their faces a mixture of embarrassment, fear and anger.
‘It’s over,’ one of them said.
The Garda raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not hearing anything that sounds like repentance.’
The other gobshite couldn’t stop the anger pushing through the fear. ‘Go fuck yourself.’
It was like the sound of a starting pistol, and the two policemen and the two gobshites went at it. Four young men doing what a certain kind of young man always longs to do – lock horns.
The Rage Page 1