Franks could feel a cold sweat run down his back.
"Stop, Bunny. I can't and I won't discuss anything with you. It is against the rules."
"Whose rules?" asked Bunny. "God's, is it? Sure, doesn't He have all manner of rules, Danny."
"I never asked you to—"
"Don't. Don't you dare. You know what you did and I don't blame you for it, I honestly don't. Something had to be done. But you could've told anyone, and you chose me. That monster chose to lay it on you, and you chose to lay it on me. I'm… I'm not a good man, Father. Sure, I try and I've… I'd like to think I've done some good, but that doesn't make me good. But you – you made me what I am now. So don't talk to me about sin, Father, because you put that one on me."
Franks felt hot tears roll down his cheeks. "What you're asking, Bunny… the seal of confession is the most sacred thing. What… what we did was wrong, but it was… he was going to do it again – sweet God in heaven, forgive me – but he was. But this man, the man you're talking about, it isn't the same…"
"I've got no choice," said Bunny.
"You can't ask me to do this," said Franks.
"I am. You put that sin on me and now I'm calling it in."
"It's not—"
"I don't care, Danny. I don't. All your rules and reasons mean nothing to me. I'm lost, but this isn't. This is here and now, and it is worth fighting for. Let your God sort it out in the next life if He wants, but in this one, I'm doing everything I can to save my one good deed."
"You can't."
"I am."
"I won't."
"You will."
Chapter Forty-Nine
Gerry: OK, I’d like to formally apologise on behalf of myself and the station for my earlier outburst. It was, – well, we’re all under a lot of stress and… I loved that car. I’m now being told that we have a Sergeant O’Brien from Clondalkin Garda Station on the line.
Sergeant O’Brien: Yes, Gerry, hello. Long time listener, first time caller. Me and the lads are big fans, we have you on all the time.
Gerry: Well, thank you, sergeant.
Sergeant O’Brien: We know you’re up on the Quays there, right in the middle of it all, you’re understandably worried.
Gerry: Well, yes, yes we are.
Sergeant O’Brien: Don’t worry about anything, and never mind all those things you said about the force over the years.
Gerry: Well thanks, but—
Sergeant O’Brien: We’ve broken out the riot gear, we’ve got the van outside – we’re coming to rescue you.
Gerry: Wow, that is… I’m speechless…
Sergeant O’Brien: No problem. But first, would you mind playing the new one from Adele? (Laughter – line goes dead)
Gerry: You absolute shower of p—
"Mr Maloney?" said Detective Wilson.
The man at the other side of the desk in the interview room looked back at him as if suddenly waking from a dream. He'd been interviewing Maloney for nearly an hour now, and beyond asserting that Hartigan and their lawyer Marcus Penrose had been alive and well when he'd left them, and that he hadn't seen any suspicious packages lying abut the place, he'd got nothing of use out of him. It was early days, but Janice from the Tech Bureau had said that the explosion appeared to have originated within the house, and they had taken some debris away for testing in an effort to determine the source. Wilson repeated the question. "I said, have you ever met Bunny McGarry?"
"Well clearly not, I'm still alive, aren't I?"
"Can I ask you what information you are in possession of that leads you to believe that Mr McGarry is a suspect in this case?"
"Are you saying he's not?"
"No, I—"
"This is absolutely typical. Craig Blake is dead. John Baylor is dead. Marcus Penrose and my good friend Jerome Hartigan just died while the world watched on in horror and, but for a miracle, I would be dead too… and, after all that, all you care about is how I know the name of the man who is trying to kill me? Have I got that right?"
Wilson glanced down at his notes for a moment to compose himself. Mr Maloney was not exactly the easiest interviewee. They'd almost had to arrest him to get him to give a statement and even then, he was only willing to do so if his chauffeur was present, citing the possibility of the entire Garda Síochána being involved in a conspiracy against him. Wilson would have been tempted to write him off as a paranoid lunatic if someone hadn’t just attempted to kill him.
Wilson glanced again at the driver sitting behind his boss and was struck, not for the first time, that he seemed to be finding the whole affair quietly amusing. He sat with a casual slouch, as if he was merely sitting around in a doctor’s waiting room rather than in a Garda interview room. Maloney had declined to ring a lawyer, citing that the only one he trusted had just been blown to kingdom come.
"Do you know what the problem is with this country?" asked Maloney.
Wilson was tempted to try and get him back on track but then he remembered something DI Jimmy Stewart, his old mentor, had said to him in one of their now regular chats: ‘Always let them talk, because they often say more than they mean to.’
"No," said Wilson, "what’s wrong with this country?"
Maloney jabbed his pudgy finger across the desk at him. "A hatred of ambition, that's what. You show a bit of ‘get up and go’ and the chattering classes despise you for it. Nothing annoys them more than ambition. This world was built by the risk-takers."
"Was that what Skylark was – a risk?"
Wilson couldn't justify the question from an investigative standpoint. He had to admit to himself, he'd only asked it because Maloney – despite the situation he found himself in – was a very hard man to like. It had been a bad day on the back of several, and on top of seeing his home town ripping itself to pieces and a house blowing up before his eyes, Maloney's repeated assertions as to the ineptitude of the force were really getting on Wilson's nerves.
Maloney quickly cycled through a range of facial expressions, like he was trying to find the definition of ugly. He started to say something and then stopped, standing up instead, petulantly allowing his chair to topple to the floor behind him.
"I can see we're done here. Rest assured, Detective Wilson, I shall be making my displeasure with your performance known to your superiors."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Can I state again for the record that I strongly recommend that you allow us to provide you with protection, as—"
"Oh please! Like I would trust the Irish police to protect my hamster! I intend to depart this godforsaken country tonight. Nowhere is safe for me here while vigilantes are allowed roam the streets willy nilly."
"I must advise—"
"Don't bother."
Maloney turned to leave. Wilson watched as the driver slipped his phone from his inside jacket pocket and nodded towards it.
"Oh yes," said Maloney, "one of the final things poor Jerome said to me was that he was worried that, over the last few days, someone had been following him. My chauffeur, Mr Coetzee, noticed someone acting suspiciously when I visited Jerome earlier in the week. He took a picture…"
The bodyguard tapped a couple of buttons and scrolled through a few screens before standing, leaning across the desk and showing the picture to Wilson.
He tried hard not to react when he saw it. He recognised the face – it was Paul Mulchrone.
Chapter Fifty
"God damn it, don't you die on me."
Brigit looked down at her phone. 4%.
She went to ring the doorbell again when a blurred silhouette appeared in the opaque glass.
"Who is it?" came an older male voice from the other side of the door. Brigit sagged slightly. This was the sixth door she'd tried and so far she'd had nobody under seventy, other than the inexplicably angry woman who'd shooed her off with a barrage of profanity that seemed to imply that Brigit was having sex with somebody called Barry.
"Hi," said Brigit, in her least-threatening voice. "I know how odd this
sounds, and believe me I wouldn't ask if it wasn't really important but, by any chance do you have an iPhone charger I could borrow?"
There was a long tranche of silence followed by, "What?"
"My phone is nearly dead, and honestly, it's life and death. I have to charge it because, well… it is a long story."
Silence.
More silence.
"What?"
"Could you just open the door for a second, honestly, I promise this is really important."
"How do I know you're not one of those looters?"
Brigit sighed and looked around her. She was standing on a road called Sweetman's Avenue in Blackrock, although so far nobody had reached civil, never mind sweet. It seemed like an unlikely place for the solo looter to go on the rampage, not least because it sat almost directly opposite Blackrock District Garda Station. She glanced at her phone again. 3%. Ah, holy fuck.
Initially she had been elated when the Sniffer app had installed on her phone and minutes later the tracker, or Bunny's ‘doo-dah’ as Duncan had referred to it, had sent back its location. This had been followed by confusion when the location turned out to be the house of Jerome Hartigan, who, as she had only just found out, Paul had been following for a week. How the hell he had taken on a case at all – never mind one for a client whose name he didn’t know – was something she hadn't even begun to process. Before she'd had a chance, Hartigan had literally gone up in smoke. The flashing red dot on her screen had then started moving a few minutes later, she had tried to not think of it as fleeing the scene of the crime.
Brigit didn't know who, or what, she was tracking. Bunny's name was now all over the news as being the man behind ‘the Púca’. She didn't believe it. Bunny didn't seem the killing spree type. It wasn't the murdering part that seemed far-fetched, but the sneaking around bit certainly did. Regardless, her only shot at an answer was the tracker. It appeared to be on a vehicle, and the vehicle in question appeared to now be sitting in the car park behind the station. Her attempt to ascertain exactly what vehicle it might be, had been thwarted by a female guard wielding a clipboard with serious intent. Turns out riots make police fierce jumpy. Brigit had backed off, as she had no reason she was willing to share for her interest in being in a Garda car park. That'd been half an hour ago. While she waited for the tracker to move again she'd decided to deal with the dying phone issue, which was turning out to be surprisingly difficult. None of the shops on the nearby high street sold chargers. This was why she'd resorted to the desperate measure of going door-to-door.
"I promise I'm not a looter."
"That's exactly what a looter would say."
"OK, sure but… looters wouldn't ring the doorbell would they?"
"I dunno, I've never been looted before."
"Just, open the door."
"Don't you take that tone with me, young lady."
Brigit took a deep breath. "I'm very sorry, it has been a nightmare of a day. To be honest, it has been an awful week. I got suspended from work for, well, that doesn't matter. I found out my ex-boyfriend who cheated on me, didn't; but he was set-up by my ex-fiancé – who did, repeatedly – and…" Brigit was aware she was babbling. "None of that's important, but what is important is that my friend is missing and the only clue we've got is a tracker that might lead to him, or at least… I also keep trying to ring Paul – he's the ex, the non-cheating one – and he's in the riot and I can't get him on the phone. They said on the radio they'd shut the mobile network down in the city centre and… the thing is – I just really need to charge my phone. I'm sorry if I came across as rude, and I know this must sound mental, but I swear I'm a good person having a bad day. Just do me this one service, I'm begging you. Have you got an iPhone charger?"
Brigit stopped talking and let the silence stretch out.
She watched the door in anticipation. There was a complete lack of movement.
After about thirty long seconds she could hear a toilet flush at the back of the house.
It was all she could manage not to kick the door in.
She looked up and down the street and then over at the Garda station. Not for the first time she wondered if the most sensible course of action might not be to just walk in and tell them everything she knew. Thing is, seeing as Bunny's tracker was currently on what she assumed was a vehicle that was sitting in their car park, could she rule out the Gardaí being involved? It was only eight months ago that Bunny had uncovered corruption at the highest level of the force, and thrown one of the main culprits out a window. It was very possible somebody still held a grudge and she couldn't bring herself to help anyone who might want to do him harm.
That's what it came back to. Whatever Bunny McGarry had done or was doing, the last thing she definitely knew he'd been up to was proving that Paul was not yet another philandering scumbag. That didn't mesh with the the psychopathic monster that the radio was proclaiming.
Brigit sat down on the front step of the terraced house and looked at her phone. Another low battery warning flashed up.
Then, the red dot started moving again.
2%…
Chapter Fifty-One
Was this Hell?
There was no fire, only darkness. But the darkness burned. It ate him whole. The darkness and the silence.
He didn't know how long he had been there, how he had got there or where ‘there’ was. This body was not his. This one was broken. None of it felt familiar.
He had woken to darkness, chained to a wall, water running down the stone behind him.
Nothing but darkness and silence for near eternity, then the blinding light would crash in and the pain would come. The first couple of times he'd watched the figure approach through slatted fingers, as the light burned his eyes. The darkness had formed into a man with the sole purpose of raining punishment down upon him. Blow after blow. The first couple of times he'd not seen them coming, as the light blinded. After that, his eyes had swollen near shut so all he could see was a dash of confused colour from the left and nothing from the right. Just enough to know there was light, which would mean pain. The darkness hurt you with the light.
At first, he'd stood and tried to defend himself, held back by the heavy, impregnable chains tethering him to the wall. He had even got a shot or two in himself, those had been sweet moments. But it wasn't a fight. It was a beating followed by another and another and another.
At first, he'd asked questions of the darkness.
Then he'd hurled insults at it.
The last couple of times he'd silently huddled down and waited for the rain to stop. For the darkness to have spent its anger. Then it would leave food and water. The darkness cared.
In between the flurries of violence, in the crushing silence, the ghosts had come to him. An elegantly-attired man standing on a stool. A grinning corpse. A pale woman, her faint pulse dying in his arms even as he tried to shake her back to life. An old friend. And her. Simone. His angel. She had come to him too, and held him in her arms, and whispered her song into the darkness.
That was how he knew. This could not be Hell. The darkness would not have allowed him her, if it was.
That meant there was hope.
This could end.
He could die.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Paul cracked open a can of the unpronounceable and ill-advisable East European beer, and held it up in toast. At the far side of the bank of tables sat Maggie, lapping her beer up from the bowl he'd already given her. Paul looked around the office.
"Well, this was worthwhile, wasn't it? Fought our way through a riot, and for what?"
Maggie didn't answer. Paul took a slug of his drink and instantly regretted it. They'd picked themselves up and limped back, making it to the office for 7:58 pm. It was now nearly 9 pm. The Devil in the Red Dress had not shown up. Paul had tried to ring Brigit, but it appeared that the mobile phone network was still down. He had no idea how she was getting on; he hoped it was better than he was.
He'd c
leaned himself up as best he could in the small toilet down the hall. He was more or less in one piece, although his ribs were tender to the touch, his ankle hurt to walk on and there was an unpleasant buzzing, like feedback, in his ear. Outside of that, a few cuts and bruises, plus he had a lovely shiner coming up. Maggie on the other hand; well, who knew? He'd tried to check out her injuries but a quick growl had indicated that – violent bonding experiences or not – her position on being touched had not changed. Paul would find an unlucky vet and get her checked out in the morning, assuming the world hadn't burned down by then.
He looked out the window. A couple of plumes of smoke could be seen in the distance, rising into the blood-red sunset. The riot was still going on. His phone could still access the Internet via next door's wi-fi. Last he'd seen, the Irish Army had marched down the quays to retake O'Connell Street. It turned out they had a stash of riot gear for just such an eventuality.
Paul had the window open, and along with the mouthwatering smell of cooking, he could hear the babble from a TV in the Oriental Palace's kitchen. Judging by the sound of scooters flying in and out, business was brisk for a Monday night. He guessed people were staying in to watch the riot on the telly.
He looked at his phone again. No signal.
He'd gone downstairs fifteen minutes ago to use the Palace's landline to ring Brigit, but it'd gone straight to voicemail. Same with Phil’s. He'd left both of them the number, and Mickey had assured him they'd shout if he got any calls.
"What do you think we should do?"
The Day That Never comes (The Dublin Trilogy Book 2) Page 28