The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  “Radha, please don’t . . . ” He took her hands again and gently pulled them apart.

  “It is because I am taking the brown sugar?” Her eyes were now shining with tears. “You don’t like it. I know this. It is why you don’t want me?”

  “God, no,” Conor groaned, miserably. “It’s true, I don’t like it. I want you to stop taking it but that’s got nothing to do with—ah jayz, please don’t cry. Listen, I promise I’ll be back later, in about three hours’ time. We’ll talk more about it then, right? We’ll think of something, together.”

  Radha’s tears continued to fall, but her face brightened slightly as she looked up at him. “In three hours?” she asked, dubiously.

  “In three hours,” he said and meant it. Unless he was lying somewhere either unconscious or dead, he would be coming back for her, tonight. With or without the money, he would be taking her from Rohit Mehta tonight.

  She nodded, and he saw she didn’t entirely believe him. With two small fingers, she wiped her eyes—careful to avoid smudging her makeup—and composed herself with a few deep breaths. When she spoke again, the exhausted sadness in her voice troubled him more than the tears.

  “I am tired from this, bhaiyya. There is nothing good here for me.”

  “Síocáin,” Conor whispered, brushing his hands down over her hair with a light, soothing touch. “Síocáin, mo chara.”

  He watched the melancholy heaviness in her face give way to confused wonder, and realized for the second time that night he had unconsciously slipped into the language he had learned to speak before any other.

  It confused him as well, and for a few seconds, Conor felt the atmosphere inside the bar change. It was as if a barometric shift had swallowed up every breath and noise, leaving room for just a single, echoing sound—a voice repeating the Irish words in a soft, comforting drone, directing them at him, not Radha.

  Síocáin, mo chara. Peace, my friend.

  The moment passed but left behind the sharp aura of premonition, a ghostly tap on the shoulder that sent a tremor of dread along the length of his back.

  Not much longer. Something was coming.

  18

  Standing in the nearly deserted lane outside the Monroe, Conor squinted at a platoon of rats streaming purposefully along the opposite wall and tried to restrain a mounting frustration.

  There were many undesirable consequences to be catalogued from the practice of having a semiautomatic handgun strapped to one’s chest. In particular, there were two he found problematic. The first was that the shape and weight of the pistol against his side had become so habitual that its absence now felt unnatural. Whenever he was not wearing it, the abnormal lightness prompted jolts of neurotic panic, as though he had lost or forgotten something important.

  The second, more worrisome side effect was the temptation generated by ready accessibility. During moments of high aggravation, the urge to yank it out and blast away at something—just to slake the desire for deafening explosion— lurked provocatively beneath the surface.

  He had returned to the Jyoti flat to retrieve the Walther before heading for Kamathipura, but although it was again strapped under his arm, he was not seriously considering a murderous assault on the rats. He couldn’t deny, however, that the present dispute with Raj was making his fingers itch to take hold of something or someone.

  The debate—all the more infuriating for being unexpected—had been going on in Hindi for the past several minutes, and he was nearing the end of his limited patience. He had to get going, primarily because the available minutes were inexorably ticking away, but also because of the god-awful burning stench wafting from an alley a few feet away from them. The noxious, unidentifiable odor was scratching at his lungs, threatening to revive the tickle that had remained blessedly dormant for the past several hours. He took in a careful breath and renewed the argument with a tone of authority he hoped would settle the matter.

  “We are not going to stand here discussing this endlessly, Raj. I have said that we need to work in Juhu tonight and time is growing short. So let’s go. Quickly, now.”

  The young man flinched as Conor completed the command by cracking the back of his hand sharply against his left palm, but Raj’s obtuse expression did not waver.

  “It is the night for collections in Kamathipura, Con-ji,” he protested in a frightened, wheedling voice. “The collections in Bandra-Juhu are for tomorrow night.”

  “Which you have said ten times now,” Conor fired back in exasperation. “So, for the eleventh and final time, I’m telling you the plan has changed.”

  “I know nothing of this changing plan.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you didn’t get the memo,” Conor sighed, lapsing into English. “Jaysus, even the Indian mafia feeds on red tape. Suddenly he’s a bureaucrat waiting for paperwork.”

  “Kyaa, saab?” Raj’s head dipped to one side in nervous curiosity.

  “I said it is useless to consider what you know or don’t know,” Conor resumed in Hindi. “What I am telling you is the only important thing.”

  “But why, saab? Why Juhu tonight?”

  Because that’s where all the money is, and I only have three hours to get it.

  This was not the response Conor intended to give to an admittedly reasonable question, but it was the naked, mercenary truth. When he had returned to the Jyoti earlier that evening, he had retrieved more than just the Walther. In his knapsack, he was hauling a cargo of pristine five-hundred-rupee notes that he’d been hiding in the flat. They were banded together in sixteen bundles of one hundred notes each. That represented eight lakhs, and it wasn’t enough.

  The money came from his account at a Colaba district bank, which had been created for him in London presumably by the same busy administrators who had assembled his briefing books, passport, and other operational ornamentations. It was intended to support basic living expenses and items of necessity, but he’d liquidated it a week ago, when the scheme for extracting Radha from her predicament had first occurred to him.

  Conor had worried that the abrupt withdrawal of the entire amount would set warning bells ringing in the halls of British intelligence. After two weeks, it seemed clear that no inquiries were forthcoming. Either the disappearance of eight hundred thousand rupees was a matter of routine for the MI6 accountants or no one was paying attention to him at all. Neither prospect was comforting.

  He had naively assumed eight lakhs would be more than enough for his purpose, but in fact he was four lakhs short. He needed to find the difference somewhere, and at this late hour the only plausible strategy for getting it was to hoover up whatever was owed to Ahmed Khalil from the swishy nightclubs and upmarket bars of Juhu.

  With its long, narrow beach and luxury hotels, the northern suburb was ideally suited for his purpose. It was by far the most productive source on their route, not only because it was a wealthy enclave where appetites were satisfied without regard for expense, but also because it was the neighborhood where Ahmed Khalil had the greatest number of “clients” in the smallest geographical area. He and Raj could complete their collection activities in half the time it took to visit the same number of clubs in central Mumbai.

  The weakest link in the strategy appeared to be the sudden intransigence of his jittery associate, whose devotion to routine was the one thing stronger than the fear of his bodyguard. It was an imbalance Conor could tolerate no longer. Raj’s question still hung in the air between them, and before answering it, he gathered up his entire reserve of cold-blooded menace.

  “Juhu is tonight because I am saying it is, Raj, and that is enough. Now, I don’t know what the fuck they are burning in that alley, and I don’t want to; but if you don’t shut up and start walking, I will throw you down into it.”

  It was not so much the words as the icily quiet, deadly tone of his voice that achieved the desired effect. He set off at a brisk pace toward the end of the lane, and without further protest, Raj meekly followed.

  “Aren’
t you going to put the bag on the floor?”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Conor bit the inside of his cheek, fighting the irrational urge to laugh out loud. There was apparently no limit to the slapstick delight God gained from placing him in ludicrous situations. The flicker of hilarity died quickly. He leaned forward in the low, uncomfortable chair with his hands on his knees and dropped his head with a sigh of fatigue.

  “Because that’s what you always do, Raj. We come into the foyer, you sit there, and I sit here. You drop the bag by the table, and we wait. The old guy comes and takes it away. We drink the chai. I eat the chocolate biscuit, and you eat the plain one. We divide the payment and leave. We’ve been here a few dozen times, and that’s how it always goes. I would have thought you’d be anxious to get some order back in tonight’s agenda.”

  “Tonight, I will hold the bag.”

  Conor lifted his head at the sharpness of the reply. He looked at Raj, who stared back at him with a gleam of fearful suspicion in his eyes.

  He was glad to have not forced the issue while they were standing on the beach in Juhu. It looked as though this might be the most difficult step in the whole reckless enterprise, and if it wasn’t going to go smoothly, it was as well to have it sorted in the privacy of the drop house foyer.

  As a means for assembling a large amount of cash in a short amount of time, his strategy had succeeded admirably. He needed four lakhs to add to the eight he was carrying, and by his estimate, the Juhu excursion had netted a little over six. The only step he had not accounted for was the delicate business of getting the duffel bag of money away from Khalil’s loyal bagman, but since Raj appeared to have an inkling of his intention, there seemed no point in further delay. As he rose to his feet, the young man shrank down into his chair, clutching the bag even more tightly.

  “Give me the bag, Raj,” Conor began softly, in Hindi. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you, but I need you to give me the bag. Just put it—”

  “No, saab. I will not.”

  The young man’s face was clenched with dread, but the reply came in a strong, definitive voice. Conor’s hands had been raised in the placating gesture he might use to calm a horse about to rear in foaming panic. At the unexpected response, they fell to his sides in surprise.

  “You . . . what? Look, I don’t have time for this. Put the bag down on the floor.”

  “If you take the money, then I must inform on you,” Raj insisted again. “They will kill you, saab. They will kill you instantly.”

  “The thought has occurred to me,” he said, drily. “It’s no concern of yours, though. I’m the one with the gun, remember? That’s been my unique contribution to this show from the beginning. They’ll know you had no choice.”

  “I will keep this bag. I do have a choice.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  To reinforce the point, Conor lifted his jacket and indicated the holstered Walther, but Raj shook his head.

  “If I give you this bag, they will kill you, saab,” he repeated, stubbornly.

  It was too much, really. An accumulation of sorrows, frustrations, and resentments boiled together inside Conor in a cocktail of emotions, and he felt unequal to the task of mastering them. The “talent for repose” finally deserted him. He snatched the gun from its holster, aimed it at the long, narrow face, and snarled in a voice he did not recognize.

  “And I’ll kill you if you don’t, you goddamned moron.”

  Raj wrapped his arms around the duffel and closed his eyes, trembling violently. “I have a choice,” he whispered.

  Conor stared at him for several seconds. With a quizzical huff of disbelief, he lowered the Walther and addressed Raj in English. “Holy mother of God, are you joking me? Now you’re brave? You’ve been jumping at the sight of your own bleedin’ shadow from the day I met you, and now suddenly, you’re a . . . ”

  He stopped. Dropping his eyes, he looked bleakly at the gun in his hand. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know what I am, either.” He snapped the gun back into its holster and offered a wan smile as Raj’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m sorry, Raja-ji,” he said, reverting once more to Hindi. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

  “What will you do, saab?” Raj asked, clearly not convinced.

  “Something you won’t like much better, I’m afraid,” Conor muttered.

  He lunged forward and seized Raj by the back of his shirt, pulling him from the chair and dragging him onto the floor. The weight pulled Conor down as well, and he soon discovered that although slightly built, his colleague was no ninety-pound weakling. Raj thrashed and kicked with a wild, wiry strength that caught him by surprise, and all the while, he continued to hug the duffel bag against his chest in an unshakeable grip.

  For several minutes, Conor had a bigger fight on his hands than he’d anticipated, one he briefly worried he might even lose. He was not as strong as he’d been a month ago, and his breathing grew ragged as he struggled to contain the spinning dynamo beneath him. He finally succeeded in flipping Raj onto his stomach so that his face was pushed against the ceramic tile. He pinned him there by planting one knee on top of his back and one hand on the back of his neck.

  “Bloody hell,” he panted, sucking in air with urgent, wheezing gasps. He reached a hand down to pull at the bag that was still entangled in Raj’s arms and now also trapped under his stomach. “You’ll be the death of me long before Khalil’s goondas, you silly plonker. Now, will you ever just let go that bag and—”

  The door at the end of the foyer opened abruptly. He had been half-expecting that complication, and as the familiar figure appeared with the usual tray of snacks, he again pulled out the semiautomatic and trained it on the elderly man, motioning him to close the door.

  “Sure, I didn’t think we had enough going on yet. Come on out here, baba-ji.” He waved the gun at the chair Raj had involuntarily vacated. “Sit down for a minute, and we’ll be right with you.”

  The man raised one eyebrow in mild interest. He closed the door, moved into the foyer with methodical dignity, and placed the tray on the table. Looking at them both without a hint of fear, he gave a disdainful sniff and sat down. Conor pressed his hand more firmly against the back of Raj’s neck and bent down to whisper in his ear.

  “If I let you up, will you let go the bag so we can get this over with, now?”

  “No, saab,” Raj whispered.

  “Well, that’s honest, anyway.” He straightened and rubbed Raj’s head gently. “I’m sorry, chotta bhai. I don’t know what else to do. I wish I could be smarter, for both of us.”

  He moved Raj’s head to one side, and with a prayer that he had sufficiently practiced the technique when it was taught to him, delivered a hard blow to the slender, exposed neck with the butt of the gun. Immediately, the body beneath him went limp as Raj collapsed into unconsciousness.

  Moving quickly, Conor rolled him onto his back and unwrapped his arms from the duffel bag. He transferred the four lakhs to his knapsack and without a glance tossed the bag with its remaining money over onto the floor next to the old man. Turning his attention back to Raj, he made sure he was breathing easily and pulled a cushion from the foyer’s second chair to prop under his head.

  Sitting back on his heels, he regarded the slack, sleeping face with its sparse collection of baby-soft whiskers. It looked even younger now. He watched for another minute, reluctant to move or take his eyes away, reflecting on the surprising, desperate display of courage he had witnessed. When a small sniff reached his ears he remembered the third person in the room and lifted his head to look at him.

  “Are you alone in the house tonight, ji?” he asked, quietly. The older man’s head moved sideways in a single twitch of affirmation. Conor acknowledged this with his own head wag and indicated Raj.

  “I think he’ll only be out for ten minutes or so. Will you stay with him?”

  The head moved a second time, and the man’s face remained unreadable. Conor re
sted a hand on Raj’s shoulder. “Here is the best kept secret in Mumbai. The mafia boy with a noble heart. He was more concerned about what they would do to me than what I might do to him. He deserves a better life than this.”

  “Fine words, my boy, but what are the actions?”

  Startled by the sound of the dry, gravelly voice addressing him in English, he turned again to the older man, who was on his feet, fastidiously smoothing the wrinkles from his immaculate white kurta. Despite the comment, his face contained no trace of judgment or disapproval, but there was a note of challenge in his voice as he gazed at Conor.

  “We can run fast and very far away,” he continued in the same dispassionate tone. “But we cannot escape our actions.”

  Conor stiffly rose to his feet with a sad smile. Picking up his knapsack, he gave a final nod to the brown, wrinkled face before turning away. “I know we can’t escape them, ji, and thank God for that. If we could, think what monsters we would all be.”

  He stepped out into the early morning darkness and stopped on the doorstep, absorbing the old man’s warning and feeling the words take the shape of prophecy as they sank in to his soul. He leaned back against the closed door and felt the momentum of the past few hours floundering in a sea of lightheaded weariness. Methodically, he rubbed his fingers against his eyelids until the dizziness receded, and then, still feeling breathless, Conor began moving forward again.

  There was a damp, soot-smelling thickness in the air, a miasma made visible in the halos of mud-yellow haze surrounding the streetlights along the road. The temperature was mild, but he felt chilled to the bone. He also noted the shaky, internal trembling that had begun after bringing the handle of his gun down onto Raj’s neck was not going away.

  Looking down the road, he saw the taxi that had ferried them to Goregaon East still parked where he’d instructed the driver to wait. It looked empty, but when he came up beside it, he saw the driver and his “assistant” were indeed still inside but curled up in the back seat, fast asleep. He was not especially gentle in rousing them. The two boys—each undoubtedly too young to have a driver’s license—sprang awake with beaming smiles of reassurance.