Dark Times in the City (29 page)

‘Deal with what?’

‘
Please
.’

Maybe it had something to do with Frank Tucker, maybe it was the police. Whatever it was, it felt like something in their friendship had shifted. For the bad, or maybe for the good, but something had changed.

‘Don’t shut me out. If you need help—’

‘Please.’

‘Ring me when you can.’

Now Novak left his mobile on the bedside table.

Robbie Nugent was walking down Westmoreland Street, a friend on each side, arms linked. They were singing the
Sesame Street
theme. This time of night, revellers were draining away from the city centre, heading for the Nitelink buses. Those who were left
were the ones for whom things hadn’t worked out – the over excited young, the drunk and the desperate, the losers reluctant to give up on the night.

Crossing O’Connell Bridge, Robbie unlinked from his friends, took two quick steps and vaulted up onto the parapet. As he walked, he held his arms out on each side and swayed. ‘
Waaaay-
haaa-ha-
heyyy!
’ he teased. One of his friends, hampered by drink, tried and failed to climb onto the parapet behind him. The other laughed very loudly.

Halfway across, Robbie jumped down to the pavement and the three ran together the rest of the way across the bridge and out onto the road, against the lights. Traffic was sparse, but a car coming up the quays made a screeching noise as it braked suddenly, the rear coming around. Robbie half-turned and doffed an imaginary hat to the driver.

They were just past the GPO when a police car pulled up abruptly, nearside wheels on the pavement, the doors opening, a couple of cops getting out. Robbie and his mates began running.

Within yards they’d split up, one friend fleeing up towards Parnell Street, the other turning and running for Henry Street. Robbie sprinted across the road and down a side street, past the Pro-Cathedral. To change his appearance he took off his powder-blue jacket, rolled it into a ball and tucked it under one arm. He took a right and a left and slowed to a walk. He glanced back.

Safe enough
.

On his way down Talbot Street he hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him home to Coolock. Before he reached North Strand both his friends had texted him to say that they were free and clear. He texted back. Twenty minutes later he was sitting on a sofa beside his mother, watching
Big Brother
live. Two of the housemates slumped on separate sofas, sulking silently. The rest were sleeping in the bedroom. The screen showed one motionless scene for a
while, then the other, then cut back to the first. Robbie watched, reluctant to go to bed, waiting for something to happen.

Sleeping like a baby
.

May Mackendrick leaned back and felt a surge of tenderness.

It was one of those too-frequent nights when she’d had trouble getting off to sleep. She lay in the dark, Lar snoring lightly beside her. The snoring didn’t bother her. It was as much a part of her night as the darkness and the moonlight from the window.

Lar was lying on his back and she considered his profile.

So peaceful
.

Within a few hours they’d know if this was going to work. If it didn’t, everything was at risk. In the year after Jo-Jo was killed, when Lar went to pieces, when his health collapsed, she’d stepped in and gently guided him back from the brink. For the next few hours she had no role but to pray.

Heaven and Earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory
.

It was something that her mother taught her, the best part of fifty years earlier. You don’t need a church to pray, you don’t need a prayer book – prayer is just talking to God. All you need are the words in your heart. Think of God in Heaven, say the words silently and sincerely and believe that God will hear them.

I beseech Thee, oh Lord, in the name of all the saints and of the Blessed Mother, to lead us from peril, and into the warmth of Thy eternal love
.

Oh most loving Father, refuge of sinners, please keep Lar safe tomorrow. Lord God of Mercy, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us peace, grant us hope, grant us thy blessing. And, please God, send our enemies into the deepest fires of Hell. Amen
.

When Danny Callaghan woke he was relieved that the night was over. Then he saw that the clock showed ten minutes to five and he groaned and turned his face into the pillow. It was unlikely he’d get back to sleep soon, and the alarm would go off at seven. He rolled onto his back.

Today
.

He was fully awake now, his gaze fixed to the ceiling.

Today, someone will live. Someone will die
.

He raised one hand, watched his fingers flexing, did it again and again.

You couldn’t miss him. Fat man with dark brown hair and a blond goatee beard, wearing jeans and an anorak. Dolly Finn identified the target from a photo. His name was Brian Tolland. You had to give Lar Mackendrick credit. He had everything ready at the war council – names, addresses, location maps and pictures of the targets. Details of who would be where and when. This was more organised than Dolly had thought it might be.

Not bad, Lar, not bad at all
.

It was shortly after eight in the morning. The street was a busy short cut for cars seeking to avoid the Simonsville Avenue traffic passing through the Cullybawn estate towards the M50. Nothing else on the street opened for at least an hour. Dolly Finn was wearing a red baseball hat and a bulky green anorak, so he’d remain anonymous on any CCTV cameras he encountered during the day.

He watched the target get out of his white van and take two crates of apples, one atop the other, from the back. He left the crates down, took out his keys and bent to unlock a padlock at ground level. After he pulled up the roller shutter he left the crates of apples inside the shop, then he went back to the van.

The metal shutter was the entire front of the shop. Inside, the remaining three walls all had display counters, with an island counter in the centre on which were an old-fashioned weighing scales and an electronic cash register. The sign above the door said the shop was called The Big Fat Tomato.

When the target carried a double load of orange crates from his van into the shop Dolly Finn came in after him.

‘Not open yet,’ the man said.

‘That’s okay,’ Dolly Finn said. He pulled down the shutter behind him and when the target turned Dolly squeezed the trigger of his automatic twice and the silenced gun gave a double cough. The first bullet hit the man in the face and knocked him back and down, the second shot shattered some kind of china figurine on a shelf behind him.

The man was lying on his side, making sucking noises. Dolly leaned over and put the muzzle of the gun behind the man’s left ear, about an inch from his hair. He squeezed the trigger twice more.

‘What matters,’ Lar Mackendrick had told the war council the previous evening, ‘is that this is done without ringing any alarm bells. We take them down, we cover them up – no one twigs what’s going on until we’re ready to let Frank know. Then he lashes out, and plays into our hands.’

Dolly Finn pulled Tolland’s body behind the island counter. He ate an apple while he waited. After about ten minutes the metal shutter rattled noisily. Dolly ducked down behind the island counter. After a moment, Dolly stood up. A man in a heavy car coat and a black woolly hat was slamming the shutter back down. When he turned and saw Dolly Finn he said, ‘Where’s Brian?’ Dolly’s first shot hit him in the throat. He administered a second shot behind the ear. Then Dolly pulled the man’s body behind the island counter. He dragged across several sacks of potatoes and placed them around the bodies. Any nosy parker looking through the letter box in the shutter – nothing for them to see.

When he left, he pulled the shutter down and locked the padlock.

Come on
.

Karl Prowse looked at his watch again. He had two jobs to do this morning and if the first target didn’t hurry up the odds were
that Karl would be late getting to the second appointment and that would make a balls of the whole morning.

If the guy didn’t come by the time he’d counted to two minutes he’d move on, do the second job.

Karl felt exposed. Standing a few yards from an old stone bridge, out of sight of the traffic, but visible to anyone who came along the towpath.

Stupid plan
.

He couldn’t say that to Lar Mackendrick, but it was stupid.

For the hundredth time he patted the bulge in the small of his back, where the gun was tucked into his belt.

‘Make sure he’s dead,’ Lar said, ‘before you leave him there. People can take a couple in the chest, even in the head, and survive. And you walk away and a year later they’re standing in the witness box, swearing your life away.’

Cillian Connolly jogged there every morning, Lar said. He brought Karl down to the towpath, to show him the gap in the wall under the bridge. ‘When you cap him, you stuff him down there – no one’s going to find him until the smell gets bad.’

Should be done with it by now
.

He watched two middle-aged men come around the corner of the balustrade, down onto the towpath. They both looked with wary curiosity at Karl as they jogged past.

Stupid plan
.

‘If there’s anyone around when he comes, give it a miss. Better to miss him altogether – last thing we want is to set off the alarm bells before we’re ready.’

Karl realised that he’d lost count. He looked at his watch again. He’d give it another two minutes.

Stupid plan
.

*

After he started the engine, Robbie Nugent exhaled slowly. He sat there, the engine turning over, his hands on the wheel, his eyes wide open, focused on nothing in particular. He was seeing again Perryman’s wounds. Small, jagged, black-red holes appearing as if by magic in his bare chest. The silencer made it all the more magical.

Phhttt!

Bingo!

Robbie realised he was gripping the steering wheel tightly and his voice was doing something high-pitched, a long-drawn-out squeal of triumph.

Magic!

No other word for it.

When it started, Perryman backed away from the door of the apartment, a warning finger pointing at Robbie, his mouth open but making no noise. Then he turned and ran and turned again and opened his mouth and—

Magic
.

The second guy, the guy coming out of the bathroom, Perryman’s boyfriend, he was wearing a Reebok top and shorts. Robbie didn’t get as big a charge out of that one. The fact that Perryman was bare-chested, maybe that was what made the difference. You shoot someone and you see some blood on their clothes, that’s one thing. You squeeze the trigger and at that very instant a wound appears in his flesh,
exactly
where you want it to be.

No other word for it.

Magic
.

Robbie pulled the bodies into the bedroom, manoeuvred them beneath the bed – had to get down flat, far side of the bed, pull like fuck at the corpse’s feet. Finished, he looked around – everything kosher. Use the elevator, you maybe bump into a witness, so he went down the stairs to the ground floor of the apartment block and found his car two streets away.

Robbie sought to control the exhilaration. His squealing sound of triumph had become an impatient humming.

Don’t fuck it up now
.

He eased the car away from the kerb and turned out of the Cullybawn estate, onto the main road.

Like a remote control. Your thumb presses a button and six feet away the channel changes.

Magic
.

Killing someone is a big step. You can do a bit of most things and when you’re caught they give you a break and you get probation, maybe a fine. Keep doing it, they’ll eventually start putting you inside.

Not murder
.

Different altogether
.

You step over that line once and it’s instant big-time. If they get you for that, the bastards tear a huge hole in your life.

That’s the downside.

The upside. You go over that line, you’ve stepped up into another league.

Doing Walter Bennett hadn’t seemed like such a big step. That was like giving someone a beating and you take it a little further than usual and he’s snuffed. Shooting Declan Roeper – Robbie was embarrassed about that. Shooting a man already lying in his grave – he could tell that Karl was angry and he didn’t blame him. Stupid thing to do.

Going after two people with an automatic pistol, taking them out like a pro. That was something else.

Right up into the fucking premiership
.

Heading back towards the city centre, staying the right side of the speed limit, Robbie began singing an old Tupac song about when we ride on our enemies. Like Tupac said – you fuck around with us, you get tossed up.