Dark Times in the City (5 page)

Danny Callaghan drove his Hyundai to Novak’s garage off the North Strand, parked it and picked up the VW Tuareg he’d use for his driving job. He spent a couple of minutes checking it out. It was clean, a full tank, everything in order. He adjusted the driver’s seat, then spent a minute tweaking the side mirrors. He popped a mint
into his mouth and started the car. The morning traffic was heavy as usual, but he allowed for that. At the airport, he took a rectangle of white cardboard from the boot, used a black marker pen to write the names
Rowe
and
Warner
in neat block letters and went to stand in Arrivals.

Rowe had long fair hair in a ponytail. Jeans and a white waistcoat over a light blue T-shirt. Warner wore a dark suit and a white shirt, but no tie. Their only luggage was one overnight bag each. On the way to the hotel the one with the ponytail asked Callaghan what he knew about the nightlife.

‘There’s a place or two.’

‘Maybe we’ll have time later – you can show us around?’

‘My pleasure.’

It was going to be a late night, then.

Traffic was light enough on the short drive to the Hilton at Northern Cross. After a brief stop at the hotel, the two gave Callaghan an address in the financial centre. From their conversation, it seemed that Rowe and Warner had something to do with marketing. Apparently some outfit had called them in to try to rescue a new product that was failing to take off. At first, Callaghan thought the product was some kind of food, then Rowe said something that made it sound like a range of clothes. Warner was doubtful that the project was doable, given that the client had spent five years making a balls of securing his customer base. It sounded to Callaghan like maybe he was talking about financial products. When they got to where they were going, the small black lettering on the wide glass door said the company was called 257 Solutions.

Rowe said the working lunch would tie them up for a couple of hours, then they had a meeting – he read aloud an address, in another part of the financial centre – and they needed to be there by four. Back to the hotel by six, and by then they’d know where they’d be eating, and after that they’d play it by ear. ‘Okay, driver?’

‘Sounds good.’ The office building had an underground car park
and Callaghan said he’d get something to eat and be waiting in the lobby within the hour, in case their working lunch ended early.

After he parked, he sat in the car for a couple of minutes. He wasn’t hungry and as the day went on there’d likely be lots of breaks to grab a sandwich.

Less than a hundred yards from Hannah’s office
.

When he got out of the car Callaghan still wasn’t sure what he intended to do.

Don’t be pathetic
.

He closed down the thought and began walking.

‘If the gun had worked first time,’ Karl Prowse said, ‘we’d have got the job done and been away within thirty seconds.’

Lar Mackendrick said nothing. In this part of Santry, the houses had narrow streets and shared driveways, and the developers had crammed in as many units as the land would take. Lar might have been focusing on the driving, or he might have been angry. Karl couldn’t tell. Lar had the kind of face that remained the same no matter how he was feeling – like he was trying to remember what it was about you that most pissed him off.

They turned in to the indoor car park at the Omni shopping centre. Lar pulled in behind a large green SUV and switched off the engine.

‘Tell me.’

There were still moments when Karl Prowse felt a ripple of disbelief – three weeks ago, the thought of chatting to Lar Mackendrick, alone, almost as an equal, would have been fantasy. If he’d got a shot at something like second-string muscle on a minor Mackendrick operation, that would have been the height of his ambition. Then, out of the blue – a phone call, a visit, a blunt offer – and now it was like he was Lar’s right hand.

In a business dominated by psychos with short tempers and long
memories, you needed luck as well as balls. The most Karl Prowse had imagined for himself was the occasional dangerous job with a reasonable cut of the proceeds, along with an occasional stretch in Mountjoy. Now he had a shot at something that mattered, shoulder to shoulder with Lar Mackendrick, with maybe his own outfit somewhere down the road.

And the first serious job he got to do went down the toilet and Karl was trying to explain why.

‘From the beginning.’

Karl decided the best thing was to give it straight, no spin. Lar had contacts all over the place – in other gangs, in the police, in the newspapers. Since last night he’d probably made some calls, picked up the basics of what happened. Karl kept it short, straight, no messing. The gun misfiring, Walter screaming for help, the interfering bastard.

‘How did Robbie perform?’

‘There wasn’t much he could do. He didn’t have a clear shot.’ Karl tried to sound calm, to play it like a professional. ‘It happened so quick. The gun doesn’t fire, I’m chasing after Walter, this bastard steps in, just knocks me down, Robbie is way back at the front door. He doesn’t have a clear shot – not with a shotgun. Might have taken out half the bar.’

Lar Mackendrick nodded.

For Karl, there was no upside to ratting out Robbie. Make Robbie look dumb, it would reflect bad on Karl. And, besides, Karl knew where he stood with Robbie. Without Robbie, Lar would bring someone else on board, someone Karl didn’t know, someone who might pull rank.

‘It was just the way it worked out – the gun, the bastard who stuck his nose in.’

Lar Mackendrick didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, ‘Who was he, this fella?’

‘Walter said his name – Danny something.’

‘You’re sure about this – it was a civilian?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It wasn’t like Walter had protection?’

‘No, it was just – it didn’t look like that. I don’t think so – it wasn’t like Walter expected – I don’t think so.’

‘That would change things.’

‘It didn’t seem that way.’

Lar Mackendrick nodded. ‘That’s what my sources say – just a smartarse sticking his nose in. The police don’t know yet who he is.’

Karl nodded. ‘I’ll ask around.’

‘No, you won’t. I’ve got people who charge good money for that.’

‘What about Walter?’

‘Gone to ground. Probably he’s not sure what we know, why this happened. The danger is, eventually he decides there’s no way out of this, so he coughs everything he’s got. My guess is he’s a couple of days from that – maybe less.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Mackendrick.’

Lar leaned closer. ‘Things go wrong, Karl – it happens. But it’s not a good sign. You and Robbie, first job I give you.’

Karl waited in silence, trying to think of something to say that might impress Lar. He decided to keep his mouth shut.

‘You and Robbie, you get your shit together, you fix this Walter thing. Or this whole project, we have to think it out again.’

Karl wanted to say he understood, but he didn’t trust his voice to work without a quiver, so he just nodded.

The gift shop was in a wide pedestrianised side street in the financial centre, a street where every building and artefact had a sheen suggesting it had been installed within the past twenty-four hours. Behind the glass-topped counters, the shelves were filled with
trinkets, gadgets and novelties. Crystal embellishment or a veneer of semi-precious metals justified a premium price for otherwise standard pieces of tat.

In the ten minutes that Callaghan had been here, the first signs of the lunchtime trade had arrived. The shop was convenient for office workers who needed acceptably expensive gifts but didn’t have time to shop around. Two men and a woman customer pondered overpriced knick-knacks.

Hannah’s print shop was directly across from the gift store. This was the fourth time that Callaghan had made his way down to these streets since his release from prison. Intending no more than a quick glance from across the street while he walked past, Callaghan had panicked when Hannah came out the doorway of the shop next to her own. He quickly found refuge in the gift shop. He let a minute pass before he chanced a glance across the street, more than half expecting her to be still standing there, staring at the gift shop. There was no sign of her and a minute later she came out of her own place carrying a large cardboard box of lever arch files and brought them into the vacant shop next door.

He cursed his foolishness.

‘Perhaps I can help, sir?’

It was the second time the sharply dressed shop assistant had asked. The shop was now empty apart from Callaghan and the assistant’s expression suggested a vague discontent. Callaghan was neatly dressed in the suit he kept for chauffeur duties, but this kind of shop always made him feel like he’d been instantly identified as a potential shoplifter by an exceptionally hi-tech CCTV camera.

‘A bit pricey, this stuff,’ Callaghan said.

The assistant nodded, like something had just been confirmed. ‘You get what you pay for, sir, that’s what I always say.’

Across the street, Hannah was coming out of the vacant shop. Callaghan had his phone out and his thumb was working the
buttons. By the time Hannah answered his ring she was back inside her own shop.

‘Hi, I’m in the neighbourhood.’ It came all in a rush. ‘Thought you might have time for a coffee?’

‘Hello – of course.’ She seemed pleased to hear from him. ‘Drop in.’

‘Be right there.’

Callaghan felt the shop assistant’s gaze on his back as he left.

They went around the corner to a mock Italian restaurant where the waiter who took their order knew Hannah and spent a while bent over her side of the table, chit-chatting and exercising his smile. Callaghan forced himself to resist repeating the order. Finally, the waiter said, ‘That was two regular coffees, right?’

‘Fine,’ Hannah said.

‘I can’t tempt you with a little snack?’

Callaghan wanted to tell him to get lost.

‘We’re fine,’ Hannah said.

The waiter said it was lovely to see Hannah again, then he went away.

‘Well,’ Hannah said, ‘what brings you down among the temples of mammon?’

He sensed the same lift he’d felt the first time they spoke, a dozen years back – a chaotic mesh of delight and anxiety, curiosity and simple pleasure in looking at her. There was lust and hope in there, too, but only small remnants, scorched dry by the events of the past decade.

‘I’ve got a couple of clients – picked them up at the airport, they’ve got a meeting nearby.’

‘Novak still has you behind the wheel?’

‘I like the work – it changes all the time.’

One day he was looking after the transport needs of visiting
businessmen, the next day he’d be collecting packages from one side of the city and delivering them to another. All of it pleasant, demanding no great effort of mind or body, just the kind of work with which Callaghan felt most comfortable these days. People needed to get themselves or something else from one place to another, reliably, safely, and that was a good thing to do with his time. Callaghan was one of four drivers working for Novak, whose transport fleet consisted of two small vans and a large one, the VW Tuareg and a Volvo. So far most of the work came out of the overspill from larger firms, but Novak reckoned it was a growth market. Callaghan’s favourite work was a country run, delivering or collecting outside the city, which allowed him hours of mindless driving.

Hannah told him about how her firm was expanding, taking over the premises next door. She was a freelance typesetter when they’d met – by the time they married she’d linked up with a designer, secured her first few contracts and was outsourcing the printing. Two weeks after the divorce she opened her first print shop. Callaghan was well into his prison sentence by then. Now her main print shop was in the financial centre, with two smaller outlets elsewhere in the city. She had recently been approached by a major graphic imaging company with a view to a buyout.

‘Business has been crazy these past few weeks. Early starts and late finishes – there’s times I feel I should set up a bed in the office.’

The decision to call her, to suggest they meet for coffee, came out of a sudden panic. Had she seen him from across the street? For fear she might think he was stalking her, Callaghan suddenly wanted to announce his presence, and before he had time to think he was making the call.

One thing leads to another
.

The driving job that took him to the financial centre, the impulse to walk towards Hannah’s workplace, the sudden sight of her across
the street, his panicked reaction and now his joy and unease in her presence.

She sees through it all
.

Knows I didn’t just turn up
.

Feeling sorry for me?

Afraid of me?

Just embarrassed?

‘It’s really good to see you.’ There was no hint of anything patronising in her words or her smile. Probably she hadn’t noticed him, standing across the street.

Probably
.

‘How’s Leon?’ It would be churlish not to ask, and Callaghan tried to make it sound like he wanted to know.