Dark Times in the City (8 page)

Sergeant Wyndham said, ‘Jesus, it’s cold in here. You got something to warm the place up?’

Danny Callaghan was slumped in one of the apartment’s two chairs, yawning. ‘Your choice, knocking on my door before dawn.’

Wyndham smiled. ‘They tell us that’s the best time to do it. People are at their lowest ebb. Makes them more likely to blurt out the truth. You going to tell us the truth, Danny?’

‘Depends on the question.’

‘We came here twice yesterday, looking for you.’

‘I was working.’

‘Working by day, scrapping with gangsters by night.’

Wyndham’s partner, Detective Garda Jeremiah Harley, grinned.

‘Danny’s a tough guy.’

Callaghan crossed to the wall beside the door and pressed a button on a timer. A small red light came on and from inside the kitchen there was the dull
whump
of the gas boiler starting. He said, ‘You’ll be long gone before the radiators take the chill off.’ Callaghan sat down again, his face resentful but resigned. The kind of expression, Wyndham thought, that convicts get used to wearing.

Wyndham pulled the second chair around and sat down facing Callaghan. ‘The Blue Parrot. Walter Bennett. I think we know the score – just need you to tell us the way you saw it.’

Callaghan ran a middle finger along his lips, like he was wiping away something invisible. ‘I was having a drink, two guys came in the pub carrying guns. Pistol and a shotgun. It just happened. It wasn’t like I wanted to get involved – but the guy with the pistol walked right past me, he was chasing Walter. That’s it.’

‘That’s what we heard. What I don’t know is why some heavy mob would be gunning for a little creep like Walter.’

‘Beats me.’

Harley said, ‘You sure you weren’t on duty that evening?’

‘And that means what?’

Harley said nothing, just stood by the window, leaning against the windowsill and watching Callaghan.

Sergeant Wyndham said, ‘We’ve got witnesses who say Walter Bennett called out to you for help, like maybe he expected your protection. In which case, whatever he’s involved in, maybe you’ve got a piece of it.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’ve got a piece of nothing. I work for a living. And I don’t do bodyguard.’

‘Your record says you did a lot of things.’

‘You know I did time, you know I haven’t put a foot wrong since I came out.’

Over at the window, Harley said, ‘Five convictions – probation twice and three sentences.’

‘I was a kid. I stole a few pairs of jeans from Roche’s Stores.’

‘You were eighteen. You got probation for shoplifting. You did time for burglary and stealing cars.’

‘It was kid stuff, in and out in a few weeks.’

Wyndham kept his voice level. ‘Murdering Big Brendan Tucker – that was kid stuff too?’

‘I’m not a murderer.’

Harley levered himself away from the windowsill and leaned forward towards Callaghan, his face showing mock surprise. ‘I should maybe tell Big Brendan’s family he’s not dead, he’s just – what? – been having a wee rest beneath the sod in Glasnevin for the past few years?’

Callaghan leaned back in his chair. ‘You came here in the middle of the night to talk to me about things that happened years ago – fifteen years ago, some of them?’

Wyndham said, ‘Look at it from our point of view. Why would a hard man like you put himself on the line for a piece of nothing like Walter Bennett?’

‘What makes you think I’m a hard man?’

‘Apart from the fact that you greet visitors with a hammer in
your hand? Or maybe because you spent most of your twenties behind bars for murder?’

‘Manslaughter.’

‘Same difference. In your case, the way I hear it, manslaughter was a jury’s way of saying you murdered someone but that’s okay because he was a scumbag, anyway.’

After a few moments’ silence, Callaghan said, ‘You done here?’

Wyndham said, ‘Couple of people carrying guns waltz into a pub – that usually means the gangs are sorting out a problem. Drugs, family feud, protection, whatever.’ He pointed to his colleague. ‘Detective Harley, he’s got a point of view on gangland murders.’

Harley nodded. ‘The more of them the better. Dumb fuckers take each other out, saves us a lot of work.’

Wyndham stood up. ‘Detective Harley and me, we have a difference of opinion on this. I think that when dumb fuckers get the habit of using guns to solve their problems there’s no telling where they’ll stop.’

There was misty rain in the icy wind and Lar Mackendrick quickened his pace as he neared the shelter. The few walkers and joggers on the Clontarf seafront had bundled up against the weather. The morning rush hour had started and traffic on the road that paralleled the seafront crept impatiently towards the city centre. Mackendrick wore a red anorak, a tweed cap and soft leather gloves. The figure waiting in the shelter wore a dark green waxed coat and a leather homburg hat.

‘Bracing weather,’ Declan Roeper said.

He was about the same age as Lar Mackendrick, with the face of someone who had become used to disappointment. ‘Wonderful public amenity, this. Green space on one side, the sea on the other – the sweep of the bay, the sea air, a long, clear path to walk on. Relief from the mundane.’

Mackendrick said, ‘Not in this fucking weather.’

‘Rain or shine, seven days a week, I take advantage of it – keeps old age at bay. I’m surprised they never sold it off to a developer with connections. You could fit in any number of apartments if you didn’t mind spoiling the view.’

Mackendrick grunted. ‘Don’t give them ideas.’

A young woman, soaked through, in red shorts and a white Nike top jogged past towards the Bull Wall. Roeper watched her go.

‘I can’t stay long,’ Mackendrick said.

‘You’re ready to take the material?’

‘Almost.’

Roeper nodded, as though this was the answer he feared.

‘Not good enough. I brought you down here to set an unbreakable deadline.’

Brought me down here?

Who the fuck do you think you’re speaking to?

Lar Mackendrick kept his expression calm.

‘Declan, it’s not as though—’

‘The pick-up was supposed to be immediate.’

‘Something serious came up—’

‘That’s your problem.’

‘There was a time, Declan, in the years before peace and brotherhood became all the rage, and your people needed a place to stay or something delivered – many’s the time I did what I could, and damn the risk.’

Roeper stretched his legs out and crossed one foot above the other. ‘You were well paid.’

‘It’s a short, unavoidable delay.’

Roeper looked directly at Mackendrick. ‘If you don’t take possession of the material within the next forty-eight hours, we’ll have to dispose of it. And we don’t give refunds.’

‘We’re not ready.’

‘Get ready.’

‘Declan—’

Roeper turned his gaze back towards the sea. ‘We don’t provide storage. We sourced the material, prepared it for use – now it’s sitting in a lock-up and every day that goes by is another twenty-four hours of risk we didn’t agree to.’

‘Be reasonable.’

‘Forty-eight hours. The clock is ticking.’ There was deliberate insult in the abrupt way Roeper stood up. Watching the slight figure hunch against the cold wind and walk with head down towards the bridge to the Bull Wall, Lar Mackendrick let the restrained rage of the past couple of minutes show on his face. Then he spat on the wet ground.

From the window, Danny Callaghan watched the two detectives cross to their unmarked car. The older one took the passenger seat, Fatface got behind the wheel. Beyond the waste ground he could see the slip road that led out of the estate. It was already busy, feeding into the main road, with the city’s day shift flowing towards their workplaces. His own work – picking up Rowe and Warner and taking them to the airport – would start late and finish early.

He yawned. It was inevitable that the police would come asking silly questions, but they could have picked a civilised hour.

‘Why didn’t you hang around the Blue Parrot, wait for the police to arrive? Why didn’t you come forward?’

‘Mostly, I try to avoid you people – and I’d nothing to say that someone else couldn’t tell you.’

They took him through the incident and Callaghan avoided any detailed description of the gunmen. He didn’t need to be caught up in witness statements, identity parades or anything else that would draw him further into something that was none of his business. By the time the cops left, they’d probably accepted that he had nothing to do with whatever Walter Bennett was involved with.

The policemen’s car turned off the slip road and settled into the creeping traffic. It was unlikely that Callaghan would get back to sleep now, but if he lay down he might get an hour or so. He was about to turn away from the window when he saw the blue Ford van.

Shit
.

In a parking bay just across from the apartment block, thirty yards down to the left.

It’s the same van
.

Hurrying to open the door before the guy from 257 Solutions spilled his guts in the car. Callaghan stepping back to avoid being creamed by the passing blue van, something white written along the side.

It’s just a blue van – how many of them are there in this city?

From up here he couldn’t read the white writing along the side. The misty rain on the window didn’t help. The angle of the windscreen made it impossible to tell if there was anyone in the van.

No one’s going to park down there at dawn, sitting around, watching an apartment block. It’s someone’s work van. Someone who lives around here, maybe someone visiting
. He was letting the cops rattle him. It was what they’d intended.

‘Stupid thing to do, sticking your nose in?’

‘I was hyped up – the guy crossed in front of me, I reacted.’

There was a tiny smile around Sergeant Wyndham’s lips. He leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘Maybe you were hyped up because when you saw them coming in you thought they were coming for you? Big Brendan’s family?’

‘No.’

‘The way I read it, after the trial Frank Tucker made it clear he was going to have you. Blood for blood – that was the phrase, am I right? You killed his cousin, you’ll die screaming, that’s what he said. Frank is more than a big mouth.’

‘If that was going to happen he could have had it done in prison.’

‘Maybe he wanted you to have the pleasure of slopping out for eight years before he finished you off.’

‘I’ve been out for months – nothing’s happened.’

‘Could be Frank decided to let you stew.’

Callaghan said nothing. It was as if Wyndham had been reading his mind.

Now Callaghan stared down at the blue van.

The radiators had started to take the chill out of the air. When Callaghan looked at his watch he saw that twenty minutes had passed since the cops had left and he was still standing at the window. No sign of life from the blue van.

Two days, two blue vans
.

Who knows how many blue vans there are?

Hundreds
.

With white writing along the side?

Why not?

He made a cup of coffee and when he came back to the window the blue van was gone.

‘Mr Mackendrick?’

‘Walter, thanks for calling back.’

‘What’s the story, Mr Mackendrick? Why did those bastards—’

‘It was a mistake, Walter, a bloody awful mistake. And it’s my fault.’

Mackendrick put some remorse in his voice. A touch of guilt.

‘I’m sorry, Walter – all I can do is hold my hands up and apologise. And I’ve made damn certain nothing like that will ever –
ever
– happen again.’

Walter said, ‘What happened?’

‘I spent three hours last night, after you called – half the night – getting hold of those gobshites, finding out what went wrong.’

‘What went wrong?’

Keep it simple
.

‘My big mouth. A few days ago – this had nothing to do with you – a few of us were talking about something, about a problem – I’d rather not go into it on the phone – I made a remark. Like I say, my big mouth, just something off the cuff about something that had nothing to do with you, someone else altogether. By the time it got to Karl, it was – there was a fuck-up – that’s the best way to explain it.’

‘This was no fuck-up, Mr Mackendrick, those two bastards, they knew what—’

‘Wrong place, Walter, wrong man. My fault. I don’t want you to blame Karl – he was doing what he thought – it was
my
fault, I should have been clearer – my responsibility. I swear to Jesus, last night we went through it, it’s all been straightened out – I mean, what can I say, Walter, all I can do is—’

‘It’s not good enough, Mr Mackendrick.’