Undercover (15 page)

"Put the knife
down
, Rory," Lydia said.

Rory didn't respond. Lydia saw the muscles push out the skin around his clenched jaw and realised he'd been scared stiff. The knife was up but going nowhere. The gunman didn't know that, though.

"Listen to her, Cullen."

Lydia saw Rory's brow crease. He began to shake. She sidestepped away from him. The gunman spared her a quick glance but kept the gun trained on Rory. Her grip tightened on the taser. She had to do something. But the biker, body armoured in leather, head cased in thick plastic, offered no target. She cursed. Levelled the taser and pulled the trigger.

The biker jumped a little and turned his gun on Lydia. She shut her eyes tight. Waited for the bang. The last thing she'd ever hear. It didn't come.

She opened her eyes and saw that both bikers were now in the room. They held their guns by their sides and towered over Rory. He lay on the bed, his body wracked by an electrically induced seizure. Two thin wires ran in spring-like loops from his upper arm to the taser in Lydia's hand. She dropped the X26 and the cartridge popped out of the muzzle. Rory's violent shakes stilled. He lay on the bed, dazed and confused. The first biker into the room reached out and took the knife from Rory's loose grip.

The second biker turned to Lydia. "Fuck me, I knew you were working for us, but that might have been taking things a bit too far."

"Just get what you came for and go."

"Better do as she says," said the first biker. "If that's how she treats her friends, like."

"I was saving him from getting shot."

"Whatever helps you sleep, love."

The second biker found the safe in Rory's wardrobe. He lifted it out and gave it a cursory glance.

"It's a combination lock."

"I doubt your man will be thinking clearly enough to provide the numbers for a while yet. Just take the whole thing. We'll drill through the lock."

"How the fuck are we going to transport this on a motorbike? It weighs a tonne. You'll have to wake him up."

Rory moaned and said something unintelligible.

The first biker bent at the waist and put his ear to Rory's mouth. "Say that again, Cullen."

He moaned again.

"He's telling me to take his motor. The keys are hanging up in the hall."

"Fair enough. I call the car. Fucking hate that bike."

"There's a bunch of bank statement and credit card bills in the kitchen beside the microwave," Lydia said. She wanted them to get everything at once and ensure her family's safety.

The men barely spared Lydia a glance as they strutted out of the room and chuckled to each other on the way down the stairs. She went to Rory and hovered over him, ready to help as soon as he asked her to. If it took him three hours to recover from the taser then that's how long Lydia would stand there. She looked at the nasty little electrodes she'd shot into his arm and shuddered. Reached out to stroke his face.

He looked completely sapped, but had just enough energy left to turn away from her.

###

C
ormac held his position, on his knees behind the open door of the Seat Leon. He scanned the road through the rolled-down window for a target. The damp cold from the grassy surface of Broadway Roundabout seeped through his jeans and little lumps of grit bit into his kneecaps. He pumped a couple of bullets into the air. Heard a few screams over the rumble of car engines and the bass-thrum of car stereos.

Big Frank and Shane had abandoned their car and taken cover behind a minibus in the now gridlocked traffic. The vehicles couldn't move forward for rubberneckers trying to figure out why the Ford Focus was empty and flashing hazard lights. Cormac wasn't sure if Big Frank was still behind the high-sided Mercedes or if he'd squirmed down the line of cars to get an easier shot. Either way, Cormac couldn't sit around and see how things developed. He had to get moving.

"Over here, Frank!" Shane's voice squalled above the motorist hubbub.

Frank's automatic pistol cracked. Blackbirds on a power line fluttered, squawked and shat. Cormac moved away from the Leon, he didn't want to return fire in case a stray bullet took out one of his passengers. He headed towards a highway maintenance van. It was a white Ford Transit with a luminous orange and yellow Battenberg strip on each side and a rack of hazard lights on the roof. He flattened his back against it and tried to put a bead on Big Frank.

He felt a presence by his side.

"What now, Cormac?"

Mattie had slipped out of the Leon and followed him, quiet as a dormouse.

"Fuck's sake, kid. You should have stayed in the car. Your da needs you."

"He's got Donna. I should help you."

"Just stay close to me, all right?"

Cormac tested the van's door handle.

"Are we going to nick it?"

Cormac took more than a little satisfaction from bashing in the driver side window with the butt of his Glock. The shattered glass that fell onto the seat was easily removed. Cormac yanked the cover off and dumped it on the ground.

"Can you hotwire this?" Mattie asked.

"Nope. Not without a laptop. We're going to have to push it."

"What's the point in that?"

"No time, mate. Just put your back into it."

Cormac reached into the cab and flicked a switch that set the orange hazard lights spinning in their little Perspex bubbles. He released the handbrake and shoved the van into the lanes of traffic behind it. Mattie helped, though most of his energy seemed to have been channelled into a giggling fit.

"This is crazy," the kid said.

Cormac peered along the side of the Ford Transit. Cars at the head of the two farthest lanes had stopped to let the van out. A man in a Honda Accord pretended he couldn't see the oncoming maintenance vehicle and continued on his merry way. He lost his rear fender.

"We hit one!" Mattie's voice squeaked in euphoric enthusiasm.

"It's not like he couldn't have seen it coming. Some people deserve a good prang."

The van lost its momentum but managed to create an obstruction across an essential lane-and-a-half of the roundabout. He'd laid the seeds of chaos. Horns started to blare and drivers rolled down their windows to yell abuse at nobody in particular. Cormac and Mattie stood close to the van. They wouldn't be the first thing Frank saw when he eventually got close to the roundabout and from Cormac's vantage point he'd be able to get the drop on the ugly big bastard. He was back to playing the feline role in the cat and mouse game.

Cormac was pretty satisfied with his ad hoc strategy. Then he heard the first of the police sirens. Their blue flashing lights were visible on the horizon. They were barely minutes away. He couldn't wait. Made a snap decision to break cover and go at Frank from the higher ground. He could only hope that he'd created enough distractions to give him a fighting chance in a head-to-head.

But before he could tell Mattie to stay put, Big Frank's square head came into view. His movements were slow and less clumsy than usual but he walked with no regard for cover. Cormac already had a clear kill shot but he held back on it. The moron was no good to him dead. Big Frank edged closer and then Shane bumbled into the frame. From the cover of the highway maintenance van, Cormac traced their movements down the sight of his Glock, alternating his aim from one to the other. When they got to the opposite edge of the road the van blocked, their self-preservation sense should have been on full alert. But still they shambled about, determined to find their man.

Cormac put a bullet in Shane's left shoulder. The hapless thug crumpled.

Big Frank held his arms out just above waist height and moved away from his fallen partner as if he was treading thin ice. Cormac took aim, held his breath and fired. The bullet tore through Big Frank's calf muscle. He toppled like a felled tree.

Cormac stepped out from behind the van. "Toss your gun, Toner."

The automatic pistol skated along the road surface. Big Frank knew the score now.

"You
are
a cop, then." Big Frank's voice was strained but not quite angry.

Cormac didn't confirm. He motioned for Mattie to stay behind the van and crossed the three lanes. Then he stood over Frank; aimed his Glock at the big square.

"I didn't believe it at first, but you must be," Frank said. "I'd be dead by now if you weren't."

The sirens encroached. The uniforms would be on top of them in half a minute.

"We've no time at all here, Toner. Can you walk?"

"Hobble, maybe."

"It'll have to do. Get up."

"And if I don't?"

"You can take your chances with the boys in green."

Big Frank struggled to his feet. It was like watching a mountain form. He pointed at Shane. "Are we taking him with us?"

"Will he talk?"

"Course not."

Shane had bled like a stuck pig and was close to passing out. But with the right attention he'd live. "Leave him, then. They'll take him to the hospital."

"And where are you going to take me?"

"Out of here for a start." Cormac pointed towards the silver Leon. "You'll be riding in the boot. Might be a tight squeeze but I can't trust you to play nice with the other passengers."

The cops were a stone's throw away but were impeded by the traffic chaos Cormac had created with the Highway Maintenance van and they would only meet more obstacles when they got to Broadway Roundabout. He'd get his ragtag crew to the hospital even if he had to ram his way through every car in the way.

It was just a matter of time before all the shit caught up with Cormac, though. That was the way of it. And by then, how much more would he have to answer for?

––––––––

P
op stars are always going to come off better in the red tops and the glossy housewife magazines when things turn to shit. Get yourself a nice glamour model.

Rory Cullen,
CULLEN: The Autobiography

––––––––

H
ow do you topple a mountain?

"Don't you love your family, Frank?"

Cormac studied Big Frank's craggy features. He just needed a small shift. Anything. But the square-headed goon had reverted to the old school interrogation technique.
Pick a spot on the wall and say nothing.

"Because you're losing a lot of blood, mate. It'd be a shame for you to bleed out so close to the Royal."

Nothing but a fixed scowl.

After leaving the chaos of Broadway Roundabout, Donna had volunteered to go on to the hospital with John Gallagher. She'd explained that it'd be easier to get John seen to quietly if Cormac, Mattie and Big Frank weren't with them. That suited Cormac. He wanted some time with Big Frank, and though Mattie probably shouldn't be a witness to what Cormac planned, he didn't want to argue against Donna's logic. He was lucky enough that she'd taken on responsibility for John.

They'd found a prefab hut at a small building site on the perimeter of the hospital grounds. Cormac had used a length of sewer rod from the site to force open the rusted cage in front of the door. Two brisk kicks at the flimsy deadbolt and they were in. Cormac swept unwashed teacups and dog-eared copies of The Sun and The Daily Star off a canteen table and set up a makeshift interrogation room. Mattie kept watch through a dust-smeared window for unwanted attention and Cormac and Big Frank took their places at opposite sides of the table. Cormac's gun sat where the recording equipment should have been. Big Frank's wrists were crossed behind the back of his chair, trussed up with cable-ties. It was a human rights barrister's wet dream.

In such an unofficial and illegal situation, Cormac couldn't help but think back to the RUC days. Too many lifers he'd encountered during his career in the PSNI harked back to their Special Branch heyday with a fond twinkle in their eyes. Usually after the fourth or fifth drink at the Christmas bash. Festive nostalgia.

Whatever Frank could tell him, Cormac didn't have the time for sleep and food deprivation. And he certainly didn't have the psychotic inclinations for stress-positioning or the infamous waterboarding technique. With a damp cloth and a bucket of water he could effectively threaten to drown Big Frank in a tried and tested practice handed down from the British Army to the RUC in the late sixties. Big Frank was already cable-tied to his chair. If Mattie held the damp cloth over the captive brute's mouth and nose, Cormac could pour a steady stream of water over his face for a minute at a time. It'd soften the bastard up all right, but even thinking about it brought Cormac dangerously close to his sadistic predecessors' murky level.

Surely there's moral leeway when you
know
the fucker's bad to the bone.

"Frank. Who told you where to find me?"

Nothing.

"If you tell me, I'll let you go and have that leg seen to. But if you don't cooperate, well, I might aim for the knee next. Maybe put a couple in your thigh after that. Then your hip. It'd only take a few well-placed shots to book you a spot on a wheelchair for the rest of your life. But who am I telling, eh, Frank? A man with your experience. I heard that you were a real punishment aficionado before they kicked you out of the Provos in '88. How many teenagers did you cripple for life with your bats, hammers and guns? Do you remember how they screamed? Called for their mummies? All those joyriders and drug dealers taught a lesson at your hands. Imagine the happiness in their hearts if they could see you trundle along the Falls Road on your own set of wheels."

Cormac stood up and placed his palms on the tabletop. Leaned forward and tilted his head back so he could look down his nose at Big Frank. Allowed his right hand to inch ever-so-obviously towards the gun.

"Come on, Frank. Save us both a bit of time. I just want to get this kid back to his mother. But I can't call in for help until I know who I can trust, or more importantly, who I can't."

Big Frank's gaze never faltered from the damp-stained wall.

Cormac thought about bartering for the info. He could have offered Big Frank an opportunity to disappear if he agreed to play ball. Told him he could go and take his family on the run, with a guarantee that he wouldn't be pursued. But Cormac didn't want to throw that down too soon. Big Frank might perceive it as a position of weakness on Cormac's part.