Dark Times in the City (14 page)

*

Heavier than it looks
.

‘You’re doing fine, lads – take it easy.’

Karl Prowse liked the way Lar Mackendrick didn’t leave everything to the foot soldiers. He wasn’t much help when it came to shifting things, but at least he turned up.

‘Wait a minute,’ Robbie said. ‘My grip’s a bit—’ He used a knee to take the weight while he slid his fingers back a couple of inches along the steel pole.

The beer barrel was set within a rectangular metal frame. Two steel poles fitted into pairs of parallel slots in the frame. Robbie and Karl held the poles at one end, two of Derek Roeper’s people held the other. Together, they had the barrel halfway towards the back of the white Ford Transit Connect.

The van, the back doors open, was backed up to the entrance of the lock-up.

Robbie took a breath. ‘Okay.’

When they got the barrel into the Ford, one of Roeper’s people went to work with a spanner and tightened the nuts that kept the metal frame immobile on the floor of the van.

Robbie sat on the floor of the van, just in front of the beer barrel, while Karl drove and Lar Mackendrick sat up front. It took half an hour to get to the street in Santry where Karl was renting a house with his wife and two kids. The house had a garage attached. When they parked the Ford Transit inside the garage there was just enough space to open the driver’s door. As he climbed out, Karl looked back and saw Mackendrick leaning towards the barrel, giving it a gentle, affectionate tap.

At the front desk of the police station Danny Callaghan asked a sergeant if he could get a lift home and the policeman just smiled. The sergeant gave him his wallet, his money, his mobile, his keys
and his Swiss Army knife. Outside, Callaghan crossed the car park and turned right and a car horn beeped from across the road. Novak’s red Audi pulled away from the kerb, U-turned across the road and pulled up alongside Danny.

‘Get in,’ he said.

Callaghan climbed into the car. ‘How the hell did you know I was here?’

Novak glanced in the mirror and pulled away. ‘Kid named Oliver, he drinks in the pub – called me, said he saw the police take you away from the Hive this morning.’

‘They tell you what it’s about?’

‘They didn’t have to. When I heard about Walter, I knew that had to be it.’

‘So you told them to let me out or you’d – what? – stamp your foot and hold your breath till your face turned blue?’

‘I gave my fat friend Sergeant Wyndham a shout. Told him your solicitor was on her way to the station – they hate that – and he said not to bother, you’d be out by lunchtime. And here I am.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Wyndham’s heart wasn’t in it. If they thought you were involved, they’d have kept you for at least a couple of days.’

‘Probably.’

‘Lunch – I’m doing an omelette, that sound good?’

‘I’m okay.’

‘You’ll sit and eat a mushroom omelette, and when it’s gone down you’ll belch and say that tasted lovely.’

‘Thanks.’

It took about fifteen minutes to drive to Novak’s semi-detached in Glasnevin, close to the Botanic Gardens.

‘We’ve got the best garden in Dublin on our doorstep. Any time of year, Jane and me get a spare hour – nothing like it, letting the colours and the shapes and the scents get at your head. Nature’s detox.’

In the kitchen, Novak was all business, giving a running commentary as he cooked. ‘What you don’t want to do, when you make an omelette, you don’t want to beat it to death. So you leave the whisk alone, you use a fork, right? You have the heat right up – get a pan like this, an omelette pan, otherwise it spreads all over the place and you’re making a pancake.’

Quietly, Danny Callaghan said, ‘I don’t need cheering up. I’m okay.’

Novak dropped the mushrooms into the pan, flipped over one edge of the omelette. ‘You’re such a whizz in the kitchen, you don’t need a cookery lesson?’

‘Since you picked me up, you’ve been non-stop yapping. I’m okay.’

Novak nodded and concentrated on his cooking.

Eight years
.

All that time ago, at the driving range, with Brendan Tucker beating up the kids, an impulse made Danny Callaghan shout at a bully and one thing led to another, and he went into a box for eight years.

Quarter of my life
.

And now, again, he’d crossed the border into territory where it wasn’t possible to take the next breath for granted. At any moment, someone might point a gun at the back of his head and he’d die without an instant’s warning.

The image of his life as a stunted thing, the greater part of it gone, closed down whole areas of Danny Callaghan’s mind. Permanently standing on the edge, forever expecting that fatal push, to imagine anything beyond the immediate tasks of the day seemed pointless.

After a while, Callaghan said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m nervous, I get snappy.’

‘No problem, you’re fine.’

They were sitting at the kitchen table, Callaghan eating the omelette, Novak with a ham sandwich.

‘Maybe now Walter’s dead, maybe that’s the end of whatever that was about. And once I get the Frank Tucker thing—’

Novak said, ‘I rang Tucker’s place this morning. Like getting an audience with the Pope. I left a message with one of his toadies, they’re to ring back.’

Danny said, ‘Thanks. That’s good.’

‘It’ll get sorted.’

Danny nodded. ‘One way or the other.’

Novak’s wife arrived as Callaghan was washing up.

Jane was in her mid-fifties and a couple of inches taller than her husband. Blonde and slim, a briefcase in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Before marriage and raising a family, she’d worked with the probation service, advising ex-prisoners. Now she worked part-time for a citizens’ advice centre. She put down the briefcase and said, ‘He been poisoning you?’

Callaghan grinned. ‘It was lovely, an omelette.’

‘I can do you one,’ Novak said.

‘Ate at the canteen.’ Jane turned to Novak. ‘Did you ask him?’

‘Ask him what?’

‘Christmas?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Novak turned to Callaghan. ‘You’re coming for Christmas dinner, okay?’

Jane adopted a withering tone. ‘You’re full of the social graces.’ To Callaghan she said, ‘We do a low-key Christmas. Jeanie’s coming home from London, Caroline and her boys are coming up from the country. Gordon Ramsay here will do his usual turkey dinner, I do the veg, and I’ll be highly offended if you don’t turn up.’

Novak’s tone was mock outrage. ‘Gordon Gobshite? Not fit to wipe Delia Smith’s wooden spoon.’

Callaghan smiled. Jane said, ‘No kidding, you’ve got to come. Your first Christmas on the outside – you shouldn’t spend it alone.’

He hadn’t thought as far ahead as Christmas. It was – what? – two weeks, maybe less, something like that. ‘Thanks, both of you – but let’s see how things go, okay?’

Jane said, ‘That’s a yes, then.’

The clatter of the police helicopter woke Danny Callaghan. First time in a couple of weeks. Before that it was every night for a week. That was the pattern, on and off, since he came to live at the Hive. The local community groups kicked up a fuss, the police denied that they used helicopters to patrol working-class areas, things went on as before.

Callaghan glanced at the clock. Just past midnight.

The
kotcha-ta kotcha-ta
of the engine wasn’t just loud, it sounded like something was loose inside and at any moment the whole thing might break apart and come down from the sky like a falling truck. Standing at the window, Callaghan looked up to where the helicopter was hovering, red light steady at the tail and a brighter white light flashing somewhere underneath. It would stay for a while, maybe five minutes, low enough to shake the windows and get the dogs barking, long enough to wake all but the heaviest sleepers, then it would piss off to some other estate.

Callaghan’s father had had a thing about helicopters. When he was a kid, helicopters were rare in Ireland – wondrous machines that attracted great excitement on the rare occasions they made an appearance. ‘Even now,’ he’d told Callaghan, ‘any time I hear a helicopter I automatically look up, like it’s some exotic sight. Must have been like that for people who grew up when cars were a novelty – they heard a car, they rushed to the window.’

When his father died, Callaghan got two days’ compassionate parole. Finding himself wrapped up in the rituals of the funeral, it was a strangely unemotional time. His father had never wavered in his love, but had never been able to conceal his shame at his
son’s crime. He’d visited the prison, but infrequently, his unease obvious. A week or two after the funeral, back in prison, reading a newspaper, Callaghan saw a piece about how helicopters had become the new definers of super-wealth. Newly prosperous Ireland had acquired more private helicopters than any other country. He made a mental note to mention that to his father, and seconds later he was bent over, the newspaper crumpled, tears streaming down his cheeks.

A searchlight came on near the cockpit of the police helicopter, moving erratically for a moment, then it found its target, the group of kids drinking around the fire on the green in front of the Hive. Danny saw a couple of the kids raise their cans in a toast to the pilot, another kid gave the helicopter the finger. One kid put down his can and stood up, arms stretched out, and began to dance, a cross between Travolta and a drunken sailor. Danny recognised Oliver. The dance in the spotlight continued for a minute, then Oliver gave the helicopter a cheery wave and sat down. The kids ignored the clattering noise and after a while the spotlight went out and the helicopter moved away.

When Danny Callaghan’s black Hyundai came to a stop, Karl Prowse was thirty feet behind. He was driving slowly enough to be able to immediately and smoothly park his Toledo without any sudden swerves. Karl watched the interfering bastard get out of the car and walk into the driveway of a large detached house.

‘
You come back here, you’ll get your pimply arse kicked
.’

We’ll see who gets his arse kicked, smart bastard.

The call from Lar Mackendrick had ruined a potentially good Saturday evening with an old girlfriend. Lar’s surveillance people were all tied up – could Karl handle the smart bastard for a couple of hours?

Karl watched as Callaghan pressed the bell and a woman with short dark hair opened the door and greeted him with a hug. She ushered him in.

Callaghan’s ride
?

Probably not. Family-sized house. Probably a couple lived here. Maybe her old man’s away. Or she’s divorced and she got the house.

There were two cars in the wide driveway, a Nissan Patrol and a Saab. His and hers, probably. Or it could be the woman had a selection of cars, so she could accessorise according to the occasion. This part of Blackrock, when it came to building your image, no expense was spared, on your house, your clothes or your cars.

Woman like that – a bit out of Callaghan’s league, though
.

The way Lar Mackendrick told it, the smart bastard was a bit rough for this neighbourhood. ‘Daniel Callaghan, age 32, seven months out of prison, served eight years of a twelve-year sentence
for manslaughter – he killed a cousin of Frank Tucker’s.’ A man like Lar Mackendrick, the kind of money he paid, had handy access to anyone’s Social Welfare records and phone records, and his solicitor had a choice of garda contacts who’d take a backhander to fill the blanks in anyone’s history. He looked up at Karl, from the typed sheet of paper.

‘This Callaghan bollocks, he could be a loose end or he could be an asset, depending on how we handle things.’

That was the way Lar worked – consider all the possibilities. All Karl Prowse wanted to do was show the smart bastard the business end of a Glock. Give him time to shit himself before Karl squeezed the trigger. Lar Mackendrick, he knew how to play all the angles.

‘Mother died when he was a kid, father was a baker – died while Callaghan was in prison. One brother, something in engineering, lives in Belfast. Callaghan’s a cabinet maker – or used to be. Married Hannah O’Connor, no children. Divorced while he was in prison. Juvenile record – petty shit. A few years with nothing on his sheet, then he hammers Frank Tucker’s cousin into the grave.’

No time for personal grudges, was what Lar Mackendrick said when Karl suggested they take no chances with the smart bastard. ‘We have a job to do. Personal feelings, they come later.’

About ten minutes after Callaghan went into the Blackrock house, an e-series Mercedes parked across the road and a couple got out – an overweight man and a woman to match. He in a long black overcoat, she in something shorter and furry, with a matching hat. When they rang the bell the same short-haired woman greeted them with hugs.

The windscreen was beginning to fog, so Prowse switched on the engine and left it on long enough to allow him to demist the glass.

After a while a taxi stopped and a blonde got out. This time, a heavy man wearing a rugby shirt opened the front door. After he’d hugged the blonde they went inside.