Dark Times in the City (28 page)

Lar Mackendrick said, ‘You’re not arranging flowers – get the fuck on with it.’

Callaghan got out of the grave, threw Roeper’s coat and hat alongside the body and picked up the spade that Roeper had used. He threw a spadeful of earth onto the body, then another.

‘I’ll wait in the car,’ Mackendrick said. He turned to Karl Prowse and Robbie. ‘Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll have a war council tomorrow, and the fun starts the day after.’

Mackendrick walked away. Robbie lit a cigarette, Karl Prowse moved off and sat in his Toledo. Danny Callaghan kept shovelling earth.

After a few minutes Roeper was covered from the legs up, along with most of his torso and arms. Callaghan flinched as a clump of soil landed on Roeper’s left cheek. He stared at the body.

He doesn’t feel it
.

Just a piece of meat now, getting colder by the second
.

He threw another shovelful of dirt onto the body and saw Roeper blink.

Callaghan paused, holding up a spadeful of earth.

Just a shadow
.

He threw the earth onto Roeper’s legs. He aimed the next few spadefuls away from Roeper’s face.

Oh, Jesus, please. Please, Jesus
.

Callaghan wasn’t sure if he was praying for Roeper to be alive or dead.

If Roeper was breathing it was too slow and shallow to show on the cold air. The blink had to have been a trick of the shadows.

Has to be
.

Roeper blinked again.

Fuck
.

Oh, shit
.

Christ
.

To draw attention to the fact that Roeper was alive would bring Karl and Robbie, who would gleefully empty their guns. To continue burying him would kill him just as surely.

Callaghan put down the spade, got into the shallow grave and felt around in the dirt until he found Roeper’s leather hat.

‘What you doing?’

Callaghan turned to Robbie. ‘It’s freaking me out – throwing dirt on his face. I need to cover his eyes.’ Robbie turned away, stamping his feet. ‘Get a move on,’ he said, ‘it’s fucking cold.’

Callaghan bent over Roeper. He looked down into his eyes, saw recognition and gave the man a slight nod. Roeper blinked again. Then Callaghan put the leather hat on Roeper’s face, the crown across his mouth and nose, the brim covering his eyes. He stepped out of the grave and resumed shovelling clay.

When all but the space around Roeper’s head was filling up, Callaghan eased a shovelful onto Roeper’s hat, letting the earth slide gently off the spade. The grave was about two feet deep. Between Roeper’s face and the surface there were about twelve or fifteen inches of earth, with several inches of that taken up by the leather hat. If the hat held its shape it might provide a pocket of air around Roeper’s mouth. Callaghan filled in around Roeper’s head, then eased more soil onto the hat until it too was covered.

It took maybe five more minutes to fill the grave and disperse the leftover earth. Karl Prowse returned from sitting in his car and began stamping on the grave. Callaghan stepped forward and stamped on the clay above each side of Roeper’s head, trying to leave the soil
above his face loose and untrodden. He didn’t know who Roeper was or what he did. He didn’t care what these people did to one another. But his mind was inflamed with the image of the man lying under several inches of earth, injured, frightened, eking out a tiny measure of air.

Karl and Robbie collected undergrowth and debris and scattered it across and around the grave.

Karl said, ‘That’ll do.’

‘Done?’ Lar Mackendrick said.

Danny Callaghan nodded. As the Isuzu pulled away across the bumpy ground towards the road, Callaghan tried to remain casual as he desperately looked for landmarks to identify the site.

If he could get back here before the air ran out for Roeper.

If he could find the grave.

Dolly Finn was awake, lying on a lumpy bed in a B & B in Gardiner Street, Billy Bauer’s gentle ‘Night Cruise’ playing in his iPod. The light was off, the small room lit only by the street lamp outside. The silenced .38 automatic he’d received from Lar Mackendrick was underneath the mattress.

Arriving early on the flight from London, he’d spent the afternoon walking around the city centre. In the old days in Dublin he’d felt a revulsion against moving beyond the tight boundaries within which he lived his daily life. Forced to flee the city, and finding himself surprisingly happy in the vast fields of play that were London, he was surprised to realise that he felt no more than a vague affection for the old place.

Standing in the centre of O’Connell Street, he tried to remember what it had looked like before the renovation. The street seemed wider now. They’d cut down the hundred-year-old trees, narrowed the roadway on both sides of the street and laid wide new pavements. O’Connell Street used to feel like it had somehow just evolved into what it was. Now everything looked like it came out of a catalogue. It was as though a class of architecture students had won a competition and the prize allowed them to implement all their pet ideas on the capital city’s main street.

Upriver from O’Connell Bridge, on the north side of the Liffey, Dolly found an Italian place, ordered chicken in a mushroom sauce, and had a single beer. Then he took a taxi to a pub in Finglas, where he met Karl Prowse and got a lift to a warehouse on the
Carrigmore industrial estate. Lar Mackendrick and his two new recruits were waiting.

The war council had been short enough. Mackendrick distributed guns and silencers and off-the-shelf mobiles, then he went over the plan, so each would know what the others had to do. Dolly Finn wasn’t too concerned about anyone else’s work – he had three killing jobs, and it all sounded very doable. Karl Prowse was playing Mr Cool, trying to impress the new guy. The kid, Robbie Nugent, seemed moody, perhaps nervous.

‘There’s a driver, too – Danny Callaghan. I had a meet with him earlier – no need for him to be here.’

To Dolly Finn, the hired help weren’t too impressive, but it was a straightforward job as long as no one lost their nerve. His work done, his Michael Sheehan bank account replenished, Dolly would be back in London by tomorrow night.

The street outside the B & B had been noisy earlier, but it was quiet now. Dolly felt sleep lapping at his mind, so he killed the iPod, slid off the headphones and turned his face towards the wall.

Danny Callaghan looked at the clock again, the
12.18
glowing in the darkness, on the table beside his bed. He’d tried reading, but his mind was skimming from one thought to another, unable to settle, unable to absorb. It was more than twenty-four hours since the shooting of Declan Roeper in the Dublin mountains.

Beside the clock there was a folded piece of paper.

‘That’s Karl’s address in Santry, okay?’ Tonight’s meeting with Lar Mackendrick, five hours back, had taken place in an upstairs room at Kimmet’s Ale House, in Wakeham Street.

‘Needn’t keep you long, Danny,’ Lar Mackendrick said.

‘What do I do?’

Mackendrick spoke above the noise from the traditional band downstairs – guitars, fiddles, a
bodhrán
and a lot of
didley-eye-de-da
. He and
Callaghan were in a second-floor room with a weak bulb. They were alone – the bar at the end of the room was closed.

‘All you need to know is that this whole thing depends on everyone doing their job. Take one piece away, it doesn’t work. And your piece is this. Nine-thirty in the morning, you pick up a white Ford van from Karl Prowse’s garage – at that address. Karl’s wife is expecting you. Take it to Cullybawn, park in the grounds of St Ursula’s church. Make sure you bring your mobile along – soon as you get there you ring me. The number’s on the other side of that piece of paper.’ Lar smiled. ‘When this is over, Danny – if you want regular work, you’re a good team player.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘To each his own. We don’t need to be friends, but there’s one reason you want to hope that this works out okay.’ Lar’s voice lowered. ‘I’ve made arrangements. Anything goes wrong, say I take a fall, your ex-wife’s going to do a lot of screaming before she dies. I’ve got people lined up—’

‘My ex-wife’s got nothing to do—’

‘She’s handy. Your girlfriend, too.’

‘She’s not my girlfriend. She—’

‘Whatever. Here’s how it is.’ He held out one hand, palm up. ‘You’ll do what you’re told. Exactly the way I want it done, and afterwards you and yours get left alone.’ He held up the other hand. ‘You stab me in the back, and you get to mourn what you’ve done to – what’s her name – Hannah, lovely name. And the girlfriend, whatever her name is – my people have the details and, believe me, they’ll enjoy their work.’

‘I’ll do what you say.’

‘They’ll die hard. And you won’t get to mourn for long.’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘Just so you know.’

*

Lying in the dark now, staring at the ceiling, trying not to see Declan Roeper’s eyes.

After the shooting of Roeper, the evening before last, Lar Mackendrick and Danny Callaghan began the drive down from the Dublin mountains. After a few minutes, Callaghan said, ‘I’m not feeling well.’

‘You’ll be okay,’ Lar Mackendrick said.

Somewhere near the Old Bawn Road, Callaghan demanded that Mackendrick stop the car. ‘Look, you go ahead home, okay? I need – I’m going to be sick.’

‘I’ll wait.’

Feeling the seconds race past, his mind full of the image of the leather hat sagging above Roeper’s face, Callaghan tried to keep the urgency out of his voice.

‘No, I think I’m going to throw up. I need a walk, to clear my head – and I’ll get a taxi home. I need to calm down.’

‘It’s no—’

‘Please – I’ll be okay.’

Mackendrick said, ‘Suit yourself.’

After Mackendrick drove away, Callaghan found a quiet street and smashed the driver’s window of a car. With no tools and no time for subtlety, he ripped the wires from under the steering column and hot-wired the engine. It took him fifteen minutes to find the two spruce trees forming an X shape, and another couple of minutes to find the clearing, his breathing noisy as he stumbled through the woods.

He’d brought along three CD cases he’d found in the car and he used one to dig at the earth and when the case broke he used a second to gouge a hole above where he reckoned Roeper’s face to be. That got him down far enough to use his fingers to tear at the earth. When he got to Declan Roeper’s hat and pulled it away the eyes stared straight up, nothing there.

Danny Callaghan sat cross-legged on the grave, the fingers of
one hand clutching tightly at his hair, his head back, his eyes closed, his teeth bared, his breathing harsh in his throat.

His hand slid slowly down his face until it held his mouth, and his head bent forward. He stared at the unblinking eyes.

‘
Please
,’ he said, not knowing what he was appealing for. His fingers were numb from the cold and the tears on his cheeks felt like slivers of ice.

The clock said
1.22
now.

Danny Callaghan flicked on the bedside light. He’d managed to doze for a while, then he woke and tossed and turned, and now he reached for a magazine. He turned several pages and began reading a review of a new movie, half-aware of the sense of the words.

Just deliver the van to the church grounds
.

He knew that wherever he left the van the chances were that someone would use it in a hit, maybe as a getaway car. Callaghan had no doubt that before the day was done his actions would play a part in killing someone.

That was some workout
.

Karl Prowse found his jeans in the dark. He was tired – in a perfect world he’d just crash out, spend the night here. The bed covers were half on the floor, the sleeping woman lying on her side, naked in the light from the window.

Twice my age, twice my energy
.

He was in the shabby little hotel, with the dyed blonde receptionist who’d been every bit as juicy as he’d figured she would be.

Best to go home, get changed in the morning before the big day
started. Besides, he wanted to kiss the kids before he left to do the job. You can’t ever tell how these things will work out.

Some ride, though
.

He stood there, jeans in hand, thinking. Maybe he should stay. Go at it again in the morning.

Nah
.

He pulled on the jeans, still staring at the naked woman.

It took longer than usual to lock up, cash up and clean up the pub. Novak was yawning when he reached home. No messages on the machine, no notes on the kitchen counter to say that anyone had called. He’d already checked his mobile half a dozen times, but he checked again as he went upstairs.

He eased the covers aside, careful not to wake Jane.

Still no word from Danny
.

‘I have to deal with this myself.’