Little Criminals (11 page)

O’Keefe turned to a Special Branch officer. ‘Anything to tell me?’

‘The chuckies have long memories. Our contacts say there was definitely nothing official, and I believe them.’

‘But?’

‘But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t some Provo hardcase nursing a private grudge.’

A recently promoted chief inspector leaned forward into the table, then waited until he got the nod from O’Keefe. ‘There’s a whole rake of gangs now, sir, small outfits, hard men in a hurry. Type of people who see guys like Jo-Jo as dinosaurs. I reckon it’s most likely someone had an itch.’

‘Nominations?’

The officer looked like he wished he hadn’t said anything. ‘Could be any one of – I don’t know – dozens.’

‘To sum up what we know for certain, then,’ O’Keefe said, ‘a pro job, by someone who’s been waiting in the long grass. Agreed?’

He looked around the table. No one said anything.

O’Keefe sighed. ‘Or, to put it another way – what we know for certain – fuck all.’

The killings played big in the media for several days, and this morning’s papers had a photo taken at Christy Powell’s cremation at Glasnevin cemetery the previous day. It showed Christy’s girlfriend clutching their two kids to her. Just in front, Christy’s brothers and mates carried his coffin. There was no real political pressure on the police for results. The Minister for Justice made a statement about how such savagery would not be tolerated, and the opposition claimed that crime was out of control. The newspapers peddled pages of gory details, some of them accurate, but already the story was fading. No civilians had been hurt, it was an internal gangland affair, so the public found the killings more exciting than shocking. The city’s leading investigative journalist wrote an authoritative piece, based on garda and underworld sources, that pinned the killing on a teenage gangster, a former McDonald’s employee who worked as a hitman for an up-and-coming gang in Dolphin’s Barn. For legal reasons, and to add a touch of glamour, the newspaper christened the alleged killer ‘the Chef’. Once the funerals were over the story would be parked. If anyone was ever charged, or someone came up with a new angle, it could be revived for public entertainment.

Most of Jo-Jo’s friends turned up for the funeral, and some of his enemies. Business associates, both criminal and legitimate, rubbed shoulders with neighbours, members of Jo-Jo’s golf club and kids from the GAA club where he’d played hurling as a youngster. There were lots of elderly people from the old neighbourhood where Pearl and her sons were revered as locals who had bettered themselves. Two nuns living in the old neighbourhood turned up. Jo-Jo had for several years financed their meals-on-wheels effort for pensioners down on their luck. There were plenty of gawkers, too. Some of them brandished disposable cameras as the coffins were carried into the church. The media was there, using long lenses from way down the street. A few months earlier, at another underworld funeral, a photographer had come too close and had three cameras broken and one arm.

Frankie Crowe was halfway up the aisle, shuffling along with the queue. A few yards ahead, he spotted Oscar Waters, with whom he’d worked briefly when he got out of jail. Waters’ partner, Shamie Cox, had recently been given another three-year stretch. Right fuck-ups that pair turned out to be.

The coffins were covered with flowers and Mass cards. One whole side of the altar overflowed with wreaths and bouquets, stacked in rows. In the centre of the display was an arrangement spelling out ‘Grandad’.

In the front row of the pews, to the right of the aisle, Lar Mackendrick welcomed each mourner with a nod and a handshake. Mostly he sat, now and then he stood up, leaning on the rail in front.

Occasionally the queue was held up for a minute or so as one of the chief mourners whispered with some family friend. Frankie saw Oscar Waters shake hands with Lar and move on to sympathise with Jo-Jo’s grown-up kids.

None of Jo-Jo’s three offspring was in the family business, and all seemed awed and out of place. They shook hands with their father’s friends and accepted sympathy, but they represented only their own grief. Formal recognition of the family’s loss, and respects to the family status, were being accepted by their Uncle Lar.

After another couple of minutes of shuffling, Frankie was extending his hand, whispering the standard phrases of commiseration.

‘Frankie Crowe, good man.’ Lar Mackendrick didn’t just shake hands, he stood up and embraced Frankie. The front of his white shirt was stained with lipstick, a remnant of an earlier sympathetic hug. Lar had made an effort at shaving, but his chin was rough. The whites of his eyes were streaked with tiny red rivulets and there was sweat on his forehead. His whole face seemed raw. His suit was expensive but too tight for his bulky frame. His tie had been loosened and his top shirt button was undone. Beside him, his wife May kept glancing at Lar, as though fearful for him.

Frankie said, ‘Sorry for your trouble, Lar. Shocking, it was. Terrible.’

Lar took Frankie’s right hand in both his own. ‘Every now and then he’d talk about that night, Frankie, when those two fuckers came to the house with shooters. If they were all as reliable as Frankie, that’s what he said to me, many a time.’

Frankie waited, then he realised he was expected to speak. He said, ‘He was good to me. Jo-Jo was a good friend.’

Lar’s voice sounded like something inside him had been stretched until it bled. ‘The two of them, Frankie. Jesus, the two of them, to go like that.’

Frankie felt his eyes sting. ‘There’s no words, Lar. If there’s anything I can do, y’know?’

Lar nodded. He continued to clutch Frankie’s hand, as though clinging to a fragment of his dead brother’s life. He said, ‘Thanks for coming, Frankie, talk to you in the morning, right?’

Frankie nodded and his hand was released. Lar sat down. Frankie shook hands with May and with Jo-Jo’s kids and moved on and the queue inched along in his wake. He found himself briefly sympathising and shaking hands with other relatives, some of whom he didn’t recognise. There were tears on both his cheeks and he used the back of his hand to wipe them away. As he walked back up the side aisle, he noticed people looking at him. He felt a pride in having been so publicly welcomed as an intimate of the family.

Frankie was looking forward to the funeral in the morning. He liked the idea of mixing with the family, being seen to be connected. There was a price to pay. After the Mass and the ritual at the cemetery there would be the inevitable and unavoidable wake at some hotel, and the kind of drinking that would put him out of action for most of the day after. Which was OK, because the kidnap job wasn’t scheduled for another six days.

In the corridor outside the Circuit Criminal Court, a woman opened her blouse and offered a breast to her baby. A young, skinny, uniformed garda, one hand clasping the other behind his back, watched for a moment, then strolled over to the mother and told her to take it outside. She told him to have a heart and her brother, a five-foot-three bundle of muscular animosity, hurried over and told the young garda not to act the bollocks. The woman told her brother to go away, she was OK. Then she continued feeding the baby.

The garda looked around, as though considering which of the eight colleagues hanging about the hall might best be called upon to help him restore law and order.

Sitting on a bench several yards away, Detective Sergeant Nicky Bonner muttered, ‘Asshole.’ Beside him, Detective Inspector John Grace looked up from his
Evening Herald
crossword, clocked the situation and nodded.

It was pushing seven o’clock in the evening, the company of performers from the Circuit Criminal Court – police, lawyers and civilians – was hanging around waiting for the jury to make up its mind. Otherwise, the Four Courts complex was closed for business.

John Grace watched the woman cuddling the child, the curve of the nourishing breast just visible between the baby’s face and the open edge of the pink blouse. Dolores Payne was a shoplifter whose work-rate added half a shift to at least one inner-city police station. She was here to offer moral support to her boyfriend, the defendant in the manslaughter case John Grace had been attending, as senior investigating garda, for the past three days.

The case was a stupid one, the kind of not-for-profit crime that filled more cells than any number of criminal masterplans. Close to closing time in the defendant’s local, someone cracked wise about something or other, someone else called the wisecracker a wanker, someone pushed someone and the sensible people left the pub in a hurry. Dolores’s boyfriend, seeing himself as the senior Big Shot on the premises, stepped in as a peacemaker. One of the combatants, a distant cousin, told him to fuck off and by the time the police arrived Mr Big Shot had to be dug out of his estranged relative. Decades of half-remembered internal family resentment popped up out of nowhere, resulting in one set of bloody fists and a distant cousin who lasted six days on life support before he gave a sudden shudder, woke up and said to the nurse who was changing a dressing, ‘Tell Sheila I want to see her.’ Then he closed his eyes and died. He had no relative, friend, neighbour or workmate named Sheila, no Sheila worked in the hospital, his wife was named Marian and no one in his family knew who Sheila might be.

For the detectives at Turner’s Lane garda station, the case involved little more than turning up and arresting the guy everyone was pointing at, Mr Big Shot. This kind of stupid killing was as old as alcohol. It was one of eight serious assaults that detectives at Turner’s Lane dealt with that week. It was the only one to end in a fatality.

‘It’s the new Ireland,’ Nicky Bonner was fond of saving. ‘Since we got prosperous, everyone’s more tense and no one feels the day’s complete until they get marinated.’ Nicky had a theory. ‘Used to be the Church set limits to things,’ he said. ‘That’s all gone. All the old landmarks are gone. Even the IRA are wearing suits and discussing gross national product. It’s all about money now, and grabbing your share and a bit of the other fella’s.’

People had become more efficient at getting revved up. A few pints, maybe into the jacks to do a couple of lines, then another few pints and everything’s faster, louder, closer to the edge. For the detectives at Turner’s Lane, there was increased business in the form of black-and-blue women, tanked-up kids driving cars into walls, and young men determined to assert their individuality by kicking the shite out of anyone who looked crooked at them.

The case now being adjudicated in the Circuit Criminal Court was the kind that in the old days would have been marked down as an assault causing bodily harm. These days, that kind of thing often developed into a homicide, with consequent long hours of boredom for gardai waiting for a jury to come back.

Facing a long stretch in the Joy, Mr Big Shot was fighting the charge, just on the off chance that his mouthpieces could bring off a miracle. His defence – that he was merely protecting himself against an unprovoked attack – might have stood up if most of his punches hadn’t been delivered when the victim was unconscious.

Dolores’s husband, one of the nicest, most obliging junkies in the North Strand, went down in one of the Aids waves that culled the city’s heroin addicts. Her boyfriend, the argumentative Mr Big Shot, was also HIV positive, as was Dolores’s aggressive brother and his girlfriend and their eldest daughter, aged six. Dolores and her two kids had escaped the virus. To John Grace, Dolores might be technically a habitual criminal but in truth she was a decent sort who did her best with one of the few income-producing options open to her. To add to her shoplifting revenue, she occasionally earned some extra money selling information to the police.

The young garda came back for another bite at Dolores. He said something about public decency.

‘Christ,’ Nicky Bonner sighed, and hauled himself up to his considerable height. He crossed to the young policeman, hands in the trouser pockets of his grey suit, looking every inch the nightclub bouncer he’d been when he needed to boost his wages during his early years on the force. He smiled as he approached the skinny young garda and took the paragon of law and order by one elbow. Nicky leaned over and said something in his ear, then turned, nodded to Dolores and walked back towards his seat. The young garda stood there for a few seconds, his face flushed. He looked over towards John Grace, then he ostentatiously looked at his watch and quickly headed down the corridor towards the jacks.

Sitting back down, Nicky said, ‘It’s a good sign, four hours.’

John said nothing. He was the same height as Bonner but lacked the bulk. Although he was in his mid-forties, his face had a placidness that made him look younger. Since his earliest years on the force, he disliked the impression of sensitivity that his soft features created. These days, his short-cropped hair was almost totally white, adding a fatherly air to his good-natured features. It could be, he concluded, that it helped with the more gormless criminals that he had a face that implied more sympathy than he felt.

‘They’d have done it by now,’ Nicky said, ‘if they were going to acquit. You reckon?’

‘The tank is empty in America?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Three, two, three. The tank is empty in America?’

‘Give me a break.’

John lowered his crossword. ‘Juries are like next summer’s weather, you know that. Predictions are for fools. It’s always fifty-fifty. Jury’s out for days, it might be bad or it might be good. They come back after ten minutes, it might be good or it might be bad.’