Little Criminals (14 page)

Then the leader said, ‘We want a million.’

Justin said, ‘Holy Christ, how can I—’

‘That’s peanuts for someone like you, fucking peanuts.’

‘I assure you—’

‘I’m not negotiating. A million. That’s half what we figured when we thought we were getting a banker. This is a compromise, OK? We keep it down to that, your mates can cough it up quick enough, we get this thing over with.’

Justin said nothing for a moment. Then he nodded. Resistance was pointless, and these people had too much of an edge for any negotiations to be worthwhile. Work out the terms, agree the deal, get it done.

‘Here’s how we can do this—’

The leader’s fist shot out and punched Kennedy on the shoulder. ‘The fuck you think you are?
You’re
telling
me
how we can do this? You – you’ve got no say in anything right now, fuckhead. You got that?’ His finger poked Kennedy in the chest. ‘You got that, fuckhead?’

Kennedy held up his bound hands in a gesture of submission. ‘Look, I’m not telling you anything. I’m just suggesting how we deal with this.’

‘Suggest nothing. Just—’ and the leader let out a scream of rage and pushed Kennedy out of the way. He darted to the base unit of the cordless phone, resting on a sideboard near the door, picked it up, found the lead connecting it to the phone socket down on the skirting board and jerked it out of the wall. Then he turned and ran out of the room. A physical shudder ran through Kennedy’s chest as he heard the leader scream,
‘Where’s the bitch?’

They both knew where this was going, even before Justin put it into words. ‘They’re going to take me,’ he told Angela.

For a while they hoped that the confusion about Bryton might abort the whole thing, then they heard the sound of glass breaking in the kitchen. The relentless shattering noise baffled as much as frightened them. This didn’t make any sense, even in the extraordinary circumstances in which they found themselves. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then Justin said he knew they were going to take him.

‘It’s what I’d do. I mean, they must have put a lot of work into this. They’re not going to walk away empty-handed.’

‘Can we just give them some money? Jewellery, things – there’s cash in the safe, a few thousand. That and the jewellery—’

‘Listen carefully. Daragh O’Suilleabhain, his home number is in my book. When we’re gone, ring him. Don’t say anything about this on the phone, he doesn’t need to know details. Just tell him you’re speaking for me, he has to do exactly what you say—’

As Justin spoke, Angela remembered the second handset for the cordless phone. She didn’t say anything, just listened to Justin giving her the instructions she was to pass on to Daragh O’Suilleabhain. Daragh would know what to do – Justin could work out the reimbursement once this was all settled. Follow whatever instructions the gang leader gave, do it all through Daragh. ‘It’s the best way, the quickest way to get this over and done and back to normal.’

The gang had disabled the phones around the house, and taken the mobiles. They’d taken the handset of the base unit in the living room. The second handset – Angela had finally remembered where she’d left it – was in the bathroom next to Saskia’s room. She’d used it there, she’d been drying Saskia’s hair after her shower, when her sister rang from Paris. Had the gang found it when they looked around the house, or when they were disabling the phones? If not, did she dare get to it?

Too risky.

Even if she got away with making a call, what if the police came stomping all over the place, panicking the gang? What if the gang started shooting and the police fired back? Maybe there was another way, maybe they could be convinced.

That’s when the leader came in and said, ‘We’re taking you.’

Angela offered them money. It amounted to several thousand, in cash and goods, and they might take it. Not bad for an evening’s work. But the leader just took Justin’s new watch and carried on making his plans.

So, Angela decided, there was no point delaying any longer.
Don’t do this and however it works out you’ll for ever despise your weakness
.

She said, ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

The tall, skinny one who had tied their hands used his knife to cut the plastic strip open. He followed her upstairs and stood outside the bathroom. As soon as she went inside, she saw that the small black handset was on the shelf beside the shampoo. She closed the door.

‘Emergency services.’

It was only then she remembered the green light that glowed on the base unit when a call was being made from either of the handsets. She kept her voice low.

‘Police, hurry.’

‘Which service do you require?’

‘Get me the police!’

‘Please hold on and I’ll connect you.’

A few seconds later the line went dead.

Half a minute after that, when the gang leader jerked open the bathroom door, Angela was washing her hands. She had pushed the handset into the middle of a stack of towels on a shelf beside the bath. Screaming that she was a stupid bitch, the leader took her by an arm and pulled and then pushed her out on to the landing and left her there. It took him a very short time, ransacking the bathroom, to find the handset. He brought it out on to the landing and began smashing it against the banister.

A door opened and Saskia’s frightened face looked out. Luke’s door opened, he came out on to the landing.

Saskia said, ‘Mum?’

‘Go back to bed, love, it’s all right.’ Angela turned to the gang leader and said, ‘For pity’s sake, can’t you—’ and he slapped her hard across the face. Luke screamed. The gang leader grabbed the front of Angela’s dress, bunching it in his fist, and dragged her towards him. ‘You want it like this? You want to be a player? OK, you’re a player. Fuck you, you asked for it.’

The other gunmen were in the hall, now, looking up the stairs. Saskia and Luke were calling their mother.

The gang leader turned to the soft-voiced one and said, ‘Take care of the kids, Martin, get them to shut the fuck up,’ then he pulled Angela by one arm, moving fast, bringing her down the stairs behind him.

In the living room, Justin was standing, with one of the gang holding him from behind. The gang leader pushed Angela across the room until she stood beside her husband. Then he turned to Justin and said, ‘You’re off the hook.’

For a second, Justin’s face reflected his relief. Then the gang leader said, ‘We’re taking the bitch.’

‘It makes sense,’ Frankie told the others, in the kitchen. ‘Take him, we have to work through his missus, or whoever can get their hands on his money. Take her, he can get the money quicker. And that’s what it’s about. Don’t give them time to get fancy on us.’

Dolly Finn was nodding. Brendan Sweetman shrugged.

Martin Paxton couldn’t think of anything else to suggest, so he said nothing.

It’s like every step we take, we’re moving further away from what we planned
.

‘Get the car ready,’ Frankie told Dolly.

The woman was allowed to take the children to her bedroom, to speak with them. Frankie took the man out to the kitchen.

‘First things first. You see this?’ He held up his pistol. The man said nothing.

‘What I have here, it’s a Heckler & Koch. German, about twenty years old, maybe more. Takes eight rounds. One of these pieces of lead, I punch it into your wife’s head, it turns her into a sack of waste. Something goes wrong, that’s your best-case scenario.’

He pushed the man back against the counter and put his face up close and spoke in a whisper.

‘Everyone plays ball, it’s over in no time, we take the money and you get your happy little life back. It goes the other way, I’m put in a tight corner, she goes first. No question. So, you do what I say, all it costs you is money. You understand?’

The man just nodded.

‘I swear, any fucking around, I’ll find out and I’ll cut my losses and bury her somewhere and you won’t even get to give her a funeral. You understand?’

He put the gun away.

‘No need for that. No percentage in that for me. But I’ll do it if I have to, you know I will.’

When the man spoke his voice was low, thick.

‘Whatever you say, I’ll follow it to the letter. Can I ask a question?’

‘One question.’

‘Please, will you take me instead?’

‘No.’

‘Why—?’

‘That’s two questions.’

‘Christ, look, it makes more – we can arrange—’

‘Shut the fuck up, OK? Understand this, big man. You don’t get to say what’s what, not on this gig.’

The man just stood there, silent.

‘You won’t hear from me for forty-eight hours. No point getting in touch with you before you have the money ready. Forty-eight hours, got that?’

‘Forty-eight hours.’

‘Have the money ready then.’

‘I’m not sure I can—’

‘You’ll have the money ready. A million. In fifties. We do the business, it’s all over in hours. You try to drag it out, you play games, fuck you, she’s gone.’

The man stared.

‘Get me? She’s fucking gone.’

‘Please, I’ll have the money, I’ll do—’

‘Here’s your mobile.’ He handed it over. ‘I’ll get your number from the missus. Maybe I’ll call you on that, maybe your home phone’ll be fixed. Don’t go too far from home, right?’

‘OK. Listen, there’s one thing.’ He waited as though seeking permission to continue.

‘What?’

‘I have a fairly structured life – I’m expected places.’

‘Take a few days off.’

‘That’s what I mean. Business associates, family – someone’s liable to notice there’s something wrong. What I’m afraid of – if the police get word—’

Frankie said, ‘You call them, you tell the cops yourself. Take the “what if” out of it. I’ll take it for granted they’re looking over your shoulder. You can tell them what you like but you’ll do what I say. And you wait until morning to contact them. No sooner than nine o’clock, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘I’ll know. I have ways of finding out. You say a fucking word to the cops before nine o’clock tomorrow morning, you know what happens.’

‘I won’t, I swear.’

Frankie said, ‘One other thing – there was something about jewellery, and your missus said there was money in a safe, shit like that?’

The man slowly nodded. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘Good boy. Then we get your missus and the kids down and you tell her goodbye. The sooner we get going, the better.’

Some hours later, lying awake on a bare mattress, on the floor of a cold room in a building on the Northside of Dublin, Angela tried to understand why she hadn’t been paralysed with fear when the gang leader said he was taking her. All along, from the moment she first walked out into the hall and saw the men in the masks, it was like there was a low-voltage current running through her insides. It was fright and dread and uncertainty, but when the gang leader said what he said, her mind pushed the fear into some hidden crevice and narrowed itself down to the tasks at hand. Calming the kids, and calming her husband.

‘Mum?’

Luke was the immediate problem. Saskia seemed to have decided that this, whatever it was, was too big for her to figure out. It was something for the adults to deal with. Her lips tight, her arms folded across her chest, she shut herself off from whatever was happening.

Luke, a year younger, was on the edge of hysteria, his eyes watery, his cheeks red.

‘The man was shouting because he’s in a hurry, Luke. You know the way grown-ups can get flustered when they’re in a hurry and things aren’t going well?’ It wasn’t working. The doubtful look on Luke’s face deepened. The explanation, even coming from his mother, didn’t come close to accounting for the ferocity he had witnessed. Needing to give him something to build a hope around, Angela continued. ‘I have to show him the way to where he wants to go. And then I’ll be back, OK?’

‘No, Mum—’

It took a while, and Angela knew that at any moment the gang leader might come storming back up the stairs, shouting. She spoke quickly, soothingly, and she knew that no words would do the job, that there was a price the kids would have to pay and nothing she could do would change that. She stayed with them as long as she dared and when she brought the kids down the stairs, one each side of her, their hands in hers, Justin and the four gang members were in the hall, waiting. She saw that Justin’s hands were now unbound.

Luke couldn’t look anywhere but at the four masked faces, his mouth open, his hand tightly gripping Angela’s hand. She tried not to imagine what this sight was doing to the children. At least there were no guns on view. Angela had to pull gently to ease Luke down one step and then another.

At the bottom of the staircase, Angela gently disengaged from Luke and Saskia. Justin hugged the kids tightly and took their hands. As she backed away, their eyes stayed on their mother. Justin didn’t dare release his grip on them, even for the time it would take to briefly touch his wife. His voice a strained imitation of normality, he said to Angela, ‘We’ll, you know, we’ll go sit down.’ With his head, he gestured towards the living room. Angela nodded. They held eye contact for some moments, then Justin was gone, shepherding the kids away. The sound of Luke’s sobbing could be heard as soon as the living-room door closed behind him.