Little Criminals (32 page)

When the door of the closet opened an inch, Angela just sat there for several minutes. Her first instinct was to hook a finger around the edge of the door, pull it closed again. She found words for the weight of fear that paralysed her.

Leave well enough alone
.

Leaving well enough alone at least wouldn’t make things worse. It meant she would stay in this predictable hellhole until somebody did something and it all worked out one way or the other. Making a move might end this horror sooner but it also opened her up to the anger of the gunmen, and wherever that would lead.

The devil you know
.

She had a choice, and she didn’t want a choice.

Stay in here, her mind dulled by boredom and fear, her body soiled, her world reduced to a dark, stuffy closet, where she waited for an unknown outcome. Or make a break for it, end the tension, reclaim her life. That required going out there, where there were violent men, strength and hostility, anger beyond her experience and the petrifying risk of an immediate and brutal end.

A raised voice. ‘Fuck this’, then she heard someone walk quickly past the closet, then the pounding sound of footsteps on the stairs above her head and the slamming of a door upstairs.

After a while, one hand steadying herself against the wall of the closet, Angela got to her feet, crouched, her head bent forward. She pushed at the door, it opened silently and she shuffled through the doorway until she could stand up.

She was in some kind of short passageway, all light blues and greens. To her left, the kitchen, the sound of the gang talking. She forced herself not to look that way. Instinct told her that if she didn’t see them they wouldn’t see her, and she knew that didn’t make sense but she believed it completely.

To her right, the corridor led past an open door and then widened into a large hall, at the end of which was the solid dark wood of what had to be the front door of the house. She turned her back to the kitchen and overcame the immediate urge to run. She walked towards the hall, fighting to keep her step steady, to walk as casually as if she was going out to buy a newspaper. The plain blue carpet was cool on her bare feet. The material of her tracksuit pants was stuck to the insides of her thighs.

There was a large brass lock on the front door, some kind of latch. She had the door wide open, the sun blazing into her eyes, when she heard movement behind her and she didn’t grasp the words that were spoken but she knew it was the voice of the gang boss.

What Frankie said was, ‘Close the door,
now
.’

He tried to keep his voice calm. ‘Just close it and nothing will happen.’

Angela took another pace, out on to the front step. Frankie raised his large black automatic and pointed it at her back.

Milky screamed, ‘
Not here!
’ and Martin Paxton shouted, ‘
No!
’

Angela turned round. She raised one hand and touched the side of her face. The hand was trembling, there was sweat on her cheek. She put the hand out, palm towards Frankie, like a little shield.

Frankie said, ‘Come in, close the door.’

Angela didn’t say anything. She just shook her head. Frankie said, ‘That’s how you want it.’ He looked along the top of the automatic, aiming at her forehead and Martin grabbed his arm and said, ‘No.’

Frankie shook his arm free. ‘She’s seen our faces, all of us.’

Angela took a step backwards.

‘So what? Our names are all over the papers. Rosslare, the cops saw our faces.’

‘Not mine, not Milky’s. Besides, there’s a difference.’

The Rosslare cops, and maybe fingerprints, that was probably enough to put them away, but a victim standing up in a courtroom and pointing a finger and saying, ‘That’s him’, that closed down any loopholes.

‘It’s all over,’ Martin said. ‘None of this matters. We’ve got the money, we can divvy tomorrow, next week, whenever. Drop her somewhere, forget the rental, forget everything, let’s just fucking
go
!’

Brendan said, ‘No, she’s seen our faces. It matters.’

Martin said, ‘Kidnapping’s one thing. Be fucking sensible.’

Frankie said, ‘Bollocks.’

Dolly appeared halfway down the stairs. He seemed distanced from the scene before him, like he was watching a mildly interesting television programme.

Martin turned away and hurried back into the kitchen.

Maybe fifty feet away, there were two women in their twenties, stride-walking past on the other side of the road. They were in Nike tops and shorts, one was wearing a pink headband. Their arms stiff and swinging, they were walking fast, shedding calories with every stride. Had they glanced to the right they would have seen Angela at the front door, facing back into the house, one hand held out in front of her, and Frankie beyond her, pointing his gun at her face. Chatting, the two women walked on, out of sight behind the hedge.

Frankie made a gesture with the gun. ‘Come back in,’ he said.

Angela said, ‘Please.’

Milky said, ‘Please, not here.’ He ran forward and awkwardly threw an arm around Angela and pulled her towards the hall. She grabbed the edge of the doorway, one knee braced against the architrave, and Milky punched her fingers and kicked at her legs. He clawed at her and she cried out. Brendan took a handful of her hair and pulled and she screamed and lost her balance and fell on her back on the thick blue carpet. Milky closed the front door.

Frankie stood over the hostage and pointed the gun at her face.

‘I said
no
!’ Martin was back from the kitchen, holding his gun down by his side. ‘Come on, let’s take a minute, calm down.’

Frankie looked at Martin and made a dismissive noise.

Martin shook his head. ‘I mean it. No killing.’

‘We’re in a situation. You know that.’

Angela’s voice was high and wavering. ‘Please, Martin, don’t let him kill me.’

‘Martin?’

Frankie’s voice had an hysterical edge.
‘Martin?’

Martin said, ‘Look, let’s just—’

‘Fucking
Martin
, right? You told her your name? Holding hands, is that it? She’s pulling your chain, mate.’ He was moving slowly around the hostage, the gun pointing down at her face. ‘Is that all she’s been pulling?’

When Angela stood on the front step and turned round and the gang leader pointed his gun at her forehead, she looked into his face and saw her death. If she did as he wanted and came back inside he would take her somewhere in the house and kill her. If she stayed where she was, he would kill her.

From that moment, something inside her hunched over, braced for the killing blow. All thought was swept away by the rush of dread. She felt hardly any pain in the struggle to stop them pulling her back into the house. Each second was the last second before the end. She tried when she could to hold up one hand or the other, to position it between her face and where she thought the gang leader’s gun was.

And when she was lying on the floor and the gun swung down and pointed at her head, a physical weakness swept through her and she felt her bladder empty.

‘I said,
no
!’

She didn’t take in what the two gunmen were saying as they argued about her life. She said something, a plea, and she wasn’t sure if she said it aloud. Their voices became harsh.

Finally, Martin reached down and grabbed her by one arm and half dragged her back towards the closet, the gang leader still pointing his gun at her head.

Someone said, ‘Ah, Jesus, look at the fucking carpet!’

Martin pushed her roughly into the closet.

‘Please—’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘You have to get me out of here, he’s—’

The gunman, his expression bitter and angry, slammed the door of the closet. She heard the sound of the chair being propped under the knob.

Afterwards, there was little talk about what happened. Martin and Frankie played it cool, let it all simmer down. That moment Martin walked back out into the hall, carrying the gun down by his side, careful not to point it at Frankie – that would always be between them. You could tell that from the politeness of the few words they exchanged afterwards. Anger would have been open to negotiation. Martin could have explained how just for that moment he wasn’t sure where he stood with Frankie and he knew he needed to get his gun before he said anything else, and maybe that was the wrong thing to do but it was how it felt when the heat flared up.

‘Killing her didn’t make sense. You know that. It would have put us deeper into the shit.’

Frankie said nothing, just shrugged. Martin nodded. The shrugs and nods and the short, polite sentences that followed emphasised the strain between them.

Later, one of Milky’s people arrived with two sets of car keys. ‘They’re parked down the seafront,’ Milky told Frankie. ‘Red Mégane, white Ford Transit.’

Frankie gave the keys of the van to Martin, who was lying down upstairs. ‘For the morning. I’ll take the Megane, you’ll need the van for the hostage.’

For a moment, it seemed like Frankie was about to add something, then he nodded and went back downstairs. It was like they both realised there was nothing to be said about the craziness that wouldn’t make things worse.

Around six o’clock, Martin came down wearing his jacket and said, ‘I told Debbie I’d be in touch today.’ Frankie nodded, Martin stopped like he had something important to say, then he said just, ‘OK,’ and he left.

It took twenty minutes of texting Deborah, watching her from a distance, directing her in and out of stores at the Omni Centre in Santry, before Martin Paxton was sure she wasn’t being followed. He joined her in O’Brien’s sandwich shop and there was an undertone of pleading in his voice. After he’d spoken for maybe five minutes she said, ‘No.’

‘Deb, think about it, please. It’s the only way.’

She said, ‘I have a family. I have a job. I can’t just drop everything here and go off and maybe never see them again.’

The tone of what he said changed, he spoke now of how he was entitled.

‘It’s my kid too.’

‘And he’s going to be born in his own country.’

‘Deb—’

‘There’s no way I can learn another language.’

‘
Sí, sí, señorita, mucho dinero
.’

She didn’t return his smile.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you’ll pick up all you need in no time. This time tomorrow, I’ll have my share, we build a whole new life.’

She said nothing for a while. Then, staring at the table in front of her, she said, ‘You know it’s what I want, the three of us together, but – it’s no life, Martin. It’s no life.’

The honesty of her sadness was unmistakable and Martin realised he’d never loved her more.

After a while she said, What are you going to do with that poor woman?’

‘She’ll be all right.’

‘What are you going to do with her?’

‘What about the baby? I mean it. I have rights. I have to be able to at least see him.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know how we’ll manage that, love. There’s years ahead. Jesus, Martin, how do we arrange it? Where? How often? This is a lifetime thing.’

‘The cops, they get lazy – I know people who come into the country and go out again when they want. People come back. Slip in, find somewhere, settle right back in. Different names and stuff, you know. We can do it.’

She closed her eyes for a few seconds and bowed her head and when she opened her eyes the pain he saw was answer enough.

He said nothing for a while. He took a sip from the still-full mug of coffee. It was lukewarm. Then he said, ‘Christ, what a fuck-up.’

Milky was pacing his living room. ‘Bastard!’ He said the word again and again. Brendan Sweetman was standing by the marble fireplace, his right hand making agitated patterns on his bristled hair.

‘I told him,’ Milky said. ‘I fucking said it, again and again. Not here, I said,
not here!
’

Dolly Finn was upstairs in a small bedroom at the back of the house, sitting on the floor by the window, his back against the wall, his knees up and his hands cupped over his eyes.

From downstairs, from the kitchen, the noises had been coming for almost twenty minutes. They started maybe half an hour after Martin left. First, the sounds of struggle, then a scream, then a series of harsh, strained cries, then another scream. For some time, there were no abrupt sounds, no sounds of struggle, just a repetitive moan.

From the moment he learned that the police knew the names of some of those involved in the kidnap, Dolly Finn felt physically weak. It was only a matter of time before they fingered him. It was like some sinews in his arms and legs had slackened and couldn’t properly function. Even the most routine thoughts had to push their way around the solid block of dread that settled inside his mind. Although capture or worse was possible in any such project, the sudden reality of being separated permanently from his home and his shop and the whole of the small, satisfying life he had constructed was paralysing. The police hadn’t put his name on the radio or his picture in the papers, but there were too many who knew he was involved, and no one was going home from this.