Little Criminals (36 page)

Twenty feet, fifteen, ten.

‘Missus?’

The victim adjusted her gaze, she saw him.
Good woman, now don’t panic
.

‘I’m a garda, missus. You’re OK.’

She said nothing.

He was with her now, and he gently manoeuvred himself between her and the suspect house. He never took his gaze from the house.

‘You’ll be fine, missus. Just take it easy. Move back down towards the car. Slowly. Step at a time. You’re doing fine.’

She said, ‘This way?’

He said, ‘Yes, that’s it. Take your time. Towards the car.’

She moved slowly, he matched her pace, still watching the suspect house. Two of his men hurried forward, one each side, closing ranks between the sergeant and the house. The sergeant turned and hustled the victim away, his men following, walking backwards, guns poised.

When he got her into cover he said, ‘How many of these men were in there?’

‘My name is Angela,’ she said.

She looked with curiosity at the left arm of her tracksuit, torn and streaked with blood.

‘What happened?’ she said.

Silver lining. They shot an unarmed man. Play well in court. Shot an unarmed man. Upside to everything
.

Milky reached into a pocket for his cigarettes and his lighter. He noticed that he’d lost a button from the front of his green check jacket. He looked up and saw a cop standing over him. Scruffy fucker, no uniform, jeans, woolly hat and a yellow garda waistcoat yoke. Some kind of fancy semi-automatic clutched in front of his chest. He was staring down at Milky, like he was point man on the first platoon into a vanquished city.

The house will go. The pub, the garage, too. These days, bastards’ve got laws lets them do that. Confiscate stuff
.

Fuck you, Frankie
.

They’ll never find the bank accounts. Tear the kip apart, never find them. Bastards
.

Shot an unarmed man. Worth a hefty slice off the sentence. Hell of a way to get sympathy, but fuck it
.

Cape Town properties, can’t touch those
.

A casual associate of these men, Your Honour. My client has a clean record, apart from some youthful follies. Forced their way into his house. Threats. Fear. Then, fleeing to safety, shot by the police
.

Play it cool, this’ll work out
.

He badly wanted a cigarette. Hadn’t he taken the smokes out of his pocket a minute ago? They were – where?

The scruffy cop knelt beside him, made the sign of the cross, bent to his ear and began whispering.

‘Say the Act of Contrition with me.’

Milky stared at him.

Fuck off
.

The cop was saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m heartily sorry for having offended Thee—’

Fuck that. Shove your Act of Contrition up the high hole of your arse
.

‘—I detest my sins above every other evil—’

Phone Dave, first thing
.

No. Dave’s fine for down the District. For this, need a lawyer gets off on suing the fuck out of people. Make back a chunk of whatever they take
.

‘—and I firmly resolve by Thy holy grace, never more to offend Thee—’

Jesus, get the right mouthpiece, might even come out of this with a profit
.

He made a noise that might have been a chuckle.

He heard the cop’s voice say, ‘He’s gone.’

Stupid fucker
.

As consciousness melted into something else, Milky thought,
Gone nowhere, I’m right here. Just resting
.

*

She’s so young, Dolly thought, in that business suit she looks like a little girl dressing up in her mother’s clothes. He’d told her to take it easy, keep the speed down. So far, there was no panic. A little Fiat wasn’t an ideal getaway car, but beggars and choosers. She’d followed his every instruction, taking a series of turns. There was no sign of the unmarked garda car. Dolly wasn’t sure if the police had identified the woman’s car as being connected with a fugitive.

The young woman looked straight ahead as she drove, as though loath to acknowledge his existence.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Bonnie.’

Dolly turned in his seat and looked back. Still no sign of the law.

Could be they’re hanging back. After catching up with the Kennedy woman, last thing they need is they get a hostage back, get another one killed in a chase
.

‘You live around here?’

‘Raheny.’

Dolly’s right hand was between his knees, loosely holding his gun. They were in a narrow, quiet street.

Maybe pull in, dump the Fiat here? Assume they twigged this one, take another car?

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a supermarket assistant manager. Look, I—’

‘You’ll be OK. I promise.’

‘Please.’

‘Soon as we’re away from here, I promise.’

Ten feet ahead of the Fiat, a parked car suddenly lurched out from the left, into their path. At first Dolly thought it was some asshole bad driver, then he saw a couple of men with guns coming out of a garden on the right. The woman braked, the Fiat stopped inches from the unmarked police car and Dolly was thrown forward, his head smacking into the Fiat’s windscreen.

The woman screamed.

Dolly’s gun was on the floor, where he’d dropped it. He reached down with one hand, the other wiping blood away from his forehead.

The window beside him smashed inwards and by the time the door was pulled open he was sticking his gun into the young woman’s belly.

‘Stay calm, do nothing stupid.’ The garda’s voice was soft, unexcited. He was wearing scruffy overalls and his hair was long and unwashed. There were two others, one in front of the car, one on the far side, both pointing pistols at Dolly.

The woman was making nervous noises. She was staring down at the gun pushed into the folds of her pale blue blouse.

‘Please,’ she said, high-pitched, teary.

Dolly said, ‘Back off, I’m telling you. I’ll kill her. I’m not kidding.’

The long-haired cop said, ‘End of the road, one way or the other. You choose.’ The muzzle of his gun was a foot away from Dolly’s temple and rock steady.

‘Get back! Move away from the car!’

‘Come on, what’s the point? Stay calm.’

‘You’ll be responsible.’ Dolly looked the long-haired cop in the eye. Both of them were breathing heavily.

The cop said, ‘No one has to die here.’

Dolly just sat there, thinking. He blocked out the woman’s mewling.

Choose
.

They’d hardly shoot him. Too big a chance he’d jerk the trigger, kill the girl.

Choose
.

If he waited too long the cops might decide he was building up to something and end it all by shooting him and taking a chance that the woman would be all right.

Choose
.

He nodded to the long-haired cop, then he slowly sat back and let the cop see that he was taking his finger off the trigger. He held the pistol loosely, making sure it wasn’t pointing at anyone. On his right, the driver’s door opened and the woman was pulled clear. Dolly could hear her crying as one of the cops hustled her away.

The long-haired garda had Dolly’s gun now, stuffing it into a pocket of his overalls.

‘Out. And put your hands on your head.’

Dolly got out of the car slowly, and no one saw the knife until after it came up swinging and slashed the long-haired garda across the cheek. The cop screamed and dropped his gun and before it hit the ground Dolly was behind him, holding the knife to his throat.

Dolly was screaming now at the other two. ‘Guns
down!
Both of you!
Now!
Right
now
or I open him up!’

Nothing happened for a very long time, maybe ten seconds.

Dolly could feel the cop’s blood wet and warm on his knife hand. He could see the other two figuring the angles. Was there enough of Dolly showing from behind their mate, would one shot disable him or would he be fast and strong enough with the knife?

‘It goes one way, I walk away. For now,’ Dolly said. ‘It goes the other way, he dies forever.’

His face was placid, as if the outcome was of little concern.

‘Decide.’

One garda, then the other, pointed his gun away from Dolly, and put it on the roof of the woman’s car. The woman was standing thirty feet away, one hand to her mouth, her legs visibly shaking.

Dolly kept the knife to the cop’s throat until he reached into the cop’s pocket and found his own gun. Then he said, You can move away now.’ The long-haired cop was holding his face together, blood spilling between his fingers. He moved away, keeping his eyes on Dolly.

Dolly said to one of the other gardai, ‘Go look after her.’ The man looked back towards the young woman. He said, ‘OK,’ then backed away.

‘You too,’ Dolly waved his gun at the other cop.

Dolly picked up the long-haired cop’s gun from the roadway, unloaded the shells on to the ground and threw the gun into a nearby garden. He did the same with the two guns on the roof of the Fiat. As he wiped his bloody hands on the upholstery of the driver’s seat he noticed an elderly man standing at the door of a house across the street, watching him, his mouth open.

Dolly turned to the cops and said, ‘Phones and radios.’ When he had smashed three mobiles and one handheld, he fired a shot into a front tyre of the woman’s car. She screamed. One of the gardai held her tight, muttering calming words.

The engine of the unmarked police car was still running. Dolly got behind the wheel.

The long-haired garda sat on the kerb, holding his face together, watching him drive away.

The ERU took their time preparing the entry to the suspect house. By now, there were uniforms all over the place. They evacuated neighbours from several houses at either side and from across the road and from the houses on the street directly behind. They blocked off streets and the ERU marksmen targeted doors and windows. Sergeant Dowd used a loudspeaker, demanding that anyone inside the house or gardens show themselves. The house remained silent, nothing visible at any window or in the shadowed hallway beyond the open front door.

OK, do it the hard way
.

Armoured-up, helmeted, they went in through the front door, slowly, covering one another, adrenalin raging. They used small mirrors on aluminium rods to peer around corners and into rooms. They found Martin Paxton sitting in the kitchen, elbows on the table, fingers linked, his chin resting on his hands. There was a gun ten feet away, on a countertop. He looked up as the first dark, militarised policeman came in. Then he looked away.

He got down on his belly when they told him to and when they had him cuffed and asked him his name he told them. They told him he didn’t have to say anything and they asked if he wanted a solicitor. He didn’t answer. They handed him over to the uniforms, who took him to Santry garda station, where he refused to make a statement or answer any questions.

Brendan Sweetman’s solicitor, Connie Wintour, arrived at Clontarf garda station less than an hour after his client was put in a cell. Wintour, a small fussy man with blotchy skin and an air of weary superiority, talked to the arresting officer, then had a whispered conversation with his client. He then told the gardai that it might be in their interests if he was allowed a full private consultation with Mr Sweetman before the interrogators went to work.

Mr Wintour spent almost an hour with Sweetman and emerged with a handwritten statement, written by Wintour and signed by his client, to be greeted by two detectives from Chief Superintendent Hogg’s team. Mr Wintour told them he wished to read this statement to them in the presence of his client.

Ten minutes later Sweetman was brought in, looking pale and sweaty. His solicitor sat beside him. The two detectives sat across the table, pens poised over their notebooks. Mr Wintour asked for a glass of water. While he waited, he quietly hummed Prokofiev’s ‘Dance of the Knights’. When the water arrived, and he had taken a sip, he began reading.

My name is Brendan Sweetman, of 15 Thornhill Crescent, Coolock, Dublin 5. DOB 16/6/1969. I am married, a father of three, and am in regular employment as a security officer in the city centre. Some weeks ago, I was offered a chance to take part in what I knew to be an illegal undertaking, the hold-up of a cash-and-carry premises in Crumlin. Although I had successfully extricated myself from a lifestyle that involved criminal activity, for which I paid my debt to society, on this occasion I succumbed to temptation due to financial worries about the medical needs of my infant child. It was my belief that this undertaking would be carried out in a considered manner, with no personal injuries inflicted on members of the public. Only at the last minute did I discover the true nature of the project. I tried to withdraw but was subjected to threats from the initiator of the project, Mr Frank Crowe, and I reluctantly went along with it. The others involved with what turned out to be a kidnap, apart from Mr Crowe, were Martin Paxton and a man known to me as ‘Dolly Finn. Certain facilities were provided by the late Adrian Moffat – known, I believe, as Milky. At no stage did I hurt or threaten the victim of this crime, Mrs Angela Kennedy. I took no part in making decisions and at all times acted on orders given under serious threat of physical harm. I was in the house when a violent assault was carried out on Mrs Kennedy by Mr Frank Crowe and I am willing to give evidence to that effect should it be necessary. I took no part in that assault and I wish to express my deepest remorse for my involvement in this unfortunate chain of events.