Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) (16 page)

He was all business now, no howling.

‘Bear!
Good
boy. Good
boy
, Bear!’

The acoustics confused him and he skittered to a halt three landings below. A querulous whine. I advanced down the steps slowly, calling his name, and soon we were reunited in a slobbery blizzard. I pushed him off and led him down to the ground floor, scooped three cans of ground meat into his bowl. He wolfed it down, one quizzical brown eye watching me as I poured fresh water. I knew this because I was keeping a quizzical eye on him. All dogs, when you go back far enough, were wolves once, but the wolfhound, to the best of my knowledge, was the only breed specifically bred to hunt its own ancestor.

Hard to trust any dog that disloyal or stupid, or both.

Once he was finished eating I opened some more cans of meat and dumped them out, left him to it. Back up in the studio,
blowing
hard now, I took a quick rummage through the drawers beneath the mixing desk, one eye cocked for Finn’s note, the other for his binoculars. Not that I had a lot of hope of finding either. He wouldn’t have written a note and then hidden it away, and I only had Tohill’s word for the infrareds being missing.

The place had already been dusted, and my prints were all over it anyway, so I tossed the kitchen too: cupboards, fridge, freezer, bin. No joy. Back into the studio, a sooty residue thick on my fingers. I was running out of time, and the cop’d be
wondering
if I hadn’t fed myself to Bear. I crossed to the window, which had been left open, poked my head out to make sure she was still there. She was strolling in a wide circle, texting on her mobile again, once in a while glancing at the PA building. But all seemed calm. Ben hadn’t even begun to spin doughnuts in his mother’s car, being more intrigued by Finn’s Audi, walking around it, admiring its lines. The water beyond was flat and still,
petrol-blue
opposite the PA, darkening to magenta as it neared the deepwater. Sounds wafted across from Cartron on the faint breeze, the low thrum of traffic, a gull’s screech, children’s
laughter
from the schoolyard on the point.

I checked the window frame to see if I could spot any scratch marks, any pattern in the peeling paint that might suggest he hadn’t actually jumped. That he’d toppled out, made one last despairing grab. There was nothing, but that didn’t mean a lot. Life isn’t like the movies. Things don’t happen in slow-mo, and the reason accidents happen is that by the time they start
happening
, it’s already too late. Lean a little too far when you’re nine stories up …

It hit hard. A low blow that convulsed my gut. Nine stories mightn’t sound like much, not until you’re up there looking down. My head spun, and I closed my eyes against the dizzying drop. That and the possibility of glimpsing the ghostly outline of a body in freefall, arms and legs flailing in a tangled whirl as they sought purchase from the pitiless air.

Except I hadn’t seen Finn fall. He’d dived. Streamlined and arrow-straight.

But it wasn’t his jumping, or diving. It didn’t matter a damn how he’d gone. What sickened me was his going, stepping off knowing what he knew was nestled in Maria’s belly and growing.

I eased back in, slow, no sudden moves. Slid down on the couch, a hot sweat prickling my hair.

Sure, you could say, if you really wanted to exonerate him, that Finn jumped not knowing what he’d be missing. That he was to be pitied for that.

Not me.

Finn Hamilton was dead because he was a selfish prick, period.

I sat there staring blindly and tried to put myself in his place, perched out on that ledge, but it wouldn’t come. Not with
children
’s laughter on the breeze and Ben down below. Not with—

It was tucked away in the corner, partly wedged behind a stack of landscapes. His first ever portrait, maybe. Even from across the room I could tell it was a pretty good likeness. Up close, when I’d tugged it free, and even splashed as it was with red paint, the canvas ragged where it had been slashed with a blade, you could see he’d caught Maria’s wicked smile, the mischief in her eyes.

So you believe he was distraught about her infidelity
…

The sweat dried cold so fast I almost heard it tinkle. It wasn’t exactly a suicide note, but it’d confirm Saoirse Hamilton’s
suspicions
, and her prejudice to boot. Guts bubbling, I took the palette knife and dug in under the frame, sliced the canvas out. There was a moment’s relief when I rolled up the canvas, blotting out the sight of those mischievous eyes, but then the disgust roiled up in a wave, setting my guts a-chunder. I barged through the
bathroom
door with seconds to spare, puke spattering the toilet seat and the cistern, each successive heave yielding less and less, and there wasn’t a lot down there to begin with, just bile and black coffee. Finally I was empty and retching dry.

I knelt there with my elbows on the rim, too weak to rise, heart pounding.

Da-
dum
, da
-dum
, da
-dum
.

That most simple and profound of symphonies, soundtrack to the seven billion or so miracles wandering the only lump of rock and water capable of hosting them for about six trillion miles in any direction.

What a waste.

I washed my face, gargled away the taste of bile, then wadded some handfuls of toilet-paper and wiped down the cistern, the spatters on its seat. Flushed the toilet and went back out into the studio, closed the window, hurrying to leave now, the big room suddenly claustrophobic and closing in, its silence so complete I could hear the crackle of static electricity as the carpet fibres crushed beneath my—

No clanking. No Tom Waits growl.

The toilet hadn’t flushed.

I went back into the bathroom, thinking I’d jammed up the toilet with the wadded papers, but no. Which meant something was interfering with the mechanism inside the cistern.

I was betting on a pair of infrared binoculars.

I lost.

The cistern was empty, unless you counted cistern-like stuff such as water and an overflow tube and the filler valve and a red plastic float. Definitely no binoculars.

Slowly, I depressed the handle, flushing again. Everything worked as it should, the red float descending, the flush valve
rising
.

The water didn’t stir.

I tried again. This time a single bubble rose to the surface.

I rolled up a sleeve, slipped my hand under the mechanism, finger-tipping my way around the base of the cistern. It felt
pretty
rough, for porcelain. Dimpled and slightly spongy.

Aeroboard, yeah. A false bottom.

Underneath, waterproofed in cling-film, a narrow padded envelope.

The chances of it being what I was looking for were slim. Who writes a suicide note and hides it away under a false bottom in a toilet cistern?

The
screak
was the fire-escape door opening. I stuck the package into the waist of my pants, leaving my shirt untucked to cover the damp stain, and braced myself for some of Tohill’s TLC.

But when I popped my head out of the bathroom, it was only the cop.

‘What’re you doing up here?’ she said. ‘The dog’s downstairs.’

‘Sure, yeah. But I got caught short, y’know,’ I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, ‘and the bog downstairs doesn’t work.’

‘So you came all the way up here.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

The faint flush at her cheekbones told me no, that she’d been sneaking off into the weeds behind the PA.

‘Out,’ she said.

‘I should flush first,’ I said, and ducked back into the
bathroom
, fitting the cistern lid back in place under cover of the clanking and growling. Then I hustled out into the studio, patting my stomach to disguise the bulge beneath my shirt. ‘Shouldn’t have had that curry last night,’ I winced. ‘It’ll be a danger to
shipping
, that.’

Her mouth twisted in disgust, and I slipped by her out onto the fire escape. ‘Listen,’ I said as she pulled the door to behind us, ‘I wouldn’t fancy both our chances on this.’ I gave the guardrail a hefty tug, let her see it wobble. ‘Ladies first, though.’

‘I’d say we’ll be okay together,’ she said. ‘You go on ahead.’

She was saying the right things but sounding tight about it, tense. It could’ve been the prospect of descending the fire escape, sure, and it might have been that she’d rang it in, been told to keep me close until back-up arrived.

Both, probably.

‘Fair enough,’ I said, and took off. Two steps at a time, then three.

‘Hey,’ she called, but by then I was two flights below her and moving a lot faster than she was willing to risk. She was still halfway down when I hit the ground at a sprint. I slid into the driver’s seat of the Mini-Cooper, blowing like a surfacing whale. Reversed back, slammed the Mini into first, put the boot down in a tight curve. Glanced in the rear-view.

No Ben.

I jammed on, gravel crunching. Leaned back to see if he’d lain down, was taking a nap.

Heard a horn parp.

Finn’s Audi. Ben frowning. Wondering why I was leaving in such a hurry.

A smart kid, though. I wished his teachers had been there to see him clock it all at once.

Me, barrelling out of the Mini Cooper and brandishing the Adidas hold-all, waving him across to the passenger seat. The cop red-faced as she hurried around the corner of the PA, radio clamped to her ear.

Ben had already scrambled across into the passenger seat when I yanked the Audi’s door open, tossed the hold-all into the back seat.

‘What is it, dad?’

‘Police harassment, son,’ I said, locking the doors and
reaching
under the steering column.

It took about five seconds to get the Audi sparked. By the time I straightened up, the cop was advancing with her arms
outstretched
.

I revved the engine, which stopped her dead, then rolled the Audi back, punched it up into first.

She had her eyes closed, shoulders sagging and the very picture of relief, as we roared past her heading for the gate. Ben flipping her the bird, screaming, ‘Grand fucking theft
auto
, motherfuckers!’

It was on the tip of my tongue to chastise him for his language, his lack of respect, but then I was driving a stolen car with ten grand of dirty cash on board, this for a coke buy, my
twelve-year-old
boy along for the ride. And that was without getting into the whole deal about me being an ex-con for blowing a hole in his father.

I glanced in the rear-view to check if the cop had followed us out and for a split-second caught a glimpse of Gonzo’s shade in the back of the car, the skull-like leer an unspoken question
asking
how much worse off Ben could have been, really, if Gonz had made it all the way down to that gun he’d been diving for and put me away for keeps.

It’s the heartbreak of many a retired and visiting New York cop that the sun does not, in fact, go down on Galway Bay. What actually happens is that the sun declines to a point roughly west of the Cliffs of Moher before disappearing behind the bank of ominous cloud permanently massed above the Aran Islands. You could’ve fried an egg on the stones when we were leaving Sligo, if you’d had an egg. Galway, on the other hand, and as always, was shrouded in a pea-soup drizzle.

We hit Supermacs on Eyre Square. Ben was ravenous, but the aroma of frying meat put me in mind of burnt pork.

‘Gift,’ he said, swooping down on my plate.

It was the first time he’d looked lively since leaving Sligo. He’d slumped in the front seat the whole way, the Gameboy silent in his lap, answering any question with grunts and mumbles. Nodded off not long after passing Knock, when I’d asked if he wanted to divert and see if we couldn’t rustle him up a miracle, only waking when I shook his shoulder in the underground car park off Eyre Square.

Shock, I guessed. It’s one thing, when you’re a kid, to throw snowballs at cop cars, hope they’ll give you a chase. Another thing entirely to be party to a getaway, especially when your old man is the wheelman.

Now he was throwing what he thought were surreptitious glances at a trio of young girls two booths away. ‘Forget about it,’ I said. ‘They only talk Irish in Galway.’

A quick grin. ‘Monty was at the Gaeltacht last summer,’ he said. ‘Said they were all gael-goers.’

‘Oh yeah? What’s a gael-goer?’

‘Y’know.’

‘I’ve heard.’

The familiar pang squeezed my heart as I realised how
quickly
he was growing, how much I’d missed while I was inside. Even now I was still getting it wrong, buying him gifts more
appropriate
for an eight-year-old, starting conversations he’d outgrown by years. He was tall for his age and yet to fill out, the shoulders and chest thin and unformed. His complexion was pale and riddled with acne, the face gaunt and shadowed from sitting too close to flickering screens. He had long lashes over round brown eyes, his mother’s eyes, and he might even have looked effeminate if it weren’t for the strong chin, the abrupt nose.

‘So what about this girlfriend I’m hearing about?’ I said. ‘She a gael-goer too?’

A faint reddening joined up the acne dots one by one. ‘What girlfriend?’

‘There’s more than one?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s no girlfriend, dad.’

A doleful note in among all the defiance that made me ache for him. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘kidding aside, we need to talk.’

He made a point of sucking hard on the dregs of his Pepsi. ‘’Bout what?’

‘About school, what d’you think? Your mother and I—’

He rolled his eyes. I paused. We stared.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘no bullshit. So here’s the question. You want to turn out like me, some fuckwit drives a cab?’

He was genuinely flummoxed, albeit intrigued by the foul
language
. ‘What’s wrong with driving a taxi?’

‘There’s nothing
wrong
with it. But you work long hours for fuck-all money. Sometimes you have to deal with drunken
assholes
. And some of them can be dangerous.’