Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) (29 page)
Read Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) Online
Authors: Declan Burke
I killed the call. ‘Fuck.’
‘What is it?’ Grainne said.
‘That car behind us, I thought it was the cops. Jesus, watch the
road
.’
She clipped a pothole, swerved onto the verge, got us back on track. ‘So who is it?’
‘Dunno.’ I dipped into the green cotton bag, came up with the .38 and the paper-wrapped shells. ‘But they’re not out here for the good of their health. Ever seen
Rebel Without a Cause
?’
‘Harry …’
‘Before your time. Jimmy Dean. Gets in a chicky-run and dives out of the car before it goes over a cliff.’
‘You’re diving out of the
car
?’
‘You just watch me go.’ I slotted home the fifth shell, clicked the cylinder closed. Checked the safety was on. Glanced over at her. She had one eye on the road, one on the green cotton bag.
‘Grainne,’ I said, ‘listen to me now. That fucking laptop’s more trouble than it’s worth. I’m serious. Best thing you can do is take it home, hand it over. You’ll be better off in the long run.’
‘You mean,
you’ll
be better off. Twenty thousand euro’s worth.’
Which was true, in theory at least. And she knew she had me. Diving out of a moving car is one thing. Doing it with a laptop in tow, and expecting us both to survive intact, was another thing entirely.
‘Make me an offer,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Cut me in. Twenty grand from the trust fund. I’ll help you track down this guy in Cyprus, we’ll screw Saoirse.’
We were on a straight section, the Phaeton a couple of
hundred
yards behind, coming up on a bend that cut a sharp left beyond a small copse. I tucked the .38 into my belt at the small of my back.
‘I should probably remind you,’ I said, ‘that yesterday I got rammed off the road, my kid ended up in a coma. So this would be a good time to—’
‘Deal, yeah, it’s a deal. Okay?’
‘Deadly. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Head back to Herb’s, she’ll never find you there. Right, this next bend’ll do it. Ready?’
She nodded again. We hit the bend past the copse and she jammed on, tyres skidding. I threw open the door and tumbled out, turning my shoulder so the impact caught me high on my back and bounced me sprawling into the long grass on the verge. A blackthorn branch ripped into my right arm, tore a gash as I pulled away reaching for the gun.
By the time the Phaeton rolled around the bend, I was up on one knee, shoulder burning from the road burn, both hands braced on the butt of the .38.
The Phaeton jerked, then slowed, eased to a halt.
A one-man job. I stood up, twitched the gun.
Slowly, very slowly, he got out and stepped away from the car and stood in the middle of the road. Arms cocked like a
gunfighter
itching to draw.
It wasn’t intentional. When you’re built like an upside-down cello, your arms just tend to hang that way.
‘You looking for me, Jimmy?’ I said.
The eyes were bright, his features impassive. It wasn’t the first time he’d been at the business end of a gun barrel.
‘Just passing on a message,’ he said.
‘You couldn’t have rung?’
‘I rang. The cops answered.’
‘What’s the message?’
‘Is that even loaded?’
‘What’s the message, Jimmy?’
‘Gillick wants a chat.’
‘What about?’
He up-jutted his chin in the direction of the long-gone Mini Cooper. ‘Her, mainly.’
‘Who, Grainne? What about her?’
‘She has the laptop, right?’
‘Why’s Gillick wanting to talk about Grainne?’
‘At a guess,’ he said, ‘I’d say it’s because she can make him money.’ He shrugged. ‘But that’s just a guess.’
I asked Jimmy if he’d mind wearing his peaked cap while he drove me back to Herb’s, and he asked me if I wanted to lose my other eye, and after that we motored along in a companionable silence until Jimmy got us off the country roads and headed back to town.
‘So where’d you pick us up?’ I said.
‘Finn’s place.’
‘You were there?’
He jabbed a thumb at his eye. ‘A patch,’ he said, ‘can fuck with what you can see. You think you’re scoping everything but, y’know …’
He was being generous. ‘How’d you know I’d be at Finn’s?’
‘Gillick reckoned you’d turn up there sooner or later.’
‘He knew about the laptop.’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘So why didn’t you brace me there?’
He tapped ash out the window. ‘Because I rang Gillick when you came out, told him the score.’
‘That Maria was with me.’ He inclined his head. ‘And he told you not to jump in, just see how it played.’
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘Just so we’re clear,’ I said. ‘I was at Finn’s picking up the
laptop
for Saoirse Hamilton. Gillick knows this, right?’
‘He knows.’
‘Does he know she’s paying twenty grand for it?’
He nodded. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Get him on the blower.’
‘What for?’
‘I want to be sure, if he wants the laptop, he has twenty grand cash lying around.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘I’m a worrier, Jimmy. Get him on the phone.’
‘Don’t sweat it. He’s Saoirse Hamilton’s bagman. You think she has twenty gees stashed under the mattress?’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.’
A flash of white teeth. ‘I wouldn’t mind a tumble in that
mattress
,’ he said, ‘just to find out.’
We came over the hill at Cartron and down onto Hughes Bridge. The traffic a trickle, but steady. Across the bridge and up the bypass, cutting right at the train station and out along Strandhill Road. Jimmy cleared his throat. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘that’s hard lines about your kid. How’s he doing?’
‘Alright, yeah. Stable.’
‘Is he a fighter?’
‘He’ll be grand, Jimmy. He takes after his mother.’
A sympathetic grimace. ‘I’ll light him a candle,’ he said, ‘first chance I get.’
‘Appreciate the thought.’
The traffic was slower on Strandhill Road for some reason, the cars dawdling along like a fat kid early for school, but I was still trying to picture Jimmy hulking over a bank of flickering candles in the back of a church when he pulled in at Herb’s gate. I took his phone, rang Herb, told him I was outside. The gates swung open and in we went.
Herb cracked open the front door, had a quick scan left and right, ushered us in and through to the living room. Maria, still bedraggled, still luminous, was slumped in an armchair facing the TV. Grainne was perched in the corner of the couch, her eyes vacant orbs, as far from Maria as it was possible to get without actually hanging herself out the window. The green cotton bag tucked between her and a cushion. The mood was tense, possibly because Herb was holding a gun, and maybe because they’d been wondering, having dived out of the Mini Cooper, if I’d ever
resurface
. And maybe it was because the TV was tuned to a
Coronation Street
repeat, mousey Sally having yet another affair. It really is the quiet ones you have to watch.
As for Herb’s gun, I presumed that was because he was
half-expecting
a frontal assault from the McConnells. It looked square and blocky, like a cut-down SIG.
‘Where’d you get that?’ I said.
‘Toto,’ he shrugged. ‘Where else?’
‘Toto gave you a rod?’
‘He
sold
me a rod, back when we hooked up.’
Jimmy was more intrigued than put out. ‘Toto McConnell?’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ Herb said. ‘You know him?’
‘You could say that, yeah.’ He sounded cautiously impressed, as if Herb had announced he kept a tiger in his kitchen, was thinking about letting it out for its afternoon romp. He made a point of glancing at his watch. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’d love to stay and shoot the shit, but, y’know …’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Maria? Hey, Maria?’
It took her a few moments to tear her gaze away from the TV. She’d been crying, and had reapplied the mascara with what must have been a shaky hand, leaving her looking a lot like a sultry Sioux racoon. Whether the look was intended as camouflage or war paint was hard to say. ‘You want to take Grainne through to the kitchen?’ I said.
Her eyes seemed to swim a backstroke as she focused on me.
‘What?’ she said.
‘We’ve had a wee, ah, chillum,’ Herb said. ‘Just to take things down a notch.’
‘Ah.’ That would explain Grainne’s dislocated stare. She was out to lunch, in Rio. ‘Alright, let’s take it next door.’
We trooped through to the kitchen, Herb gesturing for Jimmy to go first, me bringing up the rear. Jimmy perched a butt-cheek on the kitchen table, said, ‘So where’s this laptop?’
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. ‘Grainne has it, it’s in that green bag on the couch. But let’s be cool, alright? We try to take it away from her, she’s liable to start—’
Herb’s phone went off, a tinny ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ pealing through the kitchen. He held up hand, apologising, as he slipped it from his pocket, answering as he went out into the hallway, closing the door.
Jimmy tapped his watch. ‘Time’s money, Rigby.’
‘Fucking everything’s money lately, Jimmy. I just want to be sure—’
‘And that’s twice now,’ he nodded at the closed door, ‘I’ve had rods pulled on me in the last hour.’
‘He didn’t
pull
any fucking rod, for fuck’s sake. He had it out when you came in.’
‘I’m just saying, I get nervous around guns when it’s other people have them.’
‘You want mine?’ I hauled the .38 out of my belt, held it up. ‘Will that make you feel any—’
The door opened. Herb stood there, SIG in one hand, phone in the other. He seemed to have lost weight in the few seconds he’d been gone, most of it around the shoulders and chest. His eyes bright and dead as they found mine.
‘Fuck, Harry …’ he croaked.
And I knew.
It hit like cold lightning. I buckled at the knees and staggered back, reaching for the countertop. For a split second I thought I was having a heart-attack, couldn’t breathe past the pain, the
tectonic
plates grinding in my chest.
From a very great distance I heard Herb say, ‘Harry, I’m so fucking sorry, man, Jesus,’ but faintly, very faintly, from the heart of some roaring storm. The world gone black, shot through with blood.
Then came a single thought, a question, piercing:
Would Ben have died had Gonz killed me?
The storm dropped away. The clarity was surreal. Herb, frozen in place, a helpless expression etched on his face. His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear a word.
My lips felt numb, throat locked shut. But from somewhere I heard, ‘Herb? It’s Ben?’
He nodded.
‘He’s dead?’
Herb closed his eyes. ‘That was Dee. She said,’ he swallowed hard, ‘that you might want to know.’
The tectonic plates began to grind again, some deep Antarctic fault line I’d never even suspected was there. Beneath, a
poisonous
lava bubbling up a vicious brew. A cold and savage rage.
It was just Jimmy’s bad luck he was there.
Bad luck that he felt moved to say, ‘Hard lines, Rigby. Sorry for your troubles.’
Bad luck he’d offered to light a candle for Ben.
‘How’d you know, Jimmy?’
‘What?’
‘About Ben being in hospital. How’d you know?’
He came up off the table with his hands out, palms facing me. Watching my eyes, the .38. ‘Wait a minute, Rigby. You’re not thinking—’
‘I
wasn’t
thinking, Jimmy. Too fucking worried about laptops and twenty fucking grands to think straight. I’m thinking now, though. So how’d you know?’
‘Back the fuck off,’ he said, and it was only then I realised I was moving. Something flickered in my peripheral vision, Herb
raising
the SIG, and it was Jimmy’s bad luck, again, that he let
himself
be distracted. By the time he came back to me I’d reversed the .38, was smashing its butt into the bridge of his nose. A squelchy crunch. He went down hard, as only big men can, bringing a chair with him, tangling himself up. I stomped his face, once, twice, blood spraying up my shins. Bone cracking. He tried to scream but it came out a choked gurgle, and I reared back and booted him up under the chin. His head flopped back, leaving his throat open, so I got myself a good grip on the table for leverage and stomped down on his Adam’s apple.
If Herb hadn’t pawed at my shoulder, dragged me off-balance, I’d have killed him where he lay. My heel connected too high, glanced off his chin and punched into his cheekbone. His face seemed to billow, then flatten out slow.
Herb was screaming something in my ear. It took a couple of seconds to work it out, and then I realised he was saying, ‘Not here, Harry, not fucking
here
.’
I stepped out across Jimmy, turned and hunkered down. Reversed the .38 again, clicked the safety off. His breathing coming now in ragged bubbles.
‘Jimmy,’ I said, ‘you have three fucking seconds before I blow your fucking head off. How did you know?’
*
His face looked a lot like a melting balloon. Nose busted, a
cheekbone
crushed, the mouth a raw hole, both eyes swollen shut. So I guess he was literally swearing blind, in words that came slow and gloopy, when he mumbled he knew nothing about running the Audi off the road. That he’d heard about Ben from Gillick.
How Gillick knew he couldn’t say, even after I cocked the .38 and ground the muzzle into his forehead.
‘He’s not worth it, Harry,’ Herb said, and he was right, but not in the way he thought.
Herb was trying to feed me the old line. How blowing a hole in Jimmy wouldn’t bring Ben back. That revenge might be sweet, but knee-jerk retribution wasn’t worth twenty years in a cell.
Sound advice, at least where Jimmy was concerned.
Gillick, though. Depending on how he’d heard about Ben, Gillick would be a different matter entirely.
I de-cocked the .38, put it away. Herb went to get a roll of masking tape. We got Jimmy nicely trussed, ankles and wrists, then Herb pulled the Phaeton around to the kitchen door. Jimmy wasn’t exactly a dead weight but he was a big man, no easy job to cram into the boot. He lay there half-blind and snuffling.
