Read The Midnight Choir Online
Authors: Gene Kerrigan
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural
The Midnight Choir (37 page)
Fifty-fifty.
The Dobbs’s place or Willie’s.
Tomorrow, if it was Christopher’s turn to visit Willie at his home, that was where to do it. If it was the other way around, fuck that, the whole thing would have to wait a week.
I won’t make it, not another week.
Has to be tomorrow.
Turn up at Willie’s place, all concerned.
Christopher’s granny, his dad’s mother, she had an accident – fell down the stairs—
Jesus, that wouldn’t work. Something a bit more—
His granny died this morning, suddenly, poor woman.
Have to take him home, sit him down, break it to him—
And if they ask—
Fuck that. She’s dead – he’s my son, I decide—
It’ll work.
Dixie made a coffee and called Shelley’s mobile.
Dixie could tell immediately Shelley was on edge. A clipped ‘Yes?’
‘You OK?’
‘Fine.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Went to see Robbie.’
‘Shelley—’
‘He wants me out of the flat by the end of the week.’
‘What?’
‘All business. Sorry, love, client needs the place, money up front.’
‘He can’t do that.’
‘What am I going to do?’
Dixie wanted to tell Shelley that she’d help out.
No.
Mention the thousand she’d got from Synnott and Shelley would want to know everything. Anyway, even if she gave Shelley a couple of hundred so what? It wouldn’t do anything for Shelley’s problems. And it wasn’t like a thousand was such a big deal – once Dixie got Christopher across to England there were all kinds of emergencies could crop up and she’d need every cent.
‘Jesus, Shelley—’
‘I’ve a good mind to rat him out. The stuff he shifts, I know the where and the when. Just to see the look on his face.’
Dixie said, ‘What’re you going to do?’
‘Come on down, I’m in Dwyer’s – if ever there was a night for getting locked – come on.’ Dixie wasn’t used to the pleading tone in her friend’s voice.
‘Shelley, come home, we’ll get in a couple of bottles, some food.’
Shelley said no, she couldn’t stand being cooped up in the flat. ‘Listen, Dix, what about you? I mean, this affects you – I’m really sorry. Will you be able to go back to your own place by the weekend?’
Dixie realised that she’d been picking at the corner of the wood-effect kitchen table. An inch or so of the side strip had started to peel away.
This isn’t right. There must be something I can do for her.
Not now.
‘I’ll be OK, don’t worry.’
Christopher comes first.
‘I’m really sorry, Dix.’
When the call was over, Dixie pushed the strip back tight against the edge of the table. When she took her finger away it stayed in place.
Christopher, first.
Then, whatever—
45
Paddy Robert Garcia Murphy’s face hurt. The jeweller was trying so hard to appear relaxed, an unconvincing smile fixed in place, that his facial muscles felt unpleasantly rigid. Across the restaurant his wife stood beside another table, leaning down, deep in conversation with a couple whose names Garcia didn’t know. He realised that his tolerant smile had weakened to the point of vanishing, so he made an effort to restore it. He didn’t want it to look as though her bad manners bothered him.
She was always doing this. Happening across friends and acquaintances, people he didn’t know, and a nod or a hello wasn’t enough, she had to yap endlessly. Leaving him hanging around like a spare prick at a wedding. It always annoyed him, but this evening he had expected more from her. Four days had passed since the robbery of his jewellery shop and Robert Garcia was feeling vulnerable.
The least she could do. Time like this. Bit of support.
He hadn’t made contact with any of the owners of the jewellery taken from the floor safe. If they got the wrong idea—
Then, this morning, a phone call at home, at dawn. No name, but the voice was unmistakable.
‘No problems, I hope?’
‘What?’
‘I saw from the newspapers, you had a wee spot of bother on Friday. Everything’s OK, I hope?’
‘Of course – yes – that was – look, I don’t think we should—’
‘Long as everything’s hunky-dory.’
‘Sure, no problem.’
They’d find out. The stuff was supposed to be on its way to Leeds before the end of the week. When that didn’t happen—
From across the restaurant, the sound of his wife’s laughter. Robert Garcia’s smile evaporated. He no longer cared about concealing his annoyance.
He got up and headed towards the Gents’. His wife didn’t notice.
He’d been standing at a urinal for a few seconds when the door opened behind him. A man came and stood two urinals away to his right.
‘We meet again.’
Robert Garcia looked at the man. Grey suit, bright blue tie, short dark hair. Average height, average build, nothing familiar about the face. The man was smiling at Robert Garcia.
A customer, perhaps. They spend a couple of hundred and they expect you to remember them for ever.
‘Hi,’ the jeweller said.
As Garcia faced front again something clicked in his mind.
He’s not pissing.
Garcia turned his head sharply and saw that the man was just standing there, his hands nowhere near his crotch. Garcia struggled to stop pissing, felt himself out of control for a moment, then he was pulling his zip up, stepping back from the urinal, and the man was also stepping back, making himself an obstacle between the jeweller and the door.
The man wasn’t smiling now.
The jeweller said, ‘Look – I didn’t – it wasn’t—’
Lying in bed after the phone call this morning he’d tried to work out what he’d say if he had to explain losing the special merchandise. Now he felt like his head was full of disconnected words.
‘I swear—’
The man lifted his left hand and held his forefinger horizontally in front of his face.
Robert Garcia stopped trying to speak.
The man placed his finger in the space between his nose and his upper lip. Then he smiled.
Moustache—
The man said, ‘You don’t recognise me without a gun in my hand, right?’
Robert Garcia made an involuntary noise.
Joshua Boyce lowered his hand. ‘It’s OK, I just want a chat.’
The jeweller said, ‘You bastard.’
‘You’re a businessman, there’s business to be done.’
‘Not with you.’
‘I’ve had my own problems, these past few days.’
‘You shot a man, you bastard. He died.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like that.’
The jeweller’s voice was suddenly harsh. ‘You’ve
ruined
me.’
ruined
me.’
After being released from police custody, Joshua Boyce had made three phone calls and confirmed what he suspected – the fence he’d lined up to buy the stolen jewellery was opting out. Two others asked if the jewellery was from the robbery where a security guard had croaked and when he admitted that it was they weren’t interested.
One option.
‘I didn’t come here for a conversation. The jewellery from the floor safe, I know you can’t report it missing. You’ve got to take the loss.’
The jeweller, despite his anger, felt a tiny flare of hope.
‘I’ll sell you the jewellery. One hundred thousand.’
The jeweller just stood there.
The merchandise from the floor safe was worth a quarter of a million.
Jesus. This could—
Robert Garcia said, ‘Fifty thousand.’
The robber shook his head and Robert Garcia knew he meant it. The robber said, ‘I can bury it, come back to it ten years from now.’
It would take a lot of juggling to raise a hundred grand, and the kind of debt he was in, this was just digging himself deeper into the hole.
Robert Garcia decided there were worse holes to be in.
‘How do we do this?’
The robber said, ‘I know where you live.’
‘How do we do it?’
The robber held up a car key. ‘I give you this, tell you where the car’s parked. The jewellery’s in the boot, you take it and leave the hundred grand in its place.’
Garcia was nodding.
The robber said, ‘If I go there and the money isn’t in the boot, or if the police are waiting, you won’t live more than an hour.’
‘I wouldn’t—’
‘Do we have a deal?’
‘It’ll take me a couple of days to get the cash.’
The robber moved his hand and the key was arcing through the air. Robert Garcia caught it. The robber said, ‘I’ll be in touch, let you know where to go.’
The robber had the door open when the jeweller said, ‘Just one thing.’
Apart from his assistant, no one had known about the safe in the floor except the people who’d put it in and a couple of clients who’d insisted on knowing where their special merchandise would be stored. It wasn’t that he could do anything if he found the culprit but he wanted to know.
‘How did you find out about the safe in the floor?’
The robber cocked a finger at the jeweller and said, ‘What you need to worry about is what else I know, and how you’re going to keep me sweet.’
When the robber left, Robert Garcia took a while to get his breathing back to normal. He felt a jolt in his chest when the toilet door swung open abruptly, but it was just a customer heading for a cubicle.
When he got back to his table his wife was sitting there, her irritation obvious. ‘Where the bloody hell have you been all this time?’
46
The message from Chief Superintendent Hogg was delivered politely by a young detective garda named Mary something. The Chief Superintendent understood that Detective Inspector Synnott would not be attending the daily conference on the jewellery robbery, but he would be grateful if Mr Synnott would make himself available at Macken Road station in case the investigation team needed clarification on any aspect of the investigation.
Now, over an hour after the start of the conference, Synnott was still sitting at his desk, with no word from Hogg. It was getting dark outside. He decided that if he heard no word by eight-thirty he was going home.
It’s not as though I owe them anything.
Synnott sat at his desk and leafed through a case file he’d been handling. An assault in which three teenagers from a prominent private college beat unconscious a pupil from a rival school and left him with a collapsed lung and a permanently droopy eyelid. The case was unlikely to come to court. Pay-offs and promises, private arrangements and class solidarity. Synnott had been reluctant to let it go. Now, he closed the file and threw it onto his desk.
Sweeping up the shit in the crazy house.
Sweeping up the shit in the crazy house.
‘Thanks for coming in, sorry to keep you waiting.’
Detective Chief Superintendent Malachy Hogg was standing inside the door of the detectives’ room, facing Synnott.
‘No bother.’
Hogg came forward, pulled a chair from another desk and sat a couple of yards away. His voice was soft. ‘Sorry to hear you’ve strayed into a spot of bother.’
Synnott nodded. ‘I think I’ll be OK.’ Over the hours since the confrontation with Colin O’Keefe, Synnott had picked away at the details of his problem. If everything held together, the Swanson Avenue matter would remain a stalemate, a debatable clash of confessions – Ned Callaghan’s suicidal guilt versus the suicidal killer from Galway. No other case was likely to come unglued. It was a pain in the arse to be removed from the jewellery robbery case. It was unfortunate that Joshua Boyce would dance free and Max Hapgood would slither out of a rape charge, but Synnott’s anger had dimmed. He’d lost the promotion to Europol and he’d never again have the confidence of Colin O’Keefe, but to hell with that. No one could prove he’d done anything wrong.
Give it time.
Give it time.
Hogg said, ‘It’s a tough business, and you’re not the first policeman to find himself tripping over an ambiguous moral line.’ Hogg leaned closer. ‘I hope it works out for you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Hogg said, ‘I have to ask you about this tout. I’m told she gave you a statement that challenged the alibi of the suspect in the jewellery shop robbery.’
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