The Rage (7 page)

‘Are we OK?’ he said, before he left the house that night.

‘We’ll never be OK.’

‘I’ll never be forgiven?’

She looked up. ‘I needed someone to hold me tonight. And I needed a fuck, without the usual hassle. And I still like you, still want you. And, no, you’ll never be forgiven.’

Since then – one or the other making the call or sending a text – they occasionally gave each other comfort, usually at Holly’s house in Killester, sometimes at Tidey’s apartment in Glasnevin. He accepted her rule that he never stay overnight, he never tried to make things more than they were, knowing she would tell him something like she’d told him that first night. ‘We had what I thought we wanted, and it wasn’t enough for you.’

Holly’s squeamishness about the kids discovering the semi-regular relationship hadn’t mattered too much. Dylan was in London, working for button money in a sound studio, still trying to re-form the band that was going to leave U2 in its dust. Grace was office manager with a firm of architects and had a flat on the Southside. Then, almost overnight, no one wanted to build anything in Dublin, and Grace was made redundant and moved back with her mother to save on rent.

Tonight, as she opened the front door to let him out, Holly leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and Tidey looked her in the eye. She gave him an off-the-peg smile. Nothing had changed.

Tidey smiled back and nodded. He heard the door close as he moved down the path towards the front gate.

It is what it is
.

When his mobile rang, Vincent Naylor had just come back to bed from taking a leak. Still mostly asleep, wobbly, not yet on top of his drinking after eight months’ forced abstinence, it took him a moment to recall where he’d left the phone.

He rolled off the bed, looking for the jeans he’d thrown somewhere. Moving in the darkness, the jaunty ringtone relentless, he glanced back at the bed where Michelle was still asleep. As he picked up and discarded items of clothing, one foot touched something on the floor near the end of the bed and he bent and found the jeans. When he picked them up the mobile fell out of a pocket. The volume of the ringtone shot up – no way that wouldn’t wake her. Vincent picked up the phone, looked at the screen and in the second before his thumb jabbed at the answer button he noticed two things – the screen said it was 3.27 and it announced the caller as
Unknown
.

‘Yeah?’

‘Vincent Naylor?’

He kept his voice low. ‘Who wants to know?’ He moved across the room, out and along the landing to the bathroom.

‘Vincent?’

‘Who is this?’

‘Albert Bannerman.’

‘Albert? Long time, mate. And a funny time to be calling.’

‘Vincent, it’s about Noel. He’s here, my place.’

Vincent was suddenly aware of the amount he’d drunk throughout the evening. After the meal, a string of Southern Comforts through the Tommy Tiernan DVD and beyond. When his friends left, Vincent took a taxi from Noel’s house to Michelle’s place, and he’d had a couple of beers here.

Albert Bannerman?

Vincent used to do a little work for Bannerman – back in his teens. They never knocked heads.

‘What’s happened?’ Vincent kept his voice calm. When the reunion broke up at Noel’s house, Vincent assumed his brother was ready for nothing more than sleeping it off.

‘He’s all right, I’ve got him locked up, he’s OK.’

‘What the fuck do you mean, you’ve got him locked up?’

‘Vincent, he came here with a knife.’

Fuck
.

‘What did – how is he now?’

‘He’s OK. I swear. Thing is, he’s noisy. Best thing, you come here – I can’t talk him out of this, you’ve got to do that. I’ll explain what happened when you get here.’

‘You’re at home?’

‘Same place as ever. I’ll be waiting at the front door.’

Michelle’s voice, from the landing. ‘Vincent, you OK?’

‘I’ll be there as fast as I can,’ he told Bannerman.

Michelle looked worried when he came out of the bathroom. He told her it was just a family thing, he had to go collect Noel.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘I’ll manage. Go back to bed, love.’

In prison, Vincent had planned to spend his first month of freedom shagging a new woman every day of the week and two on Sundays. The first night out, at a party in Noel’s house, he’d met Michelle Flood. In Mountjoy, Vincent had hung out with her older brother, Damien, who was doing four years for aggravated assault. She had the looks, but there was a lot more going on underneath the gloss. They’d been together all but one night since he’d got out. It felt like he knew her better than people he’d known for years.

‘What’s happened to Noel?’ she said.

‘I don’t know it all yet. Tell you in the morning.’

He wasn’t up to driving. Get pulled in by a bluebottle, set the breathalyser on fire. They’d love that.

Kevin Broe or Liam Delaney?

He put on the bedroom light and began pulling on his clothes. When he made up his mind he tapped the phone and waited a long while. When Liam answered, Vincent said, ‘Are you sober?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘Sober? I need a lift, some backup.’

‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

‘You know Michelle’s place?’

‘No.’

Vincent gave him the address. ‘Call me when you get to the bottom of the street. Soon as you can. And bring stuff.’

‘How many?’

‘One for you, one for me.’

Liam Delaney said, ‘I’ll keep the Israeli automatic, if that’s OK.’ They were sitting in his Toyota Camry down the street from Michelle’s house. Liam Delaney knew more than anyone needed to know about guns, and was seldom done talking about it. ‘Nine mil, eighteen rounds in one magazine,’ he said. ‘The Israelis, they like a lot of firepower.’ Liam used a finger to remove a small oil mark on the side of the gun barrel. Thin and small, he had the intense expression of someone in a permanent hurry.

Vincent Naylor took the other gun, a revolver with a shiny steel body, a short barrel and a black rubber grip. ‘Twenty-two calibre, eight rounds,’ Liam said. Vincent didn’t care what he used, as long as it made a bang and punched a hole in whatever he was pointing at. He’d carried a gun on a job not much more than half a dozen times. Just twice he used a gun on someone. First time, he took care of a smart-arse who was making trouble for Mickey Kavanagh, a player who gave Vincent occasional work. Just walked up behind the guy, gave it to him behind the left ear, one shot. Vincent was walking away before the loser hit the ground.

Mickey was generous, but the money was neither here nor there. What counted was that Vincent proved to himself he could do it. It was a line – once you crossed it for the first time it brought you out of the herd. It marked you as someone who made moves, not just a skull who lived in someone else’s world. The thing that surprised Vincent most was that it wasn’t such a big deal. He didn’t feel any urge to do it again, but he knew he could if he needed to.

The other shooting was a reputation thing – a gobshite who was bad-mouthing Vincent to people who took that kind of thing seriously. The surgeons got most of the bullet fragments out of his kneecap and now he walked with a limp you’d hardly notice. Word gets around, people know you’re not to be fucked with, you don’t have to prove it too often.

‘Could be Bannerman’s setting me up,’ Vincent told Liam.

‘Did you ring Noel?’

‘No answer.’

‘What’s Noel doing, screwing around with someone like Bannerman?’

‘No idea – but that could be bullshit. Could be Bannerman picked him up somewhere, took him there – as bait.’

‘Why?’

‘How the fuck do I know? I stepped on someone’s toes, maybe. Could be he’s doing someone a favour. Could be that – or Noel really did turn up on his doorstep with a knife, could be that too.’

‘Why would Noel—’

‘You coming with me?’

‘Of course I’m fucking coming with you.’ Liam looked down at his Israeli automatic. ‘How do you want to do this?’

Liam Delaney drove the Camry to the Glencara estate and parked two streets away from Albert Bannerman’s house. When they got out of the car, Liam took the far side of the street, trailing Vincent Naylor by about ten yards.

‘Tactics,’ Vincent explained. ‘If we stay together, we make a handy target. This way – you’ve got my back covered, and anyone comes for you they’re wide open to me.’

Liam thought this was a load of bollocks, but he didn’t say so. Vincent was like that sometimes, like when he said it didn’t matter what gun you took on a job. For Liam, a gun was a tool, and you don’t take a wrench to a carpentry job. Vincent not bothering to know that kind of stuff, that was one of his weaknesses. But he made up for it in other departments. Vincent had guts, he was loyal. They’d known each other since their teens – when they both worked for Mickey Kavanagh. They’d worked together on small jobs of their own and Liam reckoned it was the right time for Vincent to take things to another level. The Protectica job would do that. Vincent had the head for that kind of thing – and the balls to take it by the scruff.

Always assuming they walked away from this Bannerman shit.

Liam reckoned if this was a set-up, if someone wanted Vincent popped, it wouldn’t happen close to Bannerman’s home – Albert wouldn’t want to piss on his own doorstep. Most likely, it would happen afterwards. They’d get some bullshit from Bannerman, then it would happen on the way back to the car. Or not.

There was an edge to this kind of thing – not like doing a job, where it’s all about preparing and about following the plan. Tonight, Liam found himself stepping lightly, arms loose, every nerve alert. He was surprised by the feeling, by the lack of fear – it was a kind of high.

Albert Bannerman’s place was a corner house, at the end of the street. It was pretty much the average corner house on a council-built estate, except it had a large extension attached to the side. The council had sold off the houses decades back and most of them were tarted up one way or another, but Albert Bannerman’s had almost doubled in size.

Alone among the houses on the street, all the visible windows were alive with light. Bannerman himself was standing at the open front door, wearing a leather jacket, his hands in his pockets.

Bannerman was in his late thirties. He’d shaved his head as soon as his hair began to thin. Along with his thick neck and barrel chest, it gave him the look of a man who wasn’t often told things he didn’t want to hear. He ran a solid operation – stolen cars and smuggled cigarettes, mostly, with a sideline in protection. He and a friend from Dundrum were the money behind four Southside brothels.

Liam Delaney stopped across the road, stood there with the Israeli automatic in his hand, held down by his thigh. Vincent stopped a couple of yards from Bannerman’s garden gate. Stood there with his gun hand in his pocket.

Albert took his hands out of his pockets and walked slowly down the front path, to stand by the metal gate.

‘I’ve got two of my people inside – no weapons, none of us. Noel’s around the back, in the garden shed. He’s stopped making a racket.’ Bannerman jerked his head, indicating the house behind him, ‘Let’s talk inside.’

Vincent Naylor stood where he was. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Like I said, Noel’s quietened down. Could be, though, that some of the neighbours got upset about the noise – could be someone called the cops.’

‘You locked up my brother.’

‘All I’m saying – it’s possible the cops will send a car to nose around. You or your mate, you don’t want to be caught out here carrying something you shouldn’t be.’

‘I’m going nowhere until—’

In the hallway of the house, a woman appeared. She was wearing a thick white dressing gown. Her arms folded across her chest, dyed blonde hair, a smug expression on her thin face. Liam Delaney didn’t recognise her.

‘Shit,’ Vincent Naylor said.

Albert Bannerman looked behind him and said, ‘Get the fuck inside.’ The woman stood there, chewing gum. Bannerman turned back to Vincent and said, ‘I didn’t know.’

Vincent turned and crossed the road to Liam Delaney. He handed Liam the revolver and said, ‘Wait for me in the car.’

‘You sure?’

‘It’s OK.’

As Liam turned away, Bannerman was leading Vincent into the house.

‘She’s been with me about six weeks, now,’ Albert Bannerman said. ‘I’d no idea – not that I would have done anything different. I mean, you meet a woman, these things happen, and people get over it. They broke up – how long since?’

They were standing alone in Bannerman’s kitchen.

‘What happened tonight?’

‘We were at a wedding, this afternoon, Lorraine and me. Friend of mine got hitched, down in Kildare. Ended up, on the way home – we dropped into Cisco’s. You know it?’

‘Noel hangs out there.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘She did.’

‘It wasn’t—’