The Scrapper (14 page)

It had been a simple mistake. The two plainclothes detectives were furious. They were actually giving the Morgan brothers more credit for losing the tail than they deserved. All it took to break the connection between the Morgans and the detectives following them was a simple cigarette and a stroke of luck. The shopping centre was doing a brisk trade for a bank holiday. The detectives didn’t mind this as it made it easier to stay out of sight. Unaware that they were being followed, the brothers sat on a bench beside the fountain in the centre of the mall. As usual, Bubbles put his hand in his pocket and extracted a packet of cigarettes. He lit one. The detectives watched as a security man approached Bubbles and indicated to him a No Smoking sign.

‘Well, where am I supposed to smoke?’ Bubbles asked.

‘You could smoke in the café, or just outside the Gents toilet. If you go through that door and down the hallway you’ll find it.’ The security man was very pleasant. Grumpily the two brothers made their way through the door marked ‘Gents Toilet’ and stood in the hallway outside the main toilets.

The detectives looked at each other. One followed while the other waited. When the first detective went through the first two doors he saw the Morgan brothers standing in the hallway beside a large ashtray. He walked straight past the men into the Gents. After a couple of minutes he washed his hands and walked to the blow dryer rubbing his hands together while looking at the chrome
nozzle in which he could see the reflection of Teddy and Bubbles still standing outside the door. When he walked back out into the hallway Teddy was halfway through his cigarette. Again the man simply strolled past them. Back in the mall he explained to his partner that the Morgans were just having a smoke, so the two sat down to wait on the bench previously occupied by Bubbles and Teddy. They waited. What they didn’t know was that as they were sitting by the fountain the Morgan brothers had bumped into a friend.

It was Teddy who recognised Dick Murray. Dick was wearing grey overalls and carrying a sweeping brush. He was dressed almost identically to how he had been dressed when Teddy had last met him in Mountjoy prison. The brothers greeted Dick warmly. Beside the door to the gents toilet was another door. Nodding towards it Dick invited the two to join him in his ‘office’. Dick’s office was simply a store room for toilet paper, cleaning materials, and spare brushes and so on. All three went in, closed the door behind them and joined Dick in a friendly smoke and chat.

After ten minutes the detectives began to get panicky, and they both entered the hallway leading into the gents toilet. Finding the hallway bare they went into the toilet in the hope the Morgan brothers would be in there. They drew a blank. Now in a panic, they came out and went down a fire escape, as that was the only other exit from the hallway. The fire escape brought them down four floors into an open yard. There were delivery trucks all over the place, some refuse bins, and about eight points of exit from the yard. Desperate now, the two detectives split up and headed in opposite directions. It was fifteen minutes later before they met up
again at the fountain in the centre of the mall. At this stage depression had taken over from panic. Almost simultaneously they came up with the idea of checking out the Morgans’ car. They sprinted to the carpark. The Jaguar was gone. They tossed a coin to decide who would be the one to ring Detective Sergeant Clancy with the bad news.

When Bubbles and Teddy entered Simon’s office, Simon was leaning back in his chair with his feet up on his desk. There was an uncorked bottle of Cotes de Nuit Villages on his desk and Simon was holding a glass of it in his right hand. In his left hand he held an expensive Cuban cigar, and on his face was a large smile.

Teddy smiled at the sight. ‘Well now, Mr Williams, you’re celebrating early?’

‘Well, it is New Year’s Eve, boys. Grab yourselves a glass each!’ Simon said as he rocked back and forth on his chair. The Morgan brothers took two wine glasses from a side table and made for the bottle on Simon’s desk.

‘Not that!’ Simon barked. ‘The other piss on the shelf over there.’ The Morgan brothers stopped in their tracks and without question changed direction; they were happy to drink the other piss, if that’s what Mr Williams wanted. They filled a glass each of the lukewarm white wine and stood by Simon’s desk.

‘There’s our bait.’ With the wine glass Williams indicated the white envelope and a tinfoil-wrapped parcel.
The brothers stared at the packages for some moments. They took another sip from their glasses.

‘What way do you want me to handle this, Mr Williams?’ Teddy asked.

But even as Teddy was asking the question Williams was shaking his head.

‘No, Teddy, not this time, this time it’s personal. This time I’ll handle it.’ The brothers looked at each other, surprise showing on their faces. Simon Williams hadn’t come on a job with them in years. With the heel of his foot Simon pushed on the edge of the desk and his chair spun around to face the panoramic window. The brothers could see his reflection. He had an evil smile on his face as he spoke. ‘I want to see this little bastard shit himself before I blow his fuckin’ head off.’

Eileen brushed the hair off young Mickey’s forehead. He was sound asleep. She rose from her sitting position on the bed and began to pick up his scattered clothes. When she lifted the crumpled trousers from the floor she saw beneath them a tiny Matchbox Jaguar. She lifted the toy and placed it on Mickey’s bedside table. Her eye rested on the framed photograph of her husband. She picked it up and looked at it lovingly. Slowly, warm rivulets of tears flowed down her cheeks and into the side of her mouth. She held the photograph to her breast and looked out the window at the moon.

Froggy stared out the window at the moon, wondering why such a big ball never bounced. Sparrow was sitting on the bench lengthways with his feet up and his back to a locker. He was asleep. Slowly he woke, and as his eyes cleared he looked at Froggy. He jumped up with a start. Froggy too jumped up into a boxing position.

‘We box them, we box them, Spawoo?’ Froggy asked.

Sparrow was groggy and in a slight state of panic.

‘What time is it, Froggy? Oh, it doesn’t matter.’ Sparrow ran down the hall past the ring and looked up at the gym clock. It was eight fifty-five.

‘Shit!’ Sparrow exclaimed. He turned on his heel and sprinted the length of the room to the public phone just inside the locker-room door. Rummaging through his pocket, he came up with a coin, inserted it in the phone and dialled a number. After just two short rings the phone was answered.

‘Serious Crime Squad.’ Clancy’s voice was expectant.

‘Clancy, is that you?’

‘Yes, Sparrow, any news?’

‘No, just checking in.’

‘Well, I’ve got bad news, Sparrow.’ Clancy’s statement made the hair on the back of Sparrow’s neck stand up.

‘Shit! What is it? It’s not Eileen or Mickey, is it?’

Clancy tried to be as calming as possible, knowing he had fucked up. ‘No, no, nothing like that, it’s the Morgan brothers … I had them tailed all day but my boys lost them a
few hours ago. I’m sorry, Sparrow.’ The apology was genuine.

Sparrow rubbed his eyes and tried to think clearly. ‘Okay, Clancy. I should have rang you earlier anyway to pick them up. Would you believe it, I fell asleep.’

There was silence between the two men for a few moments on the phone.

‘So, what do you want to do? Do you want to call it off?’ Clancy asked tentatively.

‘No way! Tonight’s the night, Clancy. It ends tonight. I wasn’t joking when I told Williams I couldn’t take any more of this shit. I can’t.’ Sparrow was emphatic.

‘Okay, Sparrow, it’s your call. I’m hitting the streets in a patrol car now. I’ll be waiting for word.’

Sparrow hung up. With his hand still on the phone he stood for a while trying to calculate how big a difference the Morgan brothers would make. His only worry now was that with the Morgans free Williams wouldn’t come. He lifted the phone, inserted a coin and dialled Williams’s number. The phone was answered immediately.

‘Yes?’
The voice is unmistakably Simon’s.

‘Mr Williams, it’s me, Sparrow.’

‘Okay, Sparrow. Where are you?’

‘Mr Williams, let’s cut the shit and get on with this! This boat won’t wait forever.’

‘Okay, Sparrow, let’s get the ball rolling. At the corner of Parnell Street and O’Connell Street there’s a phone box. I’ll be ringing you there in fifteen minutes. You answer it. Now go!’

The phone went dead in Sparrow’s hand. Sparrow hung up and began to put on his jacket, then remembered Froggy. He ran to him.

‘The bad men, Spawoo, we wait for the bad men?’ Froggy asks.

‘No, Froggy, I must go now. Later, we’ll get them later,’ Sparrow called as he left the club. He sprinted down the street to Carpenter’s Hill. At the traffic lights he looked left and right – the street was empty. He decided to go right towards Snuggstown village. He raced down the steep hill and had difficulty stopping at the bottom. He slid to the edge of the kerb just in time to see a cab coming towards him. He hailed it. He quickly climbed into the back and slammed the door.

‘The corner of O’Connell Street and Parnell Street,’ he called to the driver. With total disregard for traffic coming in either direction the taxi driver made a U-turn. When he’d completed the manoeuvre and was on the road safe and sound, he called over his shoulder.

‘Headin’ out for the night?’

‘No.’ Sparrow answered, thinking: Fuck, a compulsive chatterer.

‘Ah, you’re right. Only fuckin’ lunatics out there tonight. I used to go out all the time on New Year’s Eve with me wife but yeh spend hours trying to get a drink in a bar and every smelly whore is bumping up against yeh – and half of what you’re after buyin’ is spillin’ on the fuckin’ floor – fellows are blowin’ smoke in yer face, girls are pokin’ handbags up yer arse, and then when midnight comes every fucker wants to hug yeh. I’ve no time for it meself – it’s a load of shite.’

‘Yeh,’ Sparrow answered. When the taxi came to the junction of O’Connell Street and Parnell Street it had to stop at a red traffic light. Sparrow paid the driver and hopped out,
then sprinted across the junction to the telephone which was already ringing. He snatched it up. He was breathless.

‘Williams!’ he called into the phone.

Williams was very calm and very cool.
‘Yeh, Sparrow. Your next port of call is George’s Street, just outside Bewley’s Café.’

After running around to eight phone booths Sparrow had covered half of the northside of Dublin and a bit of the southside. In the square at Temple Bar, drenched with perspiration, he snatched up the ninth phone. This time he didn’t introduce himself or even ask was it Williams on the other end of the line.

‘I’ve had enough of this running-around shit, Williams. If you’re not convinced by now that I’m not being followed you never will be. So let’s call it off and I’ll give meself up to the cops.’ He spoke loudly into the phone, not caring at this stage who heard him or who didn’t.

After a pause, Williams answered.
‘Keep cool, Sparrow. We’re happy you’re not being followed. I just need to fill in a bit of time. Now, at eleven o’clock exactly I’ll meet you by the bridge in Stephen’s Green. Eleven o’clock, don’t be late!’

‘Wait a minute, Williams, Stephen’s Green is closed at this hour of the night,’ Sparrow argued.

‘Is it now, Sparrow? Well, I’ll be there!’
Williams answered.

The phone went dead in Sparrow’s hand. Sparrow replaced the receiver. For a few moments he leaned against the inside of the booth to catch his breath, then he looked around for a clock. He found one at the top of a tower. It read ten-thirty.

Kieran looked at his watch again. He sighed.

‘It’ll be somewhere busy, somewhere with a lot of people,’ Michael Malone speculated.

Kieran just stared out the window, biting his thumb nail. ‘Do you reckon?’ He stretched across and picked up the microphone of the car radio.

‘Task Force One to Task Force Base. Over!’ There was a bit of squelch and a female voice came back.

‘Go ahead, Task Force One, over.’

‘Any word from Sparrow yet?’ Kieran’s voice was hopeful.

‘No calls yet, Sir. Over!’
Kieran loosened his grip on the mike and let the spiral cable snatch it back to the floor.

‘Damn!’ he exclaimed, going back to his nail-biting.

Eileen put another shovelful of coal on the fire. It was as if she was trying to make the house as warm as possible, to take the chill off her loneliness. The television was not switched on, as if she was in mourning. Dolly had left for the evening to celebrate New Year’s Eve with friends. Eileen was alone now in the house but for her sleeping son upstairs. She turned on the radio and recognised the upbeat music – ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’, a song she and Sparrow had
danced to many years before. Eileen sat into the armchair by the fire and drifted into thoughts of her husband.

As Sparrow made his way along Temple Bar there were revellers everywhere and an air of merriment about the place. At the corner of Exchequer Street and Parliament Street, Sparrow picked out a pub. He went in to find the place jam-packed. Everyone was singing and talking, glasses were clinking, smoke was heavy in the air. Sparrow clawed his way to the bar. When he got there he tried desperately to get the attention of a barman, but it was like trying to get a blessing from the Pope for your third marriage. Eventually a barman did catch his eye. ‘What can I get ya?’

‘Where’s the phone?’ Sparrow shouted.

‘What?’ the barman called, cocking a hand to his ear.