The Storm Protocol (37 page)

He sat back and pondered the question for
a while.

‘Do you know what, Dave,’ he said, ‘and this is no id
le boast, I can guarantee it. If I’d put half the amount of energy into my business as I’ve channelled into this
revenge mission
as you call it, then
the Bullock
would be history, and I would already be controlling large parts of the Dublin trade.’

‘So why?’ asked Dave.

‘I suppose it’s a bit like the white powder we peddle,’ answered Black Swan. ‘A junkie doesn’t question why he’s addicted; he just chases the object of his addiction. Since I was ten, there has been this huge unanswered question in my life. It’s got to the stage now where it doesn't matter what the answer is, as long as there is an answer.’

Dave could almost see the hurt in Black Swan’s eyes
, as he remembered.

‘This unanswered question; it basically de
stroyed my childish vision of the perfect family. And to cap it all, it turned out I was the only one who believed it anyway, which makes it worse; living someone else’s pretence.’

‘
So, why does it matter so much?’ asked Dave.

Black Swan shot him a sharp look. Dave knew he was on dangerous ground
, but he just wanted to know at this stage.

‘Your parents are dead, right?’ he asked.

Black Swan nodded.

‘So
, this is revenge for them then?’

‘It’s more complicated than that,’ said Black Swan. ‘Some of this is retribution for what I could have been
and should have had. To be brutally honest with you Dave, I have no feelings at all. You know that; you’ve seen it. People talk about love and hate, I see none of that; it’s invisible to me. If someone owes me money, I’ll have them roughed up; if they persist, I’ll have them killed. Sometimes, I’ll slip on my leather gloves and hurt people myself. Not because I like doing it, or love doing it, but because it is expedient. It is an expected response to certain stimuli that will get me results in business. It’s exactly the same as this revenge or whatever you want to call it now. I just need closure. That’s all it is at this stage. I know practically nothing about this guy; I just hate what he stands for. It’s a promise I made to my ten year old self, and I’m going to keep it.’

Dave glanced at his b
oss in the rear view mirror.

‘We’ll find him, don’t worry,’ he said softly.

‘I know you will,’ said Black Swan.

Five minutes later, they pulled up outside a rundown Georgian terraced house. At first glance, it looked like any normal crumbling collection of student bedsits. Everything in fact, had been engineered to give that impression.

The two men ignored the steps up to the faded, but still impressive eighteenth century facade. Instead, they opened the gate in the front railings, and trotted down the modern fire escape into the tiny basement level courtyard.

T
he door was set into the wall that supported the main staircase up to the ground floor. A battered old post box was hung at eye level next to it.

Dave took out a key and opened the post box. Inside was a gleaming metal keypad. He entered a pin number and the door opened inwards with a click. They stepped across the threshold into a dimly lit corridor
, and walked to the first door on the left. Dave opened it and went straight in. The glare of the overhead lights was blinding, especially after the relative murk of the passageway.

The room was equipped in a way that would put most private
clinics to shame. There were two large hospital beds against one wall, one of which was very much occupied.

The large austere male nurse turned around as the two men entered.

‘Leave us,’ said Dave brusquely.

The field hospital, as he called it, had been his idea. Black Swan had been hugely supportive. It kept any of their men who were injured out of custody, and they could be convalesced and put back on the street as soon as was reasonably possible.

The occupant was hooked up to various machines. They could see a self administering morphine dispenser, but the man’s forehead was still creased in pain. He stiffened when he saw Black Swan and Dave. They heard his breathing quicken, and the gasps were loudly amplified by the full face oxygen mask he was currently wearing.

Dave removed the mask
, prompting a flash of fear in the man's eyes, as his airway became restricted; his chest rising and falling in a shallow and laboured fashion. Dave quickly slipped the nose tube over the man’s head, and then waited until his breathing had returned to a semblance of normality.

Black Swan pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed
, like a concerned relative.

‘So
, what's your name?’ he asked softly.

‘Adrian,’ the man gasped.

‘So Adrian,’ said Black Swan. ‘I hear you guys got yourselves into a spot of bother.’

Adrian coughed; one of those full bodied coughs that may have been agony or laughter, it was hard to tell.

‘You can say that again,’ he whispered, his eyes pain filled and bloodshot.

‘Tell me everything you remember,’ said Black Swan soothingly, sitting back.

‘Well, Decco collected us all from the pub car park in the van like he always does. He said it was going to be easy. He said it was going to be like a turkey shoot.’

Adrian coughed again; tiny blood drops could be seen forming on the crisp white sheets. Black Swan waited patiently for him to continue.

‘When we got to the house, Decco sent four guys round the back. I was one of them. As we got into position behind the house, I heard Decco shouting a name, Thomas I think it was. There were several volleys of gunfire. We waited and got ready to hit them from behind, but as we were approaching the back door, it literally disintegrated in front of us.’

He coughed again.

‘It was like that scene from the start of
Saving Private Ryan
. I’d never really heard a bullet in flight before. I was always the one launching them. It was chaos; screams, shouts, bullets flying everywhere. And then I was hit; two in the leg and one in the chest.’

He coughed for a third time, as if trying to emphasise the injury.

‘At that stage, we had three down. They looked pretty dead and I wasn’t sticking around to check. I managed to scramble out of the yard. Next thing I hear a scream and then boom; knocked me clean off my feet. I didn’t even look back. I rang Dave and here I am.’

‘Anything else you can remember?’ asked Black Swan.

Adrian shook his head. He looked drained and tired.

Black Swan got up. He gently removed the oxygen tube from Adrian’s nose. Adrian smiled at him gratefully, and this time, when the laboured breathing returned
, he wasn’t scared. Adrian noticed distractedly that Black Swan was wearing a black leather glove. He didn’t see the small hospital issue pillow until it was too late; until Black Swan caught it from Dave, and jammed it down over Adrian’s face. He scrabbled weakly, his hands plucking ineffectually at Black Swan's arms, his legs kicking feebly under the tightly tucked hospital sheets. His movements became progressively less frantic, until finally they ceased altogether.

Black Swan looked at Dave impassively.

‘He’s in a better place now. I hear hell is pleasant at this time of year.’

The nurse returned and regarded the stiffening corpse impassively. He pulled the sheet over Adrian’s head
, and then busied himself disconnecting the tubes and wires.

As Black Swan and Dave watched, the man seemed to pause
and then it was like one of those comedies where the light bulb comes on over the main characters head. He walked, or more accurately, jogged out of the room and returned a minute later. He whispered to Dave as he handed over the plain white envelope.

Dave dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
He extracted the contents and quickly shuffled through the documents contained within. He briefly paused and Eoin could see his lips moving. He was shaking; Eoin hoped it was with excitement.

Dave wordlessly handed over the contents of the envelope
.

Black S
wan browsed through the photographs, as the hate rose from them and took physical form. Thomas Eugene O’Neill. There must have been twenty pictures; shots from long and short range and from all angles. There was also a brief handwritten note.

I managed to place a GPS tracker on subject, as well as an electronic surveillance device for listening. He
has already destroyed the listening device and will discover the tracker eventually but it could be useful for the time being; gives me a slight advantage. He is currently on the way to Kinsale. Use this knowledge and act on it wisely.

‘This is great news,’ said Dave with a smile, punching his boss lightly on the arm.

‘Is it?’ asked Eoin.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know why I want him,’ said Eoin. ‘But I don’t like competition.’

21
st
May 2011 – Eleven days after the Storm.

The remembrance of a beloved mother becomes a shadow to all our actions; it precedes or follows them. – Anon.

‘It’s funny,’ said Dale, as the green fields flashed past the windows, ‘but even though I've been trained vigorously in the use of firearms. Even though I practice regularly, and I’m a very good shot. Even though I do all these things, and know that the sole purpose of a gun is to kill.’

He paused and then sighed.

‘Even though I am well aware of all those facts and accept them, I still never thought I would ever kill another man with a gun.’

‘You may not have,’ said Roussel. ‘There were a lot of bullets flying and only three targets went down.’

‘Yeah, I suppose, but the law of averages would suggest that I killed at least one of them,’ said Dale.

He paused again, this time for a little longer.

‘Did you ever kill someone?’ he asked Roussel eventually.

Roussel looked at him sourly.

‘Before yesterday I mean,’ Dale clarified hurriedly.

Roussel paused for a few seconds.

‘Back on the beat, when I was a new recruit in the Sheriff’s Department,’ said Roussel. ‘I was called to a disturbance outside a nightclub, or rather we were; my partner and me. The bouncers had already ejected the guy; he was drunk and disorderly. He’d been systematically harassing all of the single ladies at the bar; getting real mouthy and suggestive with them. So the owners called us in. When my partner and I got there, he was screaming and shouting and kicking the door, demanding to be let back in. The bouncers were standing off; they’d had enough. We told him to calm down. He shouted
I’ll show you fucking calm
. He bent down; the next thing, he’d got a gun in his hand.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Dale.

‘The first shot went between me and my partner; took the window out of the patrol car. The second shot hit my partner in the thigh. Scumbag didn't get time for another one. We’d been taught to aim for the big sections of the body. The bullet mushroomed and blew his heart clean out through the back of his torso. There was a full investigation, as there has to be with every firearms discharge on-the-job. There was never any question it was anything other than a justifiable homicide.’

‘Did you ever question yourself though?’ asked Dale.

‘Brian and me were partners for a long time before I joined CID,’ said Roussel. ‘We’re still good friends; play a lot of racquet ball, when we can find the time. Every time I see that scar on his thigh, where they had to rebuild his shattered femur, I give thanks to the Lord that I had the guts to pull the trigger that night.’

Dale turned to me.

‘So, do you ever get used to killing?’ he asked.

‘Now there’s
an interesting question,’ I replied. ‘Do you ever get used to killing? I can only give you my perspective, but I suppose it's like everything. The first one is always the hardest; then it just gets easier. I wouldn’t say you ever fully get used to it, I would say you more get desensitised to it; desensitised to death that is.’

‘So
, could you pull your gun now and shoot both of us dead?’ asked Roussel.

‘Absolutely not,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he asked.

I laughed.

‘Well for a start, I was hoping you'd noticed that I wasn't just some crazed killer,’ I answered, slightly affronted. ‘But for me at least, I always needed a justification. Guido and Ernesto knew that, and in some ways I think they were happy with it too.’

‘So
, are you claiming some morality behind your killings?’ asked Dale interestedly.

I thought about it.

‘Morality might be the wrong word,’ I said. ‘Obviously, taking a life is wrong; certainly, if you follow the Ten Commandments, it’s a mortal sin. But I would always look deeper that.’

‘Give me an example?’
asked Roussel.

‘If I was asked to retire an individual,’ I said
, ‘I would look at his track record and, see what he’d done. With most of the business arrangements I engaged in, the targets were killers, pushers, enforcers. So I would justify it to myself that I was saving innocent people from death, by killing.’

‘It’s a bit of a tenuous link, don’t you think?’ asked Roussel.

‘It’s a self-justification that has evolved over time,’ I said. ‘I can live with it.’

‘How did you get into that particular game anyway?’ asked Dale. ‘Not what you would expect from a lonely Irish Immigrant barely out of his teens.’

‘It’s surprising what people adapt to when they have to,’ I said. ‘When I left Ireland, I was a big thick naive Mick. My American streets weren’t paved with gold, as I’d been led to believe, they were paved with shit. So there I was, scratching a living working two or three jobs, when this Colombian gang surround me. I was dragged into an alley in Brooklyn on the way home one night. They worked me over nicely; left me for dead, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. Two kindly gentlemen happened to find me; father figures and Catholic like myself.’

I laughed.

‘They helped me back on my feet, paid my hospital bills and then put a gun in my hand, and told me where the gang normally hung out. I was just going to fire a few shots over their heads; frighten them a little, as I told them who I was, and why I was there, naïvely not realising they'd be packing heat. I had to kill them all. It’s a dog eat dog world, and since then I’ve had a ten course barbecue.’

‘The story the CIA man told us,’ acknowledged Dale.

I nodded.

‘Of course
, the Mancini's had me from there. Illegal alien, legal alien; what’s the difference, when you are facing time on multiple murder charges? But that day in the pharmacy everything changed. To use that dog analogy again, every dog has its day.’

‘So
, can you teach an old dog some new tricks?’ asked Dale with a smile.

‘Let's hope so,’ I said.

‘How do you feel about the Mancini’s now?’ asked Roussel.

‘Well it's funny. Maybe I’ve just got too jaded and cynical, but I don't blame them and I don’t hate them. Getting rid of me is really just an expedient business proposition for them. They would regard it just the same as if they were changing their accountant. To be honest, yeah, they may be vain narcissistic old men with huge egos and as mean as stray dogs, but they were like fathers to me when I needed it the most.’

‘So, have you given any more thoughts to the other issue we have?’ asked Roussel.

I looked at him with a puzzled expression.

‘Who do you think this guy Black Swan might be? Why does he have such a hard-on for you?’

‘I have
given it a lot of thought,’ I said, ‘but I’d appreciate hearing what you guys think?’

‘Well, as you said yourself,’ said Roussel. ‘For the Mancini's
, this is business; maybe a little bit of regret, but mainly business. But for Black Swan this is personal. In some way or other, in some other life, you have seriously pissed him off.’

‘Do you know what?’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking at it in the same way
, and I came to the exact same conclusion. But for the life of me, I cannot think of who he might be or, what it could be that I’ve supposedly done to him. Our paths can’t have crossed for at least twenty to twenty five years. I’ve had nothing to do with Ireland during that time. I’ve racked my brains, and I just cannot remember a single possible matching scenario, either person or place.’

‘What about historic grudges
; against your family maybe?’ queried Roussel.

‘No, I don’t buy that,’ I said. ‘We h
ad a very simple and happy life.’

‘What abo
ut your parents?’ asked Roussel.

‘Mum was universally liked,’ I said. ‘If she’d had enemies
, they would have liked her too.’

‘What
about your Dad?’

‘He died when I was fairly young,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember him around much. He was gone most of the week
, and a lot of the weekends too. Even most Christmases, he was only there sporadically.’

‘Well
, this might be something or it might be nothing,’ said Dale suddenly, ‘but your dad’s name was....’

He consulted his notepad.

‘....Richard, right?’

I nodded.

‘Well, in the register of marriages, births and deaths, they have no record of him at all.’

I was stunned for a second.

‘Isn’t there a possibility that they just couldn’t find the documents?’ I asked.

‘It’s possible,’ said Dale. ‘Although I think it's highly unlikely. After all, they went to the trouble of
trying to cross reference the records for your mother and your father. If they’d found anything, they would have definitely attached them.’

‘They must be somewhere else,’ I said flatly.

Dale held up his hand.

‘Well,
I do have a reason for mentioning it. You know how fond I am of tenuous and circumstantial information. And when you think about it, there is something very odd about Scott Mitchell and his attempt to pass himself off as Alan Murphy, your long lost boy. Whoever is behind this scheme is targeting something very specific here; the relationship between a father and a son. Tie that back in with the lack of information about your father. It’s just too much of a coincidence not to warrant a follow-up.’

‘Are you saying there’s something dodgy about my father,’ I said with affront.

‘I’m not saying anything of the sort,’ said Dale. ‘I’m just saying it warrants further investigation.’

‘Do you have a family lawyer?’ asked Roussel suddenly.

We both looked at him blankly.

‘A s
olicitor, you mean?’ I asked. ‘Looks after legal affairs?’

He nodded.

‘When my parents passed away, they left an awful lot of documentation behind them. I asked the lawyers to hold onto it all for me for a small fee. Couldn’t bear to go through it all at the time,’ he said, a little sadly.

I snapped my fingers.

‘Damn it Roussel, you’re right,’ I said. ‘There was a box of papers that the solicitors wanted to send me at the time my mother died. Like you said, I couldn’t face it then, it was just too raw. I have no recollection of what I told them to do with it all.’

‘They might still have it?’ inquired
Roussel softly.

‘Carpe Diem,’ I said softly.

‘What?’ they both said together.

‘Seize the day,’ I added
. ‘You believe this could shed more light on my father, which incidentally I don’t. But you are both experienced investigators, so I can’t ignore it. We are only about fifteen minutes away from their offices. What’s a little detour, to sort this out once and for all?’

I pulled over to the side of the road
, and scrolled through my phone, until I came to the number I wanted. I always kept my phone contacts completely up-to-date. It had saved my life more than once.

Just over ten minutes later
, we were heading back into town. I had managed to secure half an hour with one of the managing partners.

‘You guys stay here,’ I said
, as I parked up across the street. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

I walked into reception and gave the receptionist my big
gest smile.

‘Thomas O’Neill to see John Maguire,’ I said brightly.

‘Certainly, Mr O’Neill,’ she said to me. ‘Come this way.’

She led me down the corridor into a large
, generously equipped boardroom. A dusty storage box sat on the table with the lid removed, and some of the files had already been spread over the large expanse of mahogany.

‘Mr Maguire will be with you shortly,’ she s
tated. ‘Would you like a tea or coffee in the meantime?’

‘Just some water if that’s o
kay,’ I answered. ‘Many thanks.’

I started shifting aimlessly through the files.

‘It’s still the best way to read documents I think,’ said a voice behind me. ‘Words written down on a sheet of paper, just like God intended.’

I turned around to get a good look at John Maguire. He must have been in his late sixties. He was probably only working now because his name was above the door; Molloy and Maguire solicitors. He had a pleasant roundish face and a beaming smile, but with that
unfortunate affliction that some men get as they grow older; the legion of grey hair circling the scalp, with nothing on top.

He shook my hand warmly.

‘I'm with you,’ I said. ‘I can't read anything on a computer screen. I have to print it out.’

He nodded with understanding, and then stared at me questioningly.

‘I’m looking for some documents pertaining to my father,’ I said, rather formally.