‘Nice place you picked for us.’
He followed my gaze to where the only other customers both sat staring blankly into some distant dimension. They looked like glue was their narcotic of choice. The bar was as dingy as the inside of a movie-house before the lights come up. A place for those who prefer to dwell in semi-darkness.
And at least it meant they couldn’t see how dirty the glasses were.
What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve for.
‘It’s quiet,’ said Dalton. ‘That’s good enough for me. No one will take any notice of us here.’ And he drained his whiskey and belched quietly, before taking a long draught of his newly arrived pint, pausing for breath, starting another. Fitzgerald had said he’d been drinking since his recent problems in the murder squad, but I hadn’t expected this.
Then again, I couldn’t claim to be knocked out with astonishment either. Whatever energy Dalton had once had seemed to have fizzled out like a wet fuse on a firecracker.
‘You not talking?’ He interrupted my thoughts.
‘In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not here out of choice. You simply happen to be Draker’s pick for a date for me, and we both know he only did that to piss me off. I certainly didn’t come here to provide you with conversation.’
‘You make that obvious enough. Not exactly Miss Congeniality, are you? You never give away one thing about yourself. You got your whole life locked up tight like it’s some big mystery. It’s no wonder people don’t take to you.’
‘I’ve had that character sketch from plenty of people before,’ I said, ‘but getting it from you is something else. You’re not exactly the winner of the Cary Grant award for charm yourself, Dalton. And what the hell difference would it make if I told my life story to everyone I met? You want to know where I went to kindergarten, what grade I got in math, who my first date was, my first car? It’s an illusion that this stuff makes you know me any better. Either people take to you or they don’t. Details don’t come into it.’
‘What was your first car, since you brought it up?’
‘A 1971 Plymouth,’ I said. ‘Picked it up in a scrapyard on the southside of Boston with my first pay-check. Spent every night and every weekend for a year restoring it to life.’
‘Nice,’ he said, and it seemed like the first thing I’d ever said he approved of.
‘You bet it was nice,’ I said. ‘Broke my heart when I went to college and had to sell it to pay my fees. There now, feel better? Think we’re building some kind of empathy?’
‘It all helps.’
‘Except that, for all you’ll ever know, I might’ve made the whole thing up right this minute because it was what you wanted to hear. So where’s that leave your theory?’
Dalton looked disgusted.
‘You’ve got a real bad attitude, do you know that?’ he said.
‘My attitude is my own business,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be your buddy, Dalton. I just want to get this over and done with. Don’t you?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘You’re here, but why are you here? You give the impression of not giving a shit. You can’t even be bothered to keep your head clear by staying off the booze. If you’ve just come here to drink and gripe, why’d you accept the job at all?’
‘Why did I accept it?’ said Dalton. ‘Because I’ve been shoved aside for the last – what? – year, maybe more, while I see young kids still wet behind the ears getting ahead. So I have a few disciplinary problems? Sue me. Doesn’t mean I should’ve been left off the Marxman enquiry when someone like Patrick Walsh, who spends more time playing with his fucking Game Boy than he does building up contacts, learning his trade, is treated in there like he’s the Second Coming. I’ve just had it with hitting my head against a wall. Policing today is like trying to pick up specks of dust with a forklift truck. The whole thing is just a chorus of birds twittering in my head. I don’t have the patience for it, I don’t have the subtlety to sift through the bits and pieces to try and find the few that might just fit together. I need something more definite. I need to be doing something. That’s why I’m here. Because I’ve had it with being redundant. Because Iwant to get this thing done.’
I think it was the longest speech I’d ever heard Dalton deliver.
And there was something in what he said.
He summed himself up well.
‘So what’s the idea?’ I said. ‘You bring in the Marxman, get to be the big hero, give Grace, Healy, Walsh and the rest the middle finger and have everyone kissing your ass?’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Dalton. ‘You got any objection?’
‘Got an objection to you trying to cut the ground from under Fitzgerald’s feet when this is her case, she’s been working on it for three months without a break, and she’s stood by you a hundred times when you crossed the line and she could’ve hung you out to dry from the windows at Dublin Castle? Why would I have any objection to that? Besides, I knew what I was getting when Draker suggested your name. Knew it wouldn’t be a pleasant evening.’
‘Then let’s establish a few ground rules, shall we?’ said Dalton. ‘Rule One. I’m in charge. You do things my way. I know this terrain. I don’t just see it from the window of a train as it passes by. I can find my way round the northside blindfolded. I grew up there, guys I know still live there, they’re not always on the right side of the law but they’ve been there for me more often than half the suits up in Dublin Castle.’
Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but the mile-high chips on your blue-collar shoulders. Then I remembered I was meant to be biting my tongue.
So I bit it.
‘Rule Two. You get your two minutes,’ said Dalton, ‘but if I detect at any point during those two minutes that things are going badly then I’m moving in and I don’t care what deal you made with the Assistant Commissioner. Understood?’
‘I got it, but I think Rule One covered that one too.’
‘Don’t get smart,’ said Dalton. ‘All you’ve got to remember is to back off when I tell you to back off and leave the rest to the big boys. And if it gets too much at any time for your delicate female constitution, then just say the word and I’ll drop you off somewhere warm and safe where we can pick you up later.’
‘And miss a golden opportunity to learn something from a legend like Seamus Dalton?’ I said. ‘I couldn’t live with myself afterwards.’
‘Then let’s go,’ he said.
He drained his drink and picked up the car keys from the table, and I followed him out into the parking lot to the unmarked vehicle that he’d picked up from the pound.
‘So where’s the switch to take place?’ he said as we climbed inside.
I found myself hesitating. ‘How do I know you won’t just take the information, throw me out and leave me standing at the side of the road?’
‘You don’t,’ Dalton answered bluntly. ‘But a deal’s a deal. Call me old fashioned, but I happen to believe in keeping my word.’
So I told him the address that Strange had given me at midnight over the cellphone, and he shifted the car into first and pulled out into the flow of the traffic.
I tried to keep a close eye on where we were going as we drove, but we soon moved out of the areas I knew well and into the badlands on the northside of Dublin.
At least that was how I saw them. Huge sprawling estates, as featureless as any wilderness or tundra, where there was nothing but drugs and crime to eke out the time till the end of the world. For all the surface prosperity Dublin had to offer the lucky few, there was still plenty of the city that had failed to taste the milk and honey, which still lagged behind, as distant from that other shining city of light and abundance as their ancestors in the decaying slums had been a century before. I simply sat back and let him drive.
And while we drove, Dalton got through on his radio to Fitzgerald to tell her where we were going to be, so that she could put back-up in place. She sounded anxious, but then
I’d have been the same if it was her. The deal was that they stayed far enough out of the way to ensure Strange’s caller didn’t get suspicious, but close enough to be on hand if they were needed. In that margin, there was more than enough room for error.
‘There it is,’ said Dalton.
Through the window I saw the shadow of some derelict building, and a doorway under a broken streetlight where I was to stand and wait when it got to 1 a.m.
‘We’re not stopping?’
‘Still too early. No point drawing attention to yourself.’
So instead we drove round the block a couple more times, and I didn’t know whether to be reassured by the fact that I couldn’t see any sign of the police back-up or concerned in case they hadn’t gone to the right place. I felt my nerves tightening as the time ticked down. The only thing that stopped me admitting as much was Dalton’s reaction.
I could imagine what he’d say.
Can’t handle the heat any more, Special Agent?
Gone soft?
Eventually, with five minutes to go, Dalton pulled us over into a side street and we got out and walked the rest of the way. On one side of the street was a Dumpster, behind which he intended to lie in wait. On the other side was the doorway.
High walls rose all around, so that it felt like the road was cutting deep through some dark valley.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .
‘Now we go our separate ways,’ Dalton said.
And I crossed the road alone and stood in the doorway beneath the broken light. The glass had been smashed and slivers of it were scattered on the path beneath.
It was midnight in Howth all over again.
The sound of footsteps came almost immediately – but as I turned in their direction I saw it was only some late-night straggler, muttering thickly to himself as they all do with too much drink in them, crossing the street at the far end; and the world returned to silence, shattered only by the squeal of a joyrider’s tyres in an adjacent street a moment later. The noise made me flinch, but it made me more alert too, and now I noticed other sounds, like the clattering song of machinery in one of the nearby buildings. They were not all derelict then.
I checked my watch and saw that 1 a.m. had gone.
Had Strange’s caller got cold feet?
Had he seen Dalton? The others?
Had he—
I felt myself go tense.
More footsteps, this time coming towards me, and, yes, there was a figure, illuminated by the working streetlights, approaching slowly.
Was this him?
He stopped a couple of metres from where I waited, but all I could see even now was only an outline, a shadow, because of the broken light, and when I made as if to step forward he said sharply: ‘Stay where you are.’ So I stayed where I was and he stayed in darkness.
‘Have you got what I asked for?’ he said.
Like Strange, I didn’t recognise the voice.
‘I have it,’ I said.
‘Give it to me.’
‘How can I give it to you if you won’t let me come any nearer?’
‘Throw it along the path towards me.’
This was where things could get tricky.
I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out the brown paper bag Dalton had given me out of the glove compartment. Inside was an imitation automatic pistol. It felt the same as a working gun. Weighed the same. In the half-light he probably wouldn’t notice it was a fake. At least that’s what I was relying on.
I put the bag at my feet and kicked it across the ground towards him.
When it stopped, he bent to pick it up.
Pulled out the gun.
Nodded in satisfaction.
‘Is it loaded, like I asked?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
With blanks, but let’s not quibble over details. He must have been insane to think I’d seriously have handed him a weapon with the bullets already inside.
Did I look like a lemming?
‘Then I think we’re done here.’
‘Just tell me one thing before you go,’ I said quickly, afraid now that he would be out of here even before I’d managed to ask him my question.
‘Did you kill Felix?’
There was no hesitation.
‘I did,’ he said. ‘It was the best thing I’ve ever done.’
And he pointed the gun at me.
‘I’m really sorry about this,’ he said.
At that moment, two things happened.
The first was that a shout came from the other side of the street and Dalton emerged from behind the Dumpster, yelling: ‘Police! Put down the gun!’
The second was that the scene was lit suddenly as if by a spotlight, and the stranger froze as the joyrider I’d heard in a nearby street took the corner at a squeal and came tearing down the centre of the road, swerving from side to side, the whoops of laughter bursting out from the open windows of the stolen car. Normally I’d have been wishing the nihilistic little punks just hit a wall and be done with it, but now I was glad of the light because it illuminated the place where I was standing, and in the instant before he threw up his hand to shield his eyes from the glare I had a chance to see the stranger’s face for the first time.
I knew him.
I knew him.
But from where?
Then it came to me. He was the guy in pinstripes who’d been watching me in Burke’s store the day after my apartment was trashed. And I’d seen him somewhere else, I realised. He was one of the three men in the photograph with Tim Enright, the one that Boland had snipped from a magazine and added to the victim’s file.
Why hadn’t I recognised his face in the picture? Because I hadn’t been looking that closely at his colleagues, only at Enright, and out of pinstripes he looked a different person.
Out of pinstripes, maybe he was.
The stranger’s face right now was a study in panic as he looked between Dalton and me, like he was trying to make up his mind which of us was more of a threat. And then, incredibly, he pointed the gun back at me even as Dalton was walking towards him.
I wasn’t scared. Why should I be? The gun wasn’t loaded.
But even though I knew that, my blood was still ice as the stranger took aim and fired.
Chapter Forty-One
My ears sang. My eyes burned with the flash from the blank shell. But there I still was, standing, looking at the stranger with his arm outstretched, the gun still clutched in his fingers.
‘Put your hands up and kneel down on the ground,’ said Dalton. ‘Don’t bother trying to escape. You’re surrounded.’
And he barked into his radio: ‘We got him.’
The stranger looked up the street, and down, as if confused by the emptiness, but he threw down the gun anyway, and didn’t resist as Dalton finally reached him and told him to turn round. But as he turned, I saw his hand slip into his pocket and he drew out something that flashed like silver, and before I had time to cry out a warning, he spun round and the silver disappeared inside Dalton’s jacket, and Dalton gave a gasp and fell to the ground on one knee.
The stranger turned and ran.
I hurried forward, and knelt down next to Dalton. He was clutching the jacket at the waist where he’d been stabbed, and his fingers were black with blood.
‘I’ll go and get help,’ I said.
‘Fuck help,’ he said. ‘They’re on their way.’
‘They should be here by now.’
‘They’ll be here. Just make sure he doesn’t get away. Go on.’
I still wavered.
‘You’re losing him, for fuck’s sake. Go! I’ll be fine. I’ll call through for help.’
So I ran in the wake of the fleeing stranger, feeling vulnerable without a weapon, without protection, hardly knowing what I was doing or what I’d do if I did catch up with him.
Hold him hostage with a lighted cigar until help arrived?
I co
uld hear his footsteps in some side street, and turned the corner just in time to see him run into an alley on the other side. I followed blindly, and a cab sounded its horn as it narrowly missed hitting me, but didn’t slow down or stop to find out how I was, just blared a horn in protest and hurtled on, the neighbourliness of a city captured in one brief second of shock.
Behind me I heard the sound of sirens as the police backup finally arrived.
Where had it been?
But by this time I was over the road and moving away from the scene, and the stranger with the knife was even further ahead, dashing through one valley of dark brick after another, turning the city into a maze in the hope maybe that the pursuit would get lost; but I could see him more clearly now because he was among streetlights, and I ran as fast as I could, one of those times when I wished I had taken Fitzgerald’s advice and got more exercise, for my heart was creaking with the effort of keeping up as I negotiated more streets, more corners, my furious footfalls amplified by the echo bouncing off the encroaching walls, more—
I stopped.
I was in a small square of abandoned, broken buildings, where people had once lived, right in the middle of all these factories and warehouses, frightened trees hemmed in by railings in a communal garden dead centre, and I was surrounded by watching windows, shards and shadow, and doorways boarded up and transformed into canvases for obscene graffiti.
He couldn’t get out from here – unless he’d entered one of the houses.
Unless this was where he lived?
I rejected the idea as fanciful. He was hardly likely to lead the pursuit to the place where he lived. And no one lived here surely?
Certainly not a man in pinstripes.
Was he merely waiting then for a chance to double back and escape?
Or luring me into danger?
I thought of Dalton and went cold. Coming here alone didn’t seem such a smart idea now, but I couldn’t turn round. Trying to keep my breath steady, I made my way slowly round the edge of the square, peering through what gaps could be found in the boarded-up doors and downstairs windows at the heaps of rubble within, pockmarked with the glint of used syringes.
Looking for movement.
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 28
