FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE

by Mike Coony

  “Roger, you can’t help being a Brit…it’s not your fault…an accident of birth. But I knew there was something I liked about you the minute we met. You’ve got bollocks my friend, and fair play to you.”

  “Finn, I probably shouldn’t say what I’m about to say, but discretion doesn’t come natural like…it’s something I had to learn for the job. One, I’m pretty sure I know who you are, and roughly what you do. Two, I think you’re in the ideal position to help a young man we both know. He’s in a lorryload of trouble.”

  “Fair enough, I’ll not insult you by denying what you assume about me. I’m intrigued to know how I can help. Who’s in trouble?”

  “It’s Paul, Paul Wills. He’s in trouble with the 14K Triad, and he’s screwing up at work. The cops are watching him.”

  “Bollocks. He’s doing bits and pieces for me and some of Uncle Sui’s friends.”

  “I didn’t know that, but I can tell you that he’s in up to his neck with the 14K. And I suspect that won’t please Mister Sui Wong-Li one little bit.”

  “Let’s not be shy with each other Roger. We both know Uncle Sui’s position in the Sun Yat Sun Triad. What I don’t know is the relationships between rival Triads, and whether Uncle Sui can influence the 14K without losing face…which seems so precious to our Asian friends. In any event, he may see no benefit in involving himself in Paul’s problem.”

  “I get what you mean Finn, but the connection to George Han’s Clarrion Group, via young Paul, might interest him.”

  “OK. I’ll see what I can do, but Paul Wills must never know about my relationship with Uncle Sui or the Sun Yat Sun. I’ll have to find an intermediary to approach Paul about his problem. Then I’ll tell Uncle Sui about the situation, and I’ll draw his attention to the George Han connection. Now, let’s get back. The Olympics are starting.”

  ———

  I’ll draw his attention? Jaysus! Why didn’t I just say I’ll tell him? I’ve been hanging around with too many of these banking prats. Now I’m starting to talk like them!

  Roger and I walked back up to the roof-terrace, where we could see bodies in assorted stages of undress below. They’re writhing about in mud, swinging on slippery ropes, pillow fighting on poles, flinging mud pies at the spectators and showering each other off with fire hoses.

  Our girls from Down Under are contributing an extra spectacle to the Mud Olympics with another display of synchronised breast swinging – their party piece I presume. And they’re chomping at the bit ‘to cream the Flankers and Wankers’ from the foreign exchange banks and the big estate agents.

  I went back downstairs and found a pretty tipsy Susie sharing a joint with Joe in his secret cubby-hole behind the ladies’ toilet. Susie declared her joy at seeing me by suggesting that we return to our hired cruiser and christen the double bed in the owner’s cabin. Joe kindly offered us his chaise longue instead, which I declined, but I thanked him for the offer. I asked Susie to meet me up on the roof and left them alone to finish their joint.

  Finding Susie smoking dope really pisses me off. I grasp what a hypocrite I am – angered by one person using a soft drug, but content to ship two hundred kilos of heroin across the world to destroy the lives of thousands of weak people. That’s really the contradiction my conscience is wrestling with.

  People have broken into smaller groups consisting of those who already know each other, and – like so many expats – those who have discovered a common interest. A couple of the brokers’ straight-laced wives are shooting daggers at the antipodean girls who’ve abandoned their tops and shorts completely and are cavorting in beer-soaked knickers.

  The mother of Paul’s child is in a huddle with Helen Wynne, and it sends alarm bells ringing. I was about to interrupt their tête-à-tête when Roger came bounding up the stairs to announce that it’s our team’s turn in the mud arena.

  Our antipodean girls are first to pile into the stinking arena; they’re making short work of the wankers. The posh flankers and bankers T-shirts are buried in the mud, and all the wanker girls are as bare breasted as ours now – except for a girl called Maxine from an estate agent. I’m impressed with wide boy Roger, I see now how he saw off the Krays and the Triads. A wanker and a flanker tried to shove him in the shite, and it was no bother on him to floor them in one fell swoop. Four enormous flankers tried to take me on, but I put them down one by one. The Flankers and Wankers left the field with heads hung low, smeared in merde, dressed only in torn shorts and knickers.

  Team Bodacious Bodies was declared the winner when no one else was prepared to do battle with us. We were awarded a plastic silver trophy and twelve bottles of tequila for our triumph. With everyone’s approval, I presented the plastic trophy to Paul’s daughter and gave the case of tequila to the antipodeans. “Heaps mate!” they all cheered, as they treated us to one last bit of synchronised breast swinging.

  Not surprisingly, the antipodeans have been offered lifts backs to Discovery Bay on a variety of yachts and junks…in the company of a great number of excited males. Alas for the men, Susie was talking to the girls and discovered that they’re all dedicated followers of Lesbos – and they take great pleasure winding men up.

  On the return boat journey our guests broke into small groups, and the stewards served strong coffee and light snacks. Susie persuaded me to try out the owner’s double bed, and the journey passed in a flurry of tits, thighs and pubic hair.

  When we pulled in at Queen’s Pier Susie and I jumped ship and took a taxi back to Citizen Tower. We left everyone who wants to carry on back to the Aberdeen Marina Club on board.

  ———

  Before hitting the bed, again, I need to phone Mac. But I’m not about to trust the call to my Motorola mobile, or even my own land line. I slipped out of the penthouse and went to the telephone kiosk on Tregunter Path. I rang Mac at his BBC news girl’s cottage in Kemptown.

  Mac said he’ll be on his way, first thing tomorrow morning. His route will be London to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, and from there he’ll head to Schiphol in Amsterdam where he’ll swap boarding cards and passports with his look-alike. His next stop will be Changi Airport in Singapore, then on to Macau, and finally Hong Kong.

  I’ve always believed that Mac was raised by Irish wolfhounds; he likes leaving a trail like a dog pissing in the snow. Of course, it’s always a trail that leads nowhere and confuses the shite out of any poor fecker following him.

  I don’t think anyone will be following him on this trip, but if he is followed the look-alike should be tailed from Amsterdam. A known Provisional IRA killer turning up in Hong Kong would light a fire under the British spooks in London’s Curzon Street, to say nothing of Army Intelligence crammed into HMS Tamar. It’s just as well that height, colour of eyes, etc. aren’t recorded on passports anymore. There aren’t too many seven footers out there with grey-blue-hazel eyes willing to swap identities with Mac.

  With the Frog and Toad boat trip already fading from my thoughts, I made my way home from Tregunter Path. I stripped off my clothes as I climbed the spiral staircase to my bedroom. I’m hoping to feign sleep before Susie wakes and reminds me of my promise to shag her whenever she feels like it – she always feels like it. She woke, and I went through the motions, but my mind isn’t on the task in hand.

  ———

  I wasn’t sure if the safe house in Sussex Gardens was still secure, so I convinced my BBC news girl that we should move back to her Kemptown cottage. It’s within spitting distance of Brighton Marina.

  She’d gone out to the corner shop for milk when the phone rang – two rings, stop, four rings, stop, three rings, stop. I answered the next ring. Finn was on the line, and he didn’t need to say a whole lot. From the tone of his voice I could tell that there’s mischief afoot. We used to call it that when there was an explosive device to stick under a car, or a gobshite to be double popped through the back of the head. Does someone need to be popped in Hong Kong? No problem, my pleasure.

  Ever
ything’s in place, and I’ll be on the first train to London in the morning. I’ll fly from Heathrow to CDG in Paris, where I’ll catch another plane to Amsterdam. My look-alike will meet me there and trade his passport and boarding cards for mine. I’ll hop the plane for the long flight to Singapore, and then it’s just a matter of one more flight to Macau and getting over to Hong Kong.

  29

  HONG KONG

  I have a devious, double-crossing, limp-wristed stockbroker for Mac to kill. I couldn’t care less how Mac gets rid of the little bastard, as long as he gets away with it. With any luck, we’ll be able to make it look like a homophobic murder – that’s what I’m hoping for. I’ll be guided by Mac on the exact method to dispatch the target, but I already have a location in mind.

  I’m remembering days spent with Mac lying up to our chins in freezing cold streams or dirty ditches, watching UFF volunteers stashing boxes of British Army-issued SLR rifles in their safe houses. Times like that I had a hell of a job persuading Mac not to sneak out of his hidey hole and break the lads’ necks with a few of his killer rabbit punches.

  Mac is the most dangerous man I have ever met…and I’ve known, and fought alongside, many dangerous men. Once Mac is persuaded that someone must die, die they will. He’s an astute, resourceful, ruthless executioner.

  ———

  Like most Roman Catholics, Mac’s family were ordinary, third-class British citizens. Their own house was burnt out by the RUC in Derry, and they moved into a council cottage in Kilkeel, County Down, Northern Ireland. They were just going about their daily lives in their new home when they were senselessly targeted for slaughter.

  A gang of bored Unionist youths armed with their fathers’ revolvers drove around Kilkeel seeking out victims. The savages murdered Mac’s twelve year old twin brothers who were playing cowboys and Indians with pretend guns in the front garden. Then they gang raped and bludgeoned Mac’s fourteen year old sister to death. She was still wearing the costume she wore to an Irish dancing competition across the border in the Irish Republic earlier that day. The barbarians then tormented and killed Mac’s mother after she struggled home from the shop with a five stone bag of potatoes balanced on the crossbar of her dead husband’s bicycle.

  The murderous wretches who killed Mac’s entire family were sons of serving members of the Ulster Special Constabulary, known to the Nationalists as the B-Specials. The police arrested no one for the killings, but four youths from Warrenpoint suddenly left to visit relations in Scotland and Canada.

  Mac was ordered by the Army Council not to overreact to the loss of his family; they might just as well have told the wind not to blow. Mac tracked down all the killers and shot each one in the identical spot between his nose and mouth. He was deliberately leaving his calling card, but not surprisingly, no one returned his call.

  The brutal murders of an entire Catholic family hardly warranted a mention in the North’s Unionist-controlled media, unlike the subsequent executions of Warrenpoint youths in Glasgow, Perth and Montreal. Those killings featured extensively on the Ulster Television News, and the Northern editions of the English tabloids were anxious for every grizzly detail. Except, of course, there was no connection made with the earlier Kilkeel butchery of Mac’s family, or any explanation offered for the boys’ executions.

  What shocked me at the time was the way Mac set about his revenge. There was no sign of the crazy Mac getting up to his usual stunts. He was calculating, efficient and unemotional…ice-cold and terrifying.

  ———

  Susie’s meeting the Canadian Consul in One Exchange Square, and I need a Two Exchange Square Health Club membership card, so I suggested we meet in Plume’s for lunch. I thought I might get her to distract some lucky club member whose card I’ll steal.

  I arrived in Plume’s before Susie, but it turns out I won’t need her to distract anyone. The pimply faced money broker I’ve set my sights on is playing liar’s dice with three other Essex gobshites. He’s helpfully hung his jacket over the empty chair next to him, which happens to be directly behind the chair I asked to be seated in.

  Without even getting up from my seat, I knocked his chalk-striped, vermilion-silk-lined jacket off the back of the chair, lifted his wallet and removed the membership card. On the pretence of retrieving and re-hanging the jacket, I was able to slip his wallet back into the inside pocket. And then the gobshite offered me a glass of Champagne. “Do join us for a glass of shampoo, fellow,” he said, holding up his ridiculous jeroboam.

  I signalled not necessary and turned away from him just as Mrs. Natasha Harrington-Browne slipped into the seat across from me.

  “Susie’s lunching with clients upstairs in the American Club; their lunch is running late. She asked me to have lunch with you, so you won’t be lonely Finn Flynn. Though, I must say, you’ve never struck me as someone who minds being alone. And you seem able to find company when you need to,” announced Natasha.

  Who could ever accuse the Dutch of being blunt? I thought.

  Natasha leaves no one in any doubt that she’s the restaurant owner’s wife. She summoned the manager to our table, but in the nicest way possible, of course.

  While half-listening to Natasha talk excitedly about her husband’s business plans, I’ve been making some plans of my own. I want to make an unannounced appearance at the Wyndham Street offices after lunch – just to find out what goes on there when I’m not around.

  After our meal, Natasha Harrington-Browne and I parted company with a soft kiss on the lips.

  I arrived at Tivoli Mansion and found Sui-Lin arranging fresh flowers in my office. My dispatch manager, resplendent in suit and tie, is in the outer office.

  I read dozens of telephone messages thanking me for the day out at the Mud Olympics, including one from the antipodeans.

  PHONE MESSAGE

  To: Finn Flynn

  From: Bodacious Bodies from Down Under

  Ta muchly Finn Flynn. The Mud Olympics was a bottler! We confess, we had a howl without yous on the boat back from the Frog and Toad to Discovery Bay, and thanks for the pressie of the tequila. Dignity restored, no knickers explored – up the Queen. Sorry about the pom remarks, didn’t realise you’re a true blue Paddy begorra!

  “Sui-Lin, are you busy?”

  “No Mister Flynn. What do you need?”

  “I’d feel happier if I knew what’s happening with those account applications at the Dao San Bank on Des Voeux Road.”

  “On my way Mister Flynn. Do you mind if I take a few minutes to pop into Dickson Poon’s in the Landmark? He’s just received a new Rolex range and I’m thinking of getting my mother a new watch for her birthday. I’ll make up the time tomorrow, or the next day, promise.”

  “No problem…take your time.”

  As soon as she left the office I asked the dispatch manager if he knows where the American Club is.

  “Oh yes, Mister Flynn. My brother is employed as a steward at the American Club in Exchange Square, but sadly, no longer at their country club. We meet for chow fan at a food stall near his place of work.”

  Jaysus, the good luck gods are on my side again…and his English has improved.

  “Can your brother get copies of the members’ annuals?”

  “Yes, of course Mister Flynn, no problem. He takes them home with him to study the faces of new members. I’ll bring for the past ten years in the morning. Is that suitable boss?”

  “If you go home now could you bring them to my apartment tonight?”

  “Of course Mister Flynn.”

  I wrote my address on a Post-it note and handed it to him with a twenty. I told him to take taxis, which I suspect he won’t. He politely took the two notes and shot out the door and down the stairs.

  I need Mac to recognise his target straight off. I don’t have time, or the inclination, to arrange a face-to-face between Mac and the broker. The photographs in the members’ annuals will have to do.

  ———

  I can hear Susie
singing to herself upstairs. I haven’t tackled her about smoking dope at the Mud Olympics. I don’t want to come across heavy-handed, but I can’t let her bring that shite into my home. If the police searched the penthouse and found drugs I’d be a goner – as well as a hypocrite.

  “Have you got anymore of that grass you were smoking at the Mud Olympics Susie?!” I yelled, as I climbed the stairs to the bedroom.

  “No way! Finn love, that belonged to Joe! I hadn’t even smoked any since I was in Australia with Fran! To tell you the truth, I’m not really keen on it! I didn’t know you use the stuff!” she called back at the top of her plummy voice.

  “That’s OK. I don’t use it. I’m just curious if you had any here with you.”

  “Finn darling, I might bring big-titted dykes into your home, but drugs? Never! And while we’re on the subject, dear, I got a call from the girls you gave a lift to the Frog and Toad. They want to know if we’d go to their place in Discovery Bay for an overnight barbecue. Would we?” she asked.

  “Sure, why not? But am I expected to stand around while you get shagged by a dozen delectable dykes?”

  “Such delightful alliteration dear…all those darling ‘D’s. That’s not the impression I got. I do believe that you managed to flutter a few lesbian hearts among those antipodeans dear. The invitation is for both of us, remember.”

  “Right, say yes…we’d love to come.”

  “Filthy beast, I know that already!”

  30

  HONG KONG

  I’ve never been to Hong Kong before; it’s bleeding roasting. Finn didn’t warn me about this desperate heat. The place looks like New York, but it smelt like Calcutta until I crossed the harbour and arrived in the Central business district.