Choi moved towards her. For one brief second Brigit thought she was about to be slapped.
“Margaret,” said Kruger, softly but firmly. Miss Choi stopped, looked about her, momentarily unsure, as if waking from a dream, and then returned to stand behind her employer.
“Would you like to know how I met my wife, Ms Conroy?”
The question took Brigit by surprised. She nodded nervously.
“It was at a party,” he said, before adding with a slight chuckle, “actually, no, it was avoiding a party. There was a big bash for something… there is always something. I was in a room, quietly reading a book. Sarah-Jane came in, ostensibly looking at the paintings but really, as I, simply avoiding all those people. She was…” Kruger returned to looking into the fire, lost in his own memory, “spectacular.”
Brigit shifted nervously. “She was very beautiful,” she said.
Kruger looked up, as if startled. “Oh no.” Then he smiled. “I mean, yes, of course, she was stunning but that is not what I meant. Beneath that shyness, she was so intelligent, articulate, charming. The sound of her laugh could make…” Kruger trailed off, an embarrassed look on his face. He cleared his throat before continuing. “I am not, as I believe you would put it, ‘good with people’. I have had this disfigurement,” he waved his hand at the angry red skin on his face, “since childhood. It has made socialising difficult. I have but a few close friends. With Sarah-Jane though… when she looked at me, it was not as others look at me.”
Brigit found herself looking at him intently, at the side of his face that was not disfigured. He would undoubtedly have been a handsome man, no, he was a handsome man – once your eyes looked past the obvious.
“I may be the fool the world sees me as. The man whose wife ran off with her kidnapper. I may be all of that. However, I know how I feel. I love my wife and I will do so to my dying day. I also believe she loved me.” His voice started to rise with anger. “Someone constructed a fairytale for the world. My wife was the trapped princess and I… well, I make a good monster, do I not?”
He extended his arms, Brigit looked away, feeling ashamed.
“You read this story in a book from the pages of which, as you yourself have told me, a man supposedly 30 years dead came alive and stabbed your companion. Another man is now trying to have you killed for what he thinks you might know, and yet you still believe it. You still believe that I am the monster.”
Kruger reached his hand up to touch Choi’s as it rested on his shoulder. He lowered his voice again. “I am still married to my wife. I could have had our marriage annulled long ago, but I did not. Until I know for a fact that the love I felt we shared was a lie, I cannot and will not ‘move on.’”
Brigit could not help herself. She looked up at Choi, who turned her head to look away.
“I don’t seek vengeance, I just have to know. Connor and Declan will take you back to your car. Good day.”
And with that, he turned and left the room, as Brigit and Paul sat there in silence.
Chapter Forty
Nora Stokes could smell trouble. Actually, thanks to the cream she’d been told to liberally smear all over herself to protect her skin through the strains of pregnancy, she could really only smell the sickly sweet stench of coconut. The stuff was strong, but it was too cold outside to open a window. Greevy, despite repeated assurances, had not got the boiler fixed before he had buggered off to Italy to save his sham of a marriage. That meant the heating had two settings, blazing inferno or off. It wasn’t much of a choice but she’d gone for inferno. At least that way, between the heat and the smell of coconuts, she could occasionally close her eyes and relax into the blissful fantasy of being on a warm tropical beach somewhere. Then the baby would kick and she’d remember her current state and how, if she really were on a beach, Greenpeace would soon show up and try and roll her back into the sea. Then she’d feel bad for thinking that and apologise to the baby. Currently, her days seemed to consist of wildly fluctuating emotions, bizarre cravings, and an exciting array of physical discomforts and indignities. Oh – and smelling like a deep-fried Bounty bar.
All of that she could more-or-less cope with. It was the bloke sitting outside the door that worried her. ‘The reception area’, as Greevy grandly called it, was really just three chairs at the top of the stairs. You could see whoever was waiting through the glass door between it and the office proper. Unfortunately, this meant they could also see you. The man currently staring in at her looked like he was sent from central casting for the role of thug number 2 in a gangster movie. He was sporting the shaven head, the tattooed knuckles and even the scar running down the side of his face.
For the last 20 minutes she’d been stalling, pretending to do paperwork, taking imaginary phone calls, sending important imaginary e-mails. There was a loud cough that clearly wasn’t a cough from outside. This fella obviously wasn’t going to take the hint. She hadn’t intended to even bother opening the office today, but it was the only number Paul Mulchrone had for her, and she’d had that message from DI Stewart to deliver.
Thug number 2 stood up and pointedly looked into the office. Nora held up her finger to indicate just one minute, and did one final rearrange of the articles on her desk. She had thought that if she bought enough time, something would come to her. It seems she had thought wrong.
Nora looked up and smiled. “C’mon in. Sorry for keeping you waiting.”
The man lumbered into what was already a small room and made it feel a whole lot smaller. He sat down and looked around.
“Bleedin’ hot in here.”
“Yes, sorry about that. The heating is a bit temperamental. Feel free to take off your coat if you’d like.” Or just leave. Please leave.
The man placed his hands on the leather jacket he was wearing and then changed his mind. “S’alright.”
Nora extended her hand. “I’m Nora Stokes, and you are?”
The man gave Nora’s hand the look people normally reserve for unrequested genitalia. “You don’t need my name.”
Nora took her hand back. “I’m afraid I do – for our records. I can’t go giving out legal advice without knowing the client’s name, now can I?”
“It’s Mick, Mick… Keane.”
The gap between the first and second names was so long, Nora could actually see him trying to be clever. She duly noted down the man’s false name on her pad, and resisted the urge to ask to see some ID.
“And how can we help you today, Mick?” ‘We’ because, remember, there’s lots of people working here.
“I’m looking for someone. He’s a client of yours – Paul Mulchrone.”
Nora shifted in her seat, trying to disguise any form of reaction. Trying to hide that this was now exactly what she’d been afraid it was.
“Right, I’m afraid we can’t help you.” Why had she not just phoned the police? Because she’d been so determined to not be the over-reacting silly pregnant woman, that was why. Now that the worse case scenario was coming to pass, it was too damn late. She glanced longingly at the phone before looking back at the man who definitely wasn’t called Mick Keane.
“But you’re his lawyer, right?”
“Due to client-lawyer confidentiality, I’m afraid I can’t even confirm or deny that. You understand.”
She’d spoken to Mulchrone an hour ago when he’d rung the office. She’d passed on the message DI Jimmy Stewart had left. It had been an odd sensation, having a policeman ask her to tell somebody else that they couldn’t trust the police. To tell them that a hitman had been killed trying to assassinate two other people that they’d mistaken for you. Mulchrone had gone very quiet. Then he’d said he’d ring back later. He’d hung up the phone so quickly, she’d forgotten to give him her mobile number. If Greevy, the cheap bastard, had spent a few more quid a month, they could have had a phone line that diverted to a mobile. She’d be sitting on her sofa right now, getting overly emotional at fabric softener adverts. She’d debated going home an
yway, and then she’d had the unhelpful thought about what kind of mother would she be if she didn’t help two people who were in danger. These days, her bloody stupid internal monologue kept asking awkward questions like that. She was trying to ignore the future and forget the past. Trying so hard to focus on getting through one day at a time. That pissy little voice that wouldn’t shut up had got her here.
The man who wasn’t Mick Keane laid his hands on the desk. Now they were close up, Nora realised he had HATE tattooed across both sets of knuckles. Where was the love?
“Look darling, it’s a simple question. Are you his lawyer or what?”
“No solicitor is going to answer that kind of question for you, Mr Keane. Now if there isn’t anything else I can help you with…” Please leave, please leave, oh God, please leave.
He slammed his fist down on the desk, making her jump. She instantly pulled back, placing her hands across her belly defensively.
“Stop pissing me about,” he said.
She looked around the room. “My boss is going to be back any minute.”
“From Italy?” he said, grinning wide enough to show an unhappy collection of teeth. “It’s really simple. Just tell me where Mulchrone is and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Are you really the kind of man who is going to threaten a pregnant woman?”
“I just assumed you were fat,” he said, sneering in a way that suggested this new information changed absolutely nothing.
Nora felt as if she might cry, but dragged in a deep breath, determined not to give this prick the satisfaction.
“Now, are you going to tell me where he is or do I have to make you?”
“I don’t suppose you’d believe that I really don’t know?”
He laughed. “No.”
Then he stood up and leaned over the desk, his fists propping him up, a twisted grin playing across his lips.
“Your mother must be so proud of you,” said Nora.
“She was a stupid bitch and all.”
Nora smiled. “So that’s where you get it from!”
He had only the briefest of moments to look confused, before he got maced, right in his great big stupid face.
He pulled back and rubbed his hands into his burning eyes, stumbling briefly, before careening messily over the chair behind him. Spitting and swearing profusely, he rolled about on the ground for a few moments, before staggering back to his feet. He shoved his right hand into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a gun. “Right you fucking b…”
He was interrupted by the unhappy sensation of his entire body going into spasm. His right hand involuntarily tossed the gun away into the corner, as 240 volts surged through him. A scream escaped his lips, just as the large fried breakfast he’d eaten, enjoyed and almost digested made a hasty escape out of his other end.
Nora had, in truth, never really liked her Uncle Graham. When she’d met him in childhood, both she and her siblings had found him a little odd. An expert in agricultural sciences, Graham had spent most of his life being sent around the world by the Irish government as a form of economic aid. As her mum had explained it to Nora, he was off teaching Africans how to grow things. In hindsight, he’d never really known how to deal with kids. He’d also been completely useless with teenagers, and he was clearly at a loss as to what an appropriate present for a girl was. Her brother had got a shield from an African tribe once; it had been the talk of the whole school for weeks. She, on the other hand, had gotten a rug. What 13-year-old girl didn’t want a rug?
And so, it was with a heavy heart that Nora had let her mother guilt her into going to dinner with Uncle Graham, when he was back in Dublin for a conference last year. The man had lived in Kenya for three years, but apparently he couldn’t last a night in Dublin on his own. He’d been really rather charming to be fair. As an adult, Nora could see that he was a nice man, albeit one that was a little socially awkward, and a little too into crop rotation. Uncle Graham for his part had been worried about Nora. Her mother had shared with him her oft-expressed fears for her daughter’s safety up on the mean streets of Dublin, hanging about with all those criminals. So at the end of the night, he’d insisted a gift upon his niece. It was what he called a taser. In fact, it was a glorified cattle prod. She’d explained to him that such devices were illegal in Ireland. He’d explained to her that if she ever needed to use it, she could worry about that bit after. He’d smiled and guessed she probably knew a good lawyer.
As Nora Stokes stood over the groaning form of the man who wasn’t called Mick Keane, the air a heady mix of coconut, burnt flesh and excrement, she decided to name her unborn child Graham, if it was a boy. Hell – even if it was a girl. They could stick a couple of fancy accents in there and pretend it was French or something.
She reached for the phone and was about to ring 999, when she thought better of it, and dialled another number instead.
“Fucking bitch.”
This time he screamed even louder.
“And just so you know,” said Nora, “this thing goes up to ten. That was a four, fancy a five ‘bitch’?”
Chapter Forty-One
They looked like a couple that weren’t talking, which was exactly what they were. Brigit and Paul were sat beside the window, looking at anything that wasn’t each other. They were in the kind of moulded plastic seating that was deliberately designed to be uncomfortable if you sat on it for more than fifteen minutes. They’d been there for over an hour. Paul was fairly sure his arse had fallen asleep. He envied it.
After they’d been dropped back to the Bentley by Big and Bigger, the first part of the drive back to Dublin had been relatively subdued. Seeing Kruger’s pain laid out like that had been unsettling for them both, and it’d done nothing to un-complicate their situation.
“Do you believe him?” Paul had asked.
“That he loved her? Probably. It doesn’t mean she felt the same though. He wouldn’t be the first person in the world to misjudge that.”
Then they’d fell into silent reflection until Paul had spotted the phonebox.
The call to Nora Stokes had done nothing to lighten the mood. Paul’s stomach had turned when he heard the details of the foiled assassination attempt on Brigit’s ex and his latest mistake. When he’d dropped Brigit’s mobile into their shopping bag, he hadn’t thought that… Well, wasn’t that it? He hadn’t thought. He’d been so obsessed with dumping a phone he suspected could lead trouble to their door, he’d got rid of it any way he could. Why had he not just dumped it into the canal, like he had his own? Or, as Brigit had pointed out, he could’ve just taken the sim card out. He could have done a hundred different things, if he’d just stopped to think. Instead, he’d thought he was being clever, leading the police on a wild goose chase, having them follow a phone that was no longer in Brigit’s possession. He’d never been great at thinking ahead, and now that had almost got two innocent people killed.
When he’d told Brigit, she’d hit the roof. Many people wish their ex dead, but there’s a big difference between the idle threat and almost making it happen. She’d shouted at him, and he’d shouted back. She’d not been wrong, but at the same time, she of all people couldn’t give him a bollocking. Who’d dragged who into this situation? Everything that’d happened in the last two days was brought back up, everything except what’d not happened the night before.
Then, they’d driven into the centre of Dublin in silence. Not total silence, there’d been quite a lot of honking, wincing and hand gestures. Now here they were, eating fast food slowly while they watched Brogan’s pub on the opposite side of the street.
“And you’re sure he wasn’t in there?” asked Brigit, without looking up from contemplating her three remaining fries.
“Yes,” said Paul, for the third time. He’d been sent in on a sweep of Brogan’s as soon as they’d got there. He’d gone around every little nook and cubbyhole, carefully checking there was no sign of Mark Brophy in any of them. He’d even spent a ridiculously long t
ime at a urinal in the gents, making sure that he wasn’t in any of the three stalls. The most recent picture they’d been able to find of Brophy when they’d searched on Dorothy’s computer had been from the dust jacket of a book he’d released last year. He was a fairly stocky man, with a head of long blonde hair that was thinning slightly above a forced looking grin. If you took the photos off all of his previous nine books, you could’ve made a compelling flipbook of a man looking less and less smug about his lot in life. Since the publication of Hostage to Love nearly thirty years ago, it appeared he’d tried his hand at pretty much every genre that wasn’t true crime, with less and less success. The reviews for Bloody Lovely, a vampire love story set in rural Ireland had been particularly brutal. Paul had quite liked the one that’d started ‘Oh just suck off’.
“So, if he’s definitely not in there,” said Brigit, “then who is that smoking a cigarette outside?”
Paul looked over and scanned the front of Brogan’s. It wasn’t that big a pub, being closer to the ‘proper old lad’s boozer’ than the ‘modern super pub’ end of the market. The tables inside had that kind of finish you only get by spilling beer on varnished wood a thousand times, and the carpets showed damage that pre-dated the smoking ban, if not the Easter rising. In the laneway to one side of the front door, out of the flow of early Saturday evening revellers, stood three men smoking and chatting. One of them was tall with a head of bushy hair and glasses, looking like a low-rent knock-off of Where’s Wally. The second one was about the right height, size and age – but unless Brophy had recently become black, it wasn’t him either. Paul was about to ask Brigit what on earth she was talking about, when the third man turned around. Paul had discounted him from the get-go due to his build. The Brophy in the picture they’d seen earlier was a stocky guy, this man was about eight stone heavier, none of it muscle.
“But,” stammered Paul, “that guy doesn’t look like Mark Brophy, he looks like he ate Mark Brophy.”
A Man With One of Those Faces (The Dublin Trilogy Book 1) Page 23
