“I wonder what it makes us.”
“And there’s been a lot of talk, how Podge’s manslaughter sentence is going to be reduced on appeal, the judge gave him longer than he was entitled to. In fact, I’m not even sure if he needs an appeal, it’s just some legal technicality. In either case, the fucker will be out on account of time served. Not looking forward to that.”
“I doubt George and Leo are either.”
I attempted a laugh, but Tommy didn’t see the funny side, and I didn’t blame him: Podge had only beaten me to a bloody mess; he had raped Tommy. We might have need of the INLA ourselves if Podge Halligan hit the streets again.
The hearse had stopped near the church doors. I saw Dessie Delaney and his beery-looking brother Liam in discussions with the undertakers about carrying the coffin into the church. I saw the tiny, sinewy figure of Jack Cullen, whom I’d only ever seen photographed, take Liam to one side and point him toward Barry Jordan, the Shelbourne captain, whom was surrounded by teammates. Liam went down and spoke to Jordan—whom I then saw shaking his head emphatically; four of the other players pushed forward, one of them having first taken Jordan aside and waved an angry finger in his face. The footballers joined Liam and Dessie and they hoisted the coffin on their shoulders and set off through the church doors.
Jack and Lamp looked set to join them when Charlie Newbanks appeared at Jack Cullen’s side. For a big man, he could move with surprising grace. He spoke into Jack Cullen’s ear, and then Jack Cullen seemed to lose the use of his spine: he swayed from the waist and his head fell back and his mouth opened and out came the most astonishing howl of pain, like the cry of a mortally wounded animal. Lamp Comerford and Newbanks crowded around Jack Cullen and moved him to one side of the church door and out of my view, but it was clear that Jack had just been given the news of Ray Moran’s death. Ray Moran said Paul Delaney had been like a son to Jack Cullen, but of course, that was a role Moran himself knew well: to lose one son the night before you bury another couldn’t be easy.
The crowds streamed into the church and I followed. Tommy had vanished, whether inside the church or elsewhere, I couldn’t see. I pushed as close to the front as I could get, and when Dessie, who stood in the aisle by the front pew watching the congregation, spotted me, he hailed me and we embraced and I was genuinely moved to see him, Dessie Delaney, the one who got away, genuinely moved and then genuinely shocked when his coat pocket scuffed against my hand and I felt the sickening heft of gunmetal. I looked him straight in the eye, and he looked straight back.
“Self-defense, Ed. Until I know what happened. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? Do I know what happened? Do you?”
I quickly told Dessie as much as I knew: that Paul hadn’t been dealing, that he had been favored by Jack Cullen for footballing reasons, that he was most probably the victim of the INLA. Dessie nodded as if none of that was unfamiliar to him, and when I said I wasn’t certain of any of it, and that there was a long way to go yet, the reckless look in his glittering eyes made my blood run cold. Dessie had been many things when I knew him, but he’d never been what he looked like now: a killer.
Dessie tucked me in the vacant pew behind him; across the aisle sat two rows of footballers in flash suits. Barry Jordan scowled at me, and I wondered whether Paul Delaney had been dealing after all, or whether Jordan was simply very clear-cut about the ethics surrounding associating with gangsters. I had a lot of sympathy with clear-cut ethics along those lines; unfortunately my chosen line of work meant I couldn’t hang that sympathy out on display. I wondered also why the pew I was in was vacant when every other seat in the church was taken; my answer came when, preceded by a hush that was almost audible, Jack Cullen walked up the aisle and sat in beside me. Of Lamp and Charlie there was no sign, but still. This was going to do wonders for my reputation.
The priest was sixty, dark-haired, and apparently not unused to the sudden, violent deaths of young men. The service lasted maybe twenty minutes: a few scripture readings, a few prayers, some hard talk about how another two men were being brought to a nearby church today, how all these young men were children of God, how drugs were the scourge of this community, how violence solved nothing. He was staring at Jack Cullen as he spoke, and Jack, whose head had been bowed until then, now looked up and stared right back at the priest. The priest broke gaze first, and looked down the church and appealed for calm, and for peace.
After the blessing, Jack Cullen was first to file past Dessie and Liam: Dessie moved him on quickly, but Cullen lingered with Liam, the pair embracing and talking quietly, intensely, and I could see Dessie staring at them as he shook hands with other mourners. When I stepped around, Dessie told me to call him in maybe an hour, and I said I would. I was shaking hands with Liam Delaney, who looked like Colm Meaney in a fat suit, when I heard the sound: bigger than gunfire, not quite a bomb. I could hear glass breaking and masonry falling. There was screaming in the church, and people near the bottom spilled forward up the aisles; I moved quickly to the side altar and out a door at the top of the church. To one side was a garden that looked like it led to the presbytery; as I ran toward the front of the church, two youths in black hoods passed me, their faces further concealed by balaclavas.
The first thing that struck me was the silence: not just in the aftermath of the explosion, but because the yard was almost deserted: the heavy Garda presence had totally dispersed, as had the TV crews and press photographers. There was broken glass and masonry dust strewn across the steps and smoke billowing out of the front porch of the church: a hand grenade, I guessed. Down the yard, I saw the slight figure of Jack Cullen, presumably the intended target, running, head down, ducking out the gates and vanishing from sight. Instinctively, I followed. When I got onto the street, all I could see were a couple of uniformed Guards across the street, stopping people from approaching the church, and the wail of sirens in the distance. I turned back and walked straight into Lamp Comerford.
“Ed Loy. You need to come with us,” Lamp said, and indicated a black Mercedes estate that had just pulled up alongside us.
“I don’t think that’s what I need, no thank you,” I said, and took a step back, and felt like I’d walked into a door. It was in fact a man the size and consistency of a door; he pinned my arms and lifted my feet off the ground and marched me to the Merc and Lamp opened the back door and I was flung inside. I sat upright and tried to punch my way out, but something meaty and hard connected with the middle of my face, and the back of my head slapped against the car window. I felt panic and pain, and then numb, and then nothing.
CHAPTER 19
The first thing I was aware of was the contrast between two distinct sounds: one of them was a high-pitched gurgling pleading, a shrill supplication. The other was lower, jagged, a staccato voice with a lisp. The low voice chuckled every so often, whether sardonically or with true pleasure it was hard to say. I seemed to be lying on a two-seater leather sofa. I was cold, and soaked in what I hoped was sweat, and the pain in my head was like the clenching and unclenching of a massive fist inside my skull: the closed fist was a tight, insistent throbbing in my brain, the open fist sent bolts of barbed wire dipped in acid shooting all over my body. That was where the sweat was coming from. I tried to sit up. It took a while.
In the meantime, I opened my eyes. I could see Lamp Comerford’s back. He was standing over someone who was seated, presumably the someone with the shrill voice. As the scene came into focus a little more clearly, Lamp did something sudden and jerky with one of his arms, and shouted something like, “What do you think now?” and the someone who was seated screamed, and then began to sob quietly.
My first reaction to this was to shut my eyes again in the hope, not that it would go away, but that it wasn’t there in the first place: it was simply an illusion, some kind of macabre hallucination brought on through overwork, perhaps, or a side effect of the Ecstasy tablets which, among other things, Donna Nugent had encouraged me to take. I was unsuccessful in this, however
, not least because when I closed my eyes the entire room began to spin, and when I opened them again the spinning didn’t stop, and the sweating got worse, and before I knew it I had hoisted my head up over the side of the sofa and was vomiting onto the tiled floor beneath me.
“You scuttery fuck,” Lamp Comerford said, approaching me. I could hear his heels on the boards, hear his breath close by, but I couldn’t turn my head around to look at him.
“You’ll mop that up or you’ll fucking eat it, you scuttery little fuck you,” Lamp said.
“Lamp,” said a quiet, authoritative voice.
There was silence, and then I could hear Lamp’s heels on the boards. The quiet voice spoke again, and Lamp grunted. Then there was a loud cracking sound, and then renewed sobbing. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and sat up on the sofa and opened my eyes and looked around me. I was in some kind of farmhouse-style kitchen, with an old fireplace and a range and exposed beams. There was a big table and chairs in a dining area to my rear; ahead of me were several sofas that matched the one I was sitting on. Jack Cullen was sitting on one of them in the center of the room. In front of him, Charlie Newbanks was tied to a kitchen chair.
Charlie’s face was a bruised and swollen mess, and his mouth was leaking blood, and he was crying. Lamp was standing between Charlie and the fireplace, bending over the hearth. When he righted himself, he had a small poker in his hand whose tip was glowing red. He brought the poker close to Charlie Newbanks’s right eye, and then around to his left eye. Newbanks whimpered. I got to my feet.
“Jesus Christ, stop,” I said. “Put the poker down. For God’s sake.”
Lamp looked at Jack Cullen, who nodded. Lamp put the poker back in the fire.
“Now sit down,” Cullen said to me.
I shook my head, and immediately felt so nauseous I sat down involuntarily. I gripped my knees with my hands and breathed deeply.
“Get him some water, Sean,” Cullen said toward the kitchen. There was the sound of a running tap, and then the gigantic man who had thrown me into the car appeared at my side and handed me a glass of water and retreated into the kitchen. Cullen came and sat down beside me. He spoke in a very low voice.
“We don’t want any nonsense now, do you understand? We just need the answers to some questions, and we think Charlie should be able to answer them, and we think you will be able to help. But if you start trying to play the hero, first off, Sean will have to put a few more manners on you. Then we might have to tie you up and after that, well, Lamp might need to get to work. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Now, I know you were taking an interest in young Paul Delaney, looking out for him, and I appreciate that, even if you were worried that I might be what he needed to be protected from, fair enough, you weren’t to know. I also know that you were looking into the killing of a tax collector, and you think I might be involved. I suppose that’s a debit entry in the ledger, but since I had nothing to do with that death, I can’t get too excited about it. And of course, Lamp has told me about the knife that killed Cummins and Devlin. We still have that, and we’ll use it against you if we need to. So behave yourself. Charlie’s a big boy here, and he knew what he was getting himself into.”
Lamp was staring at me, his eyebrows raised, his eyes flashing, as if he was trying to send me a message. I looked at him and, unseen by Jack or Charlie, he gave me a thumbs-up sign. In the context, the gesture was so grotesque I thought I might throw up again.
“Now, here’s what happened today, before the INLA threw a grenade at me. In my own neighborhood. A grenade. And before that, they attacked Ray Moran’s house with pipe bombs. It’s not as if they’re worried about anonymity, everyone knows they’re the only ones who use grenades and bombs. So. So they kill Raymond, and they badly injure his minder, Johnny Gara. They badly injure him, but they don’t kill him. Contrary to what Charlie has told us. Lamp gets a call from the hospital while I’m at the removal, and he boots up there and has five minutes with Gara. And Gara tells him Charlie gives him a break this morning, and when he gets back, Raymond’s taken a beating. He’s acting as if nothing’s wrong, but Gara can see his face has been badly bruised, his nose is swollen and out of shape, it’s not pretty. What’s more, Gara saw who did it. You see, when Charlie comes over and gives Gara the morning off, Gara doesn’t like it.
“Now you’ve heard, and everyone’s heard, that we’ve had a little tension in the organization. A little strain. And everyone’s tense. Everyone’s watching his back. So Charlie, who’s only ever on the door of the Viscount or Lamp’s drinking buddy, Charlie is not the one to be giving Gara time off. And Gara thinks, maybe Charlie’s up to no good. Maybe Charlie is the wrong ’un. Maybe Charlie set up Paul Delaney. And of course, there’s advancement in it for Johnny Gara, but self-interest is the great motivator. So Gara takes off for the pub like he’s told, and then doubles back and makes a short film with his mobile phone. And in the film, we can identify you, and Leo Halligan, and a scruffy-looking chap with a ruined foot that Lamp tells me is an old friend of yours by the name of Tommy Owens.
“Now, I have people out searching for Owens, and for Leo Halligan. But what I want to know is, first of all, what was said in the room, and what was done.”
Cullen walked quietly back to his ringside seat. There was no indication in his face that he found the sight of Charlie Newbanks upsetting.
“Charlie here says he wasn’t actually present. But we find that hard to believe,” he said.
“He wasn’t,” I said.
“Why did he call off Johnny Gara? Why did he set up this meeting with yous all?”
“Because Charlie and Tommy Owens are old friends. Tommy was dealing drugs for Leo Halligan in Trinity College way back in ’90, ’91, before Ray Moran and his INLA friends moved in. That’s how you hooked up with Ray in the first place, remember? Tommy and Charlie were worried that someone was going to take me out, on account of my poking my nose into your affairs. We’ve all heard the rumors about you and Lamp there not seeing eye to eye. And people said Lamp and Raymond weren’t the best of pals either. Coming on top of Cummins and Devlin laying into me that night—and they had a knife, and they were going to use it—well, they felt Ray Moran might be able to answer a few questions about exactly what kind of danger I was in, who to expect it from, that type of thing.”
“Provided Leo Halligan gave him the once-over first. I assume that was Leo’s work? What exactly was Leo doing there?”
“Tommy and Leo go back. I think Leo acts as muscle for Tommy if he thinks the situation warrants it. And he knew Moran from before.”
“You don’t think Leo had an ulterior motive?”
“I think Leo always has an ulterior motive. I just don’t know what, in this situation, it might have been. Unless it’s to do with Brian Fogarty’s murder.”
Jack Cullen looked puzzled.
“Who’s Brian Fogarty?”
“The tax collector. There are three suspects who had motives to kill him. You’re one, and George Halligan is another. Maybe Leo is staying close enough to me to see if there’s any threat to George.”
Cullen nodded.
“So what did Moran tell you?” Lamp Comerford said, his patience appearing to snap. Cullen looked annoyed, but Lamp didn’t seem to care; with his goatee and his dark coloring and his gray flattop glowing red in the firelight, he looked like a low-rent Satan taking a break from his infernal toil. There were brass fire tools in a coal scuttle by the hearth: pokers and shovels and so forth; I didn’t know whether any of them would be enough if and when the time came; I’d probably need the scuttle itself when it came to big Sean. In the meantime, keep them talking and wait for an opening.
“Moran said Dean Cummins and Simon Devlin were in the INLA, and that the most likely thing was, they were laying in wait for him, but because we’re about the same height and we both wear dark suits, they went after me by mistake.”
Lamp nodded at this as if it had alrea
dy been established. Jack Cullen watched Lamp nodding.
“Only thing I wondered about that was, usually in the press they can identify fairly quickly who belongs to which gang or faction. They always identify INLA members straightaway. There’s been no mention of that with Cummins and Devlin.”
Lamp Comerford made a puzzled face, and Jack Cullen watched him make it.
“And Moran thought Paul Delaney was most likely murdered by the INLA, and Leo and Tommy seemed to think that was spot-on.”
Lamp Comerford shrugged as if this was not exactly news, and Jack Cullen watched him shrug.
“So for a start, I don’t see why poor Charlie here has to take all this flak, apart from it being par for the course in his chosen line of work. If he achieved anything, it was to reassure me that neither of you is trying to have me killed. Which is very nice to know.”
I smiled, and Lamp Comerford smiled back, and Jack Cullen watched him smile.
And Charlie Newbanks coughed, and a gob of blood shot out of his mouth and landed on Lamp Comerford’s hand.
Lamp’s face, already dark and hot from the fire, seemed to turn as red as the blood on his hand, and his mouth opened in a roar, and he turned to the fire and wrenched the poker out and brought the red-hot tip around and brandished it in front of Charlie Newbanks’s face and said:
“I’ll burn your fucking eyes out and then I’ll stick this poker up your fat fucking hole.”
And I did the only thing I can think of in circumstances like this: I made something up, and hoped it might be close enough to the truth to work.
I said, “Lamp told me you had Brian Fogarty killed, Jack. He said you got those INLA lads from Belfast who strayed across the river into your territory to do it, and you made sure Ray Moran took part, and that’s what tied him to you. He said he’d give me chapter and verse if I came up with evidence that you’re a tout, Jack. He paid me five grand, with five more to come, to rout the tout. That’s what he thinks you are. He thinks you’ve been giving up your own coke shipments. He thinks you’ve got some kind of deal with the drug squad that’s going to get you off, and send him down.”
All the Dead Voices Page 19
