03-Father Confessor

by Russel D. McLean

  I keyed in the number. Let it ring.

  “Aye?”

  “I’ve got someone here who wants to talk.” I put the phone on speaker, held it out to Wood. “Say hello.”

  “Who the fuck’s –”

  The voice on the other end of the line let loose a chuckle. Low at first, and then rising until it sounded like he wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Wood’s eyes widened. “Cocksucker! Fucking bawbag bastards! Cunting arsewipes, I’m going to –”

  “You’re going to what, Kevin?” said the voice on the other end. “What do you think you’re going to do? I knew my man here couldn’t resist giving you what you deserve.”

  Then, directed to me: “Where is he?”

  I didn’t say anything. Just looked at Wood. Offering a silent challenge. He stared back. I expected him to try and call my bluff. And maybe he was going to, but I think he caught something in my expression that made him hesitate. When my hand made to pull the phone back towards me, he said, “I’ll give you the name.”

  I closed the line. Hunkered down before him. Said, “This way, it’s just the law you have to deal with.”

  He laughed at that. A short, bitter bark.

  “The name. Or this time I tell him right out. And I walk away.”

  Wood’s face contorted. He wanted to kill me. If his hands weren’t bound, he might have done so. Instead, his features twisted and he spat out the name: “Mick the Mick,” he said. “Irish prick. Did some time inside for sexual assault, came out a killer for hire.”

  “He works exclusively for you?”

  “Aye, he’d say so. Probably does gigs on the side, know what these criminal types are like. Never trust them.”

  Maybe it was supposed to be a joke. Neither of us was laughing.

  “You have an address for him?”

  “A number.”

  I shook my head. “You gave her an address.”

  “Why do you want to stop her?”

  “Because she’ll be making a mistake.”

  “Aye? Don’t think I don’t know you, McNee. That incident at the Necropolis, for example. One man dead, another badly injured? Sure, maybe the survivor wouldn’t talk, but anyone with half a brain could figure what happened. Lindsay let you off. You know that, right? He fudged the report, the whole investigation. Just vague enough that he didn’t need to press charges. The stupid prick seems to have a soft spot for you. What, you think you got off because you were innocent? Christ, the Chief Superintendent was screaming for your blood.”

  I could have laughed it off. Knowing that he was baiting me. I didn’t doubt some of what he said was true, but Lindsay wouldn’t have been trying to protect me.

  I said, “Just give me the address.”

  He shook his head. “Fuck you, then,” and reeled off a street and house number.

  I stood up.

  “At least leave me the bloody torch!”

  I tried not to smile as I rolled the door shut, and left the arrogant bastard there in the dark. Alone.

  THIRTY

  She hadn’t killed Wood.

  That was a good sign.

  But then, it was hard to think of Susan as a killer. Like any copper, she had her own store of anger. This, in itself, was not a bad thing. Because you need anger to do the job.

  A healthy sense of antagonism is practically a requirement for effective policing. But it needs to be tempered. The edges have to be shaven off. Otherwise you become a thug in uniform; a disgrace to the job. You become like the late Cal Anderson.

  I wondered what would happen to the bastard’s body. One thing was certain: Burns would ensure it would never be found. There were many people connected to the old man who had disappeared without a trace over the decades. Sure, the modern cop shows would have you believe that sooner or later all your old skeletons come back to haunt you, but in Burns’s case there could be dozens of bodies he would take with him when he finally died.

  There were two others out there as well.

  I would have believed one of them to be the trigger man. But then maybe Wood had some sense of propriety after all. Knew that it would take more than corruption for one cop to kill another. When the corrupt shitebag was finally charged, there would be deep feelings among the rank and file: an age-old conflict:

  We don’t send down our own.

  The uniform is thicker than blood.

  It’s the same psychology as in families who don’t want to turn on their own no matter what they’ve done. Except coppers are honour-bound to do something about their bad apples, no matter how they feel about it.

  Kevin Wood would be safer in the hands of cops than anywhere else. They’d agonise over what to do with him, but in the end they wouldn’t – they couldn’t – hurt him. Both because he was one of their own and because anything they did to him would be scrutinised by a public enquiry.

  Handing Wood over to the coppers was a lose-lose for them.

  For him it was the best outcome to the worst day of his life.

  He’d be wondering, of course, as he waited in the dark, whether I’d hand him to the police or Burns. Or whether I’d want to deal with him myself. He said he knew who I was, what I had done. But depending on who told him the stories, he might believe I was in some way dangerous.

  And maybe I was.

  I wondered what Susan had told him. If she’d told him anything. Or just left him there, wondering if he’d die alone amongst one man’s long lost memories. She’d shown mercy of a sort.

  But would she be able to exercise the same self-control with Mick the Mick? The man who shot her father?

  ###

  Most people, when they come out of prison, seek out family or friends. Looking to get themselves back into the world; trade off old favours or loyalties and set themselves up once more.

  But there’s very few of them wind up in plush converted apartments on the top floor of old Victorian mansions. Of course, if Wood was to be believed, Mick the Mick came out of prison with a saleable skill, even if it wasn’t one of those approved by the parole board.

  And there was always someone willing to pay good money for a practiced killer.

  I’d learn more about Mick in the months and years to come, as the chaos calmed and the truth floated gently to the calmed surface. What I’d learn was that he went inside a waster, a university dropout originally from County Cork who had turned to drug dealing almost by accident. At first, it had been to raise funds for his course. Later, he dealt narcoticcs because he dug the lifestyle. He abandoned his studies, set himself up as an independent trader. He did well enough, relying mostly on his gift of the blarney to keep him out of trouble.

  But he was the kind of moron who was always destined to wind up in the nick. He had no control. And clearly he’d never seen Scarface or heard the hoary old maxim: don’t get high on your own supply. In the end, Mick was arrested for sexual assault on a young woman. His defence that he’d been under the influence at the time and not in control of his own actions didn’t wash with the court. Mick was sentenced to a year inside. The sentence was light, given that it was Mick’s first recorded offence.

  Bad decision.

  Mick found it tough adjusting to life inside.

  Prison life is not as notorious as its reputation suggests. Not for everyone. But there are elements of truth to the popular mythology. Put any people of a similar type together and you’ll get forms of tribalism and struggles for power and domination. Men like Mick, who’ve never known that world, become easy targets for certain types of people.

  Prison is supposed to change a man. That’s the whole idea. So from a certain point of view, then, you could count Mick as a success story. His sentence wasn’t long, wasn’t supposed to be arduous, but after three months inside, Mick found himself with his back to the wall being threatened by a particularly violent prisoner. With his life on the line, Mick dug deep and found his dark side again. Broke the other man’s neck in what the prison officials described as “a particul
arly brutal assault”.

  Funny how brutal a man can turn when he thinks he has nothing left to lose. Mick’s sentence was increased accordingly after the incident.

  So, aye, prison changed him. He learned control. He learned direction. He learned violence. He learned patience.

  Mick came out clean as a whistle. No more drugs for Mick. A changed man. No longer a drug addict. Instead, he’d become a killer.

  And he owed Kevin Wood, too. During his time inside, as his rep grew, he’d done a few jobs for Wood. Nothing too big. But he was rewarded handsomely. Assured of employment on the outside.

  His first job being to get rid of a copper who’d been sniffing around places he had no right being. It had been Wood’s idea to plant the drugs near the murder scene.

  After all, it’s not enough to kill a man. No, Wood knew that to really hurt a man like Ernie Bright, you had to destroy him completely.

  ###

  “You’re with the police?”

  I shook my head as I clambered out of the car. I had to grip at the bodywork to keep upright. My legs were shaking. The skin across my forehead was stretched tight. My skull ached. How the hell was I still standing?

  The man had run from across the road, his head ducked as though afraid of the sky falling on him. He was pale, the kind of pale that comes from being awake early in the morning. He was wearing backless slippers and pyjamas beneath a thick dressing gown. I noticed the ends of the gown’s sleeves were ratty, as though he picked at them.

  Judging from his quick, jerky movements, this man was a born worrier, the kind of guy who thought everything through. Probably spent so long thinking about things he missed a lot of opportunities for action.

  He stayed down, hiding behind my car. I couldn’t quite figure what he was doing. I turned to look at the old house that had been converted into high-end flats. Said, “What’s happening?”

  “I called the police. I mean, I let her in when she showed me her badge. She had business with the Irish lad who moved in on the top floor. That’s what she said, anyway.”

  “You know him?”

  “Who?”

  “The Irish lad. On the top floor.”

  The man shook his head. “Only to speak to. Like, in the stairwell or something. He’s not been there long. The girlfriend doesn’t like him much… I dunno, you can’t judge a person on how they look, right?”

  “But she was right,” I said.

  He said, “I don’t know what’s happening. This policewoman asking to be let in. Then I heard her banging on the door and then…” He was still crouched, and reached up to tug at my jacket as though to pull me down to his level. “… Jesus, there was gunfire. Gunfire, man!”

  “How many shots?”

  “I thought you weren’t with the police?”

  He’d already called them. Which meant I didn’t have time to piss around. I said, “How many shots?”

  “Just the one.”

  “Pistol? Shotgun? What kind of weapon?”

  “How would I know? I’ve lived in the Dee all my life. How many guns d’you think I’ve seen?”

  I was tempted to tell him he needed to get out more. Instead, I said, “Stay here. The cops’ll be running in like it’s Armageddon.” Which was true enough. Standard response to a weapons discharge in the city limits was to send all hands to panic stations. They’d be assembling firearms officers, rousing blokes on call from their pits and already someone in PR was preparing press releases to explain the incident. Even though they had no clue as to what was really happening.

  I took a deep breath, moved out from behind the car and crossed the road.

  Shaking.

  Hoping to hell I looked more confident than I felt.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The first time I met Susan, she had taken me to one side and told me I needed to get in the game. That I needed to put up a mask or just get my act together. Back then we’d been little more than friends. Colleagues who got along well enough. And even so, she’d been a stabilising influence in my life, helped me get ahead.

  Until we lost track of the boundaries of our relationship. When we came back into each other’s orbits, almost a year after Elaine’s death, she again became a stabilising influence, helping me to process what had happened. She was always in control, always knew what she was doing.

  God help anyone who pushed her around.

  Which is why I stopped as I walked into Mick the Mick’s front room, unable to grasp exactly what it was that I was seeing: Susan on her knees, her head bowed.

  Mick the Mick – a stringy beanpole with greasy hair and an unshaven face that was becoming leathery as he skirted dangerously close to middle age – in front of her, holding a shotgun to her head. “Ya fuckin’ bitch. Think if I could kill yer old man, I couldn’t kill you?” He looked up, suddenly realising he wasn’t alone. “Who the fuck’re you?”

  “No-one important.”

  “Then get the fuck out.”

  “You going to kill her?”

  “I’ve killed before.”

  “I know. You’re a killer for hire, right? Long way from the good old days. Used to be you slung petty drugs. Now you’re a real hard man.”

  He didn’t sense the sarcasm. Or he didn’t care. “You fuckin’ know it.”

  “Her father, the copper you killed, he was a friend of mine.”

  “Boo-hoo, buddy. Get the fuck out or I blow her head apart.” He jerked the shotgun to make his point, just enough that my eye was drawn to it, not enough that Susan would have a chance to try and take it from him.

  Her eyes flicked towards the door. Towards me.

  I held my hands out. The kind of gesture you hope is pacifying. “The cops are on their way, Mick. Your pal Wood can’t get you out of this one.”

  “Aye, so she said. I’ve been inside. I can do the time.”

  “You killed a cop, Mick. Kill her, you’ll have killed two. A two-time cop killer, Mick. Fucking hell, but that’s harsh.”

  He took a deep breath. I had his attention. Hard to tell which way he’d jump. I knew his history, enough about his rep. But what I didn’t know was what kind of man he was.

  Above all, I wasn’t a trained negotiator. A lot of cops, of course, receive basic training in crisis negotiation, but the specialists are the ones you hope show up on the scene. Because the basic psychological training most officers receive couldn’t help you talk a crisp out of an open bag.

  I hadn’t exactly been top of the class.

  What did the guidelines say? Allow the suspect to lead the conversation. Personal feelings intrude on the dialogue – never let the suspect know that he’s getting to you.

  I’d never handled a situation like this.

  “You let her go, Mick, I’ll vouch for you. We both will. We’ll say that in the end, you did the right thing.”

  “Fuck you,” Mick said. “This pig cunt came to kill me.”

  I looked at Susan. She didn’t move. Her eyes focussed on one single spot on the floor. Absolute concentration.

  I took a step forward.

  Every step is a victory.

  Mick didn’t seem to notice.

  “They’re on their way, Mick,” I said. No bluffing. In the distance, coming closer, you could hear the sirens.

  Mick said, “I should move fast, then.”

  Susan moved faster. No warning, no tell-tale tension in her muscles or shifting of her weight. She just brought her hands up, as though in supplication, and grabbed at the barrel of the shotgun, twisting her wrists and her body in opposite directions, so that the barrel pointed away from her. Mick’s reaction, jumping back and away from her, helped the process and the barrel swung round and up.

  I watched this as though frozen, utterly unable to act.

  The flare from the blast as Mick’s finger tripped the trigger blinded me. I’d been in the firing line before. The explosion sounded like an old friend. But it was the impact on my shoulder that surprised me. A giant’s palm shoving me backw
ards. At first the pain was surprisingly gentle, more like the sting of a bee than the intrusion of white hot shot slicing through flesh. But as I slammed back against the door frame, the sensation radiated outwards, and increased in intensity. My vision flashed white, as though something had exploded in my skull and started to leak behind my eyeballs.

  I blinked, finding myself on my arse, back propped against the doorframe. The pain was an intense and frequent throb that covered my right shoulder and down into the upper right of my chest. I moved my left hand up and felt at the centre of the sensation. My fingers came away sticky with blood and even that small pressure made me want to scream.

  I battered my head back against the wall. The impact focussed me. At least for a moment. I looked over to the middle of the room, saw Susan on her feet now with Mick the Mick. The way they moved, the gun held between them, was like a parody of a dance.

  Slow. Slow. Quick quick. Slow.

  Their edges were indistinct as though their bodies were beginning to melt into each other. My vision was messed up. A word ran through my head: concussion.

  Fine, I could deal with that.

  Had been through worse.

  I tried to move. To stand up. But I couldn’t. Paralysed.

  My body just giving up. No more.

  I had no sensation in my right arm. It was little more than dead weight.

  Susan ended the dance. Slammed her knee up between Mick’s legs. Sacrificing her balance but giving him something to think about. Her gamble paid off as Mick doubled and let go his grip on the weapon.

  She pulled the shotgun from him, swinging as she did so to catch him under the chin with the stock. The blow knocked him back and off his feet. He skited over the bare floorboards and wound up on his back looking up at the woman with murder in her eyes.

  She balanced the gun. Both barrels on the Irishman.

  Said, “One shot left.”

  Jesus. Didn’t feel to me like he’d only fired once.

  But did he know that?

  Did she?

  The sirens outside were quiet. I could hear the scramble of armed response officers outside the flat. Pictured one or two of them grinning beneath their helmets, thinking, finally, some action. Some of them had to have been looking forward to an incident like this.