by Declan Burke
'No one's disputing that. Except between then and him actually croaking he was in the hands of the cops, the doctors, for what, twelve hours?'
'Closer to fourteen.'
'He wasn't even in ICU, Madge. If he had been, they wouldn't have been able to get to him.'
'Get to him?'
Terry paused while the waiter slipped sideways between their table and the low railing, the guy young and slim, whip-crack taut. Madge feeling old beyond years, a heaviness inside like her bones were fossilizing.
'We're agreed,' Terry said, keeping his voice low, 'Frank probably didn't die of natural causes. And okay, you blowing his shin out couldn't have helped his cause. But no one's dying from a capping, not unless it's deliberate.'
'I knew exactly what I was doing, Terry.'
'I'm talking about after. Like if he was just left there, no one puts in a call. Then, okay, you're talking shock, blood loss, hypothermia … Anyway,' he said, clocking the expression on Madge's face, 'Frank was cuffed to this cop when it happened, right? And she'd know your basic emergency procedures, what Frank needed. The fact that the guy didn't even make it to ICU, was in his own room when it happened, means he was doing okay. He'd probably never have walked right again, sure, but he was off the critical list.'
'You're saying someone killed him?'
'Maybe, maybe not. But that's not your problem. All you're concerned about right now is the post-mortem putting blue sky between you shooting out his shin and him dying. That's all you need, reasonable doubt. Worst case scenario, it comes down to it, you need an actual alibi for where you were at the time …' Terry reached across the table and took her hand, patted the back of it. 'I know of a guy, Madge, a brief, he's had some experience in cases like this. He'd stroll this one, eyes closed. You might have to bark once in a while, roll your eyes, froth up at the mouth when Frank's name gets mentioned. But this guy'll seal the deal.'
'If you're so sure, why aren't we headed for the airport?'
Terry, with a final pat, released her hand. 'Flying back,' he said, 'like the dutiful wife, the good mother.'
'Actually,' Madge said, unwilling to add hypocrisy to her claim to infamy, 'it'd be more like I have nothing to fear, so I'm not running away.'
'That's one way to look at it,' Terry said. 'You're calm, you're rational. You're innocent, right?'
'According to your brief I am.'
'Except it'll look better in court if you panic a little first.'
'Panic?'
'There's a chance they might be charged with murder, they've already put a bullet in the corpse? Most people, by which I mean a jury of your peers, they'd be inclined to shit themselves a cartload.'
Madge prodded gloomily at the olive. 'It'll look bad if I don't go back, Terry. If only for the twins' sake.'
'See, this is how panicked you were. Except it's not your fault, it's evolution.'
Madge raised an eyebrow. 'Evolution?'
'What they call fight or flight. Yeah? And you can't fight it, all those cops, so your instinct is to shoot through. But only for a few days. Then, you get a chance to think it over, okay, it's the twins that bring you back.' Terry warming to his theme. 'Even though there's a chance you might be wrongfully convicted, you're taking that chance so they don't have to go through all the bullshit on their own. That's even supposing it goes to court.' He cocked his head. 'Hey, did you even know the gun was loaded? I mean, obviously it was, we know that now. But when this guy Rossi handed you the Glock, did you know for sure it was loaded?'
'Well, I …'
'How could you? You didn't see him load it, did you?'
Madge shook her head. 'I don't even know where it came from. One minute I was looking at Frank, the next --'
'Woah. Don't even go there, Madge. The trauma? You've blocked it all out.'
Madge was a little overwhelmed by Terry's being so au fait with the amount of wriggle room in what seemed to her a cast-iron case. 'Terry? I don't mean to sound ungrateful, you being so supportive and all, but there's one thing I need to ask.'
'Fire away.'
'Well,' Madge said, 'and don't think I'm complaining, but how come you're being so supportive and all?'
Terry gave a quick grin, clinked his glass on Madge's. 'What am I going to do, leave a damsel in distress?'
'It's a bit more than that, Terry. You're offering your brief, an alibi … I mean, people'll ask about you, won't they? What you're getting out of it.'
'They'll take one look at you and know exactly what I'm getting out of it.'
'That's sweet, Terry, but seriously – aren't you taking on a lot here that you don't need to?'
Terry picked up his silver cigarette case, offered it to Madge, then took one himself when she declined. He lit up, waving his hand through the smoke so it wouldn't drift over to Madge's side of the table. 'I'm clean, Madge. The thing with Frank? Unless you want me to say different, I hadn't even met you before you blew a hole in him. Fact is, or far as anyone can prove, the first I ever hear of Frank is that he's dead, you're telling me today. Which puts me in place to give you an alibi, you were with me last night, I'm a lucky dog.'
'But won't they investigate you? Dig around, see if we had any motive for wanting Frank dead?'
'Let 'em. There's no one can put us together before Frank checked out, it's not like we were having an affair, sneaking around behind Frank's back, especially seeing as how you were separated, Frank already with a new tart on board. And then, you're saying Frank was broke, the guy remortgaging and shit – I mean, that's why he was having you snatched, right? He was brassic.' Madge nodded. 'Okay,' he said, 'so what motive could I have? Anyone wants to look at my accounts, I'm in pretty good shape. And you were already getting divorced. So what do I gain from nailing Frank?'
'Nothing, I guess.'
Terry signaled the waiter, spiraled his forefinger for two more martinis. 'So there it is. We hop a flight tomorrow, get into Athens nice and early, maybe see a few --'
'Athens?' Madge stared. 'You're still taking the cruise?'
'Naturally. This is how panicked you are, how screwed your thinking is. So we arrive at the port, they pick us up there, maybe. Or, they haven't twigged yet you're taking the cruise, we give it a few days, see some sights. Then you make a call, say you're coming home.'
'It's that easy.'
'Hey, you've already paid for the cruise, right? Might as well get some value for it … Only thing is,' he said, sitting back to allow the waiter place the martinis on the table, nodding his thanks, 'we'll need to let Ray know the score. Best they don't get involved, complicate things. You have a number for Karen, right?'
Madge, thinking dolefully on how Frank, even dead, was making her life a misery, just nodded. Terry sat forward. 'Madge? Don't worry about it.' He raised his glass, toasting her. 'Here's to panicking,' he said, 'in the lap of luxury.'
'To panicking,' Madge said, forcing a smile. But when Terry went to the bathroom the dread crept back in, this prickly sensation calcifying the walls of her gut.
Madge, her whole life had been shaped by Frank ever since the bastard date-raped her that night in his father's car, got her pregnant, Madge sixteen years old. Now she stared across the street at the haughty mannequins in the shop window opposite, trying remember a single kindness, a gentle touch or generosity that didn't eventually reveal itself as a means to an end, the end being, inevitably, Frank's gratification.
Sure, she was glad he was dead. But he had ruined her life like sea on rock, wearing her down by imperceptible degrees.
Why should it be any different this time?
Rossi
The guy finally arrived, Johnny making the introductions. The guy, Jochem, breaking out the crizz straight away. Exactly three minutes later Sleeps was primed to hijack a submarine, take it all the way to Sydney.
'So Johnny,' Jochem said, 'he tells me about the FARCO.'
Rossi, feeling his eyes the size of golf balls, nodded tersely. 'Johnny says you got a proposal.'
<
br /> 'Is the cruise,' Jochem said. The guy with less presence than Rossi'd expected. Thin and wiry, a scruffy black toothbrush moustache, dark and wary eyes. 'Where will it going?'
Rossi glanced across at Mel. 'Oh,' she said airily, 'y'know, the usual. Egypt. The Holy Land. All around.'
'The Greek islands?' Johnny said.
'Sure,' Mel said. 'Some of them, sure.'
'What about Ios?' Johnny said.
'Definitely.'
'And when does it get in there?'
'Without the itinerary,' Melody said, 'I couldn't say for sure, it's back in the car. I mean, I could --'
'What's the frammis?' Rossi cut in.
'Well,' Johnny said, 'it's like …' He raised an eyebrow. 'Frammis?'
'Frammis, yeah.'
'Gig,' Sleeps said. 'Job.'
'Oh.' Johnny shrugged. 'Anyway, the deal is the Greeks are death on your recreational chemicals. You've seen Midnight Express, right?'
'That was set in Turkey,' Sleeps pointed out.
Rossi snorted. 'Greeks, Turks, South Sea fuckin Samolians. What's the grift?'
'Jochem here,' Johnny said, 'reckons there's a famine out in the Greek islands. A lot of party people coming up short on their holiday quota of snow.'
'I'm guessing,' Mel said, 'we're not talking about skiing.'
'Gak,' Johnny said. 'Although,' he looked to Jochem for reassurance, 'nothing too heavy. Just a couple've of keys, already stamped. All you have to do is hand it over to a man who'll be waiting when the ship docks.'
'On this Ios,' Rossi said.
'What's in it for us?' said Mel.
Johnny said something to Jochem in Dutch. Jochem shrugged, said something that sounded to Rossi like he was gargling marbles. 'Ten gees,' Johnny translated. 'Throwing the crizz in on top.'
'Sounds fair,' Rossi said.
'Isn't that a bit generous,' Sleeps said, 'for two keys?'
'Jochem needs a man,' Johnny Priest said, 'can be trusted to do the hard thing the simple way.'
Rossi nodding along. 'We can do simple,' he said. 'So where's this gak?'
Ray
Ten hours out of Amsterdam and they were still only passing Munich. Ray's eyes raw, burning. Even wearing shades, the headlights of the oncoming traffic were lasers.
'So where's next?' Karen said.
'Milan,' he said through clenched teeth. Wondering if it was just exhaustion or if lockjaw was in the post, tetanus. 'Through the Alps, down into Milan. That's another six hundred clicks. Then, Milan to Rome, eight hundred. About the same to Bari, maybe a little more. How're we doing on the happy tabs?'
Karen rummaged in her bag, passed one over. Ray dry-swallowed the pill, lit a cigarette. 'Any chance,' he said, 'of changing that CD?'
'You don't like Tom Waits?'
'Sixteen times in a row? I wouldn't even want Natalie Portman sixteen times in a row.'
Karen flicked through Ray's CDs. 'How about these guys, The Jam?'
'Going Underground,' Ray said. 'Appropriate.'
Karen switched CDs. Ray, nodding along to That's Entertainment, said, 'I'm not going to make it.'
'No?'
'Not a chance. The arm's fucked, I'm numb to the shoulder. The not-good numb.'
'Shit. So what do we do?'
'Plan B.'
'There's a plan B?'
'Always.'
'Do we still get to see the Alps?'
'We'll be mostly skipping the Alps,' Ray admitted. 'At least, they won't be getting any bigger than they are now.'
'They're pretty big now,' Karen said, craning her neck to look up at the snow-capped peaks. She said, 'Hey, Ray? Know what I like best about you?' Ray wasn't so tired he didn't catch the needle in her tone. 'It's how you're spontaneous,' she said. 'Flexible. You're not the kind of guy, he makes a plan and that's it, has to stick to it after his feet catch fire.'
'Life's too short for sticking to plans.'
'How about keeping promises?'
'A plan,' he said, 'is a theory. A promise is people. It's like abstract and actual, and you can fuck with abstract. Actual's different.'
'So what promise did you actually make to Doyle? I mean, Stephanie.'
'None,' Ray said.
'You told her,' Karen persisted, 'you'd do time. That you'd stand up in court, be her fall guy. So she could put Frank away for all the kidnaps, Frank instead of Terry Swipes. With you doing, I think you said, a two-year jolt for aiding and abetting.'
'Telling's telling. I didn't make any actual promises.'
'You lied to her, Ray. This is what I'm saying about the spontaneity. You said one thing, did another.'
'You're saying I lied?'
'You did lie.'
'I'm pretty sure I said I'd do time if you got the money.'
'We got the money. All two hundred grand of it. Now, after deductions, one sixty-seven and going down like the dollar.'
'Only because we ran off with it,' Ray said. 'Doyle, you didn't see it? She had other plans. And if we'd stuck around, I'd have gone for a tumble and you wouldn't have seen any cash. Bang goes the cottage at the lake, the three acres for Anna to run around in.'
Karen staring out into gathering gloom. 'They have many lakes on the Greek islands, Ray?'
'Hey, you're the one said you had to flee the country. That's the word you used, right? Flee.' Karen, chewing her lip, nodded. 'Because,' he said, 'if we stuck around, Anna'd be put down for mauling Rossi. Correct me if I'm wrong.'
Karen, grudging it, nodded again.
'Okay,' Ray said. 'So I took that on board, made the suggestion – a suggestion, mind – that the Greek islands might suit Anna, the Greeks being pretty cool about homicidal hounds doing the whole Born Free bit. Even agreed, this with a busted fucking arm from shipping a bullet, to drive her there. Except now I'm flat out fucked, can't do it all the way down through Italy, all I'm talking about diverting a little out of the way, make it easier on everyone.'
'This being the latest plan. Another one.'
Ray with these weird quivers in the small of his back, the strain, the constant pressure. He knuckled his eyes. 'Just say it, Karen. Whatever it is you're brewing up in there, just --'
'You made plans with Doyle.'
'You're still worrying about Doyle.'
'You made her look ridiculous. This after she specifically told you, and I quote, not to leave her looking a total fucking blonde.'
'Christ.' Ray shook his head. 'I thought it was men had problems with pride.'
'There's pride,' Karen said, 'and there's looking ridiculous.'
Ray, bone weary, flipped his smoke into the breeze. 'What're you saying, she'll come after us?'
'You,' Karen said. 'I'm saying, she'll be coming after you.'
Doyle
Watching him now through the mist as he paced the street arguing on the phone, Doyle had to admit Niko'd changed. Still tall, sure, but filling out in all the right places, shoulders and chest, leaving him slim through the hips, rangy now even in the suit and open-necked shirt, the guy could easily have passed for Italian if it wasn't for the snake-skin calf-length cowboy boots.
She wondered if it was a woman on the other end of the line, Niko dropping her at short notice to hook up with Doyle, bring her to this cute little restaurant where they could sit out on the veranda with water streaming down off the awning overhead like a curtain against the dead heat, a cool mist blowing in against the patrons. Athens in mid-September, Christ, sultry like a Tennessee Williams fourth act. Doyle, she had a straw, was sure she could've sipped the air.
Niko ducked in through the curtain of mist and strode to their table, folded himself carefully into the chair. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but that was unavoidable.' He turned off the mobile phone and tucked it away into the breast pocket of the jacket hanging from the back of his chair. 'There,' he said with a wide, easy smile. 'No more interruptions.'
'Don't worry about it.'
His face had filled out too, the olive skin taut now over a fleshy fullness, the domina
nt nose giving him a patrician look. Plus, Doyle'd forgotten, he had eyes like warm liquorice. He picked up his fork. 'So where were we?' he said.
Something else Doyle had forgotten, was thrilling to now, was Niko's accent, rich and slightly guttural.
'The girl's about my age,' she lied, 'thirty-one, thirty-two. Has this weird twist to her chin like she busted her jaw one time. She'll be the one driving because the guy stopped a bullet.' She prodded her upper arm with her fork. 'He'll probably have it in a sling. Then, the wolf has only one eye, the other one being covered with an eye-patch.'
'Like a pirate.'
'A were-pirate. We'll be needing silver bullets.'
'So if we find them, identification shouldn't be a problem.'
'I shouldn't have thought so, no.'
'Of course, the finding, this is the difficult part.'
'You get many wolves in Athens? I mean, this late in the season.'
'September is a busy time here, Stephanie.' Doyle with an involuntary shiver at how Niko packed about six syllables into her name. 'September is when Italy closes down, everyone goes on holidays. They come over in droves. Piraeus gets crazy this time of the year.'
Doyle, having hit the glass ceiling a little earlier than she expected, had found herself with a lot of time on her hands career-wise. So she'd broadened her horizons, started taking courses to get her out of the office for a week at a time and put some points on her pension. Marksmanship, hostage negotiation, community policing for ethnic minorities – Doyle had done the lot. Then Ted took her away for a long weekend to Barcelona, a junket on policing electronic frontiers, cops swapping tips on how not to look like total muppets while the bad guys ran the show. Doyle'd caught on fast, all those free lunches in Prague, Florence, Berlin, Madrid – Doyle had seen them all at her leisure, all expenses paid.
She believed Prague had been her favourite. The worst had been Athens, dirty, dusty and noisy, the buildings imported wholesale from some Kiev industrial estate. Worse, Niko had taken a shine to her, Niko the official interpreter for the group, not long back from his secondment in London and keen to impress with his Oxford English. A greyhound chasing her all over town, tongue lolling from this inane grin Doyle'd wanted to put her fist through.
