The Rage

by Gene Kerrigan

  ‘Anyone else in the house?’

  ‘He’d just arrived home. Wife was upstairs, on the phone to her brother. Sweetman came in, closed the front door, left his briefcase over there.’ Her heels clicked on the white marble floor. ‘Dropped his keys on the table here. According to the wife, she heard him come in, maybe thirty seconds later she heard the doorbell, then the shotgun.’

  ‘She see anything?’

  ‘She came halfway down the stairs, in time to see the two gents leaving – pretty messed up about it, as you might imagine. Hadn’t a lot to offer.’

  ‘She’s not here?’

  ‘Staying with her parents – Mount Merrion.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Three – the youngest is seven, oldest is twelve. The granny’s looking after them.’

  Cheney passed over a bulky A4 envelope. ‘Have a look at the snaps.’

  Tidey took the album of crime scene photographs and tucked it under one arm. ‘I assume they’ve got CCTV front and back?’

  ‘Nothing useful,’ Cheney said. ‘Smudgy images of two men, wearing the usual gear. The angle – you don’t see the shotgun blast. One of them takes a few steps into the hallway – that’s the one put the two bullets into his head. Then they left.’

  ‘He just opened the door when the bell rang?’

  ‘Nothing unusual. Aged forty-two, still a bit of a lad. Golf, poker, big rugby fan – he and his mates often dropped in on one another unannounced.’

  ‘The house next door – it’s got cameras covering the grounds. Any chance they caught something relevant?’

  ‘We’ve checked every house on the road, and the CCTV on all the approach roads. Nothing.’

  Tidey was looking up. ‘Jesus, what’s that? Blood?’

  Directly above, a pattern of darkened, dried blood speckled the white ceiling.

  Cheney said, ‘The shotgun tore into his chest, knocked him off his feet. The body goes back, the blood flies out. Some of the blood—’ Cheney pointed up at the ceiling – ‘the blast was so strong, his body jerking back, some of the blood flew all the way up and hit the ceiling. Then, after a few seconds – Technical says – droplets came down from the ceiling. Left little sunbursts on the floor.’

  ‘A shotgun blast, then two in the head?’

  ‘Someone was taking no chances.’

  Tidey opened the photo album and found a head-and-shoulders shot. The bullets had torn lumps out of Sweetman’s flesh, and the neck and face were veiled in the blood thrown up from the chest wound. He flicked towards the back of the album and found a studio shot of Sweetman. Handsome features, expensively groomed, oozing confidence. Not the kind of man to ever imagine someone might open him up and spill him all over his own hallway.

  Vincent Naylor said to Turlough McGuigan, ‘My friends have arrived.’ The Protectica depot manager looked across the coffee shop to where Noel and Kevin were ordering something to drink. Noel was still in his shorts and T-shirt and false moustache, Kevin was wearing jeans and sweatshirt and a baseball hat.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’

  Vincent looked at his watch. ‘Another ten minutes – then we’re in business.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You’re not thinking, Turlough. Where are we?’

  ‘What do you mean – we’re in Doonbeg.’

  ‘And where in Doonbeg?’

  ‘The shopping centre.’

  ‘And what happens this morning in Doonbeg shopping centre – twenty past eleven, give or take five minutes?’

  It took McGuigan a few seconds to get it.

  ‘That’s not on.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘There’s no way – they’re not going to—’

  ‘The mobile I gave you, there are some pictures.’

  McGuigan flinched, shook his head.

  ‘Not that one, Turlough, unless you need to refresh your memory. Give it to me.’

  Vincent tapped the phone until the screen showed a photo of the outside of a house. He thumbed a button, and again, another house, then a third.

  ‘Mick Shine, Paudie McFadden, Davey Minogue. You know them, Turlough, though you mightn’t recognise their homes.’

  ‘There isn’t—’

  ‘You have a job to do, Turlough.’ Vincent thumbed the button once more and the picture on the mobile screen changed and Turlough looked away from the image of his wife’s terrified face.

  Rose Cheney opened a pair of double doors, leading into a living room big enough for tennis doubles. There were oil paintings on the walls, with big, gold-coloured frames and subjects out of the nineteenth century – a bewigged man sitting stiffly on horseback, a hunt in full cry, a garden party, women in pale dresses and flowered hats ranged around a marble fountain.

  Cheney said, ‘Some house, huh?’

  Tidey nodded. ‘The wages of sin.’

  ‘Four million, he paid for it, four years ago. Four-point-four, to be precise, which was considered a bargain for this neighbourhood. Today, if anyone was buying – which they’re not – you’d get a million and three-quarters, probably less.’

  ‘I’ve seen better taste in Phibsboro bedsits.’

  Cheney smiled. ‘I’ve been in a few of these places – this isn’t the worst. Some of them, they look like Barbie grew up and became a footballer’s wife. No limit to the budget, all spent on a twelve-year-old’s notion of taste. One thing they’ve all got on display – and there it is.’ She stopped at a table flanked by two wingback chairs. The table held a large chess set, the base a couple of inches thick, edged with steel, the squares of the board in dark grey and light grey wood. ‘Monster chess sets – they’ve all got them.’

  Tidey picked up a black knight. It was intricately carved to resemble a Roman legionnaire. ‘Someone loves his hobby.’

  ‘Handmade pieces, inlaid boards, they cost more than the biggest LCD telly. And – ask them – hardly any of them can play the game. If the new Irish aristocracy had an emblem, that’s it – a swanky, overpriced version of a game they can’t play.’

  ‘What do we know about Sweetman? Any threats, any real suspects?’

  ‘No threats we know of – a whole sea of possibilities, nothing solid. Lines of inquiry—’ she began ticking them off on her fingers – ‘husbands he pissed off, business partners he cheated, bank shareholders he swindled. Take a walk through Dublin 4, throw a stick, chances are you’ll hit someone with a reason to shove a shotgun in his face. Most of them, they wouldn’t know which end of a shotgun to point – but, someone did.’

  ‘Paramilitaries?’

  ‘Killing a corrupt banker – you could see the patriotic side of that, if you did your thinking with your trigger finger. But Hogg says Special Branch has every second patriot on the payroll – not a whisper.’

  ‘What’s the score with pissed-off husbands?’

  ‘He didn’t make a big secret of screwing around. Of recent girlfriends – we’ve talked to one and there’s no jealous husband involved. Two more, we don’t have their names yet. There might well be husbands or partners from previous affairs who’ve been nursing a grudge for a long time.’

  Tidey shook his head. ‘If it was a knife or a baseball bat, maybe – but two heavies with guns, hardly an act of passion.’

  ‘We’re tiptoeing through every number in his BlackBerry.’

  ‘How bad were his business problems?’

  ‘Apart from running the bank, he had three outside directorships and a company based around his property portfolio – he was in a consortium with some lawyers, doctors, a couple of bankers.’

  ‘Busy man.’

  ‘When the game was in full flow the banks were borrowing billions to lend to the right sort of people – no one could lose. Then—’ she flicked an index finger at the chessboard and the king made a clattering noise as he toppled over, scattering pawns – ‘pop goes the bubble.’

  ‘He must have had something left. This place is worth a fortune.’

  ‘This
house – he got a mortgage of four million, then he shopped around and got two more mortgages against the same property, for the same amount. Total – twelve million.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone check?’

  ‘A banker, a lawyer, a pillar of society – start asking questions and he might take his business elsewhere.’

  ‘The smart fellas, a friend of mine calls them,’ Tidey said.

  ‘That was small change. He had tens of millions – something like a hundred and forty million – invested in property deals. All borrowed – and borrowed against bank shares that aren’t worth a cent. It’ll never be paid back. Then there’s the fraud – Sweetman and his buddies, switching billions from bank to bank, to keep the auditors in the dark, writing up transfers as deposits, to boost share price. That’s before you come to the tax dodges – the guy could have written an encyclopedia of scams.’

  ‘He wasn’t looking at a slap on the wrist, then.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’

  Tidey smiled. ‘He had something to sell? Maybe someone to sell?’

  ‘That was the plan. As soon as Sweetman knew the game was up he called the Revenue and the Financial Regulator. At the time he was murdered he was working on a deal.’

  ‘So, the murder could have been to shut him up?’

  ‘Possible, but improbable. These people, if they’re faced with a threat they bribe someone or they hire a lawyer to make a deal.’

  ‘People who had everything – they lost it, their reputations in flitters, maybe even expecting a call from the Fraud Squad. Could be someone went off the deep end.’

  ‘I can see these people smashing Sweetman’s fancy chessboard over his head – what I can’t see is any of them linking up with a mate and finding a hoodie and an automatic pistol.’

  Tidey crossed the room and stood looking up at the large painting over the fireplace. Unlike the other paintings in the room, it was contemporary, an almost photographic reproduction of a modern racing scene under a faultless blue sky. Emmet Sweetman stood beside a light brown horse, holding the reins, the pride of the winning owner glowing in his face as he smiled out into his living room. Behind him, a couple of dozen revellers cheered, most of them waving champagne glasses.

  ‘Butter wouldn’t melt,’ Cheney said.

  Tidey stared at the faces in the painting, every one of them proud, confident, no shadow of doubt in their world. They must have felt like they could get away with anything.

  25

  Christ sake, missus, leave the fucking kid alone.

  Turlough McGuigan tried to focus, to block out the kid’s howls, the sound of the mother’s hand smacking the back of the kid’s matchstick legs. He was walking slowly through the Doonbeg shopping centre. He seldom used the place, although it was within easy reach of his home. The ceiling was low, the tiled floor dirty and cracked, the atmosphere oppressive.

  The housing estate surrounding the shopping centre was just as tatty. A monster estate – vast, ugly and unloved. The shopping centre was a sprawling two-storey building that looked from the outside like something designed by a specialist in fortified artillery emplacements. It was an embassy installed by outside forces, representing the country of commerce, built with an undisguised hostility towards an alien environment. The people of the housing estate needed the services the centre provided, the country of commerce needed the profit that came with trade. In more salubrious neighbourhoods, shopping centres might pose as cathedrals of consumerism, offering to upgrade the shopper’s self-image. Here, there was no attempt to pretend this was anything other than an exchange of goods and money.

  The shopping centre was always busy, always noisy, and there always seemed to be some stressed woman with pursed lips beating her kid with passionless anger.

  Focus, Turlough McGuigan told himself.

  ‘You ever hear the expression, “Hesitate, too late”?’

  The thug leader had smiled when he said it, back in the coffee shop. He knew about that. He knew about everything.

  After a robbery a couple of years back, Turlough McGuigan’s Protectica bosses organised a series of morale-boosting seminars. The robbery was a stupid one, a small thing – two wiseguys knocked over a carrier, kicked him in the face and did a runner with a couple of bags, not more than fifteen grand. The guy who ran the seminar was named Finbarr something, full of one-liners. It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility . . . If you fail to prepare, you’re preparing to fail . . . Never let good enough be enough . . . The more you sweat in training the less you bleed in war . . . Excuses are for losers.

  And that one, Hesitate, too late.

  ‘If it looks like enemy action, behave accordingly – don’t wait for written confirmation. Hesitate, too late.’

  In the Doonbeg coffee shop, the thug leader told Turlough McGuigan, ‘My information says if I walk up to your guys when they come out of the bank they’ll flatten me. Before I get to explain the situation they’ll start punching alarm buttons and I’m face down, spitting blood.’ He leaned closer. ‘What we need is someone who makes them hesitate. Someone they’ll listen to as he lays out the facts, so they behave sensibly. That’s you.’

  Turlough and the thug leader had watched two uniformed Protectica guys – Mick Shine and Paudie McFadden – get out of the van and go into the shopping centre. Now, minutes later, McGuigan watched the two come out of the Doonbeg branch of Bank of Ireland. Both men were helmeted, toughened Perspex face shields tight down over their eyes, armoured vests over their dark green uniforms. Mick was the primary carrier, two black-and-chrome bags of cash in his left hand, two in his right. Behind Mick and two steps to one side, Paudie was the mace – carrying a bag in his left hand, his right hand casually poised close to the extendable baton at the side of his belt. Davey Minogue was podman today, locked into the back of the Protectica van.

  Turlough McGuigan had to resist looking back over his shoulder, to where he’d left the thug leader standing casually near the exit. He drew a deep breath and took the mobile out of his pocket.

  Mick Shine saw him first, recognised him, inclined his head in a questioning motion. Paudie McFadden slowed at the sight of their depot manager. McGuigan stood in their path and tried to get his face to relax.

  ‘We’re being watched. Stay calm, do nothing.’

  Apart from a sudden tension in their stance, the two didn’t react. ‘It’s very serious,’ McGuigan said, ‘but I think we can handle it. Fella gave me this, told me to show you.’ McGuigan held up the phone and thumbed a button. ‘That’s Davey’s house.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Mick Shine said.

  ‘Stay calm – I think we’ll get out of this OK as long as we stay calm.’

  ‘How did—’

  McGuigan thumbed the button and a picture of another house appeared on the screen and Mick Shine shut up. McGuigan thumbed the button again and held the phone towards Paudie McFadden. ‘Your house, right?’ Then he showed them both the photo of Deirdre, with the thug in the Superman T-shirt holding her breast. ‘That’s my wife – they’ve got her right now.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ McFadden said.

  ‘Stay calm.’

  McFadden swore.

  Mick Shine said, ‘Are you in on this?’

  ‘Don’t be fucking stupid.’

  ‘What do we do?’ McFadden said.

  ‘Are they in my house?’ Mick Shine said.

  ‘I don’t know, I think so. They’ve got my wife. They know where we all live, they—’

  ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ Behind the Perspex shield, anger and fear contorted Mick Shine’s face.

  ‘If we don’t stay calm, do as we’re told – these fuckers are not kidding.’

  ‘What do they want us to do?’ McFadden said.

  McGuigan was looking at Mick Shine. ‘Mick? You OK?’

  None of the shoppers paid any attention to the three men talking quietly. McGuigan could hear the howling kid, taking another whack from his mother.

  Mick Shine s
aid, ‘Whatever – we do whatever they want.’

  McGuigan nodded. ‘I don’t see how we can do anything else. Play it cool, we get out of this OK, our families too. Just – I’ll walk ahead, you follow me outside. OK?’

  They stood there silently for maybe ten seconds, then Turlough McGuigan said again, ‘OK?’

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ Mick Shine said.

  On the way towards the exit they passed the stressed-out mother, her son silent now, clutching her skirt, an ice cream in his other hand.

  26

  ‘That house, two up from this one – big sunroom stuck onto the side of it – guess how much it cost, three years ago?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ Bob Tidey said.

  ‘Six million – six and a bit.’

  Bob Tidey and Rose Cheney were outside the Sweetman home, looking back at it from beside their car. From here, the house had the look of an old-fashioned country hotel. Pillars flanking the entrance, rose bushes off to the left, cast-iron and dark wood benches underneath both the bay windows. And a wide, colourful welcome mat across which Sweetman’s killers had stepped.

  ‘Know how much it’s worth now?’

  ‘A lot less than six million.’

  ‘Less than three – two million, eight hundred thousand. That’s what they’re asking, and they won’t get it.’

  ‘Tough.’

  ‘Were you ever tempted to get into that game?’

  ‘On my salary?’ Tidey said.

  ‘One fella I worked with had three houses – big ones, too – set out in flats. A fair few guards got into that game. In the good old days, all you needed to qualify for a big loan was a pulse.’

  ‘Holly – my ex – and I – a house was somewhere to live, not something to invest in.’

  ‘I thought we were missing out – the newspapers were forever saying you had to be a fool not to get in on the action. My husband was the cautious one. I still feel a bit like I missed a big party.’

  ‘A big orgy,’ Tidey said. ‘Where everyone got the clap.’ He tossed the crime scene photos on the back seat. ‘You’ve got files for me to look at?’