The new project invited citizens to go online at a tastefully designed website and reveal their entrepreneurial ideas on how to get the country out of the massive hole of debt into which the bankers had driven it. It seemed to be a kind of national suggestion box, with prizes for the best submissions. Tidey pitied the poor sods who had to sort through the crank proposals and the inevitable tide of obscenities.
Three speakers followed the President, each more emotional and flowery than the speaker before. Finally, with a ringing call from the Master of Ceremonies, an RTÉ celebrity, the event ended. Bob Tidey showed his ID and was allowed through the barrier. Colin O’Keefe saw him coming and held up a palm – he smiled and silently mouthed, ‘Five.’ Tidey lit a cigarette and waited twenty minutes while O’Keefe mingled. The President went indoors after a while, accompanied by her retinue. The crowd’s smiles, handshakes and enthusiastically nodding heads suggested that the launch was considered a great success. The sound of excited chatter covered the courtyard like a fluffy blanket.
Eventually, as the crowd began to dwindle, O’Keefe beckoned and Tidey followed him to a corner of the courtyard.
‘I’m due inside for dinner, Bob – and, like I said, this is inappropriate, given your suspension.’
‘It’ll take a minute.’
‘I can’t speak to you about the suspension, or about the Sweetman case.’
‘It’s not that.’
O’Keefe leaned closer, his voice lowered, although there was no one within several yards. ‘A word to the wise, Bob – these disciplinary things, they’re a ritual dance. Once you understand the choreography, there’s no need for it to come to anything.’
Tidey said, ‘I follow orders – so, it’s over, the Sweetman case. Believe me, I’d no intention of challenging anyone’s authority. But there’s something I need, there’s a problem that—’
‘You trying to do a deal with me?’ O’Keefe seemed offended. ‘There’s something you need? And in return you’ll accept the decision of senior officers on the Sweetman case?’
‘Nothing like that. This Vincent Naylor thing – the guy who’s on a rampage—’
O’Keefe shook his head. ‘We need the lid kept on that – you shouldn’t even—’
‘There’s a woman, a witness – without her there’d have been no ERU on Kilcaragh Avenue that day. With this Naylor thug on the warpath, she needs protection.’
‘Send me the details. I’ll look into it.’
‘Colin – she’s vulnerable, she needs cover now.’
‘Jesus, Bob – what is this? Have you borrowed Bob Geldof’s halo? The Naylor problem, it’s not your case, it’s none of your business – but you’d like someone fast-tracked onto a security list.’ O’Keefe’s voice was rising. ‘Four shootings in a couple of days, the work of one lunatic. Have you any idea of the pressure – the panic, Jesus – keeping the lid on – there are dozens of people – including members of the force – people who might or might not be in this nutcase’s sights. Scarce resources have to be—’
‘There’s a real danger to a civilian—’
‘That’s the judgement of an officer – let’s be blunt, Bob – an officer who’s recently been reprimanded by a judge in open court and suspended due to a breach of discipline.’
‘Colin—’
‘I’m expected at dinner.’ O’Keefe began moving away.
‘Fuck this, Colin – this woman is entitled—’
O’Keefe stopped. ‘You’re speaking out of turn – again.’
‘It keeps coming back to Sweetman, right? You’re pissed off with what you have to do, but you’ll do it anyway. You know it’s wrong – and you know I know it’s wrong. And that pisses you off.’
‘The Sweetman case is solved.’
‘Not solved, closed down.’
Some yards away, one of O’Keefe’s minders was staring, poised to intervene. O’Keefe waved him away and stepped closer to Tidey. ‘Let me explain something, Bob. You’re not Sherlock Holmes, you’re not Sam Spade. You don’t have a mandate to go down mean streets looking for mysteries to solve. And you’re not Batman – you’re not here to clean up Gotham City.’
‘I know my job.’
‘You’re a public servant. You’re handed a file and told to ask questions of anyone who might have answers. Then you hand the file back and you move on. Then other people decide what happens to the file.’
For a moment, Tidey considered whether it was worth the waste of his breath. Then, keeping his voice under control, he said, ‘We didn’t finish asking questions. The Sweetman case – for whatever reason, it’s being shut down before all lines of inquiry have been exhausted.’
‘Your job is to gather the raw material, to pass it up the line. It’s for others to decide where it fits into the bigger picture.’
‘Whatever happened to following the evidence, wherever it leads?’
‘Grow up, Bob. We’ve got an explanation of the Sweetman case, entirely plausible – but we’re supposed to keep the inquiry going endlessly, exploring every crackpot theory until we find an explanation that rings your bell?’
‘Blame it on the dead guy. That’s a sacred Irish tradition.’
‘If we didn’t have a perfectly feasible explanation of the crime I’d be happy to continue our inquiries – but what’s your alternative explanation?’
‘Somebody with something to hide needed to shut down Sweetman, and they hired a couple of heavies.’
‘Who? Who did the hiring? Who did they hire, how, when, where – or is this all something you saw in a dream?’
‘A man named Stephen Hill – gun for hire. He regularly worked with a criminal we believed was one of the two men who killed Oliver Snead. Suppose Hill was the second man in the Snead murder, and he still had the gun. Suppose he used it on Sweetman.’
‘Why?’
‘Sweetman was talking to the Revenue, and maybe his pals panicked. Who might they go to? Maybe a shady lawyer who was up to his neck in the property game? And Connie Wintour was Stephen Hill’s lawyer. We know he talked with both Hill and Sweetman on the day Sweetman was murdered.’
‘And for this you want us trampling all over the landscape, on a fishing expedition, casting suspicion where it doesn’t belong?’
‘What if you’re wrong? What if some frightened businessmen asked Connie to arrange for Sweetman to be shut down?’
‘That’s why we have people like me – to assess the evidence, to bear in mind the bigger picture. To decide when and if an inquiry is productive. You’re throwing around allegations about the very people who have an important role in getting this country up from its knees. Maybe you don’t give a shit, but those of us who have to keep the bigger picture in mind, we’d rather not try an experiment in reckless justice, thank you very much.’
‘So, we shut up shop?’
‘Bob – the kind of people you’re talking about – you really think there’s going to be solid evidence for any of this? You want us to go finger-pointing at a time when it’s never been more important for everyone to pull on the green jersey?’
‘That’s not—’
‘You want to give every malcontent, crank and lefty head-banger a licence to stir shit? And for what? So we can get that warm feeling in our tummy for ten minutes – justice served, every avenue exhaustively explored, even if we know it’s going to run into the sand.’
Tidey spoke calmly, his voice low. ‘This country, we’re great at looking back at things. Something awkward happens, we run away from it. And when the smell won’t go away – ten years later, twenty, thirty – we have an inquiry, or a tribunal, and we write a report that no one reads and that’s it. We’re great at looking back. But when it’s happening, when we need to do something – there’s always someone to tell us we have to pull on the green jersey and shut the fuck up.’
They stood silently for a moment. Then O’Keefe said, ‘This suspension doesn’t have to be a big deal, Bob. You’ll be OK. You keep your head down, time
goes by – it’s like it never happened.’
‘Maura Coady?’
‘Send me the details. We’ll do what we can, within the resources at our disposal.’
‘Which means she’s on her own.’
‘We’ll do what we can.’
Colin O’Keefe turned abruptly and walked towards the wide doorway through which the President and her retinue had gone.
Only stragglers remained in the courtyard. Bob Tidey felt like he’d lost a lot more than an old friend.
58
Do him?
There were two sides to this.
Sitting at the writing table in his room at the Four Seasons, Vincent Naylor was staring at the wall, seeing the Geek walking towards the HMV exit, watching him turn and look back, the contempt all over his face.
‘Scumbag! Skanger!’
It was the insolence of the little freak that mattered, almost as much as the eight months in the Joy. Noel was right. ‘He’s got it coming.’
Vincent opened his wallet and took out the slip of paper Noel had given him. He unfolded it and looked at the Geek’s address for a while. Then he placed the paper on the writing table in front of him and used the edge of his hand to smooth it out.
It was doable, without messing up his plans.
Vincent loved the notion of watching the Geek’s face, the Geek recognising Vincent and knowing this wasn’t going to be good. Seeing the Bernardelli come out. Vincent could feel the weight of the gun in his hand, though it was still in the leather bag lying on the bed. He could see the Geek’s mouth opening, lips moving, no sound coming out. The gun coming up.
Vincent felt the kick of the gun against his hand.
He realised he’d been holding his breath and he let it out slowly. He was sitting upright, his chin raised, the muscles rigid in his face.
That would be cool.
But there was something not right about doing the Geek. It would be like he was giving in to his instincts, maybe even losing control. Lorraine and Albert, the others – that shit was righteous. It connected to Noel, it balanced things out. Doing the Geek would be indulging himself. Vincent was better than that. He broke the little freak’s nose, he made him curl up in fear, and he did time for that – and maybe the little freak shouldn’t get away with it, but it was important to Vincent to maintain the purity of what he was doing.
This was about Noel. It shouldn’t be tainted by anything else.
Live your pointless life, you little freak, and die your meaningless death.
Vincent knew he wasn’t just a man with a gun and a grudge. He was a man who carried the sword of justice. And the gift of life.
He tore the slip of paper in half and let the pieces fall to the carpet.
Two seagulls came in low over the Liffey boardwalk, then wheeled around and set out across the waters towards the south side of the river. Despite the whiskey, Bob Tidey felt icily clear-headed as he approached the boardwalk. He’d dropped into the Porterhouse on impulse, minutes after leaving Dublin Castle, and as the third Jameson went down he knew that staying any longer would mean the night would descend into a maudlin, self-pitying mess. He crossed Capel Street Bridge, stepped onto the boardwalk and immediately felt more at ease. It was one of his favourite places for a stroll in the city centre. If it was a sunny day, maybe sit and have a coffee. It was a simple, agreeable place, if you ignored the junkies – and mostly they ignored everyone else.
The run-up to the millennium, ten years earlier, had seen an eruption of celebratory ideas – expensive and often silly. Up at O’Connell Bridge, the council installed a luminous digital clock, floating just below the surface of the Liffey, counting down the seconds to the millennium. After a while it stopped working, so it was junked. Easy come, easy go. Few felt strongly about erecting the Dublin Spire, in O’Connell Street, but there was a committee with a brief to spend a few million, so they spent it – even though the thing went up three years late for the millennium. Bob Tidey thought the Spire was halfway pleasant to look at sometimes, in the early evening, coming up Henry Street, the sun reflecting from the steel. Mostly, it was just there, neither pleasing nor repulsive. A steel pole reaching up into the sky for no particular reason. It wasn’t ugly, oppressive or irritating, like so much left behind by the Celtic Tiger bubble, but it wasn’t much else either.
The boardwalk, though, put something useful where nothing had been before – overhanging the river on the north quays. And if the junkies liked to hang out there when the weather was good, that was OK. They were citizens too.
There were two of them now, chatting a few yards from where Bob Tidey stood. The evening was still warm, the sun waning. The Sweetman business was done and dusted. Let it go, get on with the job. Further resistance would quickly lead to tough choices – and Tidey found himself rearing back from even thinking about life without his police job. Almost everything he did revolved around the continuous flow of casework. It engaged him like nothing else. Even the ceaseless recurrence of crime didn’t weary him, though he’d long let go of the illusion that he was making the world a better place. It was the effort that mattered. To quietly accept the hopelessness, to fail to struggle, was to live without meaning.
The vibration of his mobile alerted him to an incoming call, a second before the phone rang.
‘Tidey? Martin Pollard. Bit of bad news – my Chief Superintendent has found another use for that car I sent to Kilcaragh Avenue.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘He’s short-handed. I argued we need someone watching the witness’s house – he said she had to join the queue. Have you had a chance to talk to O’Keefe yet?’
‘If I send him the details he’ll do what he can.’
‘That means a week of consideration – with probably bugger all coming out of it.’
‘This isn’t right.’
‘Let’s not assume the worst – chances are it won’t come to that. Naylor may be out of the country already.’
Tidey was about to say something about betting Maura Coady’s life on that, but instead he said, ‘Thanks for calling – I’ll, I don’t know—’
‘If there’s any change, I’ll be in touch.’
Halfway through the conversation, staring down into the dark waters, Tidey suddenly knew, as though seeing in his head a sketched map of the world around him, how things were and what he had to do. He had to do it and he didn’t dare. It had to work and it couldn’t possibly. The consequences if he failed were dreadful, the consequences if he succeeded were hardly less so.
Now, it was like there was something expanding inside his chest, his mind rippling, thoughts spinning past each other, nothing connecting. He recognised the signs of something he hadn’t experienced in a couple of decades – a panic attack. He held onto the boardwalk rail, both hands clenching so hard that it felt like he might crush the wood to splinters.
Liam Delaney was right – the Bernardelli was a good piece. Vincent Naylor thought maybe in future he should make sure he had a gun he felt comfortable with, instead of making do with whatever piece of hardware was handy. Mind you, the Bernardelli was too bulky to carry on his belt or in a pocket, and with the black leather bag hanging from his shoulder Vincent Naylor felt like a fag – but it was the only way to do it. He had the top of the bag unzipped now, coming out of the Four Seasons. No way of knowing when he’d need to get the gun out, and he didn’t want to have to fiddle with a zip. He walked out onto the main road and turned towards the city centre.
He waited until he was some distance from the hotel before he hailed a taxi.
‘Northside,’ he said, ‘out towards Fairview. I’ll give you a shout when to stop.’
‘Weather’s holding up,’ the taxi driver said.
‘Looking good,’ Vincent said.
As Bob Tidey lit a cigarette he noticed and tried to still the shaking in his hands. He took a deep drag, exhaled slowly, then began to walk up along the boardwalk towards O’Connell Bridge. He had no idea how long he’d
been standing on the boardwalk. The panic attack had gone, the dreadful alternatives still massive in his mind.
What he’d decided to do was simple enough, but at any stage something might go wrong. In which case he’d adapt, or he’d try to come up with something else. Or let it all fall apart.
There were no guarantees, and doing nothing wasn’t an option.
On his way, he’d need to stop off at home, get hold of those faxed documents on Vincent Naylor, then—
He stopped walking, took out his mobile and called Rose Cheney. ‘Where are you?’
‘I just got home, working late.’
‘I need you to do something.’ He explained about Maura Coady, about the danger she might be in. As he spoke, Cheney made several attempts to cut in.
‘I’m – look, where the hell are you? Can’t you—’
‘Something’s come up – I’ve got to find someone, it’s – look, please, this is urgent.’
‘Shit.’
‘And keep your wits about you – this guy, he’s a psycho.’
‘Gee, thanks. And I’m doing this – why?’
‘Because you know you should.’
Cheney laughed. ‘My good deed for the day, yeah?’
‘Something like that.’
59
‘I’ll be a while – don’t go anywhere,’ Bob Tidey said.
The taxi driver said, ‘Meter’s ticking, I’m in no hurry.’
Tidey went upstairs to his apartment and found the file on Vincent Naylor. He sat at the kitchen table, moving from page to page, occasionally scribbling in a notebook.
The Rage Page 22
