Slaughter's hound hr-2

by Declan Burke

  ‘You’ll be fucked if you don’t.’

  ‘Then I’ll be fucked my way.’ That was the cue for a staring game, a little glowering. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what Finn told you about what he saw from the PA, but the man’s dead. That angle is dead. Close it down, start again.’

  ‘No problem, yeah. Hey, maybe we could even put that five grand there to the new budget.’

  ‘That’s what this is about? Budgets?’

  ‘We’re close is what this is about. And you need to pull your head out of your hole, have a look around. See how you can make this work for you.’

  ‘Make what work?’

  ‘Finn’s number is in your phone,’ he said patiently. ‘He rang you, you knew where he was, you knew he’d be alone. Then he goes out the window. You’re about to sign off on a false statement when Gillick arrives, walks you out. Then we find shit in your car makes it look like you’re trying to cover some tracks. Maybe your own, maybe Gillick’s, we don’t know.’

  ‘If you think I’m fronting for-’

  ‘We have your phone, Rigby. You want to tell me now who you were calling today or wait until we work it out ourselves?’

  ‘I’ll wait, thanks. Because you’ll need a warrant to go checking my phone records, and you’ll need a rock-solid reason to arrest me, besides what’s known, before you can get it. Meantime, I’ll have my phone back, cheers. Unless you’re looking to screw the investigation before it gets started.’

  ‘How about the coke, hey? You want that back too?’

  ‘For the last time, I know nothing about any coke.’ I held out my hand, palm down. ‘You want to go ahead and rap my knuckles right now, go ahead.’

  From the way his fingers curled into his palm, it looked a lot like he was planning something a little more dramatic than a knuckle-rap or fist-bump. Except then he sat down heavily on the end of the bed, squeezed his eyes shut, dry-washed his face. He looked drained.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. He sounded almost normal. ‘Cards on the table. We think Gillick had Finn done. Maybe he did it, maybe he had you do it, and maybe you just happened to be there when it happened. Either way, it’s sweet for Gillick because you’re standing in the way and we can’t see around you. So here’s the thinking. Why not put you on the witness stand? Tell the world what we know, let it all fall out.’

  ‘I perjure myself or you frame me for Finn.’

  ‘You can go up there hostile if you want. But you might want to take a look at this first.’ He shifted his hip, took a small tinfoiled lump from his back pocket. Placed it on the sheet.

  The old black hole opened up in my gut, started sucking. ‘What’s that supposed to be?’

  ‘It isn’t supposed to be anything. It’s hash. About two joints less than a ten-spot. Poxy slate, but still.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We found it in the kid’s pocket, Rigby. Which means he was holding it for you or you were punting dope on to your kid.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Tell it to the tabloids.’ He laughed, sounding like a Ducati trapped between gears. ‘I’m thinking something along the lines of,’ he held up his hands, as if framing the headline, ‘“Coke Trafficking Killer Peddles Dope To Schoolboy Son”.’ He dropped the hands, wiped the grin, gave me the dead eye. ‘How d’you think that’ll read on his CV in ten years’ time?’

  23

  Tohill locked the door, mumbling something I couldn’t hear to the cop parked outside. I gave it half an hour to let everyone settle down, then availed of the phone on the bedside locker, one of the very few perks that go with being unofficially jailed in a private hospital room under a false name while the Guardians of the Peace wait to see if black ops will work the oracle.

  Directory Enquiries put me through to the hospital’s reception desk, where I asked the receptionist to connect me with Pamela Devine. There followed a couple of minutes of clicks, brrrs and false starts, and then she picked up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hey. It’s Harry.’

  A sigh not notable for its quality of unrequited longing, then: ‘Did you get to see him?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I just wanted to say thanks.’

  ‘My arse. What do you want?’

  ‘It’s my eye.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. The trauma to the-’

  ‘Not that one. My good eye. It’s dazzled.’

  ‘Dazzled?’

  ‘By your radiance. I’m thinking martinis on the terrace at dusk.’

  The old familiar dirty chuckle. ‘Let’s just get through to dawn first. We’ll see how we go after that.’

  ‘It’s a date. Meanwhile, I need an X-ray. I’m getting shooting pains in my eye.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘My Jap’s eye. Which one d’you think?’

  ‘Then that’s perfectly normal. Buzz the nurse, ask for some pain relief. No, wait — did you take the Dilaudids?’

  ‘One of them.’

  ‘Okay. Then you’ll just have to sweat it out.’

  ‘No kidding, Pam. It’s pretty intense. And I don’t want to go blind and have to sue you for negligence.’

  ‘If you’re blind, how’ll you find me?’

  ‘I’ll be like Homer, seeing all. C’mon, do the right thing here. Who’s one X-ray going to hurt at this time of night?’

  ‘It’d need to be an emergency. You’re seriously in pain?’

  ‘Is there any other way?’

  I heard the tappity-tap of fingernails on plastic. ‘Okay, hold tight. I’ll see what I can do. I’m making no promises, though.’

  ‘You’re a star. Oh, and Pam? The cop in the corridor, he’ll try to keep you out.’

  ‘Good. He looks like he could use the exercise.’

  Never tell a woman what she can’t do on her own turf.

  She was wrong. The new cop they’d stationed outside was tall and trim. He was also keen on the idea of not looking a complete plum. So he did it all by the book, getting on the phone to inform his superior that I needed an X-ray and waiting until it was all confirmed in triplicate before he allowed Pam push me out into the corridor in a wheelchair, sticking so close all the way to the radiography department that I could count the hairs in his nose.

  There was a patient already in situ, sitting in the row of bright yellow bucket seats, a thin bald man with big ears and tiny ragged clouds for eyebrows, dressed in a tatty brown bathrobe over maroon-blue striped pyjamas. He was barefoot and looking for company, so Pam pushed on by him, through the next set of double-doors. She parked me beside the bed and helped me up on board, got me as comfortable as anyone is likely to get on a second-hand anvil. Then she draped the protective covering over my groin, glanced across at the cop.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay if you want,’ she said.

  The cop eyed the covering. ‘It wouldn’t be, ah, dangerous or anything?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ she said over her shoulder as she scuttled for the sanctuary of the glassed-in booth in the far corner. ‘But it’s up to you.’

  He weighed it up and came down on the side of his potential progeny, retreating through the double-doors as the radiographer came through from a door to the right of the booth. A sharp-faced blonde, hair scraped back in a bun, a dun-coloured folder under her arm. She didn’t so much as glance in my direction as she clip-clipped to the booth, put some X-rays up on the light box. Nor did she meet my eyes as she swung the X-ray into place over my head, got it positioned just so. Her own were glazed, and I wondered how long she’d been on shift.

  She went back to the booth. Her voice came amplified, metallic, as she reminded me not to move. I waited for the hum, then took a quick peek at the double-doors. The cop was crowding the rectangular window, keeping tabs. A loud click-tung sounded from beneath the table.

  ‘Please, Mr Rigby.’ Her voice frayed with irritation. ‘It is vital you don’t move.’

  I held up a hand. ‘I need to use the toilet. Sorry.’

  ‘Just hold still. Th
is won’t take a-’

  ‘Okay. But I need to go now. When I get nervous …’

  ‘There’s really nothing to worry about, Mr Rig-’

  I sat up, lifting off the covering that was protecting me from whatever it was I really didn’t need to worry about. Slid down off the table, pointing towards the door beside the booth. ‘Is there a bathroom through there?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s a restricted area. There are facilities available to — Mr Rigby.’

  But by then I was already through the door, closing it behind me, sliding the snib across. Tall filing cabinets either side of the corridor, darkened cubicles, one at the end with a light showing. The sharp blonde’s, I presumed. Beyond that were a set of emergency exit doors.

  An alarm went off about two seconds after I kicked them out, by which time I was halfway across a deserted delivery area and aiming for an alleyway in the far corner. Picking up the pace now, from crabby shuffle to crippled jog. The alleyway was softly lit with an orange light and opened up into the harsh sodium glare of the hospital car park. Here, and for once, the universe chipped in on my side. The car park was huge and terraced and neatly landscaped, its levels dug out of a gentle slope, and I let gravity do the work as I zigzagged from one tidy clump of bush to another, lungs burning, the cotton-puff heart long since split in two and thumping in both ears.

  At the bottom of the car park I put a rock through a Sierra’s window, jump-started the engine at the second attempt, took off for Connaughton Road. Pulled a right at the lights, drove north towards the plum bruise of Benbulben in the false dawn.

  I was in bad shape. Weak and dizzy, wheezing hard, brain fizzing like bath salts in Perrier. And driving can be tricky when you’re only using one blurry eye and the other is hosting what felt like a rerun of Guernica.

  Still, it could have been worse. I might have been in a coma with a tangerine-sized lump bleeding into my brain pan.

  How long before the Sierra was posted stolen and the cops made the jump that it’d been me who boosted it? A couple of hours, at least, but probably more.

  Plenty of time to soak the grieving Saoirse Hamilton for a quick ten grand.

  24

  I leaned on the buzzer until I heard a click, then a tinny, angry voice asking who I was and what the fuck I thought I was doing. A metaphysical gambit, bordering on Cartesian, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I told him I was there to see Saoirse Hamilton at her request and if he didn’t open the door quick smart the art gallery hallway would have a new installation comprised of a Ford Sierra wearing a busted front door and a fake elephant-trunk knocker.

  Three minutes later I was standing in the great hall again. Simon struggled into a glare while he knuckled sleep from his eyes, half-dressed in a rumpled white T-shirt, grey tracksuit bottoms sans piping, pool-deck flip-flops. The bloodshot eyes could have been the result of too little sleep or too much brandy, and probably both. ‘This better be good,’ he muttered sourly.

  ‘Look at me. Will you take a good fucking look at me? Do I look like I’d be here if I didn’t have to be?’

  He stifled a yawn. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I need to see your boss.’

  ‘She’s asleep right now. And she hasn’t been getting much-’

  ‘She wants to see me. I’m here.’

  The quick lift of his eyebrows might have been surprise, disbelief or scorn, but whatever it signalled it meant he was out of the loop. ‘Is this to do with Finn?’

  ‘If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you later. So let’s go, chop-chop.’

  He stared. I let my eyes go dead. He took a step back without realising it. ‘Wait here. I’ll ask if she’ll see you.’

  ‘Tell her if she doesn’t, she won’t be seeing me again.’

  ‘That’ll break her heart,’ he sniped, but it came from over his shoulder as he flip-flopped away up the staircase. I waited until he’d turned left into the corridor at the top of the stairs, then ducked into the study and found the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me, Dee.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Fine, yeah. Great. Fantastic, actually.’ The bitterness was a mustard gas wafting down the line. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so peaceful for so long.’

  ‘You’re still at the hospital?’

  ‘’Course.’ Then: ‘Why, where are you?’

  ‘I had to leave. I’ve some arrangements to make.’

  ‘And they’re more important than Ben?’

  ‘You wouldn’t let me see him anyway.’

  ‘Not the point, Harry.’

  ‘So what is the point?’

  ‘The point,’ she said, ‘is that you put him in fucking hospital and now you’ve fucked off to make some fucking arrangements.’

  ‘I didn’t put him in hospital. We were-’

  ‘Save it for the cops. You were the one driving, on a mobile phone.’

  ‘Dee — it was you rang me.’

  ‘You’re saying it’s my fault?’

  I could almost taste the menace. ‘I’m trying to tell you we were run off the road.’

  A long silence, then, ‘If I find out you’re lying, Harry, I’ll stand up in court and testify myself.’

  ‘Ask Ben. When he wakes up, ask him. He’ll tell you.’

  A choked-back sob. ‘You think he’s going to be alright?’

  ‘Of course he is. Look, I can’t say too much about these arrangements I’m making, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  I swallowed dry. Saying it made it real. ‘I’m going back inside, Dee. There’s a cop on my case and he’s putting me away.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  She sounded distant, half-dreamy. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it does.’

  ‘I’ll stay in touch. If there’s any change in Ben, let me know.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Be strong, Dee.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  She hung up. I depressed the connection, rang Herb. In the silence the whole house seemed to lurk at my shoulder, one ear cocked. And maybe that was just the faint echo I was hearing, the kind you get on an open line.

  ‘Yello.’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘About fucking time, too. Where are you?’

  ‘Be cute. I’m on an unsecured line.’

  ‘Why, where’s your phone?’

  I filled him in, ending with Ben’s condition.

  ‘Fucking hell. Will he be alright?’

  In his cautious tone I heard the real question, the same one Dee had been asking, the one that ended with the words ‘brain’ and ‘damage’.

  ‘We’re hopeful,’ I said. ‘Signs are positive.’

  ‘Anything I can do from this end?’

  ‘Not much, Herb. But cheers.’

  ‘Okay, but if you think of anything … Listen, Harry? What about the-’

  ‘Not now, Herb. You’re on my list and I’ll get to you as soon as I can. But not now.’

  ‘Alright. But don’t go lost. Don’t make me send someone out to find you.’

  ‘Herb, man — I’m your reducer. It’d be me you’d be sending out.’

  ‘So don’t make me do it. You’re fucked up enough without turning schizophrenic.’

  He hung up. I waited a full three minutes before hearing a funny kind of whispering click on the line, and then I hung up too.

  25

  I wondered if my new eye-patch would stir up some memories of Big Bob’s piratical mien but Saoirse Hamilton was polite enough not to comment when she received me on the balcony of a morning room adjacent to her bedroom. Or maybe, consumed with grief, or not generally disposed to noticing the little people, it just didn’t register. She wore a lilac peignoir, the rustles of sleep in her face and hair giving her the blowsy appearance of a prosperously retired madam.

  The drop beyond the low pillared wall fell sheer to the crooked black teeth
of an inlet a hundred feet or so below, so I retreated to the wicker armchair angled towards her own, propped my feet on the low wall. It was some view. The sun was crowning gold on the horizon, the air already balmy, and depending on how I tilted my head I could have watched a corona gild Queen Maeve’s grave on Knocknerea, the Atlantic take on a patina of silvery leaf or Saoirse Hamilton’s cleavage blush a rosy hue. Not being a man for nature in the raw, I focused on the coffee she was pouring.

  She dropped two lumps into the bowl without asking if I was sweet enough already and handed it across. I stirred and sipped and closed my eyes. It was probably the finest coffee I’d ever tasted.

  ‘You’re not Greek,’ she said.

  I opened my eyes again. ‘I never said I was.’

  ‘I mean, Mr Rigby, that you come bearing no gifts.’

  ‘Ah, right. Classical.’

  She lit a menthol More, easing back into her seat and settling her bowl of coffee on her midriff, so I had to look twice to be sure it wasn’t her cleavage that was steaming. ‘Why so?’ she said.

  ‘When I spoke with you yesterday I thought I had what you wanted.’

  ‘Finn’s suicide note. Let’s not be coy.’

  ‘Fair enough. It was actually a passport with five grand cash inside.’

  She held up her bowl in both hands, so that she could sip from it without taking her eyes off mine. She thought I was lying, was waiting for the tell, some flinch, for me to brush my nose or look away. So I blinked, grazed a forefinger across my nose and glanced out at the sunrise, just to see where it might take us.

  ‘But if Finn was planning to …’ She heard the words she was about to say. Her wince was practically audible, the Botox skreek of tectonic plates grinding. ‘You told me,’ she said in a firm voice, ‘that Finn had plans to travel. To Cyprus.’

  ‘What I said was, he was moving there. To live. But it’s not just the passport.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The cops want to know why it’s a fake.’

  ‘A fake?’

  ‘It’s that or he stole Philip Byrne’s passport, stuck his own mugshot inside.’