Dark Dawn (31 page)

O’Neill tried to squeeze tighter, bracing himself against the blows. Ward, he thought, where the fuck are you?

He tried to tuck himself round Walczak’s leg as a way of shielding himself. He just needed to hang on. The boot came down again. O’Neill felt his grip slacken. And again, the boot. He swooned. Lightheaded. The boot, again. A wave swept over O’Neill. His hands went limp. He felt the leg lift up and out of his grasp. His arms clutched at thin air. It was the last thing O’Neill was aware of before the lights went out.

O’Neill woke up. He was warm and surrounded by bright light. He felt as if he was floating.

He could only open his left eye, and blinked several times trying to get the room into focus. He was in a hospital bed. A room on his own. A dull ache throbbed on his right side. He tried to move his arm and felt a searing pain shoot through his shoulder and up his neck, causing him to grimace.

After a few seconds he looked down and saw a sling holding his arm. His left hand had a needle in it and there was a drip going into the back of his hand. He was plugged into a heart monitor, the digital graph rolling left to right, showing his vitals.

I’m not dead then, he thought.

Ward sat beside the bed. O’Neill tried to speak but his throat was dry and his voice croaked. Ward stood up and poured some water into a cup. He leaned over, holding it to the detective’s mouth. The water soothed on its way down his throat.

‘I thought for a second this might be heaven,’ O’Neill said. ‘Until I saw your ugly mug.’

‘I wouldn’t count on either of us getting there,’ Ward replied.

O’Neill smiled and a stab of pain hit along the side of his jaw. He spoke again, more quietly than before.

‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘A day.’

‘Walczak?’

‘We got him.’

O’Neill felt himself relax.

‘I got there just as you blacked out.’

‘I was beginning to think you’d stopped for a fag or something.’

Ward laughed softly. ‘You and your frigging running.’

He sat down again, pulling his chair closer to the bed.

‘He’s some piece of work, that Walczak. He’s Polish. Ex-Special Forces. You should have seen him in the interview room. He laughed at the idea of jail. “Fucking police. You think I give a fuck about you and your prison?” After that he stone-walled us. Just sat there. Arms folded.’

O’Neill lay on the bed, wishing he’d been there, just to be in the room, to be asking the questions, even if Walczak didn’t answer a single one. They had the footprint. They had the DNA. They had the passports.

‘Who was he working with?’

‘He’s not going to give anyone up. He’ll do his time. He didn’t even blink at the prospect of life. Oh, and the nightclub – Mint? You’re not going to believe who owns that building.’

O’Neill guessed. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Yeah. That’s right. Spender’s got that whole block. We can’t tell how involved he is. He might just be a man with a big building. I don’t think so. But that’s as far as we can go with him for the time being.’

‘What about the black book he found – his son’s? The one with all the phone numbers?’

‘Who knows what he did with it? Maybe he burned it.’

O’Neill tried to adjust himself in the bed, wincing as a fresh stab of pain hit his shoulder. He breathed in through his teeth.

‘What about Burke and his brother?’

‘They were definitely up to something. Possibly to do with Laganview. Burke’s phone record shows they talked eight times the weekend the kid was killed. We don’t have anything tying them directly to the body though.’

Despite the pain and the cloud of medication, O’Neill could feel the weight starting to lift from him. Sure, there were loose ends. There always were. They’d got someone though. It was a victory. It meant something.

‘So what’s my diagnosis then?’ O’Neill asked.

‘Dislocated shoulder. Fractured skull. You took a few digs to the head so you’re not as pretty as you once were. Doctor says it’s nothing a bit of time won’t fix.’

‘You’ll need to apologize to Wilson. I don’t think I’m going to make my Review Board at this rate.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Ward said. ‘Walczak’s in bracelets. Laganview’s over. You’re going to be keeping your stripes. I’ll tell you better than that – there’s a permanent Sergeant’s post coming up in March and your name’s already been pencilled in.’

O’Neill lifted his eyebrows, raising three fingers on his left hand, thinking about tapping his shoulder. He winced halfway through the movement and brought his hand back down.

‘Detective Sergeant O’Neill,’ Ward said. ‘Yeah. I always thought it suited you.’

O’Neill gave a faint smile. The light in the room was beginning to sting his eyes. He put his head back and closed them.

He heard the door open and someone else walk in. A nurse, possibly the doctor.

He looked up to see Sam Jennings standing at the door, a look of worry on her face. Jennings looked at the DI. She knew who Ward was, but she was new to Musgrave Street, and in uniform. She wouldn’t be on his radar.

Ward stood up, raising his eyebrows at O’Neill. ‘I’ve got some paperwork needs doing. I’ll leave you both to it.’

As he turned to walk out of the room, Sam stood back.

‘Jennings,’ Ward said, passing the WPC.

‘Sir,’ she replied, hiding a tinge of embarrassment. She stepped forward to the bed and put her hand against O’Neill’s face.

‘You should see the state of the other guy,’ O’Neill said.

‘I did. Funnily enough, there wasn’t a mark on him.’

‘Yeah. So they keep telling me.’

Molloy felt as if he was back at school, sitting in the headmaster’s office, about to get the caning of his life.

It was eleven in the morning and The George hadn’t opened. He sat in a booth along the back wall. Gerry McCann was on a bar stool smoking, a deep frown across his forehead. He hadn’t spoken since walking in, and had ignored Molloy. Three dirty pint glasses sat on the bar next to him – leftovers from the previous night. Molloy could hear McCann breathing, each exhale angrier than the one before. He looked as if he was trying to suck the life out of his cigarette.

Molloy didn’t speak. This was a ‘wait till you’re spoken to’ moment. Most definitely. There were no lights on in The George and the grey winter sky filtered through the window at the far end of the bar. McCann was fuming, surrounded by smoke. He looked as if he wanted to hurt someone.

‘Where’s Joe Lynch?’ He spoke without looking at Molloy.

‘Eh, we’ve had people watching the house, walking round town, in and out—’

McCann repeated the question, slowly with emphasis.

‘Where –
the fuck
– is Joe Lynch?’

‘We don’t know.’

A pint glass flew through the air, smashing above Molloy’s head and showering him in glass.

In Cultra, Karen Spender stood on the patio looking down the lawn and out over Belfast Lough. She was smoking again. Two days ago she had bought her first packet in eight years. It was the phone call to Manchester that did it.

She’d hired a private investigator. Wanted him to find Phillip. He had quoted her his daily rate, plus expenses. Who cared how much it cost? She needed to know – even if it was as bad as she imagined. Every time the phone went, she jumped three feet in the air. At least that’s what it felt like. She had got into the habit of cutting people short. She couldn’t talk to them. Not now.

She hadn’t told Zara. Hadn’t told William either. This was for her.

William Spender saw the smoke drift past his office window. She was at it again. That frigging detective and his questions.

Spender was going over the profit projections for Laganview. They were back on schedule with the build. They’d pulled in more labour. These Eastern Europeans were grafters, all right. Would work their fingers to the bone and never complain. They’d sold six more apartments in the last week, four of them on the back of chatting to people at the awards dinner. No matter what anyone said, there was money to be made in this town.

Out the back Karen Spender took a last drag of her cigarette. She stubbed it out on an ashtray on the patio table. The rain had made a small puddle in the glass bowl, mixing with the ash and old fag ends. She shivered, rubbing her hands up and down her arms before turning back inside.

Michael Burke opened the doors at the back of the white Transit. It had taken him two hours to get to Dublin, plus another hour trying to find the place. He was at a building site for a new hotel on the south side. It was going to be a high-end gig, catering for pop stars and businessmen. The kind of place where people didn’t blink at 500 euros a night and would boast about having stayed there.

Paddy Hewson was in his early thirties. He wore a suit, tucked into a pair of brown construction boots. He was the principal engineer or architect or something. He looked at the three large drums of copper. They were fifteen hundred quid a pop from any wholesaler. It had been a walk in the park getting them out of Laganview. Spender knew about it. He was taking 50 per cent and then claiming the whole lot back again on insurance. Six grand a week. This was a test run and they planned to go for more, next time around. The site had a hundred grand’s worth of copper on it. Tony had knocked the cameras out the week before and they had used his keys to get in on the Saturday night. The kid getting killed was unlucky, but it meant no one else at Laganview had noticed the copper was missing.

The man rubbed his chin, shaking his head. He had a Dublin accent, all smarm and honey, like he couldn’t do enough for you. Burke had heard it all before. These guys would put a knife in your back if they thought it would make them a few quid.

‘I dunno now. We could go five hundred euros.’

‘Each?’ Burke asked, incredulously.

‘No. For the lot of them.’

Burke sighed, shaking his head.

‘Take it or leave it,’ the man said, all nonchalance.

He would take it, of course. There wasn’t a lot of choice in the matter.

Lynch stood in the bedroom of his house in the Markets. They would have had neighbours watching the place so he had left it a few days before sneaking along the rear entry. It was after 10 p.m. and he’d left the lights off as he stuffed his clothes into a sports bag. It was the same worn Adidas bag that he had used when he first walked out of the Maze. He reached under the bed and pulled out a brown envelope. It contained the five hundred pounds McCann had given him. He took a hundred and left the rest sitting on the bed. He would call Marie-Therese, tell her he was sorry, that he’d left something for her and the wee one.

He sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. This was it, he thought. He’d burned all his bridges. There’d be no coming back this time. Lynch lifted the cigarette to his mouth . . .

A fist hammered urgently on the door downstairs. Lynch turned his head, instinctively reaching for the Browning at the small of his back. He got up and peered round the door of the bedroom and down the stairs. More hammering.

The noise was light. A woman’s hand.

‘Joe!’ It was Marie-Therese. She was crying, hysterical. ‘It’s our Ciara. She’s not breathing.’

Lynch took the stairs two at a time. When he opened the door, Marie-Therese was halfway across the street, running home. He took off after her, catching up just as she ran through the front door into her place. He burst into the living room, simultaneously speaking and looking round for the baby.

‘Call an ambulan—’

Molloy sat on the sofa, bouncing little Ciara up and down on his knee. In his right hand he held a handgun. Little Ciara cooed and yelped, completely unaware of the story unfolding around her.

Marie-Therese stood at the edge of the room, crying.

‘I’m sorry, Joe. They made me do it. They were going to hurt her.’

Molloy smiled, looking up, the gun trained on Lynch. ‘Birds, Joe. What can you do, eh?’

Marie-Therese stepped forward and lifted the child from him.

‘Afraid this is it, Joe. You picked a side. Only it turns out your team lost.’

‘So what?’ Lynch said. ‘You’re going to do me here? In front of the wee one?’

‘No. Outside.’

Molloy nodded to the door that led through to the kitchen and the back of the house. Lynch imagined himself being discovered by the peelers, lying in the wet entry, discarded next to rubbish bags and old newspapers. He thought about going for the Browning but Molloy would have a bullet in him before he even got it out of his belt.

Lynch walked through the kitchen and out into the cold night air. The door on the far side of the yard was already open. Molloy followed at a safe distance. Lynch slowed his pace slightly, allowing the other man to get closer. As he reached the door to the entry he kicked backwards and lunged at Molloy. A shot went off. Lynch kept struggling. He hadn’t been hit. Lynch was on the other man, managing to get hold of the hand with the gun. He smashed it against the wall of the yard and Molloy dropped it. Lynch punched him in the face and Molloy wobbled. Lynch grabbed a handful of hair and struck Molloy’s head against the wall. Once. Twice. At the third time of asking, Molloy’s legs went out from under him and he fell to the ground.

Lynch ran out of the yard and off down the entry. It was dark in the alley, the moon obscured behind a ceiling of thick cloud. Lynch could just make out the River Lagan as it flowed by at the bottom of the entry. When he was 20 yards from the end, a figure stepped out of the dark. Lynch slid to a halt. The figure raised its arm, pointing a gun at him. McCann stepped forward and shook his head.

‘It’s like I told you, Joe. You just can’t get the staff these days. If you want something done properly . . .’

A pair of gunshots punctuated McCann’s words.

Lynch flew back off his feet. He didn’t feel his head strike the concrete. The wind had been blown out of him. His chest heaved as he tried to suck in air. A warm wetness began to seep through his jacket. He tried to reach for the Browning but couldn’t make his arms work.

McCann walked forward and stood over him. He pointed the gun at Lynch’s forehead and pulled the trigger. ‘. . . you have to do it yourself.’