Dark Times in the City (22 page)

‘
Please
.’

‘Has this anything to do with Frank Tucker?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Don’t shut me out. If you need help—’

‘Please.’

Novak was silent. Then, ‘Ring me when you can,’ and he ended the call.

Callaghan was halfway to the shopping centre when Hannah rang.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

Callaghan said, ‘I—’ and Hannah steamrollered over him.

‘You’re fucking with my
life
!’

‘Hannah—’ Callaghan stopped walking, stood there in the street. He leaned over, pressed the phone closer to his ear, trying to block out the sound of traffic.

‘Leon told me – so I know now, and there’s nothing you can use against him.’

‘Hannah—’

‘Don’t deny it.’

Callaghan said nothing. He wasn’t sure if he had anything to deny.

‘I know about Leon and Alex, he told me last night. You found his briefcase at her place and you made that obvious – I don’t know what you thought you were going to do with that information, but it’s all in the open now and there’s nothing to it.’

The strain in her voice was something he’d never heard before.

‘Alex told Leon you’d found his stuff at her place. And he told me – and there’s nothing to it. He told me you’ve been watching
the house, he told me you threatened to make up shit about him and now you think you’ve got this to hold over—’

‘Hannah, this isn’t—’

‘What Leon and I have – whatever he’s done – I just want you to know that you can’t—’

‘Hannah, please—’

‘Don’t contact me again.’ She ended the call.

Callaghan stood near the edge of the pavement, his back to the noisy traffic. He wasn’t sure what he felt. He’d lost something, and he wasn’t sure yet how much it mattered to him.

The third call came when Callaghan was in the coffee shop at the shopping centre, ordering a sandwich. He recognised Lar Mackendrick’s voice.

‘Danny?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You free?’

‘Just getting something to eat.’

‘I want to show you something. Now.’

‘I need to change, have a shower, it won’t take—’

‘You’re fine as you are.’

Half an hour later, driving a green Isuzu, Lar Mackendrick picked up Danny Callaghan near Mountjoy Square. They crossed the river and headed out through the southern suburbs.

‘Where are we going?’ Callaghan said.

‘The mountains.’

‘Why?’

‘Something to show you.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll see.’

After a while, Mackendrick said, ‘Over the next couple of days, I want you to do something for me. It was Walter’s job, now it’s yours. I want six cars.’

‘Over a couple of days?’

‘No problem to you. You nick them, stick on false plates. Karl and Robbie will collect them from you, put them away safely. We’ll need a lot of transport. Nothing too flash, but everything in good nick.’ He tucked something into Callaghan’s top pocket. ‘A few hundred there, for the plates – and make sure they’ve had a fill-up.’

They drove past Rathfarnham and eventually Callaghan saw a signpost for Glencullen. Mackendrick turned onto a twisting bushy lane, the view restricted. He stayed silent, concentrating on driving. Ten minutes down the lane they took a left and began climbing on an even narrower, more twisting rough road. In the mirror, Callaghan caught glimpses of the lights of Dublin, far behind.

‘We’re here.’

When they stopped, Mackendrick cut the ignition and turned to Callaghan.

‘You afraid?’

Callaghan didn’t reply.

‘You’re okay – if I’d wanted to hurt you I’d have sent a couple of lads to take you up here. I want you to see something.’

Mackendrick got out of the Isuzu. There were fields sloping down to the left, woods to the right. One tall, thin tree, a spruce, had keeled over, its fall broken by another tree equal in size. Together, they looked something like an elongated X.

‘Over here.’

Callaghan followed Mackendrick towards the woods. The air was icy. Closer to the trees Callaghan could see beams of light shining several yards inside the woods.

‘Someone expecting us?’ Callaghan whispered.

Mackendrick, his breathing heavy, just grunted. He switched on a small flashlight.

When they got to a small clearing, Callaghan saw that the beams of light came from the headlights of a Toledo, driven in from the far side and parked at an angle from the clear space. Karl Prowse was standing several feet away. He was holding a pistol. There was an older man standing in a long shallow hole. He was wearing a hat and coat and had a spade in his hand and he’d just stopped digging. He watched the arrival of Mackendrick and Callaghan. Despite the cold, his face was sweaty. There was a streak of blood on one cheek. His body had the stooped posture of a man tired and frightened.

Lar Mackendrick turned to Danny. ‘This is Declan Roeper. As you can see, Declan’s been digging a grave.’

Mackendrick took a couple of steps to where Karl was standing. He bent down and picked up a second spade. When he threw the spade, Callaghan instinctively reached up and caught it.

‘Help him,’ Mackendrick said.

When the thugs came the shop owner was on a ladder, hanging a string of plastic Santa Clauses over the chocolate display. Almost a whole month to Christmas, but there was no point putting it off any longer. Some shops had begun putting up their Christmas decorations before Halloween. Bloody nonsense, but if you didn’t do it people put you down as a Scrooge, and that wasn’t good for business.

The far end of the string was hooked above the stationery shelves, and the trick was to leave enough slack so there was some distance between the Santas, so they weren’t all bunched up in the middle. The ladder rocked as the shop owner stretched to connect the other end of the string to a hook. It wasn’t easy, doing this with one arm in a sling.

When he saw the two men coming through the front doorway the shopkeeper’s face went red. The older one was in his late thirties, the other was barely out of his teens.

‘Get out!’

‘No need for that, Mr Finnegan,’ the older man said.

The shopkeeper let go of the string and the Santa Clauses fluttered away from him, dangling down over the notepads and pencils.

‘Just get the
hell
—’

‘Mr Mackendrick wants to see you.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘He wants to apologise.’

‘
Out
.’

The expression on the face of the older thug was regretful. Matty was his name, Matty something.

‘Mr Mackendrick feels terrible about this.’

‘It’s okay, it’s over now.’

‘It wasn’t supposed to happen.’

‘I didn’t go to the police.’

‘He knows that. He’s very grateful.’

‘He can fuck off.’

‘It was a mistake – it was just supposed to be a verbal warning.’

The younger thug leaned towards the shopkeeper and said, ‘Let’s go.’

‘
No!
’

Matty said, ‘Mr Finnegan, all Lar wants to do is tell you himself how sorry he is. I’m asking you, please – we’ll drive you there, door to door. Have a chat with Lar, then Todd here drives you back to the shop, door to door.’ The thug reached into an inside pocket. He took out an envelope, opened it and counted six fifties onto the counter. ‘So you’re not out of pocket, having to leave the shop for an hour or so.’

This could be—

Or—

In the end, the shopkeeper thought, it wasn’t as though he had a choice.

The younger thug drove. Matty sat alongside the shopkeeper in the back of the car. They didn’t speak.

It was the second time in two weeks that Matty and his young friend had come to see the shopkeeper. The way Matty put it when he came first was, ‘The Mackendrick family’s been good to you – Lar just wants a little favour.’

‘I don’t do that kind of thing any more.’

Two days after that, two other men came and the shopkeeper found himself lying on the floor, his face bloody, two teeth broken, watching his hand being shoved into the drinks fridge, feeling
the chill of the Coca-Cola bottles, and screaming when the door of the fridge slammed against his arm.

Past Clare Hall now, out along Grange Road, through Sutton Cross, up Carrickbrack Road and past the summit of the Howth peninsula. Over to the left there were some small private estates and council houses, but around here it was all about levels of wealth. There was a time when you just needed to be well off to live here – now the very seriously rich were all over the place. It was far from this that the Mackendricks had been raised.

They were living off Ballybough Road, in the inner city, when the shopkeeper got to know Jo-Jo Mackendrick. Back then, few in the area cared that Jo-Jo was on the rob. There was wariness of his mother Pearl, and resentment from those who got caught up in her moneylending operation and ended up paying crushing interest for years. But Jo-Jo was a neighbourhood star. He was like a local development agency, slipping loans and grants to people who needed a dig-out. It wasn’t charity, and Jo-Jo expected to be paid back, but if things didn’t work out – and if he was sure he wasn’t being taken for a ride – he sometimes scrubbed the debt. If it worked out, as the shopkeeper’s first tiny shop did, Jo-Jo might or might not accept repayment. He might take a partnership in the business, as Jo-Jo had with the shopkeeper’s place, or he might merely ask for a favour.

The arrival of the Criminal Assets Bureau put a crimp in everyone’s business. Show the CAB how you got your assets, or get hauled into court and maybe lose them. Lots of hard cases, after years of graft, had seen the proceeds taken away. Everyone had to look for ways to shift excess money offshore, just like the smart businessmen had been doing for decades. Spain, the Netherlands, even into Eastern Europe. The Mackendricks had long ago forged the legitimate links that allowed them to launder most of their income.

Everyone benefitted – Jo-Jo and Lar, and the people doing the
laundering. The shopkeeper, Finnegan, had moved on and up, and now had two medium-sized shops in different parts of the city. Jo-Jo was dead and the connection with the Mackendrick family was long ago, until Lar needed an outlet to run some money through and Matty and Todd came calling, and the other two thugs came to break the shopkeeper’s arm.

Pulling into the driveway of Lar Mackendrick’s house in Howth, Matty said, ‘The view – it’d take your breath away.’

Getting out of the car, despite his fear, the shopkeeper looked back down towards the sea. Matty was right. Even on a cloudy day. Take your breath away.

The winter wasn’t too bad – which was a blessing, after the lousy summer when it seemed like most days of the week God woke with a smirk on his face and sent the angels to line up and take turns pissing down on Dublin.

Now it was late November and there were a few days of un-seasonal weather. No sun but warm enough not to have to heat the large sun room overlooking the harbour. Lar sat with his feet up, a pitcher of iced orange juice on the table. He watched Matty and Todd approach, one each side of the shopkeeper. Lar got to his feet as they came through the doorway.

‘Mr Finnegan – what can I say?’

The shopkeeper indicated the cast on his arm. ‘There was no call for that.’

‘None at all. Not my instructions – but it’s my responsibility and I’m sorry.’

‘Those bastards enjoyed it.’

‘They went beyond their orders. Say the word and they suffer – same as you.’

‘No, please.’ Finnegan said it quickly. Last thing he wanted, his tormentors nursing broken arms and a grudge.

‘Sit down – please.’ Lar indicated one of the half-dozen teak chairs. He poured a glass of orange juice and left it on the tiled table beside Finnegan, then he did the same for himself and sat down. Matty and Todd stood several yards away.

‘I want to make sure we’re okay, me and you.’

‘I didn’t tell the police.’

‘I know – that was good of you.’

‘I said it was a couple of shoplifters, said I got into a fight with them.’

‘Good.’

‘They believed me.’

‘We’re good then, me and you?’

Finnegan didn’t want to agree, he didn’t want to disagree.

‘We need to talk – the thing you wanted—’

‘Ever been out to the island?’ Lar gestured towards Ireland’s Eye, a couple of kilometres offshore.

Finnegan shook his head.

‘I was sitting here, thinking. When we were kids, Jo-Jo and me used to come out to Howth from the city, every chance we got – halfway down the pier they still have motorboats that’ll take you out to the island for a few hours. Haven’t been out there in years. Terrific place – thousands of seagulls, puffins, gannets, plover. I used to know about all that shit. A Martello tower out there on the left tip of the island. In the middle there’s the ruins of a church, hundreds of years old. Way up on top, near the cliffs, the earth is so springy it’s like a mattress. That’s what we called it when we were kids – mattress grass. We used to hold our arms out like this –’ he stretched his arms out to the sides, at shoulder height ‘– throw ourselves backwards, bounce on the mattress grass – it was magic.’