Little Criminals (13 page)

The kitchen was wide and long, with a dining table and chairs on one side. Almost the entire outer wall of the kitchen was a window, with a view out on to the long garden, the boundaries now marked by lines of softly glowing lamps.

It seemed to Paxton that the target was unable to conceal his pride, as he took his captor on a tour of the house. First, they checked out the cars. Through the kitchen, out a connecting door to a large garage. There were two cars there, a Saab and the Merc in which the target had arrived home on the evenings they kept watch on the house. The target opened a side door of the garage and showed Paxton a Land-Rover, parked in a passageway alongside the boundary hedge.

‘We’ll take the Saab,’ Paxton told the target, who nodded as though taking the Saab was obviously the sensible thing to do. Probably dotes on the Merc. And, right enough, it was the kind of flash wheels Paxton wouldn’t mind taking for a spin, but it would be silly to take the target away in such a high-profile car. And the Land-Rover, no.

The house seemed to go on for ever. It was like they thought up something they’d like to do, so they’d add on another room to do it in. Watch television, listen to music, lie around on a sofa. There was a room for the kids to play computer games, one with an exercise bike, a small bench and some weights, and a room with three computers, an array of desks and leather chairs, and several filing cabinets. One room, bigger than Martin Paxton’s living room, was just shelves, all around the walls, floor to ceiling, and all of them stacked neatly with labelled boxes.

A large room with two long sofas facing each other across a big coffee table opened into an even larger conservatory. The fuck these people do, use their mobiles to talk from one end of the room to the other? High ceilings, fireplaces wide and tall, paintings on the walls, huge leather couches, chunky furniture, chandeliers, crystal all over the place and everywhere the thick blue carpets. In the dining room, Martin reckoned you might just manage a game of five-a-side football on the long table, though that would kind of take the shine off it. There were a dozen high-backed chairs around the table, and the walls were lined with large paintings that mostly showed people sowing and reaping in sunlit fields.

At the top of the wide staircase, the target stopped and said, ‘That’s my daughter’s room, there, and my son is in the next room down. Please be quiet.’

‘Church mouse,’ Martin Paxton said. He passed along the corridor, glancing at the framed photographs of the family. There was one of the target shaking hands with a wide man with a thick gold chain hung around his neck and curving down across his belly. Paxton opened the daughter’s door and peeped inside and across the darkened room saw there was a shape on a bed. He nodded to the target, closed the door, then went to the next room. Same routine. He closed the door softly and he said, ‘OK, mission accomplished. Let’s take you straight back to Mama Bear.’

Halfway down the stairs, Paxton said, ‘I’m impressed, mate. My mammy was right. Go into the banking business, son – you’re never short of the folding green.’

The target stopped. Paxton raised the gun slightly. ‘Nothing naughty, now, OK?’

The target looked at his captor for a moment, then he took a deep breath. ‘Look, I think there’s been some kind of mistake.’

Martin Paxton said, ‘That’s what he said.’ He had his balaclava off, now, as had the other three, and he threw it on to the kitchen counter.

‘What’s this mean?’ Brendan Sweetman asked.

‘He’s trying to pull one,’ Frankie Crowe said.

‘Seemed genuine enough.’

‘Fuck!’

‘Will someone please—’ Brendan Sweetman looked at Dolly Finn, made an enquiring gesture with his open palms, and turned to the others.

Martin Paxton said, ‘Take a banker, you have a direct line to the money, it speeds things up. Now, the guy says he’s not a banker.’

Frankie Crowe wasn’t listening. He opened one of the holdalls and found the suit he’d changed out of. From an inner pocket he took one of the magazine clippings about the target, the one with the photograph. He’d brought this in case he needed a photo of the target and had brought neither of the other two clippings. One of those referred to ‘his Bryton Bank triumph’. The other quoted a friend saying, ‘When Justin brought Bryton to the table he became a player.’ Further down it said, ‘Acquiring Bryton Bank was the cherry on his cake.’ Frankie read again the clipping he’d brought. It explained how Mr Fucking Wonderful had prospered in property deals, and how his breakthrough came ‘when he landed Bryton, a small private bank’. Fucker was trying to pull one.

Frankie put on his balaclava and headed towards the kitchen door.

The Kennedys were sitting in the living room, in the armchairs flanking the fireplace. After the tour of the house, the leader’s sidekick had brought Justin back to the living room and the tall, skinny gunman, the one who’d shown them the knife, had used thin plastic strips to tie their hands in front of them. The sidekick told them, ‘Just sit there, OK? We’ll be back in a minute.’

Then the two gunmen left the living room, taking the cordless phone away with them. Justin heard the click of the kitchen door opening.

‘Are you OK?’

Angela nodded.

Justin said, ‘When I saw the guns, Christ, I nearly lost it. I thought they’d come to shoot me.’

Angela said, ‘Is there anything you’re involved in?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A deal, a client—’

‘Christ, no. Jesus, nothing that could possibly – this is—’

‘Do what they say, then. They mean it, it’s money they want. Let them take whatever they want, as long as we all—’

‘Of course, of course. I think it’s going to be OK. This is a mistake, they know that now, I think they’ll just leave.’

‘What happened upstairs?’

‘They think I’m a banker.’

Angela stared at him.

‘The fellow who took me upstairs, I told him there was a mistake, and he brought me down, back here.’

‘They’ve come to the wrong house?’

‘Something like that. I suppose he has to consult with the others, that’s why they tied—’

The door opened. The leader came in with his sidekick trailing behind. The leader said, ‘Bryton Bank, right?’

‘Look, there’s been a mistake,’ Justin said.

‘In a magazine last year, it said Pemberton Road, Ballsbridge. Justin Kennedy, big-shot what-the-fuck entrepreneur. Dublin’s upmarket Pemberton Road, that’s what it said. I checked the voting register. Justin Kennedy.’

Angela said, ‘I assure you, Justin is not a banker.’

‘Bryton Bank, right?’

Justin said, ‘I’ve nothing to do with Bryton, I swear.’

‘You’re lying.’ He fumbled in a pocket and held up a page torn from a magazine. Justin could see his own face staring out from the page.
‘“When he landed Bryton, a smile private bank.”
That’s what it says.’

The target was shaking his head. ‘You’ve got hold of the wrong – Jesus, I see, look – let me explain.’

Jesus Christ. Sitting here, fucking handcuffs, giving lessons in capital finance to a stupid thug in a balaclava
.

Bryton was almost two years back. With the Dublin property market oversubscribed, increasing numbers of investors were buying in Britain. Justin was managing the smallest of three consortia manoeuvring to clinch a city-centre development in Edinburgh. The business pages depicted his syndicate – mostly barristers looking to put tribunal money to profitable use – as ‘quixotic’, which in business journalism roughly translated as losers. Then, approached by Bryton for advice on securing a new headquarters, Justin instead convinced Bryton to come into his consortium and take on the Edinburgh project. It immediately changed the dynamics of the deal and within a month the losers had clinched the development.

‘I brought them into a consortium – there was—’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m a solicitor. I mostly, these days, organise property deals. I persuaded the owners of Bryton Bank to join a consortium – a group of investors – and because they did we beat a couple of bigger outfits to a deal. And I got the credit. That’s it. We made money from it, but I swear – beyond that I’ve nothing to do with Bryton. Jesus, that was nearly two years ago, it’s probably eight, nine months since I talked to anyone from Bryton.’

The gang leader stood there, unmoving, for the best part of a minute. Then, Justin Kennedy said, ‘It’s true,’ and immediately felt like a schoolboy offering an implausible excuse.

The leader turned sharply and walked out of the room. The other gunman said, ‘Look—’ He had a soft voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’ll be all right.’ As he moved past her, towards the door, Angela caught a whiff of a musky aftershave. When he left the room, the gunman closed the door quietly.

*

When Frankie Crowe and Martin Paxton came back into the kitchen, pulling off their masks, Brendan Sweetman was agitated. ‘What the fuck, Frankie? What’s the story?’

Frankie Crowe said nothing. He stood, hands gripping the countertop, staring down at the dark marble, as though he could see something scrawled there. Dolly Finn looked at Martin Paxton and raised his eyebrows. Paxton shook his head.

‘We calling it off, Frankie?’ Brendan Sweetman said. ‘Cut our losses?’

‘He convinced me,’ Martin Paxton said to Frankie Crowe. ‘Whatever else he is, he’s not a banker. But, maybe we shouldn’t get hung up on that? There’s an option, Frankie.’

Frankie Crowe didn’t say anything.

Martin gestured. ‘Look around you. You don’t buy a place like this with loose change.’

‘Ready money,’ Frankie said, quietly. ‘We take a banker, we squeeze his people and they can reach out and grab a bundle of money right away. That was the plan. Solicitor, it’s not like that.’

Dolly Finn said, ‘I don’t see the problem. Rich fucker, he has money, doesn’t matter what his job is.’

Martin said, ‘It’s a point, Frankie. Kind of money we’re talking about. So, it takes an extra couple of days—’

Frankie Crowe said, very quietly, ‘There was a plan’. He reached up and opened the cabinet door in front of him. It had a double-doored glass front, and glass shelves, and an array of little halogen bulbs lighting up a whole cabinet full of Waterford crystal. Frankie took down a heavy piece, a brandy glass, and held it for a moment. Then he dropped it on the slate floor. It broke into a number of pieces. He took down another glass and did the same. And another. He kept dropping glasses – brandy, whiskey, wine, whatever – and the top two shelves were cleared. By then, Martin Paxton had left the kitchen. Dolly Finn and Brendan Sweetman followed him out. They stood out in the hall, not talking. Dolly Finn finished a cigarette and ground it out on the dark wood floor. The sound of breaking glass began again.

Martin Paxton donned his mask and went into the living room and checked on the Kennedys. They looked frightened. Paxton said, ‘It’s OK,’ but he could see that didn’t help at all.

He went back and stood with the others and after a while there was silence from the kitchen.

Inside, Frankie stared at the bare shelves, a glaze of sweat across his forehead. The soles of his thick black shoes made crunching noises on the snowdrift of broken glass. He kicked at the shards and they made a sound like small bells tinkling.

Crowe stood there a moment, breathing hard. Then he closed the cabinet doors and took a heavy blue mug from a rack on the counter and used it like a hammer to smash the glass in one of the doors.

Outside in the hall, Paxton, Sweetman and Finn stood silently, not looking at one another. After a while, Frankie came out. There was a cut on his right cheek, a trickle of blood oozing down. Frankie pulled on his mask. He said, ‘We take the lawyer.’

In the living room, the leader said to Justin, ‘We’re taking you.’

Angela said, ‘No, please—’

Justin said, ‘Look—’

‘Give me the name of someone we can talk to, someone who can get their hands on your money. You have partners, accountants, what? Your wife, can she handle it?’

‘It isn’t like that—’

‘Tell me what it’s like.’

‘Look,’ Angela said, ‘we can give you money, right now. There’s a couple of thousand in a safe, there’s jewellery, there’s Justin’s watch, it’s a Rolex and it’s brand new.’

‘Let’s see,’ the gang leader said. He held up Justin’s bound hands and examined the watch. There was a click and the watch came off Justin’s wrist. The gang leader took off and pocketed his own watch and put on the Rolex. He held out his arm, admiring the watch.

‘The jewellery is worth a few thousand,’ Angela said.

The gang leader spoke to Justin. ‘We’re taking you.’

There was a silence, then Justin nodded and said, ‘OK, we need to work out the details.’

The gang leader took a leather-bound notebook from inside his jacket. ‘A name, give me someone reliable who can handle the ransom.’

Angela said, ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

The leader turned to her, his head jerking in annoyance. He went to the door and called out to one of the others. ‘Take her to the toilet.’ Angela held up her hands, showing the plastic binding. The leader jerked his thumb towards the hall. ‘They’ll untie you, just go.’ He watched as Angela crossed to Justin and kissed him on the cheek. Justin arranged his face in the shape of an encouraging smile. The leader stood aside as Angela quickly left the room.