Little Criminals (19 page)

That evening, Elizabeth brought the kids from her mother’s house to see Justin. Saskia seemed to be OK, though she said little and she kept her arms folded across her chest throughout the visit, hugging herself. Luke cried when he ran to Justin’s arms. He clung to his father and his gaze never left Justin’s face. He sobbed as he left over an hour later, his Bear Factory toy clutched fiercely against his neck. Elizabeth managed to distract him with a promise of a sleepover in Granny’s living room, in his cuddlesack. Then, once the children got into the unmarked police car, the tears started again. Luke clutched his auntie, Saskia sat alongside them in the back, her arms still folded, staring at the house as Elizabeth did her best to find comforting words. Two armed gardai drove them away.

There was a painting on the wall opposite Justin and Angela’s bed. It was a fairly innocuous thing by a Dublin artist who for the past decade had been described as promising. It was the first picture they hung when they moved into Pemberton Road. The painting had been in a similar position in the bedroom of their previous home, ever since Justin bought it at a charity auction four years back. That was some night, the night he bought the painting.

Justin sat on the bed. Tension and tiredness sapped the strength from his muscles and he lay back and let the mattress take his weight.

That painting was something special for both Angela and him but he couldn’t remember ever discussing that night with her. They didn’t have to. They both knew it to be a landmark on the way to where they were.

‘One thousand?’

The auctioneer, an RTE celebrity, acknowledged a bid from a table up near the front of the large, chintzy hotel dining room. Most people had been a couple of drinks up when the charity dinner began, each table had four open bottles waiting when the guests sat down to eat, and the waiters were now unobtrusively ensuring that no glass stayed drained for long. The bidding went up in five hundreds and the sixth time that the auctioneer asked for any advance on three thousand, Justin poked a finger in the air.

‘Thank you, sir, three and a half.’

The painting was OK – light blues and glittery whites, with the odd coil of dark colour scattered around the lower third of the canvas. It might have been a messy beach or something to do with the spirit of winter – whatever, Justin thought it hung together nicely in its grey, blotchy frame. He liked the notion of being listed as a purchaser, and it was for a good cause – a machine for some hospital or other.

‘Three and a half, I’m bid three and a half.’

Justin looked around and across the table and found Angela smiling broadly at him. Silently she mouthed the words,
Go for it!

Someone bid four. Why not? Justin thought. This was fun.

‘Five,’ he said. There were six people at Justin’s table, and at least two of them murmured encouragements.

‘Six thousand,’ a throaty voice said. Justin looked across the room and grinned. ‘Tommy Hederman, fuck sake!’ he said to no one in particular. Blond-haired, treble-chinned and usually smiling, Tommy was a property man, son of a property family that had used Flynn O’Meara Tully’s legal services for over twenty years. Tommy was a bit of a legend around town, with a devoted wife and three loving sons, and an equally devoted mistress and two equally loving daughters. Apart from his family homes – one in Dublin, one in Sligo – he had an apartment in New York, a country house in Wicklow, a farmhouse in the Languedoc region of France and a private jet to get him from one to another. His attractive personal assistant was fairly familiar with most of the alphabet, and his mobile phone’s ring tone played
‘The Ride of the Valkyries’
.

Justin had worked with the Hederman family on a couple of deals. He and Tommy had shared a flat briefly in their college days and up to a year or so back they’d played the odd game of lunchtime squash. Then Tommy developed breathing problems that limited his physical activities. It was known within business circles that Tommy’s health troubles derived from a cocaine binge that left him in the Blackrock Clinic for a week. He remained one of the country’s most cunning moneymen, specialising in quietly buying up options on city-centre locations, using fronts, then developing the assembled site at rates of return that would generate envy if Tommy wasn’t such a well-regarded guy. Invitations to generous weekends at his imitation Gandon country house were prized within Dublin business circles. On such occasions, Tommy provided as much recreational medication as his guests might require, but these days he never touched the stuff himself.

Across the room, Justin and Tommy exchanged smiles of genuine affection. Tommy held up his right hand and cocked his thumb like it was the hammer of a pistol.

‘Seven!’ Justin said loudly.

‘Seven, I’m bid seven.’

Someone behind Justin shouted, ‘Go on,
ya-boy-ya!’

Tommy took his time, letting the RTE celebrity rattle out a few
Am-I-bids
to build tension. Finally, he popped up and sat down again, staying on his feet just long enough to shout, ‘Ten!’

The room erupted in appreciation of Tommy’s timing. This wasn’t just about money, it was about flair, style, grace.

All those at the two men’s tables, and at tables in their vicinity, adopted each as a favourite. People at tables further away cheered impartially, and each bid was greeted with a roar of approval and expectation.
Twelve, fourteen, sixteen—

‘Eighteen!’

‘Twenty!’

When it got to twenty-five Justin stood up. He paused, his cheeks flushed, his smile taking over his whole face. On standing, he noticed a balding man a couple of tables away, a man he recognised as something minor in a firm he sometimes used down at the IFSC. They’d never had any more contact than a ride in a lift together and right now the man was staring sour-faced at Justin, like he deeply resented something or other.

Bollocks
. Everywhere else, faces were alight with the excitement of the moment.
One in every fucking crowd
.

It felt as if every particle of air in the room had been connected to a generator. Justin was surfing on a wave of nothing less than joy. He looked over towards Tommy’s table and his voice was loud and firm when he said, ‘Fifty thousand!’

The loudest hubbub yet, and before it died Tommy Hederman stood up, put his arms down by his sides and bowed to Justin.

The resulting roar dissolved into a clamour of applause and when Justin turned around he saw Angela looking at him with love and pride and delight for him and in him. That moment, he decided later, and all that surrounded it – the money, the applause, the social approval – even the impotent disapproval of the sour-faced fucker from the IFSC – the friendly tussle with Tommy, the clarity of Angela’s love for him, the joy of it all – was the very best moment of his life.

Jesus, that was some night. It was like everything came together in one sweeping rush – his peers’ public recognition that he had arrived as a serious player, his deepest feelings about himself, his ambition, his achievement and the world of possibilities awaiting him. And the intensity of the love he felt for Angela that night made him see clearer than ever the sheer
rightness
of their marriage.

Justin jerked up from his restless half-sleep, his hand instinctively reaching for the bedside phone. Then he realised it was his mobile, across the room on the dressing table, that was making noises.

‘Yes?’

‘You busy?’

It was Helen Snoddy’s way of asking if he could speak openly.

‘Jesus,’ he said. Justin sat down on Angela’s side of the bed.

Since this began, his grasp of the world had shrunk to this house, Angela, the kids and The Crisis. He remembered now what he’d said to Helen last time they’d been together, when they’d kissed in the car park –
Give me a buzz when you know how you’re fixed
.

Jesus.

‘Look, Helen—’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘No.’

There was a long pause. He didn’t have the words, and he didn’t have the energy or the will, to say more than that. Whether he offended her, whether he saw her again or not, none of that mattered. Things that normally took up most of his day – his work, his firm’s place on the financial leader board, his car, his office and his goddam double chin – now seemed to matter as much as the choice of where he might dine during some distant lunchtime. There was nothing in all of that, nothing outside the core of his life, that couldn’t be fixed or replaced or done without. And the realisation that that core might melt down in the next day or two drained everything else of meaning.

‘I’m sorry, Helen—’

‘Sounds like really a bad time. Talk to you soon. Bye.’

‘Bye,’ he said, but she’d already rung off.

When he looked up, there was a detective standing at the bedroom door.

‘Anything of relevance, sir?’

Justin said, ‘No, nothing.’

The office wall behind Assistant Commissioner Colin O’Keefe was a hymn to his career. There were framed certificates of this and that, along with photos of a younger O’Keefe standing beside senior officers and politicians. O’Keefe’s reputation as a man who knew how to glad-hand his superiors hadn’t damaged his reputation as a solid copper. It was pushing midnight and the rest of the Phoenix Park complex was dimmed, but O’Keefe looked like he was here for the night.

O’Keefe introduced the heavyset man in his forties seated in front of his desk. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Malachy Hogg. He’s running this case. He could use the benefit of your experience of Frankie Crowe.’

Hogg didn’t rise. He nodded to Grace, who returned the gesture. They hadn’t met, but anyone who knew the politics of the garda hierarchy knew about Malachy Hogg. His success as a district detective was spotted early on and he’d been drawn into the Phoenix Park elite. He was a couple of years younger than John Grace and no one doubted he’d be running the force by his early fifties.

O’Keefe nodded towards an empty chair in front of his desk, then said, ‘How well do you know this Crowe prick?’

‘Frankie’s given us a fair bit of business. Protection, robbery. Took a couple of falls early on.’ John Grace sat down. ‘Recent years, I pulled him in after three different hold-ups. No results. Finally put him away about – what? – three, four years back.’

‘What for?’

‘We raided him after he beat up a pub owner who got stroppy about paying protection. Got the pub owner’s back up, he came to us.’

‘A brave publican?’ Hogg said.

‘It didn’t last. Couple of days later, he withdrew his complaint, but by then we’d found a rake of dodgy cigarettes in Frankie’s attic. He went away for a couple of years.’

‘Loner?’

‘He was one of Jo-Jo Mackendrick’s boys for a long time, then he went with a couple of losers from Rialto – name of Waters and Cox. Tried a few solo runs, nothing much. What’s he done now?’

O’Keefe drew a deep breath and steepled his fingers. ‘Twenty-four hours ago, give or take, Frankie Crowe kidnapped a woman named Angela Kennedy.’

‘Personal or is this a money thing?’

‘The message is, have a ransom ready within forty-eight hours or he kills her.’

John Grace raised an eyebrow. ‘The thing about Frankie Crowe, he’s a small-timer but he doesn’t know it. This kind of stuff, it’s out of Frankie’s league.’

O’Keefe was tilting back in his chair. When he spoke it was as though he was talking to himself. ‘Half the world’s troubles are caused by people who don’t know their limitations.’

‘Who’s the victim?’

‘Wife of Justin Kennedy. Hotshot solicitor. Out Ballsbridge way.’

Grace shook his head. ‘No bells.’

‘You won’t have come across him down the Circuit Criminal. He does commercial, high-end stuff, property deals and the like.’ O’Keefe paused, then – in a deliberately casual tone – he said, ‘He’s connected. We first heard of this through the Minister for Justice’s office. Well known on the social circuit, probably on the list when the party begging bowl goes out at election time.’

Grace hesitated for a moment. Political connections, sensitivities – was he being invited to comment on how this might influence the running of the case? No, probably not. Just absorb it, be aware of it.

Grace said, ‘He can afford a ransom, then.’

Hogg said, ‘They’re asking a million, he’s willing to pay it. I’ve given him the official line on paying ransom, and the unofficial line.’

Grace said nothing for a moment, then he asked, ‘How do you know it’s Frankie?’

Malachy Hogg’s voice was deep and unhurried, as though he was recounting an interesting tale he’d heard last night in his local. ‘My lads retrieved some CCTV footage from a house close to the Kennedy home, shows part of the street. Four men arriving in a Hyundai. Two of them in suits, left the car, followed a while later by two others in tracksuits. Timing’s right. Has to be the same people.’

‘And Frankie’s one of them?’

‘The tape’s shit quality. But there was a Hyundai Accent reported stolen that evening, found next morning near Broad-stone. Without the CCTV we’d no reason to link it to the kidnap. Once we got the tape we put Technical on the car. Most of the prints are the owner’s. We got two orphan marks, Frankie Crowe and some little shit named Brendan Sweetman.’