Little Criminals (3 page)

Succulent
.

It was a word he would never use to anyone else about Angela – and certainly not to her – but it was the word that came to mind when he first saw her, and when he first took her to bed, and at the steps of the altar as he was about to marry her ten years back. Now, the word came to him again, as he evaluated his sleeping wife.

She was eleven years younger than he and although these days he could see a slight creasing under the eyes, it was still a face that drew admiring glances wherever they went. Her dark brown shoulder-length hair had recently been cut shorter than he preferred, but not troublesomely so. Her breasts, slightly on the small side, were the precise shape and weight of the idealised breasts that had most readily stirred his libido since puberty. She was long and lithe and toned and he didn’t begrudge the annual gym fees that ensured she stayed that way.

When they’d met, her job in PR required her to spend a certain amount of time and money maintaining an appearance. Throughout their marriage, the budget for what she called ‘upkeep’ was agreed without negotiation. Angela was on his books as an assistant, so most of it could be written off.

Succulent
.

As he gently pulled the cover over her, Angela stirred and said something he didn’t catch. He whispered, ‘Night, love,’ and switched off her lamp.

Just over two hundred, it came out as.
Fuck sake
.

Frankie Crowe was still angry about it next morning, still doing a bit of pacing in the small living room of Leo Titley’s cottage. It was a combined living room and dining room, cramped, with a dining table in the centre. It reminded Frankie of the poky little living room of the house he’d grown up in in Finglas.

‘Wanker,’ he muttered, when the door closed behind Leo. They were a couple of miles from Harte’s Cross, at the isolated farmhouse where Leo lived alone. It made sense to torch the Primera and go to ground locally. It meant sleeping overnight in lumpy armchairs in Leo’s manky cottage, and eating his greasy food, but they could take their time travelling back to Dublin, instead of making the journey while the Meath bluebottles were agitated by the robbery.

Repeatedly, Frankie ran his hand back and forth through his curly black hair. He was medium height and he was fit without being obviously muscular. His even features were diminished by a permanently querulous expression.

He had done a couple of things with Leo in the dim and distant and it was Leo’s urging that had brought them to Harte’s Cross. A hatful of money, he said, no security worth talking about. What he didn’t say was, no fucking money worth talking about.

Frankie did a bit of roaring and shouting when they got back to Leo’s place after the balls-up, then Martin said it was their own fault. Do a quickie, no checking, you take your chances. Frankie snorted. The knowledge that Martin was right didn’t help.

‘I’ve got some whiskey,’ Leo said, as though that might help. Frankie waved a hand. No booze. That was a Frankie Crowe rule. Keep a sober head until you’re well clear of trouble. Celebrate when it’s over.

Not that there was anything to celebrate. It wasn’t like they’d been expecting a fortune, but
two fucking hundred
.

This morning, Leo was on his way into Harte’s Cross, to see if things had settled down, and if it looked OK the others would take off and be back in Dublin by lunchtime.

‘Risking everything,’ Frankie said, ‘for beer money.’

Martin Paxton was a tall man in jeans and a Manchester United shirt, almost thirty and already balding. He was soft-voiced and gave an impression of rounded edges. Whenever he had to lie about what he did for a living he said, ‘Software,’ and he looked the part. When he did occasional straight work it was mostly chasing and plastering for his electrician brother. Doing that, he could put in the best part of a day for a couple of hundred into his hand.

Paxton said, ‘OK, it’s not the Crown jewels, we’ll have a go at them next week.’

‘Smart-arse.’

By the time Leo came back from Harte’s Cross to say the coast was clear, Frankie had decided there was no point splitting two fucking hundred. He left it with Leo.

On the road to Dublin, in the anonymity of the heavy traffic, Frankie said, ‘I never want to see that wanker again.’ From behind the wheel, he looked across at Martin. ‘Risking our lives for loose change. Fuck sake, this is no way to be.’

Martin Paxton knew the rest of the routine. Starting with
We’re not kids any more
, moving into
It’s there to be taken
, and finishing on something like
All we need is the balls
. He’d been hearing it from Frankie at least twice a week for the past three months.

Martin Paxton had known Frankie Crowe for over twenty years. They grew up on the same housing estate, mitched from the same school, got into trouble on the same streets, and met again when they were doing time in Mountjoy. And there was never a time when Frankie didn’t have notions. ‘There’s moochers and there’s doers,’ he used to say. ‘Moochers take shit. Moochers don’t know they’re alive.’

Over the past few months, the ambition had taken shape. You could hear it in Frankie’s tone.

‘It’ll always be this way, unless we do something about it. You keep putting things off, what happens – you wake up one day your arse is dragging on the floor, you’re still living on loose change and it’s too late to do anything except crawl into the coffin.’ He poked a finger at Martin. ‘Or, you pick a target, put a price on it, do the big one.’

‘You know how long you get in the funny house for kidnapping?’

‘If you get caught. And you get caught because you dawdle – way I want to do it, there’ll be no dawdling.’

Three days later, Frankie was talking like it was all agreed.

‘Just the two of us?’ Martin said.

‘Three, four maybe. Dolly Finn if he’s up for it, maybe Brendan Sweetman.’

Martin nodded, then he said, ‘Something like that, it’s not just the cops we have to worry about.’

Crowe tapped his chest. ‘Leave Jo-Jo to me. He owes me. Big time. Jo-Jo’s cool.’

Martin Paxton reckoned there wasn’t much point in arguing. This was where Frankie was headed. And the way things were, cutting loose from Frankie Crowe and striking out on his own wasn’t an option. There wasn’t much point heading into this kidnap thing with half a heart.

‘You got the target picked out?’

‘It’s down to four or five,’ Frankie said. ‘Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.’

Brendan Sweetman knew that the chubby blonde’s name was Nina and that she was a brunette in a wig. That afternoon, she was with two other women in their late thirties. They were fashionably dressed, and had all put a lot of work into their hair. Each carried a large handbag. Sweetman didn’t recognise the other two women, but seeing as they were with Nina, there was no doubt they too were shoplifters.

In the four hours since Sweetman came on security duty at noon, he’d already refused entry to eight people he knew to be strokers. He stepped away from the shop door, shifted his chewing gum from one cheek to the other and held his hands up and wide. ‘Sorry, Nina, not today, love.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Piss off, Nina, take a hike.’ He grinned. With her hooked nose and her over-plucked eyebrows, the poor cow was unmistakable, no matter what she wore on her head. The days when she’d get away with stuffing other people’s merchandise down her jeans were few and far between.

‘How dare you! Who d’you think you’re talking to?’

‘On your bike, Nina.’

‘I want to see the manager!’

Sweetman’s smile broadened. ‘Go on, Nina. You’re sussed. Take it like a lady and fuck off quietly.’

All three of the women erupted in obscenities. Brendan Sweetman didn’t take it personally. As they snarled at him, he stared in turn at the two he didn’t know, imprinting their faces on his memory. The three walked away. Until they rounded the corner into the main street, they took turns hurling the usual curses back at him.

Sweetman was in his mid-thirties. He’d worked the front of one store or another in the city centre on and off for almost five years, and for the past year he’d been full-time at it. Some security personnel found it boring, standing around for hours, using their walkie-talkies to share info and dirty jokes with neighbouring bouncers, using their mobile phones to text friends, or just shuffling their feet and chewing gum. Brendan Sweetman loved the job. Some of the thieves waited until near closing time, knowing the bouncers were likely to be tired, bored and inattentive. Brendan Sweetman was as lively at five minutes to six as he was when his workday started.

Hair cut so tight it was little more than a shadow, he was short and wide and made up in bulk what he lacked in height. He tended towards plain black T-shirts along with plain black trousers that he had made by a tailor in Ringsend. Although he was eligible for staff discounts, the shops he protected didn’t sell much in Sweetman’s size. Jeans big enough to go around his waist were several inches too long for his legs, and had to be taken up at the ends. Shirts that accommodated his neck had sleeves too long for his arms. Much of his bulk was muscle, and few who came across him dared make any of the obvious fat jokes in his hearing. No one had ever done it twice.

The idiot two doors down was jabbering into his radio again. ‘The tart in the yellow top, look at the tits on that!’

Brendan Sweetman didn’t reply. That kind of unprofessional carry-on, passers-by could hear shit like that, it gave the business a bad name. He’d just spotted Frankie Crowe standing with his back to a nearby shop window. Frankie mimed drinking a pint and Brendan nodded. Frankie poked a finger in the direction of Coley Street, then gave the thumbs-up. Sweetman went in search of the manager, to arrange a break.

There were two pints of Guinness on the counter in front of Frankie when Brendan arrived ten minutes later. Crowe held out his hand.

‘Looking good, mate.’

‘Jesus, Frankie, it’s good to see you. It’s been, what—’

It had been three and a half years. Sweetman had been the back-up muscle on a successful job across in Terenure, a jewellery thing organised by Jo-Jo Mackendrick and carried out by Frankie. That was just before a garda raid on the Drumcondra house where Frankie then lived turned up a stash of stolen cigarettes and Frankie went away for two years.

‘Been a long time, Sweets,’ Crowe said. Brendan sat on the next stool. The pub, which used to be called Maguire’s or Malloy’s, something like that, had recently been extended and renamed Vesuvius. A lot of work had gone into the volcano motif, with predictable consequences for the price of drink. Everything seemed to have a hard, shiny surface, including the barmen. The male customers tended towards long hair and long black overcoats. The women customers more often than not were insistently blonde and had fashionably surly mouths.

Frankie Crowe said, ‘You retired? Someone told me you were full-time at the security game?’

Brendan Sweetman grinned. ‘You know how it is.’ He picked up his pint. ‘Cheers.’

Frankie Crowe held his pint and watched Sweetman take a long swallow. Frankie moved his beer mat a fraction of an inch, so it was exactly parallel to the edge of the counter. He put his pint down in the exact centre of the beer mat.

He said, ‘You’re not open to suggestions, then?’

‘Nothing wrong with talking.’

When she became pregnant, Brendan’s wife told him she wouldn’t ever visit Mountjoy, and if he ended up there so would the marriage. Which was fair enough. After fifteen years of stroking, with only two short spells in the Joy, Sweetman owned his own house and the security job was pulling in a steady wage, so he made her a promise.

When Frankie told him about the kidnap, Sweetman took another long swallow of Guinness. ‘Interesting,’ he said.

He asked about the when and the where and how long it would take and who else was on the crew and Crowe explained. Then they talked money.

The thing about the straight life, as far as Brendan Sweetman was concerned, was it took away the anxiety. You knew more or less where things were going. There wasn’t the chance that one day you’d come out of a bank or a jeweller’s with a shotgun in your hands and find half a dozen trigger-happy cops waiting to blow you away. You weren’t taking a chance you’d spend a few years in a small room with bars on the window and some bonehead wanking and farting his way through what passed for a life.

Other hand, though, you knew things would never get much better than they were. There’d always be some rich asshole looking down his nose while he short-changed you, and the money you took home would never amount to more than it took to keep you exactly where you were.

Was a time the risk was worth it, so that’s the way he went. Lately, life was comfortable, and the downside of stroking wasn’t worth the kind of money you got to take home.

‘You’re talking about real money.’

The kind of take Frankie was talking about could shift life to a different level. One big jump. Then the security work would keep things motoring along. Have to give Frankie credit. Comes a time when you either get out of this business or you make something of yourself. Brendan Sweetman was out of the business, living cool. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t see the benefits of a one-off that makes a difference.