The Midnight Choir (19 page)

Authors: Gene Kerrigan

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural

BOOK: The Midnight Choir

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That’s the one night Dixie spends in Mountjoy, before Inspector Synnott comes to see her and has a word in someone’s ear and the drug-possession charge goes away.

‘Smart man, Lar. Look at the gaff he’s got. Fucking palace.’ Like Owen, Brendan wants people to know that he hangs out with people who matter. He drinks with the people who drink with Lar Mackendrick and Tommy Farr and Bill Ridley. Brendan knows what’s going on and he talks about it. In the weeks when money is especially tight Dixie sometimes makes a phone call.

‘Inspector Synnott?’

It’s business, but sometimes there’s a personal edge to it. Dixie feels good when she’s making a call about something that Lar Mackendrick’s up to.

What goes around comes around.

The CCTV camera inside the jeweller’s shop took in a good three-fifths of the retail space. Harry Synnott watched the gunman appear at the bottom of the frame, back to the camera, gun in hand, just standing there. Could have been anyone.

Then the gunman walked forward, showing the gun to the jeweller and the assistant, and Synnott said, ‘Joshua Boyce.’

Rose Cheney said, ‘You can’t see his face.’

They were in what was known as the Comms Room, in Macken Road garda station. It was called that probably because the room was once used for radio transmissions, though now it was more of a storeroom. On a table against one wall there was a television set and a video player. There were no chairs, so Synnott and Cheney stood in front of the television, bent slightly forward towards the screen.

From somewhere down the corridor they could hear incoherent shouts. The first of the late shift’s customers, no doubt collared somewhere in the vicinity of a pub, was getting stroppy.

Synnott said, ‘I’ve had that bastard in my sights for ten years – sat outside his house, followed him for days, had him in several times.’

Although the baseball hat and the anorak made the figure anonymous, Synnott had no doubt. Perhaps it was the way the gunman moved, the way he stood, the inclination of his head, the gestures he made with one hand as he said something to the jeweller and the assistant.

Boyce, beyond question.

On the screen, the gunman suddenly strode across the shop and used the pistol to smash the assistant’s face.

Cheney winced. Even with the strained colours of the CCTV tape, the flecks of blood down the front of the assistant’s white shirt were garish and shocking. She noticed the drops of blood that landed on the glass-topped counter. The lack of sound somehow emphasised the assistant’s terror.

Poor kid.

Then the screen emptied as the gunman took the two jewellers into the back room.

‘It’s not just fingerprints that set us apart,’ Synnott said. He was leaning forward towards the screen and Cheney felt like he was eager to teach her something. ‘You switch on the telly and there’s a football match. And before the commentator says anything, even when it’s just a dot running in the distance, you know that’s Ronaldo or Beckham or Lampard, you know without having to think about it, from the way he turns or runs or just the way he holds himself.’

Cheney said, ‘I guess.’

‘Boyce,’ Synnott said. ‘Four or five other jobs, he did that, hit someone, made them bleed. It’s his way of closing everyone down.’

‘Has he done time?’

Synnott shook his head. ‘Not since he was a teenager, stole a car. One job, a bookie’s, we got back a bundle of cash from a lockup that Boyce rented a few weeks earlier. The guy who rented it to him, he identified Boyce from a picture, then chickened out. That was all we had, so the DPP wasn’t buying.’

On the screen the gunman and the two jewellers had come out of the back room and the gunman was directing the older man to take pieces of jewellery from the display cabinets.

Rose Cheney watched Synnott staring at the screen. His features seemed to lose a struggle to suppress the loathing inside. His voice was so low that she barely heard the words.

‘People like that.’

On the screen, Boyce was sideways-on to the CCTV camera and Harry Synnott stared at the image of the baseball hat, the fake moustache, the slight arrogance of the stance. He could see himself sitting up in front of a jury, with his best suit on, telling them that he knew Boyce did it because – he knew.

Juries don’t believe in a policeman’s intuition.

‘It’s a start,’ Cheney said.

Synnott continued looking at the screen. ‘He didn’t expect to be tackled, he didn’t expect a shooting, and that’s made more of this job than he planned for. His fence will be expecting the stuff, but now someone’s got shot he won’t want to take it until things cool down.’

‘See if the jeweller can make an ID?’

Synnott turned towards the door. ‘I’ll make up a spread of mugshots, Boyce included. You show them to the jeweller and his assistant, I’ll bring them to the security guard. Long shot, but something might ring a bell.’

The security man’s name was Arthur Dunne and he was aged twenty-four. He was insulated from the world by a cushion of painkillers but when he moved in the hospital bed he winced. There was pride in his voice when he said, ‘I’m going to join the force myself.’

Standing at the bottom of the bed, watching a nurse scribble something on the security man’s chart, Harry Synnott figured this was the event that Arthur would bore his grandchildren with thirty years from now. How he got shot trying to stop an armed robber getting away with a bag of jewellery from the shop next door. Synnott wondered whether the grandchildren would tell him to his face that he was a fool.

Arthur Dunne’s face right now had an expression that said he was looking forward to having a medal pinned to the front of his hospital gown.

The pillows aren’t the only thing puffed up around here.

Which, Synnott conceded, might be fair enough. There was bravery in what Arthur did, even if a more accurate description was stupidity. The professional thing to do was also the smart thing – let it happen, deal with it later. It was what Arthur should have done, but it was what Garda Maura Sheelin should have done too, all those years ago. Arthur went at the robber like a train and he got lucky, coming away with a wound instead of a headstone.

The shooting had made headlines in the
Evening Herald
. Arthur would be all over the dailies tomorrow and no doubt he’d be talking to the television reporters when he got out of here. The publicity couldn’t hurt the investigation. The
Herald
described the ‘callous, cowardly shooting of a have-a-go hero’, thereby ensuring a certain level of police overtime. Although the robbery had nothing to do with Arthur’s official duties, the building society had put up a reward of ten grand. That would bring out the busybodies, pointing fingers at every thug who ever smashed a street light. But sometimes it worked – a reward encourages a criminal’s friends and neighbours to sell him out.

‘You didn’t notice a second man?’

‘Just the one.’

‘No one else driving the Accord?’

‘The bastard drove himself, once he took me out of the picture.’

‘No one keeping lookout?’

Arthur said, ‘I know you can’t give a commitment, I’m just asking – but do you think they’ll take this into account when I apply?’

‘Sorry?’

‘To join the guards.’

‘To be honest, that’s not—’

‘I applied about three years ago, got a form letter – never even got an interview.’ Arthur shrugged. ‘I know they get a lot of applications. But, a thing like this, I mean, I’ve shown my mettle, right? That should count, do you think?’

Harry Synnott didn’t know if getting shot in the course of a robbery would count in an applicant’s favour – but he wasn’t here to pop the bubble of a potentially crucial witness.

‘I don’t see why not. You tackled him, you got up close – did you notice anything significant, anything that might help identify him?’

When Arthur spoke it was with the tone of a security veteran. ‘Holding onto him – I reckon the moustache was a phoney. Baseball cap, it changes the shape of the face, but I’d definitely recognise him if I saw him again. Anytime, anywhere.’

Synnott nodded. ‘You did well. Any scars on his face, on his neck, his hands, marks, whatever?’

Arthur thought about it, then shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Anything distinctive about his accent?’

‘Just, you know, ordinary.’

Bugger-all use.

Synnott opened his briefcase and took out a dozen mugshots. He laid them out in three rows of four on the cantilevered tray at the bottom of the hospital bed. He put the picture of Joshua Boyce in the middle row. Synnott moved the tray up the bed and Arthur leaned forward.

‘The shape of the face,’ Synnott said, ‘the shape of the head, shape of the mouth, the eyes – anything ring a bell?’

The security man spent a couple of minutes carefully examining the photographs before he said, ‘I’m ninety per cent, maybe ninety-five.’ He pointed at a photo on the extreme left of the bottom row. ‘That’s him.’ He was pointing at the picture of Ronnie Carey, a burglar that Harry Synnott knew was currently into the second year of a four-year sentence for aggravated assault.

As Harry Synnott arrived back at Macken Road, Rose Cheney was coming out of the station. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Snap. The jeweller’s assistant spent five minutes deciding that he didn’t recognise anyone. The jeweller looked at the mugshots for all of two seconds before he said it was pointless.’

Synnott said, ‘There’s nothing more we can do tonight.’

Cheney said, ‘The Hapgood thing, the rape?’

‘Little Max and Big Max.’

Cheney gestured across the road to Derwin’s. ‘I’ll tell you over a drink.’

Synnott shook his head. ‘I don’t – I’m tired, I should—’

She was already walking out to the kerb, talking over her shoulder. ‘It’ll help you sleep.’

It was about more than the Hapgood thing, as Harry Synnott knew it would be. Sooner or later, anyone he worked with got around to asking how he’d managed to make enemies of so many colleagues. And, if they had the guts, they followed that up by making it clear that they intended to guard their back while he was around. Cheney came at it sideways. Arriving back at the table with a vodka in one hand and a whiskey in the other, she said, ‘I hear you’re not long for Macken Road?’

Synnott took the whiskey and put it on the beer mat in front of him. ‘Doesn’t take long for word to travel, does it?’

Cheney shook her jacket from her shoulders as she sat down on a low stool at the other side of the table. She folded the garment onto the stool beside her. ‘This town, everyone knows someone who knows someone. You went to see Colin O’Keefe at HQ, right? Lunch with the Assistant Commissioner.’

‘He’s an old friend. Way back. But, as it happens – and please, I mean, I’d rather this—’

Cheney said, ‘I’m not as big a mouth as you might think.’

‘Anyway, there’s nothing in the bag yet, but there’s a possibility of a kind of promotion. Nothing to get excited about.’

They were sitting at a table close to the front window. The long imitation-leather seat on which Synnott sat stretched the length of the window. Derwin’s was a neighbourhood pub that had recently been tarted up. The shiny black bartop matched the shiny black backdrop behind the bar. The backdrop was decorated by three large rectangles of coloured glass lit from behind. Anything that wasn’t coloured glass or shiny and black was matt chrome. It was pushing nine o’clock and custom was still fairly light.

‘A kind of promotion? What’s that.’

‘It’s a way out of a cul-de-sac.’

‘Macken Road is somewhere to keep you busy while you wait, then?’

Synnott shook his head. ‘It wasn’t like that—’

‘What happened?’

Sooner or later they all ask.
There was nothing aggressive in Cheney’s voice, just curiosity.

Synnott picked up the whiskey and looked into the glass as he gave the ice a swirl. Then he put it down. ‘No offence, but—’

‘It’s your business – I just thought, if you wanted to talk.’ She was looking him in the eye. ‘Myself, I don’t care. I’ve nothing to worry about, working with you.’

Synnott tried to keep the harshness out of his voice. ‘I’ve a clear conscience. I did what I knew was right, every time.’

‘Fair enough.’ Cheney used a blue plastic stick to rattle the ice in her drink.

She’s just curious. She’s not having a go.

I’m pissing her off.

Sooner or later they all asked, and always he finessed the answer. He didn’t remember ever wanting to talk about any of it. He took a sip of whiskey.

‘The Garda Sheelin murder—’