Wolf Tickets (20 page)

"You want to know what all this is about, Jimmy? You know why he's over here? He's got
big
plans, that cunt, and I guaran-fuckin'-tee you you're not part of 'em. Ask him about that Nora lass. Only visitor Frank had when he was in Durham, man. You ask him about—"

"I say we kill him."

Goose froze. Farrell stood in the doorway. He had a foil-wrapped brick in one hand and a shoebox in the other. I pointed at the brick.

He held it a bit higher, his eyebrows up. "This, Jimmy? This would be a whole load of drugs. From the heft of it, I'm thinking serious prison time. And if you're asking why I have it, it's because Hopalong here doesn't have much in the way of walking-around money. No pun intended." Farrell sat the box down on the settee and chucked the lid. Sweaty twenties, tens, fives. Couple of orange fifties near the bottom.

Goose gave Farrell the fish face – all bug eyes and popping mouth – and lunged for the box. Farrell brushed him away.

"Tell me where Frank O'Brien is, Goose, and I might leave you some money."

"I don't know, do I? You think I deal direct?"

"Yes."

"I don't."

"But you know Nora. At least, that's what you said."

"I know what you were trying to fuckin' pull."

"Where is he?"

"Fuck d'you think he is? Where else does he have to go?"

"You're telling us he's at The Claddagh?" He reared back and kicked Goose in the ribs. Goose didn't move. "We've just come from there, you dozy bastard."

Goose choked out a breath. Farrell stood over him for another minute, kept looking at us but he couldn't hold it. Goose dragged himself over to the shoe box. He tipped it over and started stuffing his pockets. If he was going to die, he was going to die with a couple of hundred to his name. I just watched him, and then watched Farrell with the feeling that I'd just slipped in dog shit and landed in a pile of manure. Someone else's battle had turned into someone else's war, and there was, fuckin' Muggins, caught in the middle of it. Fuckin' cannon fodder.

"Jimmy."

I wished I could talk. I rubbed my fingers together until Farrell chucked us a tab. Looked at him through the smoke. Reckoned it was time to see how committed he was to payback.

I help up my lighter, sparked a flame and held it until the tip of my thumb started to burn.

"You want to go to a soft rock gig, Jimmy, or does that mean something else?"

I stared at him. He knew what it meant. A wicked grin spread across his face.

"Then I think that's a grand idea."

In the car, I counted the cash I'd taken from Goose. A little over eight grand, which wasn't enough to replace my lost twenty, but better than a kick in the teeth, which was what I'd left Goose with. And there was always the chance that the cash hadn't been at the hotel. For all I knew, O'Brien had it on him.

Cobb wrote me a note as soon as we got in the car. It sat stuck to the dashboard for a good long while. When it looked as if we were getting closer to Tynemouth, Cobb lashed out at the note.

"I know, I saw it."

Cobb moved his head at me:
Well?

"I took the brick because it was there, Jimmy. Didn't know you were so squeamish about having drugs in the car. Didn't used to bother you any. Not like you didn't have a fucking gun in here not so long ago."

"
Copsh
. After
you
."

Good point, but if McDonald had been tailing us, then he was bloody good at it. I glanced in the side mirror, saw nothing behind. Then again, if he wasn't running me, he might've been running other leads. Like, for instance, if I wasn't the one who'd checked in with Nora, then who had? Which might've got him as far as us and, with their resources, quicker. Yeah, that was a thought, and not a pleasant one. Because if the police got to O'Brien before I did ...

"You think you've got enough in the boot, Jimmy?"

Cobb nodded, and that was all I needed. He could make a little go a long way. Something still not right about him, other than the Sean Connery impressions. Something else, like maybe this wouldn't be over when O'Brien was dealt with. We passed a church on the right. I was halfway through signing the cross before I realised the place was a fucking shopping mall. Cobb stared at the pub as we drove up Front Street. We cruised past, the car moving like a drive-by, except it wasn't bullets spewing out of the windows, it was the Kirby long song again – eleven minutes of Creedence doing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine".

The pub was open. Evening lights burned inside. Friday night, and Tynemouth was already beginning to hum with drinkers. Cobb sped up a little, drove further out towards the sea front, and parked the car. He stared out at the sea for a little while, then killed the music and got out. He strode over to one of the benches and dropped into it. That wasn't good. I got out of the Volvo and followed him over to the bench. I had to pull my leather tight as I walked, and the chill breeze whipped in through the bullet hole. I sat down beside Cobb and offered him a cigarette. Cobb shook his head, so I lit one for myself.

Waves crashed against the beach. Silence otherwise. I smoked the Dunhill down to the filter while Cobb watched the sea.

"I have to phone Nora's family, let them know. I don't know where to start, though. Maybe Galway." I breathed out. Smoke hit wind and then my face. I wiped my eyes. "Hellish way to find out. I know you don't like me robbing Goose, but someone's got to pay for the funeral, Jimmy. Got to bring her home, have her interred, all that. A wake, even. Christ, though, I don't know if I could stand a wake."

Cobb snorted. He pulled out his pad and hunched over, flicking the cap from his pen onto the grass in his hurry to write. He tore the note free and handed it to me.

your a fuckin liar

I sniffed. Cobb was glaring at me. I knew Goose had been talking, but I didn't reckon him talking that much.

"Okay, you're right. I should've told you. Truth is, I didn't think things would pan out the way they did, so I didn't think you'd need to know."

Cobb's jaw moved.

"You remember that time you came over to mine? And I said I was doing this thing, but your accent didn't fit? That was O'Brien."

He nodded slowly, still watching the sea.

"It was all Nora's idea. It was personal. I don't know why. She told me that she never forgave him for doing a bunk after they killed Cahill, but that never sat right. For that kind of money, it didn't matter." A gust of wind slapped my face, followed up with more. I waited it out before I started speaking again. "She went to see him in prison, got to know him again, got him interested enough in her wellbeing so that he was spilling all sorts to her. He had places all over Newcastle, Jimmy. All it would take was a couple of Irish accents, ties to O'Brien and some careful planning to take the lot."

I looked at Cobb. He was stone.

Back to the sea. "What happens when a Brit meets an Irishman? What do they think of? Bloody Sunday and the Brighton bomb. Doesn't matter that my accent isn't northern, it's this fucking place, Jimmy. Racist to the core. And where you've got that kind of ignorance, you can play on it. You can make money out of it."

Cobb held out one hand and rubbed the fingers. I gave him a cigarette. I lit another one. He didn't say anything. Didn't make a move for his pad, either. All this silence made it feel like a confession.

"The plan was to insinuate ourselves slowly. Get Nora known as O'Brien's girl, me as an old country legbreaker. Get ourselves known as the kind of people who'd bomb your clubs, pubs and snooker halls if you looked at us wrong. It was a big time plan, and I had to tell her about the buried cash to buy in to it properly. Way I saw it, this was a head-knocking exercise and a solid long con rolled into one. Once we were up and running, Jimmy, I swear to God, I would've brought you in on it. Needed someone who knew the city, someone I could trust. Tell you, it would've been something if it'd panned out."

Cobb didn't react. It was the truth, but it still needed to be believed.

I flicked ash. "And then Nora changed her mind. I should've seen something, but I didn't. She just came back to Galway one time and told me that he'd clammed up. He suspected something. So that was it. End of story. And that was when things started to go rotten between us. Then one night she said she wanted to make it up to me. She got me drunk. The rest you know about."

I tossed my cigarette. I'd lost the taste for it.

"She led me on, Jimmy. Played me for a mug. Just the same way she was played by O'Brien. She got killed because she was too dense to give up on him, even after she'd admitted she was trying to rip him off. And, y'know, when I came over here I knew I'd have to tackle the bastard at some point. That's why I needed your help."

Cobb took a long draw on the cigarette. He held the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds, then let it out slowly. He moved his mouth. He looked at me. "Can we gurn this fucker'sh housh down now?"

And with that, he got up from the bench and headed back to the car.

Misery loved company, and there was no company like the fuckin' Irish, was there? Woe is fuckin' Farrell. Misery came out his pores like a next-day whisky sweat and the maudlin cunt had been boiling my piss something chronic. Ah Nora, oh Nora, I miss you fuckin' so. Ah, I'm so
sorry
, Jimmy, I wanted to be big time, I would've brought you in ...

Wah, wah, wah.

Get fucked. He bit off more than he could chew and this woman of his – who I'd known was a fuckin' bitch the moment I clapped eyes on her, by the way – turned him into a human country song. She fucked off, he was hacked off, and the crops didn't come in, momma. This prick thought a broken heart hurt, he should try having a jigsaw for a fuckin' face.

I watched the pub. Just after last bells now, and I could see the first of them come staggering out into the world, pissed and vague. Farrell sat next to us, twitching like he wanted to kick right off, but then he liked to make a big show of everything. Way I saw it, the moment we went large on this, O'Brien would be a fuckin' ghost and me, I was pig sick of fucking about. I wanted the paddy fuck. Not just for my face – I'd never heal up proper now – but because that cunt put us in a position where I had tears in my eyes and piss in my pants. That wasn't right. A man didn't go out like that. And I never got scared like that by anyone who wasn't a blood relative.

A buzz-cut bloke in a checky shirt broke away from his mates and staggered our way. I shifted down in my seat. Watched him out the corner of my eye as he put a hand on the roof of the car.

"The fuck does he think—"

I put a finger on my lips. Waited.

Then I heard it. The slow, steady stream of piss. The sound of relief.

I counted three, counted another for luck and then shoved open the driver door. It slammed into the bloke and the thick grunt he made told us it'd connected with the right part. He bent double, shuffled back, his face and stance a combination of Mick Jagger and Chuck Berry. It took him a couple of seconds to catch his balance, but when he did the shock turned to rage and he came at us. I pushed out, straightened up to full height. He kept at us until he realised I wasn't coming into focus properly. And then once he got a good butcher's at us, the alcohol pissed out of his system just as the blood went from his fuckin' face. All I needed to do was step forward and he shat it, running in diagonals as he tried to catch up with his mates.

"What was that all about?"

I didn't reply.

"You want to do it now?"

The lights were still on. There were still too many people on the street. I got back in the car.

"Hey, if we're going in there, we're better off doing it when the doors are open."

I closed the piss-drenched driver's door and shook my head.

"So they lock up and what happens then? Fuck this." Farrell made a move for the door. I clamped a hand on his chest and pinned him to his seat. He was going nowhere till I fuckin' well said so.

"No shtaff."

"Fuck the staff. You know 'em. Junkies to a man."

I dug my fingers in. Farrell squirmed. "I shay when."

He looked sideways at us. "You feeling alright, Jimmy?"

I nodded.

"Because if this goes tits up 'cause you don't want to hurt some smackheads, then you and me are going to have a long talk."

I snorted out a laugh that hurt us all over. Who the fuck did Farrell think he was threatening? I was old enough, big enough and ugly enough not to be scared of anyone.

I wasn't scared. That was right. Of anyone.

Not even Frank O'Brien.

The simple fact of the matter was that my cara Cobb had lost his frigging mind. You only had to look at him to see that. He was pale apart from the streaks of red on his face that had turned an oily black in the moonlight. He looked like one of those weeping Christ miracles the bogtrotters and yanks loved so fucking much. Outside he was iron, inside I knew something had shorted out. And Christ, hadn't we all been feeling a bit like that lately? I could've done with a touch of Dutch courage, but the car was dry. I figured I'd take a cheeky nip once we got in there. If we weren't too busy with other things, that was.