A silver Mercedes slowed and pulled in alongside Lynch. Its tinted rear window slid down and Gerry McCann’s voice came out of the back seat.
‘Joe. Come on in out of the rain. I need a word with you.’
Lynch looked up and down the street before ducking into the car. The Mercedes pulled out quietly into the morning traffic. The car was stopped at traffic-lights halfway down Victoria Street. The rumble of a building site came through the tinted glass windows. McCann pointed to his left.
‘Look at the state of that, would you? Another frigging shopping centre. I swear, these guys are better at flattening this city than we ever were.’
Lynch looked at a pair of steel cranes rising high over the city skyline.
‘Molloy told me you were good the other night. Said he reckons you might have what it takes.’ McCann laughed at the idea. Molloy, still in his twenties, providing a reference for Joe Lynch. ‘These kids, Joe. No sense of history. They think the world didn’t exist before they strode on to the scene and took centre stage.’
McCann knew it would work in Molloy’s favour, not knowing too much about who he was partnering. He was a good worker, reliable, and remorseless when he needed to be. Sometimes a bit of ignorance could be bliss.
McCann tossed a brown envelope on Lynch’s lap. He picked it up, not needing to open it.
‘Here. That’s five hundred quid. You’ve earned it. Take that wee girl out for a drink. Get yourself laid. I’m sure it’s been a while.’
Lynch held the envelope in his hand, feeling its weight. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want cars slowing at kerbs beside him. He didn’t want heads turning when he walked into a bar. He didn’t want people watching their words when they spoke to him. And he didn’t want the likes of Molloy thinking they were on the same side. He knew though that giving it back would provoke more hassle than it was worth.
Outside the car, people hurried along Victoria Street under umbrellas, trying not to get wet.
‘I have a proposition for you, Joe. Another job. This one’s a little more, how would you say, technical. Needs more than a bit of taxi driving. Needs a man with some subtlety, some patience, some experience.’
Lynch stayed silent, trying to plot his way out of the car and whatever it was McCann was thinking up for him.
‘Twenty grand. That’s what it’s paying.’
It was a hit. Lynch knew straight away. He waited though, wanting to hear McCann say it. The other man paused, allowing the money to hang in the air for a while, allowing Lynch to imagine what he’d do with it, the doors it would open, the possibilities. After ten seconds McCann spoke.
‘Could you kill a peeler?’
McCann asked the question like you might ask for a light. He turned to Lynch, reassured by the lack of reaction that he’d picked the right man. Lynch wasn’t Molloy, he wasn’t like anyone in the crew. They were all keen, but they were young. They wanted to prove to the world how hard they were, how ruthless. Lynch knew the lie of the land though. He could do something and shut up about it. He didn’t need to brag or try and make a name for himself. Discretion. Professionalism. That was it. He was a professional.
‘What has he done?’ Lynch asked.
‘You don’t need to worry about that.’
McCann had barely said the words when he realized it wouldn’t work with Lynch. He wasn’t some twenty-one year old with a high opinion of himself. He couldn’t just be given an order and expected to blindly follow it.
‘He’s one of Jack Ward’s. He’s messing with my business, lifting people left, right and centre. We’ve become an itch he can’t scratch. Nights off he’s camped outside The George. He’s sniffing round Mint. Asking people questions — the kind of people that don’t want to be asked questions. He’s not going to go away on his own. So we’re going to help him go away.’
Lynch could tell from McCann’s voice that this was a done deal, no longer a question of ‘if’ but rather ‘how’. The peeler was already dead, he just didn’t know it. The clock had started.
McCann resumed his sales pitch. ‘This is your out, Lynch. One last job. A one-time deal. Twenty grand — think what you could do with that. A man could start over, with that amount of money. Head off to the sun. Maybe even take a girl and her wee one away with him. If he was inclined that way.’
Lynch looked at the rain bouncing off the grey Belfast pavements.
‘Picture it. Walking along some Spanish promenade. A wee breeze off the sea, the sunshine. No one knows who you are, no one cares.’
Lynch pictured Marie-Therese in a summer dress and a big straw hat, pushing the buggy in front of her. He imagined them stopping at an ice-cream joint, the kind with wicker chairs out front. A cold beer for him, an ice cream for her. The sun would have just started to dip.
‘Who is he?’
‘It’s a soft target. We have an address and all. He lives alone, in a flat off the Stranmillis Road.’
McCann passed Lynch a photograph. It was one of the peelers who had followed him. The man looked to be in his late thirties. He was walking through Castlecourt shopping centre and the shot had been taken as he turned his head to the right.
‘What’s the name?’ Lynch asked.
‘O’Neill.’
‘Killing a peeler brings a lot of heat. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.’
‘You let me worry about that.’
‘What about Stormont? The Peace Process? The Unionists will say this is business as usual, that nothing’s changed. They’ll want to bring the whole thing down. Get the Brits back on the streets.’
McCann smiled ruefully.
‘You’ve been away too long, Joe. Or maybe you read too many books in prison. United Ireland? Great Britain? It doesn’t matter any more. No matter who you vote for, the government still gets in. These days, the only countries that matter are Colombia and Afghanistan. It’s about product, not politics. Politics is dead. The only kind of green that people round here care about is in that envelope I just tossed you.’
McCann ordered the driver to stop the car.
‘The peeler needs to be done, Joe.’
Lynch remained silent. McCann patted him on the arm, laughing.
‘That’s what I thought you’d say. It needs to happen this week.’
Lynch got out of the car. In the centre of Belfast the rain had worsened. He walked along Donegall Avenue looking into shop windows advertising the remnants of January sales. He felt the envelope in his pocket and thought about buying something for Marie-Therese, or maybe the wee one. He hesitated outside a shop, thinking about the money. Was he a criminal now? Is that what had happened? He felt like a tout. Like someone who had turned his back on his friends. Had he sold them out?
Lynch thought about night-time in the Maze, lying in his cell, six by eight foot. He had nothing in there. But it didn’t matter. He had a reason. He’d taken a stand. Burton was right. He’d been backed into a corner. You couldn’t just sit there and take it. Pretend it was OK, waiting for someone else to come along. It was the only way. Someone had to do the hard yards, get their hands dirty, put themselves on the line.
This was what Lynch had told himself. Night after night, listening to the screws walk up and down the corridors, trailing their sticks along the doors to keep the prisoners awake, fucking with them just for the fun of it. This was what he told himself to placate the ghosts, the faces that visited him as he lay trying to sleep. The off-duty RUC man, the part-time soldier, the fourteen-year-old boy. The last one was an accident. The bomb went off before the coded warning was called in. ‘Collateral damage’ was what they called it. It was a war. Things happened.
What about now though? The five hundred quid. The twenty grand. What was that money for?