‘Great. Is there anything you do know?’
‘A few bits and pieces, yeah. First I need to find out what they’ll buy me.’
‘That’d depend on what they were worth, wouldn’t it?’
‘Sure.’
There was silence then, until we rolled to a stop at a red light opposite Markievicz Park. ‘I won’t know what they’re worth until you tell me what they are,’ he said.
‘I get that,’ I said. ‘But first I need to know what the market’s like.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘What I’m wondering, why I’m here, is why CAB is interested in Finn. I’m also wondering if CAB taking an interest wasn’t what pushed him off the PA.’
A grin wrinkled in the cracked leather of his tough boot face.
‘You think it’s funny?’ I said. ‘That Finn jumped?’
‘Not at all. Where are we going, by the way?’
‘Rasharkin.’
‘Where’s that?’
We were passing the Sligo Park Hotel by then, driving south towards Carraroe, so I told him to head for Maugheraboy, skirt the town, come in through the industrial estate at Finisklin. He turned west off the Carraroe roundabout across the new road, an arrow-straight model of everything the modern bypass aspires to be, apart from the fact that it cuts straight through the town and splits it in two. Took the Oakfield Road, the ditches a-bloom with dusty blue blossoms and silky-peach leaves.
‘Last night,’ he said. ‘I was out of order.’
‘The intimidation or the spitting?’
‘The spitting. That’s not me.’
‘Then you’d want to watch out for that evil twin of yours. A fucking pest, he is.’
‘See it my way. You’re telling barefaced lies, signing off on a statement.’
‘Keep it up. They’ll have Tom Hanks play you in the movie.’
In theory, a cop car is a place of work, which meant no smoking. That didn’t stop Tohill finding a cigarillo in his breast pocket, sparking it up. I went for the makings and followed suit.
‘Okay,’ he said, exhaling heavily. ‘So now we’ve established that you’re a radical free-thinker, you’re out there on your own believing all cops are fascist pigs. I’m some kind of Nazi, right?’
‘Try Black and Tan.’
‘Nice. Historical. I like it.’ He tapped ash from the cigarillo. ‘Except here you are, chasing me up for quid pro quo. What’s that make you, some kind of collaborator?’ He winked, but there was no humour in it. ‘And you weren’t so proud the last time either, were you? Happy enough to let Brady pull some strings when you killed your brother, buy you easy time in Dundrum.’
‘Buy me?’
‘That’s what the man said.’
‘Funny, that. Because the way it was sold to me was, I’d be doing them a favour keeping quiet about this dirty cop who was in bed with ex-paramilitaries, the guy looking to establish a nice little coke empire for himself. And then I go and take Gonzo out, save them the bother, all those pesky reports and public inquiries and therapy sessions. The least they could do, they reckoned, was make sure my pillows were nice and soft in Dundrum.’
He drove on. A glorious summer day, a warm sun high above Queen Maeve’s grave on Knocknerea. Midges swarming the hedgerows in search of a pharaoh to plague. ‘I spoke with Brady this morning,’ he said. ‘Not very talkative, is he?’
‘Can’t say I know him that well.’
‘He’s not particularly fond of you, either. Said I should carry one of those forked sticks snake-handlers use, and wear Kevlar. Maybe grow an eye in the back of my head.’
‘He said a lot for someone who doesn’t like to talk.’
‘I’m good at deciphering meaningful silence.’ He took a long drag on the cigarillo and exhaled slow, came to a decision. ‘He said you were a stone-cold killer, no doubt about it. Ice all the way down. But he reckons you know how to keep your part of a deal. So quid-pro, yeah? I tell you about Finn and CAB, you give me what you have on Gillick, anything he said last night, at the PA or after he picked you up. How’s that?’
‘Sounds good.’
He inclined his head towards the back seat. ‘There’s an Irish Times back there. See page seven, three paragraphs down the right-hand side.’
It was a report on a court case, in which a named Italian art dealer was suing an unnamed purveyor for breach of contract and damage to reputation. The gist was that the Italian had been peddled a fake Paul Henry landscape, although things were complicated by the fact that the Italian wasn’t trying to sue the purveyor, who swore he bought the Paul Henry in good faith, but instead a third party who had sold the purveyor the fake. The third party was also unnamed, and was currently lobbing in all kinds of injunctions to slow proceedings down, soak up the Italian’s war chest. The judge was to make a decision today as to whether the third party could be named and dragged into the mire.
By the time I’d finished reading we were cruising around by Finisklin, on the docks aiming for Hughes’ Bridge.
‘I take it the third party is Fine Arte Investments,’ I said.
‘I’d be in contempt of court if I confirmed that,’ he said, nodding.
‘Shit.’
‘Actually it’s pretty clean,’ Tohill said. ‘Iceberg tips generally are.’ He tapped some ash. ‘A nice scam, if you’ve the money to get in on the ground floor. Buy a painting for some investor who wouldn’t know a Pollock from a boot in the hole, knock off a copy, put the fake into circulation under the investor’s name. The original goes to someone who can keep his trap shut.’ He shrugged. ‘What’s daft about it is, the fake retains all the value and the original gets sold at a discount because it can’t go on the open market. Fucking art, eh?’
‘They know what they like.’
Irish gangsters had been targeting art long before the Criminal Assets Bureau was set up, the idea behind CAB being to target the gangs and their untouchable wealth, which was generally salted away in offshore accounts and real estate. A noble endeavour, given that the Bureau was a kind of monument to the murdered investigative reporter Veronica Guerin, and largely effective, although the gangs had adapted quickly, found other ways of laundering their cash.
Back in the day, the IRA, or the General, would just wander up to Russborough House of a dark and stormy night and filch an occasional Goya or Vermeer from the Beit’s private gallery. This latest scam was a bit more sophisticated. Buying the originals low, stashing them away. In ten years’ time, maybe more, there’d be a hoo-hah about a painting hanging in some gallery, an expert taking a close look during an exhibition and querying its provenance, maybe declaring that the certificate of authenticity was real enough, a pity about the actual painting. And hey presto, the original is discovered lying in some cellar or up in somebody’s attic, worth at least what the market had been prepared to pay when it first disappeared, and very probably more.
No wonder Finn’d been planning to bolt for Cyprus, and Northern Cyprus at that. The TNRC not being renowned, exactly, for its alacrity in responding to extradition requests.
‘So who tipped you off?’ I said.
‘I’d be in contempt of court,’ he said, staring straight ahead, ‘if I named our source as Finn Hamilton.’
‘Finn?’
‘The very man.’
‘The flaky fuck.’
Tohill nodded agreeably. ‘So you can see why we might be interested in why Gillick swung round to see Finn so late last night. Specifically, if Finn mentioned anything about what Gillick might have said about how Hamilton Holdings propose to deal with the judge’s decision today, which is very likely to rule on behalf of our Italian friend.’
‘It never even came up.’
‘No?’
‘Gillick was taking the piss out of Finn alright, about how much his own paintings were worth, or weren’t. But that was about it.’
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘I dunno. Something about how art is priceless because dead materials, paint and canvas, make something come alive.’
‘And that’s it?’