His expression lacked the sickly green pallor of Munch’s Scream but it wasn’t a bad stab. ‘Something else you should know,’ I said.
‘This better be good fucking news, Harry.’
‘A cop told me Finn was onside.’
‘He was touting?’
‘Not about the grass. But he was cosy, yeah.’
He said nothing to that. He didn’t have to. Herb’d said all along that Finn was a flake, and the whole sorry mess had kicked off with a call from Finn ordering up three bags of grass Herb’d questioned from the start. And I’d vouched for Finn.
We stared awhile, neither us composing any odes about limpid pools. ‘There’s good news,’ I said then.
‘Yeah?’
I told him about Saoirse Hamilton and the laptop, skipping the bit about the gun in case he melted down right there. The twenty grand cash, ten of which was Toto’s for the impounded coke, ten going to the cost of replacing the torched cab.
‘Toto really wanted that coke for tonight,’ he said.
‘Yeah, well.’
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Fuckity-fucking shit.’
There wasn’t much I could add to that. ‘Listen, about Maria. A couple of hours is all she needs, somewhere to kip down.’
‘Anyone looking for her?’
‘I wouldn’t think so. Anyway, they’ll never look for her here. While I’m gone,’ I said, ‘you could be booking her out of Knock on the first flight to London.’
‘I’m a travel agent now?’
‘The quicker it’s done, the sooner she’s gone. And it’ll look better with Toto, he comes looking for his coke, if we have his ten large ready to go.’
He accepted the logic. ‘When’ll you be back?’
‘Soon as I get the money and work out some way of seeing Ben.’
He nodded. ‘What’s the latest there?’
‘Last I heard he was holding on. Dee isn’t keen on hearing from me right now.’ Something wobbled up through my chest, a bubble that broke at the back of my throat. Herb stepped in, put a hand on my shoulder.
‘Want me to ring her?’ he said.
‘That’d be good, yeah.’
We went back into the house, through to the kitchen. There was no black coffee, no buttery toast. Grainne was at the table hunched over the laptop, smoking and sullen. I made the introductions, asked where Maria was. She jerked a thumb in the direction of the living room.
Maria was panned out on the couch, snoring gently.
‘Mi casa, su casa,’ Herb observed as he scrolled down through the contacts list on his mobile. He found Dee’s number, pressed call.
He didn’t get to say a lot. There was much by way of sympathetic grunting, and then he asked Dee if there was anything he could do.
‘If I see you,’ he said after he hung up, ‘I’m to kick your balls into your throat and then suck them out and spit them into a blender. Then bring her the blender.’
‘Is he okay?’
‘Better, she says. He squeezed her finger about an hour ago, although the doc says that could be just a reflex reaction, nothing to do with anything.’
‘Shit.’
‘Think positive,’ he urged. ‘If he was really bad, they’d have transferred him to Dublin by now. What’re you looking for?’
I was hunkered down beside the couch, rummaging through Maria’s suitcase. Came up with her passport. I flipped it open on the off-chance but it looked genuine, no five grand stashed inside. ‘You’ll need that to book her flight,’ I said. ‘Her purse must be around here somewhere, her credit card.’
‘How long will you be?’
‘Couple of hours, tops.’
‘So I should book her flight for …’
‘This evening. Late as you can. Give me a chance to get back here, drive her down.’
‘We could always stick her in a taxi,’ he said, and for the briefest of moments something glittered in his bleak eyes, a faint hint of humour.
Sometimes that’s enough. For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long I felt like everything might just work out okay.
I fetched Grainne from the kitchen, hit the road. It wasn’t until we were pulling out of Herb’s drive that it hit me. That maybe Ben hadn’t been transferred because he was too fragile to be moved at all.
31
We drove in along the Strandhill Road and I thought I was smart directing Grainne down Orchard Road and through Rathedmond, cutting out the town’s traffic and coming out near the quays and Hughes’ Bridge. Except there were road works just beyond the Eircom building, temporary traffic lights. She sat stiffly, back straight and hands at ten-to-two on the steering wheel.
‘What Maria said about you pushing Finn,’ she said.
‘What about it?’
‘Why would she ask that?’
‘She was drunk.’
‘I know, but-’
‘This is the last fucking time I’m saying this,’ I said. ‘I didn’t push Finn anywhere. Okay? I liked the guy. Now I’m not so sure I like him anymore, every time I turn around I’m tripping over another lie he told me. But I didn’t push him. Maria, she was drunk, she has plenty to worry about with your mother coming on all Cromwell at the gates of Drogheda. So she’s looking to push her crap onto someone else, and that someone is me. Right now I’m just counting my blessings that she didn’t try to rake my fucking eyes out.’
She flushed. ‘All I’m trying to do is-’
‘I know exactly what you’re trying to do. What I’m saying is, find some other sap to practise on.’
‘Practise what?’
‘Being your mother.’
She whipped around to face me. ‘You dirty fucking-’
‘Guilty as charged. The lights are gone green, by the way.’
Face set in a bitter pout, she edged forward a couple of car lengths, knocked the car out of gear again. The temporary lights had an erratic sequence, which led to the first few cars jumping the red, snarling things up further. In the middle of it all a motorcycle cop in leather strides and fluorescent yellow jacket was waving his arms around like an arsonist on the apron at Heathrow.
‘Maybe,’ she said through clenched teeth, ‘I should tell him who you are.’
‘The cops aren’t morons, Grainne. If they seriously thought I’d pushed Finn off the PA I’d be banged up in a cell right now.’
‘What about the gun?’
‘What about it?’
‘If they find you with a gun,’ a triumphant note, ‘you’re screwed.’
‘Find me with a gun? Whose car are we in?’
She frowned. ‘The gun’s on your side,’ she said, sounding nowhere as peppy.
‘I don’t have a side, Grainne, it’s not my car. And anyway, the gun’s your mother’s. Anyone wants to know, I’ll say she asked me to fetch a bag of stuff from Finn’s apartment. How was I supposed to know what was in it?’
She edged the car forward, knocking it out of gear three lengths back from the junction. Close enough to see the whites of the cop’s eyes.
‘You’d expect them to believe you didn’t look in the bag,’ she said.
‘There’s a marvellous legal invention called reasonable doubt, you might want to look it up. Besides, if the cops find the gun, they’ll impound the laptop too. What’ll happen your little scheme then?’
‘What scheme?’
‘There’s more than one?’
She’d got more than her blue eyes from her mother. The imperious tone could have cut glass. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re-’
‘No? Then you’re not trying to follow up on Finn’s changing the terms of the trust fund, see if you can’t play with that, maybe even tweak it some more so you buy yourself leverage with your mother. A little independence, so you can move out, get away from all the bullshit back home. Am I warm?’ If her flushing cheeks were any guide, I was two degrees off self-combusting. ‘Here’s the deal, Grainne. If I get nabbed, you get nabbed, everything gets fucked. Your call. Now, go.’
The light was already red as she accelerated through the junction, waving airily at the irate cop. I twisted in the seat to see if he was noting her registration, but he only stood with his hands on his hips as a mustard Peugeot and a metallic-green Phaeton filtered in behind us.