‘Jimmy’s guy, Gillick, the solicitor, he’s brokering this gig I have going on. His client being too posh to dirty her hands with cash. So Gillick told Jimmy, seeing as I didn’t have any transport, to lend me his Phaeton to get the deal done.’
‘So why isn’t he answering his phone?’
‘I don’t know. Gillick lives up the back of Lough Gill, out in the sticks. Maybe there’s no coverage, all the mountains.’
The shades made it impossible to read his eyes. ‘When do you kick this ten grand free?’
‘I’m on my way there now.’ I picked up a crutch, hefted it. ‘Soon as I get these loaded up.’
‘So you wouldn’t mind if I tagged along behind, just for the spin.’
‘It’s a free country.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But listen, Rigby, if I get the feeling you’re-’
There came a tinny, muffled sound from the Phaeton’s boot. A mobile phone ringtone. Wings, ‘Live and Let Die’.
Toto’s head turned instinctively, just a fraction, but that was enough. It helped, too, that whatever he had buried in his pocket snagged as he stepped back already drawing. I was only going to get one chance so I swung from the knees, aiming for the bleachers. The crutch smashed into the side of his head, sent the shades flying. He staggered and reeled back, then went down on one knee, toppled over onto his side. I stepped in, Bear snapping and snarling behind me, stepped on his wrist and reached in, eased the gun from his pocket. A Beretta, if the legend stamped on its barrel was any guide, 9mm. The safety off.
I thumbed the safety on, pointed the Beretta at his face. ‘Up,’ I told him.
The crack on the head had been hard enough to put a bend in the crutch. Dazed, blood seeping from a ragged gash over his ear, he dragged himself to his feet, stood there swaying. I popped the Phaeton’s boot, gestured at it. ‘Get in.’
It boasts a roomy trunk, the Phaeton, but Jimmy was a big man. It was going to be a tight fit. Toto, eyes glazed, didn’t move.
‘Get in,’ I said, ‘or I’ll lock you into the PA with the hound.’
‘Rigby,’ he said. Sounding drunk, or delirious. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘I’ll figure it out.’ I stepped in behind him, put a hand on his shoulder, pushed him on. A pity I hadn’t brought the masking tape from Herb’s. ‘Now get in.’
It took him a couple of attempts, but he finally clambered inside. ‘Turn over on your front,’ I told him. Once he was in position I patted him down. Came up with two phones and a four-inch blade he had taped to his right calf. Jimmy’s phone was more of a struggle, it being jammed in his pocket, but eventually I came up with it. He had seven missed calls.
I slammed the boot closed, went weak at the knees. No going back now.
Like the man said, when you’re in, you’re in.
The Beretta went into my belt alongside the.38 Special. Getting crowded back there now, a Gatling gun short of starting a revolution.
I tossed the crutches into the back seat, slammed the door. Bear snuffing at the Phaeton’s boot, intrigued by the scent of blood. I glanced over at Maria to chivvy her on and realised she was staring at me, standing stock still, her expression caught somewhere between horror and disgust.
Nothing new there, then.
‘You can get in,’ I said, ‘or you can try riding Bear all the way to Knock. Your call.’
37
Maria shushed Bear a couple of times when he whined at being forced to lie doggo in the well behind the front seats, but otherwise she didn’t speak again until we’d cleared the town and were heading out along the lake shore, the road meandering through a tunnel of trees. We passed Dooney Rock.
In shock, I supposed. I couldn’t blame her. First I’m cracking Toto over the head and waving his gun around. And then, we open the boot, there’s Jimmy drenched in blood.
I’d never paid much attention in school, but now I was wishing I’d paid none at all. So I wouldn’t know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
I could dump the car, sure, and run, take Saoirse Hamilton’s twenty grand and never look back. No Ben to keep me here now.
Except that’d leave Herb to face Toto. Dee, too.
No. We were playing for keeps now, going all the way.
I reached Herb’s print-out from the dashboard, Gillick’s place Google-mapped, gave it to Maria. Told her we had a pit stop to make before we headed for Knock. I was expecting her to protest but all she said was, ‘He was smuggling those paintings out, wasn’t he?’
Grit under her nails as she sifted Finn’s clay feet.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘they do say it’ll be an export-led recovery that’ll dig us out of recession.’
‘You think he stole them?’ she said.
‘I’d say he was given them.’
‘You mean, like, donations to charity.’
‘Something like that, yeah. Keep an eye on the map.’
We came up on Slish Wood, Maria following the red line with a forefinger. ‘Looks like the second left after this,’ she said.
I turned off the main road, up a narrow rutted lane and into a forest of pines. A steep incline. I dropped down into second, then first. Maria balled the map, tossed it on the floor.
‘Don’t get carried away,’ I said. ‘We might need that yet.’
‘We’re going to Gillick’s, right?’
‘Yeah.’
She’d been before, with Finn, a couple of times. Barbecues and long boozy summer evenings on the decking overlooking the lake. ‘What are we doing here?’ she said.
‘Jimmy reckons Gillick was the one told him Ben was in hospital. I want to know how he knew.’
‘What will that achieve?’
‘Depends on how Gillick knew.’
The Phaeton bounced down and out of a pothole and set the crutches a-rattle on the back seat. A dull bellow followed. Toto, feeling his chops. I reached over and punched the stereo on, was more than a little surprised to hear the delicate, unadorned tinkling of a piano. Schubert, I thought. I’d have had Jimmy down as a guitar man, Metallica, maybe some Led Zep if he was going old school.
We crested the summit, a razor-backed ridge in the pines. There the lane branched, the right tine curving away and down through the trees to run parallel with the ridge.
‘Straight ahead,’ she said.
We were high above a lake shaped like a crooked finger, maybe half a mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide, nestled in a steep-sided valley velvet with pine.
I pulled over, put the handbrake on. Found Jimmy’s phone and brought up his list of contacts, scrolled down, jabbed the one called ‘Fat Man’.
It rang twice, and then Gillick came on. ‘Where are you?’
‘It’s Rigby.’
‘Oh?’
‘Jimmy’s driving, asked me to ring ahead. Says we’re coming in.’
‘And not before time.’
‘He says we have the laptop, wants to be sure it’s all clear.’
‘Clear?’
‘He doesn’t want to fetch up with the Mac if there’s anyone else there.’
‘Why would anyone else be here?’
I covered the phone with my hand, repeated the question, then said, ‘He says there’s no harm in being careful.’
‘Indeed. Be so good as to put Jimmy on, Mr Rigby.’
‘Okay, hold on. Jimmy? Gillick wants to talk to you.’
I hung up.
‘This won’t bring him back,’ she said.
I wasn’t sure if she meant Finn or Ben.
‘Not the point,’ I said.
‘But you are going in there to kill him.’
I thought about quoting her some Shakespeare, the bit about how we first kill all the lawyers, but the time for cheap cracks was long gone.
‘I want to know who ran us off the road,’ I said, ‘who made that call. If it was Gillick, then yeah, I’m going to kill him. You want to step out, do it now. But here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘You believe Saoirse’s the one who killed Finn, walked him out onto that ledge, gave him the nudge, okay. But she couldn’t have worked him, had the kind of leverage she’d need, if Gillick wasn’t backing her every step of the way. He’s the legal eagle pulling all the strings. And that night at the PA, according to Saoirse, he was there to tell Finn to kick you into touch.’