Gina swallows. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, like I said, I talked to some people and… I’m getting some fairly fucking strange reports back. There’s rumours going around.’
‘What kind of rumours?’
‘Well.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I heard this from a couple of different people. They’re saying that the hit was really meant for your brother, that there was a mix-up -’
‘What?’
‘- with the names being the same and all. The whole thing was arranged in a big rush, apparently -’
Gina leans forward.
‘- and wires got crossed. It was just assumed that a hit on Noel Rafferty had to be, well, a hit on our Noel.’
Gina feels like she’s been punched in the stomach.
‘Now whoever done the job was a pro,’ Stack goes on. ‘There’s no denying that, but they could only act on the basis of information they were given, and that information -’
‘No, no, wait -’ Gina is shaking her head at this, and vigorously, as though trying to brush aside anything that isn’t one hundred per cent relevant. ‘I don’t understand -’
‘What?’
‘Who would want to kill my brother?’
Stack pauses and grunts.
‘You tell me. I don’t fucking know.’
‘I don’t know either. How would I know?’
‘He was your brother.’
‘Yeah, but -’
Gina is lost here. For a week she’s been contending that there was more to what happened than met the eye – and now, faced with a possible confirmation of this, she finds herself unable to accept it. She assumed there was some connection between the two deaths, a causal link – but in her mind it all remained vague and non-specific.
What Stack has just posited, by contrast, is shockingly specific.
‘I mean…’ She doesn’t know what to say. ‘It was still an accident, the way he died, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Stack says. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe? What are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything. Just that this… well, it changes things.’
‘Are you saying that maybe it wasn’t an accident?’
‘I don’t know. It still could have been, I suppose. But not necessarily.’
‘How? He was over the limit, that’s in the autopsy. His car ran off the road. Everyone says it was an accident.’
‘Gina, love, you can fake an accident. You can hold someone down and reef a naggin of Power’s down their throat. You can fiddle with the brakes of their car. There’s a million different things you can do.’
‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Look, if your brother was the target of the original hit and they fucked that up, then it makes sense that they’d try again.’
‘But do it differently.’
‘Yeah. Probably. Chances are there was a bit of panic in the air.’ He takes a sip from his pint. ‘Of course, there’s no way of proving any of this now. Because he’s gone, he’s buried, and the forensics are gone, too. Not that anyone would believe it in the first place.’
‘Oh God.’ She lowers her head.
‘Listen to me, Gina,’ Stack says. ‘This is still only speculation. No one knows who the shooter was, not yet anyway. So what you should be doing is trying to find out if anyone had it in for your brother.’
She looks up. ‘But he was… he was an engineer.’
‘Ah go on, would you. These professional cunts are no different from anyone else.’ He pauses. ‘Think. Did he owe money to anyone? Did anyone owe him money?’
Gina shakes her head. ‘How would I know?’
‘Believe me,’ Stack says, lifting his pint again, ‘with this kind of thing it’s nearly always about money.’
Gina looks around her in exasperation.
The place is almost empty. Two old-timers are sitting at the bar, and there’s a group of middle-aged women in the far corner.
It’s early, though.
This is the second time in a week that Gina has been in Kennedy’s, and she’s finding the experience unutterably weird. It’s a quiet suburban pub now, carpets and dark wood everywhere, at least four TV screens that she can see, and a blackboard menu with stuff on it like seafood chowder and toasted paninis. But when she was growing up, Kennedy’s was a very different place. What it was, in fact, was an awful dive.
Guinness, Harp, Woodbines, King crisps.
Spit, piss, vomit.
Her father used to drink here.
Gina remembers coming in as a kid – being sent in – to get him or to give him a message.
Her mother used to drink at home.
‘And if it isn’t about money,’ Stack is saying, ‘chances are it’s about sex.’
Gina looks at him. He has what could develop into a smirk on his face.
‘Noel was a happily married man,’ she says, immediately realising that to someone like Stack this might sound naive.
‘But sure they’re the worst,’ he says on cue. ‘I see blokes like that all the time, gagging for it.’
Gina doesn’t want to get into this. Taking a sip from her Corona, she tries to think of a neutral response. But then, luckily, Stack’s mobile phone goes off.
He takes the phone out of his pocket and puts it up to his ear. ‘Yeah?’
Gina looks away – over at the bar. She’s still in shock and feels a little sick. She turns back and stares down at the table.
‘When did he ask?’ Stack is saying, and in a loud whisper. ‘Was it this morning?’
Up to now Gina’s been assuming that her brother’s death was some form of collateral damage, a messy, possibly unintended consequence of her nephew’s murder. But now she has to deal with the fact that maybe the reverse is true: that her nephew’s death was the unintended consequence of her brother’s murder.
She lifts her head again. Stack is tapping his fingers against the side of his pint. His brow is furrowed. He is listening intently.
To avoid looking at him, she glances around.
Three of the TV screens are showing snooker. The fourth screen, mounted above an alcove near the door, is showing the six o’clock news. The sound is down, but Gina watches it anyway. After a few seconds it cuts from the newsreader in the studio to a reporter outside. Talking directly to camera, the reporter is across the street from a large hotel in what looks like Manhattan. Gina can’t hear him, but she senses an urgency in the way he’s speaking. Then it cuts to another man entering an office, sitting at a desk and picking up a pen to sign a document. This is one of those staged and fairly stilted archive clips they use to identify government ministers.
In this particular instance the government minister is Larry Bolger.
Gina finds this a little strange. Not strange that he’s in the news – Larry Bolger is frequently in the news – but strange because she actually had a brief conversation with the man only last week.
‘He’s a little prick.’
Startled, Gina turns back and looks across the table at Stack.
‘I gave him the details yesterday,’ he’s saying into his phone, ‘so he knows what the story is. He’s a scabby bollocks. Look, don’t let him leave. Keep him talking. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
He closes the phone and puts it away.
Gina wishes she hadn’t heard that.
‘Have to go,’ Stack says. ‘Sorry.’
‘Er… that’s OK. Thanks for the information.’
‘No problem.’
Gina takes a Lucius business card out of her wallet and hands it to him. ‘If you hear anything else, will you let me know? My mobile number is on there.’
‘Sure. Yeah. Of course.’
As he gets out of the booth, Stack produces a business card of his own and places it on the table. Without picking it up Gina can see what’s printed on it.