Collusion (4 page)

7

The doormen at Lavery’s nodded as Lennon entered. The bar looked cleaner these days, lighter. The smoking ban might not have helped turnover, but it certainly sweetened the air. Belfast’s traditional student haunt seemed to draw an older crowd, now. No tang of cannabis tickled Lennon’s nose, the haircuts were less exotic, the dress code not quite so grungy. He allowed himself a small ripple of nostalgia as he took a stool at the bar, thinking of his student days when he and his friends blew their grants on cider.

Lennon had studied psychology at Queen’s, managed a decent degree. He might have got that MSc, maybe even gone after a doctorate, if things had been different. As it turned out, he didn’t even attend his own graduation ceremony. His mother had bought a new dress for it, gone all the way from her home in Middletown, near the border, to Marks & Spencer’s in Belfast. She had borrowed money from the Credit Union to pay for it.

He remembered her parading up and down the living room of the old house, asking again and again if it was a good fit, did the hem hang properly, was it slimming on her. Lennon and his elder brother Liam exchanged weary looks as they told her once more it was beautiful on her.

‘But the money,’ she said, chewing her lip in worry. ‘I wouldn’t spend the money if it’s not right.’ She wagged a finger at them in turn. ‘Don’t you dare tell me it’s right if it’s not.’

‘It’s lovely on you, Ma,’ Liam said as he rose. His big shoulders stretched the fabric of his shirt tight. He still sported a black eye from the hurling match a few days before when he’d caught a stray swipe from a teammate’s stick. At least that’s what he’d told his mother. ‘Stop fretting about it. It’s only money.’

‘Only money,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘Listen to him. Wait till you’re raising wee ’uns and tell me it’s only money. Sure, it cost me every penny I had, and every penny I hadn’t, to put that one through university. And he spent the lot on beer and cider and chasing after women.’

She pronounced it
wee-men
.

Lennon feigned offence. ‘It was the rent,’ he said. ‘The grant hardly covered it.’

‘My arse,’ she said, the closest she ever came to swearing.

A little more than a week later, a day before she was due to wear it to the graduation ceremony, she took the dress back to Marks & Spencer’s. She exchanged it for a black one so that she could bury what was left of Liam.

Lennon remembered carrying his brother’s coffin. It weighed hardly anything. Sixteen years ago, and the silence of the mourners still came to him when he least expected it.

He pushed the memory away, and scoped the bar. Early yet, plenty of room for improvement. He’d spent an hour at the station’s small gym, gone home to shower, blasted a ready-meal in the microwave, and then headed out. He had reason to celebrate. A meeting with DCI Gordon had been arranged for the morning, and he had a good chance of being back on an MIT before the end of the week. He ignored the sick bubbling at the pit of his stomach when he thought of Dandy Andy Rankin getting off with GBH. But he could live with it, drown out his own conscience, if it meant getting back into an MIT.

No tourists in Lavery’s tonight, only midweek drinkers trying to recapture their student days. He caught the barmaid’s attention, a thin wisp of a girl with dyed black hair.

‘Pint of Stella,’ he said, dropping a fiver on the bar.

A duo tuned guitars in the corner; a woman one-two’d into a microphone. She was tall, looked almost as tall as Lennon, with a mass of blonde curls. The blackboard outside had said ‘Nina Armstrong’. He sized her up, and the followers that gathered around her. Too many men vying for her attention, too much work. Pity. She looked good in a hippie kind of way.

They started to play. She could sing, her voice clear and sinuous, and the guitarist wasn’t bad. More punters drifted in, pairs and larger groups. The Stella burned his tongue. He studied the women, found their weaknesses.

A hacking smoker’s cough woke Lennon. Hard fingers of sunlight found his headache. He forced his eyes open, squinted at her, as the queasy pain pulsed inside his skull. She stood in a camisole and thong, a lighter in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He wondered what she intended to use as an ashtray for a moment before he noticed the half-full wine glass on the bedside locker, three butts already doused in it.

‘Fuck, look at the state of you,’ she said. A chesty laugh turned into a barking cough.

He scrambled for a name. Something Irish. She wasn’t a Prod. Siobhan? Sinead? Seana? He rubbed his eyes, willing it to come. All he could remember clearly from last night was her shouting in his ear, telling him she was a nurse at the Royal, while he stared down her top.

‘Morning,’ he said.

Jesus, rough as biscuits, she was. I must be losing my touch, he thought. The idea frightened him. He reached out. ‘Give us a drag.’

‘I thought you didn’t smoke.’

‘I don’t.’ He clicked his fingers at her.

‘Just one, right? I’ve only a couple of fags left.’

She approached the bed and placed the filter between his lips. He sucked, inhaled, felt the heat, coughed, let it charge his brain. ‘Fuck,’ he croaked.

She laughed, her breasts jiggling inside her camisole. She had a Celtic knot tattooed on the left one. He saw it through watering eyes, smelled tobacco and sex. He wondered if he could muster another go, but decided against it. He craned his head so he could see the clock past her hip. It had gone eight. He was supposed to be in DCI Gordon’s office at nine.

‘Fuck,’ he said, throwing back the quilt. ‘I need to get moving.’

‘You can run me home, can’t you?’

‘Where?’ The wooden floorboards chilled the soles of his feet, clearing a little of the fog behind his eyes.

‘Did you not listen to a word I said last night?’ She pointed to her chest. ‘Or were you too interested in these?’

He sighed. ‘Where?’

‘Beechmount Parade. Off the Falls.’

‘No. I’ve to be at work for nine or I’m in shit. I can’t get all the way over there and back again.’

‘At work?’ She stood with one arm across her stomach, her other hand pointing the cigarette at him. ‘You told me you were an airline pilot.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yeah, you fucking did.’

‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘So, what are you? You’re hardly answering phones in the call centres if you can afford this place.’ She walked to the window and pulled back the blind. ‘River view and everything. Fucking nice. What
do
you do?’

‘Look, take a taxi.’ He pointed to his jeans, bundled on the floor. ‘Take the money out of my wallet.’

‘Fucking typical.’ She scooped up the jeans and dug for the wallet. ‘All big talk. Get your end away, everything’s all right, never mind me. Fucking arsehole.’

She found the wallet, opened it, and smiled. The smile turned to a frown. She turned the wallet face out to him, showing him the photograph. ‘Who’s this?’

‘My daughter,’ he said.

The smile flickered and returned. He could tell she begrudged it. ‘How old?’ she asked. A year?’

‘Five,’ he said. ‘Coming six.’

‘Jesus, could you not take a newer picture?’

He thought about answering the question, that he’d take a newer picture if only Ellen’s mother would allow him to know his daughter, that she never would because it was how she punished him for what he’d done, that they’d moved away months ago, that he’d been trying to find out where they’d gone since then.

Instead, he said, ‘Ten quid ought to do you.’

‘All right, big spender,’ she said as she looked for the money. ‘I get the message. I’ll be out of your way in—’

She stopped talking.

‘There’s bound to be a ten in there,’ he said.

She stared at him, and he understood.

He raised his hands, said, ‘Look, I—’

‘A fucking cop?’

‘I—’

‘You’re a fucking peeler?’

She threw the wallet. It slapped against his chest and fell to the floor. She looked down at it. She stooped, picked it up, pulled out two ten-pound notes, threw it again. This time he caught it. He tossed it on the bed beside him.

‘Jesus, if anyone knew I’d gone home with a cop,’ she said. ‘Fuck me, I’d be burnt out of my house.’

Lennon smiled. ‘Then tell them I’m an airline pilot.’

Arsehole,’ she said, gathering bits and pieces of clothing. ‘Jesus, I knew peelers made decent money, but a place like this?’ She pulled her jeans from the chair in the corner, disturbing the jacket underneath. ‘How much is your mortgage? Or do you rent? Must be a fucking—’

Something heavy dropped to the floor. She stared down at the leather pouch.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

He shrugged and nodded.

She kept her eyes on it as she slipped her jeans on and tucked the money into her pocket. She picked it up. She turned it in her hands, slid the pistol from its sheath. ‘What make is it?’ she asked.

A Glock,’ he said. He watched her drop the holster to the floor. She had chips in her nail varnish.

‘You ever shoot anyone?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. The lie was well practised.

‘That scar on your shoulder. You said you got it in a car crash.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

He didn’t answer.

She traced the Glock’s lines, brought it to her nose, smelled it. Her tongue brushed her upper lip. ‘It’s heavy,’ she said. ‘Is it loaded?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Shouldn’t you tell me to be careful? Shouldn’t you take it off me?’

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘There’s a safety catch or something, right?’

‘No,’ he said. He made a gun with his fingers and aimed at her. ‘You just point it and pull the trigger. Simple as that.’

She looked up from the Glock. Her eyes couldn’t hold his. She walked slowly to the dressing table, cradling the pistol like it was made of tissue, and set it down. It hardly made a noise against the wood.

She said, ‘I should go.’

8

The Traveller eased back onto the bed and pulled the sheet up around him. ‘Going away for a while,’ he said.

Sofia kept her naked back to him, the late afternoon light pooling in the valleys of her flesh. A scar, pale against her tan, spread across the small of her back. He’d never asked how she got it, but he had a good idea. ‘What for?’ she asked.

‘Business,’ the Traveller said.

She stretched as she rolled onto her back, her skin brushing against his, the stubble of her underarm scratching at his shoulder. ‘When will you be back?’ she asked.

‘Depends,’ he said. ‘Not long, maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ she echoed. ‘You said that last time.’

‘Then get yourself someone else to play with. Won’t bother me. Just make sure he wears a johnny. Don’t want to catch nothing off some dirty bastard.’

‘Pig,’ she said as she rolled away.

He reached under the sheet and squeezed a fleshy buttock. She slapped his hand away. The sound of it reverberated around the high-ceilinged bedroom. It was made up to look like some grand old place, with cornices and an elaborate rose above the light, but the house couldn’t have been standing more than five or six years. New money trying to look like old, the Traveller thought. Sofia had inherited the place from her dead husband, along with half a dozen other properties, a fat investment portfolio, and a luxury-car dealership. Did she know he was the one that did the husband in? He reckoned so, but she’d never let on. That scar on her back wasn’t the only one. The first time he’d bedded her there had been something close to gratitude in her eyes.

Not that she’d bought the hit. That had been a rival businessman the husband had shafted on a deal. When the Traveller had been watching the doomed man’s comings and goings, figuring out the job, he’d seen Sofia driving the big Range Rover away from the massive house. He’d followed her to some young lad’s place where she drew the curtains and emerged two hours later with her skirt crooked and her hair messed up. He’d made a mental note then to call on her once the job was done.

Two years ago, that was, and he visited her at least once every few weeks. He’d even taken her to Benidorm. She got drunk and tearful on cheap sangria and talked about her only regret: the husband hadn’t given her a baby. He sometimes wondered why she didn’t just quit the pill and not tell him about it, get pregnant and say goodbye. Maybe she had an honest streak in her. He laughed out loud.

‘What’s so fucking funny?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said. He turned onto his side and slipped his arm around her waist, pulled her in close to him. She took his hand and placed it on her plump breast.

‘Fancy another?’ he asked.

‘Already?’

He squeezed. ‘Me? Sure I’m always raring to go.’

‘Bastard,’ she said.

It took an hour and a half to drive north through Ardee, Carrickmacross, and Castleblaney before hitting the outskirts of Monaghan town a few miles south of the border. The Traveller had bought a ten-year-old Mercedes from a dealer he knew near Drogheda. It was a big, wallowing estate with 200,000 miles on it. An automatic with plenty of room in the back if he needed to stash anything or anybody.

The Bull had described the place well, even drawn a map. The Traveller stopped at junctions as he got nearer, traced the shape of the words on the map with his finger, and matched them to the road signs.

He remembered the word ‘alexia’ as a shadow, how a doctor explained it to him in broken English fifteen years ago. Another name for it was acquired dyslexia. Something about the piece of Kevlar they dug out of his head, how it fucked up something in his brain, made written words turn into a jumble of criss-crossing lines.

The doctor had told him he’d never read anything again. That didn’t bother the Traveller at first; he’d never been one for books. But when he re-entered the living world, the lack of words became an obstacle. So he had trained himself to memorise the letters as shapes, all twenty-six of them. He could study a word, judge each letter in turn, and decipher its meaning if he tried hard enough. But more than one or two words, and it might as well be Chinese. It suited him to let the likes of Bull O’Kane think he was illiterate. No one ever suffered for being underestimated.

Another thirty minutes and he found Malloy’s place, just as it was getting dark. An old cottage set back a hundred yards from the road with a single-track lane running up to the small garden.

He stopped the car halfway along the lane, far enough so the Merc couldn’t be seen from the road, and not too close to the cottage. He pulled the IMI Desert Eagle from under the seat. People said a Glock or a SIG was a better combat pistol, and they were probably right, but the Desert Eagle was a big bastard that scared the shite out of anyone he pulled it on. It was noisy, too. If you needed to take someone’s head off in a crowded pub without worrying about heroes, it was the one. It sounded like the end of the world, and it could stop anything with its .44 load.

Lights glowed behind drawn curtains up ahead. He got out of the Merc and walked towards them. If the Traveller lived in a place like this, he’d have a dog. A big, mean one. He kept to the grass verge to silence his footsteps and listened for growling as he approached.

Kevin Malloy had a wife, the Bull had said. She might or might not be in the cottage. Malloy was still bedridden from his injuries. It was a simple job, really. Get in, do anyone inside, grab any money, wreck the place, get out. The cottage stood black against the hills behind. Just twenty yards now. The wind changed direction.

There, a low rumble as a dog caught his scent. The Traveller froze, listened, waited. The Eagle’s heft felt good. Solid, like the power of God in his hand. He started towards the house again.

The rumble turned to a growl punctuated by gasps. He could hear the animal’s excitement and fear. No sign of it in the shadows yet. He listened for another sound: the high jangle of a chain. No one would leave a big dog loose out here, but he wanted to be sure.

It launched into a clamour of barking, then, the low bass vowels of a deep-chested animal. The Bull said Malloy was an arsehole. If he was an arsehole he’d have a dog he thought made him look hard. Something stupid and brutal, maybe a Rottweiler or some kind of mastiff, rather than a smart guardian like a German shepherd or a Dobermann.

The braying grew louder and the Traveller heard heavy paws crunching on gravel. Then a gallop, the jangle of chain, and a yelp as it snapped taut. That was all he needed to know.

He reached into his pocket and took out the Vater earplugs. Drummers used them to protect their hearing. The little beehive-shaped pieces of rubber blocked out the dangerous frequencies but let through the detail of the environment. They blocked out the worst of a gunshot, but you could still hear a mouse fart. He pressed the two earpieces, joined by a twelve-inch plastic string, into place. He worked his jaw open and closed, swallowed, and walked.

There it was, some sort of mastiff cross. A low wall surrounded the cottage. The dog stood just inside the open gate. It stopped its barking and watched the Traveller approach. There was enough light yet to see the glow of its eyes. He pulled back the Eagle’s slide to chamber a round and thumbed the safety off. The dog’s legs quivered and its chest rumbled.

The Traveller raised the Eagle in a two-handed grip, his wrists firm so his shoulders would take the brunt of the recoil, and squeezed the trigger until he felt resistance. Sometimes he forgot which was his right hand, and which was his left. Something else that came out of his brain along with that piece of Kevlar. Not that it mattered much; he had trained one hand to be about as strong as the other.

He lined the sights between the dog’s eyes. It lunged. He blew its skull apart.

The boom rolled across the hills. The Traveller watched the house for movement. No surprises now, just get in and do it. He marched to the old wooden door and booted it below the handle. He kicked it again, and it swung inward. He went in gun first, ready to take down anything that moved.

The tiny open-plan kitchen and living room was empty. Old bottles and beer cans crowded around the sink. The remains of a Chinese takeaway littered the dining table. The place reeked of stale cigarettes and alcohol, damp and rotten food. Only two doors led from this room. One of them stood open, revealing a dirty bathtub and toilet. He went to the other, the Eagle at shoulder level.

The Traveller threw it open, and the door frame exploded around him. He fired blind into the room three times, the recoil throwing him backwards against the table. His wrist shrieked; splinters and plaster dust stung his face.

‘Bastard,’ he said. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes. Hot pain seared the right. He shook his head, tried to dislodge whatever burned there.

‘Jesus,’ he said. He rubbed the heel of his left hand against the eye. It came away wet and red. ‘Dirty fucker.’

He calmed his breathing and listened. Moaning and sobbing came from the room. The Traveller crossed to it, both hands supporting the Eagle.

Kevin Malloy lay on the floor between the bed and an open wardrobe, his legs tangled in sheets, a shotgun by his side. A ragged hole was torn in his shoulder.

The Traveller lifted the shotgun and admired the polished wooden stock and steel barrel. ‘Fuck, that’s a beauty,’ he said, putting it on the bed. He recognised the stag’s head logo. ‘Browning. Very nice. Think I’ll have that. You got more shells?’

Malloy lay there shaking. His blood soaked the carpet. It squelched under the Traveller’s feet. He kicked Malloy’s shoulder. Malloy screamed.

‘I asked you a question,’ the Traveller said. ‘You got more shells for that?’

Malloy turned his head. ‘In… in there.’

The Traveller stepped over him and found three boxes of 20-gauge cartridges in the bottom of the wardrobe. He threw them on the bed beside the Browning.

‘Anyone else here?’ he asked.

Malloy shook his head.

‘Where’s your missus?’

Malloy cried.

The Traveller kicked him again. When Malloy’s screaming died down, the Traveller said, ‘Where is she?’

‘In town,’ Malloy said. ‘Please don’t kill me.’

‘When’ll she be back?’

‘I don’t know. Please don’t kill me. I’ve money. You can have my cash card and my PIN. There, in my wallet.’

The Traveller went to the dressing table and put the wallet in his pocket. It would help make it look like a robbery, but he’d dump it somewhere on the road. No way he’d use the card.

He rubbed his right eye on his sleeve, hissed at the sting. ‘You might’ve fucking blinded me, you know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Malloy said. ‘Please don’t kill me.’

The Traveller flicked the Eagle’s safety on and tucked it into his waistband. He went to the bed and lifted the Browning. He turned it in his hands, tested its heft. It was compact and light. ‘Fucking lovely,’ he said. He pulled back the slide to eject the spent cartridge and pushed it forward to load the next. The action was smooth and easy. ‘That’s a beauty,’ he said, running his fingers over the smooth walnut stock. He wedged the butt against his shoulder and lined up Malloy’s head.

‘Jesus,’ Malloy said.

The Traveller took three steps back. He didn’t want to get covered in the splatter.

Malloy wept and prayed.

The Traveller blinked blood away from his right eye. He sniffed and swallowed. He shifted his weight onto his leading foot, braced for the recoil, and pulled the trigger.

It didn’t make too bad a mess of Malloy, considering. The recoil gave the Traveller a solid kick to the shoulder, but it was a controllable piece. He held the Browning out to admire it again. ‘Nice,’ he said.

He pulled the earplugs out by the plastic string and put them in his pocket. He opened and closed his jaw to clear the pressure. His eye stung pretty bad, now. He walked back to the kitchen and turned on the tap. A scoop of cold water eased the burning a little.

He wondered if there were any old plastic bags under the sink in which to carry the boxes of cartridges back to the car. He opened the cupboard doors.

A woman lay trembling on her side in there, squeezed beneath the plumbing. She covered her head with her hands, her knees drawn up to her chin. She smelled of gin.

‘Ah, fuck,’ the Traveller said.

He reached for the earplugs.