The Going Rate (2 page)

“Tell him you're coming, I said.”

She pulled at the belt of her dressing gown, losing one end. He laid his arm on her shoulder, with the pistol pointed at the hall door. He felt her start when she saw it.

“Jesus, Darren, what's the need of that?”

Her voice was strained with the panic.

“Just keep going, will you.”

He looked down the hallway. Martin had set up an escape route when they moved in here three or four years ago, and one night last summer he had shown Mulhall the setup, his master plan of getting out in a hurry. Three steps out the door to the garage – Martin had never used it as a garage but as a workshop, where he kept all his tools in perfect nick – and a couple of steps to the workbench. Then, up to the window he had put in three-quarters the way up the wall and Bob's your uncle: you were in the neighbour's. He had even timed himself taking a few gos at it, he had told Mulhall with pride.

Mulhall had been careful not to scoff at Martin's meticulousness. Martin was such an iijit. His whole Mission Impossible type of approach made the others slag him mercilessly. Even Murph, who took the gold for being the most complete iijit in the known world, knew that Martin was an iijit. But everyone had still depended on Martin for the welding and the lock-smithing.

Even if Martin was no mastermind, he'd had a good run. He was always careful and modest in his work. It was only bad luck that a cop car was passing that petrol station that night. Though Martin would never admit it, Mulhall was certain that he had only started into his own line of robbing because of Bernie, with her shopping and her holidays and her decorating shite.

Mulhall's tact had earned him Martin's trust. It was to Mulhall that the same Martin had turned after his sentencing. Could Mulhall look in on things while he was inside, could he keep an eye on things? Murph could barely look after himself, not to mind someone else. Bernie needed minding sometimes, Martin told him. She wasn't always on the ball: she didn't have much confidence. He should make himself at home, naturally. Did that include drinking Martin's vodka, Mulhall had wondered daily since he had come here last week to lay low. And did the make-yourself-at-home bit cover riding Bernadette twice a day until they were pouring sweat and aching?

Mulhall tiptoed around her as she took the last step down, and he turned toward the kitchen. He heard the man at the door whistling softly to himself, his blue overalls visible even through the frosted glass of the hall door. He kept Bernadette in front of him, ignoring the shudders that had begun to seize at her.

“Stand there,” he whispered. “Right there, where he can see you're there.”

“Why are you doing this? Christ, stop pushing me, will you.”

He tugged on her shoulder.

“Here,” he hissed. “Count up to ten– No! In your head!”

He pulled the collapsed back of his Air Max up over his heel, swore at the sharp pain as his finger was squeezed, and then he opened the door out to the garage. His nostrils filled with the comforting smell of oil and old grass from the lawnmower. The door swung shut silently behind him: Martin's work again, he was sure.

Sure enough, in three steps, Mulhall was on the bench, stooped, and pulling the bar release from the window. The neighbours' garden wasn't a garden at all: it was more of a dump. Maybe it had started as storage, all the lengths of warped timber and the pieces of ruined particleboard, the cement blocks, and three or four disemboweled lawnmowers. But like Martin had pointed out, the neighbours had let the fence fall apart just like everything else of theirs, and there was a clear run to the lane. Lifting the window, he rolled into the opening. He dropped onto a soggy patch of last year's leaves that were already almost covered by new grass.

He stayed in a crouch, staring at a deflated soccer ball, and listened. There was nothing out of the ordinary. A face appeared at the kitchen window, an unshaven man, drawing on a cigarette. It was Martin's neighbour, Mr. Depressed, Mr. Alco. Mulhall gave him the nod, and then he skipped toward the stack of cement blocks. He threw his leg over the wall, gasping as he felt it tear through the denim at his skin. He straddled the wall carefully for several moments before swinging the other leg behind it.

The laneway was graffiti world of course, with all the usual half-arsed, jerry-built cement block sheds and old corrugated iron, and plenty of barbed wire. Dear Old Dublin. Again he listened. The scrapes on his thighs began to burn. The cold morning air had made his hangover vanish. Movement to his right broke his gaze from the glints of light from the broken glass in the laneway. A pudgy man was stepping away from the wall of the laneway ahead, his green safety vest and yellow hard hat almost glowing now in the spring light.

Mulhall teetered between annoyance and relief: so it was the gas company, after all.

“Howiya,” he called out, warily. He was frowning now, his eyes straying to the pistol in Mulhall's hand.

A bit late to be trying to hide it now, Mulhall decided. He waited for fleeting eye contact, and then the man quickly looked down at his feet.

“Howiya yourself,” Mulhall said. “Get to work, why don't you, you fat gobshite. And not be annoying people this early in the day.”

Well that was settled, then. More relieved than he was sore, or even angry, Mulhall strode down the lane, mapping out in his mind the entry of the laneway onto Ossory Road. He'd cross there, and head somewhere where he could lie low. The dumpsters behind the shops there would do for a short while, or even an old garden shed in one of the houses there. Then, back to Bernie, get some stuff and clear off. Mr. Gas Man down the lane was hardly going to keep his trap shut about seeing a fella with a gun, was he. Mulhall could hardly blame him.

The weight of the pistol dragging on his arm with each stride came to his attention. The laneway was covered in damp patches, with clumps of mashed cardboard every now and then. It felt greasy underfoot. God, but he must look totally stupid, he thought, like a schoolkid holding his mickey and going up to the teacher to get permission to go to the toilet.

He thought for a moment of Bernie, and suspicion flashed across his mind. It didn't last. Bernie, if it were possible, was even thicker than Martin. He slowed, and the anger returned. This was what he was reduced to, hanging with the likes of Murph, and Martin, and Martin's retarded missus? Something had to give here, he murmured. Maybe it was time to do the thing, make his move.

He had saved the copper's number in his mobile under the name “Paddy,” and he had added two digits to each number in case anyone ever snooped through his numbers there. Molloy – no: Tommy Malone. It was Murph told him about Malone, warned him about him. Malone was a Dub, and he was smart. He knew the score in Dublin nowadays, with everyone paranoid and jumpy, and looking for a place to hide, or an escape hatch from this dump of a city. Malone was doing what coppers always did, putting out feelers, trying to get fellas to grass on the higher-ups.

But according to Murph, Malone talked serious money. He hinted that he could even deliver the whole package, even a new identity. According to Murph anyway: as far as that went. He didn't believe Murph on the last part, but money could sort a lot of issues.

This was the end of the lane ahead. He slowed, his chest pumping in the cold air and his own hot, rank breath coming back over his face. It was definitely the lie-low-and-wait option.

There was a car up ahead, not moving. Green, older Jap car: a Corolla? Someone was standing behind its half-opened driver's door, a man in a leather jacket. He had noticed Mulhall too. He did not seem in the least bit put-out to be seeing a man in a T-shirt on a cold spring morning, holding something the shape of a gun.

Mulhall stopped, undecided. There was a faint smell of aftershave, or cologne or something expensive. In this laneway, here in this kip, on a lousy damp cold Dublin morning? Hallucinating, that's what it must be surely.

But it was too quiet here. It'd have to be back the other way, he decided, over the walls and off through the gardens. He picked a cement block wall a half-dozen houses away and headed for it at a jog.

Then there was a door opening into the alley to his right, a figure emerging as he ran by. He did not slow, but he took the pistol out, and broke into a sprint instead, weaving from side to side. There were other footsteps running behind him now, almost matching his own. Turning to cast a quick glance over his shoulder he saw flashes, and he felt himself being punched over against a wall.

He was able to squeeze the trigger once but then his arm fell as did everything else, sideways and buckling. He heard his own knees hit the cement, and the skin tearing as his momentum carried him scraping along the laneway.

He came to a stop, and felt his chest rising and falling on the slimy, cold cement. This new sideways world was way too bright. He'd need to lie here a few moments only, until he could figure out if he had broken something. Slowly, he flexed his fingers. The pistol was gone somewhere.

There were footsteps on the cement nearby, soft shoes at a walk.

Mulhall wanted to shout, but the voice that came out was a whisper.

“Hey,” it said.

He wasn't sure if he had actually spoken the words.

“Why did you do that?”

It was his own voice. His chin and his cheeks were scraping the cement.

“Who are you?”

Someone was breathing hard nearby.

“Ma?” Mulhall said then. “Jesus, Ma. I'm having a terrible dream.”

There was a ticklish movement around his cheek, and something red flowed by his chin. A car started nearby but the noise soon died away. This is a concussion, he decided. He must have slipped or something.

“Going to wake up now,” he said, or thought.

He was being rolled over. The sky was blinding him.

He couldn't focus his eyes. A shape moved dimly not far above him. He heard the strained breathing again, breathing out the nose. A black spot appeared between him and the shape above, wavering slightly, and Mulhall had a moment to conclude that it was the barrel of a gun.

Chapter 2

G
OOD
F
RIDAY CAME AND WENT
, and in its wake the Easter. A freakishly warm holiday Monday drew Minogue into the garden, and there he worked fitfully at rehabilitating the rockery. It was a yearly ritual now. That was how he missed the phone call with the news that the Commissioner's wife had died.

He replayed the message twice to be sure he had the funeral details right. When Kathleen came home, he waited until she was settled before telling her the news. She was more upset than he had expected. After a while, he brought out two kitchen chairs, and then two tumblers of Jamesons to the patch of grass that was now home to a dozen or more large, marooned rocks.

The sun made an unexpected appearance, taking the edge off the cool air, and turning the scruffy spring growth a bright green while it incited more noise from the birds gadding about unseen in the undergrowth.

The whiskey was quickly downed.

Kathleen and he sat together for the better part of a half-hour, adrift in the smells of torn earth, the stirring leaves and grass, and the birds' unceasing bustle. Every now and then Kathleen recounted things that Rachel Tynan, artist and teacher, had done in the recent past.

Minogue did not tell her that it had been only a fortnight ago that he had spotted Rachel Tynan and her husband on Dunlaoghaire Pier. She had been pale and thin, and she moved haltingly along arm-in-arm beside him. Minogue had not wanted them to see him, and a gap in the sea wall let him escape. His excuses – it was dusk and they wouldn't have spotted him, they needed no interruptions – had crumbled long before he had gotten home, but the shame of his evasion stayed with him.

Wednesday was a long time coming, but by nine o' clock that morning, Minogue was backing out of the garage in his new Peugeot, listening for squeaks from the chassis as it rolled down to the gate. He was trying not to be impatient, but he was losing. The collar on his new shirt chafed. He just couldn't find a decent driving position in his new car, and he was bewildered as to how he had missed this on the test drive. And now, Kilmartin, the very one who had guilted him into taking him along to the funeral, was late.

At least he had time for a re-read of the file he had been hurriedly handed yesterday afternoon.

Tadeusz Klos, a twenty-three-year-old Polish national, had arrived in Ireland five days before the assault that ended in his death. Klos had been beaten and stomped into a coma a stone's throw from the Custom House, in the centre of the city. The considerable amount of blood that he had left on the footpath behind him was quickly determined by the State Pathologist to have been cranial in origin. The report did not mention that it would have been thickly mixed with that night's rain into something that Minogue knew would be as greasy as it would be acidic from the roadway to where it had flowed. Klos was resuscitated twice in the ambulance. He died about a mile short of the hospital entrance.

The briefing file contained a copy of a passport photo and four photos taken in the hospital. Three of the four haunted Minogue much of the evening and early morning. It took a lot to crush a man's skull with kicks.