The driver braked late for the lights and the Fiat began to slide. Larry Smith cursed and eased off the pedal. What the hell was he doing with this law-abiding routine, stopping for an amber traffic light on a Sunday morning? He shifted into first before the car came to a stop halfway across the white line and groped under the seat for the pistol. It hadn’t shifted.
A Toyota van turned on to Strand Road ahead. Some fella delivering the Sunday papers? He looked across the bay. The tide north of Dublin was out. Lambay Island like a slab sitting on the gray, flat water of the Irish Sea. Frigid looking, the color of water out of the washer, or an old, battered saucepan. There was piles more rain on the way too. What a poxy start to the day.
Even the golf clubhouse looked like a dump. It’d been twenty years since Zipper Brophy and his brothers had destroyed that clubhouse. There’d been two days of questioning, he remembered, and a hammering from head cases in the Special Branch. All because a lot of Guards were members. Zipper was dead three years now. It was pure heroin, one of the first loads to hit town. Zipper’d always been careless. It was April first too, of all days, and they found him in the toilet out at the Jolly Rover, that dump that had burned down in Finglas last year. Plainclothes Guards all over at the funeral too, trying to mix in. They’d almost caused a scrap with Zipper’s brother outside the church.
He looked in the rearview mirror again. The early mass in Sutton was started already. He shifted in his seat to get a better look at the sea. He thought of the last holiday he’d had with Yvonne. It’d been like a honeymoon all over again in Portugal.
He yawned until the tear almost broke away from his eye. He’d been shaky enough getting up. He drew the pistol out from under the seat and laid it in his lap. Nice weight to it, balancing there, and the little knob under the trigger guard. He’d been on the move for a month now, after he’d heard the rumors. Moving around every night had left him restless, washed-out. You couldn’t really get a night’s sleep like this. He couldn’t even use the cell phone to talk to Yvonne. Someone had heard the law could get in on the new ones even. Well how was that anyway, wasn’t it an infringement on a person’s basic rights and all that?
He leaned over the wheel and stared at the red light. He should give up on the Fiat really. The blind spots were making him jittery. Cheaper to fix the smashed wing mirrors, sure, but it was burning a bit of oil now. He swore at -
A screech and a flicker in the side mirror made him drop his hand on the pistol. He looked out the passenger window. A seagull drifted down onto the footpath. That’s all it was? He looked at the twisted edges on the mirror frame. Both of them smashed in the one night a fortnight ago. Christ, if he got his hands on the little bastards. His back was tightening up on him already. He leaned over the wheel again but it didn’t help. He let out the clutch a little, let the Fiat roll into the junction.
That van ahead was taking its time. Well what if he were to just drop it all and get into Australia or someplace? On his own, and then send for Yvonne after he was set up right — and on the QT of course. Shouldn’t be that hard. A car, a Renault, was cruising up to the lights now. There was only the driver. He looked up at the red light again. Christ, were they broken or what? The road ahead looked suddenly huge and empty. He couldn’t be sitting here in the middle of nowhere on a lousy, rainy Sunday morning. He let out the clutch.
The banging came steadily from the back. He jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Renault had come through the junction. The back doors of the van were opening. Spots appeared on the panel of the passenger door, and a burning smell stung in his nose. He banged the pistol on the ashtray as he went to find second gear. Glass showered across the seat at him. He kept the wheel turning. The growl and burr of the impacts didn’t seem to be so loud now. The glove compartment shattered a split second before the windscreen went white. He banged at the glass with the end of the pistol but it wouldn’t give.
The first shot hit him in the shoulder, knocked him hard against the door. The steering wheel went nuts and then locked as the Fiat mounted the footpath, slid along the seawall, and stalled. He heard himself shouting. The spots on the steering wheel were blood, he knew. He wondered when he’d begin to feel his arm, why he wasn’t panicking.
He rolled out onto the footpath. The glass grinding into his elbows didn’t register with him. He thought of the rocks under the seawall, if he could get over there.
“Who are yous?”
The Fiat twitched with more impacts.
“We’ll work this out…!”
Seaweed, he smelled; rubber, oil, sewage.
“Give me a chance to talk…!”
He waited. Still nothing.
“Just tell me what you’re after…!” It wasn’t a shout now, a screech that ripped at his throat. “Just let me fucking talk!”
The buzzer from the open door was driving him around the twist.
“Whatever it is…! Come on…! Who are you?”
There were more shots from the front. It was a steady pattern now, like those drum rolls he used to do in that band the social workers organized for them back when they were in fifth class, that stupid community band. Something stung as it flew into his cheek. He pressed his face to the panel by the wheel. The bullets slamming into bodywork resonated through his cheekbone.
“Jesus,” Larry Smith whispered. “Yvonne.”
Running feet were zigzagging his way. They weren’t stopping, slowing down even. The panic broke over him then. He shoved the pistol around the side of the bumper, fired twice, ducked back.
Larry Smith was turning to see if others had come up behind him when a bullet shattered the base of his skull. It was a firearm of similar caliber if not the identical weapon, the Garda press release stated two days later, that was also used to blow parts of Larry Smith’s head across Strand Road. The postmortem report contained three further sentences which were to be much remarked upon in the Murder Squad. They concerned what appeared to be the marks of a kick to the face delivered, it seemed, prior to the coup de grace.
“Lads,” said APF Colm Brennan. He waited until they looked over at him. At least they’d see the uniform and cop on that he was Airport Police. “Lads? Come on now, for the love of God. This is Dublin Airport now, not a bloody rave-up. Yous can’t be blocking the way here.”
There were five of them now. Brennan looked around at the faces of these die-hard fans of Public Works. Nobody had actually complained. The trouble was that the big fella, the dopey-looking one with the four hundred studs in his ears, had started drinking out of something from inside his jacket. He could be fifteen or he could be twenty, couldn’t be sure. But he was the one to watch. He might lose the head handy enough, that one.
“Well, turn it down at least. Do you hear me?”
The big fella threw his hair back, began nodding to the beat. teenage babies die at night
Brennan thought, God, if he heard that stupid song one more time. Where were those fellas living with their depressing frigging “tunes”? Hadn’t they heard there were jobs out there, the Celtic Tiger going around roaring money now? He waited for the big fella to look over. Not a chance, no. And the others were ignoring him too. The young one with the tights for pants and the yellow hair and the thing in her nose was swaying and dancing and grinning. A taxi pulled away from the drop-off area by the terminal doors. The driver beeped as he passed. The big fella waved and raised his fist
“Yeaaaahhhhh!”
Brennan clutched the walkie-talkie tighter behind his back and glanced over at the video camera set high in the wall. The big fella turned away. He was taking another swig out of the bottle.
Enough was enough. Brennan stepped over.
“Look,” he said. “That’s the limit.”
The big fella dropped the bottle inside his jacket. He stared at some point on Brennan’s chest.
“What’s A, P, F? I mean, you’re not a real cop, are you?”
“Airport Police, and yeah, I am a real policeman. Now turn that thing down, get your gear and move on.”
“- The F, though. There — APF F stands for something. Right?”
Brennan stared at him.
“Airport Police and Fire Service. Take your mates too.”
“So it’s like fires too, you have to put out fires, right? Like, big fires?”
Brennan stared into the bloodshot eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was just the slagging or something else on the way.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s it. Out of here. It’s over, let’s go.”
“Well wait a minute here.” The big fella wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ve got me rights haven’t I? No one’s hassled here, are they? All we’re doing is seeing the band off.”
He lit a cigarette. His eyes stayed steady on Brennan’s. A guitar riff howled behind him. The big fella started to snigger and turned away, shaking with laughter. Brennan looked from face to face, down at the ghetto blaster, the bags, the rucksacks. Badges everywhere, paint, beads, studs. And they thought Public Works was still the local lads, their pals. Gobshites. They didn’t even cop on that Public Works had their own frigging jet at the far end of the airport. That they were going off to do a video somewhere. That worldwide success didn’t begin with the bloody band climbing out of taxis and buses like ordinary Joe Soaps and pushing trolleys up to the bloody check-in. He wished he could tell them.
“All right then,” Brennan muttered. “Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”
A minibus with tinted windows had stopped near the doors.
“Look,” the big lug called out. “It’s the lads!”
Brennan knew that he’d left it too late. He made it in front of the girl. The others moved around him. He thumbed to transmit, hoped to God Fogarty or someone had been keeping an eye on things. Not a bloody Guard in sight. The girl got by him. There were hands pawing the minibus. The big fella had his face plastered up to a side window on the van. Fogarty, the supervisor, answered on the radio.
“They’re mobbing a van here,” Brennan said. “We need to get people out.”
He began shoving the teenagers away.
“Leave the van alone!” he shouted “That couldn’t be them!”
The girl with the face full of hardware shrieked the name of the lead guitarist. Brennan squinted in the window himself. Could it be someone from the band? The tint was so bloody dark.
“Get back!” he grunted and he shoved the girl.
He caught a glimpse of a sticker by the bottom corner of the windscreen. Squiggly writing, dots, a piece of a moon. Oh Jases, he muttered. Where did they put their CD signs now, those diplomatic plates? Well it was their own bloody fault. He turned and grasped the big fella’s collar.
The doors to the terminal slid open. Fogarty and Jimmy Doyle and the new fella what’s his name were coming out full tilt now. About bloody time. -
The big fella turned. The loose look on his face had turned to something narrow and Brennan knew he’d have to get a hold of him rapid, pull him off balance. Behind the lug, though, a window on the van slid down to reveal two startled brown eyes staring at Brennan. Masks, he wondered, but no, some of those things the women wore because… APF Brennan opened his mouth to say something and then fell backward as something connected with his cheekbone.
Chief Inspector James Kilmartin was on a roll now, and he knew it. He slid off his stool and hitched up his trousers. Minogue knew the routine: the cute countryman, nobody’s fool — so look out. He looked at the faces in the huddle around “The Killer” Kilmartin here in the bar of the Garda Club. One of the Guards, a red-faced sergeant, kept shaking his head and rubbing his eyes. Every now and then he’d repeat things Kilmartin had said and he’d chortle softly. Kilmartin leveled a finger and swept it around slowly by each of the Guards.
“So it’s getting dark now,” he said. “This poor Yankee tourist, he’s getting kind of worried, isn’t he?”
Over at the far end of the bar Sergeant Seamus Hoey was rolling depleted ice cubes around the bottom of his glass. Minogue counted back it was seven months since Hoey had transferred out of the squad. He now worked in Crime Prevention. Kilmartin still thought this was hilarious, annoying, stupid. A Guard didn’t just opt to leave the squad, especially to join a joke shop like Crime Prevention. On top of that he’d become a teetotaler of nearly one year’s standing. Kilmartin had stopped slagging him about that after Minogue had asked him whether he’d still be making the jokes if Shea had succeeded in his suicide attempt. Detective Garda Tommy Malone, who had taken up Hoey’s position in the Murder Squad, was staring at the goings-on in Hoey’s glass. He seemed to be mesmerized. Malone was simply knackered, Minogue decided, same as himself. The few pints had slammed the door on the adrenalin that had kept them going these past few days.
Kilmartin’s voice grew louder.
“I mean here he is, out in the back of beyond, down amongst the buffs of County Clare… ”
Kilmartin looked across at his friend and colleague, Minogue, and his wink gave way to a leer. Minogue raised an eyebrow to register the slur against his native county. This seemed to enliven Kilmartin.
“So anyway,” he went on voice, “here’s this fecking tourist, this poor iijit of a Yank, beginning to wonder if he’d been given proper directions at all. Researching his ancestors, walking in ditches, and staring at oul cow sheds — you know the routine! What happens but doesn’t he fall over this courting couple in behind a ditch…”
The red-faced sergeant began to chortle. Kilmartin paused and leaned back, let his tongue trace his bottom lip.
“Now you know what they’re up to,” he said.
The sergeant laughed outright. Malone drifted over to Minogue and laid his glass on the counter.
“Another pint, boss? My twist.”
Minogue shrugged. Hoey had followed Malone over now.
“Is this the Family Member one?” Hoey asked. “Or the Old Log Inn?”
“Family Member,” said Malone. “But we won’t know for a while yet.”
Minogue looked at his watch. Half-six. Kilmartin had insisted on taking them all to the Garda Club. Sure didn’t they have plenty to celebrate, God damn it, was the chief inspector’s tack: a) Tynan fighting off the decentralizing shite from the Department of Justice for another year. Who’d have thought he’d be coming to our rescue at all? Then b), finally getting the chief supers with their whinging about dispersing the squad buried for another year too? Tynan again, strangely enough, and this time telling those yobs just how bad crime had gotten here in Dublin with the frigging jackals and hyenas and wolves doing their own take on the Celtic Tiger rigamarole? Not to speak of c) Hoey’s promotion, the speed of it and all…? And not to mention d) that bastard Harte finally coughing up for the Dunshaughlin shooting?
Laughter erupted from around Kilmartin. Minogue had missed the punch line again. Now Kilmartin was heading their way. Minogue tracked the chief inspector’s approach, the slow rolling gait, the faked punch to the stomach of the laughing sergeant, the clumsy headlock and guffaws. High spirits entirely, and why not: Kilmartin was away on three weeks leave as of this evening. He could nurse his sore head on the plane to Boston tomorrow. As of one hour ago, in fact, Minogue had become acting head of the Murder Squad.
Kilmartin drew up opposite Malone.
“Well now, Molly,” he said. “Anudder one, den? My twist and all, now.”
“No,” said Malone. “Thanks.” Kilmartin turned to Hoey.
“Coke, Sergeant?” Shea Hoey seemed to consider it. Kilmartin eyed him.
“I don’t want you drinking your way into Bolivia now, but,” he added.
The barman pointed the remote at the TV across the room. An ad for a hamburger chain came on. Minogue wished he’d eaten before the three pints. He thought about sausages in Bewleys. What day was it today anyway? Thursday he was to meet his daughter Iseult for lunch. The baby was due in three months. Trimester, that was the word: her last trimester.
The spinning globe and floating letters slowed and jumped off the screen. Small pictures then turned into movies as they sprang to the front. A military vehicle unloaded food next to a dusty track. Sudan? Or was that last year? Next was a dusty plain. The camera moved from a close-up of bleached bones to a shimmering horizon. Next came a scene of a riverbank protest. Had to be Ireland. Yes, slurry had killed thousands of fish in Cork.
“Oh I know when my money’s no good,” said Kilmartin and moved off to the Guards at the far end of the bar.
Too lazy to get up, Minogue watched Hoey begin to flip a beer mat. As well as studying for his sergeant’s exam, Hoey had taken to conjuring tricks. To cod his new missus, was Kilmartin’s theory. Not so. Aine Finnucane, not Aine Hoey, had brought Hoey to the inner-city school where she taught remedial. A lot of hard cases, Hoey had reported: broken homes, some already into drugs, families in and out of jail. So Hoey had prepped himself with sleight-of-hand tricks to get the kids’ interest. He’d ended up more or less hypnotizing them, Hoey reported, but wasn’t sure if he’d gotten through to them about anything else. That didn’t seem to matter to Hoey. He kept returning on a regular basis to “put on shows” at other inner-city schools. Aine, a woman Minogue liked a great deal indeed because of how she laughed as much as what she had done teaching and building in Africa, had told Minogue that a lot of the kids in her school now called Hoey the Magic Cop.
Malone dropped some coins on the counter.
“All right,” he said to Hoey “Show us the married man trick. You know, where you make the money disappear?”
Airport Police and Fire Officer Derek Mitchell, twenty, and six weeks into his new job, checked his walkie-talkie and headed out toward Dublin Airport’s long-term car park. The breezes which had played around him by the doors to the freight depot were gusts out here.
He waved at the Guards sitting in the squad car by the ramp. One of them managed a nod. “Don’t strain yourself,” Mitchell murmured. The news that the Guards were going to make a new Garda station at the airport was only a rumor anyway. This squad car sitting by the ramp up to the terminal was for show now. That mob of fans had been turfed out and four of them had been arrested. Even Fogarty hadn’t seen anything like it. It was the van with the tinted windows showing up that’d torn the arse out of the situation. No wonder those Saudi Arabians would be thinking we were all bloody barbarians. Well, they should talk: the women in masks, veils, or whatever, hiding their faces. And for what? Like furniture covered up. Chattels, that was the word.
It had taken three Guards to get the big lug into the squad car. The one who had clocked Brennan. He was sixteen, it turned out. Derek Mitchell sort of felt sorry for Brennan. Brennan, who should have known better, was going home with a thick lip. He might even be concussed someone said — but that was maybe Brennan already taking a dive with compo in mind. Using his head better now after getting clattered than before. Brennan, yeah, aiming for an easy way out. It was Brennan had told him the Guards were going to set up a station at the airport, that the APFS would be in the ha’penny place then.
The wind was rising. He zipped his jacket up higher. It took major work to push the button through the frigging buttonhole on his collar. His thumb hurt like hell from pushing the edge of the button. Bollocks: it was too tight now.
He rubbed his thumb hard against his forefinger and watched a plane make its approach over the Irish Sea. It just hung there. Stats: at any given moment a million people were flying up there. That was day and night too. Where’d he read that? He rolled the volume dial of his walkie-talkie over and back. Now, think about it: was he the only person in the world, the civilized world like, to think about how mad air travel was?
All they were basically were metal tubes, for God’s sake, tons of weight, full of people getting fired through the air at five hundred miles an hour. Madness really. People reading the papers, having their dinners, watching films, sitting on toilets, sleeping — all five miles up there.
He turned and looked around the sky. There were dirty gray, rolling rain clouds to the west. It was getting colder. He eyed the canopy over by the fire depot. It’d be a quarter after seven before he’d log into the last checkpoint next to the decks for the drop-offs. They should give him a car or something, like for the dog patrols on the perimeter rounds had. A bike even! Ah it was exercise, wasn’t it.
The windscreens were covered with clouds. It made Mitchell dreamy. The long-term car park always looked full. That was because people parked as close as they could to the walkway. A lot of the cars had the flashing lights that told you the alarm was set. What a bloody pain the alarms were out here! If people decided to ignore the notices about the alarms, then they actually deserved to get their cars robbed. Well not ignored exactly, but the Guards didn’t care much to be told about alarms going off. A good gust of wind could do some of them. A lot them didn’t have automatic resets either. There was a surge of engines from the far side of the hangars. A car started up a few rows over. He walked on. He knew he’d given up checking every car. He walked slower, tried to get a system going where he’d be covering all the cars in both directions, row by row. There might be video in here now, no matter what Fogarty had told them about it taking another few months at least. There could be cameras just for keeping an eye on patrols. But he didn’t have to be the FBI for God’s sake, did he. Just cover himself, that’s -
He was quick but still late. He let his hand settle on his hair instead and watched the damned hat tossed rolling down the roadway between the rows. It bounced as the brim rolled under. Then it lodged against a wheel and fell over like a really bad actor in a really bad cowboy film from a million years ago. He stared at the hat. There were specks of rain on the windscreen of the Golf next to him now. He picked up the hat, jammed it on his head, held it there.
He walked faster now. There was a blue Escort with an English number plate. He stopped, turned away from the wind, and jammed his stupid hat between his knees. He peeled back the pages in his logbook until he got to to the notes he had scribbled down from the patrol board. It was a blue Escort, Dublin registration, they were looking for. Someone had scribbled VIP and TV on the sheet too. He wondered if the other patrol APFS bothered with the board at all. Robbed cars was the Guards’ job anyway. As in, those two layabouts sitting in their squad car back at the ramp. Someone had told him the Guards didn’t try anymore because there were so many being stolen, in Dublin at least. Brennan had wised him up to the fact that it was only for insurance that the Guards had to post the bulletins to them. Well he’d better keep a note of it, just in case. Show he was on the ball at least. The pages flapped and clung to the pencil. He wrote blind anyway.
His eyes watered from the gusts now. He looked back down the rows he’d done. A right iijit he must look, his hat jammed between his knees, the pages still flapping and cracking in his other hand. No wonder the probationer APFS got the long-term patrols for months. He managed to close his notebook with one hand and slip it into his pocket. It was going to lash rain any minute: de-fin-itely. He looked across the rows of car roofs. They were all one color from this angle. A blue Escort? There were probably dozens of them here. He bit his lip. A raindrop smacked his hat brim. Part of him had decided not to go back down those rows again anyway.