Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) (31 page)

The PA yard still stank of burnt petrol, warm tar. The crime scene tape hanging limp.

‘Didn’t take them long to move on, did it?’ Maria said.

Budgets and resources being what they are these days, I was more surprised they hadn’t taken the crime scene tape with them when they left. The chalk outline, too.

We gave the scorch mark a wide berth, the jam stain on the tarmac that was still purple at its centre but mostly sun-browned and flaking. It was worth trying the door, on the off-chance the cops had wandered away without locking up, but no joy. So I left Maria out front and went around the side, scaled the rusted fire escape again. Came in through the studio as the phone Herb had given me beeped, a text message to say Maria’s flight was booked, 7.30
PM
to Gatwick out of Knock. Which gave us about three hours. I went on down the metal stairs to the ground floor, padding across the silent gallery. Let Maria in, directed her to the window.

‘You keep sketch,’ I said. ‘If anything moves, do that scream thing again.’

Then I crossed to the rear of the gallery, went through to the storage area behind. Opened the metal door and got a half-
second
warning, the clickering of nails on concrete, realising too late I hadn’t announced my presence. A furry Panzer exploded out of the dark. Jaws open, teeth gleaming in the gloom. I ducked away, rearing back, so the crown of his head hit me full-force in the chest. Heard the jaws snap and then I was down, bowled over. He skittered on the concrete as his paws scrabbled for grip, and then he bunched and sprang again.

Sprawled on my back, winded and weak, it was all I could do to meet his lunge halfway, bounce an elbow off his snout, grab a handful of rough fur beneath his throat. Gobs of spittle
spattering
my face as he slavered and snarled, forepaws on my chest, the rear scraping in my groin like he was rucking out a scrum. I tried kneeing him off but he had all the weight and momentum, his relentless twisting and snapping wearing me down.

There came a shrill whistle with a neat little trill. His head shot up as if jerked by a chain, ears pricking. A plaintive whine.

‘
Bear
,’ Maria urged. ‘C’mere, Bear!’

One last gouge in my groin and he was gone, launching
himself
at Maria like some grotesque teddy bear, all snuffles and short barks, skittish now. I sat up, shaking so hard I could barely tug my shirt free, wipe the drool from my face.

Starving, I guessed, and maddened for the want of water cooped up in that heat. Had the cops fed him before they’d left? Doubtful.

I went into the storage room and opened a couple of
well-gnawed
cans of dog food, scooped them into a bowl. Brought that outside and put it down on the ground, slid it across the concrete in his general direction. He’d wolfed it all down when I got back from the bathroom with a bowl of water, Maria hunkered
alongside
tugging his ears, so I opened another couple of cans of food while he inhaled the water, lapping at it so fast he splashed more than he drank.

‘He’s just a big dopey kid really,’ Maria crooned, tears in her eyes as she tickled Bear under the throat. ‘Aren’t you, Bear?’

A big dopey kid, sure. When you weren’t eyeball to eyeball, his jaws crunching, eyes rolling back white in their sockets. All the better, my dear, to inspect the instinct that had taken his lupine ancestors all the way from the tundra to the ground floor of an art gallery a couple of million years later.

A big dopey stone-cold killer.

Except it wasn’t really Bear she was talking to. It was the other big dopey kid, the one with the Brian Jones fringe and shit-
don’t-matter
grin, the one who’d walked away forever when he’d taken a stroll off nine stories out into the big empty. I was tempted to suggest she’d be better off talking to the jam stain out in the yard, but I let it slide, went through to the storage room again. The place stank of stale piss and shit, although at least Bear’d had the good grace, or sense of self-preservation, to leave all his deposits in one corner. The pile of crutches lay loosely stacked behind his kennel. I picked one up, shook it. Then another. The rattle of their hitting the concrete alerted Maria to the reason we were there, and she slipped in beside me, picked up a crutch.

She swallowed hard, although whether that was from the rancid stench or some repressed emotion was anyone’s guess. ‘We were supposed to be bringing these home to Cyprus,’ she said.

‘I heard, yeah.’ Finn, the part-time philanthropist. ‘Noble as all fuck, he was.’

She shook the crutch, tossed it aside. Bear wandered in,
licking
his chops. ‘No need to get pissy,’ she said.

‘I just said he was noble as all fuck. What more do you want?’

She shook another crutch, threw it down. Bear had a nuzzle at it, wandered off. ‘Some people used to get sniffy about it, alright,’ she said. A tart edge now to her tone. ‘Mainly because it made them feel bad about not helping out.’

‘Not me.’

She gave a light shrug. ‘I guess some people are more inclined to help.’

‘Spare me the
noblesse
fucking
oblige
, alright? The guy had more time and money than was healthy, he was working off his guilt and impressing the pants off you in the process. Nice work if you can get it.’

‘Jealous much?’

‘Keep talking,’ I waved a crutch at her, ‘and you’ll be needing one of—’

A dull clunk. Her eyes widened.

The crutches were telescopic, the kind with holes punched in the lower half so they were adjustable to the user’s height. I pushed the metal knobs in, twisted the bottom half of the crutch free. A silver-grey flash-drive dropped out onto the concrete.

Neither of us reached for it. Instead we stared at the rolled-up canvas protruding from the top half of the crutch.

‘What’s
that
?’ Maria said.

I slid the canvas free, unfurled it. A landscape scene, some upland moor of rock and heather, a vast sky, a storm brewing.

There were sixty-plus crutches in the pile. We went through them all. Twenty minutes later we were staring at nine canvases in total, all landscapes. Each one signed, none of them by Finn.

The one that caught my eye was a fiery sunset, a vermillion blaze I could’ve sworn I’d seen in the very recent past, hanging opposite a bank of elevators in a hospital lobby. Not that my
testimony
would’ve been worth shit. Any half-decent lawyer would’ve torn me to shreds, this on the basis that I’d been pie-eyed on pills at the time, and perhaps understandably distracted as I staggered upstairs to visit my son, comatose in intensive care.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said.

‘Maybe the crippled orphans were supposed to pin them on their walls,’ I said, ‘brighten up the place a little.’

Maria pocketed the flash drive, got the leash on Bear. More of a chain, really, with a plaited-leather grip. The canvases went back into the crutches. Originals, I was guessing, their fake twins hanging on walls all over the country. I wondered if they were all Finn’s work, or if he hadn’t brought some of the Spiritus Mundi crew in on the scam.

Either way, they’d come in useful the next time I saw Tohill. Nine originals in oil had to be worth at least the equivalent of ten grand in coke in a trade, especially when the oils could well be that thread Tohill was looking to pull.

We stepped out into the blazing sunshine, blinking against the glare. Bear tensed, growled low in his throat.

He was leaning back against the Phaeton, shades on, face upturned to the sun. Basking, both hands in the pockets of the waist-length leather jacket.

Toto fucking McConnell.

‘So I’m on my way over to Herbie’s to see what the story is about a certain delivery I’m expecting,’ he said, ‘because for some reason Herb isn’t answering his phone, when I get a call from one of the boys, says he’s seen Jimmy’s motor only it’s not Jimmy
driving
, it’s this guy he thinks he knows from the taxi rank, Harry Rigby, only he’s wearing an eye-patch so he can’t be sure. Now this is interesting, because Harry Rigby should know something about this certain delivery I’m waiting on, so I ring Jimmy to see what the score is, why Rigby has his car. Except Jimmy isn’t answering his phone either. So I tell the guy to stay with the Phaeton, keep me posted. Next thing I hear, Rigby’s down at the docks, the PA building, where the guy he vouched for a couple of nights back took a dive onto one of my cabs. So here I am,
wondering
what’s what.’

There was no one in the battered Golf he’d parked to one side, but that meant nothing. He could’ve had a couple of guys staked out anywhere, maybe waiting outside the yard.

‘I vouched for Finn that he’d pay for his weed,’ I said, stacking the crutches against the Phaeton’s boot, ‘not that he wasn’t
suicidal
.’

‘Sure,’ Toto said, ‘only Herb says you got the paying bit wrong too. What’s with the crutches?’

‘They’re for a charity Finn used to run with Maria here,’ I said, nodding back to where she stood rigid with the effort of
restraining
Bear. ‘They were planning to get married.’

‘Sorry to hear it,’ he said, dipping his head at Maria, a brief bow. ‘Condolences on your loss.’

‘Who’s this?’ she said.

‘Just some business I need to take care of. You get in the car.’

Toto slipped his left hand out of his pocket, held it up. ‘Stall the ball. No one’s going anywhere yet.’ The gesture, his tone, got Bear growling again. ‘Keep a good grip of that hound,’ he told Maria, ‘or I might get nervous.’ He came back to me. ‘So what’s the story? Jimmy being family, you can start with him.’ He saw something in my eyes, stood away from the car. Tightened his grip on whatever it was he had buried in his right pocket. ‘Rigby,’ he said, ‘I got enough problems right now. And the last thing I need is my sister chirping in my ear, wondering where Saint
fucking
James is, if he hasn’t done another runner, send out a search party. Where’s he at?’

Jimmy, as it happened, was lying prone and semi-conscious about two feet from where he stood. Sweat sliding down the back of my thighs at the prospect of Toto’s sister trying to ring him, Jimmy’s phone sounding from the boot.

‘It’s complicated,’ I said.

‘So give me bullet points.’

‘That, uh, delivery,’ I said, ‘it’s gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘I got run off the road coming back from Galway, ended up in hospital.’ I shrugged. ‘The cops have it.’

‘They found it in the car?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What’d you tell them?’

‘Said I knew nothing about it, they must have planted it there.’

‘And they just let you waltz out free.’

‘No, I bolted from the hospital when they brought me down for an X-ray.’

‘So they’ll be looking for you right now.’

‘It’s not exactly a manhunt, and no one got around to reading me my rights, but yeah. If they find me, they’ll pull me in.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Toto,’ I said, ‘it’s on me. I know that. And I’m making it good.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I got this gig going on, someone’s asked me to retrieve their personal belongings. Paying me ten grand to do it.’ No point in telling him about the twenty straight away, he’d want the lot off the bat. ‘Soon as I deliver, the ten grand goes to you, leaves us clean on the, y’know, delivery.’

‘First off,’ he said, ‘that delivery was needed for tonight, I was specific on that. And I was guaranteed. So there’s penalties.’

‘I know all that.’

‘Yeah? So how’re you going to pay that off, you’re up the
fucking
Swannee on ten grand worth of product? And where the fuck,’ he said, ‘is Jimmy?’

‘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.