Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) (32 page)

Maria shushed Bear a couple of times when he whined at being forced to lie doggo in the well behind the front seats, but
otherwise
she didn’t speak again until we’d cleared the town and were heading out along the lake shore, the road meandering through a tunnel of trees. We passed Dooney Rock.

In shock, I supposed. I couldn’t blame her. First I’m cracking Toto over the head and waving his gun around. And then, we open the boot, there’s Jimmy drenched in blood.

I’d never paid much attention in school, but now I was
wishing
I’d paid none at all. So I wouldn’t know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

I could dump the car, sure, and run, take Saoirse Hamilton’s twenty grand and never look back. No Ben to keep me here now.

Except that’d leave Herb to face Toto. Dee, too.

No. We were playing for keeps now, going all the way.

I reached Herb’s print-out from the dashboard, Gillick’s place Google-mapped, gave it to Maria. Told her we had a pit stop to make before we headed for Knock. I was expecting her to protest but all she said was, ‘He was smuggling those paintings out,
wasn
’t he?’

Grit under her nails as she sifted Finn’s clay feet.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘they do say it’ll be an export-led recovery that’ll dig us out of recession.’

‘You think he stole them?’ she said.

‘I’d say he was given them.’

‘You mean, like, donations to charity.’

‘Something like that, yeah. Keep an eye on the map.’

We came up on Slish Wood, Maria following the red line with a forefinger. ‘Looks like the second left after this,’ she said.

I turned off the main road, up a narrow rutted lane and into a forest of pines. A steep incline. I dropped down into second, then first. Maria balled the map, tossed it on the floor.

‘Don’t get carried away,’ I said. ‘We might need that yet.’

‘We’re going to Gillick’s, right?’

‘Yeah.’

She’d been before, with Finn, a couple of times. Barbecues and long boozy summer evenings on the decking overlooking the lake. ‘What are we doing here?’ she said.

‘Jimmy reckons Gillick was the one told him Ben was in
hospital
. I want to know how he knew.’

‘What will that achieve?’

‘Depends on how Gillick knew.’

The Phaeton bounced down and out of a pothole and set the crutches a-rattle on the back seat. A dull bellow followed. Toto, feeling his chops. I reached over and punched the stereo on, was more than a little surprised to hear the delicate, unadorned
tinkling
of a piano. Schubert, I thought. I’d have had Jimmy down as a guitar man, Metallica, maybe some Led Zep if he was going old school.

We crested the summit, a razor-backed ridge in the pines. There the lane branched, the right tine curving away and down through the trees to run parallel with the ridge.

‘Straight ahead,’ she said.

We were high above a lake shaped like a crooked finger, maybe half a mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide,
nestled
in a steep-sided valley velvet with pine.

I pulled over, put the handbrake on. Found Jimmy’s phone and brought up his list of contacts, scrolled down, jabbed the one called ‘Fat Man’.

It rang twice, and then Gillick came on. ‘Where are you?’

‘It’s Rigby.’

‘Oh?’

‘Jimmy’s driving, asked me to ring ahead. Says we’re coming in.’

‘And not before time.’

‘He says we have the laptop, wants to be sure it’s all clear.’

‘Clear?’

‘He doesn’t want to fetch up with the Mac if there’s anyone else there.’

‘Why would anyone else be here?’

I covered the phone with my hand, repeated the question, then said, ‘He says there’s no harm in being careful.’

‘Indeed. Be so good as to put Jimmy on, Mr Rigby.’

‘Okay, hold on. Jimmy? Gillick wants to talk to you.’

I hung up.

‘This won’t bring him back,’ she said.

I wasn’t sure if she meant Finn or Ben.

‘Not the point,’ I said.

‘But you are going in there to kill him.’

I thought about quoting her some Shakespeare, the bit about how we first kill all the lawyers, but the time for cheap cracks was long gone.

‘I want to know who ran us off the road,’ I said, ‘who made that call. If it was Gillick, then yeah, I’m going to kill him. You want to step out, do it now. But here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘You believe Saoirse’s the one who killed Finn, walked him out onto that ledge, gave him the nudge, okay. But she couldn’t have worked him, had the kind of leverage she’d need, if Gillick wasn’t backing her every step of the way. He’s the legal eagle pulling all the strings. And that night at the PA, according to Saoirse, he was there to tell Finn to kick you into touch.’

Her throat tightened. She chucked Bear under the chin. ‘Drive on,’ she said.

I knocked the car out of gear but kept my foot on the brake as we bumped and jolted down what was starting to look a lot like the dry bed of a waterfall. The pines began to thin out. Soon we emerged into a clearing that sloped down to the edge of a cliff. The lane veered sharply to the right into a sheltered parking area of loosely packed rough stone, where I reversed and turned, pointing the Phaeton back the way we’d come. The only thing to spoil the view was a low wood-frame bungalow squatting near the edge of the cliff.

‘Maybe I should come in,’ she said. A dry rasp in her throat.

‘Hear what Gillick has to say for himself.’

‘See no evil,’ I said, ‘do no time.’

‘I’ll take my chances.’

‘Except you’re taking chances for two now,’ I said. ‘So you don’t have the right to make that kind of call anymore.’

‘I need to know. About Finn, what he was really planning.’

‘I appreciate that, sure. But—’

‘Swear on Ben,’ she said. Husky now. ‘Swear you’ll ask him.’

‘I’ll ask, yeah.’

‘
Swear
it.’

I swore. Then I gave her the Beretta, on the off-chance Toto managed to kick his way out of the boot.

‘I’m not asking you to shoot him,’ I said. ‘If he gets out, fire off a shot and make for the trees. He won’t come after you knowing you’re tooled up. Okay?’

It wasn’t okay, not by any reasonably civilised standards, but she nodded.

I got out, crossed the parking area and strolled around to the front of the bungalow. Except it wasn’t a bungalow. The house had been built into the hill, its frontage split-level, the upper half all glass. Decking ran the full length of the house and was
probably
exhausted by the time it disappeared around the far corner.

The sun was warm on my back as I climbed the wooden steps, the smell of fresh pine sharp and clean. Birds chirped and
whittered
. Below on the lake, two small islands shimmered in the haze. Then I stepped up onto the porch and saw Gillick, a napkin tucked between his third and fourth chins. He wore a pale blue short-sleeved shirt open at the neck, knee-length shorts, a dainty pair of deck shoes. Given the amount of flabby flesh on view, it was akin to arriving at Jeremiah Johnson’s cabin to find Jabba the Hutt claiming squatter’s rights.

‘Ah,’ he purred, ‘the elusive Mr Rigby. Would you be so kind as to join me?’

He beckoned me on and turned without waiting to see if I’d do his bidding. I followed him inside and down a glassed-in
walkway
that ran parallel with the decking outside, the wall on our right defaced at regular intervals by examples of what can go wrong when a man is given too much paint and not enough sex. At the end of the corridor he turned into an office-cum-
conservatory
with a large walnut-wood desk near the wood-panelled back wall, a two-piece leather suite angled to face the desk, two filing cabinets standing sentinel either side of the desk. On the desk sat a Mac Pro, a printer and a tidy version of the usual office clutter, loose pens and a block of Post-Its, a yellow legal pad defaced with doodles. A crystal-cut ashtray, on which was perched a cigar the cops would be requisitioning if the truncheon factory ever burned down. The shelves behind the desk were lined with legal tomes bound in green leather and nary a cracked spine to be seen.

‘That night at the PA,’ I said, just to be conversational. ‘What was this favour you wanted to do Finn?’

He held up a hand without looking around, the forefinger extended, beckoning me on again. I expected him to turn into the office but instead he kept going, plodding ahead into the
conservatory
. There a small dining table sat before the floor-to-ceiling window offering an expansive view of the lake below, the ridge beyond tinged ruddy as the sun dipped for home. He went around the table and eased his bulk down into the chair. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘sit down. Make yourself comfortable.’

The .38 was digging into my spine standing up, so I passed. He’d already eaten, the dirty plate pushed to one side to make room for a couple of smaller plates of grapes and crackers and what looked like a spectacularly whiffy brie. A large cafetière sat filled to the brim with hot nectar, but he reached for the bottle of red, topped up his glass. That he slid across the table towards me, then sloshed some more wine into the coffee cup.

‘No sense in standing on ceremony,’ he said. ‘Will you join me?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ I said. The howls of protest from my belly were the screams of the damned. ‘Just tell me about Finn and this favour.’

‘At least have some coffee. It’s freshly brewed.’ He was
slathering
brie onto a cracker. ‘Colombian, the real McCoy. Have you ever had the pleasure? In Colombia they say it’s a better hit than cocaine. Not,’ he gave a cute smile, ‘that I’d know.’

‘If you’re waiting for Jimmy, he won’t be coming.’

He’d taken a bite of cracker and brie, so his ‘No?’ came
muffled
. He swallowed. ‘Why so?’

‘He’s indisposed.’

‘Really.’

‘Ring him,’ I said.

His eyes were thoughtful, reassessing, as he stared. Then he dabbed at the corners of his mouth with the napkin, picked up his phone. Pressed a button. After a moment or two, the faint strains of ‘Live and Let Die’ wafted up from under the table. I reached into my pocket, took out Jimmy’s phone and hit the answer button. ‘This is Jimmy,’ I said. ‘I’m fucked four ways to next Tuesday. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you. On Tuesday.’

I hung up and put the phone away. Gillick, nodding, laid his own phone on the table, picked up the other half of the
cracker-and
-brie, then had second thoughts and put it down again. ‘It would appear,’ he said, ‘that events have taken an unexpected turn.’

‘Jimmy said you wanted a chat with Grainne. She couldn’t make it. I’m here instead.’

‘Indeed you are. Larger than life and twice as resourceful.’

‘Just pang-wangling along, happy as a sandboy.’

He smiled at that, a tired and cynical smile that fumbled for purchase on his greasy lips. ‘Shall we proceed to business, then?’

‘Let’s do that.’

‘Very well.’ He drained the wine and then reached for the cafetière, poured a cup of coffee. This time he made no offers. He got up and carried the coffee through to the office, put it down on the desk and went straight to the framed nightmare on the wall behind, this one an impressionistic take on spaghetti
meatballs
or a grenade in the guts. I was ready to go, standing
sideways
on, hand hovering near my hip in case he came up with some hardware, but when he turned he was holding nothing more sinister than a brown envelope.

He tossed it onto my side of the desk, then lowered his bulk into the leather swivel chair. ‘I am authorised by Mrs Hamilton to pay the agreed fee for retrieving Finn’s computer,’ he said. ‘You’ll find twenty thousand euro in that.’

I picked up the envelope, had a peek inside. Disappointed at how slim a bundle was twenty grand cash. I slid it out, balled the envelope, dropped it on the floor.

‘We’ll consider this a deposit,’ I said, holding up the twenty grand. ‘Ring Saoirse, tell her the fee’s changed. I’ll be wanting one-point-eight million.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘I’ll also be wanting to know what it is on the Mac she’s so desperate to find.’

‘But Mr Rigby.’ He seemed genuinely outraged. ‘That deal was made in good faith.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘Well, yes, it is.’

‘So what kind of faith was it that had Jimmy scoping out Finn’s apartment when I was picking up the laptop?’

His lips flattened. ‘That was simply a case of Mrs Hamilton protecting her investment.’

‘You’re saying, she didn’t trust me not to bunk off with the Mac. Dig into it, maybe, find out why she really wants it back. Put the squeeze on.’

He’d had enough of being lectured by the undeserving poor. He leaned back in his chair, crossed one flabby calf over the other, joined his hands on his paunch. ‘It is not my place, Mr Rigby, to question Mrs Hamilton’s motives. And now that she has
commissioned
you to provide a service, neither is it yours.’

‘You want me to remember my place.’

‘I want you to focus on what you are doing here.’

‘What I’m mainly doing here,’ I said, ‘is getting ready to put a bullet in your fat fucking face.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard.’

He had, but he’d heard it all before. The kind of defendants Gillick specialised in, that line was probably something of a negotiating tactic, an opening gambit to keep him on his toes. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘I’d imagine the idea was for me to do the dirty bit, the
break-and
-enter, truck the laptop and young Grainne out here. Then Jimmy’d step in, swipe the Mac, turn me out. Where am I going to go, the cops?’

‘That’s a rather lurid leap to make, Mr Rigby.’

‘Meanwhile, you’re having a cosy chat with Grainne about the trust fund, the one-point-eight mil. Trying to persuade her that now is not the time to go making drastic decisions, that she’s a
little
fucked up, not thinking straight. Best to leave these things to the grown-ups, for now anyway. Am I anywhere close?’