‘We are moving outwardly respectable Irish people into council estates. They will live as members of those communities until such time as we need them to do our work for us. These people are called sleepers, and your lot seem to be in a fucking coma these days because we haven’t heard anything from or about them for months! Now we have paid you a lot of money for this venture and suddenly you’re shafting us. We want to know the score.’
Derrick O’Hare was not scared of much, it wasn’t in his nature, but the IRA scared even him.
Eamonn carried on talking, knowing he had the man on the hop and wanting to keep up the pressure.
‘The reason I am here as opposed to one of the IRA big shots is because my London accent will go unnoticed, whereas an Irish accent in London is noted now and listened to. If one of the main men has to come over, you’re a fucking dead man, O’Hare. Now where is the money and what’s happening with the sleepers?’
Derrick had let the Cause go in recent months, mainly because he was bored with the whole situation. When he had first taken it all on it had been exciting and a lucrative money spinner. He had taken their money, set up the deal, and then gone on to bigger and better things - namely, financing the London takeover. Now he had to pay the piper and wasn’t sure how he was supposed to do that. Nor was he sure exactly what the Irish and Americans wanted of him now.
‘I’ve had a few problems meself,’ he temporised. ‘I’m in the middle of a big deal here and I have to oversee it personally. Once that’s sorted out, I’ll be back on top form with everyone.’
Brought up in an Anglo-Irish household, and having never been to Southern Ireland, let alone the North, he found the whole concept of an undercover army not only juvenile but mad. The British Army would soon rout them all out and that would be that, surely? Until then, he would appear to toe the line. The British Army had tanks, they had bombs, they had manpower. It was only a matter of time before this lot were banjaxed and either dead or locked up.
Eamonn picked up a newspaper and placed it on the table between them. ‘How come you didn’t know about this?’
Derrick saw a photograph of two people being led out of a small redbrick house. There were coats over their heads and a heavy caption above crying out:
IRA arms cache found in Liverpool council house
.
‘That was yesterday’s
Daily Mirror
. Even you must have heard of that. It’s the biggest news story about at the moment.’
That O’Hare was stunned was evident; that he didn’t really know what was going on in his own back yard was beyond Eamonn’s comprehension.
‘Like I say, I have other things on my mind at the moment,’ he said, trying to shrug it off. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t have avoided that happening. Even you must see that much.’
Eamonn leant across the small rickety table and hissed: ‘You should have known about that within minutes of its happening. We would have had lawyers and men from the Cause shouting about police corruption, framing, and anything else we could use to take the heat off. Instead we had to read about it like everyone else. Now you listen to me, O’Hare, and you listen fucking good. There’s some big arses on the line and yours is the fucking biggest. The IRA even frighten the fucking Mafia. Take it from me because I know that from first-hand experience. A small-time Liverpool wanker means nothing to them. Fuck all.’
Derrick O’Hare was having trouble swallowing his pride. All he wanted to do was take Eamonn Docherty, his handsome face and thick well-cut hair, and throttle the life out of him. That was Derrick’s answer to everything. But in the back of his mind was the memory of the £750,000 the IRA had paid him. He wanted to keep that money at all costs.
‘These things happen,’ he muttered lamely. ‘I couldn’t have stopped the police from raiding that house.’
Eamonn shook his head in disbelief. ‘The money you were paid was so you could fund a few good informants in the local and national police! On a local level, you could have found out what was going down and we could have moved the people out overnight - before the neighbours knew anything, before the filth knew anything. Instead they’re awaiting a trip to prison for a seriously long time. Now I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing aggravates the life out of me and mine. In New York you’d be hung, drawn and fucking quartered for that, and the same is usual in Belfast. Now it looks as if you might find it also happens in London. Because outside this room there are men waiting to escort you to your final fucking resting place.’
Knocking on the table top loudly, he summoned two large men into the room.
Derrick O’Hare was in a state of shock and it showed. His mouth was hanging open.
‘From today, you’re an ex-criminal and an ex-human being. All your assets are now ours and all your men are now ours.’
Derrick O’Hare, psychopath and gang boss, stared at Eamonn Docherty as if he had never seen him before. ‘You’re joking?’
Eamonn laughed contemptuously. ‘What’s to joke about? You fucked up big time. Now you have to pay the price.’
He walked out of the Café Central in broad daylight but Derrick O’Hare was not seen again for one week. Then only his head and his left hand came to light.
Lottie took her own life shortly after his few remains were found.
Lee Bonham was still speeding and still impatient. He knew the word on the street about Joey, also that the Irish had a few big wigs in town and had disposed of O’Hare. He also knew he was privy to information that even the British Government couldn’t get hold of. It was a professional thing. He was tipped the wink by an old mate of his in the same line of work.
Lee had broken a cardinal rule and arranged a meet with the Irish connection, as he referred to Eamonn Docherty.
They met in a small pub called the Peterboat in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, where they talked surrounded by day-trippers and locals, all enjoying a quiet Sunday drink. Both were dressed casually and looked for all the world just like every one else around them. But their conversation would have blown the mind of any eavesdropper.
‘I had to kill Joey because it was a job,’ Lee began. ‘Nothing personal like, I hear he was a good man. But then again, they all are. This is my business. If ever you needed my services, I’d extend you the same courtesy I did O’Hare. Except I hear O’Hare upset a lot of people, including the Irish. Now I can’t tell you how I came by this information, but the fact you’re here shows me I’m right, don’t it? See, I never did get paid for that job. You took O’Hare out a bit too sharpish for me. But I hear you’re interested in anything to do with his business. I can fill you in on all you need to know, for a price - that price being the twenty grand I was to have been paid for taking out Joey. Now do we have a deal or not?’
Eamonn was impressed by the thin man before him. He knew Lee was speeding faster than an express train and yet a lot of hitters did the same thing. They said the speed gave them an added edge.
‘I’ll see what you have to say before I decide if it’s worth twenty grand, OK? I can’t be fairer than that.’
Lee shrugged and gulped at his lager shandy. The speed always made his mouth dryer than a buzzard’s crotch, as he’d freely tell anyone who’d listen. Then he launched forth on his story.
‘As you probably know, O’Hare was after the West End, that’s why he wanted Joey’s demise. Now Tommy Pasquale will want to shake your hand because he’s been after O’Hare himself and had already set up a hit. What Tommy seems to have forgotten for the moment is that his father hid a lot of money for the bullion robbers - remember that robbery in the late sixties? Well, all the blokes involved are still banged up and keeping stumm. Joey was an old-style villain. He knew where the bullion was hidden but he kept it to himself and never once dipped into it. He knew that once the market was flooded with gold, there’d be a national enquiry. When the gang was released, then they could do what the fuck they liked and pay him for his silence. You see, when they were caught and convicted, they had to get word to someone to hide the stuff properly. Believe it or not, it was in a warehouse in fucking Norfolk for all that time.’
Lee laughed at the farcical situation.
‘A little old lady had rented it to them for a fiver a fucking week. She didn’t give a toss about what was in it, it was just a few quid to her on top of her pension. It was her old man’s scrap yard, see. Anyway, the rub is word got to Joey and he had the stuff moved. Only he knew where it was. He didn’t even trust a contact to take word to the men inside. “Careless talk costs lives”, and all that old wartime crap, I suppose. Anyway, they all trusted him. They had to.
‘Well, when one of them was banged up in Durham nick and under the influence of a bit of the old wacky baccy, he tells a face. The face tells O’Hare and O’Hare puts two and two together and decides he wants London and the bullion. What he didn’t do, though, was find out off Joey where the bullion actually was. He killed Joey, then went out to the Essex marshes and looked for the stuff. It wasn’t there. It’s actually hidden near there, O’Hare was on the ball in some ways, but you see he listened to one of Joey’s close companions, a bloke called Hemmings from Ilford. Hemmings, thinking he was on a touch, told O’Hare he thought the bullion was on the marshes. A lot of people thought that. Everyone knew Pasquale had hidden the bullion. For the record, my money’s on Aveley Lakes of Tilbury. But either way, it don’t matter, does it? Because no one is going to have the balls to touch it.
‘The blokes who nicked it ain’t cunts and they’re getting out one day, you can bank on that. I wouldn’t fancy them coming after me, no matter how much dosh I had. Let’s face it, that’s all they’re going to think about, ain’t it? Getting out, getting their stuff and getting on with lives that’ve been tragically foreshortened by the British judicial system. I bet even the fucking judge will shit himself the day that lot is released. But I digress.’
He took a large swallow of his drink and lit a Marlboro before continuing.
‘The only person left who knows where the stuff is located is Tommy Pasquale, and that prat O’Hare should have allowed for that fact. I thought Tommy would be hit the same day, so father and son were out of the way. Apparently O’Hare decided otherwise. Maybe he thought Tommy was a wanker, I don’t know. What I do know is Tommy Pasquale is a worthy successor to his father and will not be best pleased that you beat him to the job of killing the Scouser. Still, saying that, he’ll still want to shake your hand, I suppose. I know I would.
‘The only other person who might know the location is a face called Desrae. Joey Pasquale, married man and father, was also a shirtlifter in his spare time. Desrae is his boyfriend-cum-girlfriend. They recently opened a club in Wardour Street for rich men of a like persuasion. In other words, big wigs who like men in big wigs.’
Lee laughed at his own joke and carried on.
‘Tommy wasn’t trashed at his dad’s boyfriend. They get on well apparently. She, he or
it
also took in a little bird called Cathy Connor some years ago . . .’
As he felt his arm grabbed by Eamonn, Lee knocked his drink to the floor, the glass shattering and making everyone stare at them. It seemed to Eamonn to take an age for the barmaid to sweep up the glass, replenish their drinks and make her way back to the bar to start serving again.
‘Cathy Connor? What’s she look like? How old is she?’
Eamonn’s voice was low and upset. Lee Bonham realised he had stumbled on a piece of information that the man was definitely interested in.
‘She’s a blonde, about twenty or so. Nice little bird, big blue eyes and great big tits. But she ain’t on the game or nothing like that. She runs the bar with this Desrae and is quite respectable. Joey looked on her as a daughter, he really loved her. Like Desrae was the mum and he was the dad. What a weird fucking set-up, eh! But all that aside, they took good care of her. She lives with Desrae in a small flat in Soho - in Greek Street, I think. I hear she’s a right little madam in her own way. Don’t take no truck from anyone. But with Joey behind her, she wouldn’t, would she? I mean, he was heavy muscle, eh?’
Eamonn shrugged, apparently recovered. ‘Evidently O’Hare didn’t think he was that heavy.’
Lee grinned. ‘Whatever O’Hare thought is a bit fucking academic now, isn’t it?’
‘How do you know so much about everything?’
‘My job is specialist, see. There’s only a few of us and we tend to get told things in the course of our work. I mean, we have to be as trustworthy as the grave, don’t we? So we find that people talk to us a bit more fluently than they’d talk to other people. It’s funny, you know, but people try and justify the killing to me and to themselves. I don’t have no allegiance to any particular gang of people. I kill anyone, anywhere, any time.’
Eamonn smiled. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. And I’ll see you get your twenty grand.’
Lee nodded happily. ‘Another beer?’
Eamonn shook his head and grinned. ‘I’ll have a large Scotch.’
‘Have what you like, it’s your round,’ the other man joked. ‘I’m just going for a piss.’
Laughing genuinely, Eamonn went to the bar and got the round in. He liked Lee Bonham - there was an honesty about him that was rather refreshing.
Cathy made Desrae another coffee and laced it liberally with brandy. In the weeks since Joey’s death Desrae had gravitated between extreme melancholia and euphoric happiness as he tried to convince himself that Joey wasn’t really dead. Cathy knew that it would take the funeral to put it all in perspective for him.
All she could do was listen and try to be a shoulder to cry on for her old mate.
She had cooked him meals, made him eat and forced him to put on make-up and wig. The police and press had finally left them alone and they were relying on Tommy to keep others away.
People meant well, but it was wearing listening to them all enthusing about Joey and it upset Desrae who had really loved him.