Slaughter's hound

25

I wondered if my new eye-patch would stir up some memories of Big Bob’s piratical mien but Saoirse Hamilton was polite enough not to comment when she received me on the balcony of a morning room adjacent to her bedroom. Or maybe, consumed with grief, or not generally disposed to noticing the little people, it just didn’t register. She wore a lilac peignoir, the rustles of sleep in her face and hair giving her the blowsy appearance of a prosperously retired madam.

The drop beyond the low pillared wall fell sheer to the crooked black teeth of an inlet a hundred feet or so below, so I retreated to the wicker armchair angled towards her own, propped my feet on the low wall. It was some view. The sun was crowning gold on the horizon, the air already balmy, and depending on how I tilted my head I could have watched a corona gild Queen Maeve’s grave on Knocknerea, the Atlantic take on a patina of silvery leaf or Saoirse Hamilton’s cleavage blush a rosy hue. Not being a man for nature in the raw, I focused on the coffee she was pouring.

She dropped two lumps into the bowl without asking if I was sweet enough already and handed it across. I stirred and sipped and closed my eyes. It was probably the finest coffee I’d ever tasted.

‘You’re not Greek,’ she said.

I opened my eyes again. ‘I never said I was.’

‘I mean, Mr Rigby, that you come bearing no gifts.’

‘Ah, right. Classical.’

She lit a menthol More, easing back into her seat and settling her bowl of coffee on her midriff, so I had to look twice to be sure it wasn’t her cleavage that was steaming. ‘Why so?’ she said.

‘When I spoke with you yesterday I thought I had what you wanted.’

‘Finn’s suicide note. Let’s not be coy.’

‘Fair enough. It was actually a passport with five grand cash inside.’

She held up her bowl in both hands, so that she could sip from it without taking her eyes off mine. She thought I was lying, was waiting for the tell, some flinch, for me to brush my nose or look away. So I blinked, grazed a forefinger across my nose and glanced out at the sunrise, just to see where it might take us.

‘But if Finn was planning to …’ She heard the words she was about to say. Her wince was practically audible, the Botox skreek of tectonic plates grinding. ‘You told me,’ she said in a firm voice, ‘that Finn had plans to travel. To Cyprus.’

‘What I said was, he was moving there. To live. But it’s not just the passport.’

‘Yes?’

‘The cops want to know why it’s a fake.’

‘A fake?’

‘It’s that or he stole Philip Byrne’s passport, stuck his own mugshot inside.’

She flapped some eyelash so hard that a hurricane started to brew in Brazil. ‘But why would Finn need a fake passport?’

‘At a wild guess, I’d say he wanted to travel incognito.’ I swallowed off the last of the coffee, put the bowl down on the hardwood table. I’d resisted long enough but I hadn’t had a smoke in over eight hours, so I filched a menthol More, sparked it up with her dinky gold Cartier. It didn’t exactly taste like mint-roasted cowpat, but it was close.

‘Mrs Hamilton,’ I said, ‘let’s just accept at this point that when it comes to Finn and why he did what he did, I know nothing. What’s bugging me is that he stashed the passport where someone was bound to find it eventually.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’

‘That makes two of us. I’m just saying, you should mention that to the cops. They don’t seem to think it’s all that important.’

‘Why should they?’

‘Well,’ I exhaled hard, ‘mainly because they feature me for pushing Finn out the window. So I’d appreciate it if we could crack on with this job you have in mind, because there’s a good chance that I’m under arrest at the moment, technically speaking, and I don’t have a lot of time to play with.’

But I’d lost her at window, the full lips pursing into a cat’s-bum pucker. ‘How dare you,’ she began, but by then I was waving the More around to distract her, a Yoda-sized lightsaber.

‘I didn’t push anyone anywhere,’ I said, ‘and I don’t do poetry either. It’s late, I’m knackered, and I’ve more to worry about than whether Finn bit the big one or wafted off into the ether on angels’ downy wings. I’m here because you want me to do a job. So just tell me what it is and how much it pays and we’ll see how it goes from there.’

She bridled, quivered and damn near danced a Cuban hokey-cokey. ‘You haven’t the manners you were born with,’ she hissed.

‘True enough, but I’m guessing etiquette isn’t a prerequisite for this work you need done. So what is it you want?’

She simmered a while. I dunked the More in the coffee bowl. The fizz-spit seemed to bring her back. She sat forward and placed her own bowl on the table, flicked some silk and lace into a froth while she gathered her thoughts.

‘One prerequisite,’ she said, sounding starch, ‘would be an ability to actually deliver on your promise. Regardless of what it was you found in Finn’s studio, you singularly failed to bring it to me. As you said you would.’

‘Yeah, well, that had a lot to do with being rammed off the road and being hauled in by the cops. Next time I’ll be what they call forewarned, keep a weather eye out for the deus trying on his machina shit.’

‘Yes, the Guards. Why do you say you are technically under arrest?’

‘I said I might be, but I don’t know. The boys don’t believe I was rammed. So they’re thinking, a one-car accident, I was probably drink-driving, on drugs. Right now they’re waiting for the blood tests to come back.’

‘They didn’t breathalyse you?’

‘I was out for four hours, maybe more. And they’d have needed my permission to go poking around in my mouth.’

‘Should I ask if you were under the influence?’

‘Ask away. But time’s a-wasting.’

She took her time lighting another menthol and didn’t offer one across. I took one anyway, snapped off the filter, beckoned for the Cartier. When she handed it over I knew she was in deep schtuck. Desperate enough, at least, to take a one-eyed desperado into her confidence.

‘Finn had a laptop computer,’ she said. ‘It belongs to Hamilton Holdings. I’d like very much for it to be retrieved.’

‘From his apartment?’

She inclined her head.

‘What’s the catch?’ I said.

‘There is no catch.’

‘On a repo gig, there’s always a catch.’

‘Perhaps some people are more prone to being caught than others.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m one of the happy few.’

‘Then it’s just as well there is no catch in this particular instance.’

‘I take it we’re talking the same fee.’

An eyebrow ripped free of its Botox moorings. ‘Ten thousand euro? To retrieve a laptop?’

‘Sounds a bit excessive, I know, but if we’re talking break-and-enter, well, that’s illegal. And the cops don’t much like my face as it is.’

‘You won’t be breaking and entering.’ She reached into the side pocket of her robe and placed a key-ring on the table. There were two keys attached. ‘The apartment also belongs to Hamilton Holdings. Finn just lives there.’ She choked down a tiny hedgehog, compressed her lips. ‘Lived there.’

‘And you can’t send Simon because …’

‘My reasons are my own.’

‘The main one being, I’d imagine, that you don’t want Maria to know you have Finn’s laptop.’

Something Arctic seeped into the Aegean-blue eyes. ‘That would be one benefit, yes.’

‘So just to clarify. You’re not paying me to break in and steal, you’re paying me to make it look that way.’

‘Correct.’

‘Okay. What’re the other reasons?’

‘They are none of your business, Mr Rigby, and I’ll thank you to keep your impertinence in check.’

I grinned. ‘Impertinence, Mrs Hamilton, is a fundamental characteristic of the human condition. You should brush up on your Milton.’

Red spots appeared high over her cheekbones. Anger, I was guessing, turning the Botox to lava. ‘Ten thousand euro is a substantial sum, Mr Rigby. Will you provide the service required or not?’

‘Absolutely, yeah. Once I know I’m not someone’s stooge.’

‘But if you believe I am trying to manipulate you,’ she said tartly, ‘then how could I possibly convince you otherwise?’

‘A few questions should do it.’

‘You’re really in no position to-’

‘What, interrogate my betters? Sorry, but that lark went out with rack-rents and the slow boat to Van Diemen’s Land.’

I couldn’t tell if it was the rack-rents or Van Diemen’s Land but something cut where it counts. She executed a class of reclining flounce, then went through the old routine of rearranging the silk and lace. ‘What questions?’ she said.

I struggled up out of the leather recliner and went and sat on the balcony wall, a strategic move designed to occupy the high ground and force her to look up at me as she answered. A bad idea. The surf swirled and swushed around the black rocks far below, spraying up on the little boathouse perched out on the point. A dizzying fall even if you hadn’t given blood a couple of hours before, a one-eye perspective skewing your depth of vision.

‘First off,’ I said, squirming, ‘Gillick reckons you knew he was up in the PA with Finn before he jumped. True?’

‘Yes.’

‘On your behalf?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

She was still having trouble with my insubordinate attitude. The words came short, clipped and damn near pedicured. ‘Mr Gillick was there in his capacity as solicitor for Hamilton Holdings. He was authorised to employ whatever method he felt was appropriate to convince Finn he was making a mistake.’

‘Authorised by you.’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought you said Finn wasn’t entitled to sell the PA.’

‘He wasn’t.’

‘So what was his mistake?’

‘I think we both know the answer to that, Mr Rigby.’

‘Maria.’

She nodded.

‘So Gillick was there,’ I said, ‘to tell Finn dump Maria.’

‘Crudely put, but correct.’

‘Appropriate method. What does that mean?’

‘Exactly what it says.’

‘A bribe?’

‘It would certainly have been in Finn’s interests not to marry that woman.’

‘His financial interests.’

‘Among others.’

‘Such as?’

She looked away and down, to where she was rubbing the lacy hem between her fingers. ‘I believe you have a son, Mr Rigby.’

‘Go on.’

‘No doubt you want the best for him.’

‘Sure.’

‘Then surely you can appreciate why I felt the same way about Finn.’

‘Finn believed Maria was the best thing for him.’

She was shaking her head even before I said her name. ‘She wanted to take him away, Mr Rigby. To Cyprus. The north coast of Cyprus, to be precise, a poverty-stricken hell-hole run by Russian gangsters. Where my grandchildren would eventually sink into penury while she squandered Finn’s inheritance on her whims and fancies.’

‘And the noble Hamilton name goes down the tubes.’

‘You betray yourself, Mr Rigby. Reverse snobbery is every bit the vice of its mirror image. And is it really such a crime to hope that your grandchildren might enjoy a superior quality of life?’

‘I don’t suppose it is. But maybe that’s why Finn was bailing out.’

A flash of something lethal in the azure eyes, a bolt from the blue so vicious it damn near toppled me off the wall. Then she glanced away, bowed her head. ‘Sit down, please, Mr Rigby. Looking up at you is giving me a pain in the neck.’

I swallowed the quip, settled into the wicker armchair again. She pointed out across the bay, all the way to Queen Maeve’s grave on Knocknerea. Gilded now, shimmering. Not a cloud in the sky. It was going to be another scorcher.

‘Do you know your local history, Mr Rigby? I’m asking specifically about Queen Maeve.’

‘I’ve heard of her, yeah.’

‘An iron woman. Fierce.’

‘Dead, I’m told.’

She nodded. ‘Dead this two thousand years and more,’ she said, ‘and yet here we are, still talking about her.’

She was, anyway. ‘And Finn, you’re saying, doesn’t get it.’

‘Finn, as we know, was always prone to overreacting. He had panic attacks as a boy, did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t know that. Look, Mrs Hamilton-’

‘This is an old country, Mr Rigby. There are passage tombs up on the hills of Carrowkeel and their stones gone mossy long before the pyramids were built. There were Greeks sailing into Sligo Bay when Berlin was still a fetid swamp in some godforsaken forest. Take a detour off our shiny new roads and you’ll find yourself in a labyrinth, because no Roman ever laid so much as a foundation brick on this island. Hibernia, they called it.’ A wry smile. ‘Winterland.’

‘Well, the roads run straight enough now.’

‘Indeed. Irish tyres hissing slick on the sweat of the German taxpayer, who will tell you that he has paid for every last yard of straight road built here in the last forty years. You know,’ she said, ‘there have always been those who turned their back on Brussels and Frankfurt, and not everyone who professes to ourselves alone is a Sticky or a Shinner. But I could never understand that. I quite liked the idea that Herr Fritz was spreading around his Marshall Plan largesse to buy himself some badly needed friends.’ She shrugged. Her voice gone dead and cold, as if she spoke from inside a tomb. ‘Perhaps I was wrong. Herr Shylock has returned demanding his pound of flesh, and it appears he is charging blood debt rates. Straight roads, certainly, and more suicides in the last year than died in traffic accidents.’

‘It won’t last,’ I said. ‘Nothing ever does.’

A hard flash of perfect teeth. ‘My point entirely, Mr Rigby. I’m told that the latest from Frankfurt is that our German friends are quietly pleased that the Irish are not Greeks, that we take our medicine with a pat on the head. No strikes, no burning of the bondholders, or actual banks. Apparently they’re a little contemptuous, telling one another as they pass the latest Irish budget around the Reichstag for approval that we have been conditioned by eight hundred years of oppression to perfect that very Irish sleight of hand, to tug the forelock even as we hold out the begging bowl.

‘They are children, Mr Rigby, our German friends. Conditioned themselves, since Charlemagne, to believe want and need are the same instinct. Hardwired to blitzkrieg and overreach, to forget the long game, the hard lessons of harsh winters bogged down in foreign lands.’ Tremulous now. Not the first time she’d delivered this speech. ‘The Romans were no fools. Strangers come here to wither and die. Celt, Dane, Norman and English, they charged ashore waving their axes and swords and we gave up our blood and took the best they have, and when they sank into our bogs we burned them for heat and carved our stories from their smoke and words.’

I got the message. Big Bob was long gone and Finn couldn’t take the heat. But Saoirse Hamilton was still foursquare at the furnace, smelting away, an Iron Queen beating ploughshares back into swords.

‘I blame myself, Mr Rigby, for allowing Finn to lead something of a sheltered existence. As a result his understanding of life’s requirements weren’t always rooted, shall we say, in practical concerns.’

‘No nose for the long game.’

‘That is one way of putting it.’

‘And soft enough to let Maria scam him.’

‘I have always believed so, yes. And what you told me about this ridiculous notion of building a property empire in Northern Cyprus only confirmed my suspicions.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ I said, ‘Maria’s no con artist.’

A faint, ghastly smile. ‘A moot point now, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I might, yeah, if you weren’t offering me ten grand to rip off Finn’s laptop. What’re you worried about?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m asking,’ I said, ‘what it is you want from the laptop.’

‘I want his computer, Mr Rigby. That is what I am paying you for and all you need to know.’

‘Not good enough.’ I flipped the More out into the void and stood up, watching the tiny orange ember whirl down towards the waves. ‘You’ll be needing someone else.’

But I made no effort to leave. We stared one another down, both knowing she had no other option.

‘You haven’t already realised?’ she said eventually.

‘Obviously not.’

‘Think, Mr Rigby. Who gains from Finn’s death?’

‘Seeing as how he jumped, I’d have to say Finn.’

She brushed that one aside. ‘You have no way of knowing this, but Finn had a comprehensive life assurance policy.’

‘Which’d pay out on suicide so long as it was in place more than two years before he jumped. Except that puts you in the frame, as his next-of-kin. Finn and Maria weren’t even engaged.’

‘In theory,’ she nodded, ‘yes. But there is the not insignificant matter of Finn’s will.’

‘Of course. The will.’

The cobalt skewers glittered. She flung the coffee bowl aside, shattering it against the near wall. I really didn’t know what Saoirse Hamilton’s problem was with Finn marrying Maria. She’d have had a whale of a time at a Cypriot wedding.

I settled back on the balcony wall, folded my hands in my lap. ‘So,’ I said, ‘the will.’

She composed herself by smearing some coffee stains into the silk. Then, low, she said, ‘I have very good reason to believe that that tramp was being unfaithful to my son, Mr Rigby. And I’ll be damned if I’ll allow her to benefit from his naivety.’

‘I don’t know where you’re getting this idea that Maria was-’

‘If I find a single reference to an infidelity on his computer, even the vaguest hint, then I will deploy every resource I possess to have her charged with contributing to my son’s death. Are you satisfied?’

‘You’ll need a better lawyer than Gillick to make that one stick. I mean, even if you were to plant something on the laptop …’ I shrugged. ‘Not that I’m suggesting that the thought had occurred.’

‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I will be forced to explore other avenues.’

The threat was there. She was obviously distraught and lashing out, but even so I made a mental note to tip off Maria.

‘So that’s it,’ I said. ‘Swipe his laptop and mess the place up, make it look like a break-in.’

She inclined her head. ‘Naturally, while you are at the apartment, I would like you to see if you can locate his suicide note.’ Fainter now. ‘If it exists.’

‘Without, presumably, checking the laptop for one.’

‘Correct.’

‘And we’re saying, ten grand the lot.’

‘There is one other item.’

‘The will, sure.’

She turned the Aegean blue up full blast. ‘A gun, Mr Rigby. It belonged to Finn’s father. Finn stole it when he left home. I would like it returned.’

For some reason I thought of Hemingway, how his mother had sent him the gun his father had used to kill himself. It seemed appropriately perverse, in that brooding museum of a home, that a weapon should be considered a sentimental token.

‘What kind of gun?’

‘There will be only one.’ An acid bite to her tone. ‘Finn wasn’t in the habit of collecting firearms.’

‘The reason I ask is, if it’s a.22 for shooting crows or some shit, then fine, it’s probably licensed. Otherwise, and presuming I find it, I’d be carrying an illegal gun. Bit of a nightmare, that, if I got run off the road again.’

‘It is not licensed.’

‘Then no dice.’

‘I will double your fee.’

‘Twenty grand?’

A nod.

‘Deal.’ She made no effort to shake on it. I swiped another More, sparked it up. ‘Anything else you need? Some plutonium he has stashed away? A Chinese takeaway on my way back?’

She waved me off as if swatting flies.