Slaughter's hound

37

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 cafetiere 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 cafetiere, 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?’

‘I am the executor of Finn’s will, Mr Rigby. I would be derelict in my duty were I not to do my utmost to convince Grainne that certain decisions would not be in her best interests.’

‘The girl knows what she wants.’

‘She’s distraught, Mr Rigby. Bereaved. She and Finn were very close, you know.’

‘So she says. Close enough that he told her about the changes he made to the trust fund.’

The porcine little eyes glittered, as if he’d caught sight of a trove of truffles. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘I saw it myself.’

‘Did you, indeed?’ He sat forward and reached for the coffee and had himself a sip, the pinky finger shooting the moon. ‘And what else did you see?’

‘Not much.’

A wry smile. ‘Please, Mr Rigby. According to Jimmy you were in Finn’s apartment for approximately forty minutes. I can only assume that you found this information on the laptop.’

‘Assume again.’

‘Where else might you have seen it?’

‘That’s between me and Grainne.’

Another sip of Colombia’s finest. ‘I do hope,’ he said, ‘that you’re not taking advantage of that girl’s misfortune. It’s perfectly understandable that she’s angry right now, and disappointed, and seeking, in that unfortunate way people have, to strike out and cause others to feel a pain akin to her own. Mrs Hamilton wants only the best for Grainne, but that’s not always how-’

‘What Mrs Hamilton wants is the Mac.’

‘Well, yes, she does want her property returned. But in terms of the bigger picture, her instincts are to-’

‘And the gun.’

‘Gun?’

I reached around and untucked the.38, laid it on the table. A couple of chins wobbled as he slumped in the chair. From the expression in his eyes he was watching the trove of truffles being carted away. Then he heaved himself more or less vertical and reached for the gun.

I snaffled it back. More nodding, more chins a-wobble. A weariness to him now. ‘I can only assume,’ he said, ‘that this is why the price has jumped so exorbitantly.’

‘You’d want to rethink that whole assuming lark,’ I said. ‘It’s getting you nowhere fast. This,’ I pointed the gun at his face, ‘is here to kill you. Simple as that.’

This time I got through. Maybe it was staring down that little black hole, and maybe it was the way I said it, but he realised there was no negotiating involved, no tactics.

‘Mr Rigby,’ he said, ‘I must tell you that I’m not in any position to pay over any more money than has already been-’

‘Forget the fucking money, Gillick. This isn’t about money.’

Now he was truly at a loss. Eyes wide, mouth agape. I could almost hear the cogs whirring in the back of his head.

If it wasn’t about money, what could it possibly be?

It was fascinating to watch on a purely anthropological level. Gillick looked a lot like a squid that had found itself high and dry on a mountain peak with a sudden but somewhat vague understanding of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

To confuse him further, I lobbed the bundle of notes at his face. Notes fluttered in the air, and his instinct was to reach and grab.

By then I was halfway across the desk, landing ankle-deep in a wobbly mess of chins. We hit the floor in a tangle of leather, chrome and flailing limbs. Being about a hundred pounds lighter and feeding off a murderous rage, I was first to my knees. Yanked the chair out of the way and cracked him flush on the mouth with the butt of the.38, followed up with a left cross to his right jaw that cracked the knuckle of my little finger. I heard myself yelp. Gillick flopped back, his eyes rolling up in their sockets.

By the time he came back I’d ripped the sash-cords off the blinds and got his hands bound behind his back. No mean feat when the knuckle of your little finger has swollen to the size of a decent conker.

I clenched my left fist, felt the pain shoot up into my elbow and ricochet off into the icy core.

‘How’d you know about Ben?’ I said.

He blinked, groggy, the eyes round and owlish. ‘Wha …?’

‘Jimmy said he heard from you that my boy was in hospital. How’d you know?’

The flattened prim beak leaked blood and a couple of teeth as he half-spat, said, ‘I don’t-’

‘Slow down. You’re not thinking.’

I got up and righted the chair. Put the gun on the desk and retrieved the crystal-cut ashtray, the cigar, from where they’d landed near the filing cabinet. Then I sat down on the chair. When the cigar was glowing I leaned in and exhaled in his face.

‘Cuban,’ I said. ‘Am I right?’

‘Rigby, I know nothing about your kid.’

‘You knew enough to know he was in hospital.’

‘It was on the news, for Chrissakes. The accident.’

‘The accident, maybe. Our names were strictly under wraps.’ I took a good pull on the cigar, got the tip glowing again. Held it close to his lower lip. His eyes flared and he twisted his head away, so I singed his earlobe instead. He squealed.

‘That’s so you know I’m serious. Every time you move, you get burnt. Okay?’

He nodded.

‘Jimmy told me,’ I said, ‘that he heard it from you. So that means you called it, or whoever called it told you. Which?’

He shook his head and half-shrugged, helpless. I scooched in close, placed the tip of the cigar half an inch from his chin. His head tilted back so that he was looking into my eyes.

‘Are you religious?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Me neither. Lapsed Catholic. Still, the old learning dies hard.’ I tapped my eye-patch. ‘An eye for an eye and all that.’

‘But I don’t know-’

‘Gillick,’ I said gently, ‘there’s no cavalry coming. Jimmy’s fucked. So focus, man. It’s you and me, and I just lost my son. Which pretty much means I’ve got nothing left to live for. I don’t know, maybe that’ll pass, they say it does. But right now I don’t give a flying fuck what I do or who I do it to. Are we clear?’

We were, albeit a little too clear. Somewhere in there I’d lost him, taken away his last hope.

Do that, all you leave a man is his dignity.

The way his hands were tied it was physically impossible for him to square his shoulders. But it was there in his eyes. A sudden hardness behind the damp gleaming, as if he’d scraped through to bedrock.

‘Fuck you,’ he whispered. Then he spat a bloody gob.

He was nowhere as practised as Tohill. The gob flopped to one side, dribbled away down his cheek. I puffed on the cigar again. His jaw muscles tightened. There was pain in the post but his mind was a-swirl, drunk on dignity. Sweat glistening on his forehead.

‘Last chance,’ I said. ‘From here on in, there’s no rules.’

‘Fuck. You.’

‘Your call.’

I flexed my fist, felt the pain burn. Then I sat back and placed the cigar on the crystal-cut ashtray. Bent in again, thumbs cocked.

He started to frown before he realised what I was about. He shrieked, but by then I was already digging in.

I had no idea a man’s eye socket could be so deep. My thumb was buried to the second knuckle when I scraped back and out. His scream set the fillings in my teeth a-shiver as I puffed again on the cigar. The eyeball lay on his cheek like a wobbly marble, still attached by stringy muscle. Tears seeped out of the socket and down his cheek, under the eye. I touched the tip of the cigar against the wetness. It hissed.

‘Jesus Christ no,’ he rasped.

The coming together of a glowing ember and the vitreous substance encasing an eyeball is an unedifying sight, but I’d been expecting that. What I hadn’t factored in was the smell. It was that of a half-boiled egg jammed against a hot pan.

Twice I raised gritty blisters singeing the eyeball.

The second time he knew there’d be a third, a fourth.

‘Grainne,’ he gulped. ‘It was Grainne Hamilton.’

‘Bullfuckingshit.’

‘She heard you …’ He gasped. ‘Heard you on the phone. When you rang the hospital from … from the Grange.’

That made a kind of sense. ‘And she told you?’

A nod.

‘No way Grainne Hamilton ran anyone off the road,’ I said. ‘So who did it?’

He didn’t know. Or so he said. I had myself another pull on the cigar and he broke. Everyone does in the end. He started babbling, begging. His theory being that so long as he was talking, I wouldn’t be singeing.

It took a couple of slaps around the head to get him focused, and then I pointed the.38 at his good eye, slipped the safety off, cocked the hammer.

‘Listen good,’ I said. ‘If it wasn’t you, you don’t need to die. But I know you have a best guess.’

He did, and when it all tumbled out it sounded like I was mostly to blame for Ben’s dying, this because I’d told Saoirse Hamilton on the phone that I’d come see her after I got back from Galway, and that I already had what she was looking for.

There’s only one Galway-Sligo road. I’d been driving Finn’s Audi. The rest had been easy.

‘She thought I had Finn’s suicide note,’ I said. He closed his good eye and nodded. The raw socket mocked me, its eyelid flopping. ‘What was she so worried about?’ I said. ‘What’d she think it’d say?’

‘The safe,’ he moaned. ‘The safe.’

I got up and crossed to the painting of exploding meatballs, pushed it aside. Inside the safe were a number of slim manila envelopes of varying sizes, all blank. A small case in black velvet, inside of which was a matching necklace-and-earring set in jade.

‘What am I looking for?’ I said.

He directed me to the top right-hand corner of the rear wall, told me to feel around. ‘There’s a catch,’ he mumbled.

‘Isn’t there always?’

I slid my finger up the right side of the safe, felt a small bump. I jiggled it back and forth, up and down, then pressed hard. There came a soft click. The back wall of the safe sprung, leaving a half-inch gap. Behind was a single buff manila envelope. Inside was a blank CD in clear plastic and two pale blue Basildon Bond envelopes, one blank, the other with an address handwritten in Finn’s flowing cursive script.

Back at the desk I slipped the CD into Gillick’s laptop. When the folder popped up, I clicked it open. It contained a single document, a spreadsheet. The first page was titled ‘Irish’.

O’Leary, George: 17/3/2010 — €12k

Smyth, Val: 24/5/2010 — €14k

McCaul, Manus: 09/6/2010 — €21k

Walsh, Padraig: 11/8/2010? €8k

Callaghan, Cormac: 21/9/2010 — €11k

O’Toole, Hugh: 14/11/2010 — €17k

Byrne, Brian: 05/2/2011 — €13k

Kelly, Paul Christopher: 12/3/2011 — €9k

Flynn, Bryan: 23/3/2011 — €19k

Morris, Colin: 04/5/2011 — €12k

Carruthers, John: 27/6/2011 — €5k

O’Rourke, Laurence: 19/8/2011 — €27k

And so it ran, for almost six pages, the lists divided into various nationalities. The total topped out close to seven hundred grand.

‘Who are they,’ I said, ‘shareholders?’

‘Artists,’ he whispered.

The Fine Arte portfolio, I presumed, but as always I was just that bit behind the curve. The list did detail some of the Fine Arte portfolio, but only those artists who’d been copied, strictly one per artist, the originals sold on to private collectors, the fakes left hanging in courthouses and libraries and county council offices to gather hefty tax deductions for their philanthropic owners along with a thin film of dust.

It had been Gillick, not Finn, who’d tipped off Tohill about the scam, buying himself some credit when CAB started to squeeze.

It wasn’t fool-proof, of course. It helped that Finn had focused entirely on impressionistic takes on landscapes, but even so it depended heavily on the art world’s assessors and experts being largely incapable of differentiating between a modern masterpiece and a blurry fart.

Finn had needed Gillick for the legal side, cutting him in for a percentage. They’d left Saoirse Hamilton out of the loop. The first she’d heard of it was when the Italian art dealer with a keen eye for a blurry fart had sued for breach of contract, and the defendant pointed the finger at Fine Arte for originating the fake.

She wasn’t, to put it mildly, best pleased. It wasn’t so much the Italian suing, this on a blood-from-a-stone basis. No, Saoirse Hamilton was far more concerned about the public ridicule that would inevitably follow.

Being wiped out financially was one thing, and just about bearable so long as everyone else in the Golf Club was leveraged up the ass all the way to the tonsils and beholden to NAMA for a modest stipend to keep themselves in freshly pressed silk kimonos. But the idea that the Hamiltons were grifters, and were to be dragged through the courts as petty thieves who had preyed on the gullibility, greed and unsophisticated eye of their peers, was a social embarrassment that would deliver the coup de grace to her reputation. And all for what was, by Hamilton standards at least, chump change.

The kicker, and the reason Gillick wanted a squint at the laptop before handing it over to Saoirse, was that Gillick had taken it upon himself to invite some valued clients of his to the party. Specifically, the rootin’ tootin’ McConnell boys, who were always keen to avail of the opportunity to give a dirty wedge a nice spring-clean.

It made sense, of course, that a man of impeccable Republican credentials and sewer-level morals like Gillick would represent Ted McConnell, ex-INLA killer and bank blagger of note.

‘Now Saoirse’s pissing herself Finn made a confession in his suicide note,’ I said.

He was a pitiful sight, had there been anyone in the room capable of pity. Like an abused child baring his gritted teeth, desperately clinging to the belief that if only he could smile hard enough it would all go away. He raised a trembling hand and pointed at the pale blue envelope, the blank one. ‘The proof,’ he whispered.

The document inside was a birth certificate. The date seemed right — October 28, 1994 — and the stamp looked official. But it was a fake.

‘I don’t know what this is supposed to be proof of,’ I said, ‘but whoever put it together got the name wrong.’

From somewhere he found a second wind, even if the words came halt and hoarse. ‘The name is correct.’

‘She was adopted, Gillick. They both were, Big Bob Hamilton was shooting blanks. So the birth cert wouldn’t read Grainne Hamilton, it’d be Grainne something else. And the way Saoirse likes changing her kids’ names to Irish, maybe not even Grainne.’

‘Genuine,’ he said, although it took him about four seconds to push it all the way out.

‘Bullshit.’

‘Finn,’ he said, then swallowed thickly. His good eye closed. I looked around for some water but there was nothing to hand.

‘What about Finn?’

Nothing. I tapped him on the chin with the.38. ‘Gillick?’ I said. ‘I’m giving you five fucking seconds to-’

‘Robert couldn’t live with that.’ He meant the birth cert.

‘But why would he want to kill himself over-’

Except Gillick wasn’t saying Big Bob topped himself. He was saying Bob couldn’t live with knowing what his wife had done, was moving back to London and planning to divorce her.

Saoirse had panicked, even though Gillick had reassured her that Bob had confirmed the truth would stay hidden.

‘What truth?’

‘That truth.’ Again he meant the birth cert.

‘What fucking truth?’

For a moment he found himself, the old Gillick, supercilious and smug, although the effect when he smiled was rather ruined by the fact that his teeth were pink. ‘No wonder,’ he whispered, ‘you failed as a private detective.’

That did it. I reached behind myself, scrabbling on the desk for the cigar, and came up instead holding the ornate paper-knife.

‘We could’ve done this the easy way,’ I said. I plonked myself down on the broad saddle of his chest, a knee either side. He gasped a fine spray of blood. ‘But this way we’ll have ourselves some fun.’

I gripped him under the throat to hold his head steady. His good eye bulged. He tried to say something but it came out a strangled squawk.

‘Day late,’ I said, ‘dollar short.’ Then dug in.

When I’d finished carving the ‘T’ into his forehead, and eased off on his throat, it all fell out like some third-rate Jacobean farce, Gillick squealing like a one-man chorus about murder and incest, blood and gore. How Saoirse Hamilton had seduced her teenage son, maybe even convincing herself it was somehow okay given that he was adopted, not flesh and blood. Then falling pregnant, Grainne arriving, Big Bob not knowing shit from shinola, but suspecting shinola. Blazing rows, threats of violence, the inevitable mooting of divorce. Saoirse taunting Bob about being half the man Finn was.

All this Gillick knew from Finn, who’d gone to Gillick as some perverse kind of priest. A scared and very confused young man, no more than a boy, with nowhere else to go and confusing the idea of client confidentiality with the sacred oath of the confessional.

Telling Gillick, putting the gun on his desk, that he’d shot his father down at the docks, tumbled him into the water, then reversed the Beamer into the quays.

‘With that gun,’ Gillick gasped.

‘So I’ve heard. Paranoid bullshit.’

Not so, apparently. And Gillick being Gillick, he’d sniffed leverage, juice. Started grooming Finn as some kind of dauphin, this with one eye on the Hamilton Holdings fortune Finn would some day inherit. Never guessing for a second that he might be the one being groomed, manipulated into a false position of power, as they schemed their way towards isolating and undermining Saoirse Hamilton’s position.

It made a lot of sense. At least, it went a long way towards explaining Finn’s bipolar mood-swings, the arson, the constant need to reinvent himself, to lose himself in his art or in diving off cliffs. And why, just when he believed that he was getting out from under it all, squirreling away enough nuts to get him a new start in Cyprus, he might take a stroll off the ninth floor when he discovered that Maria was pregnant, only not with his kid. Going down in style and up in flames, taking everyone with him, yours truly included.

What didn’t make sense was the big finale. The sick punch line, so ludicrous I actually laughed out loud.

I got the dull point of the paper knife under Gillick’s chin, pushing up so that his head strained back, leaving his throat exposed.

‘This is true?’ I said.

‘On my fucking life,’ he rasped at the ceiling.

He had nothing left. No reason to lie. Besides, if what he said was true, it would take only a short journey to prove it beyond doubt.

‘Okay, that’s us. We’re done.’

I slipped sideways off his chest as his entire body sagged with relief. The good eye closed again, although it snapped open when I wrenched off his shoe, tugged his sock free.

‘What’re you-’ he began but then I dropped an elbow into his groin. He oooofed and gagged, his mouth dropping open. I jammed the sock in his mouth, saddled up on his chest again. Picked up the paper-knife.

A muffled croak came from behind the sock as he strained his head away. I seized him by the throat, held his head steady, my knuckle throbbing all the way up into my shoulder. Then I dug in again.

It took some time. He gurgled and squawked and squealed behind the sock all the while, a Philip Glass overture, Agony in C Minor. Blood seeping down to pool in the empty socket and blind his good eye. But the naked eyeball, singed as it was, saw all.

I found a bathroom down the hall, washed off the blood as best I could. Then I went to retrieve my latest swag. The birth cert, the pale blue envelope addressed in Finn’s hand, the twenty large in loose notes. Gillick had toppled over onto his side, lying snuffling like a beached elephant seal, badly gored and dying slow. Low moans coming muffled from behind the sock.

I still was picking up hundred-euro notes, leaving behind the ones spattered with blood, when he developed the power of ventriloquism. Amazing stuff. Projecting his voice behind me, and not so much as a wobble from the sock, when he said, ‘Put the tool down, Rigby.’