Slaughter's hound

3

‘That’s his fourth,’ Herb groused as I came back into the living room. ‘First it was a Joe Campbell, last time it was a nice hardback on Spinoza, the feeling brain. The fuck am I, a library?’

‘Maybe you need to start imposing fines.’

‘Right, yeah.’ A bleak grin. ‘Maybe skim off the top, tell Ted it’s all Toto’s fault.’

Camped about six thousand miles due west, the McConnells would have been a shit-kicking rabble of inbred, rebel-yelling, crank-cooking sister lovers. They were the first to organise properly in Sligo, this something of a spin-off from the Peace Dividend up North, Ted being the kind of diehard ex-INLA who wouldn’t be fully happy until everything was the way it’d been before the Ulster Plantation, when every chief had his own fief and a surfeit of spears. They’d started with dope, moved on up to coke and E, were dabbling now in H. They had hardware and were happy to use it, generally for hoot-‘n’-holler drive-bys but at least once to lethal effect. Cold. Opening a van door in the middle of town, three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. One round through the forehead, two in the chest. The backsplash spattering the guy’s girlfriend, the kid she held in her arms.

The dogs in the street knew Toto’d been the shooter. The problem there being, dogs don’t do so well on a witness stand, tend to crumble under cross-examination.

Herb took a drag on the jay, held it down, popped a smoke-ring. Settled back in the Ezy-Chair. ‘What’d he want, anyway?’

‘Was asking about Finn, if I vouched for him.’

‘I hope you didn’t, the flaky fuck.’

Herb took a dim view of what he reckoned were Finn’s unnatural proclivities for skiing, surfing and charitable innovations. Herb being of the opinion that if Finn wanted to help those less well-off than himself, which was pretty much everyone bar the Hamiltons these days, he might consider donating a chunk of Hamilton Holdings’ before-tax profits instead of haranguing people to dig into their own pockets.

‘I told him,’ I said, ‘Finn always pays up front.’

‘You tell him who he was?’

‘That he’s Finn Hamilton, sure. The rest he knew.’

‘Dundrum?’

‘He knows I was in Dundrum, yeah. Asking if I knew Malky Gorevan.’

‘But you didn’t tell him about celling with Finn.’

‘No.’

Sins of omission. What the bishops like to call mental reservations.

‘Maybe that’s what he was asking about,’ Herb said.

‘Don’t sweat it. At the end there he was offering me more work, said it was there if I was available.’

‘He mentioned that?’

‘What’s the gig?’

‘A run to Galway tomorrow, there’s a shipment due in. Small enough, ten grand’s worth, but the good stuff. He was asking me to take it on, but, y’know.’

Herb didn’t get out much, in part because he was a low-level paranoiac, but mainly because he just didn’t like people. His credo was pretty simple: always assume everyone’s an idiot.

He’d been a snapper once, a good one, hooked up with an agency. We’d worked as a team for a few years, freelancing local news, stringing for the nationals. I did the words, Herb took the shots, and once in a while we’d work some off-the-books research consultancy, which was a fancy name for what amounted to prowling hotel car parks for proof of some wayward husband’s mid-life crisis.

Happy days.

Then Herb got his face stove in. Someone had told someone else that Herb had a photograph the someone else wanted.

I was the someone who’d done the telling. Inadvertently, as it happened.

Not that the who mattered. The bruisers were still walking around, free to stove at will. Herb stayed home, his complexion pasty, skin like old dough. The way it can get when most of both jaws and one cheekbone are underpinned by steel plate. Anyway, Herb ended up staying home a lot, huffing mucho weed. One day Toto McConnell, this back when Toto was still dealing himself, asks if Herb’ll rent him some space. Herb’s not interested in any sublets, but Toto’s talking about turning the upstairs, the attic, into a grow-house.

A couple of years later Herb’s salting away a couple of grand a month to top up his disability benefit, easy money. Two years after that, he moved out to Larkhill, went to Toto with his idea for a couple of cabs, nice cover for deals-on-wheels. A front to get him onto the Revenue’s books and keep them sweet, so no one got the urge to pick up the phone and ring the Criminal Assets Bureau, wondering how no-income, disability benefit Herb could afford a four-bed on its own grounds out in the burbs.

‘How come the short notice?’ I said.

‘His regular guy popped a kneecap last night.’

‘And now he’s under wraps.’

‘No, I mean he popped his own kneecap. Five-a-side up at the Sports Complex, went in for a sliding tackle and up she blew.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah. So what d’you think? Toto’s pretty keen to get it tomorrow, has the stuff promised for Saturday night. Says he’ll do twenty percent.’

‘Two grand?’

‘I get the impression, reading between the lines, Toto’s greasing some serious wheels.’

‘So we’re not talking smoke.’

‘Coke, yeah.’

‘Shit.’

‘Two grand, Harry. Five big to me for brokering, okay, but that’s still tidy money for a spin to Galway.’ He sat forward in the Ezy-Chair, offered across the spliff. When I declined he slotted it into the ashtray, stood up. ‘Just think about it, okay? No harm at all in seeing Toto right.’

He took a little side-wobble setting off, then stabilised and headed for the hall. Right on cue my phone rang, the caller ID flashing up Dee-Dee-Dee.

I sat the phone on the coffee-table, rolled a smoke and let it ring out. Herb came back in with Finn’s three baggies, tossing them on the table just as the message-minder buzzed, the screen lighting up to let me know I’d missed four calls from Dee.

‘Reminds me,’ he said. ‘Dee rang earlier. Said to call her.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Said something about Ben’s parent-teacher meeting tomorrow.’

‘I got her messages, yeah.’

He plucked the jay from the ashtray, subsided into the Ezy-Chair again. ‘How’s Ben doing these days?’ he said.

‘Grand. Not a bother on him.’

‘A good kid, that lad.’

Herb hadn’t seen Ben in years. To be fair, though, he’d been there for Dee while I was inside, letting her know she wasn’t on her own, a few quid available if she was ever badly stuck. Not that Dee took advantage, but sometimes just knowing there’s somewhere out there can make all the difference.

Another favour I owed him.

‘So what d’you think,’ he said, ‘about Toto’s gig?’

‘I’ll do it, yeah.’

‘Nice one, Harry.’

‘If Dee rings again, you haven’t seen me.’

‘Roger and Wilco.’

I stubbed the smoke, gathered up the three baggies. Herb aimed the remote control at the TV. ‘Hold up,’ he said, bringing up the menu, flicking down through the options to digital radio. ‘Let’s see what kind of mood this fuckwit’s in.’

He tuned to McCool FM in time for the last couple of verses of Townes van Zandt’s ‘St John the Gambler’.

‘Christ,’ Herb muttered.

From van Zandt to Joy Division, ‘She’s Lost Control’. Then straight into Big Star’s ‘Holocaust’.

Herb cracked first.

‘There’s any amount of Motown in there,’ he said, pointing the spliff at his CD rack. ‘I want you to bring it down to the docks, tie that part-time fucking philanthropist to his chair and tell him from me he’s getting no score until I hear Smokey.’

‘Will do.’