Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

‘You’re up this early for the good of your health? What’s next, a sitz bath?’

A sigh. ‘Mrs Hamilton,’ he said, ‘is not just a client of long and good standing. She is a friend, as was her husband. If she calls on me at an inconvenient time, that simply confirms how badly she needs me.’

‘Thou good and faithful servant.’

We were coming up on Monaneen Cross. He indicated left, shifted down and turned off towards the sea. The horizon turning grey, the Donegal mountains a faint purple haze on the horizon. ‘A touch of inferiority complex can be a healthy thing, Rigby. Just don’t let it cripple you.’

‘What happened to the “Mister” bit?’

He liked that. ‘You’d rather I called you Mr Rigby?’

‘You’re getting well paid to do it. And I’d say you’re on triple time for anti-social hours.’

He slowed into a crossroads, eased across. ‘May ask as to why you didn’t tell our friend Tohill I was at the PA tonight?’

‘He never asked.’

A soft chuckle. ‘Jimmy will appreciate the sentiment.’ He waited. ‘And is that, definitively, all it was?’

He should have brought Jimmy. The more he talked, the more I was wondering why he was worried I had something on him.

He indicated left, turned up through the iron-wrought gates, crunching gravel as we rolled on into the small forest of oak and sycamore. Up ahead I saw a badger waddle off the road into the ditch, its eyes gleaming greenly in the halogen glare. ‘I understand you used to be a private detective,’ he said.

‘Research consultant.’

‘Of course.’ Another chuckle. ‘You know, I might require the services of a research consultant one day.’

‘I’d say your kind of operation needs that kind of service every day. What’s wrong with the ones you use now?’

‘Nothing, they’re all perfectly fine. But I am blessed in having a large number of clients. Sometimes I need to outsource.’

‘Squeamish about the debt collecting, are they?’

‘In the current climate, Mr Rigby, you diversify or die.’ The faintest of sneers. ‘I’d imagine you appreciate that better than most.’

‘And you think I’m onside because I don’t squeak to the shades.’

‘If by that you’re asking if confidentiality is important to my clients, then yes.’

‘I’m retired.’

‘I heard.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Harry J. Rigby, former research consultant and freelance journalist. Tried in 2004 for the murder of one Edward aka Gonzo Rigby, but not convicted, this on the basis that you claimed temporary insanity and were subsequently referred to the Central Mental Hospital for assessment, which for one reason or another took the best part of four years.’ He glanced across. ‘I’m no expert, but I’d imagine killing your own brother is as good a way as any to become the least private eye in town.’ He waited. I let it hang. ‘So why come back?’ he mused. ‘It’s either the boy or a lack of imagination.’ Again he waited. ‘I’m betting it’s the boy.’

‘Mention my son again and I’ll put you through that window.’

‘How dramatic.’ He tugged on his nose to disguise a wry smile, his Blofeld impression beginning to grate. ‘I am impressed.’

‘Stay that way, you’ll save on windows.’

He sniffed at that. ‘Look, Rigby, this isn’t a moral issue. You did what you did, and your actions couldn’t be condoned by any civilised standards. But as far as I’m concerned, you’ve served your time, paid your debt to society.’

‘Society charges interest.’

‘Undoubtedly. Otherwise you wouldn’t be driving a taxi.’ I let that one bowl on through. ‘Understand that I’m not offering you a permanent position. But your reputation precedes you, and your actions tonight confirm that you’re a man who can be trusted to negotiate, shall we say, potentially treacherous situations without succumbing to the urge to unburden yourself unnecessarily.’

‘You want muscle. A reducer with a killer’s rep, who’ll keep his mouth shut if the cops start to squeeze. Someone like your friend Limerick Jim, say.’

‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘For one thing, you lack his physique.’

‘And his way with a blade.’

‘Ancient history, Mr Rigby. And you of all people, surely, wouldn’t deny Jimmy his right to rehabilitation and reintegration.’

We circled the fountain, passing the Merc and the Lexus, the Rav4 jeep. A red Mini Cooper tucked in behind that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Gillick parked beside the wide steps, turned off the engine. He was too bulky to turn all the way around, so he peered at me over a well-padded shoulder. ‘Can you honestly say you enjoy driving a taxi?’

‘More than life itself.’

‘There are more profitable ways of making a living.’

‘I’m my own boss. I work when I want to. The bills get paid.’

‘And that’s the sum total of your ambition in life?’

‘My lack of ambition breaks my heart. Every day I wake up weeping for the want of an urge to take a sledgehammer to some poor fucker’s front door. What’s so funny?’

‘This posturing,’ he said. ‘Your contrived antipathy towards money. And yet all it took was five hundred euro in cash to lure you here tonight.’

I didn’t like the sound of that ‘lure’.

‘Money’s not the issue,’ I said. ‘Money’s fine. If the sun ever goes out, we’ll have something else to help the world go round.’

‘So it’s not the money per se, it’s who offers it.’

‘And the why.’

‘Undoubtedly. But money is a wonderfully democratic concept, Mr Rigby. It cares not a whit for the history or social position of the person who spends it.’

‘Money’s a gun. Harmless until it winds up loaded in the wrong hands.’

‘Loaded?’

‘With influence, access, self-interest. For such a democratic concept, money seems awfully dependent on wearing the right tie in the right place.’

‘You need to attend a polling booth to vote,’ he purred. ‘And they’d hardly be inclined to let you in if you arrived naked, would they?’

‘I don’t know. Depends on how badly the Germans need the latest referendum passed.’

He nodded, smiling indulgently. ‘I’m not asking you to come to work for me, Mr Rigby. I’m simply suggesting that, should the opportunity arise, you might-’

‘I’m allergic to evictions, Gillick. Crying kids bring me out in a rash.’

He inclined his head, slid me another oily smile. ‘Think it over. Talk to Jimmy if you want. If you change your mind, my door is always open.’

‘With all due respect to Jimmy, my probation depends on me not knowingly associating with known criminals.’

‘Everyone who comes to me is innocent until proven otherwise. That’s the law.’

‘The law is what the law says it is.’

‘Your loss.’

‘I’ll live.’

‘Yes,’ he said with an apologetic wince. ‘But how well?’

A stone staircase swept up and around to a first-floor balcony but we didn’t go up there. Simon and Gillick went away into the shadows at the far end of the hall, leaving me dawdling outside the study without so much as a fat giraffe for company. I heard Simon knock on the mahogany doors at the end of the hallway. They waited for a summons and then merged with the gloom.

I rolled a smoke and set sail down the plush Tigris of Persian carpet. Outfitting that hall cost more than I had earned in my entire life and even at that they hadn’t included a single necessary object. The chandelier was a Milky Way in crystal, the walls covered with the therapeutic dribbles of blind amputees which constitute modern art, a couple of facing Knuttels giving one another a slit-eyed dare, a few blobs that could well have been sunrises or sunsets or psychedelic cow-pats on a low simmer. There were potted palms at regular intervals, the pots burnished copper and the foliage clipped tight, the leaves dusted, gleaming. The pots, at least, were useful for tipping ash into. The spindly legs on the facing set of antique velvet-covered couches suggested they’d been designed to accommodate Tinker Bell and her little friends, even if the little friends would have to take turns sitting down.