Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

Either way, not good.

The Saab’s driver already getting out.

The baggies were under the spare wheel in the boot, so I eased up to where the driver stood, then three-pointed, reversing back into the space beside Finn’s black Audi, leaving the boot tight against the PA’s wall. Got out and locked the cab, strolled around towards the PA’s door. The driver with a hand up, palm out, saying, ‘Far enough, big man.’

His accent wasn’t quite harsh enough to be Derry, the hint of a lilt suggesting north Donegal. Built like an upside-down cello, wearing a white shirt with the collar button open, a thin black tie with a loose knot. Patent leather shoes, in the reflection of which he could have flossed his even white teeth. Through the Saab’s open door I could see, hung on a hangar, the top half of a dark suit silk-lined in red paisley. Italian, maybe. The eyes were eight-gauge, sawn-off.

I pulled up six inches shy of where I guessed his swing would land. ‘I’m expected,’ I said.

‘Not by me you’re not.’

‘True for you.’

The trouble there was, if one guy gets to thinking he can tell you what you can do, it’s only a matter of time before the rest start feeling the same. Then you’re on the skids. And I was already on the skids.

‘I’m going on up,’ I said.

‘Fine by me, big man. Just not yet.’

I craned my neck to glance up at the ninth floor, the window’s dull yellow glow. ‘He makes you wear a tie?’ I said.

That didn’t work him at all. ‘You know what I like?’ he said. ‘Cars, threads and quim. He pays me to drive a Saab, wear good suits.’

‘Two out of three ain’t bad.’

‘I make out.’ He up-jutted his chin. ‘Finn’s expecting you?’

‘That’s right.’

He glanced over my shoulder. ‘Something wrong with his Audi?’

‘Other than it’s not a Porsche?’

‘Too fucking right.’ He backed off a step, ushered me on through. ‘Jimmy,’ he said.

‘Rigby.’

He leaned in as I went past, sniffing, his nostrils flared. I glanced up at him going by and stared straight up those sawn-off barrels, black and cold, and nary a light to guide a weary pilgrim.

‘Stay useful, Rigby.’

‘I’ll try.’

Finn Hamilton was doomed from the start, named by his mother for the great hero of Irish mythology, Fionn mac Cumhaill, and left in no doubt, from a very early age, that he was expected to grow into a man apart: hunter, warrior, legend, king.

No pressure.

And then, still a kid, he sees his father drown.

I guess they were lucky it was only a few buildings he’d burned down.

He’d had his epiphany in the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, how to use the Hamilton name and the resources that went with it. Stopped resisting and went with the flow, folding back into the family like a fifth columnist, a saboteur bent on good deeds and charitable works. The cops turned a blind eye to McCool FM on the basis that it wasn’t a commercial enterprise, its rare advertisements being on behalf of St Vincent de Paul and the Lions Club and similarly minded charities and organisations, its website offering directions and links to Aware and the Samaritans, the Model Arts Centre and the Irish Cancer Society, as well as hosting examples of work available in the gallery on the PA’s ground floor, his own included, a third of each sale going to the charity of the artist’s choice.

His latest idea, still in the embryonic stage, was SpiritusMundi , a loose collective of artists, musicians and writers all operating out of the PA, a kind of urban take on Annaghmakerrig, a retreat for those of a creative bent. Last I’d heard he was in talks with Blue Raincoat, offering them rehearsal space, the idea being that they’d relocate their theatre from the town centre to the docks, Finn dangling the carrot of a long-term lease on very favourable terms.

I buzzed two short and one long, waiting for the beep, the ka-chunk, before slipping inside. The tiny lobby had a single spotlight recessed in the roof, a security camera high in one corner. I glanced up at it, waited for the second beep, then pushed on through to the gallery. Finn had stripped out the ground floor, leaving nothing to distract the eye from the canvases he’d mounted on support pillars and the bare brick walls, the space echoey under a high ceiling. I left the lights off and snuck across to the window, peeked out into the yard. Jimmy was sitting half-out of the Saab, smoking and jotting down the cab’s number, head at an angle, phone tucked between shoulder and ear.

The efficient type, Jimmy.

By now Bear was barking fit to shiver the foundations. I made my way through to the rear, gave the metal door the double tap, made shushing sounds, then shunted the door inwards. Bear’s nails clickered on the concrete as he reared up to plant a paw on either shoulder. Full-bred Irish wolfhound. Up on his hind legs he’d have held his own in a line-out. I staggered under his weight, waltzed backwards a little, then pushed him off and tousled his ears.

‘Not tonight, Bear. Sorry.’

I kicked the crutch he’d been mauling back into the pile in the corner and found the box on the top shelf, scattering a handful of bone-shaped biscuits into his metal bowl, topping up his water. Finn loved that hound, had rescued him as a terrified pup from a shelter, but he had a theory that a hungry watchdog made for an alert watchdog. Put that with Finn’s prodigious appetite for psychotropic grass and a general attitude to life that if charted on a graph of ambition and endeavour would resemble a hammock, and you had a dog that was on occasion leaner and meaner than his doggie god creator intended.

While I was at it I ducked my head into his kennel to check on the bedding. It seemed fresh and clean, and by the time I backed out Bear had settled himself in a corner to gnaw at a biscuit, toying with it, three or four others still in the bowl. Which meant Finn was on the case and Bear was well fed, which was a pity of sorts. I’d been entertaining the idea of taking him out for a stroll in the yard, just to see how efficient Jimmy might be with 160 pounds of war hound bearing down at full throttle.

There was no lift in the PA building. What you got was nine stories of rusted metal stairs bolted to the inside walls. Once upon a time a set of four stairs would have taken you up to a new floor, but the insides had long ago been ripped out. Now, once you cleared the gallery space, the building was a silo all the way to the top floor. A stiff climb, but nothing a reasonably fit man couldn’t manage without breaking a sweat. By the time I reached the top I could have done with an oxygen mask and a brace of Sherpas.

I rapped a tattoo on the studio door.

‘Yeah, Harry?’ Finn’s voice came muffled. ‘C’mon in.’

The studio took up most of the ninth floor, with a mixing-desk tucked into the far corner. Egg-boxes covered the ceiling and most of the walls. Finn was behind the desk, headphones around his neck. Tall and lean even sitting down, shoulders bony under the white crew-neck tee. He almost always wore the same ensemble: white T-shirt, faded Levis, brown suede moccasins, coarse blond stubble. No socks. The flaxen hair cut into the shaggy bowl favoured by post-smack Brian Jones. In behind the fringe he had a wide-awake face, an engaging grin, bright blue eyes.

Behind him were amps, processors, serried ranks of vinyl LPs. The muted rattle was The Wedding Present turned down low. It sounded like ‘Brassneck’, but then one Weddoes sounds a lot like the rest when it’s turned down low.

The near half of the studio was dominated by a rough wooden table covered with tubes of paint, brushes in jars, palette knives. A pair of easels stood side-by-side, both covered with paint-spattered tarps. Canvases stood stacked four and five deep against the wall, some framed, some not. In the corner a Stratocaster in the classic yin-yang black-and-white stood propped on a stand, two strings missing, a third hanging by a thread.