Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

The far wall was the reason Finn had picked the PA for his studio: a full-length window, looking out across the docks and the deepwater to the sea and Benbulben beyond. A pane had been slid aside to allow a faint breeze waft through and create a draught with the fire escape door, which was wedged open on the opposite side. On a summer evening, with the equipment humming, the day’s heat rising and Finn huffing weed, the studio could get stifling, the air thick enough to chew.

The guy in the tailored suit swamping the couch under the window put me in mind of William Conrad without the moustache. Finn waved in his direction. ‘You meet Gillick before?’

‘I’d have remembered,’ Gillick purred.

Arthur Gillick’s rep was choice. Put a bullet in a cop’s face at the passing out parade in Templemore, Gillick’s was the number you dialled when they finally gave you your call. He’d made a name for himself starting out, this in the late ’70s, all through the ’80s, as the Provos’ go-to silk, although it’d be pushing it to say he was politically motivated. Unless, of course, his politics stretched to some kind of convoluted anarchist theory that involved keeping every last smack-dealing lowlife, recidivist wife-beater and sticky-fingered Traveller on the streets. Last I’d heard he’d been diversifying, feeding off the economic downturn by moving into debt collecting and facilitating evictions, although his crowning glory had come a couple of years back, when he’d defended the upstanding citizen who’d strangled his daughter and dumped her body in the lake when the girl finally decided that, at the grand old age of thirteen, she was old enough to decide who took her pants down.

Now he hauled his huge frame forward, rising with the ponderous grace of a bishop who understands that without dignity a bishop is just another fat man. A large head under a flat swirl of sleek grey hair, the face full rather than fat, jowled but healthy. The tan helped. Big round eyes gave him an owlish aspect, the mouth prim and beaky under a prominent nose. He held out his hand. It was small and pudgy, not unduly encrusted with precious gems. The handshake was surprisingly dry and firm.

‘Arthur Gillick,’ he said.

‘Harry Rigby.’

He took a beat longer to look away than he should have. Then he let go my hand. ‘Harry,’ he said. ‘A fine, princely name.’

I slid him a leer, trying to work out if it was more odd that he was trying to needle me off the bat or that he was doing it by suggesting I was second-in-line to the English throne. Not that Arthur Gillick was in any position to start tossing rocks around the glasshouse.

‘It’s short for Harrison,’ Finn said. ‘His mother loved My Fair Lady , named him for Rex Harrison.’

‘Really?’ Gillick was amused.

‘Could’ve been worse,’ I said. ‘She might have called me Pygmalion.’

‘Because then,’ Finn put in, ‘we’d be calling him Pyggy. And that might get confusing.’

Gillick’s smile didn’t dim by so much as a quark but something went out in his porcine eyes.

It wasn’t me he was trying to needle. It was Finn, adopted in England and raised there, given an Irish name to offset what his mother believed was a taint akin to the mark of Cain.

‘I see you appreciate the classics, Mr Rigby,’ Gillick said. A smooth voice, warm chocolate oozing. He gestured towards the stack of canvases. ‘Are you a patron of the arts too?’

‘Not since my portfolio crashed, no.’

‘Ah, but Mr Rigby.’ I was getting diabetic just listening to him. ‘Great art is priceless, surely. Its worth resides in its power to evoke the fragility of life when juxtaposed against the, ah …’ He glanced across at Finn.

‘Against a universe almost entirely composed of dead matter,’ Finn finished.

‘Indeed. Particularly when art itself is generated of dead matter.’

Finn gave him a slow handclap.

‘A pity,’ Gillick observed, ‘that this priceless wonder costs so much to hang on a wall. On those rare occasions when it sells at all.’

Finn gave him a sloppy grin and sat back in his swivel chair, hands behind his head. ‘You’re confusing cost and worth again, Arthur.’

A dainty bow from Gillick. ‘Precisely my point to you.’ A wristy little wave that finished with the forefinger pointing at Finn, thumb cocked. ‘Call me,’ he said. ‘Let me do you this one favour.’

He took his time leaving because he’d have waddled if he hadn’t. I stepped up onto the couch to where the window was open and straddled the sill, my back against the frame, foot resting on the narrow ledge outside. The rising heat carried the acrid odour of tar cut with the ocean’s salty tang. I rolled a smoke and waited for the clanging to die away down the metal stairs, then reached Finn’s night-sight binoculars off the hook where they lived, leaning out to train them on the cars directly below. Jimmy was still sitting half-out of the Saab.

From across the water in Cartron came the faint drone of traffic. Even fainter, from the direction of town, the tinny whirr-whirru of a siren, cop or ambulance I couldn’t say. Someone’s alarm was a waspy whine.

‘He just get a call?’ I said.

‘Gillick? No. Why?’

‘Just wondering.’

He propped his moccasined feet on the desk. ‘No joy with the weed?’ he said.

‘I left it in the cab when I saw the bruiser outside.’

‘Limerick Jimmy.’

‘Jimmy, yeah, but he sounded more Derry.’

Finn made an elaborate flourish, then thrust forward. ‘Tasty with a blade. Or so they say.’

‘Ah.’

He clamped a headphone to one ear, eased some knobs up and down the mixing desk. The headphones slid down onto his neck again as he slumped back in the leather chair, hands folded on his midriff.

‘Here,’ I said, ‘I never knew Gillick was a fruit.’

‘Gillick a fruit?’ Finn grinned. ‘Try again. Man’s the worst minge-hound in Christendom.’

‘So why’s he giving me the juju eye?’

‘It’s just his thing, how he remembers people. Says it’s like taking a photo.’ He double-tapped his temple. ‘Clickety-click.’

A dull roar rumbled up from the yard. I trained the infrareds, caught the Saab pulling out through the gates. It disappeared behind the wall, then emerged onto the quay heading back towards town. I hung up the infrareds, climbed down from the couch. ‘Coffee?’

‘Got one here,’ he said. ‘You work away.’

I went through to the kitchenette and put the kettle on, stepped into the shoebox bathroom to make room for the fresh brew. Washed and flushed, then winced. The way the old cistern clanked and growled, you were only supposed to flush when Finn was playing Tom Waits, and preferably something from Rain Dogs .

The Stones were playing by the time I got back, ‘Get Off My Cloud’ cranked all the way up. Finn with a stubby jay on the go. I perched on the windowsill, sipped some coffee and nodded along. That high up, looking down the docks out over the deepwater, you could see an awful lot of nothing much at all: gaunt buildings, forty shades of shadow, the silvery-green sheen of moon on oily water.

Finn did his thing sliding knobs. Billy Bragg came on, ‘A New England’. Finn lowered the volume, and I nodded towards the bathroom. ‘Sorry about the flushing.’

‘Just one more fucking thing, man.’ He shrugged it off, had himself another toke. Which reminded me.

‘Listen, these three baggies,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Herb’s wondering, it was three last month too. Says that’s a lot of personal use.’

The sloppy grin. ‘Depends on the person, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but he’s worried you’re punting on. That it’ll come back to bite him.’