Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

‘Right. Because every girl needs to find out, at some point, how her brother is her father too. Doing her a favour really, weren’t you?’

‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’

‘And now you’re going to steal her trust fund, use it to destroy the Hamilton name. Maybe drop some incest into the mix to spice things up.’

‘That’s the general idea, yeah.’ She held up the envelope. ‘Mind if I keep this?’

‘It’s all yours.’

O’Neill Crescent lay on the outer fringe of the Cartron estate, a left-hooking curve of semi-ds that petered out just before the pocked tarmac crumbled into a shallow ditch, its muddy stream choked with brown weeds and rusting bike wheels, used condoms and shopping trolleys that looked brand new. In the bare field sloping down to the water two emaciated ponies snuffed for grazing among the blackened circles of dead bonfires and the dark hulks of burnt-out cars.

When I U-turned the Saab at the end of the street, reversing into the high weeds, a rabbit-sized rat went scuttling across the road to disappear up the driveway of number 26.

Maria shuddered. ‘This better not take long,’ she said.

‘It won’t.’

Leave a Saab sitting out on O’Neill Crescent and you’re asking for rats a lot bigger than rabbits to come swarming.

For now, there wasn’t a single human face to be seen.

The driveway of number 19 hosted a battered caravan up on breeze-blocks, and even at that it was in better nick than the house. Three of its facing windows were either fractured or boarded up and the front door had been patched at least twice with plywood.

Number 18 was still holding on, or trying to. The window boxes on the first-floor sills were empty, but at least their chipped and flaking paintwork gave the place a splash of yellow and blue. The tiny lawn out front was ragged but recently cut. The front door all of a piece.

There was no bell, so I rat-tat-tatted on the reinforced glass. When I turned around I could see why the planners had once thought O’Neill Crescent worth building. Away to the north, Benbulben was a delicate swash of amber-tinged plums and lavenders as the sun sank for the horizon. To the west the bay gleamed silvery-green, still as mercury where it funnelled up towards the docks.

I rat-a-tat-tatted again, giving it serious knuckles. That won me a shadow lurking back in the hall and a muffled, querulous tone. ‘Who is it?’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘What do you want?’

‘It’s Andrea, right? I’ve a delivery for you.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘I’m not a bailiff.’

‘Fuck off away from that door now .’

No threat to back it up. Even through the door the deadened tone sounded strained, defeated.

I hunkered down, prodded in the letterbox. ‘It’s from Gillick,’ I tried.

‘I don’t know any Gillick.’

‘He knows you.’

A pause. ‘What’re you delivering?’ she said.

I slipped the envelope out of my pocket, pushed it halfway through the letterbox. ‘This.’

‘So drop it in.’

‘Sorry. I need to hand it over in person.’

‘Fucking bailiff. Fuck off.’

‘Go back inside,’ I said, ‘and look out the window. If I look like a bailiff, then fair enough, I’m gone. But I should warn you, there’s a cheque for seventy-five grand in here.’

The shadow didn’t go away in search of a window. Hard to tell with shadows, but I got the impression its shoulders slumped. Then it seemed to swell, come closer, and I heard the rattle of a chain. She opened the door a crack. One glimpse was enough to convince her that, whatever my business was, it was a long way from being official.

She unhooked the chain, stood back. I pushed the door in and stepped into a tiny hallway. She backed away into the sitting room. I closed the door and followed. The curtains were pulled tight, leaving the room dark except for the glare of the muted TV. It felt like stepping into a cave, the TV a coldly flickering fire. An emptiness in that room IKEA would give up Stockholm to be able to mimic, the kind of minimalism only functioning poverty can carry off with any degree of authenticity. She shuffled around the low table and sat on a couch that had much in common with a Swiss Protestant’s pew. The low table was bare but for an overflowing ashtray, a pack of smokes and a tumbler with about half an inch of wine.

The place stank like a grow-house, that sickening smell of stale dope that seeps into the walls. She didn’t look stoned, though. Eyes like new coins, bright and shiny and hard.

‘It’s Harry,’ she said, not looking at me as she fumbled a cigarette from the box. She didn’t offer me one. She knew why I’d come. ‘Isn’t it?’ The tremble in her voice made it all the way down to her fingers. She had to snap the plastic lighter three or four times before she got the cigarette lit. ‘Harry Rigby. Right?’

‘That’s right.’

Her face was pinched, pale but blotched with crude pinks and angry reds, and I didn’t have the kind of time it’d take to work out which was make-up and which tough living. Late twenties and hard with it, time as a kiln forging a mask of her face.

The last time I’d seen her she’d been sitting on a rock staring out to sea, her back hunched against the sight of Finn perched high on the cliff, the retro-mini ’60s wedding dress rucked up and wrinkled in the small of her back.

I put the envelope on the table, pushed it across. She glanced at it once, biting her lower lip, then looked at me, the eyes still hard and shiny and bright. I looked past her, to where a cane stood propped in the corner.

‘Paul around?’ I said.

‘Not right now.’

‘Will he be back later?’

‘You’d need to ask Paul.’

‘Where’ll I find him?’

‘Your guess,’ she exhaled, her voice flat now, ‘is as good as mine.’

From outside came the fat parp-parp of the Saab’s horn. I crossed to the window, twitched back the curtain. Maria spotted the movement and held up her arm, tapping at her wrist. I gave her the thumbs up. ‘It’s Maria,’ I said. Andrea nodded, then wrinkled her nose. I pulled the curtain all the way back. ‘Finn’s fiancee,’ I said.

‘I know who she is.’

‘Come here,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Come over to the window. I want to show you something.’

‘I think you’d better go.’

‘I’m going. Just let me show you this one thing. That way I don’t take the cheque with me when I leave.’

She picked the envelope off the table and folded it in two, rammed it into the front pocket of her jeans. Stubbed the cigarette and got up, came around the couch. I pushed back the other curtain.

A pretty view, so long as you looked long and far. Benbulben dissolving into dusk, the bay suffused with the faintest of pinks. On the far shore, down at the deepwater, the PA building stood out stark as a warning finger against the coppery sky. It took a moment or two, but it was there her eyes were drawn.

‘Did you watch?’ I said.

She twitched. ‘What?’

‘Were you watching,’ I said, ‘when he jumped?’

‘Who, Finn?’

‘Paul. Did he give you a time, when it was likely to happen?’

‘I don’t know what you’re-’

‘Come on, Andrea. Seventy-five grand? Sounds a lot like a life insurance policy on a cardboard box like this. Unofficial, maybe, but it’s in the ball-park. Am I right?’

She stood rigid now, the eyes shiny and bright, no longer hard.

‘Just nod,’ I said. ‘The cheque’s going nowhere. It’s yours. Christ fucking knows you’ve earned it.’

She turned away from the window, muttering something I didn’t catch, and went to perch on the edge of the couch again. Hunched forward, with the effort of maintaining a defiant stare deranging her features, she wasn’t unlike a gargoyle. She reached for the smokes but her hands were shaking so hard that I had to take away the cigarette and lighter, spark it up. She took a quick hard drag, spat out the smoke.