Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

All of it predicated on ripping off young Grainne’s legacy, the one-point-eight million held in trust by a man who was both brother and father. Her life strip-mined even before it began.

And maybe Finn might have pulled it all off, too. Squared all those circles. Until a certain Harry Rigby got involved, started slipping between his sheets.

‘Belfast’s a better bet,’ Maria said. ‘There’s a flight tomorrow morning to Larnaca, connects through Birmingham.’

‘Sound,’ I said.

Anything that postponed the moment when I’d finally have to look down at Ben, waxy and lifeless on a morgue slab, was good with me.

We turned out of Carton and up the hill, down onto Hughes Bridge. Hardly any traffic. The bypass clear under the orange glow of the lights. A faint snoring from behind, Bear panned out with his nose on his paws. The crutches a-rattle on the rear seat.

Empty, now. Drained. No rage, no pain. Running on fumes and guilt.

We cut across past the hospital, out by the college. Got onto the Enniskillen road. I knocked the Saab into cruise mode, got comfortable.

It didn’t last.

It never does.

The phone rang.

‘Herb?’

‘Where are you?’

‘Heading for Belfast. What’s up?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Who, Grainne?’

‘Who fucking else?’

‘Christ. How’d she-’

‘I was helping her with the laptop, some shit she wanted to find. Then she picks up the SIG, says, nice gun.’

‘And?’

‘And she locks me in the fucking utility room.’

‘You’re shitting me.’

‘Don’t get fucking smart with me, Harry, bringing fucking lunatics around here, shitting all over-’

‘She say where she was going?’

‘What d’you think, we had a nice fucking chat through the utility room door?’

‘When was this?’

‘An hour ago, maybe more.’

‘And she said nothing at all. About where she was going, like.’

‘I told you, she said nothing.’

‘She bring the laptop?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What shit was she trying to find?’

‘We found it. Her birth cert, scanned in.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Fuck is right, Harry. It’s not like we don’t have enough-’

‘We’re sorted with Toto, Herb. That’s done.’

‘Done?’

‘Mostly, yeah.’

‘How come?’

‘Long story. I’ll tell you later. Listen, you’re sure Grainne said nothing about where she was going?’

‘She wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t listen. Just kept singing.’

‘Singing?’

‘Girl’s off the charts, Harry. If you see her coming, you’d better-’

‘Herb? What was she singing?’

‘Something about speed to her side, nobody every told her something something something … I don’t know, she isn’t exactly fucking Adele, y’know?’

I hung up.

Our old friends Rollerskate Skinny. Speed to my side, nobody ever told me that this sort of thing could come alive …

‘Let me guess,’ Maria said. ‘The little witch promised him a blowjob.’

I didn’t want to hope. But it was worth a try.

‘Give me your phone,’ I said.

‘What’s wrong with that one?’

‘It doesn’t have Grainne’s number in it.’

She rummaged in her bag until she found the phone, scrolled down through her contacts, pressed Grainne’s number. I plucked it from her hand, clamped it to my ear.

She answered on the sixth or seventh ring. Amused, cold. ‘I am led to believe,’ she said, ‘that you are pregnant with an ex-convict’s bastard. I do thank you for confirming my long-held suspicions.’

‘Mrs Hamilton,’ I said, ‘it’s Harry Rigby.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d like to speak with Grainne, if I may.’

An iron-sounding chuckle. ‘Grainne is nowhere to be found, Mr Rigby. We’ve tried ringing her, of course, but for some reason she left her phone here this morning when she drove away with you. Naturally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that to the Guards when I file a missing persons report.’

‘You do that. On the off-chance that she does turn up, though, tell her I have the paintings Finn stole. My guy in CAB tells me that the finder’s fee, the reward, should be enough to tide her over for a few months, keep her going until she’s old enough to access the trust fund herself.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘It is. I’ve got the gun, too.’

Silence then, and the faint hiss of static.

‘Perhaps you should come here, Mr Rigby. When Grainne does turn up, you can tell her about her unexpected good fortune in person.’

‘I can do that, sure. Should I bring the gun?’

‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

‘No trouble at all, Mrs Hamilton. I’ll see you soon.’

I got turned in a laneway, drove back to town. Pulled up at the taxi-rank opposite the Town Hall, double-parked.

‘You’re really going after her,’ Maria said.

A flash of some eyes behind a fringe, the hopeful up-and-under look, pleading.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘She’s insane,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

‘Troubled, some’d say. And with good reason.’ A horn parped from behind. I acknowledged it with a wave as he pulled around me, then knocked on the hazard flashers. ‘You told Grainne you were pregnant, didn’t you?’

‘So what?’

‘Did you tell her Finn was the father?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Mainly because you couldn’t know for sure. Unless you’ve already had a test done.’

‘Don’t go getting any ideas, Harry.’

‘Ideas aren’t really my thing.’

‘Good. Keep it that way. Now let’s-’

‘I need to know.’

She sat there with her hands on the steering-wheel, thumbs tapping the soft leather grip. ‘Archu,’ she said, so softly I barely heard her.

‘What?’

‘You don’t recognise your own name?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Finn.’ She looked up at me then, and there was hate in her eyes, and hurt, and something that might even have been tender. ‘He said it was the night you pulled him back from the edge. Telling him about your brother. How you killed him over a kid who wasn’t even your own.’

Odd. The way I remembered it, Finn had been the one who’d dragged me back from the edge. Telling me about the arsons, the pressures that opened up the fissures deep inside, left him bipolar, suicidal and clinging by his fingertips to that sheer black cliff.

We’d ended up laughing at one another. The way you do when a spark of hope flares. That god-given moment when you realise there’s someone even more fucked-up than you. That there might even be a way back.

Of course, we traced it all back to our mothers. Saoirse for changing Finn’s name from Philip, starting him early down that road of hiding who he really was, the brain-bending strain of pretending to be someone else, always.

‘Is it true?’ she said.

‘Nope.’

‘No?’

‘You know what Finn was like,’ I said. ‘He wanted everyone else to be someone else too.’

She nodded. ‘Pity,’ she said. ‘Archu, the Hound of Slaughter. Has a nice ring, just trips off the tongue.’

‘I like Harry better.’

‘I’ll bet you do.’

I got out of the Saab and went around to the first cab in line. When I told him he was up for a run to Belfast, he nearly shit. Hopped out, scuttled around the back of the Saab, started transferring Maria’s bags.

I sat back into the Saab. Maria with the sun-shield down, touching up her eyes in the mirror.

‘You haven’t had any tests done,’ I said, ‘have you?’

She found that funny in a sour kind of way. ‘What’re you saying, Harry?’ She cocked an eyebrow. ‘You actually give a shit?’