Little Criminals Read online

  After the second shot, the two gossips shuffled into the newsagent’s, glancing back as they went, already shaping the anecdotes they would harvest from the drama.

  The garda had decided he knew where the shots had come from. He began running towards Sweeney’s Pub. He was into the car park when he heard the second flurry of shots. He stopped ten feet from the stolen Primera. Martin Paxton tugged his baseball hat so the peak was shading his face, opened the door and got out of the car. He held the gun casually down by his side.

  The garda looked from the pub to Martin Paxton. The gunman just shook his head.

  The door of the pub opened and Frankie Crowe came out.

  He stopped just outside the door and used the index finger of one hand to rub his nose, the hand partly obscuring his face.

  The garda was a riot of uncertainty. No obvious course of action was acceptable. Do something – that was stupid. Do nothing, Jesus –

  End up with the lads at the station calling him a fucking eejit for having a go, or a no-balls coward for being sensible? He knew that right now heroics were dangerous and pointless. He knew too that if he backed down, no matter how long he lived there would never be a day when a part of him didn’t squirm at the memory.

  Frankie Crowe walked as though he was setting out on a stroll to see the town sights. He stopped a yard away from the garda.

  The thing to do, Garda Joe Hanlon knew, was to play it cool. Do nothing to give the thug a reason to use the gun. Take everything in – the face, the build, distinguishing marks, the other one standing by the car. Get the number as they drive off. Take it all in, survive, watch them run, then deal with them. Branches all over, he used to joke – outfit I work for, we’ve got branches all over.

  Garda Joe Hanlon held his chin up.

  Across the street, in the window of the clothes shop, the shop assistant stood as still and as pale as the mannequin she was dressing.

  The thug was smiling. ‘Morning, garda. Soft day, thank God.’

  The thug held the gun up, moved a finger and the magazine dropped from the handle into his other hand. He held the garda’s gaze as he put the empty magazine into a pocket and took out a new one. Garda Hanlon heard it click into place.

  ‘You from around these parts?’ the thug said. He had a Dublin accent. He was holding the gun down by his side now, as though to put the garda at ease.

  ‘You know there’s nothing I can do.’ Garda Hanlon was surprised that his voice carried no tremor of the dread he felt. ‘Just take whatever you got and fuck off out of here.’

  He didn’t see the thug squeeze the trigger.

  For a moment, there was nothing inside his head except the sound of the gun going off. It was like the biggest door in the universe slammed shut an inch from his ear. Then his mind was flooded with panic.

  No, please wait—

  The garda realised he hadn’t been shot. The thug was still holding the gun down by his side. He’d fired into the tarmac surface of the car park. The garda was already turning, and in seconds he was fifty feet away, his head still echoing with the gun’s explosion. When he stopped and looked back, the gunman was standing there, gun poised.

  Garda Hanlon reached up and touched his bare head. He hadn’t noticed his cap fall off, but it was there on the pavement just outside Sweeney’s car park.

  ‘Frankie, for fuck sake!’

  Martin Paxton lurched in behind the wheel of the Primera. Frankie was walking towards the garda now, big smile on his face. The garda backed away, turned and ran a little more, then looked round and stopped.

  Martin watched Frankie pick up the garda’s cap. Frankie walked slowly back towards the car. He threw the garda’s cap into the back seat, climbed inside and took off the thick-rimmed glasses. It was like the anger had been diluted by the shooting. He smiled. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

  Paxton revved the car and drove across the car park, towards the exit. He saw the garda turning and running fast down the street.

  Frankie Crowe was looking towards the pub. The old hillbilly who had challenged him was standing in the doorway. Crowe lifted the baseball hat in salute and smiled.

  2

  It was a gift, an ability to close his eyes and immediately drop off to sleep, and an instant clarity on waking. Justin Kennedy was sitting in his favourite chair, in his living room, it was late evening and his wife and two children were asleep upstairs. His briefcase and his jacket were on the sofa, carelessly thrown there when he had arrived home. The vodka and tonic he’d poured sat on the side table, untouched. He’d surrendered to the tiredness, collapsed into the chair, let the drowsiness take him for a few minutes. Now, his mind clear, he looked around the room. From where he was sitting, everything he could see spoke of quality. The furniture solid, the walls expensively embellished, there was an unmistakable balance to the room. It was mostly Angela’s doing, her and that fruit she’d hired.

  Justin dipped a finger in the drink, put the cold tip of the finger to his tongue. He lifted the glass and took as much pleasure in the weight of the crystal as he did in the sip of vodka.

  He enjoyed this. The late-night working, the tiredness, the knowledge that he was stretching himself to the limit at work and had a place of comfort to which he could return.

  He watched a drop of moisture fall from the glass on to the dark cloth of his suit trousers. He smoothed the damp spot into the material. Justin’s business suits were mostly Ermenegildo Zegna, but he had recently ordered a suit from Brioni. It was his normal friend Daragh who put him on to Brioni. It cost maybe three times as much, but that wasn’t the point. ‘It’s not about fashion,’ he told Justin, ‘and it’s not about showing off. It’s about positioning yourself in the market.’

  At forty-one, when the first millimetres of grey had recently appeared, Justin had his hair touched up to match his natural dark brown. Laser treatment allowed him to dispense with glasses, but that, he was convinced, made the puffiness under his eyes more noticeable. He had a pair of clear-glass spectacles made, but he felt foolish and wore them only once.

  For a while, he regarded the unmistakably inflated belly that softly pushed out over his belt as a correctable failure of discipline. As time went by, he’d come to think of it as an acceptable indulgence of his prosperity. The secondary chin that had gradually accumulated over the previous few years was more of a worry. Mostly when he looked in the mirror he unconsciously edited out such blemishes and noticed only a slightly older version of the handsome striver he had seen in his youth. Over the past year, however, he had winced at occasional photographs in the business pages of the newspapers, and at social-page snaps of his appearances at a couple of charity events. He worked out a little at home, but lacked the necessary discipline. He signed up with a gym but after three weeks of early-morning sessions he decided he couldn’t spare the time. It was a problem that strayed into his thoughts with increasing frequency.

  He let the ice touch his lips and took another sip of the vodka, then he put the glass down carefully and made a satisfied sound as he pulled himself to his feet. Upstairs, he looked in first on Luke, then on Saskia, both fast asleep, before entering his own bedroom. His wife had fallen asleep with the bedside lamp on. A hardback book, one of her reading-group novels, was open beside her on the pillow. In her sleep she had shrugged off the duvet and he stood there a moment, looking down at her with approval and pride.

  Succulent.

  It was a word he would never use to anyone else about Angela – and certainly not to her – but it was the word that came to mind when he first saw her, and when he first took her to bed, and at the steps of the altar as he was about to marry her ten years back. Now, the word came to him again, as he evaluated his sleeping wife.

  She was eleven years younger than he and although these days he could see a slight creasing under the eyes, it was still a face that drew admiring glances wherever they went. Her dark brown shoulder-length hair had recently been cut shorter than he preferred, but not trouble
somely so. Her breasts, slightly on the small side, were the precise shape and weight of the idealised breasts that had most readily stirred his libido since puberty. She was long and lithe and toned and he didn’t begrudge the annual gym fees that ensured she stayed that way.

  When they’d met, her job in PR required her to spend a certain amount of time and money maintaining an appearance. Throughout their marriage, the budget for what she called ‘upkeep’ was agreed without negotiation. Angela was on his books as an assistant, so most of it could be written off.

  Succulent.

  As he gently pulled the cover over her, Angela stirred and said something he didn’t catch. He whispered, ‘Night, love,’ and switched off her lamp.

  Just over two hundred, it came out as. Fuck sake.

  Frankie Crowe was still angry about it next morning, still doing a bit of pacing in the small living room of Leo Titley’s cottage. It was a combined living room and dining room, cramped, with a dining table in the centre. It reminded Frankie of the poky little living room of the house he’d grown up in in Finglas.

  ‘Wanker,’ he muttered, when the door closed behind Leo. They were a couple of miles from Harte’s Cross, at the isolated farmhouse where Leo lived alone. It made sense to torch the Primera and go to ground locally. It meant sleeping overnight in lumpy armchairs in Leo’s manky cottage, and eating his greasy food, but they could take their time travelling back to Dublin, instead of making the journey while the Meath bluebottles were agitated by the robbery.

  Repeatedly, Frankie ran his hand back and forth through his curly black hair. He was medium height and he was fit without being obviously muscular. His even features were diminished by a permanently querulous expression.

  He had done a couple of things with Leo in the dim and distant and it was Leo’s urging that had brought them to Harte’s Cross. A hatful of money, he said, no security worth talking about. What he didn’t say was, no fucking money worth talking about.

  Frankie did a bit of roaring and shouting when they got back to Leo’s place after the balls-up, then Martin said it was their own fault. Do a quickie, no checking, you take your chances. Frankie snorted. The knowledge that Martin was right didn’t help.

  ‘I’ve got some whiskey,’ Leo said, as though that might help. Frankie waved a hand. No booze. That was a Frankie Crowe rule. Keep a sober head until you’re well clear of trouble. Celebrate when it’s over.

  Not that there was anything to celebrate. It wasn’t like they’d been expecting a fortune, but two fucking hundred.

  This morning, Leo was on his way into Harte’s Cross, to see if things had settled down, and if it looked OK the others would take off and be back in Dublin by lunchtime.

  ‘Risking everything,’ Frankie said, ‘for beer money.’

  Martin Paxton was a tall man in jeans and a Manchester United shirt, almost thirty and already balding. He was soft-voiced and gave an impression of rounded edges. Whenever he had to lie about what he did for a living he said, ‘Software,’ and he looked the part. When he did occasional straight work it was mostly chasing and plastering for his electrician brother. Doing that, he could put in the best part of a day for a couple of hundred into his hand.

  Paxton said, ‘OK, it’s not the Crown jewels, we’ll have a go at them next week.’

  ‘Smart-arse.’

  By the time Leo came back from Harte’s Cross to say the coast was clear, Frankie had decided there was no point splitting two fucking hundred. He left it with Leo.

  On the road to Dublin, in the anonymity of the heavy traffic, Frankie said, ‘I never want to see that wanker again.’ From behind the wheel, he looked across at Martin. ‘Risking our lives for loose change. Fuck sake, this is no way to be.’

  Martin Paxton knew the rest of the routine. Starting with We’re not kids any more, moving into It’s there to be taken, and finishing on something like All we need is the balls. He’d been hearing it from Frankie at least twice a week for the past three months.

  Martin Paxton had known Frankie Crowe for over twenty years. They grew up on the same housing estate, mitched from the same school, got into trouble on the same streets, and met again when they were doing time in Mountjoy. And there was never a time when Frankie didn’t have notions. ‘There’s moochers and there’s doers,’ he used to say. ‘Moochers take shit. Moochers don’t know they’re alive.’

  Over the past few months, the ambition had taken shape. You could hear it in Frankie’s tone.

  ‘It’ll always be this way, unless we do something about it. You keep putting things off, what happens – you wake up one day your arse is dragging on the floor, you’re still living on loose change and it’s too late to do anything except crawl into the coffin.’ He poked a finger at Martin. ‘Or, you pick a target, put a price on it, do the big one.’

  ‘You know how long you get in the funny house for kidnapping?’

  ‘If you get caught. And you get caught because you dawdle – way I want to do it, there’ll be no dawdling.’

  Three days later, Frankie was talking like it was all agreed.

  ‘Just the two of us?’ Martin said.

  ‘Three, four maybe. Dolly Finn if he’s up for it, maybe Brendan Sweetman.’

  Martin nodded, then he said, ‘Something like that, it’s not just the cops we have to worry about.’

  Crowe tapped his chest. ‘Leave Jo-Jo to me. He owes me. Big time. Jo-Jo’s cool.’

  Martin Paxton reckoned there wasn’t much point in arguing. This was where Frankie was headed. And the way things were, cutting loose from Frankie Crowe and striking out on his own wasn’t an option. There wasn’t much point heading into this kidnap thing with half a heart.

  ‘You got the target picked out?’

  ‘It’s down to four or five,’ Frankie said. ‘Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.’

  3

  Brendan Sweetman knew that the chubby blonde’s name was Nina and that she was a brunette in a wig. That afternoon, she was with two other women in their late thirties. They were fashionably dressed, and had all put a lot of work into their hair. Each carried a large handbag. Sweetman didn’t recognise the other two women, but seeing as they were with Nina, there was no doubt they too were shoplifters.

  In the four hours since Sweetman came on security duty at noon, he’d already refused entry to eight people he knew to be strokers. He stepped away from the shop door, shifted his chewing gum from one cheek to the other and held his hands up and wide. ‘Sorry, Nina, not today, love.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Piss off, Nina, take a hike.’ He grinned. With her hooked nose and her over-plucked eyebrows, the poor cow was unmistakable, no matter what she wore on her head. The days when she’d get away with stuffing other people’s merchandise down her jeans were few and far between.

  ‘How dare you! Who d’you think you’re talking to?’

  ‘On your bike, Nina.’

  ‘I want to see the manager!’

  Sweetman’s smile broadened. ‘Go on, Nina. You’re sussed. Take it like a lady and fuck off quietly.’

  All three of the women erupted in obscenities. Brendan Sweetman didn’t take it personally. As they snarled at him, he stared in turn at the two he didn’t know, imprinting their faces on his memory. The three walked away. Until they rounded the corner into the main street, they took turns hurling the usual curses back at him.

  Sweetman was in his mid-thirties. He’d worked the front of one store or another in the city centre on and off for almost five years, and for the past year he’d been full-time at it. Some security personnel found it boring, standing around for hours, using their walkie-talkies to share info and dirty jokes with neighbouring bouncers, using their mobile phones to text friends, or just shuffling their feet and chewing gum. Brendan Sweetman loved the job. Some of the thieves waited until near closing time, knowing the bouncers were likely to be tired, bored and inattentive. Brendan Sweetman was as lively at five minutes to six as he was when his workday started. />
  Hair cut so tight it was little more than a shadow, he was short and wide and made up in bulk what he lacked in height. He tended towards plain black T-shirts along with plain black trousers that he had made by a tailor in Ringsend. Although he was eligible for staff discounts, the shops he protected didn’t sell much in Sweetman’s size. Jeans big enough to go around his waist were several inches too long for his legs, and had to be taken up at the ends. Shirts that accommodated his neck had sleeves too long for his arms. Much of his bulk was muscle, and few who came across him dared make any of the obvious fat jokes in his hearing. No one had ever done it twice.

  The idiot two doors down was jabbering into his radio again. ‘The tart in the yellow top, look at the tits on that!’

  Brendan Sweetman didn’t reply. That kind of unprofessional carry-on, passers-by could hear shit like that, it gave the business a bad name. He’d just spotted Frankie Crowe standing with his back to a nearby shop window. Frankie mimed drinking a pint and Brendan nodded. Frankie poked a finger in the direction of Coley Street, then gave the thumbs-up. Sweetman went in search of the manager, to arrange a break.

  There were two pints of Guinness on the counter in front of Frankie when Brendan arrived ten minutes later. Crowe held out his hand.

  ‘Looking good, mate.’

  ‘Jesus, Frankie, it’s good to see you. It’s been, what—’

  It had been three and a half years. Sweetman had been the back-up muscle on a successful job across in Terenure, a jewellery thing organised by Jo-Jo Mackendrick and carried out by Frankie. That was just before a garda raid on the Drumcondra house where Frankie then lived turned up a stash of stolen cigarettes and Frankie went away for two years.

  ‘Been a long time, Sweets,’ Crowe said. Brendan sat on the next stool. The pub, which used to be called Maguire’s or Malloy’s, something like that, had recently been extended and renamed Vesuvius. A lot of work had gone into the volcano motif, with predictable consequences for the price of drink. Everything seemed to have a hard, shiny surface, including the barmen. The male customers tended towards long hair and long black overcoats. The women customers more often than not were insistently blonde and had fashionably surly mouths.