JP

Tracking down the garage took me less than a day. I’d been out of the game a while, but I still had contacts and plenty of currency. I put the word out that I needed to speak to anybody who’d turned over a Mercedes or BMW since June of that year, and within hours I had a name and an address. I’d already paid a quiet visit to his house to check out the layout. McNamara had two cars in his garage, but the Merc very rarely came out. If I was to bet, I’d say he was hiding that car.

My old boss rang me with the details.

‘Do you want to come back, John Paul?’ he asked. ‘I could always do with a grafter like you.’

‘Yeah, let me think about it,’ I said.

He rang the garage I was headed to and let his guy know I was en route. The mechanic who’d done the job was waiting for me outside, smoking nervously and shifting from one foot to the other. He squinted at me as I approached.

‘John Paul?’ he said.

‘That’s me. Tony?’

He nodded, flicked his butt on to the ground and started walking.

‘Can’t bring you inside, mate,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down to Gills. I’m on me lunch break – we can go there.’

‘Gills?’

‘Me local.’

He came back from the bar with two pints of Guinness and a Mars bar for himself.

‘You’re missing one of your five-a-day,’ I said, trying to ease the tension. He was ridiculously skinny. Starved-looking – that kind of working-class skeletal appearance that told you he’d rarely had a nutritious meal as a child and his metabolism was driven by nervous energy. I should have looked like that, I suppose, but I had culchie-farmer blood in my veins, the one decent thing Seamie had given me.

‘Fuck it. Curry later. Me appetite is gone anyway. Ever since Jim rang. Put the shits up me, it did. I knew there was something off about that job on the Merc. I knew it would come back to haunt me.’

I picked up the pint and sipped from it, probably only my third or fourth pint in my life. It was going to be one of those conversations.

‘Sorry, we didn’t mean to put the willies up you,’ I said. ‘Anything you tell me will stay between you and me, mate. You have my word.’

He studied me from over the top of his pint, then settled it back on its mat.

‘That’s as may be,’ he said. ‘But just to be clear, I’m doing this because Jim is me second cousin and I want a job over at his outfit. I reckon if this shit comes out it will be my boss’s name that’s mud – not us sods who do the dirty work – but I’d still rather be out of it.’

‘Understood. Does he take many of these jobs, your boss?’

Tony sighed and shook his head.

‘Too fucking many. I don’t mind dealing with a hot motor, but the ones involved in accidents? Nah. That doesn’t sit right with me. And the boss – he’s in with all sorts of gangsters. You worry, you know? You’ll fix up a car that’s been used in a job where some kingpin has got whacked, and next thing a gang will be setting fire to your place of employment. Health and fucking safety shot to pieces.’

I almost laughed. Health and safety. Tony was a character.

‘The man who brought in the Merc,’ I asked. ‘How does he know your boss?’

‘He doesn’t know him – but he was riding some bird who does. She’s like a model or something, but her brother is selling charlie all over fucking Dublin.’

‘What did you say?’ I froze.

‘Charlie. The white stuff? Cocaine?’ He shook his head, looking at me like I’d just landed. ‘Anyway, he uses the garage, and she must have given this banker wanker a calling card because not just anybody can rock up at the door and say, “Howya, can you help me cover up a murder?”‘

My stomach churned.

‘What was his name?’ I said. ‘The client.’

‘No clue. Just that he was a rich prick who works in a bank. The boss is the soul of discretion. He’d cut my fucking tongue out if he knew I was having this little parley with you. Want another one?’ I looked down at my drained pint glass. How had that happened?

And, yeah, I wanted another one so badly I would have strangled Tony to lick the dregs of his.

I shook my head. I needed to keep my act together to see this through. It wasn’t the afternoon to turn into my dad.

‘Fair enough. Anyway, your man drove it in. Brown hair, sunglasses, hoodie and jeans, like he was trying to disguise himself. He’s driving a bleeding Merc and his sunglasses are Gucci. Like, actual Gucci, not me ma bringing me a pair back from a market in Spain Gucci.’

I pulled up the image on my phone, the screenshot from a recent profile piece McNamara had done.

‘Yeah, that’s him,’ he said. ‘Who is he?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, putting the phone back in my pocket. ‘How banged up was the motor?’

Tony shifted uneasily in his seat.

‘Look, this is the reason I want to get out of this garage, you understand?’

‘I get it. I told you, you’ve nothing to worry about from me. I’ll never mention your name to anybody. Jim must have told you we go way back.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, he did. He likes you. Trusts you.’ Tony gave me his best dead-eye stare, trying to impress on me how much he was trusting me in that moment too, and the respect it deserved.

I took a bundle of notes out of my wallet.

‘I discussed this with Jim,’ I said, and placed it beside the empty Mars bar wrapper on the table. ‘It comes with a firm offer of a job from his shop. There’s nothing dodgy over there. Well, bar the obvious. He’ll take you as soon as.’

Tony lifted the cash and counted it with his eyes. Fifties, at least twenty of them.

‘There was no need,’ he said, putting it into his pocket.

I wondered how much he’d been paid to panel-beat the car that had killed my sister, to remove any trace of her blood from its paintwork. Probably just his day’s pay, €70 or €80.

‘He’d hit somebody,’ Tony said. ‘Left side, passenger side. The bonnet was dented. Not too badly – I’ve seen worse. But it was a Merc. His victim would have taken the biggest dent. I saw the news. Some young one was killed walking home from a party a week before. I’d say it was her.’

I closed my eyes as the room started to spin around me.

‘I gave it a few taps, replaced the front headlight and resprayed it a nice midnight blue,’ Tony continued. ‘Here, are you all right, bud?’

I nodded, then stood up.

‘Thanks, Tony,’ I said. ‘Just – just write down the reg for me, would you?’

He turned over the beer mat and pulled a pen out of the front pocket of his overalls.

‘I don’t normally remember the numbers on regs,’ he said. ‘I’m usually changing them anyway, and I’m not bleeding Carol Vorderman. But this one stayed in my head. I told you, I knew it would come back to haunt me.’

He held out the mat but when I tried to take it, he kept his fingers on the cardboard.

‘Jim didn’t tell me your last name,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I answered.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it doesn’t.’ He extended his hand for me to shake and as I did, he pulled me in close.

‘Find him and fucking kill him. That’s what I’d do if it was someone belonging to me he did that to. He has it coming.’

And with that, the atmosphere between us changed from one of shared suspicion to one of mutual understanding and agreement.

That’s why Tony hasn’t come forward.

He understood.