When Crowe discovered that Darren, or Maggot as he was known, was Jig’s brother, she had a good idea what she was up against.
As she drove towards their home, she recalled the info from the Garda Pulse computer system.
Maggot had clocked up sixty charges in his fifteen years, the most serious, and the most recent, a firearms charge. He ran with a crew on the canal. She saw that he came from a good lineage. His dad had serious form, mainly for armed robberies and burglaries. The mother was a serial shoplifter and had carried out a number of nasty assaults on staff.
She’d managed to grab Sergeant Flynn at the station and asked about his meeting with Ms King. He said the meeting was short because the woman was just too nervous. She’d made her excuses and left, which, he said, was not uncommon. He said there was no way information about that meeting could have leaked out from the station. He was adamant about that. The information was known only to himself, the DI and the Chief. Ms King must have told someone, he said. Perhaps the gang had followed her on the day of the meeting, but he doubted that. He agreed that Ghost was the most likely person behind the threat and didn’t seem surprised that a child might have been used to send the message. But he doubted that Crowe would find concrete evidence. The Canal Gang were too good at covering their tracks.
Crowe wasn’t going to let that stop her.
She slowed over the speed ramps. The road teemed with kids. A girl was pulling a big holdall on wheels. She stopped and unzipped it and out popped the head of a toddler. He laughed and the girl pushed his head back in. Crowe smiled. You could never predict what you’d see around here, she thought.
She scanned the house numbers and recognised Maggot’s. There was a gang of kids, little ones, on the other side of the road. They were hitting a lightpole repeatedly with bars or something.
She sized up the house as she got out. There were big bins blocking most of the path to the door. One of them had tipped over a railing; bits of rubbish had fallen into a neighbour’s garden. The windows of the sitting room were wide open. Noise blared. A tattered, dirty curtain hung inside, looping in the middle.
The front door slammed and she looked at Maggot. As he tried to root out a bike from behind the bins, she felt for her holster, probably because of the most recent charge Maggot had against him. Outside the firing range, she had yet to discharge her Sig P226. But with fifteen rounds in it, including one in the breech and another magazine with fifteen bullets in a holder on the left side of her belt, she was well prepared for madness. Though why detectives were obliged to carry so much ammo she had yet to understand.
‘Well, garda,’ he shouted on seeing her, ‘what the fuck do ya want?’
‘You want to watch your mouth there, Darren. I’ll add being abusive to a garda to your charges.’
He laughed as he pulled out his bike.
‘How many charges have you got now before the Children’s Court?’ she asked.
‘What, the joke shop?’
‘Well, your firearms charge is no joke.’
He pulled his hoodie up and shrugged his shoulders in contrived nonchalance.
‘You won’t be smiling when you get serious time in St Pat’s.’
‘Be no bother,’ he said, doing a wheelie on his bike. ‘I knows half of them fuckers in there anyways. It be like a camp.’
She watched as he stuck his finger up back at her and allowed her thoughts to come to the surface.
Little scumbag. Chances are he’ll have a short and nasty life.
She turned to the door, but couldn’t see any buzzer or knocker. She gave it a rap.
‘Ms Hunt? Can you open the door please?’
No response. She stood there for the next couple of minutes knocking and calling out her name. There was a light noise behind her, like little stones hitting a car. She turned around and kids looked at her, laughing. In a fit of frustration, she gave the door a kick.
There was a roar from the bowels of the house, as if she had awoken something. Feet stomped down the hall.
‘Who the fuck done that?’ the voice came, as the door was pulled back.
Crowe expected to see a huge battle-axe of a woman, but this woman was average height, shorter even, and skinny. But wiry. She had red hair tied back into a severe ponytail. A white vest hung off her and a black and gold belt was tight around her narrow waist. She had a big black tattoo across the top of her chest, visible above her vest. Another smudged the side of her neck. Before Crowe could take out her badge from her bag, the woman pointed to her unmarked Mondeo.
‘That yer car? Come on, let’s go and kick the shite out of it.’
‘Ms Hunt, calm down. I am –’
She pushed past her, stormed out of the gate and kicked the side of the car. The kids across the road roared and slapped the pole.
‘Ms Hunt,’ Crowe shouted, holding out her ID, ‘I’m a garda and that’s a garda vehicle. Now calm down.’
She swung around and marched back, her face sweating, her eyes bulging. The muscles on her arms were sinewy and taut.
‘Ya kick me door,’ she said, gesticulating wildly with her finger, ‘I’ll kick yer fucking car.’
Crowe could smell booze. The woman looked like she’d downed a handful of tablets too.
‘Ms Hunt, I’m looking to talk to Jig.’
‘Ya mean that other useless prick,’ she said, pointing in the direction that Maggot went.
‘Not Darren. Jig.’
Ms Hunt stood there, swaying slightly, as if something was taking effect, or wearing off, Crowe wasn’t sure.
‘Yer not dragging Jig down to any cop shop. He’ll come back all battered, like Maggot does.’
‘I just want to talk to him. I can wait inside.’
‘He’s gone up the shops for smokes.’ She turned and swayed down the hall, leaving the door open behind her.
Crowe followed and put her badge back in her bag. She winced at the noise from the front room. An enormous TV was bolted to the wall. Some children’s programme boomed. A baby lay face down on the floor, its neck straining up towards the flashing images.
Layers of smells assailed her: damp clothes, cigarettes and the remnants of takeaways. She walked after Ms Hunt into the small kitchen. She was plonked at a table, staring up at another TV, up on the wall.
‘After the break. False nails. We have the latest fashions.’
A thought bubbled inside Crowe’s head.
‘Can I use your toilet?’ she asked, ‘while Jig comes back.’
Ms Hunt lit a cigarette and pointed upwards.
There were clothes dumped along the stairs and on the tiny landing. A bright bulb dangled from a long wire, illuminating dark spots and blotches along the edges of the ceiling. The front bedroom had been crudely partitioned into two rooms. One of the doors was splintered as if someone had kicked through it. The door to her right was to the toilet and the one ahead was ajar. She pushed that door back and glanced in. There was a football poster up on one of the walls. She reckoned it was Jig’s.
The room was cramped, just a narrow gap between a single bed and bunk beds on the other side. Light poured in through a curtainless window. A school bag was dumped on the bed.
Crowe reached into her bag and put on her latex gloves. She stepped carefully and zipped open the school bag. She pulled out a copy book and flicked through the pages. There were pages of homework and scribbles, of team layouts and drawings, quite good ones she thought, of the canal and swans and the Luas. Then a page opened out and she grabbed it. She nearly let out a cry. The page had bits of paper attached to the staples. She recalled the note and the tears where it was stapled. It looked like a fit. She took out her phone and took a picture of the page and shoved the copybook back in.
She stepped back out and opened the bathroom door. The smell of urine and used wet towels hit her. She held her breath, leaned over and flushed the toilet. She took her gloves off and allowed herself a smile.
Got the little fucker.
Crowe glanced around at her three colleagues as they waited. Tyrell sucked on his mint, but was otherwise expressionless. Such a cool fucker, she thought.
The door opened.
Instead of stepping back at the intimidating presence of four guards in front of her, each wearing anti-stab vests, Ms Hunt pushed her face towards Crowe.
‘That’s the fucking thanks I get for helping ya.’ She jabbed her finger into Crowe’s vest. ‘I let ya in,’ she said, swinging her right hand back into the house. ‘I was all hospitable. Ya barely said goodbye and now ya come back with the heavies.’
‘Ms Hunt,’ Crowe said, ‘we have a warrant to search the house. Here is a copy.’
Ms Hunt crunched the sheet into a ball, turned around and pretended to wipe her arse with it.
Crowe blinked at the sight. ‘Ms Hunt, this will be a lot easier if you just let us proceed and we will be out of here as quickly as possible.’
Ms Hunt leaned back on the wall, laughing to herself. The two uniformed guards headed for Jig’s bedroom.
‘Well, if it isn’t Garda What’s-his-fucking-name,’ Ms Hunt said to Tyrell. ‘Not seen yer miserable head in a while.’
Crowe watched Tyrell bite down on his mint. ‘Well, if you attended some of your son’s court dates you would,’ he replied.
Tyrell had told her on the way he wasn’t surprised Jig was one of the Hunts. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ he said to Crowe. He said it was already too late to save Jig. ‘Their lives are like the Luas tracks, Crowe, heading in one direction.’
Crowe went up to Jig’s room to see how the search was going.
There was no sign of the boy, or the bag.
Two hours later, Crowe slumped into the passenger seat.
‘I don’t get it,’ she said, as Tyrell drove off.
‘He copped it somehow,’ Tyrell said, speeding down the canal. ‘Or his ma did. She’s smarter than you might think, under that mad fucking exterior.’
‘Or someone tipped them off,’ Crowe replied, curtly.
She expected a rebuke, but none came.
‘What about we arrest the boy?’ Crowe said, watching a huge seagull hovering over the canal, its right eye, it seemed, glaring at her.
‘On what grounds?’
‘I saw the copybook. The tears on the page matched the note. I have a picture of it in my phone. The bag has since disappeared. We quiz him on that.’
‘How are you going to explain to the judge the photo you have of the copybook? An image you acquired from searching his room and going through his property without a warrant.’
Crowe had that sinking feeling, one she had yet managed to deal with: of a case, which she thought she had built up nicely, suddenly collapsing.
‘What about the CCTV?’ she asked, in desperation.
‘I already told you,’ Tyrell said, careering into the station. ‘A, the picture is not clear enough and B, even if we could show it was him, he could be just out acting the bollix. And the forensics from the scene drew a blank. So did the note. We have nothing linking the boy to the scene. You know that.’
Tyrell exited, leaving Crowe sunken in her seat.
She waited till he was gone inside, then lashed out hard with her feet.