65

Jig dug his fists into his hoodie.

It was freezing in here. Wherever it was. Ghost had got him to pull the hoodie up and lean his head against the dashboard with his arms around his face all the way in the car. At one stage he heard a gate open and they drove up a bumpy path. Ghost got him out and told him to keep looking down until he opened a big metal door and pushed him inside some building. When he looked around it was a warehouse, full of echoes and rattles.

Jig stared at the men. Ghost was in a huddle with two others. One was a mini Incredible Hulk. He had a battered head that looked like the side of a car that had been smashed in and someone had tried to beat it back out. The other man was bald and built like a barrel. He didn’t seem to speak, just looked on as the others talked. He gave Jig a hard stare when he fell off a pallet. Must be the boss man, Jig told himself.

The door opened with a clang and Cracko strode in.

Everyone was wearing new clobber, even if it was poxy, he thought, as he tried to balance on an iron bar.

Must be the gang meeting about the rat.

He twitched as he remembered Ghost at the canal with Bowie and Cracko crunching his shoulders.

But what are they going to do? They going to torture some fucker, to find out who the rat is?

There were sounds of bangers in the distance. Jig wondered what Spikey and Dizzy Dylan were up to. He wished he was with his mates, messing. He looked up at the windows that ran along the top half of the walls for fireworks, but the windows were covered with grilles. There were a couple of big metal doors, but all, apart from the one they came in, were bolted and rusty. There was a tapping noise as he walked back the far side, towards the others. Drops fell from holes in the roof. It took seconds for them to hit the ground. He watched them sail down and plop, bang off the metal poles.

There was a noise from outside. Another car was stopping.

 

Hall heaved in a breath, held it for a few seconds and exhaled slowly. Between the fight in the pub and the explosion at the bonfire, they had lost Leo in the pandemonium.

They only had the targets now. He looked at the feeds on the screens.

‘T/1 is on the move, heading north, into Clondalkin,’ Slavin said. ‘T/2 has gone Rathfarnham direction. And T/3 is driving down the canals, towards Ballsbridge.’

All going in different directions. Hall leaned against a desk and studied the screens, examining the routes of the targets up to this point.

‘Decoys,’ he said, in a whisper. ‘Two of them are sending us in the wrong direction.’

He clasped his chin in his hand and rubbed it, squinting at the screens. Something else dawned on him.

‘Or,’ he said, looking at Slavin, ‘all three of them are.’

‘All?’ said Slavin, confused.

‘Have the two targets who were still in their homes moved?’

‘No, they haven’t stirred.’

Hall looked at the detectives logging those teams for confirmation and they nodded.

‘Mackin was seen going into his apartment last night and hasn’t come out since,’ Slavin said, reading the logbooks. ‘The other guy, Roberts, was last seen going into his house just before 5 p.m. He hasn’t budged.’

Hall ran his tongue against his front teeth. Something was up.

‘Hold on,’ Hall said, ‘did one of the teams not report a utility van arriving at Mackin’s apartment just after Leo left the priest’s?’

Slavin flicked through the sheets.

‘Yeah, we have a guy, wearing a yellow hi-vis Irish Gas jacket and cap, carrying a holdall, calling to the apartment block,’ Slavin said, reading from the log. ‘He examined a box outside for a while. He then entered the building. We got a good look at him when he arrived. No one we knew. He exited,’ Slavin said, reading the notes, ‘some five minutes later and left in a white van with the Irish Gas logo.’

Hall looked at Slavin.

‘Was it the same guy who left, as entered?’ Hall asked. ‘Tell me it was.’

Slavin looked at the notes.

‘Just says Irish Gas guy exited. Nothing else.’

‘Get onto 9/0 and check.’

Hall listened to Slavin. The team didn’t know for sure if it was the same guy or not. They only had a partial image of him when he left.

‘This is the best picture they have of the guy after,’ Slavin said, opening up the photograph on a screen.

All Hall could see was a guy in a cap and a yellow hi-vis jacket. His face wasn’t visible.

‘Call up the images when he arrived?’

Slavin searched for a few moments. He opened up the images separately. The man’s bulk and clothes looked different, Hall thought. It wasn’t the same guy.

‘Circulate the photo of the guy leaving to the other teams and the description of the utility van. Tell me we have the reg?’

Slavin shook his head.

‘Fuck,’ Hall roared. ‘Right under our noses.’

He needed to regain control of this.

‘Organise search patterns for teams 9/0 to 9/3. Bring one team back from each of the three mobile suspects. And bring in 8/1 and 8/2. We’ll need as many as possible.’

He walked over to the map.

Lock Man would have kept this meeting local, he said to himself, somewhere secure.

‘Okay, we have nine teams to find this van,’ Hall said, running his finger in circles around the map. ‘Get three teams into the Coombe, Rialto and Inchicore, three into Crumlin and Drimnagh and the last three into Bluebell, Ballyfermot and Ballymount. Surely, between them, they can find a fucking white gas van.’

Slavin gave the orders, directing the teams and devising search patterns.

Hall got on to the ERU intervention squads.

‘5/0 to Black 1, Black 2, Black 3. We have new locations.’

 

Jason Mackin pulled the van in near the back entrance to the War Memorial Gardens, his wipers creaking back and forth. He looked at the red dot on his tablet. Leo had gone all the way from the canals into the city centre, across the Liffey, back down the quays and out towards the canal again. He smiled at the gang’s attempts to shake off company.

Shoving the van into first, he kept glancing at the map. The vehicle was on the Naas Road now, about a mile from him.

Not only had they bettered the Canal Gang, he thought, but they had also fooled the spooks. They were about to take out the gang right under the noses of the garda. That would put them on the map for sure.

He looked down at his holdall and practised the drill again in his mind.

 

Jig and the others stared at the door as it clanged open. In walked some hoodie. There was a big guy with him, who nodded to the hulk and shut the door behind him. The bang echoed around the warehouse and there were darted looks back and forth between the hoodie and the crew. Jig felt his body shake a bit. He needed to go for a piss.

The hulk motioned to the guy, who pulled his hoodie down. Jig sneaked up a few steps to take a look.

Is this guy the rat? He looks like a junkie.

He was wearing the same type of tracksuit, it was hanging off him.

The hulk strode over. He told the man to take his clothes off. The man pulled off his top, then, hesitating for a second, took down his bottoms.

Jig muffled his laugh. The guy was bollix naked. He was all black and purple and bones. He had little craters on his legs and arms.

A junkie alright.

The hulk leaned in and examined him, got him to hold up his arms and spread his legs. He pointed at the guy to turn around and bend over.

Jig stared at the hulk looking up the man’s arse and burst out laughing. The boss man glared. Jig nearly shat himself and swallowed the rest of the laugh.

The hulk strolled back and nodded to the boss man. The junkie pulled up his tracksuit. As he threw on his top, he spotted Jig and his face darkened.

Jig wondered if they were going to kill the guy.

Are they going to get me to do it? Is that going to be my initiation to the gang or something?

No one spoke. The hulk stood in front of the boss. Ghost was off to the right, near the door. Cracko stood closest to the man, his arms tight against his T-shirt.

Jig watched the junkie shift where he stood, exposed in the middle of the warehouse, standing under a bright light.

The hulk said: ‘Well?’

Jig barely heard the reply, the voice was so shaky.

‘I wants me debts written off.’

No one said anything.

‘Talk,’ the hulk said.

‘I wants guarantees first.’

 

Hall’s mobile vibrated. He cursed as Deputy Commissioner Nessan’s number came up.

‘Sir?’

‘Why has Detective Inspector Tyrell put in a request through his Chief to trace a phone linked to Jig. And a request to have the ERU on standby?’

‘What?’

‘They have reason to fear for this boy’s safety,’ Nessan said. ‘They have information that the Provos are going to take out the Canal Gang.’

Hall’s mind spun.

Fuck you, Shay, if you’re behind this.

‘You need to get on top of this, Hall,’ Nessan said. ‘Quick.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The phone company is locating the boy’s phone. Get onto Comms and tell them to keep you informed. I hope this op of yours doesn’t backfire on you.’

Nessan hung up. Hall chewed over the use of ‘yours’ and ‘you’ and knew what it would mean if it all went pear-shaped. He dialled Shay’s mobile.

You’re fucking history, Shay, if you’ve fucked me over.

 

Cracko laughed when the junkie said ‘guarantees’.

‘Just get on with it,’ the hulk said.

The guy shifted on his feet and scratched at his head.

‘Listen, I wants to know I’m safe if I tell youse this? That’s fair enough.’

Cracko turned to the hulk. Jig could see him almost begging for a lash at the guy.

‘Don’t waste our time,’ the hulk said, ‘or I might allow my friend here,’ nodding to Cracko, ‘to ask the questions.’

The guy starting shaking.

Jig smiled.

Ya better fucking talk.

‘I wants to know why youse killed me ma.’ He glanced over at Jig. ‘Why?’

Jig stumbled back and fell over a pole. He looked at Ghost, who shook his head to say nothing and looked at the man again.

He’s that old woman’s son. He wants to kill me.

There was silence. Jig heard rain beat against the sheeting on the roof. Big drops fell, making a loud tapping noise as they hit the metal poles. He pushed himself up. He felt something in his trousers and remembered the phone.

‘Don’t be wasting our time,’ the hulk said, with a deliberate nod at Cracko.

‘The cops have an inside line on youse,’ he blurted out as Cracko moved towards him.

The boss man stepped forward. Jig saw all of them turn to face him, then back to the man.

‘I got this off a garda,’ the man said, ‘when they were actually fucking investigating me ma’s murder.’

Jig heard more strength in the man’s voice now.

‘The copper told me to lie low, not to do nothing, that they had a source.’

The man stopped talking. Jig scanned the faces. The boss man looked like he was chewing on a wasp.

‘And?’ the hulk asked.

‘What I knows is the garda said yer gang is compromised. Her words. She said they mightn’t have enough on youse for me ma, but that they’re playing the long game and all that. Youse have a rat.’

The boss man tilted his head from side to side, like a boxer in his corner.

‘Spit it fucking out,’ the boss man said. ‘Who?’

Jig shivered at the change in atmosphere. Everyone seemed to stop breathing. No one moved. The hair on the back of his head prickled. Save for the dripping there wasn’t a sound.

The man scratched his head, harder this time.

Jig sneaked around the back of them, stopping behind a wooden box. He shoved his hand into his pocket and grasped the phone.

They’d kill me if they knew I had this.

But no one was looking in his direction. Jig blinked at the screen. Fifteen missed calls. A text came up.

Get out Jig. Danger.

He felt warm liquid run down the inside of his right leg. He looked at the message again. He dropped the phone back in his pocket.

‘I’m after pissing in me tracksuit,’ he said, looking towards Ghost. Tense faces swung around at him, annoyed by the distraction. Jig ran to the door, but didn’t know how to open it. He banged on it. He felt eyes staring at him now. He turned and saw the boss man looking at a mobile phone.

‘It’s a trap,’ the boss man roared. ‘Out.’

 

Shay held Crowe’s phone and put Tyrell on speaker as she careered down by the canal towards the Naas Road. The wipers swung hard as the rain smacked against the windscreen. Shay shook at his ears to try and hear what he was saying.

‘It’s off the Naas Road. They’re trying to triangulate it as best they can,’ Tyrell said. ‘Units from the area have been dispatched.’

Shay could hear what seemed like other voices at the end of the phone and guessed Tyrell was still talking to someone else.

‘Looks like it’s one of the industrial estates, on the Bluebell or Ballyfermot side.’

‘Almost there,’ Crowe shouted above the metallic noise of the Luas running beside her, the silver tram glistening in the heavy rain.

She put the foot down, passing the Luas, and flung the car around a tight turn across the tracks, horns beeping from all sides. Crowe had to break hard at a steep speed ramp, the front bumper banging loudly.

Shay reached for his pocket as his own phone vibrated. There were two missed calls. A text had come through.

Ring. Now.

He sensed Crowe glancing over, her eyebrows knotting with suspicion.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said, putting his phone away.

Crowe flew across a junction.

Shay’s head smacked against the passenger window when the explosion went off.

The car vibrated off the road and skidded hard against the footpath.

A massive fireball filled the sky ahead.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Shay roared before the pain from the bang kicked in.

‘Explosion?’ Tyrell said.

‘Yes,’ Crowe shouted, fighting to regain control of the car as it slid across the road, ‘explosion at one of the industrial estates, not sure which, beside the canal. We need fire crews, ambulances. Now.’

‘Oh my God,’ the priest said from the back of the car.

Shay stared open-mouthed at the blaze shooting up into the sky. He could see bits of material, sheets of metal, catapulting upwards, and shuddered. He banged the dashboard with his fist, cursing.

‘Too fucking late. I’m too fucking late. It’s all for nothing.’

Blood ran from his nose and gathered on his lip.

‘Fucking go, go!’ he shouted, slamming his hand down.

Crowe tore over ramps, the chassis crunching and sparking. The rain hammered against the roof and the windscreen. The yellows of the street lamps blurred in the rain. But behind that was a display of oranges. Shay twisted his head at thoughts of what they were going to find. Bodies blown to bits. Little arms and legs. The priest whispered prayers behind him.

Crowe catapulted them forward at breakneck speed. She narrowly missed a van coming towards them, skidded around a bend and halted.

Shay jumped out before the car even stopped and kicked back the gate to a unit, his arm over his face.

‘Shay, wait,’ Crowe shouted behind him.

He sprinted up the lane towards the blaze.

I’ve killed the boy.

Shay ground his teeth at the realisation.

The side of his head throbbed from the impact of the explosion, and, with his nose split and swollen, he struggled to breathe as he ran.

Orange flames danced against a canvas of black. On the other side of the perimeter wall, he heard the canal waters hiss as crackling debris hailed down.

If the gang was inside the building they were blown to pieces, Jig with them.

A sheet of corrugated roofing slammed down in front of him, searing his shin. He winced, but forced himself on.

So, this is how it fucking ends: risking my life searching through rubble for bits of the boy. After everything I’ve sacrificed.

Somewhere behind, the detective shouted at him to come back. But, ahead, Shay thought he could make out screams. Distant sirens echoed along the warren of Dublin’s streets.

The remainder of the warehouse heaved and groaned. He was out of time.

Fuck it, I’ve nothing to lose.

He stumbled forward, his face bubbling with the heat. His ankle twisted over something loose on the ground, tipping him off balance. Spitting blood from his lips, he looked down and followed the forks of yellow light.

Something small was smouldering.

It looked like a runner.

A child’s runner.

‘Jig?’ he roared. ‘Jig?’