Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) (5 page)

‘Yeah, well, if Maria’s anything to go by …’

‘Here’s the kicker, though. She wants the training done through English, she reckons she read something in
Newsweek
about how the ability to speak English is the single most
important
factor, world-wide, if you want to work.’

‘She’d be better off teaching them Mandarin.’

‘Or Russian, maybe. Anyway, the Chinese and the Russians aren’t offering education grants. The EU is, and the EU wants Turkey, and Turkey means Turkish Cyprus. Except Maria’s
having
huge problems converting her qualifications from here into what’s needed over there.’

‘The EU’s falling apart, squire. You’re talking frying pan and furnace.’

‘Might be an issue,’ he said, easing out from behind the
mixing
-desk, ‘if this was about the EU and Ireland anymore, if it wasn’t about you and me and taking care of number one.’ He headed for the emergency exit. ‘Excuse me,’ he winked, ‘while I take care of a number one.’

He went out onto the fire escape to piss in the fresh air, as was his wont, so that he wouldn’t have to flush afterwards. Herb, I could hear him already, would have something suitably cynical to say about Finn Hamilton living like a prince among the Cypriot paupers, the part-time philanthropist who’d spent a good chunk of his extended adulescence wandering through Europe in his customised camper van, chasing the next big breaker, the latest fall of crisp snow, boozing, snorting, squandering money he’d never had to earn. What I couldn’t tell Herb was what a shrink had once asked Finn during one of our group therapy sessions, whether Finn thought he was reacting against his father’s suicide, either by blocking it out or trying it on for size.

I’d thought he was done running, that he’d learned you never outrun it. That it’s not a race but a wrestle, and the best you can hope for is an honourable draw. I got up from the couch and wandered over to the stacked paintings, ran a fingernail down his latest take on St Hilarion. From the other side of the room it was another of his riffs on a Gothic kind of impressionism, sheer crags and soaring peaks, barren slopes, a blowsy sunset bleeding across a wine-dark sea. But as always, up close, as the image
dissolved
, each stroke was a vivid scar etched into the skin of
something
savage that seemed almost ready to snarl, the frame
doubling
as the bars of its cage. Even the proverbial blind man could see, by means of braille, that the artist in Finn was not a happy man. He painted in oils, and thickly, leaving a texture so crude it was as if he worked from a palette of blood, bile and coarsely grained gunpowder, a gritty and glutinous blend that you feared to examine too closely lest a spark of light, the faintest
transference
of heat, cause some raw and lurking quality to spontaneously combust. He favoured for inspiration Oscar Epfs, but for me his landscapes were crude variations on early El Grecos or Caravaggios, men who had harrowed a hell of their own making, and where his canvases lacked for technique they offered a banked rage, the tensile pause in the moment before the world exploded from the frame.

Finn had found his metier inside. All the hours of the day to devote to his craft. Too fanciful to say that every artist paints out his own soul, but even my untrained eye could tell that Finn was so engaged, for better or worse. Whether it was good or bad art was almost incidental: it was startling, arresting, in and of itself. Was it worth money? Is any man’s soul? Yes, with the inevitable caveat of
caveat emptor
.

I liked them, sure, but I wouldn’t have wanted one on my own wall, even if I could have afforded the two or three grand they generally went for, when they went. Too unsettling, always watching it from the corner of your eye as it prowled the frame, snuffling and growling and poised to spring.

He came back in from the fire escape, got some Sonic Youth going, ‘Teenage Riot’.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘this deal with the beauty salon.’ He took one last drag of mainly roach, stubbed out the jay. ‘That’s kind of under wraps for now, at least until we get the red tape sorted.’

‘No worries.’

‘Mind you, the way things are going, it could take years.’ He fiddled with the bass levels, not that there was anything wrong with the bass levels. ‘No wonder the place is in the shitter. There’s a million middle-men to go through, everyone’s dipping their beak, except everything gets done tomorrow. Y’know?’

‘Pity they couldn’t be a bit more Irish, eh?’

‘It’s actually worse over there, if you can believe it. I wouldn’t mind so much, but it’s jobs I’m offering, proper investment.’

‘No disrespect, but I’d say beauty salons aren’t top of their list of investment priorities.’

He did the bob-bob thing with his head again, the shaggy mop falling in front of his eyes. ‘The salon, sure. That’s Maria’s gig. Me, I have other plans.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘You haven’t been out there, Harry. It’s like here twenty years ago, every second lot is a building site, except you have the sun, the climate. Last summer I took a wee wander, had a look at some show houses, these villa developments. One place, I got chatting with the site manager, right? Three hundred and twenty grand sterling per villa, twelve villas per development, beach-side, they’re being built for a quarter of that, and even that’s off the books, it’s all cash-in-hand. The Turks are bunkered in, there’s more Russians than flies, the border’s relaxing, everyone knows the EU is on the way. That place is a gusher ready to blow.’

‘You’re going solo?’

‘Sort of, yeah. The seed capital is coming from Hamilton Holdings but I’m the one brought it to the board, so it’s my gig.’

He fleshed it out, a high-end development of two-storey apartments fronting a beach about eight miles east of Girne, one pool to each apartment block, playgrounds, a gym, putting greens, on-site restaurants and bars. Maria’s salon. Hands waving as he sketched it out in the air, how the kicker was that it wasn’t just a build-and-sell project, it was all about the long term. Managing the development for foreign investors, maybe tying in a car rental operation, some kind of quasi-official tour guide operation, some of the profits siphoned off for a Cypriot getaway for any of
Spiritus Mundi
’s mere anarchists who fancied a tan. Grinning all the while like the idiot second son who’s just been bought a one-way ticket to Happy Valley. ‘All we need now,’ he said, ‘is Ryanair to start flying direct to Ercan and we’re minted.’

‘So you’re running the show for Hamilton Holdings,’ I said, ‘and Maria’s happy as a lark working for you, managing this beauty salon.’

‘The salon’s a separate issue. It’ll be on-site but independent. Maria’s own place, like.’ He grinned self-consciously, tugged at his nose. ‘I mean, you couldn’t give someone a wedding present with strings attached, could you?’

And there it was.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Another good woman bites the dirt.’

He winced through the grin. ‘If she’ll have me,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s a pity the salon’s a wedding present, I could set her on these Cypriot fuckers holding up the show. Bastards have cost me nearly three hundred grand already, and counting.’

‘Christ. That’s serious kickback, man.’

‘No, I mean with Gillick. This time last year he was offering nine hundred grand for the PA, the sixteen acres. His latest offer, he’s down to six and change.’

‘Take his fucking hand off, Finn. Are you kidding?’

‘Gillick’s a fly fucker. Soon as I jump he’ll find himself caught short, cash-flow issues, he’s over-leveraged, the works. So he’ll come back with, I don’t know, half that, maybe less. Fifty grand up front, then I’m chasing the rest, and trying to do it from Cyprus.’

‘So fuck him. Go with someone else.’

‘This
is
going with someone else. Gillick’s brokering the deal, he’s fronting for some consortium. And the way things are now, there isn’t exactly a queue for sixteen acres of Sligo dockland.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so. What’s he planning, a prison?’

Finn shrugged. ‘Originally, this is back when everything was flying, he was talking up a self-contained village, its own shops, a restaurant or two, a pub. At the start he had a marina attached, dock-space going with every unit along the quays. He had me draw up an artist’s impression, it looked good. Keeping all the old brick, the façades, he reckoned the yupniks eat that shit up with a spoon.’

‘Yupniks?’

‘Yuppie rednecks.’ He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Anyway, that’s all scuppered for now.’

‘But he still wants it.’

‘Yeah, he’s bunkering in, buying low. Except he’s good-cop bad-cop all on his own. One minute he’s all, “You need to sell now, Finn.” Next he’s going, “It’s a buyer’s market, Finn.” Schizophrenic, the fucker is.’

‘You shouldn’t be dealing with him direct. Get yourself a
solicitor
, put some space between you. Get the solicitor to play
hardball
.’

‘Just another fucking thing, man. Gillick is my solicitor.’

‘Right.’

‘It’s complicated. He’s the family solicitor, always has been. Plus there’s the fact that he likes the Cyprus idea, wants in on the ground floor.’ He shrugged it off. ‘Anyway, there’s no panic. By the time we get all the red tape sorted on Cyprus, he’ll be throwing money at me.’

‘I wouldn’t bet the farm on that one, Finn. I think we’re in for the long haul this time.’

‘Yeah, well …’ His shoulders slumped. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘keep it under your hat for now.’

‘I’ll buy a hat special, just to have something to keep it under.’ I toasted him with my coffee mug. ‘Fair fucks, man. Bon voyage.’

‘Cheers.’

I drained the coffee, took the mug into the kitchen, rinsed it out. He had The Only Ones on when I got back, ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’. ‘Expecting anyone else?’ I said.

‘No. Why?’

‘I’ll bring up the score.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘No need, I’m nearly finished. I’ll
follow
you down. Oh, here.’ He reached under the desk,
clickety-clicked
through some CD cases, came up holding a blank. Frisbee’d it across. He’d scrawled
Songs to Dance and Make Babies To # VII
in flowing script on the white insert card. ‘See if you can work it out.’

‘That reminds me. Herb was looking for some Motown. Some Smokey if you have it.’

‘No problem. See you in ten.’

As it happened, it took him twenty. He arrived in a hurry, though. When he ploughed head-first into the cab he must have been doing damn near sixty miles an hour.

Sizzling flesh, burnt petrol, maybe even a whiff of sulphur. The stench of the Saturday night riots in Hell.

My guts bubbled and yawed. I stumbled across to the
deepwater
for a smoke, hands shaking so hard it took three goes to dig the makings out of my back pocket. Bear had stopped barking, although now and again I could hear him scraping, a low whine. I finally got a cigarette rolled, stuck my face in the smoke.

When my guts finally stopped sloshing around I rolled another smoke and went back to where he lay. Hunkered down, fingers clamped on my nose. Some words needed. It was a bit late for an Act of Contrition, and anyway Finn wasn’t the religious type, so I settled for something vaguely spiritual from
Bell Jars Away
.

‘I have thrown myself into your warm hold,’ I whispered, ‘where you bless away the shivering.’

No good reason to whisper, there being no one within half-a-mile to hear. But I didn’t trust my normal voice to work. Shuddering now, the quake taking its own sweet time to settle, aftershocks rumbling.

I kissed one knuckle and touched it to what remained of his left shoulder.

Not much, but it’d have to do.

I spent the eternity or so it took the ambulance to arrive
looking
for something that might do for a slim jim, this before it occurred to me to wonder if Finn might have left his Audi unlocked. He had. I was cursing him for a feckless fool, aloud, when I realised I was only doing it out loud because I knew there was no one around, never was, not that late down at the PA. I half-expected to find the keys in the ignition, but even Finn wasn’t that hopeless. Two minutes, some loosened wires and a couple of sparks later and I was mobile again. The Audi was badly scorched all along its left-hand side, the windows
smoke-blackened
, so they looked like they’d been given a botched tint job. But it would run.

When the paramedics arrived, and looked and winced, I
identified
Finn and told them what I’d seen. The guy in charge seemed competent, solid, so I drifted away. He heard the Audi’s door close and strolled over, knuckled the window. I rolled it down.

‘You okay to drive?’ he said.

‘Sound, yeah.’

‘Watch out for the delayed shock. If you start feeling sick, dizzy, tired, any way off, pull over straight away.’ He peered a
little
closer, taking in the singed eyebrows, the bloody hands dried black. ‘And you’ll be needing a stitch or two in those.’

‘I’ll do for now.’

‘You know you’re not supposed to leave until the cops get here.’

‘Someone should tell his folks.’

‘The cops’ll do that.’

‘Yeah, but it should be somebody who knew him.’

‘Fair enough, but they’ll have my balls if I don’t write down your reg.’

‘Work away. I’ll swing back this way when I’m done. If I don’t find them here, I’ll head in to the cop shop. Should take about an hour out and back.’

He tap-tapped the roof, straightening up. ‘Better you than me,’ he said, walking away.

He didn’t know the half of it. I pulled out of the PA yard and headed for town. Ten minutes later I was outside Weir’s Folly, the four-bed penthouse suite of which had balcony views of Yeats’ Bridge to the north and Lough Gill to the east, and was officially registered as the office address of Fine Arte Investments. Two of the bedrooms had been converted into actual office space, which left two-thirds of the penthouse for the director of Fine Arte Investments, aka Finn Hamilton, to call his own, rent-free. That perk was impressive enough, given that a four-bed penthouse in the heart of town could be pulling down anything up to fifteen hundred a month, but the office address allowed Finn to claim practically every aspect of its upkeep as a tax write-off.