‘By the way, Harry – word’s been circulating about this since late last night. First thing this morning, the Minister for Justice was hammering at my ear.’
Synnott couldn’t help smiling. ‘He’s reconsidering his offer?’
O’Keefe shook his head. ‘He’s already appointed someone else. A shiny young thing with impeccable party connections who’ll do the country proud in Europe.’
‘Fuck him.’
O’Keefe looked tired. ‘Frankly, Harry, I’d have withdrawn your name, anyway. The last thing we need is to draw attention to you. By the time this ends, you might have a career left or you might not. Depends how the chips fall. We’ll save you or we’ll screw you – depends on what’s best for the force.’
‘Thanks.’
‘No one asked you to stitch up Ned Callaghan.’
‘No one cared how it was done – and you know how these things are done, and the politicians know how they’re done – no one gives a shit until something like this happens.’
O’Keefe’s face tightened.
‘Don’t play the martyr, Harry. We handled the heavy gang going around beating the crap out of suspects. We handled it when suspects were stitched up like chickens on a spit. And you, we’ll handle you too.’
Synnott ran both hands back through his hair and paused a moment before he said, quietly, ‘I’m fucked.’
‘Maybe so. On balance, as long as you keep your head down and nothing else comes out, you just might shade it. Ned Callaghan’s dead, Wayne Kemp’s a nutter.’ He paused before he met Synnott’s gaze. ‘I take it there’s nothing else that might fall out of the woodpile?’
Synnott shook his head.
‘OK. Then the best thing you can do is keep your head down. Word’s already leaking through the force, it’s only a matter of time before someone gives it to the media. Take a few days – let’s see what it looks like when the dust settles.’
A mile or so from Garda HQ, Harry Synnott tasted the bile in his mouth and pulled the car over to the side of the road. He rolled down the window and took gulps of air. He had stopped by the side of the road in an isolated part of the Phoenix Park that he didn’t recognise. He got out and walked some yards from the car.
Kill the statements.
Dixie’s.
Mine. Do a new statement, lose the verbal.
He spat on the grass, but it didn’t relieve the harsh taste in his mouth.
Have to stop somewhere, buy some mints.
Synnott took out his mobile and rang John Grace’s house. A male voice he didn’t recognise said, ‘Yes?’
Synnott ended the call.
He had an urgent need for a piss. He walked away from the car, down an incline and towards the woods maybe fifty feet from the road. As he urinated against a tree, his back to the road, he remembered he’d left the car door open, the key in the ignition. He stifled a rush of anxiety that urged him to swing around. He forced himself to take his time, suppressing the irrational fear that at any moment he would hear the car being driven away. When he finished he turned and walked back towards the car.
No panic.
Think it through.
John Grace is retired – they’ve got no leverage, he sings dumb.
Swanson Avenue – it’s a face-off between me and a lunatic who killed two people and tried to jump off a roof.
It’s doable.
Everything else – this case or that, any other shit that was dragged up – without hard evidence it was nothing more than chatter, easily dealt with.
Take it easy.
Hold steady.
Do what has to be done.
Synnott could see a possibility.
Days, maybe a few weeks, of staying calm, taking any allegation head-on
– deny and challenge, make them work for every inch
– when it all blew itself out he could be still standing.
Nothing will be the same.
No promotion.
Ever.
Probably get shifted sideways to some backwater.
Quit?
Harry Synnott stood at the car, one hand on the roof, a fingernail tracing circular patterns on the blue paint.
I wouldn’t know what to do.
44
At Macken Road, Harry Synnott unlocked the drawer in his desk and took out the folder of statements that he had compiled the previous night. He took out his own statement about his conversation with Joshua Boyce and the handwritten version of Dixie Peyton’s statement. He drove to the city centre, parked, then walked to his flat by the Liffey and opened the copies of the files he’d brought home. In the kitchen sink he burned all versions of Dixie’s statement, originals and copies, along with his own statement on his conversation with Joshua Boyce. He crumpled the ashes and ran the tap on them. He watched the black particles swirl around the sink until they disappeared.
Walking towards Cooper Street garda station Synnott made a phone call.
‘Yeah?’
‘Where are you?’
Rose Cheney said she was hanging around a corridor outside the Circuit Court, waiting while a judge listened to lawyers arguing a legal point very slowly.
‘That statement I told you about this morning, from the tout?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s not on. I talked to her again. She
thinks
it was Boyce she saw. Last night she said she was certain. Put her on the stand, let a lawyer at her, she’d fall apart. The statement’s worthless.’
‘That’s a pity.’
‘Not her fault, she was trying to help.’
‘You OK?’
‘Don’t—’
‘You sound tense.’
‘Look, do me a favour – don’t mention the statement to anyone. Cracking the alibi, then it falls apart – it’s embarrassing.’
‘Informers, that’s how they are – these things happen.’
‘Yeah.’
After a moment, Cheney said, ‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘Fine. I’m fine. Just a bit disappointed, you know?’
It took no more than fifteen minutes to get Dixie out. The sergeant in charge at Cooper Street was indifferent and the arresting garda was a decent sort who felt sorry for the poor woman, barely his own age. Once he was assured that the kid she’d abducted had been in no danger, and that Synnott would ensure that she’d turn up for court proceedings, he nodded and that was that.
‘Where to? Home?’
Dixie sat in the front passenger seat, mouth pinched, and Synnott had to ask her again. It took her a few seconds to focus on the question – then she shook her head.
‘Just get me away from here. I’ll stay in the city centre for a while. I’ll – I don’t know, I want to go somewhere, have a coffee, get my head straight.’
‘We have to talk.’
Nervous.
Dixie had never seen Synnott like this. It was something about his facial movements – the way he moved his lips, rubbing the lower lip against the upper – something about the way his head kept moving slightly, turning just a little this way and that. With Inspector Synnott, usually it was like he was carved out of stone.
He seemed as though he wasn’t exactly sure what he ought to say next.
‘That statement—’
The way he looks at me, it’s usually like he’s seeing right into what I’m thinking.
They were sitting on high stools at the little Croissanterie in the Ilac Centre, mugs of coffee in front of them, his head bent towards her, speaking low.
‘The statement you signed last night?’
She nodded.
‘Forget about it.’
As Dixie opened her mouth to speak he touched her arm. ‘It’s OK, you’ll get your money. Things have changed. We don’t need the statement, there’s better evidence, we’ll wrap it up without having to drag you into it.’
‘I get paid?’
‘A thousand.’
‘We agreed three.’
‘A thousand – for doing nothing. Don’t be stupid, Dixie.’
Dixie stared at him. Then she said, ‘OK.’
A thousand.
Enough.
Give it a day or two.
Lie low, at Shelley’s place. No rushing things, suss things out.
Christopher.
Before the old Dobbs bitch knows I’ve got him we’ll be in London, take it from there.
After a moment, Synnott said, ‘This never happened, none of this. No statement, no money, we never talked about any of this – it just didn’t happen.’
She met his gaze.
He did that thing with his lips again. ‘Right?’
‘Are you in trouble?’
‘Fuck off, Dixie. This never happened, right?’
She said, ‘Right. It never happened.’
‘There are things I can do, you know that.’
‘It never happened, Mr Synnott.’
There was silence for half a minute. Dixie finished her coffee. Synnott hadn’t touched his. She put down the mug.
Why not?
‘An extra five hundred?’
He stared at her.
‘I’m not demanding it, Mr Synnott, I’m just asking. It means the difference, it—’
‘Don’t push it, Dixie.’
They went up in the lift to the third-floor car park and sat in Synnott’s car. She watched Synnott take an envelope from his inside pocket. He held it so she couldn’t see what was inside, then he counted out ten €100 notes and gave them to her.
Dixie said, ‘Thanks.’
‘Need a lift?’
‘I’m OK.’
For a moment he looked like he was about to say something. Then he nodded and Dixie got out of the car and walked towards the exit.
A grand.
Lie low for a couple of days at most, work out how to get to Christopher. No point trying at the school again, the Dobbs bitch would see to that.
There’s always a way.
No stalling, taxi straight to the airport, time it right, cut and run.
When she got to the ground floor, Dixie went out onto Henry Street and turned left, heading up towards Shelley’s place.
*
Still sitting in his car, Harry Synnott rang John Grace’s number again and this time Grace answered.
‘You had a visitor?’
Grace said, ‘Two.’
‘Tough guys?’
‘They wanted to be my friends.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’d nothing to add to my statement of four years ago.’
‘Do they still want to be your friends?’
John Grace didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said, ‘Look, this is going to be difficult. They showed me what the fella said, the fella in Galway.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s all there, pushing the door in, the tattoo, stuff he couldn’t have known unless he—’
‘A pissing contest. Two admissions.’
‘His prints.’
‘He could have been in the house a week earlier, a month. No connection with the killing.’
Grace said nothing.
‘What we did was right, absolutely right – no doubt about that.’
Grace said, ‘We did what we
thought
was right.’
Harry Synnott paused. ‘That’s all we can ever do.’
‘Now it looks like—’
‘John, you’re retired – they can’t do anything to you.’ Harry Synnott felt a sudden revulsion at the pleading tone in his own voice. ‘
Fuck it
– we’re not the bad guys, John, we’re—’
‘I know.’
‘Just keep it together, whatever they do.’
‘I said what I had to say about Swanson Avenue four years ago, that’s all they’ll get.’
Synnott realised he was about to say thanks. Instead, he said, ‘We should have a drink some night this week, just – you know—’
John Grace said, ‘Yeah.’
*
Shelley’s flat was empty and when Dixie Peyton arrived she spent a while tidying up, thinking things through. No point waiting a couple of days before making another attempt to reach Christopher.
This is, what?
Tuesday.
Tomorrow – after school.
Every Wednesday since playschool Christopher would get together with his friend Willie immediately after school, at one or another of their homes.