Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(33)

One of the many differences between Murder and Undercover is our attitudes to subtlety. Undercovers are even better at it than you think, and when we feel like a giggle we do love watching the Murder boys loving their entrances. These two swung around the corner in an unmarked silver BMW that didn’t need markings, braked hard, left the car at a dramatic angle, slammed their doors in sync—they had probably been practicing— and swaggered off towards Number 16 with the music from Hawaii Five-0 blasting through their heads in full surround sound.

One of them was a ferret-faced blond kid, still perfecting the walk and trying hard to keep up. The other one was my age, with a shiny leather briefcase swinging from one hand, and he wore his swagger like it was part of his El Snazzo suit. The cavalry had arrived, and it was Scorcher Kennedy.

Scorcher and I go back to cop college. He was the closest mate I made in training, by which I don’t necessarily mean that we liked each other. Most of the lads came from places I had never heard of and didn’t want to; their main goals, careerwise, were a uniform that didn’t include wellies and a chance to meet girls who weren’t their cousins. Scorcher and I were both Dubs and we both had long-term plans that involved no uniforms at all. We picked each other out on the first day, and spent the next three years trying to wipe the floor with each other at everything from fitness tests through snooker.

Scorcher’s real name is Mick. The nickname was my doing, and personally I think I let him off lightly. He liked winning, our Mick; I’m pretty fond of it myself, but I know how to be subtle. Kennedy had a nasty little habit, when he came top at anything, of pumping his fist in the air and murmuring “Goal!” almost but not quite under his breath. I put up with it for a few weeks and then started taking the piss: You got your bed made, Mikey, is that a goal? Is it a good one, yeah? Is it a real scorcher? Did you put the ball in the back of the net? Did you come in from behind in extra time? I got along with the bog-boys better than he did; pretty soon everyone was calling him Scorcher, not always in a nice way. He wasn’t pleased, but he hid it well. Like I said, I could have done a lot worse, and he knew it. I had been considering “Michelle.”

We didn’t make much effort to stay in touch, once we got back out into the big bad world, but when we ran into each other we went for drinks, mainly so we could keep tabs on who was winning. He made detective five months before I did, I beat him out of the floater pool and onto a squad by a year and a half; he got married first, but then he also got divorced first. All in all, the score was about even. The blond kid didn’t surprise me. Where most Murder detectives have a partner, Scorch would naturally prefer a minion.

Scorcher is close on six foot, an inch or so taller than me, but he holds himself like a little guy: chest out, shoulders back, neck very straight. He has darkish hair, a narrow build, a serious set of jaw muscles and a knack for attracting the kind of women who want to be status symbols when they grow up and don’t have the legs to bag a rugby player. I know, without being told, that his parents have serviettes instead of napkins and would rather go without food than without lace curtains. Scorch’s accent is carefully upper-middle, but something in the way he wears a suit gives him away.

On the steps of Number 16, he turned and took a second to look around the Place, taking the temperature of what he was dealing with here. He spotted me, all right, but his eyes went over me like he’d never seen me before. One of the many joys of Undercover is that other squads can never quite figure out when you’re on the job and when you’re, say, on a genuine night out with the lads, so they tend to leave you alone, just in case. If they called it wrong and blew your cover, the bollocking in work would be nothing compared to the lifetime’s worth of slagging waiting in the pub.

When Scorch and his little bum-chum had vanished into that dark doorway, I said, “Wait here.”

Shay asked, “Do I look like your bitch?”

“Only around the mouth. I’ll be back in a while.”

“Leave it,” Kevin said to Shay, without looking up. “He’s working.”

“He’s talking like a f*cking cop.”

“Well, duh,” Kevin said, finally running out of patience; he had had a long day, brotherwise. “Well spotted. For f*ck’s sake.” He swung himself off the steps and shouldered his way through a bunch of Hearnes, towards the top of the road and out. Shay shrugged. I left him to it and headed off to retrieve the suitcase.

Kevin was nowhere in sight, my car was still intact, and when I got back Shay had sloped off too, gone wherever Shay goes. Ma was on her tiptoes outside our door, flapping a hand at me and squawking something that sounded urgent, but then Ma always does. I pretended I didn’t see her.

Scorcher was on the steps of Number 16, having what looked like a deeply unrewarding conversation with my favorite guard bogger. I tucked the suitcase under my arm and strolled in between them. “Scorch,” I said, slapping him on the back. “Good to see you.”

“Frank!” He caught me in a macho two-handed shake. “Well well well. Long time no see. I hear you got in here ahead of me, yeah?”

“My bad,” I said, throwing the uniform a big grin. “I just wanted a quick look. I might have a bit of an inside track here.”

“Jesus, don’t tease me. This one’s ice cold. If you’ve got anything to point us in the right direction, I’ll owe you big-time.”