Charlie wasn’t much of an improvement. Everything he came out with had a big sigh on the end of it. ‘Red, how’s it going?’ sounded like ‘Fuck me, poor Greg, what’re we gonna do?’ Depressing. It would’ve taken more than a beauty clinic to lift his face. And he’d been up all night by the look of him. Usually by this time – it was getting on for nine – he’d be turned out like a tailor’s dummy, darting the cuffs and setting the tie. No tie today. A string vest and suit trousers. I could’ve done with taking my shirt off as well. Now I know why Bin hadn’t an ounce on her. It was fucking roasting in there. Tarzan would’ve felt at home.
Charlie pulled me up a wicker chair and nodded to the booze on the glass-topped coffee table. ‘Help yourself, Red.’
‘No thanks, Charlie.’ I didn’t fancy any. As usual, he was on Irish Mist. He downed what was in his glass and poured himself another, then out came the smokes. I don’t touch them. Charlie’s one after the other. He was always the same. They were telling on him too. His chest always sounded like a mouthful of phlegm was on the way.
I asked him where Ted Lyle was.
‘Fuck Ted Lyle. Letting Greg walk in on the like of that. If Winters doesn’t finish the bastard, I will.’
Which meant Winters had since hauled him in.
‘What does your brief say, Charlie?’ Charlie had the best legal firm in Dublin watching out for him. They’d be working on getting Greg bail.
‘Winters is putting severe pressure on that son of mine, Red.’
‘Oh?’
The implication was obvious, though not one that I was gonna dress a question around. Not that I couldn’t have. I was one of the few people who could get away with asking Charlie a direct personal question without him taking it as a slight. A fool might’ve asked him if he meant that Greg might squeal on Charlie’s activities in return for a deal. Charlie would’ve taken it like a dig in the mouth, the fool seen as showing no respect and advised to leave. A look would’ve done it. Charlie’s into all that respect stuff. Me, I know what I am: I neither expect nor deserve respect. Charlie thinks he’s entitled because he’s got a chandelier some aristocrat put up before the bishop moved in. It’s all bullshit.
‘It’s yer woman I’m thinking of, Red.’
‘Who?’
‘Bin. It’s hard for a mother to see her son taken away from her.’
‘Sure now …’
‘Let alone labelled a killer.’
‘Desperate.’
‘She has visions of being separated from Greg for the next twenty years. What mother can stand that? And him an innocent party.’ Big drag, lips pursed, purple from years of big drags. Charlie was looking old. And creased. Another few years and he’d be seeing a gob like a bloodhound’s in the mirror. But you can see what I’m getting at. He was only using Bin to let me know he wanted action. Which wasn’t like him. That was probably his second bottle he was digging into and, with no sleep, the old brainwaves were going out on the wrong frequency. Letting me know he wanted this cleared up didn’t even need to be said. You could’ve made condensed soup with it it was that thick.
‘You know I have every confidence in you, Red. But maybe you going after Picasso is too much for just one man.’ He was telling me that if I didn’t come up with a result soon, he’d put others on it. If I knew him, he already had. ‘No harm in putting a man in Kells’s place to watch for her though.’
‘As long as he doesn’t fuck things up, Charlie. You know how I work.’ Alone.
‘I know that, Red. Nobody keeps things to himself the way you do. Or sees things the way you do.’
‘Still, it is your son we’re talking about here. If you want me to step aside, I’ll give you what I have, and you can have a think.’ I didn’t say, ‘I’ll give you what I have, and you can give it to someone else to run with.’ That would’ve been too firm a recognition on my part that he’d no confidence in me. He also knew that I knew that if he put his heavies, plus an investigator, on to it, they were unlikely to be any more successful than I’d be. He’d then be in the position, further down the line, of having to come back to me to pick up where I’d left off.
With Charlie, things were often expressed through facial gestures and silences. Little is said but a lot implied. He knew he’d handed me a case even the Garda Síochána couldn’t solve. And I had to let him think that I was still his best option. Then there was the guilt factor. The sex scam with Gemma was my idea. If I hadn’t come up with it, Greg wouldn’t be in this mess. Charlie knew I’d be sensitive to that and do my best.
‘You think Lucille Kells has that laptop, Red?’
‘She’s in the running, Charlie.’ I had to say that.
‘Find her, Red. If she has it, take the scam off it and use the rest to get Greg out. Then Kane’ll take care of it.’ There it was. For ‘it’ read ‘Kells’. Bye bye, Lucille. Now you know why I wasn’t giving him the laptop.
Bin came in, glass in hand. Serious times. Bin never interrupts, son or no son. Interrupting meant she was telling Charlie she didn’t trust his
