“Not a problem,” I said. Which he already knew: reading upside down is one of life’s more useful skills, and the file in front of him was one of mine. “Nothing’s at a crucial stage. They just need watching. An hour or two to get my paperwork in shape, and I can be ready to hand over.”
“Right,” George said, on a sigh. “Why not. Hand over to Yeates. He’s having to ease off on the southside coke op for a while; he’s got time.”
Yeates is good; we don’t have duds in Undercover. “I’ll bring him up to speed,” I said. “Thanks, boss.”
“Take a few weeks. Clear the head. What’ll you do? Spend time with the family?”
In other words, are you planning to hang around the scene, asking awkward questions. I said, “I was thinking about getting out of town. Wexford, maybe. I hear the coastline’s lovely this time of year.”
George massaged his forehead folds like they hurt. “Some gobshite from Murder was onto me bright and early this morning, giving out about you. Kennedy, Kenny, whatever. Says you’ve been interfering with his investigation.”
The squealing little arse-gerbil. “He’s PMSing,” I said. “I’ll bring him some pretty flowers and he’ll be grand.”
“Bring him whatever you want. Just don’t be bringing him any excuse to ring me again. I don’t like gobshites annoying me before I’ve had my cup of tea; banjaxes my bowels.”
“I’ll be in Wexford, boss, remember? I won’t have the opportunity to get Little Miss Murder’s frillies in a twist, even if I wanted to. I’ll just tidy up a few things”-I jerked a thumb in the direction of my office-“and I’ll be on my way, out of everyone’s hair.”
George inspected me, under heavy lids. Eventually he flapped a big weary hand and said, “Tidy away. Take your time.”
“Cheers, boss,” I said. This is why we love George. One of the things that makes a great super is knowing when he doesn’t want to know. “I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
I was halfway out the door when he called, “Frank.”
“Boss?”
“Anywhere the squad can make a donation, in your brother’s name? Charity? Sports club?”
And it hit me all over again, like a rabbit punch straight to the gullet. For a second nothing came out of my mouth. I didn’t even know if Kev had been in a sports club, although I doubted it. I thought there should be a charity created specially with fucked-up situations like this one in mind, a fund to send young guys snorkeling round the Great Barrier Reef and paragliding down the Grand Canyon, just in case that day turned out to be their last chance.
“Give it to the Victims of Homicide crowd,” I said. “And thank you, boss. I appreciate it. Tell the lads thanks.”
Deep down in his heart, every Undercover believes that, by and large, Murder are a bunch of big pussy boys. There are exceptions, but the fact is that the Murder lads are our pro boxers: they fight hard, but when you come right down to it they have gloves and gumshields and a referee ringing his little bell when everyone needs to take a breather and wipe off the blood. Undercovers fight bare-knuckle, we fight backstreet and we fight till someone goes down. If Scorch wants into a suspect’s house, he fills in a square mile of paperwork and waits for the rubber stamps and assembles the appropriate entry team so no one gets hurt; me, I bat the baby-blues, spin a good story and waltz right in, and if the suspect should decide he wants to kick the shit out of me, I’m on my own.
This was about to work for me. Scorch was used to fighting by the rules. He took it for granted that, with the odd minor bad-little-boy breach, I fought the same way. It would take a while to occur to him that my rules had sweet fuck-all in common with his.
I spread out a bunch of files on my desk, in case anyone happened to stop by and needed to see me busyworking towards a handover. Then I phoned my mate in Records and asked him to e-mail me the personnel file of every floater working on the Rose Daly murder. He did a little fussing about confidentiality, but a couple of years back his daughter had got off on possession charges when someone was sloppy enough to misfile three wraps of coke and her statement sheet, so I figured he owed me at least two major or four minor favors. Underneath the fussing, he saw it the same way. His voice sounded like his ulcer was growing by the moment, but the files came through almost before we got off the phone.
