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At that stage, I really didn’t have more than a few vague notions, but I could see that the police concentration on the gang was to our advantage. Whatever we did, the criminals’ room for manoeuvre was limited. Obviously theirs was a cash business — somebody had to come and physically collect the money from Greg. The pattern was that their guy would turn up every two weeks and browse the electrical goods. Sometimes he’d buy something small but he always went away better off than he came in. In the previous two months, it had been somebody different — I assumed that the boss was reacting to the police surveillance by using somebody who wasn’t directly associated with the gang. I thought I was fairly safe in assuming that the new guy was less experienced than his predecessor.
The police who were watching Greg’s “protectors” would most likely be aware of Greg’s less legitimate activities too: that would explain the gangsters’ interest in his business. Of course, they wouldn’t have any evidence but equally they wouldn’t be under any illusions as to Greg’s law-abiding character. I calculated that, though I was Greg’s best “known associate”, any surveillance wouldn’t extend as far as me. Targeting criminals is an expensive business and, if I was right in thinking that the gang boss was the bullseye, I’d be on one of the outermost rings.
That left me free to look into the background of the gang’s new collection agent. I learned that his name was Bernard Sheehy and that he was a nephew of a prominent member of the gang. Sheehy himself had no criminal record and, it seemed, no history of gang activity. He’d been called to the bar — part of some grandiose idea of his uncle’s that the gang ought to have their “own” lawyers. Sheehy had responded with enthusiasm to his uncle’s encouragement, studied hard, attended his dinners but, when it came to it, didn’t come up with the goods for the gang. The study of law affects different people in different ways. For some, if a visit to the legislature is analogous to watching sausages being made, an in-depth, up close study of the law is more akin to being inside the sausage-making machine itself. Such people become entirely cynical about the very notion of justice. There are some, however, a surprisingly high proportion, for whom the lure of being a rule-keeper, the seduction of legitimacy, is too compelling to be resisted. Sheehy was such a person.
He wasn’t fool enough to think that the gang would continue to support him after he’d turned his back on them, so he relinquished his ambition to become a noted criminal advocate and a charmer of juries, instead attempting to build up a practice in the area of personal injury. The gang, his uncle included, turned out to be more vindictive than he’d counted on. Their pressure on a select number of solicitors, coming at the same time as the introduction — at the behest of the insurance industry — of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, meant that suddenly his prospects in the law were a lot less attractive. It wasn’t long before Bernard was attempting to rebuild bridges with his uncle. His rediscovered conciliatory mood came at an entirely opportune time for the gang, who needed somebody capable of evading Garda notice to continue to collect their protection money.
I pieced this together partly from following Bernard — I’d told Greg that I’d be discreet and that it would be useful to have as much information as possible about our new liaison with our “protectors”. The rest I got from Law Library gossip: a couple of my classmates from UCG, no more enthusiastic than I’d been about teaching the poetry of Yeats and Heaney to feckless teenagers, had eventually made their way to the bar, where they’d found a practice marginally more lucrative than Bernard Sheehy’s. Sensing that Sheehy, if he had a normal set of human emotions, was probably feeling resentful about his descent in the world at the hands of his uncle and his accomplices, I decided that there was probably nothing to be lost by approaching him direct.
I’ll admit I handled it badly. As I’ve already said, I’m not always astute in my understanding of other people’s motives. I’d read Bernard as a rule-keeper, someone who’s self-image had “law abiding” inscribed at its core. I really thought the prospect of working with the police to help them close down the criminal operation which had treated him so shabbily would actually appeal to him. I know, I know … when I put it in those terms, even I have to wonder how I could have been so obtuse. Bernard was appalled.
“What kind of ungrateful fucker do you think I am?” he demanded, after I’d outlined my proposal to him. My idea was that he should avoid handing over the money he collected for a few weeks, using the fear of attracting police attention as an excuse. In the meantime, he could be talking to the police, giving them what they needed, getting the gang out of everybody’s hair, including ours.
“If I tried to pull anything like that, the first thing they’d do is suspect that I was going to … you know. I’d be dead — or worse — within hours. These aren’t guys who wait for their suspicions to be confirmed. Anyway, I owe them. If they’ve been a bit harsh in their treatment of me, it’s no more than I asked for. And Barney is my own flesh and blood. You must be crazy, thinking I’d do something like that.”
Sheehy assured me that he wasn’t going to tell his uncle Barney or any of the others about my approach. This wasn’t purely altruism on his part — he took the view that the less he said the less likely he was to raise suspicions. In spite of my misgivings, I thought he was probably not going to say anything.
I’ve another discreditable admission to make: I played up my doubts when reporting on this to Greg. I can’t say exactly why I did this. If there really had been a risk of Bernard’s telling his uncle about my approach, that would make my misjudgment all the more catastrophic in Greg’s eyes. It would have been more sensible to have tried to reassure him that there was no danger, but if anything I exaggerated the risk.
“Do we need to do anything about Sheehy?” Greg asked me.
“Like what? I can’t see what we could do that wouldn’t make things worse.” Having aroused his anxieties, I now started to backtrack. “If the hard chaws get to hear about what I said to him, you can tell them it was just me trying to show a bit of misdirected initiative. You knew nothing about it. That has the advantage of being true. Tell them that you’re handling it now and there wont’t be any other attempts to undermine their — well, you know what to say.”
“As Sheehy put it to you, we’re dealing with people who don’t wait for confirmation of their suspicions. And they’ll still be suspicious, even if they believe me.” He sighed. “So what do we do about this?”
“Nothing. Above all, we don’t do anything that would make things worse. We hold our horses and see what happens.”
“If it was anybody else we were dealing with, I’d agree with you. But you don’t take chances with people like these. Talk to this Sheehy guy again. Try to make sure he hasn’t said anything to his uncle Barney or to any of their associates. And, once you’re sure he hasn’t — in fact, even if you’re not sure — make him go away.”
“Make him — ?”
“Put the fear of God into him. Make him believe that he has no option but to flee the country.”
“The fear of God — I don’t think that’s going to be able to compete with the fear of his uncle’s pals. Now if — ”
“If?”
“I just had a wild idea. But it was one of my wild ideas that got us into this position to start with. Forget it.”
“Let me hear it anyway. I’m not going to do anything against my better judgment, but I’d like to know what all my options are.”
So I told him my idea. Sheehy was already terrified of Barney’s friends. He believed, rightly, that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if they thought he was a threat. This knowledge made his situation enviably uncomplicated: all he had to do was to stay on the right side of them and make sure he gave them no grounds to suspect him. If I could persuade him that he was in danger from another angle, suddenly his life would no longer be quite so simple. Instead of a single variable, the equation would now have two.
“What would be the second variable?” Greg asked, though I had an inkling that he was way ahead of me.
“If he believed that you thought he was going to tell the gang about my conversation with him, and had decided to have him killed before he could do that.”
“And you could make him believe that?” Greg didn’t attempt to keep the scepticism out of his tone.
“I could — if I had, say, a surreptitious — mar dheadh — recording of you and me discussing his impending death.” I let him have my goofy grin — we were just tossing around silly ideas, after all.
“No.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t — ”
“Not you and me discussing it. On the recording. Me and somebody whose voice he doesn’t recognize but whose timbre unmistakably conveys ‘ruthless hitman‘. You know — ”
“Tadhg?”
“Tadhg.”
Tadhg was Greg’s brother-in-law. He was, to all appearances, a perfectly blameless and amiable individual, blessed with a vocal tone which can most accurately be described as a bass rasp. He’d have been ideal in the role of homicidal conspirator, but I’d be surprised if he had been willing to play it.
“You’d be asking him to let himself be recorded, ostensibly plotting to commit murder. I don’t think he’s that stupid.”
“He’ll trust me. After all, I’ll be on the recording too. He’ll know that I’d have to make sure it didn’t get into the wrong hands.”
“And how could you do that? You’d have to let me have a copy at least, so that I could play it to Sheehy.”
“I’ve thought about that.”
And he had, though where he’d got the time to do so, considering that I’d just now outlined my scheme, was beyond me. The recording which I was to play to Bernard would be on an iPod. By default, the software on this device wouldn’t allow me to copy the audio file off its hard disk. It would also show a digital count of the number of times the recording had been played. I was to play the recording once and once only to Sheehy. Any attempt to duplicate, rerecord or copy the audio file would leave a digital trace and I’d have earned Greg’s undying suspicion.
There were, of course, ways around these restrictions but they too would leave behind tell-tale indications. I had no doubt that Greg could buy the necessary technical expertise to interpret them — if he didn’t already possess it himself. And another thing: Greg claimed that he wouldn’t just be relying on the default software on the iPod. He would have specialist software installed which would keep a record not only of how many times the audio track was played but also of the time at which it happened. So it wouldn’t be possible, for example, to make a duplicate recording through the line-out and then play the duplicate as often as I (for example) liked.
I couldn’t blame Greg for being a little suspicious of me — after all, I was the one who’d suggested that he make a recording which could potentially implicate him in plotting a serious criminal act. Far from blaming him, I was grateful to him for letting me know just how much of a mistake I’d be making if I allowed myself to fall into temptation.
So, a few days later, I met Sheehy in a quiet coffee shop. I played him the recording of Greg and Tadhg giving their best and most sinister vocal performances, having first warned him to listen carefully as it would be played only once. In spite of my warning, he wanted to hear it again. I had to insist that that wasn’t possible.
“You recognized Greg’s voice. You know what it means. Hearing it again isn’t going to change any of that. Is it?”
He let his head sink onto the table. The earbud slipped from his right ear and a shake of his head dislodged the left. I detached the cable from the splitter and rolled it up. I put the iPod and its accessories away carefully in my small document case. “Why me?” Sheehy muttered. “I’m not the one taking his money. I just collect it.”
“Because you’re the one who’s out in the open. Exposed. You’re the low-hanging fruit. Also, you’re not fully a member of the gang, but you’re related to Barney by blood. So, it would be a way of sticking it to Barney without getting everybody else’s backs up. You’re just badly positioned. Actually, the more I think about it, the more taking you out seems like a good tactical move. Greg hasn’t been involved in physical violence before, to the best of my knowledge (which is extensive), but it looks as if he may have quite a feel for it. Your bad luck, I’m afraid.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Actually, your options are as straightforward as they’ve always been. It’s just that they keep getting less inviting.”
Sheehy groaned. “I’m going to have to run.”
I patted him on his miserably hunched shoulder. “As far away as you can.”
Of course, Sheehy was in no actual danger from Greg, whose sole aim was to discredit him in the eyes of the gang and get him out of the picture. His former employers viewed his sudden absence with less equanimity but luckily for him he hadn’t had time to take any of their money before absconding and Barney was still willing to defend his corner. So I have no reason to doubt that Bernard Sheehy got clean away. I like to think he’s living a modest life in some little-visited backwater. He’s probably better off.