“Fun? What are you talking about?!”
Kiefel smiled and stroked his beard. “As I said, that is for me to know and you to find out.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Devlin and Lea emerged from the Taxi on Tolka Quay and squinted in the Dublin rain as they walked the final fifty yards to their destination.
Lea looked at the junkyard through the rainy night and shivered. The sign above the gate read O’SULLIVAN’S SALVAGE. “Are you sure we can trust these guys?”
“Sure, what do you think I am — some kind of eejit or something?”
Lea smiled. “Sorry.”
Devlin opened the heavy gate and swung it open to allow them both through. They dodged the puddles as they walked to the front office, lit low in the damp night.
Devlin knocked three times and took a step back.
A gravelly, low voice replied. “Come in, Danny. We don’t want anyone hanging around out the front, do we now?”
Lea followed Devlin into the office, watching him carefully for any body language triggers. It was cold in here, and she could see her breath clouding out in front of her. Worse, the whole place stank of old engine oil and brake fluid and one of the overhead lights was faulty. It flickered on and off like a horrible yellow strobe and put her on edge.
An overweight man with a shaved head and thick moustache got up from his desk and padded over to them. Behind him, through a doorway that opened out onto a large workshop, a taller, thinner man with a long ponytail leaned against a car crusher with two muscular, tattooed arms folded high over his chest.
“Good to see you Danny Boy,” said the first man. He smiled to reveal at least two missing teeth.
“Likewise, Mikey,” Devlin said.
They shook hands and then the man looked at Lea. His eyes crawled from her face down to her boots and then all the way back up again. “And what have we here?”
Lea stood still and said nothing.
Devlin took a step forward and partially blocked the man’s view of Lea. “This is an old friend of mine, Lea Donovan. Was in my unit. If you fuck with her you’ll be sorry.”
The man returned his gaze to Devlin. “Is that right?”
In a flash Lea elbowed Devlin out of the way, pulled a gun from her shoulder holster and pushed it into the folds of fat on the man’s wide neck. “Sure it’s right, ya great big lunchbox. Wanna try me out?”
A long moment of awkward silence followed and then the man burst into laughter. A second later Ponytail started laughing as well, and unfolded his arms.
“Oh… I like her, Mikey,” Ponytail called through the door.
Lea holstered the weapon and took a step back, winking at the man.
“Lea Donovan, please meet Mikey O’Sullivan here with the barrel mark in his neck and Kyle Byrne hiding back there by the crusher. Pay no attention to either of them,” Devlin said coolly. “Mikey’s a real kingding at times and they can both be a couple of dry shites if they lose on the horses, like tonight, I’m guessing.”
Mikey and Kyle exchanged a glance.
“Hey guys,” Lea said casually.
“Good to meet you, Lea Donovan,” Mikey said. “Now, Danny and Lea — would you like a drink to keep the cold out?”
They agreed to the drink and a moment later they were sitting around the desk. Mikey pulled a bottle of Irish whiskey from the drawer and poured out four doubles into old, chipped mugs.
Lea peered into hers with suspicion.
Mikey raised his mug. “Well, sláinte!”
Like it or not, Lea thought, she had to drink from the mug. She had done worse. She picked it up and they all chinked them together.
Devlin spoke first. “Not seen you around Dublin for a while, Mikey.”
“I was over in Edinburgh visiting me brother. Old mate of his lives there — Graeme. We all hook up now and then in Kelly’s — an Irish pub in Old Town that’s always jammers. Had a few good times there I can tell you — the craic was ninety, Danny, I swear it. Great city — some of the best pubs I ever went to. You should go.”
“I’ll do that,” Devlin said.
Lea sighed. “I think we’re moving away from the point.”
Danny looked at Lea and then to Mikey. “She has a point…”
Mikey smiled broadly. “Just sayin’…”
Kyle looked at Mikey and shook his head. “All right, so where are we at?”
“Where we’re at,” Lea said, “is that we need some help.”
Kyle nodded. “Some muscle, you mean?”
“Call it what you like, but we need it.”
“And you do owe me, Mikey,” Devlin said. “You’ll recall that little problem you had with those Roach muppets in Tyrone…”
Mikey looked embarrassed. “Sure, and I’m a man of my word, Danny. You shall have your help.”
“We don’t even know what they want yet!” Kyle said.
Mikey got serious. “It doesn’t matter what they want, Kyle. I gave the man here my word. So Danny, what is it you want?”
“Lea can answer that better than I can.”
Mikey poured more whiskey. “The floor is yours, Miss Donovan.”
Lea took a breath. “It’s like this… when I was a child my father was murdered right in front of my eyes. We were walking together out on the coast. He was going to teach me how to take a photograph. I had to go back to the car to get something for the camera, and when I got back he was gone. My father was there one minute, looking after me, and the next I was alone. They found his body at the bottom of the cliffs and ruled suicide.”
“So how can we help?” Kyle said quietly.
“It was no suicide, Mr Byrne,” she said. “I saw a man running from the cliffs. He was dressed in black from head to foot — he looked weird. I can’t tell you how, but there was something about that man. He pushed my father off the cliff, I just know it in my heart.”
“But you didn’t see it happen?” Mikey said.
Lea shook her head. “My father never threw himself off a four hundred-foot cliff while he was looking after me, Mr O’Sullivan. He was a loving, kind man — a doctor who dedicated his life to healing people. If he was going to do anything like that — which he never would have even considered — he would hardly have taken me along with him to watch, now, would he?”
“So why did they rule it a suicide?”
“Simple. I was a young girl and they decided I was an unreliable witness. They said I had imagined the man in black in my grief, but I saw him running before I even knew my father was dead. The man in black murdered my father, Mr O’Sullivan, I know it.”
“All right, I believe you. But I still don’t know why you’re talking to me.”
“Very recently I received information from a reliable source that an old friend of my father’s, a Sean McNamara, was brutally murdered in his home in Cork. Sean McNamara and my father had worked together on some kind of research relating to the medical industry a very long time ago.”
“What research is that?” Kyle said.
Lea shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. But I do know they were both killed for it, because before he died, McNamara sent a message saying he was killed by the same men who had killed Dad.”
“And now you want revenge?” Mikey said.
“I want to know who killed my father and Sean McNamara, yes…and revenge wouldn’t go amiss either, but what I want more than anything is my father’s life’s work — research files I never even knew existed until now, but now I know were the reason he was murdered by that bastard in black.”
Mikey gave an understanding nod and took more of the whiskey. “So where do we start?”