Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) Read Online Free Page A

saying , ‘Far enough, big man.’
    His accent wasn’t quite harsh enough to be Derry, the hint of a lilt suggesting north Donegal. Built like an upside-down cello, wearing a white shirt with the collar button open, a thin black tie with a loose knot. Patent leather shoes, in the reflection of which he could have flossed his even white teeth. Through the Saab’s open door I could see, hung on a hangar, the top half of a dark suit silk-lined in red paisley. Italian, maybe. The eyes were eight-gauge , sawn-off.
    I pulled up six inches shy of where I guessed his swing would land. ‘I’m expected,’ I said.
    ‘Not by me you’re not.’
    ‘True for you.’
    The trouble there was, if one guy gets to thinking he can tell you what you can do, it’s only a matter of time before the rest start feeling the same. Then you’re on the skids. And I was already on the skids.
    ‘I’m going on up,’ I said.
    ‘Fine by me, big man. Just not yet.’
    I craned my neck to glance up at the ninth floor, the window’s dull yellow glow. ‘He makes you wear a tie?’ I said.
    That didn’t work him at all. ‘You know what I like?’ he said. ‘Cars, threads and quim. He pays me to drive a Saab, wear good suits.’
    ‘Two out of three ain’t bad.’
    ‘I make out.’ He up-jutted his chin. ‘Finn’s expecting you?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    He glanced over my shoulder. ‘Something wrong with his Audi?’
    ‘Other than it’s not a Porsche?’
    ‘Too fucking right.’ He backed off a step, ushered me on through. ‘Jimmy,’ he said.
    ‘Rigby.’
    He leaned in as I went past, sniffing, his nostrils flared. I glanced up at him going by and stared straight up those sawn-off barrels, black and cold, and nary a light to guide a weary pilgrim.
    ‘Stay useful, Rigby.’
    ‘I’ll try.’

5
     
     
    Finn Hamilton was doomed from the start, named by his mother for the great hero of Irish mythology, Fionn mac Cumhaill, and left in no doubt, from a very early age, that he was expected to grow into a man apart: hunter, warrior, legend, king.
    No pressure.
    And then, still a kid, he sees his father drown.
    I guess they were lucky it was only a few buildings he’d burned down.
    He’d had his epiphany in the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, how to use the Hamilton name and the resources that went with it. Stopped resisting and went with the flow, folding back into the family like a fifth columnist, a saboteur bent on good deeds and charitable works. The cops turned a blind eye to McCool FM on the basis that it wasn’t a commercial enterprise, its rare advertisements being on behalf of St Vincent de Paul and the Lions Club and similarly minded charities and organisations, its website offering directions and links to Aware and the Samaritans, the Model Arts Centre and the Irish Cancer Society, as well as hosting examples of work available in the gallery on the PA’s ground floor, his own included, a third of each sale going to the charity of the artist’s choice.
    His latest idea, still in the embryonic stage, was Spiritus Mundi , a loose collective of artists, musicians and writers all operating out of the PA, a kind of urban take on Annaghmakerrig, a retreat for those of a creative bent. Last I’d heard he was in talks with Blue Raincoat, offering them rehearsal space, the idea being that they’d relocate their theatre from the town centre to the docks, Finn dangling the carrot of a long-term lease on very favourable terms.
    I buzzed two short and one long, waiting for the beep, the ka-chunk , before slipping inside. The tiny lobby had a single spotlight recessed in the roof, a security camera high in one corner. I glanced up at it, waited for the second beep, then pushed on through to the gallery. Finn had stripped out the ground floor, leaving nothing to distract the eye from the canvases he’d mounted on support pillars and the bare brick walls, the space echoey under a high ceiling. I left the lights off and snuck across to