Little Criminals Read Online Free Page B

cowardly abdication of international responsibilities. Frankie decided the guy was right.
    ‘ Fuck off .’
    The female half of the arguing couple was walking fast towards the door. The man sat there, his face red, staring after her. Frankie watched him. It was hard to tell if he was upset about the row, or just embarrassed that it had happened in public. After a moment, the man threw some money on the table and hurried out after the woman.
    Frankie moved to their table, beside the window. He watched as a waitress cleared the table and took the money, then he ordered another coffee. From a pocket in the inside back cover of his notebook, Frankie took a folded wad of paper. When it was unfolded, there were three pages clipped from magazines.
    The thing about the really rich bastards is that as soon as they clock up enough funds they piss off out of Ireland to live in mansions in the Caribbean. Frankie Crowe had started with a Rich List magazine that came free with a Sunday newspaper. It took him little more than an hour to select five possible targets.
    There were a hundred people on the list. He went down through the ones with the hundreds of millions and most of them were tax exiles, only dropping back to Ireland now and then to make a fuss about giving money to charity, or to watch their favourite racehorse win a cup.
    He went down through the people with tens of millions, ticking off possibles – some of them did a lot of their business in London and Eastern Europe and spent most of their time there and that was no good. Then it occurred to him that he was going about this the wrong way.
    No matter how rich these people are, he told Martin Paxton later, they’re not going to be able to get their hands on more than couple of million in a hurry. ‘So, if you’re taking a million from someone, and you want to do it quickly, it doesn’t matter whether he’s got six million or six hundred million. Matter of fact, the more he has the more difficult it gets. Fortresses some of those bastards live in, you’d need a couple of tanks to get in, and a squad of commandos to bring them out.’
    So, he went past the bottom of the Rich List, to where fifty rich people were listed in a section headed ‘Bubbling Under’. There he found his five possibles, all of them said to be worth around thirty million. He asked at his local public library and was directed to the Business Information Centre at the ILAC Library, and there he spent an afternoon looking through press cuttings on business and businessmen. One magazine story was headlined THE CELTIC TIGERS WHO GOT THE CREAM. It listed ten up-and-coming entrepreneurs who made fortunes during the boom years, two of whom were also in the ‘Bubbling Under’ rich list. What clinched it was a sentence in another magazine story, about property deals. ‘Justin Kennedy is, of course,’ it said, ‘best known for the breakthrough that came when he landed Bryton, the small private bank.’
    ‘Couldn’t ask better than that,’ Frankie told Martin. ‘A small private bank – a direct line into the money. Last thing I want is we get into some kind of back-and-forth, me and the family. That’s the way they like to work, the cops. Tie you up in chat, the money just out of reach. Negotiators spinning things out, trick cyclists analysing every fucking word you say, looking for a handle. Fuck that.’ He kept his voice calm and deliberate. ‘Short deadline, let them cough up or pay the consequences. They fuck around, someone else’ll know better next time.’
    Now, at the counter in Top Nosh, he again read the page from the Rich List magazine. The piece on Justin Kennedy mentioned his ‘new home on Pemberton Road’, and it carried a picture of the lucky man. Soft-looking fucker with a double chin and bags under his eyes.
    What David Finn – known since childhood as Dolly – liked about the narrow cobbled streets of Temple Bar was the smell of the food. Everything else you could stick,