Free Wolf Tickets by Ray Banks

didn't matter what she'd done, Frank O'Brien had done worse. And as much as I'd hoped the scrawny little bastard was still choking on prison food, I should've known better. Dogs like him didn't get bit without snapping back.
    "So, apart from a dead man, who's this Frank O'Brien?" said Cobb.
    "You know the name Martin Cahill?"
    "No."
    "They made a film about him. Two, actually, but only one that wasn't shite. Called himself The General. On the face of it, he was pure as the driven: didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't do drugs. Lived with his wife and his girlfriend, mind, which I'm sure wasn't as fun as it sounds. Cahill's big vice was robbing people. He got off on it and he was fucking good at it. He nicked a bunch of paintings, stole turf—"
    "Sounds like a right charva."
    "This charva managed to get away with sixty million all told."
    "Fuckin' hell."
    "Course you can't do that in my neck of the woods without pissing off the wrong people, and in the end the Republican Army did what the fucking Garda wanted to do, and put a couple of bullets in him. That's the basic story, anyway. You watch the film, you'll get the picture, even though there's still plenty of blanks."
    "And what're you saying; your bloke is one of them blanks?"
    "Lot of people think it was the two Johns who organised Cahill's murder, like they'd sold him out to the IRA. And right enough, they did well after The General was gone, but that was mainly because the market was ripe. You ask me who arranged the Custer, it was Frank O'Brien. That fucker had Cahill's ear when he wouldn't give it to anyone, mostly because Frank has a talent for dirty work. Which is why he kept to the shadows, and why nobody's ever likely to make a film about him – there's only so much you can sugar coat when your man's malt fucking vinegar."
    "So he's a ghost."
    "O'Brien's the fella, you see him once in your life, and that's about two seconds before you leave it."
    "And you're giving him shit like you're going to bray him all over."
    "I'm the victim here, Jimmy. Apart from hooking up with Nora, there's nothing between me and him. I never even met the man."
    "But Nora and him ...?"
    "Never figured her for a moll, did you? Tell you the truth, neither did I. She wasn't typical. You know the way they normally look."
    "Battered WAGs."
    "Exactly. But she was different. She was never in it for the cars and clothes. She just mistook menace for mystery. And let's face it, she was never the kind of girl who went for the white knight. On her lesser days—"
    "Hang on, are you telling us you nicked this bloke's missus?"
    "Not on purpose."
    Cobb snorted. "Fuck's sake."
    "I'm not a fucking suicide case, am I? She didn't tell me anything about him until we were already well into it. By that time he was in Durham, anyway."
    "What was he doing in Durham?"
    "Admiring the cathedral with its handsome knockers, Jimmy. The fuck d'you think he was doing?"
    "Stir?"
    "Yes."
    "What for?"
    "Same as everyone else. Bad luck. Carelessness. Fear. When Cahill bought it in '94, some of his friends automatically earned the right to take a pop at the man who turned him over. They went through the UVF because of the history – word was that Cahill sold the paintings on to them, though God knows what they wanted with them – and together they started tying up any loose ends. And out of all of them, O'Brien was the loosest, so he skipped the puddle. Now he couldn't work heroin in Liverpool or Manchester – talk about your stiff competition – but there was a market between Newcastle and Middlesborough, so he got himself set up in Bishop Auckland with a bloke called Sammy Yanoulis, you know him?"
    "No."
    "Good. Sammy's got a knack of leading his new partners straight into police stings."
    Cobb was silent for a moment, his brain working. "But he's out now."
    "Well, I don't see him using a mobile that someone's sported up their arse, so he must be out. My best guess is that Nora told him about the money. And when she