0

d, coming straight to the point.

“What’s the problem?” he asked. I summoned over the barkeep.

“Another pint of Guinness for my friend here,” I said, and offered him my hand. He shook it.

“Brian O’Nolan,” I said.

“Nice to meet you, Brian, my name’s Phil, thanks for the pint,” he said.

“My pleasure, Phil.”

Phil looked at me, eager to hear the nature of my difficulties.

“Ach, I’m in a wee spot, Phil,” I said, trying not to appear too anxious.

“What do you need?” Phil asked, finishing his own pint and starting on mine.

“Well, I’m a bit disappointed, to tell you the truth.” “What’s the matter?”

“Uh, it’s not important,” I said with a sigh.

But the man’s interest was piqued. I had him on the hook now. “No, tell me,” he said.

I laughed.

“It’s probably a stupid thing. But me dad, we live in America now, he moved us out there in the seventies when I was just a

wee boy. And, well, he used to be in the Orange Order. You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“No, go on.”

“Well, he used to go to an Orange Lodge round here, and I was coming over to Belfast for business and so he asked me if I could find his old lodge and take a picture of it for him. Well, wouldn’t you know it, business took me a little longer than I thought it would in Belfast and now it’s dark out and I’ve been driving around for a couple of hours and I haven’t been able to find it and, ach, I’m just a bit upset for me da.”

The man nodded solemnly. I had hit all the right buttons. The Orange Order, family, tradition, a son’s duty, if only I could have worked a dog in there it would have been a home run. Phil looked upset for me and gulped down his pint. I put a fiver on the counter and nodded at the barman. He started pouring another.

Phil cleared his throat.

“Well, Brian, you shouldn’t be giving up yet. I don’t know too much about that sort of thing; I’m not really from around here, but Sam Beggs over there, he knows this area like the back of his hand.”

“That guy in the corner?” I asked, looking at a haggard, blue- nosed yokel chain-smoking his way through a packet of loose tobacco.

“Yeah, that’s our Sam.”

“Thanks very much, I’ll go ask him,” I said. Phil shook his head.

“You better not, he’s not exactly a big fan of strangers; you know how it is with some of those culchie types, wee bit sleekit, you know. I’ll just go over and ask him for ya,” Phil said.

“I would be much obliged.”

“Sure, ’tis no problem at all. What’s the details?”

“All my dad said was that he used to go to an Orange Lodge within a stone’s throw of the Knockagh; he said it might be a ruin now, could be an arch over the gate or something,” I explained.

Phil walked to the character in the corner of the room while I sipped my lemonade and tried desperately not to look at my watch. Five agonizing minutes went by as the two men chatted.

Phil came back with a smile on his face.

“See, never say die, he knows the very place. The arch you’re talking about must be what’s left of the old narrow-gauge viaduct, the lodge is the next field over. About two miles up the road from here, a wee lane you turn off and go down. The lane has a big sign on it that says “Trespassers Prosecuted, No Shooting.” You can’t see the old lodge from the road, you have to go down the lane a good bit. He says that he thinks it is a ruin, mind, but if you’ve a flash on your camera it might come out.”

I thanked Phil profusely, ran out to the car.

I reversed the taxi out of the pub car park, sped along the Knockagh Road, hammering down the foggy track at ninety miles an hour. A Jeep passed me doing fifty in the other direction and it distracted me enough so that I almost drove straight past the lane.

Almost.

I slammed on the bloody brakes, skidded, nearly rolled, recovered, stopped, reversed, read the “Trespassers Prosecuted, No Shooting” sign, pulled in, parked the car, and grabbed the gun.

A smell of burned gorse over by the tarn. That or a bonfire. Or perhaps someone lighting turf in an old Orange Lodge in an attempt to keep warm. The path led down to a field. But there

was a haze in the glacial mouth of the valley—a gluey sea mist snaking its way up from the ocean at the head of a cold front and storm from the north. That, coupled with the fog on the mountain and the coming night, had closed the visibility to almost zero.

I felt my way forward gingerly and arrived at a second barbed-wire fence and a gate with another sign, which said “Keep Out. Trespassers Strictly Prosecuted.” This sign was new and there were tire tracks in the mud.

A big vehicle and a couple of smaller cars. I bent down to examine them. Definitely fresh, in the last day or so, I would have guessed.

The path seemed to diverge now, left along the contour of the hill, but straight on took you farther down the slope. A bite of wind came from the high bog, a cold blade moving over the shadowy hills. While I zipped my jacket, the gust opened a gap in the mist. Fences hugging the hills, separating one desolate little sheep field from another. But what was that at the bottom of the slope? A house, a ruined lodge? Definitely worth investigating. I’d have to get closer. My hands tensed on the cold fence.

I opened the gate and walked onto a metal cattle grid, got one pace, immediately skidded, slipped, and fell. One of my Stanley work boots came off and my plastic foot got caught between the gaps in the metal rollers.

“Bloody hell.”

A cattle grid is a series of metal tubes usually placed over a trench in front of a gate. People can walk on the rollers and cars can drive over them, but cows cannot cross them. The cows don’t even have to fall one time to get it, instinct keeps them away. It’s a handy device that allows you to keep your gate open without worrying about your cows, pigs, or horses bolting.

A clever contraption, and it’s the rare fucking eejit that gets his foot caught in a cattle grid. But he was here tonight. I

tugged at it, but my artificial foot was completely wedged. I unhooked the straps and pulled as hard as I bloody could. It didn’t move an inch.

I removed the sock and heaved on the bastard, but there was still no way it was coming up. A better option would be to push it through the rollers. I could get the whole weight of my body behind it, but the problem there was that I couldn’t see how deep the pit went under the rollers. I didn’t want to lose my foot in a bottomless hole, not when I might need to run on it in a second. And anytime now the car with the kidnappers and Siobhan inside was about to drive up from the house.

That would be a nice fucked-up and ignominious way to end my existence on planet Earth. Hunting for my foot in a cattle grid while they drive past, stop the car, look at me in amazement, and then shoot me to blazes.

“Come on,” I said as I tried pulling it again, but it was pointless. I would have to push it through. The pit couldn’t be that deep. They didn’t want cows to break their legs. They just wanted to spook them a bit.

Have to check it out. I lay down on the metal rollers and felt underneath. I stretched my arm to full extension and touched years’ worth of sheep, cow, horse, pig, and dog shit, as well as leaves, garbage, and other assorted filth. Disgusting, but not deep.

I leaned with my full body weight on my foot. I pushed, and it sank through the rollers and landed in the shit.

“Ah, Jesus,” I said aloud.

I reached for the foot, found it, grabbed it between my fingers, and maneuvered it to the big gap in the rollers at the edge of the pit. I pulled it out, cleaned it as best I could, and strapped it back on. I spent another two minutes rummaging in the murk to find my boot. I saw that the cause of this minicatastrophe had been when the lace had broken and the boot had skittered off. The lace was neatly bisected, so I could tie up only the top four holes.

I stood. The boot didn’t feel remotely comfortable on the stump, but it would have to do.

The wind had killed the fog completely now and I found that I was looking at a one-room building. Very old, but far from being a ruin. It had a corrugated iron roof, a working chimney, and glass windows. It was a very old Orange Lodge, perhaps one of the original ones, and the fact that the kidnappers were using it made two things clear. First, whoever had kidnapped Siobhan certainly wasn’t a member of the Orange Order or the Protestant paramilitaries. They would never countenance the possibility of being traced back to an Orange Lodge. It wouldn’t look good within the community to use a semisacred place, even a partially ruined one, for a high-profile organized crime. This in itself was also puzzling because it didn’t seem likely that Catholic paramilitaries would use such a place either. They’d pick somewhere they were comfortable in, safe, a territory they knew well. An old Orange Lodge deep within a Protestant farming area? No chance. Bridget had been told the same thing from both sides and Body O’Neill hadn’t known a thing about the kidnap.

But if it wasn’t the Protestant paramilitaries and it wasn’t the Catholic paramilitaries, who in the name of God had grabbed the wee girl? Try to be an independent hoodlum in Ulster without being allied to one of the two sides and you’d very quickly end up as fish food. Was it a foreign organization? If so, they’d recruited local talent; but the masterminds could easily be from abroad—like that old guy on the phone. A risky game, but why not?

Well, we’d soon fucking see.

I crept my way closer. The lodge fifty feet away. Two cars outside. A beat-up Ford Sierra and a new Camry. Two cars— so what was that, maybe eight or ten guys?

If time wasn’t such a big factor, I would have stalked the place for at the very least twenty-four hours. In the gorse and heather there were dozens of places to hide. A pair of binocs and a notebook and I could have sussed the whole operation.

But I had no time for that shite.

Close enough to be seen, so I got down on my belly. The smell of slurry was strong and the ground was damp from a rainstorm earlier in the day. I slithered through the tuft grass until I came to a small stone wall that surrounded the building.

I looked at my watch. Ten-fifteen. They wouldn’t be on the move just yet. They’d be nervous; but they wouldn’t be shitting bricks. Keeping up one another’s bravado. I looked over the wall. Just a few paces to the lodge. If she was still alive the girl would be there with them, so I couldn’t just storm in, killing everything that moved.

There was only one way. In with the gun. Give them a chance to put their hands up, and if they tried anything, shoot the fuckers. But protect the wee lass at all costs.

I slithered over the wall.

I could hear voices now. At least two, possibly three men. I crawled my way around the lodge so that I was facing the only door.

The voices were quite distinct. All of them Northern Irish, all from the Belfast area.

“See this in the Tele, attacking the peelers again, so they are.”

“Fucking peelers deserve it.”

“Aye, you’re right, they’ve had it far too easy.”

“What’s that about a wedding, it’s not Charles and Camilla, is it?”

“Nah, it’s about Paul McCartney, getting married to yon awful woman.”

“I had one of her pies once, it was lovely.”

“She doesn’t make pies, you’re thinking of Linda. Hey, I’m going for a jimmy.”

More like three or four different men speaking. Maybe another two or three keeping their own counsel. Could be

seven targets in there. I’d have to reload the bloody gun. Tricky, but you could do it if you’d practiced. And I’d have surprise. I grabbed three shells and held them in my left hand. I checked the .38. It looked clean. I eased the hammer back.

Here goes, I thought, just as the door opened. I ducked into the shadow beside the wall. A heavyset man in a checked shirt and body warmer came out carrying an old-fashioned shotgun. He didn’t see me. Even though the fog was gone, it was close to full dark now. He walked to the wall, set down his shotgun, opened his fly, and pissed.

Quietly I got to my feet, eased in behind him, put the gun to his neck.

“This is the police, don’t move a fucking muscle or I’ll top you, do you understand?” I said in a whisper.

He flinched and urinated on himself. “I understand,” he said in a croak.

“Keep your cock out and put your hands on your head. If you make one sound I’ll shoot your dick off. Get me?”

“Aye,” he said, frightened out of his mind.

He put his hands up and I patted him down. He had a penknife in his back pocket, a wallet with some low-denomination bills, and the driving licenses of three different people.

I dropped the wallet in the mud. I knew I had to work fast.

“Ok, get down on your knees. Keep those hands on your head,” I said.

He knelt down. He was physically shaking. Terrified I was going to kill him.

“Ok, what’s the story, pal? Tell me everything in a fast whisper,” I said.

“What about?” “The girl.”

“I didn’t touch the girl, I promise, I didn’t touch her, the—”

He was starting to raise his voice.

“You better learn how to fucking whisper pal or you’re a dead man,” I said.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“You were talking about the girl,” I said.

“I didn’t touch her. The boss said no one was to touch her. He gave her the drugs, and we weren’t supposed to go near her, it was Slider, it wasn’t me, I didn’t lay a finger on her.”

“What did Slider do?” I asked coldly.

“He felt her tits, that’s all, I tried to stop him. He said he wanted to see if they were coming along. He made me do it. I didn’t even want to. I mean, the boss told us not to. He said we weren’t to do a thing while he was away. I only did it once. Not like Slider. She was out the whole time, mind. Well out.”

“Is she ok?”

“Where’s the other cops?” he asked.

“Never mind that. How is the girl? Is she ok?”

“She’s alive, she’s fine, doped up but fine. I promise.” “Ok. How many people in there with you?” I asked.

“Three people.”

“Only three, don’t you bullshit me, I saw two cars out front,” I said.

“The others have left,” he said. “Left where?”

“Left with her.”

“Fuck,” I said, biting down an urge to yell the word. “Ok, ok, when did they go?”

“Twenty five minutes ago,” he said.

“Twenty-five minutes ago. Jesus. Not in a goddamn Jeep?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

I cursed inwardly.

“Where did they go?” “I don’t know.”

“I said where did they fucking go?” I demanded, pushing the revolver between folds of fat in his neck.

“I don’t know, Slider knows, he talked to the boss, he suggested the handover place, I don’t know where it’s going to be, I’m not supposed to know. I promise, I don’t fucking know.”

“Slider’s still in there?” “Yes.”

“And the boss?”

“He left with the others and the girl.”

“You have no idea where they went? You better not be lying.” “I don’t, I really don’t know,” he said.

“How’s your shotgun? Do you keep it clean?”

“It’s clean, but I only have the left barrel loaded.” “Ok.”

I didn’t have time to tie him up. If I knocked him out he could come to at any time. Really, there was only one course of action. And he had fondled her breasts while she was unconscious. That was enough for me. I unfolded the penknife. I put the gun in my jacket pocket. I quickly threw my hand over his mouth and locked his head between my shoulder and arm. I shoved the blade into his throat, missing the carotid artery by an inch. It was ok, I dragged the blade through his flesh, found the artery, lifted it out, and cut through it. Blood spraying everywhere.

That would kill him in two minutes, but I didn’t have two minutes. I took the penknife and stabbed him in the voice box. Couldn’t risk a scream while he bled to death. I kicked him to

the ground and let him gurgle there. I was drenched in arterial blood but time was pressing. I picked up the shotgun in my left hand, held the revolver in my right. I walked to the building and slowly began turning the door handle. No profit in kicking it in. That would just alert them. This way they’d think it was their mate coming back from his piss—give me a second to analyze the situation.

I inched opened the door, raised the shotgun.

A single room, twenty feet by fifteen feet. A fire burning in a grate. A camp bed. Recliner chairs and deck furniture. A table with a gas stove and an oil lamp. Three men. One sitting in the old leather recliner reading tonight’s Belfast Telegraph. The second cooking a plate of sausages over the gas stove. The third lying on the bed looking at a chess problem.

“Which one of you is Slider?” I asked.

None of the men answered, but the one looking at the chess set nearly leaped out of his fucking skin. I shot the one cooking the sausages with the twelve-gauge, the impact blowing his shoulder and the side of his head clean off. I dropped the weapon and with the .38 shot his mate reading the paper, the bullet sailing through the color picture of the half- sunk Ginger Bap on the front page and catching him in the stomach. I shot him twice more in the chest. Slider, meanwhile, had produced a gun of his own, a semiautomatic, which he was trying to load with a clip. He got the clip nine- tenths in and attempted to pull the trigger, but the gun wouldn’t fire like that and the lead shell jammed half in and half out of the chamber.

A cool-headed man would have cleared the mechanism, slammed home the clip, and shot me. Slider wasn’t cool or fast enough. I strode across the room and knocked the gun out of his hand. I pistol-whipped him back onto the bed.

He resembled his mother more than any of his brothers. Dead crab eyes, one brown, the other blue, graying unkempt hair, lank smell, a broken nose. He was thin, but the skin was

hanging off him. With a haircut he could have passed for Iggy Pop on a bad day but that wouldn’t get him on my good side.

He put his hands up, and keeping the gun on him, I patted down his dirty jeans and a suede sweathshirt that was covered with food stains.

“Are you going to turn me in?” he asked.

“I’m going to fucking kill you if you don’t tell me everything you know,” I said.

“About what?”

I shot him in the left kneecap, the noise sounding dissonant and terrible in the wee room. He screamed and tumbled off the bed. The kneecap is a nasty place to take a bullet because of the conjunction of bone, muscle, and nerve endings. Especially at close range with a .38.

“You fucker, you shot me, I’m dying, I’m fucking dying,” he gurgled, writhing in agony.

I knelt beside him.

“No one ever died because of a bullet in the kneecap. One time, many years ago, I shot a man in the kneecaps, the ankles, and the elbows. Christ, you should have seen the state of him. Well, that’s what I’ll do for you. To begin with.”

“Why, why, you bastard?” he said.

“Now listen to me, Slider. I’m not fucking around here. I’ll torture you and I’ll kill you unless you tell me where she is.”

A sudden burst of pain rode through him. Tears were running down his face.

“What do you want to know?” he managed.

“Do you know what’s going to happen tonight at the exchange?”

“I know a bit.”

“Well, talk then.”

“Bridget Callaghan’s getting a phone call at the Albert Clock in Belfast,” he said, every word an effort.

“I know that. What happens after that?”

He groaned and shat himself. He was in agony. Goddammit. I looked around the room and saw that there was a bottle of Johnnie Walker next to the dead man who’d been reading the Belfast Telegraph. I went across the floor, grabbed the bottle, poured a full measure into a coffee mug, handed it to him.

“Drink the whisky,” I said.

He sipped and then gulped it. I let it bubble through him for a minute. He started doing a wee bit better.

I spoke softer.

“Ok, Slider, what happens tonight? Tell me everything.”

“They’re supposed to make her drive to a couple of different call boxes over the city,” he muttered.

“Go on.”

“And then there’s the swap. We’re supposed to wait here. We couldn’t all go, but we’re rendezvousing back here with the money, after Bridget and the girl are dead.”

“What are you talking about? After you swap the girl for the money, you mean?”

“Nah, I don’t think the boss wants to do it that way. I think he wants to kill the pair of them or something. Maybe for security reasons. But we get the money anyway.” Slider groaned again and I forced him to drink another mug of whisky. He sobbed a little.

“Get that down your neck, mate, go on,” I said.

He drank gratefully, looking at me as if I were an old friend. “Tell me about this boss. Who is he?” I asked.

“I don’t know, he’s from Dagoland, probably the Mafia or something, for all I know. Dead good English, though.”

“Ok, Slider, you’re doing great, now where’s the girl?” I asked.

But the whisky was working too well. Slider recovered some of his bravado. He looked at me suspiciously.

“Who are you?” he asked, his eyes still filled with tears. “I’m asking the questions. Where the’s girl?”

“She’s gone, she’s not here,” he said.

“So I see. Listen, mate, my finger’s getting awful itchy, so you better keep talking.”

“I don’t know anything more,” he said.

“Slider, I want to know where the exchange is going to be.”

“We’re not in on that. The boss comes back here. He didn’t want to tell us the place. You know how it is, some things you have to keep secret. It was on a need-to-know basis,” he said, thinking he was pretty smart wasting time like this.

“Slider, listen. Your mate outside already told me that you know where they’re doing the fucking swap. If you don’t tell me, I’ll fucking kill you,” I said.

“You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood,” he said with a half- drunken smile and closed his eyes.

I smacked him across the face with the barrel of the gun, opened his eyes with my fingers, and made sure he saw me standing over him pointing the gun at his head. I had to end this little chitchat right now. I mean, for Pete’s sake, I was only bluffing about the torture. There was no time to torture the information out of him. I didn’t have all bloody night.

“Slider, you’re taxing my patience, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Are you a reader? I’m a big reader. Have you ever read Zeno? He’s the Greek guy that says an arrow can’t move, because it has to cross an infinite number of slices in the air between the shooter and the destination. So let’s do an experiment. You keep your head there and I’ll keep the gun

here and I’ll pull the goddamn trigger and we’ll see what happens with the bullet. Fingers crossed for Zeno, huh?”

I began squeezing the trigger.

“Wait, wait, wait, oh God, wait,” he screamed. He was shaking and the terror was locked in his eyes.

“You don’t want to do the experiment?” “No.”

“Ok. Talk. Where’s the rendezvous?”

“The boss asked Jackie to ask the boys if they knew any out- of-the way places, you know, discreet. Well, I came up with somewhere. I used to go fishing at—”

“Not the whole goddamn story, just the place.”

“On Islandmagee, there’s a path called Black Head Cliff Path; it splits, the top path goes to Black Head Lighthouse, the bottom path works its way round to the Witches’ Cave. They scouted it out yesterday. Boss really liked it. Single route in and out. Bump Bridget over Belfast and bring her down to Islandmagee. I think that’s what he’s going to do.”

“Islandmagee, Black Head Cliff Path, lower path to a cave,” I repeated.

“Exactly.”

“Whereabouts is Islandmagee?”

“About ten miles or so from here,” he said, his face more relaxed now.

“Quickest route?” I asked.

“Drive down to the lough, go through Carrickfergus and Whitehead.”

“How will I find this path?”

“Ask anybody in Whitehead, you can’t fucking miss it. Right under the lighthouse, you’ll see it,” he said.

“You better not be lying, Slider,” I said.

“I’m not fucking lying, it’s the honest truth, I swear it.”

I had a million more questions. What was the girl doped with? What were the goons carrying? Tell me everything about the boss. How many in the team? What was the backup plan? But there was no time. I stepped away from him.

What I was going to do next was going to hurt. Cold blood was cold blood.

But time was the operative word. I didn’t have the time to be smart, to make the right call.

“Well, Slider, you’ve been very helpful and I’ll be honest with you, I thought about not killing you. It’s very good the way you look after your wee brother and everything but I don’t have the time to tie you up.”

“What are you saying?”

“Slider, I can’t have the possibility of you escaping on me and alerting your boss that I’m on my way to stop him,” I said.

I was trying to convince myself as well as him. What was the less wrong thing to do? Was it less wrong to leave him and risk it? Or was it better to shoot him and rule out any possibility of him screwing with me? My watch said five minutes to eleven. I didn’t have the luxury of thinking it through.

“Y-you’re going to kill me? But I helped you. You can’t kill me.”

“I have to kill you, I’m close now. Can’t afford interference. And after all, you did assault the wee lass.”

“You’re not serious. I’m a good guy. You know I have a kid brother, I look after him.”

“I am serious. Like I say, I was in two minds about it, but this is the only prudent course of action. I’ll do something for your wee brother, I promise.”

“You fucker, you fucker, you can’t. I’ll fucking see you in hell,” Slider sobbed.

“Nah, with all your good deeds, Slider, you’ll be going to the other place,” I said and shot him in the chest and then in his stunned, half-open auburn-colored eye.

On the tabletop there was a box of shotgun shells and assorted ammo for a handgun. I grabbed what I could, picked up the shotgun, and went outside.

Raining again.

I slipped in the mud, dropped all the weapons, picked them up, walked over to the body of old-

knife-in-the-neck, removed the blade, and pocketed it.

I wanted to run to the car. I had to run to the car. Time was of the essence.

But I walked.

It’s never easy.

I don’t care what anybody says. It’s never easy.

I avoided the puddles and the mud. Alone now, save for the hawks.

And sparrowhawks. Rain.

A breath of wind.

One foot followed another down the Knockagh lane to where the road curved and the woods came and the path wound its way back to the other millions of souls huddled in this green lifeboat of an island in the western sea.

The taxicab.

The key.

I threw the guns in the trunk. I started the car.

Drove.

I’ll come on the halo. I’ll come on the white water. I’ll come from the cinder sky.

Yes.

Greenisland, Carrickfergus, the small town of Whitehead. A lighthouse above the cliff.

A storm barreling in from the North Atlantic.

I ditched the Toyota in a seafront parking lot. I popped the trunk, quickly checked the mechanism on the shotgun. It was so filthy with mud I knew I couldn’t rely on it. My pistol, however, was clean.

Slider had said that the boss had several men with him. If there was going to be a shoot-out, I’d have to be ready to be outgunned.

Outgunned, outnumbered, outflanked. Exhausted, wounded, done.

I smiled.

What else was new?

I loaded six more rounds in the .38 and went to get Siobhan.