57
The motel had a small coffee shop attached. Fegan had wanted to stay out of sight, but hunger got the better of him. He sat at a table in the back corner where he could watch the door.
‘What’ll it be?’ a waitress asked.
He studied the menu. Sandwiches mostly, all with cheese. He didn’t like cheese. Why did Americans put cheese on everything?
He pointed at the menu. ‘That one,’ he said. ‘Turkey. But no cheese.’
‘Cook only works to lunchtime,’ the waitress said. ‘Sandwiches are all made up. Cheese is already on ’em.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘And water.’
From here he could see the afternoon traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike and the airport beyond, the control tower reaching towards the fading sun. Cutlery rattled as jets passed overhead, either ascending from or descending to Newark’s three runways.
While Fegan waited for his sandwich, he took the phone out of his pocket. He set it on the table and stared at the screen as if that would make it spring to life. It hadn’t hit the ground that hard, surely it couldn’t be completely destroyed. He turned it over, examined the casing, tried the power button again.
A boy at the next table watched. ‘Is it broke?’ the kid asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Fegan said. ‘I think it might be.’
The boy’s mother looked up from her limp salad. She gave Fegan a suspicious stare. He dropped his gaze back to the phone.
‘Did you drop it?’ the boy asked.
‘Yeah,’ Fegan lied.
‘Let me see,’ the kid said. ‘I can fix stuff.’
Fegan looked back to the mother. ‘Can he?’
She hesitated before nodding. ‘Aaron likes to fix things. Anything you can take apart, he can put it back together.’
The waitress brought his sandwich on a plate with a glass of water. Fegan handed the phone to Aaron. While the boy held the phone to the light, Fegan set about removing the cheese from his sandwich.
‘The casing’s loose,’ Aaron said.
Fegan took a bite. The bread was stale.
The boy popped the phone’s back off and a rectangular block dropped to the table. ‘See? The battery wasn’t in right. It must’ve got knocked out when you dropped it.’
Aaron picked up the block and slotted it in. He aligned the rear casing and popped it home, then grinned and handed it back. ‘Bet it works now,’ he said.
Fegan thumbed the power button, and the screen lit up. ‘You fixed it,’ he said.
‘Told you I could,’ Aaron said.
‘He told you,’ the mother said with a proud smile. She had freckles on her cheeks.
‘So he did,’ Fegan said. He returned her smile.
‘I’m Grace,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Paddy Feeney,’ Fegan said.
The phone vibrated in his hand. Fegan’s stomach clenched like a fist. The screen showed a text message. It said, ‘You have one new voicemail.’
‘Are you okay?’ the woman asked.
Fegan went to answer her, but realised he hadn’t been breathing. He coughed.
‘Drink some water,’ she said.
‘I need to go,’ Fegan said.
‘Oh,’ she said, her smile falling away. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you.’
Fegan nodded. He stood, looked down at the boy. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and headed for the door.
‘You’re welcome,’ the boy called after him.
‘Hey!’ The waitress stopped Fegan at the door. ‘You going to pay for that sandwich?’
Fegan took a bill from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. He squeezed past her and out onto the parking lot. Another jet screamed overhead.
‘Hey!’ the waitress shouted over the plane’s roar. ‘This is a hundred!’
Fegan ignored her and climbed the flight of steps to the top floor. He ran to his room, unlocked the door, locked it behind him again. He called the number to retrieve the message.
A metallic voice said, ‘We’re sorry. The service you are trying to access is unavailable when overseas. If you would like to enable outgoing international calls, please talk to one of our operators by dialling—’
Fegan hung up. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
Marie had called. No one else knew the number. There could only be one reason.
He put the phone in his pocket and took the roll of money from the dresser along with the Irish passport. What if it didn’t get him past security? He’d have to take that risk. He lifted his bag, hoisted it across his shoulder.
The outside air cooled the sweat that had broken on his brow and sent cold fingers down his spine. He could wait for a cab, but twenty minutes on foot would take him to the airport. He knew there was an evening flight to Belfast, just a few hours from now, then six and a half more on the plane. He’d be home by the morning.
Fegan hoped it wouldn’t be too late.
58
The Traveller’s vision turned crimson for a moment before the nurse pressed a damp cotton pad against his eye. A searing hot ball of pain burned for a few seconds and eased to a small point of fire beneath the pad.
‘Looks like a little bit of wood,’ the nurse said. He heard a metallic clank as she placed the tweezers in a tray. ‘It might have scratched the cornea too, and the eyelid’s quite badly infected. When the bleeding stops we’ll flush it out and get a little bit of antibiotic ointment on it.’
He couldn’t see them, but he could feel the presence of the two uniformed cops guarding him. Big fuckers, faces like stone. The kind of arseholes who wanted to be cops just so they could push people around.
Handcuffs bound his right wrist to the trolley. A narrow bed with a thin mattress. The noise of the A&E ward’s busywork whisked and rattled outside the bay. His left hand lay on a pillow. The wrist throbbed, but not with the deep, hard pain you get with a break. Sprained, more likely, and that cop Lennon hadn’t helped it any. It pulsed in time with the sickly ache that sat lodged behind his eyes. They’d X-rayed his head and his wrist, and then put four stitches in his temple. That bastard cop had hit him just below the spot they’d pulled the chunk of Kevlar from all those years ago, opening the scar, and it had bled like hell. Now they waited for a doctor to have a look at the images.
The nurse had changed the dressing on his shoulder. When she asked how it happened, he said he’d fallen on a knitting needle. The nurse had blinked and looked away. She was a pretty thing, all right. Easier on the eye than the two cops, anyway.
She took the cotton away from his eye and dabbed around it with a clean piece. His vision cleared. The plastic curtain swished back and the doctor entered carrying a red folder.
Lennon stood beyond the bay, staring. The Traveller raised his head and grinned at him. Lennon shifted his weight, bristled.
‘Lie back,’ the doctor said.
‘Fuck off,’ the Traveller said. He pushed up on his left elbow, ignoring the screaming in his wrist. ‘You and me. We’ll settle it between the two of us.’
Lennon walked away.
‘That Marie one’s not bad looking,’ the Traveller called. ‘I’ll let you watch me fuck her before we finish things.’
The nurse scowled.
The cop’s footsteps receded, and the Traveller shouted after them, ‘How’s that, eh? You hear me?’
‘Lie back,’ the doctor said. ‘Please.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ the Traveller said.
One of the cops pushed past the doctor and put a hand on the Traveller’s chest. He shoved hard and the Traveller’s back slammed against the thin mattress, knocking the wind out of him. The Traveller breathed deep then spat in the cop’s face.
The cop made a fist, raised it.
‘Come on,’ the Traveller said. ‘I dare you, you cunt.’
The cop shook his head and slowly lowered his fist. ‘Either you stay down, or I’ll make you stay down,’ he said. ‘And I won’t be gentle about it.’
The Traveller laughed. He smiled and relaxed as the doctor took his hand, tuned out what he was saying. He ignored the pain as the quack manoeuvred the joint, pushing it this way and that. The Traveller didn’t make a sound, just stared at the ceiling.
59
Roscoe Patterson waited at the door to the apartment, arms folded across his chest. Tattoos of Ulster flags and fiery skulls decorated the skin. He nodded as they approached. Lennon carried Marie’s suitcase, and she carried a sleeping Ellen.
Roscoe handed Lennon the key. ‘I tidied the place,’ he said with a wink.
‘Thank you,’ Lennon said. ‘No one knows she’s here, right?’
‘Not a soul,’ Roscoe said. He slapped Lennon’s shoulder. ‘Look after yourself, big lad.’
‘Who is he?’ Marie asked once the lift doors closed on Roscoe.
‘A friend,’ Lennon said as he unlocked the apartment.
‘He doesn’t look like a nice man,’ she said.
‘He’s not,’ Lennon said. He carried the suitcase inside. ‘He’s a scumbag. But he’s an honest scumbag, and that’s good enough for me.’
Marie followed. ‘Do you trust him?’
‘I don’t trust anybody,’ Lennon said. He flicked lights on as he made his way towards the bedroom. True to his word, Roscoe had hidden the handcuffs and vibrators, the bowlful of condoms, the pornographic pictures on the walls. Lennon put the suitcase on the bed.
Marie hesitated in the hallway.
‘You should get some sleep,’ he said.
‘So should you,’ she said. ‘Couch looks comfortable.’
Lennon drifted in and out of the world. His body ached for rest, but his mind raced. Every time his thoughts got caught in the quicksand at the edge of sleep they would break loose again, wild and darting.
DCI Gordon had taken his statement while Dan Hewitt and CI Uprichard stood in opposite corners. Hewitt had been pale and distant. Gordon had been gruff and matter-of-fact. Lennon told them he believed the man he had captured was responsible for the deaths of Kevin Malloy, Declan Quigley, Brendan Houlihan and Patsy Toner. Lennon watched them both as he spoke, but neither Hewitt nor Gordon reacted.
Hewitt and Uprichard left the room, but Gordon remained, when Lennon gave another statement to some pen-pusher from the Police Ombudsman’s office. Gordon said nothing, stared straight ahead, when Lennon said he believed elements within the security forces had been protecting the arrested man.
When the statements were done, and the pen-pusher had packed up and left, Gordon put his hand on Lennon’s shoulder.
‘That’s dangerous talk, son,’ he said.
‘It’s the truth,’ Lennon said.
‘The truth is a slippery thing,’ Gordon said. ‘Watch your back, son, that’s all I’m saying.’
Marie and Ellen had been waiting for him in reception when he emerged at two the following morning. Marie had given her statement to a sergeant. There hadn’t been much to say, there or on the journey to Roscoe’s apartment in Carrickfergus; she’d seen nothing.
Daylight found the crack in the living room curtains. Seagulls screeched over the marina outside the window. Fatigue saturated Lennon’s mind. He drifted.
Lennon dreamed of the women he’d known, the women he’d lied to, the women he’d let down. He passed among them, tried to speak to them. They turned away. They would not listen. His mother stood at the centre of them clutching a tattered shirt. As he drew close he saw the blood on it. Liam’s shirt, the one he’d died in.
His mother said something, her words lost beneath the growing clamour of the women.
What?
he tried to ask, but his lips and tongue were too leaden to form the word. He tried again, a dry croak this time. ‘What?’
She opened her mouth, the sound eaten by a new noise, a high chiming.
‘What?’ he asked again.
She smiled as she faded into darkness and said, ‘Answer the phone.’
Lennon sat upright, his head buzzing, his heart hammering. ‘Jesus.’
That high chiming again. He scanned the room looking for it. Marie’s shoulder bag lay on the glass coffee table, its mouth agape. Something glowed inside. Lennon leaned forward on the couch and reached inside the bag. The phone vibrated in his hand. He thumbed the green button and brought it to his ear.
‘Hello?’ he said, breathless.
A pause. ‘Where’s Marie?’
‘Who’s this?’
A loud speaker made an echoing announcement somewhere. ‘I want Marie,’ the caller said.
‘She can’t come to the phone,’ Lennon said.
‘Where is she?’
‘I can’t tell you that. Who are you?’
Another pause. ‘Is she safe? Is Ellen safe?’
‘They’re both safe. Who is this?’
‘Where are they?’
‘Are you … are you Gerry Fegan?’
Quiet for seconds, only bustle and echoes, then, ‘I’ll kill anyone who touches them. Keep them safe till I find them.’
‘Stay away,’ Lennon said. ‘Don’t come near them, do you hear me? Stay away from my daughter.’
‘You’re that cop she told me about,’ Fegan said. ‘You walked out on them.’
‘That’s nothing to—’
‘Keep them safe.’
Lennon heard a click, and the phone died.
‘Who was that?’ Marie asked from the doorway.
60
Fegan slipped the phone back into his pocket and leaned against the toilet cubicle wall. That cop had Marie and Ellen. He was the girl’s father. Maybe he could protect them. But he couldn’t know the kind of men who wanted to hurt them. Fegan knew because he was that kind of man.
He picked up his bag and let himself out of the stall. No one had looked twice at his passport on either side of the Atlantic. He had tried to sleep during the flight, but the fear of the dreams of burning kept him awake, his legs and arms aching in the cramped seat.
As soon as he’d landed and cleared immigration, he found the nearest private spot to retrieve the voicemail. He dialled the number Marie had left. The call had led to nothing but more worry. He had to find Marie and Ellen, make them safe. The only place he could think to start was at her flat on Eglantine Avenue. He went to the bureau de change and traded the last of his dollars for pounds.
The morning sky was grey and heavy when he went outside to wait for the bus into the city. Marie and Ellen were somewhere under that same sky. So were the men who wanted to harm them. Fegan would find them first. Anything else was unthinkable.
61
They fed him tea and toast. The tea was cold and the toast soggy. The Traveller’s head hurt like a fucker. The best they could give him was paracetamol. Waste of time, but he swallowed the tablets anyway.
The strapping on his left wrist made it stiff and clumsy. He laid it on the tabletop. The skin between the fingers itched. A wad of cotton and gauze was taped over his right eye, the eyelid hot and slick beneath it. A cop stared at him from across the table, all business. Gordon, he said his name was. Another cop stood in the corner and said nothing. He was pale and sweaty like he had the shits.
Gordon spoke to the tape recorder. ‘For the record, the suspect who identifies himself as Barry Murphy has declined legal representation.’ Gordon spoke to the Traveller. ‘Now, Mr Murphy, we have checked with our colleagues in the Garda Síochána, and they tell us there is indeed a Finbar Murphy living at the Galway address you provided. They asked the county records office to email us an image of his driving licence.’
Gordon turned over a sheet of paper. A standard European Union licence was printed on it. It carried a picture of a red-haired man with jug ears and a prominent overbite.
‘Jesus,’ the Traveller said. ‘Looks like he should be playing a banjo in front of a log cabin in Alabama or somewhere.’
Gordon didn’t return the Traveller’s smile. ‘So you agree that the man pictured on this licence, a licence registered under the name and address you provided to us, is not you?’
The Traveller shrugged. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’
‘Care to tell me your real name?’
‘Thomas O’Neill,’ the Traveller said.
‘And your address?’
The Traveller gave the cop the Wicklow address he’d memorised.
Gordon ripped the sheet from his notepad and went to the door of the interview room. He handed the paper to someone outside and returned to his seat.
‘Should I expect that name and address to check out,’ Gordon said, ‘or have you provided more false information?’
‘You never know,’ the Traveller said.
‘Your fingerprints don’t match any record we have access to,’ Gordon said. ‘It’ll be some days before the DNA swab we took comes back, but am I correct in expecting that to shed no light on you, either?’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ the Traveller said.
‘Quite,’ Gordon said. ‘What were you doing at the Royal Victoria Hospital yesterday afternoon?’
‘No comment,’ the Traveller said.
‘What did you want with the little girl?’
‘No comment.’
‘When Detective Inspector Lennon arrested you, you were in possession of a firearm, namely an Israel Military Industries Desert Eagle .44 calibre semi-automatic pistol. An unusual weapon in this part of the world. Did you bring this weapon across the border, or did you acquire it in the North?’
No comment.’
Not the most articulate individual, are you?’
‘Me?’ the Traveller said, grinning. ‘I’m articulate as fuck. But all the same, no comment.’