Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (43 page)

‘Oh, yes, and then what?’

‘There’s a stool in my room. When the first one of them gets to the top of the stairs I’ll jump out and smack him with it.’

Pat looked dubious. ‘And you think that’s going to put him out of action?’

‘There’s a chance. Those stairs are fierce steep, aren’t they?’

‘And what about the other fellow?’

‘Well, we don’t know who’s down there, do we? It could be those foxy-haired twins, the girl and her brother. I reckon I could take them on.’

‘But supposing it’s not the twins? Supposing it’s the red-brick shithouses?’

‘Listen,’ said Eoghan, ‘do you want to get out of here or not?’

‘Of course I do. Like I said, I’m not going to sit here like some turkey waiting for Christmas.’

‘Then let’s just go for it. What have we got to lose?’

‘Well, nothing at all. So long as you realize I’ll be no use at all if it comes to a fight. I can hardly take a breath, let alone give anyone a beating.’

‘We’ll just have to take our chances,’ said Eoghan. ‘You go back to your room and when I give you the signal, start moaning. I’ll be hiding back here at the top of the stairs. When you hear me whack whoever it is comes up, come out quick and we’ll make a break for it.’

Pat hesitated for a moment, listening. Again, he could hear a door opening and closing downstairs, and more of that tuneless whistling. Actually, he recognized that it wasn’t completely tuneless: it was ‘The Fields of Athenry’, but whistled flat. He could hear the words inside his head. ‘It’s so lonely round the fields of Athenry …’

He looked at Eoghan. He didn’t know him from Adam and yet here he was agreeing to join him in a totally reckless attempt at escape. What if he were nothing but a header? What if the High Kings of Erin had kept him tied up because he was some kind of a psycho?

‘Are we going for it then?’ asked Eoghan impatiently. ‘We’d better do it quick because the others could be coming back at any moment and then we’d be fucked.’

‘All right, let’s go for it,’ Pat agreed. Whatever happens it couldn’t be worse than having my nipples cut off. And if we do manage to escape, I can make sure these High Kings of Erin are locked up for good, which is less than they deserve. Eoghan gave him the thumbs up and he shuffled back to his room, feeling frightened but strangely excited, too. He had never been involved in a fight in his life, not even in the school playground.

Pat left the door a few inches ajar and then went over and sat on the bed. He waited for what seemed like well over a minute, although it was probably less than half that. Eventually he heard Eoghan call out, ‘
Okay, Pat
!
Let’s hear you
!
Give it all you’ve got
!’

He took a deep, painful breath and then let out a long, warbling howl, like a dog crushed under a car wheel.

‘
Louder
!’ Eoghan urged him.

He howled again and then he sobbed for breath, although the sobbing was genuine because his ribs hurt so much.

‘More!’ said Eoghan, in a stage whisper. ‘They’re talking to themselves downstairs, I can hear them.’

Pat breathed in yet again and this time screamed as high as he could, and went on and on screaming until he ran completely out of air. He leaned forward, his eyes shut tight in agony, trying to summon up the strength to scream again, but he couldn’t.

It didn’t matter, though. Eoghan hissed, ‘
They’re coming
!’ and Pat could hear footsteps stamping up the stairs. He stood up and went over to the door, ready to come out when Eoghan hit the first of the gang to reach the landing.

Malachi appeared at the top of the stairs, his face flushed and his white shirtsleeves rolled up. He saw Pat peering out of his half-open door and he started to say, ‘What in the name o’ – ’

Eoghan stepped out from behind him, holding a heavy oak stool high up over his right shoulder. He leaned back a little and then swung the stool around hard, so that the edge of its seat struck Malachi on the side of his head, about an inch above his ear. The noise was extraordinary,
clokk
! – as if Malachi’s skull were hollow. He pitched backwards, his feet doing a scrabbling, complicated dance, his left hand trying to snatch the banister rail to stop himself from falling, but he lost his footing and went thumping and banging down the narrow staircase. He slithered down the last few stairs, head first, and then hit the first-floor landing with a crack.

He lay there, both arms spread wide, his shiny black loafers still resting on the stairs, looking up at Eoghan with an expression of disbelief. He blinked, so it was clear he wasn’t dead, but he didn’t appear able to move. He looked as if he had been crucified upside down.

Pat came out on to the landing and stared down at him. Still Malachi didn’t move, although he blinked again, and opened and closed his mouth.

‘Malachi?’ came a shout from the hallway below. ‘Malachi, what the feck was all that fecking racket about? You didn’t push that fecking spastic down the stairs, did ye?’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Pat. ‘Look – he has a gun on him!’

The grey steel butt of an automatic pistol was just visible sticking out of the waistband of Malachi’s trousers. He wasn’t making any attempt to pull it out – he was still lying on his back with his arms outstretched. Eoghan dropped the stool with a clatter and swung himself down the staircase, grasping the banister rails on both sides like a gymnast on the parallel bars. He climbed awkwardly over Malachi and when Malachi made no move to prevent him, he tugged out the pistol with two or three jerks and then stepped away from him.

‘It’s all right, I have it,’ he said, holding the pistol up for Pat to see. ‘I think his neck must be broke.’

‘Malachi!’ came another shout from downstairs. ‘Are you making us this fecking breakfast or not? The fecking beans have just pinged! Malachi!’

Pat came down the stairs and Eoghan helped him to step over Malachi’s outstretched body. Malachi opened and closed his mouth again, but the only sound that came out of him was ‘
urrrrrr
…’

‘Jesus,’ said Pat.

‘What? You’re not feeling sorry for him, are you?’ said Eoghan. ‘This is one of the two who shot a woman garda right in the face. Come on, let’s get out of here!’

‘
Urrrrrr
…’ said Malachi, rolling his eyes.

‘And
urrrrr
to you, too, you murdering scumbag,’ said Eoghan. ‘It might be human to
urrrrrr
, but I’m not going to be divine and forgive you!’

They headed for the wider flight of stairs that would take them down to the hallway. Before they had reached them, however, the head of the second bouncer-type appeared over the top of the banisters as he came trudging up to see why Malachi hadn’t answered him.

As soon as he saw Pat and Eoghan walking towards him, and Malachi lying prone on the landing behind them, his mouth dropped open. ‘What the
feck
– !’

Eoghan lifted Malachi’s pistol, pointed it at him and pulled the trigger, but the safety catch was still on and it didn’t fire. Immediately the bouncer-type turned around and began to jump back down the stairs, two and three at a time.

Eoghan ran to the top of the staircase, pointed the pistol with both hands and fired at him again. This time the pistol went off, and the shot was so loud that Pat was deafened. It missed, though, and the bouncer-type leaped to the bottom of the stairs, staggered for a second, and then turned towards the kitchen.

Eoghan hurried halfway down the staircase, leaned over the banisters and fired again, almost directly downwards. The bouncer-type had almost made it to the kitchen door but he clapped his left hand to his shoulder and dropped heavily on to his knees.

Eoghan quickly went down the remainder of the stairs to the hallway. The bouncer-type was trying to shuffle his way towards the kitchen on his knees, rucking up the threadbare carpet as he did so. Eoghan walked around so that he was facing him and pointed the pistol at his face.

‘Go on, then, shoot me,’ croaked the bouncer-type. Blood was glistening between his fingers and staining the front of his shirt. ‘I’ll bet you don’t have the fecking neck.’

‘I’m not going to shoot you,’ said Eoghan. ‘I’m not a murderer like you High Kings of Erin.’

‘Oh yeah? Then what have you done to Malachi?’

‘Malachi tripped and fell down the stairs, that’s all. Nothing that a lifetime in a wheelchair won’t put right. No – I’m not going to shoot you. All me and my friend want to do is get out of here, so that you won’t be able to extort ransom money to have us set free. The only thing we want apart from that is to forget that we ever knew you.’

The bouncer-type slowly shook his head from side to side. ‘You won’t ever be able to forget us, I can promise you that, sham. You can hide yourselves anywhere you like, we’ll find you and we’ll do for you.’

‘Well, dream on,’ said Eoghan.

Pat had come down the stairs to join him now. The bouncer-type looked up at him and then spat blood and saliva on to the floor.

‘Let’s go,’ said Eoghan. ‘But you can’t go out with those bandages showing. There, look, in the kitchen, there’s a jacket hanging over the back of that chair. Take that.’

‘That’s Malachi’s jacket,’ the bouncer-type protested.

‘So what?’ said Eoghan. ‘He won’t be needing it any more. All he’ll be needing is a hospital gown.’

Pat went into the kitchen and lifted the jacket off the chair. There was still a strong smell of bacon everywhere, and the frying pan was crowded with curled-up rashers. When he put on the jacket it hung on him like a large black tent, but it would help to keep him warm and it would hide his bloodstained bandages. In the inside pocket he found a black pigskin wallet which contained a driving licence in the name of Malachi Brawley, a colour photograph of a round-faced woman with a double chin and frizzy blonde hair, and three twenty-euro notes.

‘Keep the money,’ said Eoghan. ‘Compensation for your injuries. We’re going to need some grade, anyhow.’

The bouncer-type coughed and blood and saliva ran down his chin. His eyes were nearly closed and he was swaying on his knees.

‘What are we going to do about him?’ asked Pat. ‘The other one, too, Malachi. He’s going to need medical attention.’

‘Let’s get away from here first,’ said Eoghan. ‘Then we can call 112, anonymous, like.’

They left by the kitchen door. It had been bolted and locked, but they found the key lying close to it on the kitchen counter. Outside, they found themselves in a tangled, overgrown garden with brick walls all around it and beds filled with slimy brown and yellow weeds. At the end of the garden path there was a gate with peeling pale blue paint. It, too, was locked, but the wood was so damp and rotten that Eoghan only had to kick it twice and the lock came away from the crossbar.

On the other side of the gate there was a deserted country road and fields.

‘You realize, don’t you, that we can’t go home yet?’ said Eoghan. ‘If we do, those murdering bastards will come after us, no messing. And our families, too.’

‘I know that,’ said Pat. ‘I’m going to call my Mairead and make sure that she goes to stay with one of her cousins where they won’t be able to find her. But we also need to call the Garda and tell them that we’ve got away and that they don’t need to pay the ransom money, and we can also tell them what those High Kings of Erin look like. I reckon you and me will see those scumbags locked up, Eoghan. Revenge is sweet.’

They walked along the road for a while in silence, both of them thinking about how they had managed to escape and what they were faced with now.

‘Do you know what you look like in that jacket?’ asked Eoghan Carroll, as they came to a road junction.

‘No,’ said Pat. He was looking around, trying to decide which would be the best way for them to go. There were no direction signs and he had no clear idea where they were except that they could be somewhere between Upper Bridestown and Keame, but that was only a guess.

‘You look like a kid who’s dressed up in his old fellow’s clothes.’

‘Well, do you know something?’ Pat replied. ‘Right at this moment, I feel exactly like I did when I was a kid, coming home from school. Tired, hungry, bruised all over and totally fecking bewildered.’

Katie was fastening her large brown leather satchel, all ready to leave her office, when Inspector Fennessy came in. He was wearing new thick-rimmed spectacles, which made him look like a college lecturer.

‘I’m fierce sorry about them suspending you, ma’am. I don’t know what to say.’

‘Well, I appreciate it, Liam, but I don’t think there’s a whole lot that anybody
can
say, except that Jimmy O’Reilly has been waiting for an opportunity like this ever since I was first promoted, and Bryan Molloy isn’t exactly the picture of disappointment either.’

Her phone rang. She looked at it, wondering if she ought to answer it. After the tenth or eleventh ring, Inspector Fennessy picked it up.

‘Hello. DS Maguire has just left the station. Who’s calling her?’

He listened for a moment and then reached across Katie’s desk for a sheet of paper and a pen. He jotted down a few notes and then said, ‘All right. Grand. Yes. This is Inspector Fennessy you’re talking to. We’ll send a couple of detectives and a technical team directly. Yes. Good. I will, of course.’

‘What was that about?’ asked Katie. ‘Not that it’s any of my concern. Not for the time being, anyway.’

‘Oh, I’d say that it
is
your concern, ma’am. Very much so. That was Sergeant Mahoney from Ballincollig. He says that they’ve discovered a man’s body and they suspect that it’s the rest of Micky Crounan.’

‘Serious? Where did they find it?’

‘It was only by chance, he said. It’s underneath some freshly laid asphalt on the road that runs south from the Lisheens roundabout on the N27. They’ve only uncovered one arm so far but it looks like he’s been flattened, he said, like somebody had driven a roadroller over him. But whoever laid the asphalt on top of him, they left three of his fingertips sticking out by the side of the road.’