Canning looked across at the bolted door. He didn't like the idea ofleaving McEvoy alone with the little girl, but didn't see that he had any choice. McCracken had said that he was to deliver the tapes, and he doubted that he'd be able to persuade McEvoy to go in his place. He put the carrier bag into his holdall and got his British Midland ticket from a drawer in the sitting room. When he got back to the kitchen, McEvoy was draining his glass. He held up the bottle. 'Get some more whiskey, will you?'
Canning nodded and went outside to the Mondeo. He drove to the airport, parked the car in a short-term carpark, and checked in an hour before his flight to Heathrow.
McCracken was waiting for him in the buffet on the arrivals floor of Terminal One, sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of her. Canning bought himself a coffee and a sandwich and sat at a neighbouring table with his back to her.
'Everything okay?' McCracken asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
'Everything's fine,' said Canning, not looking around. He took the carrier bag from his holdall. A middle-aged couple with three unruly children sat at a nearby table. Two of the children started arguing about where they were going to sit on the plane,
and the mother slapped the bigger of the two. Canning flinched.
He'd never hit either of his own children - never had, never would. He put the carrier bag down on the floor and gently pushed it back under his seat.
He heard McCracken bend down and pull the carrier bag between her legs, then heard her open and close her briefcase. A few minutes later she stood up and walked away, her high heels clicking on the tiled floor. Canning stayed where he was,
finishing his coffee. He listened to the three children squabbling and arguing and wished that he was with his own kids. His soontobe ex-wife he could live without, but his children were the most important things in his life.
McCracken opened the door to the Transit and slid into the passenger seat, placing her briefcase on her lap. O'Keefe started the van and edged away from, the terminal, squeezing in front of an Avis coach. McCracken wound down the window.
They drove in silence for a while, the slipstream tugging at McCracken's dyed blond hair. She took a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment and put them on. O'Keefe broke the silence first. 'What are we going to do with the Hayes woman?'
he asked.
'What do you mean?'
'When it's over.'
McCracken tapped her red-painted fingernails on her briefcase but didn't reply.
'She did hear, didn't she?'
McCracken turned to look at him. 'I'm not sure. If she did,
she hid it well.'
'She must have heard. She knows my name.'
'Maybe.'
'Maybe? That twat Quinn yelled it across the factory, right enough. She must have heard.'
McCracken screwed up her face as if she had a sour taste in her mouth. 'She might have heard, but that's not to say that she realised the significance.'
'Significance my arse,' hissed O'Keefe. 'He used my name.
She heard it. If she tells the cops, I'm fucked. How long do you think it'd take to track me down?'
'All she heard - all she might have heard - was Don. Maybe she'll think you're a Mafia boss.'
'This isn't fucking funny, McCracken. This is my life we're talking about. I'll put a bullet in her myself rather than go down for this.'
McCracken turned away and stared out of the windscreen.
'She's got to be dealt with, McCracken. If I go down, we all go down. There's going to be no Marquis of Queensberry rules after this -- it'll be a rubber-lined room with a drain in the floor,
and they'll beat the fuck out of me until they get what they want.'
'No one's going down,' said McCracken quietly.
'So when it's over, she's dead.' O'Keefe banged on the horn as a minibus cut him up. He accelerated and overtook the minibus, flashing the driver a dirty look.
McCracken opened her briefcase and took out the carrier bag. She counted the tapes. Seven.
Mick Canning parked the Mondeo by the wooden garage and let himself in through the back door. McEvoy was watching the portable television in the sitting room, his feet propped up on a low coffee table. The Smith & Wesson was in his lap, and he had a glass of Bushmills resting on his stomach.
Canning asked McEvoy if he wanted a coffee but McEvoy just lifted his whiskey glass and shook his head, his eyes never leaving the television screen.
'How's the girl?' asked Canning.
'No idea,' said McEvoy. 'How was McCracken?'
'She was there. I gave her the stuff and got the next plane back.' *
'She say there were any problems?'
'Didn't say a word. Just took the tapes and left.'
McEvoy pulled a face. 'Must be going okay, then. I guess if it wasn't, she'd have told us to off the kid.' He grinned at Canning.
'Only messing with you, Mick.'
Canning nodded at the gun. 'You expecting trouble,
George?'
'You can never have your gun too close,' said McEvoy.
'Didn't they teach you that in the INLA?' He noticed that Canning was holding a white plastic carrier bag. 'What's in the bag?'
'Comics. For Katie. Picked them up at the airport.'
McEvoy shook his head in disgust. 'You'll spoil the little brat.' .
Canning held the bag to his chest as if he feared that McEvoy would try to take it away from him. 'The happier she is, the easier she'll be to handle.'
'Bribe her, you mean? Is that how you control your own kids?' He took a swig of his whiskey. 'Never got anything from my da, other than a clip around the ear when he'd had too much of the amber fluid.'
'Yeah, well, that probably accounts for your well-balanced personality and your easy-going nature,' said Canning.
'Never did me any harm,' said McEvoy.
'You an only child?' asked Canning.
'Nah. One of eight. Seven sisters. That's probably why me da used to knock me around. He'd never lift a finger against a woman.'
Canning leaned against the door. 'What about you, George?'
McEvoy balanced his glass on his stomach and stretched his arms above his head as he yawned. 'What do you mean?' he growled.
Canning gestured with his thumb at the door to the basement.
'Suppose McCracken had said that the mother wasn't cooperating.
Suppose she said that we had to, you know . . .' He pointed with his first and second fingers, forming his hand into the shape of a gun and cocking his thumb. 'Would you?'
'Like a shot,' said McEvoy. He laughed at the unintentional pun. 'Like a fucking shot.' His belly rippled as he laughed and the glass tumbled to the floor. 'Fuck. Now look at what you've made me do,' he said. He sat up, retrieved the glass and poured himself a refill.
Canning headed towards the basement door.
'Where the fuck are you going?' said McEvoy.
'I'm going to give her the magazines.'
'She'll be asleep. Leave it until tomorrow.'
Canning stopped in the hallway. McEvoy was right -- it was almost eleven o'clock. He'd give them to her tomorrow.
'Are you gonna cook?' asked McEvoy, lounging back in his chair and sipping his fresh glass of whiskey. He grinned when he saw the look of annoyance on Canning's face. He put down his whiskey and held up his hands in mock surrender. 'Okay, okay,
I'll cook if you want. But you know it'll taste like shit.'
Canning walked back to the kitchen. McEvoy had only cooked once since they'd moved into the cottage, and it had been a disaster. Sausages fried to a crisp, mashed potatoes with half the peel still on them, and lukewarm peas. It had taken the best part of an hour to clean the frying pan afterwards. 'What do you feel like?' he asked.
'I feel like going out and getting my end away,' said McEvoy, kicking off his shoes. 'That's what I fucking feel like.' He took another swig from his glass. 'But I'll settle for beans on toast.'
Mark Quinn clicked on the mouse and the picture on the VDU changed to a view of the bathroom. He leaned back in his chair and watched as the Hayes woman brushed her teeth. She held her blond hair in a ponytail as she spat into the sink and rinsed her mouth.
Her hair looked genuinely blond, soft and golden, not at all like McCracken's dyed hair which was dark brown, almost black, at the roots. She came out of the bathroom and Quinn clicked the mouse again. He found her in the giant trading room, walking across to one of the half-dozen desks that were still in place. There was a telephone on the desk and she reached out a hand to it.
'Naughty, naughty,' said Quinn. 'You've been told not to use the phone.'
The woman looked around furtively, squinting up at the ceiling.
'You'll never find it,' said Quinn. 'It's too well hidden.'
The woman looked at the phone again, her hand only inches away from it. Quinn grinned, wondering how she was going to resolve her dilemma. She'd been told not to use the phone, but she obviously wanted to talk to her husband.
There was a squeal of brakes outside and Quinn stiffened. A door opened and then slammed shut. Quinn relaxed. It was the Transit van. On the monitor, the Hayes woman was still frozen,
hand outstretched. The second van door open and closed and Quinn heard McCracken say something to O'Keefe.
The side door opened and McCracken and O'Keefe came in. McCracken called across the factory floor, 'What's she doing?'
'Struggling with her conscience,' said Quinn.
McCracken walked up behind Quinn and looked at the monitor. On the screen, Andrea turned away from the phone and wrapped her arms tightly around herself.
'No balls,' said Quinn.
'Well, that's the thing about women, Mark,' said McCracken.
'As I'm sure you'll learn one day.'
Quinn scowled at her. 'It would have been easier just to tell her that all the phones have been disconnected,' he said.
McCracken had already walked off to the offices and didn't hear him. 'Bitch,' he added, under his breath.
Egan had thought long and hard about what to do with Martin Hayes. Not that he had any doubts that Hayes had to die - that had been a foregone conclusion once the Garda Siochana had turned up on his doorstep. What concerned Egan was the method; he wanted to cause as few ripples as possible, and his first thought had been to kill Hayes the same way he'd disposed of the headmistress' secretary -- talk his way into the house, hold a gun to his head, make him stand on the plastic sheeting, then put a bullet in his skull. It was relatively mess-free - the body could be wrapped up in the sheet of plastic, placed in the plastic-lined boot of the car, and then buried in some out-oftheway place. The big drawback was that if Hayes disappeared,
the police would start looking for him. And they'd start searching for his wife and daughter. They might turn to the media, and the last thing Egan wanted was to have Andrea Hayes's face splashed across the evening news.
The police would need a body, but if they knew it was murder they'd start a full-scale investigation, and that meant more publicity. They'd be looking for a killer, someone who had a reason for wanting Hayes dead, and that would start them looking into his background, and eventually that would lead them, to his wife's past. Egan would have to give them a body,
but in such a way that there wouldn't be a murder investigation,
and that meant that Martin Hayes would have to kill himself.
On the passenger seat of the Scorpio was a length of rope,
already knotted, in a white plastic carrier bag. Under his jacket,
snug in its leather shoulder holster, was the Browning. There'd be no need to use the gun, no need even to threaten violence against Hayes. Egan would give the man a simple choice: Hayes could write a farewell note saying that he couldn't live without his wife and daughter, and then hang himself with the rope. If he refused, Egan would simply tell Hayes that he was going to kill him anyway, make it look like suicide, and then he would torture and kill his wife and child. Egan knew without a shadow of a doubt that Hayes would do anything if he thought it would save the lives of his wife and child. Even if it meant taking his own life.
Egan guided the Scorpio down a tree-lined road, his gloved hands light on the steering wheel. Ahead of him was Martin's redbrick house, its slated roof glistening wetly from a recent shower of rain. Egan checked his rear-view mirror. There was a police car behind him. No blue light, no siren, just two uniformed officers going about their duties, not suspecting that a few yards in front of them was a man with a gun who would shortly be forcing another human being to take his own life.
Egan smiled to himself as he drove. It was going to be so easy,
but then the best plans always were.
Martin Hayes was lying on the sofa watching the late-night news when the doorbell rang. Dermott started barking and ran into the hall. Martin shouted at the dog to be quiet and went to open the door. It was the two gardai who'd called the previous day.
The older one, O'Brien, tapped the peak of his cap with a gloved hand. 'Evening, Mr Hayes.'
'What's wrong?' asked Martin.
O'Brien smiled without warmth. 'Why should anything be wrong, Mr Hayes?'
It's ten o'clock at night and there are two officers of the Garda Siochana on my doorstep. I don't suppose you're here to sell me tickets to your Christmas ball.'
O'Brien chuckled, but his younger colleague stared at Hayes with hard, unsmiling eyes. Martin wondered if they'd rehearsed the 'good cop, bad cop' routine before pressing his doorbell,
O'Brien playing the relaxed, matey garda you could trust, the younger one staring with barely concealed hostility, hoping to put Martin off balance.
He looked over O'Brien's shoulder, wondering if the kidnappers were watching the house, and if they were, what they'd make of a second visit by uniformed gardai within twenty-four hours. He knew there was no point in worrying -- if the house was under surveillance, then the damage had already been done.
'Could we come in, Mr Hayes?' asked O'Brien.
Martin held the door open for them and sighed in resignation.