by Ian Rankin
The farmhouse was an old two-story building, galloping toward dilapidation. The door was not locked, and inside Collins motioned Miles to sit down and remain silent, while he went upstairs as quietly as was possible. The stairs were a perfect burglar alarm, creaking ponderously with every footstep. The upstairs landing, too, joined in the fun, identifying for Miles the progress Collins was making.
The room in which Miles sat was part kitchen, part lounge. He sat at a heavy wooden table, upon which lay a loaf of uncut bread and a huge pat of butter. There was a wood-burning stove in one corner, with a teapot of truly Brobdingnagian proportions sitting on it. Sheila had always wanted a wood-burning stove. All Miles wanted was a cup of hot, sweet tea and a slice or two of buttered bread.
He knew that he could make a run for it, could take off across the gritty farmyard in his second escape of the day, but Collins was counting on his tiredness, hunger, thirst, and the fact that this place provided shelter from those who might still be searching for him.
Collins was a shrewd man. Miles bided his time, making himself comfortable on the long wooden bench.
A few minutes later, with accompanying squeals of tortured wood, Collins reappeared from upstairs. He stared at Miles, then smiled, yes, you’ve stayed put, just as I knew you would. He went to the stove, opened it, and dropped a firelighter into it. This he lit with a match, then crammed small, neat peat briquettes into the iron interior. A blaze started almost immediately, and Collins closed the door with a satisfied chuckle. He warmed his limbs, motioning for Miles to join him, then filled the old kettle with water and sat it on the heat.
“No time at all,” he said quietly, while Miles rubbed his hands and felt the life still in them, the tingle he had felt in that damp field.
“Nobody’ll bother us for a while,” said Collins. He cut thick slices of bread and spread butter over them. Miles, busy with the kettle, accepted one and bit into it. The kettle had boiled, and above the sink was an old tin tea caddy. He washed out the huge teapot, then opened the caddy. Inside, wrapped in clear plastic, was a small handgun. Miles looked quickly at Collins, who was busily slicing more bread, then pulled the gun out and slipped it into his pocket. Its weight there felt comforting. Silently, he replaced the caddy and tried another tin box. This contained loose tea and a rusted scoop. Collins still had not looked at him. Miles filled the teapot with hot water, threw in a handful of leaves, and touched his trouser pocket to check that he had not been hallucinating.
“Here we go,” he said, pouring the tea out into tin mugs. He was trying to forget about the gun, for he knew that Collins would spot any change in his attitude or even his tone of voice. He did not have a gun, he did not have a gun, he was still at the absolute mercy of Collins.
But he did have a gun. The question now was, would he use it?
“Have you decided yet?” asked Collins, wolfing down the last of the bread. They had eaten the entire loaf, and were on to a second pot of tea.
“Decided what?”
“Decided why your friends should want you dead.”
“I’ve got a few ideas, too many ideas in fact.” Miles sipped at his tea. “A colleague of mine tried to warn me before I came out here, I think, but he was vague. He wouldn’t say much.”
“Some friend,” said Collins.
“I didn’t say friend. I said colleague.”
“What’s the difference?”
Miles shrugged. “Anyway,” he said, “what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Well, I take it you are a terrorist, an enemy of the British state?”
“I’m not a Sunday-school teacher,” said Collins, smiling, “but I’m no terrorist. I’m a freedom fighter.”
“That’s just the same thing viewed from a different angle.”
“Robin Hood was a freedom fighter. Would you call him a terrorist?”
“Robin Hood may not have been such a hero after all. Historical research tells us—”
Collins hooted.
“Would you listen to him?” he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling as though consulting some friend up there. “”Historical bloody research.“ Aye, Mr. Flint or Scott or whatever, history’s a funny thing, though, isn’t it? I mean, look at what history’s done to Ireland, and look at how successive British parliaments since God knows when have twisted the real situation here into a pack of lies for their own use. That’s all the history I need to know, and a right biased bastard it is. Shall I give you a history lesson, Mr. Flint? No, perhaps not. Instead, you can tell me, what do you know about the situation here, about the roots of the trouble?”
Miles shrugged his shoulders, feeling suddenly tired. “Not much,” he said, “I confess that.”
“Just what you read in your newspapers and see on TV, am I right?”
“That’s about it.”
“But you see, it goes back a lot further than that, a whole lot further. It goes back nearly five hundred years. Ireland was Catholic, you see, just when it shouldn’t have been. That was its only mistake. And the people wouldn’t change their religion, so Protestants had to be brought in instead, and they were given the land that had belonged by right to the Catholics.”
“Yes, plantation they called it, didn’t they?”
“Plantation is right. The English turned our princes into slum landlords, and that’s been the way of it ever since.” Collins stretched. “Ach, what’s the point?” He pointed to a door at the foot of the stairs. “There’s a spare room through there. We’ll get some sleep, then see what’s to be done.”
“Where are we exactly?”
“County Monaghan,” said Collins. “That’s all you need to know. Better for you if you don’t know. OK?”
Patting his shirt again, he rose from the table. Miles resisted the temptation to pat his pocket in reply.
There was a small bed with a horsehair mattress, and a large armchair in the room, and no space for anything else. The place smelled damp, musty with disuse. But Collins found a two-bar electric heater and plugged it in, sparks flying as the layer of dust that lay upon it ignited. Soon, however, it had heated the room. Collins chose to sleep in the chair, so that he could keep an eye on his “prisoner,” as he put it. He pulled one of several thick quilts from the bed and wrapped it around himself, then maneuvered his way out of his clothes, which he threw in front of the fire, telling Miles to do likewise. The bed was chilled, but Miles soon warmed up. He would have given everything for a hot bath and a shave, followed by a change of clothes, but contented himself for the moment. He had slipped the gun under his pillow before throwing the trousers over toward Collins, who had patted the pockets conspicuously.
What if it were discovered that the gun was missing from its caddy? Well, he had nothing to lose in any case. He felt woozy and welcomed sleep, but Collins seemed to have wound himself up by talking of Ireland, and he continued his monologue, snatches of which Miles heard becoming distorted and echoic as he fell toward darkness and release.
When he awoke, the sun was shining. His watch said ten, which meant that he had slept for only three hours, yet he felt utterly refreshed and wide awake. He felt for the gun and stroked it, then looked across to where Collins had pulled the quilt right up over his head and was breathing with the deep regularity of sleep. Miles slipped out of bed, leaving the gun under the pillow, and picked up his clothes from in front of the fire, which was still burning. His clothes were dry, except for a patch of damp here and there. The faint odors of sweat and dried urine were not inviting, but he dressed anyway, leaving off his shoes. Collins’s breathing was becoming rather too deep, and he might wake himself with a snore soon. Quickly, Miles returned to the bed and slid the gun into his pocket, wrapped still in its plastic packet.
What now? He could disarm Collins, or he could make his escape. He had heard no sounds from the kitchen or from upstairs. The farm seemed utterly deserted: no hens clucking in the yard, no dog, no tractors or jeeps, no clanking of machinery at all. This wa
s the Marie Celeste of agriculture: the bread and butter lying out, the kitchen still warm from the previous evening, the door unlocked. It all seemed to him—for the first time—very strange, and he wondered why he had not mentioned this to Collins, who now snorted once, turned beneath the quilt, and began to breathe more regularly again.
Miles, stepping over the pile of clothes, the outstretched legs, the shoes, managed to pull open the door without a sound, watching the figure in the chair as he did so. He entered the short hallway and tiptoed into the kitchen, closing that door behind him. So far so good.
Then he caught sight of the girl at the kitchen table, and felt his chest tighten into a clenched fist. But the girl stared at him as though it were the most natural thing in the world for a stocking-footed stranger to appear before her. She was eating bread and jam, and, sure enough, Miles could smell the unmistakable aroma of newly baked bread, half a loaf of which sat on the table alongside a new wedge of butter. The girl turned her sleepy gaze back toward the table. She was nine or ten, her eyes and hair dark, her face thin and sharp. Miles could think of nothing to say, so he decided to ignore her. He started to walk toward the kitchen door, deciding at that moment, shoes or no, to leave, but he kept his eyes on the girl in case she should set up a hue and cry.
Finally, he decided to make a sign to her that she should remain quiet, and that was what he was doing when the door pushed itself open and Will Collins came in from the yard, clean clothes on his back and black Wellington boots on his feet.
“No need for that, Mr. Flint,” he said casually. “Marie’s dumb, can’t utter a sound. She won’t give you any trouble.”
“Who the hell is that in the room?” gasped Miles.
“Oh, that’s Champ. He lives here. Has he fallen asleep by any chance? I take it that’s why you’re out here. And about to leave us by the look of it. Well, go ahead.”
Collins made a sweeping gesture with his arm, holding the door ajar for Miles.
“Go on,” he said. “Though I should warn you that your friends are still in the neighborhood. They won’t be for long. I’ve just telephoned the local gardai with an anonymous tip-off that they’re here and have broken the immigration laws in the process. They’ll be chased off in a hurry, I should think, but if you want to take your chance just now, be my guest.”
Collins was smiling like a schoolboy: he’d gained the upper hand again and was delighted with himself. Miles walked back to the table and sat down across from the girl. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.
“Suit yourself,” Collins said, closing the door with a slam, which eventually brought the man called Champ staggering into the room.
“He’s made off, Will!” he shouted before seeing Miles seated quite peaceably at the table. “Oh, Jesus, mister, what a fright you near gave me.”
Laughing, Collins went to the stove to pour out more tea.
In the rich, primitive warmth of the kitchen, they smoked cigarettes and played gin rummy. Miles took long puffs of those cigarettes he won, though he had not smoked for years. As an undergraduate, he had affected a liking for Gauloises so as to appear bohemian. Now he smoked to blend in with Collins and Champ. It was an old and trusted psychological ploy—become like your captors. It made their minds easier to read, and also made it more difficult for them to justify murdering you. So he smoked, not heavily or with any conspicuous show, just enough. And, playing cards, he made sure that he lost as often as he won, even if it meant cheating against himself.
More often than not, they used candles instead of the low-wattage electric lighting. This made the room more intimate still, so that everyone felt very comfortable in the presence of everyone else. Just the desired effect. Miles was practicing on Champ now, trying to ingratiate himself. Champ was a simple man, but not simple-minded. He had told Miles that working the land gave a man time to think, lots of time, and offered also the opportunity for a kind of communion with natural justice, so that the man-made farce called “justice” came to seem utterly ridiculous.
The farm, however, was no longer a working concern. Most of the fields had been sold to a property developer in Dublin, who would let it molder until the time was right for building or selling. Miles reckoned that Champ was fifty, though he might be a bit younger or a bit older. The land did that: it made the young old before their time, and the old seem eternally young.
During the days, Collins wandered through the fields and around the farm, keeping himself to himself. He had agreed to allow Miles an amount of freedom, and so Miles too walked the farm, inspecting the carcasses of rusting cars and antiquated machinery, watching the wooden planks of the cowshed crumble to dust beneath his palm, rotten with woodworm. Everything here had run down in accordance with the rules laid down by nature itself. Soon the rusting scrap would be covered by earth and grass, wild seedlings of oats and barley, bright flowers.
In the warmth of the kitchen, kitted out in some of Champ’s old work clothes, Miles thought of London. What would Sheila be thinking? He wondered, too, about the traitor, the smiling Arab, the whole game. He had swallowed a great draft of fear, and it had destroyed a tiny, important part of him. There remained a maddening need to know the truth, even if the reward for knowing that truth was received point-blank and without mercy.
But he would never discover the truth unless he could escape from the farm. He needed Collins’s help, needed to persuade him to arrange passage to London, and that, finally, meant telling him everything.
TWENTY-ONE
“WE’RE GOING TO DROGHEDA.”
“Who’s Drogheda?”
“It’s not a who, it’s a where. Champ’s gone to pick up a car for us. Can you drive?”
“Yes.”
Miles wondered, is this it, a drive into the country, down a lane, into some woodland, and then the gun at the base of the neck? Dying somewhere in Ireland, a lowly statistic that might never even come to light.
“About Champ…” Miles began, curious and trying to calm himself.
“What about him?”
“Is he your…father?”
Collins roared with laughter.
“Of course not. Jesus, I wonder if I should take that as an insult?”
“I shouldn’t if I were you. He’s a very clever man, and a very sane one. What about Marie?”
“Oh, Marie’s his daughter right enough.”
“And his wife?” They were in the yard immediately outside the kitchen door. Collins seemed to be scanning the horizon for some kind of prey.
“She ran out on him when the farm started to collapse. She’s always been a survivor.”
Miles nodded slowly. Collins was still shaking his head and grinning.
“Me the son of Champ,” he said. “Jesus, I’m not even a Catholic.”
There was smoke in the distance. But the chaff had already been burned, hadn’t it? Collins had seen it too, puffing into the air, growing ever nearer as though carried on the wind, though there was no wind.
“Collins—”
“It’s Champ!” Collins was already reaching into his waistband, producing the handgun that Miles had not seen since the night of their escape. Looking up the winding farm road, Miles saw Champ’s car veer sharply and take the last hundred yards or so of track as though heading toward a finishing line. The car, dust enveloping it, slid to a halt in front of them. Dust, thought Miles, that’s what it is, not smoke.
“What’s the hurry, Champ?” shouted Collins, his eyes still fixed on the track.
“Being followed!” Champ bellowed back at him, lurching out of the car. “Get in!”
Miles had no choice. Collins pushed him into the driver’s seat, then ran around to the passenger side, hauling himself in. There was blood on the steering wheel.
“Champ’s hurt,” said Miles.
“Never mind Champ. He’s indestructible. Get us out of here.”
“Same way we came?”
“No, around the side of the barn. There’s an old track there throug
h the fields.”
“That’s never wide enough—”
The barrel of the gun stuck its cold, probing tongue into Miles’s neck.
“Drive,” said Collins.
Taking the car in its circuit around the farmhouse, Miles had time to glimpse the other car heading down the main track toward the farm. Oh, he’d recognize that car in his dreams, in his waking nightmares, and he had no doubt that Six and One would be in front, the one driving, the other angling his gun out of the window.
He drove.
Champ had gone into the farmhouse. It struck Miles that he would be reaching into the old tea caddy, searching for his own weapon, the weapon with which to protect Marie and himself. Oh, God…
“Just drive!”
He had pulled the car out of one rutted ditch, foot hard down on the accelerator, and now pushed it through the tortured track, no more than a walkway, while the fields complained all around him and the motor whined its plea for a third gear change.
“It’s them!” he shouted.
“Well I didn’t think it was Christian Aid,” Collins called back as the first hollow bang told them both that bullets were angling toward them.
The fields, once pockets of green, now seemed huge and barren. Miles knew that one slip would plunge the car into another, larger ditch. He had to keep his hands steady, steady despite the smear of blood on the steering wheel, despite the sweat pouring down his face.
Collins slid into the backseat and smashed the window with the butt of his gun. Another whine, as of a blacksmith’s hammer, came and went, and Miles was still alive. There was the terrible sound of sudden thunder as Collins tried his luck. As his ears cleared, Miles risked a glance in the rearview mirror. The car behind had slowed.
“They don’t like that!” Collins shouted.
Then Miles found the ditch.
The car plunged in, its back wheels leaving the ground and remaining suspended. Collins was screaming at him.
