Stuart Neville - The Ghosts of Belfast

by The Twelve aka The Ghosts of Belfast (mobi)

  “Did he hurt her?” he asked, taking the Walther away from Campbell’s temple.

  A little of the calm returned to Campbell’s face, along with a shadow of anger. “I told you I don’t know. Now, either take my word for it or shoot me, for fuck’s sake.”

  Fegan swung the Walther at Campbell’s cheek again and the impact sent a jolt up to his shoulder. The Scot slumped against the wall, his eyes glassy, blood seeping from the growing welt below his left eye. Fegan took a glass tumbler from above the washbasin, filled it with water, and threw its contents at Campbell’s face. Two more glassfuls and Campbell was upright again, sitting on his hands.

  “Who’s the cop?” Fegan asked.

  Campbell’s mouth curled in a smile. “The one who did you over? I don’t know him.” He hunched down, his head between his shoulders, when Fegan raised the gun again. “I don’t know, for Christ’s sake! He’s Patsy Toner’s contact. He knows him. I only heard of him today.”

  “I need to know who he is,” Fegan said. “I need to know why the RUC man wants him.”

  “What?” Campbell raised his head from between his shoulders, a knot in his brow.

  “If I’m going to finish this, I need to know why him. What did he do to deserve it?”

  Campbell shook his head. “What are you talking about, Gerry?”

  Fegan sighed and shrugged. “Christ knows.” He put the Walther back to Campbell’s forehead. “Well, that’s that, then.”

  “Wait!” Campbell said. “For fuck’s sake, wait.”

  “What for?” Fegan said.

  “There’s a way out of this. A way to stick it to McGinty.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “No, no, listen to me. There’s a way, I swear.”

  Fegan sighed and lifted the pistol slightly. “Go on.”

  Campbell’s quick eyes revealed the working of his mind as the words spilled out of him. “McGinty’s milking Caffola’s killing for everything he can get, saying the cops did it. And Eddie Coyle, too. He’s saying the cops beat the shit out of him. If you give yourself up, go to the law, tell them the truth, everyone will know McGinty’s a liar. He’ll be disgraced. Tell the press, tell the TV people. They’re McGinty’s lifeblood.”

  Campbell was smarter than Fegan had thought. “No, that won’t be good enough,” he said.

  “Come on, Gerry, you know you can’t get to him.” Campbell’s voice belied his wide, easy smile. “He’ll get you first. This way, at least you’ll live. You’ll see him destroyed and you’ll live.”

  “No.” Fegan shook his head. “I’m not going back inside. I’ll die first. Besides, McGinty can get me just as easy in prison as he can outside. Easier.”

  Campbell leaned forward, his face upturned and pleading. “Just think about it, Gerry, eh? Just take a minute and—”

  “Shush.” Fegan pressed the Walther’s muzzle against Campbell’s lips to silence him. “You know I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  Campbell gave a nervous laugh as Fegan raised the gun slightly, but he didn’t answer.

  “I’m away in the head; you know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Campbell said, his voice cracking.

  Fegan sat on the edge of the bathtub, giving in to the insistent pains in his midsection. He kept the Walther trained on Campbell’s forehead. “Then why try reasoning with me?”

  Campbell blinked sweat away from his eyes.

  “I wanted to know who the cop was,” Fegan said. “I wanted to know why he deserved it. But I know why you deserve it.”

  “Deserve what?” Campbell asked.

  “To die,” Fegan said.

  The shadows tightened around them.

  Campbell shook his head. “Gerry, I—”

  “Those two UFF boys,” Fegan said. Campbell’s head became still. “They were nothing more than cheap hoods, a pair of smart-arses selling dope for beer money. They couldn’t have got McGinty in a million years. They couldn’t even have dreamt of it. They were too busy getting stoned off their own merchandise.”

  Campbell’s shoulders rose and fell. Blood and spittle hung from his lip.

  Fegan said, “You know what that lot were like, the fucking UFF, and the rest of the Loyalists. All of them. Nothing more than jumped-up thugs with a bit of organisation. They were great at killing their own. They were even better at taking out civilians who had nothing to do with us or them. The easy target, that’s what they were best at. Even the top boys couldn’t have gone after McGinty, let alone those two bottom feeders.

  “But somehow it turns out Francie Delaney struck a deal with them. Francie Delaney, an even bigger prick than Eddie Coyle, clubs together with two apes from the UFF and hatches a plan to get to McGinty. Funnily enough, the only person Delaney spills his guts to is you. And you beat him to death in the process of finding that out.”

  “He sold McGinty to the Loyalists,” Campbell said. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Because you said so, and they believed you. You fingered those two boys to complete the picture, didn’t you? You set it up for me to do them to cover your own tracks. What were you up to? Why did you need to get rid of Delaney?”

  “They were going to get McGinty,” Campbell said. “You and me, we saved him.”

  “Bullshit,” Fegan said. “You remember. They weren’t killers. Not like you and me. They died like women, crying and begging.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” Campbell said.

  “What, you hear them too?”

  “Shut up.”

  “When you close your eyes at night, do they scream?”

  Fegan felt something vibrate against his chest and heard a high chiming sound. The phone in his pocket. Only one person knew the number. His eyes flicked downward.

  Mistake.

  Campbell had his wrist, pushing it away and upward. Reflexively, Fegan squeezed the trigger and plaster dust sprinkled down from the ceiling and into his eyes. He was pushed backwards and his head cracked on the tiles over the bath. As spots and dust danced in his eyes he felt himself slide into the tub. He concentrated all his strength on his right hand, the hand Campbell was grappling with, trying to claim the gun. Fegan’s feet hung over the edge of the bath and he kicked out, feeling his foot connect with Campbell’s groin. He heard the other man grunt, his grip weakening for just a moment and Fegan forced his hand down, pushing against Campbell until the Walther was between them.

  The pistol’s angry shout boomed against the tiles, and Campbell fell backwards, his face twisted in pain, a scorched strip torn from the side of his shirt. The mirror dropped in pieces from the wall behind him. Fegan strained to drag himself from the bathtub while a hundred knives in his stomach fought to keep him there. He fired at the blurred shape of Campbell making a crouching sprint for the door. The bullet split the wooden frame.

  Fegan spilled over the lip of the bath and onto the floor, crying out as pain roiled in his abdomen. He heard Campbell’s quick, light footsteps on the stairs. Fegan used the washbasin to pull himself up as he heard his front door wrenched open. Feet pounded along the street outside as he lurched down the stairs.

  Sunlight burned Fegan’s already stinging eyes when he got outside. Through the glare he saw Campbell running to the row of parked cars. He aimed and fired, putting a spidery hole in a windscreen. He squeezed the trigger again and a wing mirror splintered, leaving plastic shards and wires dangling. Campbell reached his car, his hand clasped to his ribs. Fegan fired once more and Campbell fell against the hood. A dark circle spread on the back of his thigh. He pulled the door open and was inside the old Ford Focus before Fegan could aim again.

  Fegan began to run, but the churning inside weighed him down. The car’s engine came alive and Campbell pulled away from the curb in reverse, clipping another parked car. The Focus rocked on its suspension as it swung in a tight circle to face the other way, and its engine squealed along with its tires. Fegan fired one last time, putting a hole in the car’s rear just as it reached the corne
r.

  He bent over, coughed, and spat blood onto the tarmac. His stomach and groin smoldered with a deep, hot pain.

  So, this was it. No more pretending. It was time to run, time to hide, time to find a way to get McGinty and the others. He straightened and turned in a circle, looking for his nine followers.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asked the empty street.

  He took faltering steps to his open front door, his arms across his belly. He didn’t have long. Even in this part of Belfast, afternoon gunfire wouldn’t go unreported. He stepped into his dim house.

  “Gerry?”

  He stopped at the sound of a distant, disembodied voice.

  “Jesus, Gerry, what’s happening? Answer me!”

  Fegan reached into his pocket and took out the phone. “Hello, Marie,” he said.

  29

  “You’re a lucky man,” the doctor said.

  Campbell didn’t know if he was smiling or not; his eyes were screwed shut against the pain. It wasn’t the wound in his thigh, the one the doctor was currently stitching up, that bothered him. No, it was the one at his side, the one that screamed and roared every time he breathed.

  “Almost done,” the doctor said. He had been summoned to McKenna’s bar shortly after Campbell limped in, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. Now Campbell lay on a table in a back room with the retired GP sewing up the neat hole in his leg.

  Fegan’s second shot had creased his flank, barely taking any flesh with it, but Campbell knew enough of wound ballistics to understand the transfer of energy from the bullet was like a hammer blow to his ribcage. The doctor couldn’t be sure if it had cracked a rib, or merely bruised it, without an X-ray. All Campbell could be sure of was it hurt like hell. A gauze pad was taped over the wound, and Campbell breathed in shallow gasps, trying not to spark another burst of pain.

  “There, now,” the doctor said. Campbell heard instruments being placed in a dish. “No major damage done. The bullet just nicked you, really. Sliced a bit less than an inch at the back of the thigh. Nine-millimeter wounds are always nice and tidy. It’s a long time since I treated any of you boys, and believe me, I’ve seen much worse.”

  Campbell opened his eyes and saw McGinty standing over him, still wearing his black suit from Caffola’s funeral. He hadn’t heard him enter. They watched each other as the doctor washed and packed up his equipment.

  “Take it easy for a few days,” the doctor said. He placed a small bottle of pills on the table. “Stay off your feet if you can, and take three of these a day. Antibiotics, in case of an infection.”

  “Thanks, Kevin,” McGinty said. He handed the doctor a roll of cash. The doctor nodded and left them.

  “You fucked up, Davy,” McGinty said.

  “He got the drop on me,” Campbell said, wincing at the effort. “Even crazy, he’s better than I thought.”

  “It won’t do,” McGinty said. “You’ve let me down, Davy. I’m very disappointed.”

  “Christ, what was I supposed to do? He had a gun to my—”

  “You were supposed to fucking kill him!” McGinty slammed his fist against the table, and Campbell howled as the impact resonated up into his chest. “You were supposed to do what I sent you to do instead of running away from him.”

  “He would’ve killed me.”

  McGinty leaned down. “You think I won’t?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McGinty, I never—”

  “Bad enough you didn’t get him, you even had him shooting up the street. The cops were called. He’s done a runner and they’ll be looking for him. Our friend in Lisburn Road Station let Patsy know. If they get him, and he talks, it’ll get out it was him killed Caffola and McKenna, and him beat Eddie Coyle’s head in. How am I going to look then, eh? The press will rip the shit out of me. I’ll be a fucking laughing stock.”

  “Did anyone see me?” Campbell asked.

  “Someone saw a silver car, that’s all they got out of the neighbors.” McGinty pointed a finger at Campbell’s face. “And you’re bloody lucky, ’cause if they’d tagged you you’d have a fucking bullet in your head right now.”

  Campbell gritted his teeth to quell a scream as he righted himself on the table. His left leg felt heavy and wooden, and a roman candle burned in his side. “Any ideas where he went? To the woman, maybe?”

  “No.” McGinty handed Campbell his shirt. “Get dressed. Patsy Toner’s parked outside her place now, keeping an eye on her. He’s going to make sure she goes to the airport and takes that flight I booked for her.”

  “Why not just do her?” Campbell asked as he struggled to get into his shirt. It had a ragged hole in the fabric, underneath the left sleeve.

  McGinty’s eyes flickered. “That’s my business.”

  Campbell sensed that pressing the politician would be unwise. He lowered himself from the table, feeling a deep throb in his thigh. “Fair enough, but you could use her to draw Fegan out.”

  McGinty thought about it briefly. “No, too risky. Not with the press conference in the morning. If anything went wrong I’d be fucked.”

  “What, then? Just wait for Fegan to make a move?”

  “I don’t think we have much choice,” McGinty said.

  “I was right about one thing. He’s going to come after you. And me, for that matter. He talked about that cop, too.”

  “The cop can look after himself.”

  “Maybe,” Campbell said. “Can you?”

  An hour later, Campbell lay on the threadbare couch in his flat on University Street with a bag of ice resting on his side and the phone to his ear.

  “Well, this is a fucking mess, isn’t it?” the handler said.

  “Oh, don’t start,” Campbell said, wincing at the sparks in his side. “I’ve been shot twice, been pistol-whipped, been roared at by Paul McGinty. I don’t need any shit from you.”

  “Need it or not,” the handler said, ‘you’re going to get it.”

  Before the handler could continue Campbell hung up and dropped the phone to the floor. One of McGinty’s thugs had driven him back to the flat in his Focus, leaving Campbell to struggle up the two flights of stairs. Tom the bartender had given him a large bag of ice for his troubles, most of which was now in the small freezer that hummed in the flat’s tiny kitchen.

  The phone buzzed on the floor and Campbell groaned. He picked it up. “What?”

  “Hang up on me again and I’ll blow your cover. I’ll leave you stranded there without a friend in the world. Understood?”

  Campbell sighed. “Understood.”

  “Okay. Now, what’s happening?”

  “Nothing much,” Campbell said. “We’ve just got to wait until Fegan shows his face again.”

  “Well, wherever and whenever that is, you better be ready to take him out.”

  “Christ, I’m in no fit state to—”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck,” the handler said. “You’ve got a job to do, so bloody do it. You better pray Fegan doesn’t do any more damage before you get him. This is a bad situation for everyone. Maybe we shouldn’t have sent you in there in the first place. You’ve been under too long. For Christ’s sake, don’t let it get any worse.”

  The phone went dead, and Campbell threw it across the room. He covered his eyes, frustration burning as brightly as his injuries. Today he had come as close to dying as he had in fifteen years of service, and he’d had some scrapes. He’d let Fegan, a crazy man, almost get the better of him.

  Almost?

  No, there was no almost. Fegan would have killed him if not for the phone going off. Blind luck was all that had saved Campbell. He shuddered at the thought.

  And there was a bigger question, a more troubling idea. How had Fegan known? He was dead right: there had never been a threat from the UFF boys. The Ulster Freedom Fighters were the militant wing of the Ulster Defence Association, the working-class Protestant movement that claimed to defend its people from Republicans. In reality, they were common thugs, the ki
nd the Loyalists bred in abundance. The kind who could walk into a pub and open fire on anything that moved, or call a taxi, wait for it to arrive, and then shoot its driver. But a real hit on a dangerous target? Never. They just didn’t have it in them.

  It was Delaney. Campbell remembered the night the slimy bastard had cornered him, saying he knew he was a plant. Even now, Campbell could smell Delaney’s breath and cheap aftershave.

  “Get me fifty grand,” Delaney had said, grinning as his oily black hair spilled into his eyes. “Just fifty grand and I’ll forget the whole thing.”