Stella’s eyes are feverish but the agitation is punctuated by uncontrollable yawns.
“Please Danni.” She grabs hold of Danni’s arms and Danni has to resist a sudden desperate panic, an urge to shake her off as she might shake off a spider that suddenly startled her. “Please Danni!” She is wheedling now but the thin bony fingers are vice like in their grip.
“Stella, there’s no booze. Johnny didn’t leave anything like that.”
“It would help, Danni, please. Something to take the pain away.” A watery mucous runs from her nose but she seems oblivious to it.
“Stella, I don’t have anything.”
“You do. You know you do. You could get it. Couldn’t you Danny? You could get it. There must be a shop.”
“There’s no shop for miles. Anyway, I can’t leave you.
Yes you can. Yes you can, Danni. I’ll be okay. I’ll stay right here. I promise. I …” Her fingers are gripping harder and harder.
“I can’t.”
“I fucking hate you,” Stella says venomously, digging her nails into Danni’s arms. She lets go suddenly, pacing the floor anxiously, kicking out at the cupboards with her feet. Danni watches silently as Stella suddenly doubles over with stomach cramp.
Danni opens the back door and leans against the frame, wrapping her arms round herself and breathing deeply. She daren’t leave Stella. This is as much escape as she can allow herself. The air is chilled, damp, tinged with the mild, sweet fustiness of rotting vegetation. A soft mist rises eerily from a sea of bracken in front of her, the bracken bowing wearily, heavy with dampness and singed brown at the edges with decay. She thinks longingly of walking through it, into the anonymity of the mist, tries to imagine what’s beyond it, beyond the enclosed world of this house.
Bang! Behind her, Stella has uncurled herself and is throwing open cupboards she has already checked, rattling pots and knocking over bleach bottles, slamming them closed again. “There is,” she mutters. Bang! “There is.” Bang! “I fucking know there is …”
Danni closes the back door quietly, with a soft click, and removes the key, slipping it into her pocket.
Screams in the darkness. Danni hears them, like a distant echo of the screams inside her own head. She snaps on the bedside light, heart pounding. 4 a.m. She only got to bed an hour ago because Stella wouldn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep. She left her eventually on the sofa in the sitting room, curled up with stomach cramps, white and sweating and her hair sticking damply to her forehead. She’d left the lamp on for her, and the television, though she wasn’t watching it. The sound of voices might make her feel like she had company.
When she throws open the sitting room door, Stella is standing on top of the two seater screaming, her feet drumming hysterically.
“Get them away!” she screams at Danni in terror. “Get them away!
“Get what away? What is it Stella?” Danni walks towards her, baffled.
“The rats! The fucking rats! They’re all over the floor! Oh my God you’re walking on them.” She throws her head back and screams, like there’s another force inside her, something separate from herself.
“Stella, it’s okay. There aren’t any rats. Stella. Shhhhhh. Stella, it’s okay.”
“It’s not. They’re everywhere. The tails …” She’s pointing to the swirls in the carpet, trembling and crying.
“Stella listen to me. There are no rats. I promise you. They’re in your head, Stella. It’s the smack … remember? Stella …”
“They’re there,” she screams. “Under your feet. Why can’t you see them?”
“I promise you Stella …” Danni tries to keep the desperation out of her voice, reaches out to her with her hand. Stella won’t have it. Putting her hands behind her, she backs away on the sofa.
“Keep away from me. You put them there. You let these rats in. You did this. KEEP AWAY FROM ME!”
Danni stays still.
“Stella,” she says softly. “Stella listen to me. You’re not well. There are no rats here. Don’t be frightened. This is what happens when you get rid of all the junk in your system. Remember earlier when you thought there were spiders on the walls. There weren’t, though, were there? Remember? I promise you Stella. Everything’s going to be okay. Just tell yourself the rats are not there. Not real. They can’t touch you or harm you. Just remind yourself they’re not real. See?” She runs her foot over the carpet. “Nothing there.”
“Not there?” Stella is staring at her in confusion. She runs a hand over her tear-streaked face and shudders.
“Deep breath, Stella,” Danni says. “Listen, I am going to come up there on the sofa and look after you. Okay? Okay Stella?”
She walks tentatively towards her, holding out a hand. Stella doesn’t move.
“I am going to step up there, now. Okay?”
The sofa wobbles slightly as Danni climbs up.
“I’ll look after you,” she says. “Come here. Come on now, kneel down here and then you won’t have to step on the carpet if you don’t want to. That’s it. That way you won’t fall. That’s it. Well done Stella.”
Stella is on her knees, her head on Danni’s shoulder like a sick child. Putting her arms round her, Danni feels the slightness of her, the wasted skeletal outline beneath her clothes. It’s only been two days since Johnny left. The longest two days of her life. She finds it almost hard to conjure him up now, the exact curve of his mouth, the set of his jaw, the quiet stillness of him. It was a bit like that when her mother died, that inability to hold on mentally to physical outlines. It gives her a strange jolt. What happens now if he never comes back?
A sly voice inside asks if she misses him but she silences it immediately. What if Pearson has got hold of him, the sly voice retorts. What if Pearson kills him? A panic rises inside her. It is not, she tells herself, the idea that Johnny might be dead that distresses her. It is the idea that someone might get to kill him before she does.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Belfast, November 2010
He knows himself with a cold kind of precision. How icy his blood flows when the bars begin to close around him. When the body is being starved, it shuts down to protect the vital organs. When Johnny is threatened, he shuts down his emotions to protect his psyche. It is his default survival mode.
He tore up every one of Pearson’s letters in jail. They meant nothing to him. But here he is in the same old street, looking up at the light in Pearson’s office, ready to walk back in there. For her. For Danni. Fire and ice, battling inside him. The outer door bangs shut behind him. His hands are thrust deep in his coat pockets and he takes the stairs two at a time, long legs swallowing them up.
He has the satisfaction of seeing Pearson start in surprise when he opens the door without knocking.
“Johnny!”
Johnny manages a half smile. In the corner, Coyle, hands thrust deep into a bag of salted crisps, look startled, then stiffens almost imperceptibly when he takes in the situation. He has heard about Johnny. He doesn’t want him back here, interfering. Coyle is Pearson’s top man now. “Johnny, me old fox,” grins Pearson. He stands up from behind his desk and moves towards him.
“How’re you boy?” he says, slapping Johnny’s proffered hand rather than shaking it.
“Good,” nods Johnny. “Good.”
“What’s this?” says Pearson, tugging on Johnny’s long hair and laughing. “Jesus, if your ma could see you now!”
Johnny smiles tightly.
“Ah Pearson, do you want me to cut some off and stick it on for you?” he says raising his eyes at Pearson’s bald pate. “Sure, you could be doin’ with some.”
“Always the joker,” says Pearson, patting Johnny’s face sarcastically, just a little too hard. “Always the joker.” He turns.
“You’ll need to watch this man for me, Coyle,” he says.
Coyle lifts his head morosely, licking salt from his fingers.
“So this is Coyle,” Johnny says, and he looks at him uns
milingly, with cold deliberation.
Coyle’s long dark lashes flutter upwards, and he matches Johnny’s stare. Pearson moves back to his desk and opens the drawer, pulling out a bottle of whisky.
“Sit down man,” he says. “A wee glass of the red diesel.”
Johnny watches the peaty whisky swirl in to the glass.
“What about Coyle?” says Johnny, glancing at him. He turns to Pearson. “Or is it not legal for him yet? He looks like he should be on the fizzy pop still.”
Pearson laughs.
“So Johnny. How you been? What brings you here?”
“A lady called Danni,” says Johnny.
Same old Pearson, he thinks. His eyes have hardened into granite slits at mention of Danni.
“Yeah?” says Pearson.
“She said you asked me to call.”
“Oh yeah, yeah,” says Pearson. “Just social, you know? I heard you were back.”
He takes a sip from his glass and smiles benignly at Johnny.
“What happened to her?”
“Who? Danni?” Johnny shrugs. “Dunno. Said she was going home. I’m afraid I couldn’t help her. With her research.” He makes sure to hold onto Pearson’s gaze longer than necessary. “In fact, that’s partly why I’m here. I’d rather you didn’t put anyone like that in touch with me, you know? I didn’t really appreciate a stranger turning up at my door.”
Pearson grins.
“No problem, Johnny,” he says. “She was just … two birds with one stone, you know?”
“I’ve moved on.”
“Course you have. We’ve all moved on.” He takes a swig from his glass. “Though you don’t ever move on from Ireland really do you?”
“Not when you’ve been inside for it, no.”
“That was unfortunate.”
“It was for me.”
“Still,” says Pearson, “you’re out now. You need to come round, Johnny. See my club. I’m in the entertainment business now. Did you know?”
“Zoo,” Johnny says, picking up his glass and swirling the rest of the whisky over in a oner. It burns all the way down. The walls of this place are closing in on him. He needs out. He glances over at the corner. Coyle is watching him with a sneering hostility.
“That’s the one,” says Pearson. “You been?”
Johnny shakes his head, stands up.
“Tomorrow. Nine,” says Pearson.
“Maybe,” says Johnny. “You know me, Pearson. I’m not very sociable.”
“Course you are,” he says. His eyes seem to shrivel, like the pupils have been burned out in their sockets. “Why else would you be here?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Danni opens the kitchen door and looks up into a darkening, moving sky, clouds solid as ship hulls floating in a gunmetal sea. The back step has become her refuge. She shivers. It is cold out here but she doesn’t want to go back inside with Stella. Loneliness is familiar to Danni; it doesn’t frighten her any more. It’s just a background ache she learned to live with years ago. But being alone with Stella is different. Loneliness is worse with someone else present; there is something with which to measure the gulf. Above her, the clouds form and reform in an ocean of shifting shapes. She rubs her arms, feeling the cold gradually ripple through her body, steady as a breeze through barley fields.
She closes the door quietly at her back, longing for a feeling of distance from the house. It isn’t just Stella. It is Stella’s fear. It rises out of her like a grotesque separate entity, a ghastly dismembered hand reaching out of a lake. Danni is frightened. It is going to grab her, that hand: drag her in, drag her down, drown her. She lets her back slide down the door, until she crouches on the step, her head leaning against the frame. It is out of control. Everything is out of control. Out here, against the vast expanse of sky that wheels round her, she feels tiny and insignificant and powerless
“Danni! Danni!”
She closes her eyes as the voice reaches out to her from behind the door.
“Danni!”
She doesn’t answer.
The letterbox moves.
“Danni …?” Stella’s voice seeps through the opening, whispering almost, Danni, crouched on the step still, turns her head to the opening but doesn’t answer.
“Don’t leave me, Danni. Please.” The metal flap drops with a bang. Slowly, Danni stands up, her legs locking in cramp. She opens the door tentatively. Stella is sitting on the floor, her back to a cupboard, knees drawn up to her chest, shaking. Her hair is damp, stuck to her head with a light glue of sweat. Danni watches her silently, but Stella refuses to look up. Danni slides down beside her. She can smell Stella faintly, the staleness of several days without a shower, of illness, and it surprises her, the strange, distant tenderness that wakes in her. Stella needs her. Like a child needs, wholeheartedly and selfishly. It is a long time since Danni has felt her existence matters this much. You can endure so much for someone who needs you, she thinks.
A light fluttering noise above her makes her look up; a plain brown moth battering itself against the grimy inner rim of the old, white, dust-coated lampshade. It hurts her eyes to look but she is as mesmerised by the moth as the moth is by the light. There is nothing it can do but hurl itself frantically into the burning bulb. Danni looks away, still seeing patterns of light in front of her eyes. In her semi blindness she can not see, but can feel, Stella’s head dropping lightly onto her shoulder, and she lifts her arms, wrapping them round Stella’s bony frame, rocking her gently like a weeping child.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Johnny puts the lights on in his bedroom first, so that he will be seen at the lit window, then closes the curtains. He looks down out of the corner of his eye to the black Ford sitting on the opposite side of the road. Bloody eejit, he thinks. He might as well sit under the lamppost with a surveillance sign painted on the side of his car. Pearson must have lost the plot getting kids to work for him. Slim-hipped, pretty boy kids. Johnny switches the bedside lamp on and the main light off, as a person would if they were getting into bed, then moves back out of the room and into the darkness of the sitting room, looking out into the road from behind the curtain. Coyle looks up, starts up the engine, drives off.
Being in the room with Pearson, smelling the old rank scent of claustrophobia – it was too much. He can’t do it, can’t pretend to work with him unless there is no other possible way. He thought that being older would change things, that he would cope with it differently, but maybe the advantage of being older is not coping differently with the same old things but doing them in a different way completely. He sits down on the sofa in the darkness, feels the ridge of broken springs beneath him. The light of his mobile glows as he punches Danni’s number in.
“Hello?”
Her voice silences him, hearing the low, rich tone of it. He misses a beat.
“Danni.”
She says nothing.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah fine.”
“Stella?”
“Fine.”
“Hard to talk?”
“Yep.”
He sits forward on the sofa.
“I’ve told Pearson you’ve gone home but it’s been too risky to come straight back in case they follow. They’re watching the house. Well Coyle is. My best bet is to leave late one night and be back by early morning.”
“No need. We’re fine.”
The snub of it pierces him keenly. The trouble with beginning to need people is that you need them to need you too.
“I need to talk to Stella,” he says.
“Right.” She pauses. “So … so should we expect you?” she adds diffidently.
He rests his head back staring into the darkness.
“Yes,” he says. You should expect me. Some time.”
“I’ll put Stella on.”
He hears low voices, then Stella.
“Johnny?”
“How’re you Stella?”
“Yeah okay. Okay Johnnie
. Danni’s been … she’s been amazing.”
“Yes.” He believes that.
“Listen Stella, I need to ask you about something. You remember you said Stella spoke about her two important clients … one in the law and one a priest.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, did she ever say who the priest was?”
“‘The Right Reverend Father McConnell’ she called him when she was taking the piss and giving him his full title.”
“And when she wasn’t?”
“Holy Jim, the failing Tim,” she says, and her voice gives away to a small laugh. “When she was taking the piss but not giving him his full title.”
Johnny smiles in the darkness.
“I think she quite liked him in her own way,” says Stella. “She talked to him. Told him what she wanted to do, how she was going to get out.”
“Did she say a parish?”
“No, never said. Why?”
“Doesn’t matter. It would take too long to explain. Listen Stella, I need to go but you take care, y’hear? Danni will take care of you there. I know that. I can’t come back yet … there are … there are some things I need to take care of first … But I’m rooting for you and I know you can do it. Okay?”
For a second he thinks she’s gone already.
“Stella?”
“I’m here,” she says, her voice breaking.
“You can do it Stella,” he repeats. “Keep going.”
“I will,” she says, “Bye.” And the line goes dead.
He looks at the phone for a minute then moves over to his computer, and switches on. It shouldn’t take him too long to track down Father Jim McConnell of Belfast.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Her first day beyond the back step. While Stella sleeps, Danni walks through the edge of the woods behind the house. Yesterday’s rain has passed. The day is crisper, cleaner, with a light wind. She breathes in deeply, feeling the cold, sharp air cut into her chest as her lungs inflate. Out of the corner of her eye she sees movement: a rabbit darting into the undergrowth. She stands on tiptoes trying to see where it’s gone. It’s cheering to see something move. Life-affirming. Sometimes in the last week it has felt like there’s no one else in the world alive but her and Stella. The last survivors on earth after a nuclear explosion, clinging to a fading reality.
Kiss the Bullet Page 18
