Kiss the Bullet

by Catherine Deveney

  “How do you square it with all this?” he asks curiously.

  McConnell looks at him with the first flash of belligerence.

  “You think it’s the worst thing I could do? Who lives up to what they aim to be? Do you?”

  “No, but I don’t tell others what they should do.”

  “I tell people they shouldn’t be selfish but nobody would expect that I was never selfish in my life. Nobody would be shocked if I was. Why is celibacy so important?”

  “It’s not. It’s the pretence that’s important. You lot tell everybody else how to run their sex lives while doing something else. You don’t publicly claim that you’re never selfish but you do publicly claim never to have sex. How can you have sex and still be a priest?”

  “I went to confession.”

  “And promised never to do it again?”

  “Sometimes we fail. In all sorts of ways, we fail. Anyway, I told you I only had full sex with her once … though … though I admit there was … there was … sexual contact …”

  Johnny has gone from feeling cold to feeling the sweat glistening on his back. He moves from the radiator. What the hell difference does it make, these grades of intimacy? Full sex, half sex, simulated sex.

  “Look none of this matters,” he says, a bit impatiently. “I told you I’m not here to judge you. I have no right.” He wipes his forehead. He’s burning up. “Anyway, I don’t actually care if you have sex.” Johnny leans his weight against the wall. “But what I do care about right now is whether Myra talked to you about her other clients.”

  “No,” he says, a little too quickly.

  Johnny raises his eyes to the ceiling, clicks his tongue impatiently. He waits.

  “I’m going to make an educated guess, here,” he says eventually. “I think she did. I think she told you about another important client of hers, knowing that you couldn’t afford to ever tell because you would give yourself away. I think that would have appealed to Myra. Anyway, I think in your own strange way you became friends. I think she might have asked your advice.”

  “I cared about her,” McConnell says quietly. “I was devastated by her death.”

  “Well if you cared about her, you have to tell me about this other client. I can’t tell you why but it will help friends of hers. Otherwise, someone else is going to die here and you’re going to have to take your share of the blame.”

  “Oh my God,” says McConnell and he puts his head back into his hands. “What have I got into?”

  “Sometimes life gets out of hand, eh Father?” Johnny says, and his tone is not without its own compassion. “But I’m telling you that other people need protecting and the only way I can do that is if I know who Myra was seeing.”

  “I can’t. I can’t get involved.”

  “Because you need to save your own skin?” Johnny looks at him and shakes his head. He’s losing patience now. “Well, let me make it easier for you Father McConnell. If you don’t, I make your name public. After all, for all I know, you might have killed Myra.”

  McConnell looks wildly at him, like the world as he knows it is falling apart. “What? Of course I didn’t kill her! I lov … I was fond of her. I’m a priest for God’s sake!”

  “Yeah? Well give me the name or everyone gets to know the story of the priest and the prostitute. Ask your God and see if He can help you with that one.”

  McConnell squints at him. “You’re putting me in an impossible situation.”

  “Moral dilemmas,” says Johnny brutally, “Who’d have them?”

  He watches as McConnell gets up from his chair, walks over to a table and tears a bit of paper from a notebook. Above him is a picture of the Sacred Heart, the anguished face of Christ staring down from the wall. Silently, McConnell writes something on the paper and hands it back to Johnny.

  Johnny glances at it, then stands in silence for a few seconds just staring at it. No wonder Myra’s dead. He looks at McConnell and nods.

  “You don’t need to worry,” he says, walking past him. “You won’t see me again.” He lets the door swing closed behind him with a bang.

  Shit. He has been careless. This thumping head has put him off his stride. Johnny wipes the sweat from his forehead and glances again in the car mirror to see the black Ford turning off the main road. How long has that been following? God, had he led the car straight to McConnell? He slows as he approaches traffic lights that are turning red. In the side road to his right, he sees the Ford slow half way up the street and wait. A few minutes later, it has rejoined the main road and is sitting a couple of cars behind him again.

  He’ll have to go to the club tonight. Keep things right. Then he’ll head back to Donegal. He parks outside the flat, and out of the corner of his eye sees Coyle pull in further down the street. When he steps onto the pavement, his legs feel like they’ll give way beneath him. He needs to sleep for a while. Back in the flat, he swallows some more paracetamol and heads for bed. But there’s something about the bedroom he can’t face. He packs a few things in a bag for later, then takes a blanket and lies down in the sitting room with the fire on low.

  Pearson said 9 p.m., so he’ll make it 10. How quickly he has slipped back into that old pernicious relationship where everything is competition or confrontation, everything is about scoring without even admitting you’re playing the game. It was the hardest thing about prison. Not thinking that Pearson had won, but knowing that Pearson would think he had won. Then Pearson became so inconsequential it didn’t matter any more. Until now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Zoo is located in an old converted church with a double flight of steps leading up to the main entrance. It’s on two levels, the old upstairs choir loft converted into a bar area surrounded by thin silver slats running floor to ceiling, like an ornate cage. Downstairs, the main area is given over to a dance floor with a bar at one end, the supporting columns of the original church now painted in black and white zebra stripes.

  Johnny sees Pearson in the upstairs gallery, sitting in the corner of a cordoned off area of the cage, with an entourage. Johnny recognises one or two of them. Still hanging on, he thinks. Pearson looks like a dodgy car salesman with his black shirt and fitted jacket pulled over his stocky figure, the trousers straining over chunky, muscular thighs when he sits. Gold jewellery round his neck and his wrist, sitting like rocks on a stubby, bald, Buddha’s fingers.

  He hears a roar of laughter from above, Pearson with a glass in his hands, holding forth. As Johnny moves further in, he sees Coyle at Pearson’s side, watching him. Pearson catches sight of him, waves a hand at him to beckon him up. Johnny nods. Points to the toilet. A few minutes to get his head together.

  He has his back to the door when it happens. Hears nothing above the roar of the hand dryer and the thump in his head, until the arm is round his neck and he hears the clinical click of a blade flicking out next to his ear. He tries to turn but feels himself being slammed up against the wall, his cheek turned against the cold, unforgiving tiles, his arm held up his back.

  “Stay still Johnny,” a voice whispers, forcing his arm tighter, further. Johnny winces with the pain but says nothing. Coyle, he thinks. He recognises the voice … the tall, slim build. He could take him if he could only fucking move.

  “What were you doing today at the church?”

  “Prayin’.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Johnny, or you’d better start praying now.”

  He feels the cold metal blade pressing against his neck.

  “Think you’re a big shot? Not any more. You’re yesterday’s man.”

  In a sudden burst of anger he grabs Johnny’s head and thumps it against the wall. The pain comes in a wave that washes over him, reaches a crescendo, then recedes, leaving a wash of minor ripples in its wake.

  “What did McConnell tell you today?”

  “Nothing,” Johnny says through gritted teeth. Pain spirals him upwards until he hovers somewhere above himself. “He wouldn’t tell me anything.�
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  Thump. His head cracks sickeningly against the wall It’s amazing how many computations the brain makes in a single second. Johnny knows he has no choices any more. Coyle hasn’t the experience to walk that fine, beautiful, brutal line between torturing his victim until he cracks, and killing him. Johnny either does something here or he risks dying. That knowledge, along with a second wave of pain, unleashes a burst of energy, a torrent of pent up anger. And just as it’s unleashed the door opens and a startled clubber freezes in the doorway.

  “Fuck off out of here,” Coyle screams looking up, and Johnny, thankful for the slight hesitation the interruption prompts in Coyle, throws everything into releasing himself, jerking his leg up backwards into Coyle’s groin, twisting round and bringing his elbow into his stomach. The door bangs shut again.

  Johnny was never a pretty fighter. He wraps his arms round Coyle and hurls him into the wall, watches him slide down it, cracking his head off a basin. The knife slithers along the floor. Johnny grabs hold of it, sees blood running down his hand. He’s been cut as he twisted out of Coyle’s grasp but he doesn’t even know where because he feels nothing yet. Later he will feel the keen sting of pain in his right forearm, see the knife is so sharp it has sliced him open, lifting a wafer thin slice of flesh. And there’s a gash down the palm of his hand, blood oozing slow and thick and sticky. He has a sudden image of the bird in the cardboard box in Danni’s hotel room.

  He closes the blade of the knife over. Coyle is flat on the floor, semi-conscious, and Johnny bends over him, grabbing hold of his shirt, lifting his head off the floor by the collar.

  “I should finish you off,” he whispers. He feels a dangerous surge inside him, the years of controlled aggression beginning to crumble into an explosive dust that will take only a tiny spark to ignite. It’s always been inside him, that unpredictable roar inside his head that drowns out his reason. But since prison, he’s controlled it. Now he feels the control slipping away into darkness.

  “You hear me?” He lets Coyle’s head bang back to the floor.

  He has lived with what it feels like to kill a man. To kill a boy, he thinks, the dark eyes of the child that have haunted him so often for so long, rising unbidden in his mind. After that, killing Coyle would be like accidentally standing on a spider. Unfortunate, but hardly a tragedy.

  “Let me give you some advice Coyle,” he says, speaking directly into his ear. “If you want to pick a fight, don’t pick one with a man who has nothing left to lose.”

  The door creaks behind him. Pearson stands inside with two of his henchmen at his back.

  “Ever travel alone, Pearson?” Johnny asks aggressively.

  “What’s going on Johnny?”

  “Your wee playmate got above himself.”

  “He saw McConnell today,” Coyle says groggily from the floor.

  Pearson takes a step forward.

  Johnny lifts Coyle’s knife and flicks the blade out, staring at Pearson.

  “You know, Pearson, I don’t really fancy my chances against three of yous.” He glances at Coyle still sprawling on the floor. “Three and a half,” he adds. “But you know what? I could do a bit of damage to a few pretty faces on my way down.”

  Pearson lifts his hands.

  “Hey Johnny, calm down. Come on now, we’re old friends. Come and have a drink.”

  “Some other time,” says Johnny. He can feel the livid heat of his cheek bone where it smashed against the wall. He puts one hand tentatively to his head where a lump is forming. He motions with the knife.

  “Move over there,” he says to Pearson.

  “Come on Johnny.”

  “Move.”

  He knows Pearson is calculating. He can’t get rid of Johnny here. It’s too public. He wants him to come and have a drink so he can keep an eye on him. Dispose of him later.

  Pearson sighs.

  “Okay Johnny,” he says soothingly. “We’ll move here. You go out there and wait for us.”

  He’s keeping up a façade but he’ll be furious, Johnny thinks. Forced into a position of weakness. That’s when Pearson’s at his most dangerous. Johnny walks with his back to the wall, the knife held out in front of him. He closes the toilet door behind him and walks swiftly to the entrance of the club, slipping the knife into the inside pocket of his jacket. The bouncers eyeball him on the way out. He has maybe half an hour before Pearson will send someone after him to his flat.

  The night air is cool on his fevered, swollen cheeks. As soon as he is outside the club, he runs as best he can, trying to ignore the pain in his limbs, sprinting round the corner to the sidestreet where he parked. He turns the ignition immediately, pumping the accelerator with his foot, and turning on the fan. There is no need to go back to the flat. His bag is in the boot and he’s going to Danni.

  He drives one handed, the gash on his left hand making it painful to hold the wheel. Changing gear makes him wince; he tries to use the tips of his fingers only. Blood stains his shirt. He accelerates hard, the engine roaring as he pushes it to its limit, braking hard on bends. The adrenaline surge of the last hour makes him reckless. He has to be fast. He doesn’t want them to follow him, to lead them straight to Danni and Stella. And the fact is he needs to be there. Nothing to lose, he’d told Coyle. No, that isn’t true any more.

  He puts his foot to the floor, careless of speed, blanking out his thoughts in the blur of the white line, the endless curve of the road. When he reaches the track to the cottage he turns fast off the road but immediately brakes, wincing. The rutted track, covered in bumps and potholes, sends lightning forks of pain through his body. There’s sweat on his forehead again, glistening beads of fever from the flu that has been building through today, combined with the sick pain and inflammation of his injuries. And the sickness in his head, he thinks. Sometimes he fears what he is capable of.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  He sees two figures at the window as he approaches, Danni and Stella watching the headlights move slowly towards the house. He notices it’s Stella who comes to the door, Danni holding back in the sitting room.

  “Hi Johnny,” Stella calls softly into the darkness. He takes his bag and as he walks towards her, he feels his leg buckle more than usual and then, moving into the circle of light, he sees Stella’s face freeze, her hand flying to her mouth.

  “Oh my God,” she says.

  “What is it?”

  He hears Danni’s voice rising high and then he sees her standing next to Stella as he reaches the door. Stella has stepped out, taken hold of his arm.

  “My God Johnny, what’s happened,?” she whispers.

  “Danni,” Johnny says, looking at her. His head is fuzzy.

  “Stella, get some ice,” Danni says urgently.

  She holds out a hand to steady him.

  “Take my arm,” she says. She cannot look at him. It is the first time she has touched him deliberately.

  “I’m okay,” he says.

  “Bloody well take my arm, will you?” she says sharply.

  He lies on the two seater. Danni listens intently to his stumbled explanations as she puts icepacks on his head and cheek.

  “Sorry,” she says, her voice low, as he winces at her touch.

  She puts a hand on his forehead. Burning up. His eyes are closing in exhaustion.

  “Stella, can you bring some paracetamol and help me get him to sit up,” she says. “Johnny. Johnny,” she says close to his ear and supporting his neck to raise it, “you need to sit up for a minute.”

  His eyes open, unnaturally bright, liquid and glistening with fever. He is somewhere between consciousness and sleep, acquiescent in his confusion.

  Afterwards, Danni lays his head back. She pushes the two chairs together for herself to lie in as she had ended up doing with Stella when she couldn’t leave her.

  “Danni, you go to bed,” says Stella. “You’ve done enough of this.”

  “No, you need to get stronger. I’m fine.” She throws down a pillow and a blan
ket. “I’ll stay here.”

  When Stella goes to bed, Danni watches Johnny’s face while he sleeps. She stares, frowning, at the livid swelling on his cheekbones, the dark curl of his lashes, the thin, fine, bow of his lips. For the first times she can really examine him without anyone knowing she is doing so. Why does she feel this way? She has not forgotten why she is here. Everything that has happened has swept her up like a whirlpool but surely there will come a point where she is spat out again into the reality of her hatred for him.

  There is no need to panic. It is only human to feel a temporary shock at his injuries. This strange tenderness will go. But right now she watches his face quietly, confused by the fact that, for the moment, she is confused.

  There are, in the next forty-eight hours, only small crests of lucidity in great crashing waves of surreal fantasy as the fever takes hold. Stella, Danni, swimming towards him, noises muffled in the pull of an underwater tide. Danni tangling in seaweed that wraps around her like green limbs, frilled growth clinging perniciously to her throat, creeping tighter and tighter till she’s choking with it. And him, tearing at it with his bare hands, trying to free her, release her, stop it tightening round her windpipe.

  At the height of the struggle a brief moment of consciousness, cool hands freeing him from the sheet and blanket that he has been thrashing in, that tangles now around his legs like a vine. Stella? Danni? A cool cloth pressed onto his forehead, heavy with water, soaking into him, taking him back to the brine of the sea, the smell of salt carried on the wind, the tang of it on his tongue. He can taste it, the salt cracking his lips till they sting, bitter and bloodied.

  The eyes come out of the sea like a monster, dark and dreamy and haunted. Eyes like arms, that can reach out, lift and roll in agony and supplication. He carries them everywhere, the eyes of a child who drowned in him, who rises constantly from the deep towards him, the eyes of a child betrayed. Angelo, whom he never knew but who stays with him constantly. A boy, a boy, a forever boy who never looks to adulthood, but only looks to him who destroyed him.