by Jay Stringer
Gaines nodded. “Go on.”
“It’s crowded round here. Too many idiots, too many gangs. I want what you got. We’ll help you run these guys out, and then you and me? Partners.”
Gaines put her hand out to shake on the deal. Dodge put his out but hesitated. He pulled back a little. “I mean for real. I’m not your boy, and I’m not an idiot. We run everything together, equal. You may have cut Gyp here in on the board of your companies or whatever, but that’s not what I’m after. I’m going to be sat at the top with you.”
I held my breath. I knew both of these people and yet I couldn’t tell if they were being honest with each other. A teenage boy bargaining with Veronica Gaines over a seat at the top table? I looked from one to the other. Then Gaines raised her hand a little higher, reminding Dodge that it was there to shake.
“You going to keep talking or start shaking?”
The door opened and Sukh stepped in. He nodded at me, then back over his shoulder. “There’s an old dude here. Guy in a suit. Says he’s with you?”
All three of us stood up, but I put my hand out toward Gaines, telling her to hang back. She told me to go to hell, and we both followed Sukh and Dodge out into the hall. The old man in the deerstalker had left, and Branko was standing in his place at the bar, sipping a glass of milk while talking into a mobile phone. He smiled and raised his glass at me. I listened to him talking into the phone, and picked up on local road names.
Directions.
He was telling someone where we were.
“Mr. Miller, it is good to see you again. Perhaps we could have our little talk now?” said Branko. Someone had killed the music and his manicured voice echoed around the large hall. He spun the phone around in his hand like a cowboy playing with a gun, then slipped it into his inside pocket. “And Miss Gaines if you could come along, that would be of great help.”
Dodge turned to us with a question in his eyes, and I shook my head. He turned back and nodded to his guys. Sukh pulled a gun out from the small of his back, and one of the black kids raised the gun Dodge had held earlier.
Branko drained the glass and rested it on the bar, wiping his lips lightly before turning his attention to the gunmen. “I see everyone in this country welcomes a guest with the same manners as Mr. Miller. Really, all I want is to speak with him. Perhaps I should tell you about the first time—”
“We don’t need any more of your stories,” I said.
He shrugged, taking it much as I imagined he would if I’d said I didn’t like the color of his socks. “Shame. Maybe we should talk about youth.” He looked across at the teenagers and then at Gaines and me. “You’re all young to me. Confused, I should think. I envy you that, I suppose. I never had the time to be confused. You know, my hometown, it’s famous in the country, because people say nobody should live there. They say it’s only good for the fucking of the wolves.”
He talked as if he didn’t see the guns trained on him. And, unlike when he faced me down, these kids were not afraid to use them. Just when I’d thought I had the measure of him, he found new ways to scare me.
“You can hear them at night,” he continued. “The howling, the fucking. You know a wolf howl when you hear it, even before you know what a wolf is. You can lie in bed and hear these animals going about their lives in a part of the world that really belongs to them. It is not a place for a young boy, certainly not a family. My sister, she went out after dark once, never came back.”
Dodge turned to me. “You want this freak dead?”
“I do.”
I turned back toward Gaines to escort her back into the back room, which had more to do with my own wish to avoid the bloodshed than hers. I heard the guns being raised again.
Then Branko spoke, his voice still calm and reasoned. Almost pleasant.
“Mullo.”
I turned back to him, my mouth opening and closing before my throat caught up with the idea. “What?”
“That’s what your people believe, yes? Haunted by a Mullo, by a spirit come back to punish you for your actions?” He slipped his phone out of his inside pocket. “Quite a poetic way of explaining how the world works, don’t you think? My father used to say it was who you left behind, rather than who you helped, that you would be judged by.”
He pressed a button on the phone, and after a second of electronic clicking I heard a whimpering that rose above the shuffling of the gang members as they shifted positions. It was a familiar sound. I’d heard it many times, in those early nights of Matt’s recovery when he slept on my sofa.
“He is still useful to me,” Branko said. “You are his use. Will you walk away now, make him, like the kitten on my farm, one more thing to put down?”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I thought of all the excuses I had to turn and run. I thought of Tony’s wallet, and all the ghosts around my bed. I pulled Dodge toward me and whispered an address.
“Get Gaines there. Say I sent you. Regroup.”
“You doing?”
“Being an idiot. Go.”
Dodge told his crew to keep their guns on Branko long enough for him to get clear and nodded for Gaines to follow him but she stood her ground. She stared me out, and a moment threatened to pass between us, rolling in like storm clouds to hang in the air. Then Branko stepped forward, and Gaines followed Dodge through the curtain. We stood in silence for a few moments. I counted out what I hoped would be enough time for Dodge to get to a car and pull out of the street. Then I waved for the kids to lower their weapons.
I walked toward my smiling Mullo.
My head was covered. I was in the back of a car, and we were traveling at high speed. Branko was the only person I’d seen, but he kept talking to someone, giving directions. It was a one-way conversation.
Back at the snooker hall he’d taken a phone call and then smiled at me. “Our ride is here.”
He’d produced a piece of neatly folded cloth from his jacket, which turned out to be a mask. He fitted it over my head until it covered my nose and mouth and I had difficulty breathing. It smelled of sweat and panic. I wasn’t the first person given this treatment.
Occasionally on the drive he would talk to me, and I got the impression he was sitting in the front beside the driver. It sounded like he was ahead of me, leaning back. “Save yourself a lot of time, Mr. Miller. Just tell me where you sent them to.” When I didn’t answer on his third or fourth attempt, I heard him chuckle, “He protects her so, eh?”
The car increased speed and we took a corner too fast, throwing me against the door, before we turned hard to the other side and I slumped back into the middle. I heard a police siren approaching and tried to put all my belief into imagining a miracle rescue by a police force that hated me, but the siren blew past us and continued on in the opposite direction. I scanned my thoughts for any sense of hope for myself, then realized it had never been there at all. My survival instinct had been missing since I’d sat in the police interrogation room with Becker. Since then the only people I’d been thinking about protecting were Gaines and Laura. That was all I was focusing on now. If I didn’t give Branko what he wanted, I could buy more time for Gaines, and I could maybe keep Matt alive.
I’d always assumed selflessness came through heroism. Noble deeds and riding off into the sunset. Now I knew it came from hopelessness. From knowing you had no way out and looking to minimize the collateral damage.
The car came to a halt. I heard both front doors open and the car rose slightly as two people climbed out. I was left alone for a second with the sound of the engine cooling and popping. Then the door beside me opened, and I was pulled to my feet by Branko. I could tell it was him by the strength in his hands. I sensed a second person was with us but had no idea who it might be. I was pushed, dragged, and prodded for thirty paces. I felt the hard surface beneath my feet give way to grass, and then someone held me by the arm as I he
ard a door open before I was pushed through it. I let myself be guided into a chair, where my arms were held down forcefully and tied to the armrests. Then the sound of footsteps receded and I was left alone in silence.
I tried counting, but got angry at myself for speeding up and slowing down. I thought of calling out, but I didn’t want to give them any satisfaction. I sat in silence. As I got used to my surroundings, I started to get more of a sense for the space I was in. It was warm and there was moisture in the air; the atmosphere was close like a greenhouse and somehow familiar. Then I heard movement close by and tried to focus in, tried to feel the air around me. I wasn’t alone. There were other people near me, not moving, silent.
Then I heard a whimper.
Matt.
Footsteps entered the room and walked toward me slowly, padding across a hard surface. A hand grabbed at my head and pulled the stocking slowly over my mouth and nose, then more quickly from the top of my head. I blinked as light hit my eyes for the first time in an hour, and spots of color danced in front of me before forming into solid shapes and people.
I blinked again.
I was in the conservatory at the house of Ransford Gaines, next to the indoor pool. Claire was sitting to my right, her hands tied out of sight behind her back and a gag covering the lower half of her face. She was staring at me with eyes that were both scared and exhausted. I felt like I should say something to reassure her, but we were both tied to chairs and I didn’t want to sound like an idiot. Sitting to my left was Ransford. He wasn’t tied to his wheelchair, but he didn’t need to be. He appeared to have deteriorated from just a few days ago; his head was stooped low to his shoulder, and his eyes were half-awake slits. His breathing came with a rattle. Sitting in front of me, tied to his chair in the same way as me, was Matt. His skin was pale and there were flecks of dried blood around his mouth. I noticed several of his fingers were swollen and misshapen.
He looked at me and tried to smile, which was the scariest thing I’d ever seen.
Standing between the four of us, holding court like a game-show host with a gun, was Branko.
“I’ll leave you to talk,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes and you’ll tell me where Veronica Gaines is, or I’ll start killing people.”
“Mnowen, th’goo to thee you.”
Matt’s words were accompanied by the whistle of missing teeth. It took me a second to adjust to his new voice. Eoin, it’s good to see you. He was a comedian. His injuries spoke for themselves, but I needed to ask. “He’s been torturing you for information?”
He sighed. A gesture that came from deep within and shook his whole frame. “No, he already has all that. I gave it up back at the sports hall. He’s been doing all of this to mess with you.”
He tried to wiggle his swollen fingers, but they didn’t move correctly. I felt anger and hatred, but it was aimed at myself. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Not your fault. He’s a psycho.”
Ever since he’d cleaned up, I had been amazed by Matt’s ability to forgive. His honesty and earnestness were qualities that I’d abused too many times—leaning on him for favors, backing out on agreements, increasing his workload. He took it all with a shrug or a nod, and stayed so low-key that I could pretend he didn’t mind. Even now, when all of his current pain was directly my fault, he wanted to let me off the hook.
He smiled again and exposed his toothless gums, still bloody. He looked like a grizzled old bandit in a western. “He likes to play games. I think he wants to break people just for the sake of it. He keeps showing me all the drugs he took from Jelly’s place, offering them to me. Then he hurts me again, or breaks something, and offers me the drugs again. Tells me they’ll take the pain away, make me happy.”
“You’ve not taken any?”
He started to speak but was stopped by a wet sound in his mouth and had to swallow something down. He grimaced and paused for a second, drawing a breath, then shook his head. “No way.”
“Matt, I know you want to stay clean, but I don’t think torture is covered by the twelve steps.”
“Fuck the steps.” Had I ever heard Matt swear? I must have, but it still caught me off guard. “They’re bullshit anyway. Allowing in God, handing over control of yourself. The whole point is that I want control. You take drugs or you don’t—those are the only two steps that matter. Everything else is just to sell a book.”
“Okay, but—”
He leaned forward, finding a fire that helped him past the pain and the broken body parts. “You remember the night I came to you? I’d been sleeping in the old Goodyear factory, the bit that’s left, anyway. A gatehouse. Me and Lando, you ever meet him? No, I don’t think you did. Billy Devon, met him at Uni, got shortened to Billy D, and then Lando after Billy Dee Williams. Anyway. We’d been sleeping there, in the gatehouse, and do you remember how cold that winter was? There was a fox that stayed in there with us some nights, wouldn’t come to our corner of the room but ate at scraps of food we left out. The fox froze to death, that’s how cold it was. We started setting a fire in the middle of the room, then shooting up to get mellow and ignore the cold.” He took a deep breath. “One night Billy rolled into the fire. I’m pretty sure it was an accident—you wouldn’t choose that way—but he was so cold and he got too close. His clothes were all Sally Army castoffs, and they went up in seconds. He screamed more than anything I’ve ever heard, but I was so high, man, I just sat there and watched the fireworks. It wasn’t until the room started to smell of bacon that my brain kicked in, and by then—”
I thought of the words Matt had repeated so often when he’d first shown up at my doorstep. Billy was cold.
Tears mingled with blood on Matt’s face. “I’m never taking anything again. I’m going to spend the rest of my life clean, and when I die, I’m doing it straight and sober.”
I turned at the sound of Branko’s footsteps.
“Okay, then.” He was carrying a gun and his voice was smooth as honey.
I watched him step around the side of the swimming pool and put the barrel to Matt’s temple. I watched him pull the trigger.
The world went into slow motion around me, everything except the blood—which was traveling at light speed. I felt something wet and warm hit my face, blurring my vision before slipping away, and the impact of the gunshot came up through my feet, rattling my chair and making my stomach turn over.
I held it in.
I gave him nothing.
If he saw me buckle, he’d know he could get to me. He’d shoot one of the others to keep proving his point. Maybe if I acted like a monster, he’d treat me like one and put me down, take it out on me rather than Claire.
I stared at what was left of Matt, slumped down in his chair, and I felt part of him slipping down my face to land at the nape of my neck. I looked to Branko with cold, dead eyes.
I held it in.
I gave him nothing.
His face turned into an expression of mock embarrassment, an apology for his faux pas. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, letting a smile creep into his tone. “I was meant to threaten you first, yes? Ask you to tell me what I wanted before I pulled the trigger?”
I fought for something I could cling to. A way of coming out fighting and keeping the fear and panic from my voice. I needed something I could use. I found logic. I found a question.
“Why do you care where Veronica is? You’ve got us. You’ve got the old man; the cartel has the airport deal. They’ve probably moved on the businesses already. What does Veronica matter?”
“No.” He kicked at Matt’s chair, sending the bloody mess falling backward into the swimming pool. “I’m afraid I must insist. My employer was quite specific. If I don’t get Veronica, my employer doesn’t get what they hired me for, and I look unprofessional. Do you want that?”
“But I’m the one who messed up the immigration deal. I’m t
he one who pissed them off. Leave her out of it.”
He seemed to ignore me and turned to face Claire, who cowered into her chair, trying to get farther away from him. He pressed the gun to her temple, and she tried to scream through her muzzle, her eyes boring into me.
“Does he protect you the way he protects your sister?” He turned to me again. “A man will do many things for love, I think, but he’ll do more for sex, wouldn’t you agree? Mr. Gaines here once saw me work on two IRA men, people who thought they knew my job better than me. I threatened them both, and they wouldn’t talk. I tortured one of them in front of the other, still nothing. I killed one, and his friend still wouldn’t open his mouth. Then I took a disposable razor to the side of his penis and talked about how women would laugh at him, and he cried like a baby and told me everything.” I flinched, and he saw it. He smiled. “And now you know I’m not bluffing. Sex sells, and sex sells people out. I’ve seen it in the way Claire looks at you. The anger, the sex. You couldn’t be with her sister, so you used her.” His finger closed around the trigger and he stared at me, one eyebrow raised. “Now, I’m pretty sure you want to tell me where her sister is.”
I held it in.
I gave him nothing.
Ransford Gaines leaned up in his chair, finding a speed of movement that surprised us all. When he spoke, his voice was more phlegmatic and cracked than it had been only days before, but there was no mistaking his anger.
“Get away from my daughter,” he said.
Branko smiled and turned to face him. As he did so, Ransford’s right hand rose up from beneath his blanket, and I saw he was holding a gun of his own. Smaller than Branko’s, and looking something like a revolver with an old spinning chamber.
“Nobody ever checks the colostomy bag,” he said.
Branko folded his arms, tilting his head to one side. He tapped his right foot on the tiled floor. “Ransford, really. Have I ever told you about the first time someone pointed a gu—”
