Niall was just getting ready to descend when he became aware of a sound just behind him. It was whiny and mechanical and reminded him of those remote-controlled cars Danny let him borrow because his own dad couldn’t afford to buy him one.
“Good morning,” someone said, sounding pleased to have snuck up so silently.
“Who is . . . ? Oh, shit!”
The old boots Niall had got from Mrs. Crimmins slipped on the loose dirt, and for a moment he was falling into the abyss. His one hand had grabbed hold of a branch, purely by reflex. As he dragged himself back to safety, cheeks aflame with embarrassed rage, he turned and saw the man.
The figure sitting just behind him wore an old-fashioned red velvet smoking jacket, accessorized with green commando boots and a black forage cap. His mustache was sparse and well-trimmed. The eyes above it gleamed hazel in a way that was neither hostile nor inviting. His legs were covered with a green woolen blanket. A double-barreled shotgun lay across his lap like a fossilized pet snake, and he stroked it as if it would soon awaken with lots of noise.
Why would anybody just sit there like that, rather than come up and challenge me? Niall’s brain asked before he saw that the answer was obvious.
Whoever he was, the young man was in a wheelchair.
Niall’s ankles felt cold. He couldn’t imagine how to escape fast enough to outrun two volleys of steel shot. The wizard had found him the moment he’d stepped foot into his domain.
“I’ve come to speak with you,” Niall said, voice croaking and high.
The legless prince only nodded and waved a hand in the air. Two silhouettes, each a hundred meters apart on the trail behind them, rose from the foliage like wolves to the hunt. These men acknowledged the “Everything’s okay down here” greeting by waving their guns in like fashion and blending back into the trees so seamlessly you’d never know they’d been there.
“Is that so?” asked the wizard, unimpressed. “Then let’s see if you know the magic word.” He wheeled himself down a trail and bade his uninvited guest follow into a darkened culvert, from which no light at all seemed to escape.
“Do you like ragtime?” he wanted to know. Niall saw his rough hands dance on the all-terrain tires as if he were demanding that they make music, too. “Because if you don’t, this is going to be a very long day for the both of us.”
NIALL ALLOWED HIMSELF to feel safe when he saw the dogs coming to greet the man in the wheelchair. Springer spaniels, both of them, with that peculiar fixed look of fierce intelligence that makes even their owners feel insecure. A woman in a starched white apron waited near the front door of a classic, early nineteenth-century Georgian mansion with unkempt moss creeping up its walls. It’ll be tea and lemon crèmes next, thought Niall, until he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into the patient face of one of the underbrush men. His face was as stoic as the trees themselves.
The legless prince spun his off-road contraption around with an impatient jerk. Niall was about to say something when he took another look at the front door, beyond which the servant had wisely retreated with the dogs. It was a gate, really, and painted black as the inside of a pair of miner’s lungs. So it’s to be a hanging at dawn in front of the Fort of the Wolf, then, he thought, and got ready to duck backward and to the left in order to give the thug an elbow to the nuts.
“Come for the clean country air?” asked the crippled aristocrat, breaking the shotgun open on his lap with a practiced motion and searching all his pockets for fresh shells.
“Now, just wait a minute, please, you’ve got the wrong—”
“Don’t tell me it was the music that drew you here, as if by magic,” persisted the gaunt figure, grimacing when he still didn’t find the ammo he needed. “Because then I’ll get really cross with you. So. Declare yourself. Are you simply lost? Or do you have a purpose worth listening to?”
“I’ve not come to harm you,” said Niall, feeling both shoulders pounding as the other helper gave it a generous squeeze.
“I frankly don’t see how you could,” said the lord of the manor, shaking his emaciated head and triumphantly gripping a single 12-gauge cartridge between thumb and forefinger. “You come all this way, over hill, over dale, into my little hovel, the only other unbidden guest for nine years since some French tourist ambled in here because he’d taken a wrong turn, looking for the train station over in Portlaoise. And you don’t even have the manners to apologize?”
“I don’t mean to trespass,” persisted Niall, eyeing the double-barreled muzzle. “But I need to speak with you. It’s important.”
Ned no longer pretended to enjoy baiting his quarry. He shook his head, bored already with the entire spectacle. “Important to whom? Little birdwatching Frenchman two years ago, his name was . . .” He glanced at the goon to his left. “Marcel, was it, Theo?”
“Not sure, Mr. O’Driscoll. Think so.”
“And when you dragged him away by the scruff of the neck, what was that word he kept repeating, like he was calling for his maman?”
“Sounded like ‘pity,’ sir, I recall correctly.”
The wizard favored Niall with a boyish smile, and his eyes widened like camera lenses adjusting focus. “Ah, that’s the one. Pitié. That’d be mercy. Did we show him any, by the way?”
In response, the bodyguard merely smiled at the memory.
“Do you speak any French?” Ned asked, cocking his head at the young intruder whose voice sounded muffled because of the hand clamped tight around his neck.
“No,” croaked Niall, as he struggled to breathe.
“Pity,” said the wizard, nodding at both his henchmen.
“Want us to take him away now, Mr. O’Driscoll?” asked the lummox crushing Niall’s clavicle.
Niall’s face had turned blue. “Tell your troll to get his fucking mitts off, or I’ll—”
“Or nothing, fuckwank,” said Theo, clamping his other hand around Niall’s wrist.
Ned lit up in a genuine smile, and now Niall could see how Jim’s twin resembled him in every respect but the natural, lethal charm. His brother had no sensuality whatever and had probably never seduced more than his father’s porno mag. But neither was far from turning someone’s insides out like a summer coat to get what they wanted.
“Look at this, Theo. We start the morning off right, rinsing out a wayward traveler’s dirty mouth.” He bared his beautiful even teeth at Niall and turned down the temperature behind his eyes, like scores of women had seen Jim do right before they drew their last breath. “You couldn’t even be bothered to come up with an original excuse for being here. All you can do is swear. Well, that’s verboten in my forest, don’t mind telling you.” He turned his wheelchair around and engaged the whirring engine Niall had heard earlier. A hand waved in the vague direction of the other bodyguard. “Break his legs, Otto. And make sure to leave him by the road this time, for the motorists to find. Last time was an awful mess.”
“Roger that, Mr. O.”
“I know what killed your brother,” Niall almost screamed. “And I have it right here in my pocket.”
The wheelchair stopped. Ned turned it just slowly enough for Theo to get in another good squeeze. “Surprise me. And then go take your medicine like a good boy.”
“Tell this creature to let me go first.”
Ned sent his handler an overbearing grimace, and the large man stepped aside.
Niall dug into his bag with the hand the fascist hadn’t mangled (Thank God it wasn’t his drawing hand, he couldn’t help thinking, despite everything) and pulled out the picnic napkin Róisín had used to give a murder weapon a proper burial shroud. He held it out to Ned, who steered his wheelchair closer, the tiny motor straining into overdrive.
“He was stabbed with this,” said Niall. “And if you want the other thing of his that only I can tell you about, you’ll let me go.”
Ned had already swiped the dirty object and was unwrapping it like a true relic. When his fingers touched the rusting blade, his
eyes lit up as if he held the Spear of Destiny that pierced the side of Christ, not the IKEA veggie knife that punched a raping murderer’s ticket. “Astounding,” he mumbled to himself, then revealed the smile of a born cynic. “How do I know you didn’t just make this yourself, doctoring the linen with your own white hands? Although it is quite a good forgery, I must say. Nearly believed it there, for a moment.” He threw it to the ground. “Well, toodle-oo. Off you go, then.”
Theo and Otto grabbed a leg each and hauled Niall up the trail, back into the woods.
“You’re Gatekeeper,” shouted Niall at machine-gun speed, clawing at the wet ground and finding no purchase. “You used to get on the ham radio for years, while your darling brother raped and murdered his way through five counties. You said his fatal flaw was women. You even warned Róisín and Fiona Walsh, the two girls who used that knife on him. Do you even know you spoke to them? Your brother’s killers? I’ll bet you don’t know they’re dead now, either, do ya? I read their shagging diaries!” The two men had stopped tugging, and seemed to be reacting to a hand signal Niall couldn’t see. “The only reason I found you in the first place is because your brother drew a map. Unless I’m very mistaken, you also have a tattoo of two boys, holding hands. Because you and Jim are twins, now, isn’t that right? Answer me, you fucking cripple! You’re your brother’s keeper, aren’t ya, you culchie bastard?”
Theo and Otto helped Niall to his feet and brushed as much dirt and leaves off him as they could. Then they practically carried him toward the house, where the servant had reopened the black gate and the smell of fresh coffee penetrated even his stopped-up nose.
Ned raised his head and regarded Niall with a mixture of curiosity and respect. He had picked up the knife blade again and held it this time with a reverence that couldn’t be faked.
“Well, my boy, look at that,” he said, shifting his chair into second gear. “You did know the magic word, after all.”
THE COFFEE WAS strong and made Niall’s head swim. Another servant in a white lab coat stood behind him, applying a thermal bandage through the open shirt to the bruised skin beneath.
His host sat at the piano, a scratched-up Bösendorfer concert variety with a raised sail the size of a large dinner table. There came those Cole Porter tunes again, played fortissimo, then furioso, one after the other, until they all sounded the same. It seemed to Niall that the lifeless legs dangling from the stool had lent Ned’s arms all their strength and fury. The wizard finished and hesitated, before raising his head and nodding at the servant, who immediately retired and closed the French doors behind her.
“D’you know, it actually feels rather nice with some company,” Ned said, sliding into his wheelchair like a soft-shell crab and wheeling himself two rooms away before Niall could answer.
Niall followed, noticing silver-framed family photos of what had to be Ned and Jim as boys: healthy, vibrant, with that arrogant lassitude of those aware of their parents’ wealth. Dented cricket bats and hurleys hung above a fireplace. There were oil portraits in the next chamber, which seemed to shun the light. Renaissance glazed vases, too.
But a dusty photo, half hidden behind two golf trophies, made Niall stop.
It showed a young blond woman sandwiched between the twin brothers on a swing set long ago, sweaty summer grins on all three faces. It was impossible to tell whether it was Ned or Jim who had a hand around her waist with just enough possessiveness to notice. Her skin was so white the poor contrast in the old black-and-white picture had turned her eyes into black sockets. Niall could only recall one person that pale and sexy at the same time, and she wasn’t even real.
Her name was Princess Aisling. And a wolf first loved her, then killed her.
“In here,” called Ned, and Niall followed. The smallest room was also the place where the lone occupant of the house clearly spent most of his time. Stuffed hoot owls were forever caught in mid-blink underneath glass bell jars. There may even have been a few ravens and hawks for good measure, Niall couldn’t be sure. Because it was the wolves, sprawling on pictures and posing in clay, that dominated everything. There was even a real wolf’s head, mounted right above the doorway, jaws pried open as far as they would go without wrenching the mandible entirely from the skull. It looked like the creature was still in pain, trying to howl its way to safety, the way Prince Euan once had attempted. But someone had caught it first. The only sound in the room was another electronic signal Niall couldn’t locate. It was a single beep about every ten seconds, like a slow metronome.
“When did your brother put these up?” asked Niall, choosing the chair farthest away from his host. He wondered if he had the strength to fight back if the intemperate piano player decided to finish him off before the next solo performance.
“I did,” Ned said, leaning back and staring at the grayback head as if for the first time. He lit a cigarette and waved it about. “I taught Jim everything about animals. Horses, falcons, rabbits, and deer. How to ride them or kill them. And, yes, even wolves. We had to go all the way to Kyrgyzstan to find our old friend up there. We call him Freddie.” He waved at the stuffed head. “Say hello to the nice man, Freddie!”
Niall felt like throwing up. The beep sounded again, closer this time.
“Our parents never used this place while my father was alive,” explained Ned, adjusting a gilt-edged oil portrait of an elderly man next to a stag he’d obviously just brought down. “But after Father died, Mother felt the Dublin air was too stifling, so we all moved out here.” The legless prince sounded nearly wistful, forgetting to guard himself for a moment. “She tried to make it a real home for us—riding lessons and evening prayers by the dinner table. Of course, we all became frightfully bored, I don’t mind telling you. And there’s no money in the world quite so intemperate as the inherited kind.”
“You have a beautiful home,” said Niall noncommittally, feeling anxious again. The stag in the picture lay with its bloody snout toward the painter, twisted antlers reaching for the dark sky like antennas.
“You said you had something else to show me,” said his host, with the impatience of those born to give dead trophies names better suited for children.
“Here,” Niall said, holding Jim’s map out as though it might crumple and turn to dust before he could hand it over. “Your brother kept a visual log of the story he told around the country as it unfolded in his head. Look, see there? That’s you, I think. With rays coming from your—”
“My fingertips, yes,” said the impatient wizard, suddenly sitting thigh to thigh with his guest, poring over the poor rendering like two boys inspecting a rare stamp not belonging to themselves. He gently folded the map and pushed a button on the leather handle of his chair. There was the clacking of heels, and a manservant Niall hadn’t seen before discreetly poked his head inside.
“Mr. O?”
“Sam, can we mount this and put it in a lovely frame? Nothing too stark, the drawing’s the star here. Good man.”
“Right away, sir.” The servant took the holy object and retreated in a flash.
Beep!
Niall looked past Ned’s withered legs and saw a bulky shape, covered by a green felt cloth. He had thought it was a dresser, or maybe an upright piano. But now he knew what had made the sound. And he didn’t need to peek underneath to make sure.
“Clever boy,” said the surviving twin, following the direction of Niall’s eyes. “Want to see Old Sparky? Afraid I haven’t fired her up much recently. Not since . . .” He let the unspoken words fall to the floor and dry up.
“But you used your shortwave radio to warn people before,” Niall said, feeling a little braver. Who was this made-up wanker, who spoke like he had his head up the queen’s arse? “When Jim was still killing people. Why didn’t you just call the gardaí instead, when there was time? Stop him? Or did that become boring, after a while?”
“Why did you come out here at all?” spat Ned, gripping the joystick on the armrest. “To delight in sharing the obv
ious?”
“I came to finish a job I’d promised to carry out,” Niall said, liking the sound of that. It was the first time he’d articulated it out loud, and only wished Fiona, Róisín, and Aoife could be there to hear it, too. “Putting the final pieces together for some friends who couldn’t be here themselves.”
Ned’s eyes grew unfocused and distant. He was in the past, with his brother and someone else his face didn’t reveal. “And they didn’t listen anyway, did they? All those women? They wanted to love someone dangerous, that’s all. I love Jim. You’ll notice I don’t use the past tense, because the bugger is still my brother. Moment he left here—oh, thirteen, maybe fifteen years ago—I knew what he was going to do eventually. But I couldn’t rat him out to the guards, now, could I? Wouldn’t have been decent of me.”
“And then,” Niall said, playing along with the logic of someone with nothing but objects left to occupy his days, “you became aware of a change, didn’t you? Something happened. It made the papers. The wolf struck for the first time. And he got used to that blood music in his ears.”
Ned looked like he might leap up and throttle Niall, despite his handicap. Then he shrank back, nodding at the memory. “He began by sending me a gift. A keepsake. They just kept coming. Would you like to see?” Without waiting for an answer, the legless prince wheeled over to a cabinet and hauled out a leather pouch the size of a small deflated football. He opened it, and the floor was immediately covered in shimmering women’s earrings of every shape and size. Ned picked one up and smiled.
“The first one, the very first, was made of cheap simile and brass,” he said. “A barmaid or someone on the dole, one thinks. When the fourth one arrived, it had a bit of dried blood still on it. That’s when I cranked up Old Sparky to minimize the damage, so to speak. That radio used to belong to Jim, you know. Delightful irony, isn’t it? Of course, Mum and Dad went to their graves believing us both to be marvelous gentlemen.”
Darling Jim Page 28
