Collusion jli-2

by Stuart Neville

  Orla stopped with her fingers on the door handle. ‘I’m an O’Kane, sweetheart. We run away from nobody.’

  Ellen lay down and rested her head on her mother’s breast, turning away from the room and its milky light.

  ‘Nobody,’ Orla said to the child’s back.

  She let herself out of the room, locked the door behind her, and descended the flight of stairs to the first floor. She found the Traveller there, leaning against the railing that overlooked the grand entrance hall. He watched her approach, a sly smirk on his lips. His swollen red eyelid seemed to wink at her as it twitched.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘Were you up visiting with the wee girl?’

  ‘Just making sure they’re all right.’

  ‘What do you make of her?’

  Orla shrugged. ‘She’s a child. A brave one.’

  ‘There’s something funny about her, though,’ the Traveller said. ‘Like she’s looking through you. Like she knows things.’

  ‘You’re talking shite,’ Orla said. She brushed past him, heading for her father’s room.

  ‘Am I?’ he called after her. You look like you saw a ghost. What did she say to you?’

  Orla stopped and turned on her heel. ‘She said Gerry Fegan’s coming.’

  ‘Well, then,’ the Traveller said. ‘We’d best be ready for him.’

  82

  Lennon’s phone rang again and again, the number always withheld. He ignored it as he drove. Embankments and bridges blurred. Would Hewitt squeal? Would he tell his bosses to catch Lennon and that lunatic Gerry Fegan? Or that the hole in his leg was put there by Lennon’s personal protection weapon? Or would the fear of what Lennon knew about Hewitt keep him quiet? Lennon couldn’t gamble either way. If Hewitt talked there could be roadblocks going up even as he drove. Here, across the border, the Gardai might be on the alert, searching for them. Then all would be lost. He had to move, get there before anyone had the chance to find them.

  Fegan sat silent beside Lennon, his hands on his knees, his body stiff. The killer’s breathing remained steady and even, no sign of worry or fear on his face.

  ‘How do you live with it?’ Lennon asked. ‘People like you. People like that animal I caught at the hospital. How do you look at yourself in the mirror? How can you face yourself when you’re alone?’

  Fegan turned his eyes to the window and the landscape beyond. If Lennon’s words meant anything to him, it didn’t show on his face.

  Lennon said, ‘I think of the things I’ve done, the things I’m ashamed of. It makes me sick to my stomach. How can you stand to—’

  ‘Stop talking,’ Fegan said.

  ‘How can you—’

  ‘Stop,’ Fegan said, his voice tight like a fist. He turned his eyes away from the window and back to Lennon.

  Lennon swallowed his retort and stared at the road ahead. They continued in silence, the motorway stretching into the grey morning ahead.

  The Audi’s satnav gave directions in its soothing voice. A woman’s voice, refined and calm, as if the world still turned. Lennon had stopped twice so far to throw up at the roadside, the fear too heavy for his stomach. His nostrils stung, his throat burned. Fegan had watched him with those cold eyes, making the act all the more emasculating.

  The speedometer read eighty-five as they approached the last exit north of the Boyne. The satnav’s disembodied voice told Lennon to turn off here for Torrans House. A convalescent home, a place for the elderly to recover from broken hips, a place for Bull O’Kane to nurse his ruptured gut and his devastated knee, injuries caused by Lennon’s passenger. The other man would also be there, the southerner who talked like a traveller, but who Lennon suspected was not. Two monsters in one house, surrounding the only good thing he had ever done in this world.

  And now Lennon ferried a third monster to this place. That idea forced bile up from his stomach once more, but he willed it to subside as he hit the slip road.

  His foot barely touched the brake as he reached the roundabout. Lights flashed, tyres screeched and horns blared as he cut across the early traffic. They might as well have been moths against a window.

  83

  Orla O’Kane stood over her father’s sleeping form. His throat rasped with every breath, a line of drool across his chin as if a snail had crawled from his mouth. A carapace of a man, skin laid loose over old bones and hate. No longer a giant of the soul, no longer a warhorse thirsty for the fight. Just an old man without the sense to know his true enemies. The giant vanquished.

  She reached out and smoothed the wisps of white hair across his scalp. Love swelled in her until she feared it might burst from her breast. She took a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed at the drool.

  Orla had lost count of the times she’d had to push that panicky feeling back down to her belly, the one that told her that her father had lost his grip on the world he had built for her, leaving it to career into the sun. It would burn up, along with everything she knew.

  And no one would mourn its passing.

  She thought of the little girl upstairs. The mother didn’t have long. Even if someone got her to a hospital, the greyness of her skin said it was too late.

  But the little girl.

  Maybe, when it was over and done with, the Bull might allow the little girl to live. He was not a monster, after all. Orla knew this to be true. She had not been raised by an animal, surely?

  No, she had not. When things were settled, the little girl would live. And the little girl would need a place to live. A home. Orla had a house in Malahide with a sea view and a beach not twenty yards away.

  Maybe, Orla thought.

  ‘I hope …’

  She put her hand to her mouth when she realised she had spoken out loud. Her father stirred.

  ‘Hmm?’ He blinked at her, his eyes like fish mouths gasping in the air. ‘What’s wrong? What time is it?’

  ‘Shush,’ Orla said. ‘It’s early.’

  ‘Then what the fuck are you waking me for?’ He tried to push himself up on the bed, but his flailing moved only blankets and sheets. ‘What’s going on?’

  Orla put a hand on his chest. She arranged pillows behind her father’s head. ‘Easy, now. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just the wee girl.’

  As she hoisted him up to a sitting position, the Bull asked, ‘What about her?’

  ‘She said something.’ Orla pulled the blankets up and smoothed them. ‘Some nonsense about Gerry Fegan coming.’

  The Bull’s eyes narrowed. ‘Nonsense? But worth coming in here and waking me up for.’

  ‘Maybe she contacted him somehow,’ Orla said. ‘I don’t trust that gyppo fella you hired. Christ knows what happened when he took them.’

  ‘Quit with the maybes and the somehows,’ the Bull said. ‘Tell me what you think. Is Fegan coming?’

  Orla looked her father hard in the eye. ‘We have to assume so. If he’s as dangerous as you say, we can’t take any chances.’

  The Bull stared at the far wall as he thought. ‘Right,’ he said. He reached for her hand, squeezed it. ‘You’re right. You’re a good girl, you know. Better than any of the men I raised, if you can call them that.’

  Orla pulled the blankets back while she tried to hide the tears welling in her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She pulled his legs off the edge of the bed and knelt to fetch his slippers.

  ‘It’s nearly over,’ she said. ‘Gerry Fegan will be dead soon, and it’ll be over.’

  The Bull’s shoulders dropped as he exhaled.

  ‘Thank Christ,’ he said.

  84

  Lennon followed the satnav’s directions west, then south. He and Fegan crossed the River Boyne via a small bridge, then cut west again. The car’s navigation had deserted him at the last junction, leaving him only a one-track road to follow. Up ahead, between the high treetops, he saw the roof of a grand old building.

  Sickness and hunger wrestled in Lennon’s gut. His eyes dried with ti
redness, his mind flaking with the rust of fatigue. He blinked hard and wound the window down. Cool damp air rushed in to meet him. He breathed it in deep.

  The road curved south, mirroring the river’s arc through the countryside. A rabbit sprinted across his path, its white tail bobbing madly until it disappeared into the undergrowth. He’d travelled little more than half a mile when he slowed to a stop.

  ‘How do we do this?’ Lennon asked.

  Fegan shifted in the passenger seat. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we’re here,’ Lennon said. ‘How do we do this? Do we find a way in or what?’

  Fegan opened the passenger door. ‘You can do what you want. I’m going in.’

  ‘Wait! You can’t walk straight in there, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘They know I’m coming,’ Fegan said. ‘No point in sneaking around.’

  ‘How do they know?’ Lennon called after him, but the door slammed closed before the question was out.

  He watched Fegan walk along the road ahead, sunlight creeping through the branches above and glancing off his shoulders.

  ‘Fucking madman,’ Lennon said.

  Would he get Marie and Ellen killed? Possibly, but what other options were there? He and Fegan had discussed precious little on the journey here, let alone what they were going to do when they arrived. Now Fegan disappeared around the bend up ahead.

  Lennon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he worked through the possibilities, panic edging in from the outer limits of his consciousness.

  Surely they would kill Fegan as soon as he showed his face at the gates?

  Yes, so they’d be busy there. And who were ‘they’ exactly? Bull O’Kane’s people, Lennon supposed. Henchmen, maybe that was the word. Lennon thought of the useless lumps of belly and muscle Roscoe Patterson kept around him. O’Kane’s men would be of a different order, Lennon was certain. But they still had Fegan to deal with.

  Lennon looked to his right, along the river shore, beyond the woods. Did he have a better idea?

  ‘Nope,’ Lennon said to himself.

  He pulled the Audi into the treeline, felt it buck and jerk over the terrain until the nose pitched downwards. He saw moss and earth spewed into the air in his rear-view mirror. He shut off the engine and got out.

  Lennon stood back and looked at the car, its radiator jammed into a gulley. It wasn’t going anywhere without a tow rope.

  ‘Christ,’ he said.

  He looked to the water beyond the trees, the Boyne making its way to the coast. No other way to go, Lennon started walking.

  85

  Fegan stopped and studied the shadows around the entrance to the estate. Leaves and branches stirred in the breeze, but no human form emerged. They were there, Fegan was sure of it. They probably watched him as he stared back. He set off again, his eyes and ears open, ready for any movement, any challenge. When he reached the gates, he stood still, his heels together, his hands at his sides, and waited.

  It had been only a few months since he’d last travelled to meet Bull O’Kane. That time he had thought he was done with it, that he would never return to this island again. Fegan supposed he knew deep down he would have no peace until either he or O’Kane was gone. And neither Marie nor Ellen would be safe while O’Kane breathed and hated, so the choice was clear. Fegan had to finish the Bull here, in this place. He had no idea how he would accomplish such a task, but then he never consciously knew how to kill. He simply did, and that was all there was to it. So, he would get inside and find a way.

  A man emerged from the trees by the gate and approached. He held a shotgun and a piece of paper which he examined as he drew close. Fegan recognised the image printed on it as the one the Doyles had shown him back in New York.

  ‘You’ve aged,’ the man said. ‘Go on. Straight up to the house. You’ll be met at the door. Do whatever they tell you. No fucking about.’

  The gates opened with a slow mechanical movement. Fegan started walking without speaking to the man. The road turned from rough tarmac to gravel as he passed through the gates. The stones crunched beneath his feet.

  The trees thinned to reveal an open sweep of green leading to the three-storey mansion at the end of the driveway. Flower beds punctuated the neat lawns, and smaller gardens split away from the main grounds to form enclaves of shrubbery and rock. A waterless fountain sat at the centre of the semicircle of gravel that fronted the house. Fegan skirted it and watched the vast wooden doors open.

  A broad woman in a trouser suit descended the steps. A man came behind her, dressed like the man at the gate in jeans and a khaki jacket. Something bulged beneath themuddy-green material, something very like a pistol.

  The woman took a step closer. She had hard features, narrow eyes and thin lips. Make-up failed to mask a bruise on her cheek. Her mouth split in a joyless smile.

  ‘We’ve been expecting you,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’

  86

  Orla O’Kane led Fegan through the entrance hall and into the drawing room. She indicated the man who followed them and said, ‘This is Charlie Ronan, and he’ll shoot you dead if you move one single inch. You understand?’

  Fegan nodded as Ronan pulled the small pistol from his jacket pocket.

  Orla regarded the great Gerry Fegan. Tall and thin, but strong, a face cut from flint.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Fegan said.

  ‘How did you find this place?’

  ‘A cop,’ Fegan said. ‘He told me everything.’

  ‘A cop?’ Orla asked. ‘Which cop?’

  ‘I don’t remember his name,’ Fegan said. ‘Big house off the Lisburn Road.’

  ‘Dan Hewitt,’ Orla said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Fegan said.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Drove,’ Fegan said.

  ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘I left it out the road a bit,’ Fegan said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘An Audi. I stole it in Lisburn. You can send your boys to look for it if you want.’

  Orla looked him up and down, the whole of him, trying to find what it was about this sad thin man that haunted her father’s dreams. Then her eyes locked with his, and something cold shifted inside her. She looked away.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she said, and left the room.

  87

  The Traveller dreamed of dismembered children, bodies stacked upon bodies, blank little eyes staring to heaven. He dreamed of crackling pyres and burning meat. He dreamed of the boy who’d come at him with an AK47 in one hand, a newspaper in the other, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old.

  Three short bursts of his MP5 cut the boy dead. In his dream, the boy floated to the floor like a sheet of fabric, the AK47 falling to one side, the newspaper to the other. But a draught caught the newspaper and spun it in a slow circle, before carrying it to the Traveller’s feet.

  He looked down at the ragged paper. There, his own face staring up at him, the letters forming shapes that said ‘soldier’ and ‘killed’ in the headline, the words beneath the picture coming into focus, a name becoming clearer until—

  Wake up.

  —the letters formed into words, words he could understand if he really wanted to, for the first time since they’d taken the Kevlar from his head, if he had the will to face—

  Come on, wake up.

  —them, but he could not face them, yet he could not turn away from them, they burned—

  ‘For fuck’s sake, wake up, you lazy gyppo bast—’

  Before he even knew he was awake, the Traveller was up from the bed, on his feet, the stocky man’s windpipe pinched between his fingers. The man croaked and his eyes bulged. His face turned red then purple.

  ‘What did you call me?’ the Traveller asked as he blinked the sleep away.

  O’Driscoll grabbed his wrist, tried to loosen his grip.

  ‘What did you call me, you fat cunt?’

  O’Driscoll gagged as his mouth opened a
nd closed. He tried to dig his fingers in between the Traveller’s. Strong and hard as they were, they found no purchase. As sleep fell away from the Traveller, the room around him closed in from the edges of his vision. The hospital bed he had lain down on what seemed like an age ago, the clean functional furnishings, the tiled floor. He released O’Driscoll’s throat.

  O’Driscoll fell to the floor, gasping and clutching at his neck.

  ‘Breathe,’ the Traveller said. ‘Slow and deep. Come on, breathe.’

  O’Driscoll hauled air in and coughed it out again. He rolled to his side, moaned, and spat on the tile.

  ‘Dirty fucker,’ the Traveller said.

  O’Driscoll’s colour crept back to his normal pasty white and his breathing settled. ‘What’d you do that for?’ he said between mouthfuls of air.

  ‘I don’t like people sneaking up on me,’ the Traveller said.

  ‘I was only waking you up,’ O’Driscoll said, hoisting himself into a seated position. ‘They told me to come and tell you when that Fegan fella arrived.’

  The Traveller’s heart fluttered with something that might have been joy, or fear, or both. ‘He’s here?’

  ‘Downstairs,’ O’Driscoll said. ‘The Bull wants you beside him when he’s brought up.’

  The Traveller hauled O’Driscoll up by his lapels. ‘Jesus, why the fuck didn’t you say so?’

  O’Driscoll could only blink back at him, his mouth sagging open. The Traveller let go of the jacket and was out of the room before O’Driscoll landed in a heap on the floor. For a moment, as he marched down the corridor, an image of a boy with an AK47 and a newspaper in his hands flickered in the Traveller’s mind, a stuttering snapshot of something he couldn’t quite place.

  88

  Fegan stood silent in the drawing room, his hands loose at his sides. Ronan stared from the other side of the room, that same pistol held useless at his side.

  Fegan knew five paces would take him across the space between them faster than the other man could react, and he’d have the gun off him before Ronan could think of pulling a trigger. But what then? Better to stand and wait.