Collusion

by Stuart Neville

  Lennon hung up. He paced a single circle around the small kitchen and stopped at the sink. He ran the tap, splashed water on his face, dried himself on his sleeve. He walked out through the living room and into the hall. His Glock lay on the floor. It hadn’t done Marie any good. He stooped and picked it up.

  The constable shuffled his feet and coughed in the doorway. Wallace, his name was, and he watched Lennon with nervous deference. He didn’t look like he’d been long on the job, most likely a probationer paired up with the older sergeant to learn the ropes.

  ‘Should you lift that, Inspector?’ His face dropped as Lennon gave him a hard look. ‘I mean, it’s evidence at the scene, isn’t it?’

  Lennon patted his shoulder as he stepped past him to the corridor. ‘You’ll go far, Constable Wallace,’ he said.

  The lift doors slid open and Sergeant Dodds stepped out. He reviewed his notebook as he walked.

  ‘Anything?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘Nothing useful,’ Dodds said. ‘Only three other flats occupied. All of them heard the gunfire, and two of them called 999. Everyone locked their doors and kept their heads down till they heard our siren. Nobody saw anything.’

  Lennon had expected nothing more. ‘All right,’ he said. He walked towards the lift. ‘An MIT from Lisburn will be here when they have the people gathered, and forensics when they can get away. Wallace, you stay here. Dodds, you wait downstairs at the entrance. Don’t let anyone use the stairwell if you can help it.’

  Dodds followed Lennon into the lift. ‘And where are you going?’

  ‘To see a man.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Just a man,’ Lennon said. He prayed Roscoe Patterson was on drinking form tonight.

  76

  The Traveller put his shoulder to the door and pushed. It budged only an inch or two before the hedgerow pushed back. ‘Fucking bastard arsehole,’ he said. He slid the other way and struggled over the armrest, going head first. The gear stick caught him in the balls and he groaned. In a second or two, that sick, heavy ache would join the throb in his chest where the seat belt had crushed the air out of him. And his neck hurt too. That pain seemed to begin in his shoulders, creep up to the back of his skull, then trace a line up and over to his forehead.

  He opened the passenger door and climbed out. He grabbed Marie’s mobile phone and hit a button. The screen had cracked, but it still worked, casting a weak light. He used it as a makeshift torch so he could inspect the damage to the car. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. The hedgerow had cushioned its impact with the embankment, and the old Volkswagen was built tough. He shone the light down at the tyres. The earth wasn’t too wet; he should be able to reverse the car out of the tangle of green.

  The light died as the phone went back into standby. The Traveller turned in a circle at the edge of the little country road. An orange glow hovered over Lurgan to the west. To the north he could make out the soft rumble of night-time traffic on the motorway, lorries hurrying to make the early ferries to Britain, or holidaymakers heading to one of the airports.

  He listened hard for noises closer to the road, for the sound of feet creeping through the hedges and fields. Was that a wheeze and a rattle from across the way? The sound was so small, perhaps he only imagined it. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and listened harder. A cold, damp breeze washed across his face.

  There, a child’s soft cry, then a hoarse whisper.

  The Traveller opened his eyes. He looked in the direction of the sounds. A light, maybe a window, glowed dim in the distance. A farmhouse, about half a mile away. He thumbed the phone again. He turned, crouched down, and used it to find Hewitt’s Glock in the passenger footwell.

  As he straightened, the pistol cold in his hand, a weariness came over him. He leaned on the car’s roof and breathed deep. New pains signalled from all over his body. He wished he’d never entered the bar in Finglas. He wished he’d never taken the note from Davy Haughey, the one with Orla O’Kane’s phone number on it. He wished he’d never accepted her invitation to that fucking convalescent home near Drogheda, the one where Bull O’Kane wallowed in his own hate and shit-smelling stink.

  An insane notion flitted through his mind, one so ludicrous he couldn’t help but examine it as it passed. Just get in the car, reverse out of the hedge, and drive away. Leave the woman and her kid to their fate out here. Whoever was in that house would take them in, see them right. The Traveller could go to one of the flats he kept in Dublin, Drogheda or Cork, gather up his passports, and disappear. He had money stashed in accounts in Ireland, Brazil, the Philippines and more places besides, enough to see him to his dying day if he was careful with it.

  But what kind of life would that be, hiding under stones like a woodlouse? And then another thought came to him.

  Gerry Fegan.

  The Traveller wanted to know if he could take Gerry Fegan. He considered his condition, the injured shoulder, the sprained wrist, the stinging eye. He inhaled, igniting a fresh pain in his chest. Maybe add a cracked rib to that list. He’d be at a disadvantage, and that gave Fegan a fighting chance.

  If the cops didn’t get to Fegan first, the Traveller could have a go at him. May the best man win, and all that.

  Alone, in the dark by the side of the road, the Traveller smiled to himself as he made his mind up. He turned towards the sound he was now sure he had heard and started walking. When the crunch of country road under his feet turned to the soft squelch of damp grass he thumbed the mobile and let its glow reach into the dark. He watched and listened.

  Another rattling inhalation. He trained the light on its source. Eyes glittered there. He marched forward, and he heard, ‘Go, go, go!’

  A small shape sprang from the hedge and disappeared into the black. The woman tried to raise herself from the tangle of greenery, but stumbled. He was on her before she could move. She didn’t have the strength to struggle, just lay limp beneath him, her breath shallow and stuttering.

  ‘Easy now,’ he said, letting her feel the cold of the Glock against her neck.

  The Traveller put the phone into his pocket, then eased back and slipped an arm around her waist. He got to his feet, taking her with him. She shivered against his body as he held her close, the pistol’s muzzle beneath her chin.

  ‘Call the wee girl,’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Call her.’ He jabbed her chin with the muzzle and she whimpered.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘All right then, I’ll do it.’

  ‘She won’t come to you,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘Oh, she will.’ He pulled Marie tight to him. ‘A wee girl like that won’t leave her mammy. Watch this.’

  She inhaled to call out, but he sealed her mouth with his strapped-up hand.

  ‘Ellen!’ the Traveller called.

  Marie tried to prise his hand away. He pressed it harder against her lips and her teeth nipped at the skin of his fingers, trying to get a hold. He twisted her neck around.

  ‘Quit it,’ he said, his mouth buried deep in her hair. ‘Quit it or I’ll break your neck.’ He looked back out to the darkness. ‘Ellen!’

  The Traveller slipped the Glock into his waistband and took out his phone. It lit up in his hand, and he held it out in front of the struggling mother.

  ‘Your mammy needs you, Ellen. Come on back, now. You don’t want to be out there in the dark, all on your own. There’s bad things in the dark. Things that’ll get you. Things with teeth. Things that sting.’

  He stopped, listened. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Your mammy needs you.’

  A shadow moved out there in the layers of black. He saw a glint. Then she came running from the darkness, fell, picked herself up again, and threw herself at her mother. Ellen wrapped her arms around Marie’s thighs, pressed her face to the warmth.

  The Traveller said, ‘Good girl.’

  77

  The door of the Red Fox Bar, off the Shankill, was locked
, but lights shone inside. Lennon hammered with his fist until the pane of frosted glass rattled in its frame.

  ‘We’re closed,’ a hoarse voice called from inside. A silhouette formed against the glass. ‘Fuck off.’

  The silhouette faded.

  Lennon kicked the door.

  The silhouette returned. ‘I told you to fuck off, we’re closed. Away to fuck or I’ll come out there and kick your shite in.’

  Lennon kicked the door again and again until the glass cracked.

  ‘Right, you fucker,’ the voice said.

  The bolts sounded like two rifle shots as they opened at the top and bottom of the door. It swung inward, and a heavy-set man with a shaven head and tattoos on his neck filled the doorway. He wore spectacles that sat at an odd angle. Before he could take a step, Lennon drove a fist into the valley beneath his belly and shattered his nose with the other. The man stumbled into the bar, blood erupting from between his fingers as he clasped his hands to his face. His spectacles fell away, cracked and bent. He tripped over his own feet and landed on his back.

  Lennon stepped over him and into the bar. Three men were gathered around a table strewn with cards and cash, bottles and glasses. Two were on their feet, their hands out and ready for action.

  Lennon drew his Glock and aimed at Roscoe Patterson’s forehead, one hand supporting the other in a combat stance. Roscoe sat at the far side of the table, his face blank, staring back at Lennon. The two standing men drew pistols, both small-calibre toys, the kind of weapons jumped-up thugs would carry to make themselves look big.

  ‘Put ’em away, boys,’ Roscoe said. ‘No need for playing silly buggers, is there, Jack?’

  The two men obeyed.

  ‘Get rid of them,’ Lennon said.

  ‘Jesus, you got Slant a good ’un,’ Roscoe said. He threw his head back and laughed. ‘Fucking stove his face in.’ He smiled at Lennon. ‘Know why we call him Slant?’

  ‘I don’t care, just get them out of here.’

  Roscoe continued, ‘We call him Slant ’cause when he gets pissed, his glasses sit at a slant. Fucking comical. The way you just pasted his nose all over his face, he’ll never get them glasses to sit straight again.’

  Lennon took a step closer and steadied his aim. ‘Get rid of them. Now.’

  Roscoe’s smile broadened. His eyes dimmed. ‘You heard the fella,’ he said to his companions. ‘Fuck off and take Slant with you.’

  ‘You sure?’ one of Roscoe’s thugs asked.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Roscoe said. ‘Jack’s a smart fella. He’ll not do anything stupid. Will you, Jack?’

  ‘Just get them out of here,’ Lennon said.

  ‘Go on, boys.’ Roscoe dismissed them with a wave.

  They sauntered past Lennon, rolling their shoulders, keeping eye contact with him, trying to show they weren’t intimidated by a stranger with a gun.

  Lennon kept his eyes on Roscoe. He heard Slant moan and curse as his friends gathered him up. The door closed, and all was quiet save for Lennon’s breathing. Sweat dripped from his eyebrows.

  Roscoe said, ‘That was bad form, Jack.’

  Lennon didn’t answer. He took a step closer, kept the pistol trained on Roscoe’s forehead.

  ‘Making a cunt of me like that,’ Roscoe said, his hand beginning to shake on the tabletop. His lips thinned across his teeth. ‘Any other fucker tried that, I’d break the bastard’s neck. I’d take that gun and shove it so far up their arse they’d frigging choke on it. I’d put my fucking boot in their—’

  ‘I’m not here to play games, Roscoe,’ Lennon said. ‘I know what you did. I’ll put a bullet in your bigoted little brain and I won’t give it a thought. You understand? No threats, no fucking around. I’ll shoot you dead.’

  Roscoe stood up. He leaned forward, his knuckles on the tabletop, the cards spreading beneath his weight. ‘Watch your mouth, Jack. I’ve been good to you, you’ve been good to me. I wouldn’t call us friends, like, but as taigs go, you’ve been a decent sort of a fella. But no one threatens me. No one makes a cunt of me in front of my boys. You’re playing with your life, here, Jack. Don’t go making—’

  Lennon focused on the heart-shaped tattoo on the back of Roscoe’s left hand. He squeezed the trigger. The bullet split the tabletop an inch from Roscoe’s fingers. Roscoe pulled his hands away, but didn’t make a sound. He stepped back from the table, shaking his head.

  ‘Who did you go to?’ Lennon asked. ‘Who did you tell?’

  Roscoe held his hands up and backed away. ‘What are you talking about, Jack? I told no one about nothing. You’re making a serious mistake here, mate.’

  Lennon followed. He pushed the table aside, ignoring the crashing of bottles as it tipped over. Paper money and broken glass crunched beneath his feet. He holstered his pistol. He flexed his fingers. ‘You told someone where Marie and Ellen were. You told someone where my daughter was. Now they’ve got them.’

  Roscoe backed towards the bar. ‘Fuck’s sake, Jack, you’re talking out your arse. I told you before, I’m no tout. I said nothing to no—’

  Lennon caught Roscoe with an elbow to the jaw. Roscoe dropped like a sack of loose flesh. He rolled on his side, hands to his chin.

  ‘He has my daughter,’ Lennon said.

  Roscoe squirmed on the floor. He spat blood on the grime-caked tiles.

  ‘He has my daughter,’ Lennon repeated. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘My tongue,’ Roscoe said, his words blunt. ‘I bit my fucking tongue, you Fenian bastard.’

  Lennon stood over Roscoe, one hand on the bar. ‘Talk to me now or I’ll kill you, I fucking swear.’

  ‘Shove it up your taig arse, you cunt,’ Roscoe hissed. He spat again, spattering the floor with crimson.

  Lennon kicked him in the gut. Roscoe doubled up, curled into a ball, rolled so his back was to Lennon. Lennon aimed his foot at Roscoe’s kidney, felt the flesh give under the force of it.

  When the squealing was done, Lennon hunkered down and said, ‘You passed on the information. You tell me now who you talked to. See, I don’t give a fuck. Ellen is the only good thing I ever gave to the world. I talked to her today. For the first time in five years, I talked to my own daughter. She has no notion who I am, but it doesn’t matter. I have a chance to make it right. I have a chance to get her back. And you sell her out to some piece of shit.’

  Roscoe uncurled. He tried to haul himself away, but the pain creased his face. ‘You’re wrong. I never—’

  ‘You sold her out to the other side. You, the big Loyalist, you sold a child to the Republicans. It’s like Patsy Toner said. The collusion, it goes all ways, all directions. All the likes of you ever cared about was lining your own pockets. You didn’t give a shit about any cause, did you? Just so long as you were making money.’

  ‘You’re losing it,’ Roscoe said. ‘You’re fucking off your—’

  Lennon drew his Glock and pressed the muzzle to Roscoe’s forehead. ‘You’ve got one last chance,’ Lennon said. ‘Someone will have reported the gunshot. The moment I hear the sirens, I’ll pull the trigger and blow your brains out. It’ll be self-defence, a known career criminal against a cop. The Ombudsman’s office won’t care. No one’s going to give a fuck about a piece of shit like you. Do you understand?’

  Roscoe blinked at him, his nostrils flared.

  ‘The only way you live is if you tell me who you talked to,’ Lennon said. ‘That’s all there is. No other choices. Now tell me.’

  Roscoe squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Fuck,’ he said. His face went slack, his eyelids fluttered. ‘Dan Hewitt,’ he said. ‘That Special Branch fucker. He’s the one you want. He’s the one put the word out. He wanted to know what you were up to, if anyone saw you around, if you came at anyone looking favours. I called him up. Told him you wanted the flat.’

  Roscoe opened his eyes and smiled. ‘What? You think you’re the only cop I’m mates with? Like you said: all ways, all directions.’

  Lennon stood upright and holst
ered the Glock. ‘You breathe a word of this, I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that you’re a tout.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Roscoe said.

  ‘You know what they do to touts,’ Lennon said. ‘You come near me, or anyone I know, I’ll tell every last fucker in this city you’re a tout. You won’t be able to show your ugly face on the street. You understand me?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Roscoe said.

  Lennon kicked him hard in the groin. Roscoe curled into a tight ball, blood dripping from his lips. He vomited onto the tiled floor.

  The smell of it hit Lennon hard, and he went for the door, swallowing against his own bile until the night air cooled his skin.

  He didn’t see the tall man coming, only felt the hard hands on his throat before he hit the ground.

  78

  ‘Where are they?’ Fegan asked, his face inches from the cop’s.

  Lennon struggled beneath him, his shoulders twisting as Fegan fought for balance.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the cop said.

  Fegan tightened his grip on Lennon’s throat, tried to find the windpipe with his fingers. ‘You should’ve kept them safe.’

  The cop reached up, going for Fegan’s eyes. Fegan pulled back, twisting his face away. His balance left him, and he lost his grip on Lennon’s throat. Another push and his back hit the pavement, a heavy body on his, a Glock against his cheek.

  ‘Gerry Fegan,’ the cop said.

  ‘Why did you leave them?’ Fegan asked.

  ‘I had to,’ Lennon said, panting. ‘No one knew where they were.’

  ‘But he found them.’

  The Glock pressed harder on Fegan’s cheek. ‘I fucking know he did,’ Lennon said. ‘They were sold out. I was sold out. Now get away from here or I’ll blow your head off.’

  ‘No,’ Fegan said. He pushed up with his elbows, ignoring the pressure of the pistol’s muzzle against his cheekbone. ‘Not until I know where they are.’

  ‘Why?’ Lennon pushed him back down. ‘You caused all this. They’d be safe if it wasn’t for you. You started this whole thing, you crazy bastard.’