Collusion

by Stuart Neville

  ‘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 and 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.

  They’d stood like this for ten minutes now; not a word had been spoken since he’d been led into the room. Fegan closed his eyes and let his mind rest. An image of a face in a newspaper burst brilliant in his consciousness, but was gone in an instant, along with the smell of burning flesh. Sweat broke on his forehead. His stomach reeled. A weight settled in his gut, dense, sickly and insistent. He swallowed. A chill rippled from his heart to his groin, then down through his thighs to his calves, and on into the soles of his feet. He shivered like a horse overjoyed with exertion.

  When Fegan opened his eyes again he saw Orla O’Kane by the open door. Something moved across her face. Fegan recognised it instantly, like a brother lost but not forgotten. Fear, sweet and giving, the one emotion Fegan knew by sight.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, dropping her eyes from Fegan’s gaze.

  Ronan indicated that Fegan should follow Orla to the grand entrance hall. Fegan did as he was told, glad to be moving, glad to get it over with. The thug closed the door and came behind them as they crossed the hall to the staircase.

  Fegan’s heart quickened as he climbed. The stairs levelled to a gallery, then doubled back on themselves to form an atrium beneath a stained-glass ceiling. Morning light shone through it, making orange, green and red shapes on the walls. When Orla reached the first floor gallery she turned right into a corridor leading to the east wing. Ronan gripped Fegan’s shoulder to steer him after her.

  Half a dozen rooms branched off the corridor, but Orla kept walking to the double doors at the end. She threw them open in an ostentatious gesture and stepped inside. Fegan entered the room and was met by a low smell of human excrement. He stopped, but Ronan pushed him ahead. Fegan halted as the plastic sheeting rustled beneath his feet.

  ‘Hello Gerry,’ O’Kane said, his lips parting to form a jagged smile.

  The Bull sat in a wheelchair, a blanket covering him from midriff to feet. The chair was high-backed with small wheels, the kind hospital porters used to ferry invalids along disinfectant-smelling corridors. The Bull’s flesh hung loose from his face. His eyes gazed too bright from their darkened pits, his cheeks sunken and hollow. A small bubble of spit glistened at one corner of his mouth.

  Two men flanked the chair. Fegan recognised one of them, Ben O’Driscoll, who’d done a short stretch in the Maze during his own time there. He had fat hands and a pugilist’s build, thick around the torso and broad at the shoulders. But the other man was something different, something altogether more dangerous. Medium height, wiry build, and dead eyes. A killer. Fegan smelled it on him through the haze of odours that tainted the air. He knew beyond doubt this was the man Tom the barman had told him about, the one who had prowled Belfast in recent days.

  From its size, Fegan guessed this to be some kind of recreation room for the convalescent home’s patients, but all the furniture had been hastily pushed to the walls. Formica-topped tables stood stacked alongside vinyl-coated chairs, overlooked by paintings of the Drogheda countryside. The floor was empty save for the six people gathered there on the plastic sheeting that covered the parquet flooring.

  ‘Where’s Marie and Ellen?’ Fegan asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ O’Kane said.

  ‘Me for them,’ Fegan said.

  ‘That was the deal last time.’ O’Kane nodded. He laughed then, high and fractured. ‘Didn’t work out that way, though, did it? It’s not going to work out this time either.’

  Orla went to her father. She took a tissue from her sleeve and wiped the spit from his mouth. He slapped her hand away.

  ‘Da,’ she said, leaning down to him. ‘I don’t want to watch this.’

  ‘All right, love,’ O’Kane said. ‘You go on, take a walk or something. I’ll call you when it’s done.’

  Orla did not meet Fegan’s gaze as she passed. He heard the double doors close behind him, followed by footsteps fading into echoes. Five in the room, now. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Ronan resting against the wall. Fegan noted their positions. The man at O’Kane’s right hand, the killer, stepped forward.

  ‘I’d like to introduce you to a friend of min
e,’ the Bull said. ‘He’s been dying to meet you.’

  89

  Lennon edged along the riverbank, mud sucking at his shoes. Swans watched from the shallows, while others waddled through the grass and ferns between the wall and the water. They hissed as he neared them, raising their heads and opening their wings. Lennon went to the wall and clung to it as he passed them.

  A gate sealed an opening in the old stonework. It bordered a landscaped area that stretched down to the water. The ground had been levelled off, and benches and picnic tables arranged on the lawn. A life ring was suspended from a post on the short wooden pier. A small rowing boat sat on the dry slipway. The convalescent home’s patients must have used this place to relax when the weather was good.

  He went to the opening and peered through the gate. A wide path cut through well-tended gardens, leading up to the rear of the house. Shutters blinded many of the windows. A quiet hung over the place like a shroud. Lennon leaned close to the bars and scanned the grounds, looking for movement. He saw nothing but magpies squabbling over scraps near a door at the back of the house. It was small and functional, probably an old servants’ entrance leading to kitchens, Lennon thought.

  A fire escape had been built on to the western side of the house, ugly steel steps and platforms just visible at the corner.

  To the right there was nothing but open ground that would leave him exposed if he went for the fire escape. He could just make out a copse to the left, the trees forming a buffer between the wall and the gardens. They ran up to the east of the house. If he could get over the gate he might be able to use them as cover, then sprint to the door where the magpies fought over morsels.

  Thick tangles of barbed wire raised the gate’s height by a foot or so. Lennon stood back and studied it. He could climb the gate, but the barbed wire would cut him to shreds. The wall stood a good ten feet tall; he had no hope of scaling it, unless …

  Lennon walked to the landscaped area and crouched by one of the picnic tables. Nothing rooted it to the ground. He tested its weight. Heavy, but not immovable. He set his feet apart, gripped each edge of the table. It moved more easily than he expected, the damp grass providing a slick surface to pull across. A few minutes’ effort had it against the stonework. He climbed up and eased his fingertips over the top of the wall. As he thought, shards of broken glass had been set in concrete. It was a lawsuit waiting to happen, any insurance company would balk at the idea in case some burglar would claim for the lacerations, but Lennon imagined Bull O’Kane had no such qualms.

  He pulled his jacket off and folded it into a pillow. He stood on tiptoe, balanced on the table, and laid the jacket across the glass shards. The swans watched with interest from the riverbank as Lennon took a deep breath and hauled himself upwards. He drew his knees up, wincing as the dulled points of glass dug into his kneecaps, then manoeuvred his legs out from under him. The glass tore through the jacket to grab at his thighs. He eased himself over the edge, one arm clinging to the top. Jagged glass ripped through the fabric and scraped at Lennon’s forearm. He let go, and his weight dragged his arm across the point of glass.

  Lennon fell towards a bank of dock leaves, tatters of shirtsleeve trailing behind him. He tumbled down through the greenery and slammed against a tree trunk. He stifled a cry as pain shrieked in his ribs. A tapered streak of red blossomed on Lennon’s exposed skin, six inches long. He righted himself, his back against the tree trunk, and examined the wound. It wasn’t that bad, just a scrape, lucky it hadn’t been worse. He reached out and grabbed handfuls of the dock leaves, wiped the sheen of fresh, bright blood away with one handful, then pressed another to the cut.

  His breath came in hard rasps as he listened for movement in the gardens beyond the trees. Nothing stirred, so Lennon dragged himself to his feet. He kept the wad of leaves pressed to his forearm as he advanced through the copse, far enough behind the treeline to stay hidden but close enough to the edge to see the house and the gardens beyond. The two magpies still battled over scraps in front of the kitchen door.

  Lennon walked steady until he stood level with the house’s eastern edge. Fifteen, maybe twenty yards separated him from the building. He looked south and saw the lawns sweep into the distance, a long driveway cutting through them. He dropped the bloodstained leaves, took a breath, counted to ten, and sprinted across the grass and gravel.

  He pressed his back tight against the sandstone, between the corner and the first window. His chest tightened as he listened. Nothing moved, no voice of warning, no footsteps on gravel. Lennon exhaled, sparks firing behind his eyes. He crouched and edged along the wall, keeping his head below the windowsills. Small stones ground together beneath his feet. The back door stood just twelve yards ahead, eleven now, nine, six—

  The magpies squawked and launched themselves towards the sky, blurs of black and white, the remains of a Chinese takeaway scattered behind them.

  The back door opened, and a woman stepped out onto the gravel, her broad back blocking the early sun. She took a packet of cigarettes from her jacket pocket, plucked one from the row of filter-tips with her teeth. Her lighter sparked, and the flame sputtered long enough for the tobacco to catch. She drew hard on the cigarette. A cough erupted from her deep chest, and she covered her mouth as she hacked. The fit passed, and she turned to see Lennon’s drawn Glock staring back at her. She dropped the cigarette to the gravel.

  ‘Take me to Ellen,’ Lennon said. ‘Take me to Marie.’

  Her mouth opened, but no sound came.

  ‘Now,’ Lennon said.

  90

  The Traveller stood between the Bull and Gerry Fegan. ‘So you’re the great Gerry Fegan,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr Fegan. Let’s see if you live up to your reputation, eh?’

  ‘Who are you?’ Fegan asked, his first words since entering the room.

  ‘Now that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it, Gerry? I’ve got lots of names, but none of them’s real. People call me the Traveller.’ He gave Fegan a grin. ‘Pleased to meet you, big lad.’

  Fegan did not respond.

  The Traveller turned to the Bull. ‘How do you want it done?’ he asked.

  The Bull raised his head. ‘Hmm?’

  The old bastard looked weak and confused, like a man who’d walked many miles to a place, then couldn’t remember why he’d made the journey.

  ‘How do you want it done?’

  The Bull’s face seemed to solidify, the strength bleeding back into it. ‘Slow,’ he said.

  The Traveller nodded to O’Driscoll and Ronan. ‘Get a hold of him.’

  They went to Fegan’s sides and took an arm each. Fegan didn’t resist. He stared straight ahead, his face expressionless.

  The Traveller kicked him hard in the groin. Fegan’s legs folded under him, and O’Kane’s men pulled him back up.

  ‘Slow,’ the Traveller said. He turned back to the Bull, took the knife from his pocket, and unfolded the blade. ‘I could gut him. Bad way to go.’

  ‘Aye, that’ll do,’ the Bull said. ‘Don’t rush it, though. Give him some time to think about it.’ His gaze fixed on Fegan and his lip curled. ‘Give him time to think about what he did to me. How he got my son killed, and my cousin.’ His voice raised in pitch, breaths forced between the words, as he leaned forward. ‘How I got shot in the gut because of him. How I’m in this fucking wheelchair because of him. How he made a cunt of me. Give him time to think about all that.’

  The Bull collapsed back, his chest heaving. The Traveller thought of a wounded dog he’d seen as a child. It was a stray, hit by a car, and it had dragged itself to an alleyway behind his mother’s house. It snarled and snapped at anyone who came near until he went and got a shovel. Three blows had silenced its howling.

  ‘I had no fight with you,’ Fegan said to the Bull. ‘You could’ve left me alone. You brought it on yourself.’

  ‘Aye, I could’ve left you alone,’ the Bull said. ‘But I didn’t. I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck i
f you had a fight with me or not. I had a fight with you, and that’s all there is to it. You got anything else to say before our friend here goes to work on you?’

  ‘One thing.’

  The Bull tilted his head and smiled. ‘What’s that, now?’

  ‘Remember this: I’m going to kill you,’ Fegan said.

  The Bull threw his head back and laughed, high and grating. ‘Christ Almighty,’ he said. He nodded at the Traveller. ‘All right, finish him.’

  The Traveller stepped close to Fegan, close enough to smell his sweat. He rolled his left shoulder, that stiffness continuing to nag at him, his wrist still bound in the strapping. He stared into the madman’s eyes, looking for some sign of fear. There was nothing, only a steady calm. He held the blade up to Fegan’s left eye.

  ‘Maybe I’ll scoop it out of your skull,’ the Traveller said. ‘How does that sound?’

  Fegan didn’t react.

  The Traveller pressed the blade’s edge against Fegan’s cheek, below his eye, until red beads appeared on his skin. Fegan’s eyelid flickered. The Traveller drew the knife down towards the mouth,leaving a bright crimson trail behind it. Fegan’s lips tightened.

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ the Traveller said as he leaned forward, his voice conspiratorial. ‘People kept telling me about the great Gerry Fegan, how he was the scariest fucker ever came out of Belfast. And look at you.’

  ‘Was it you who took them?’ Fegan asked, looking the Traveller in the eye for the first time. Blood pooled at the outer edge of his mouth.

  ‘The woman and the wee girl?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fegan said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you hurt them?’

  ‘The wee girl’s all right,’ the Traveller said. ‘The woman’s hurt, though. She wasn’t looking too good last time I saw her. I don’t fancy her chances. Sorry about that.’

  Something moved behind Fegan’s eyes, a decision made, before he looked back into the distance. ‘Go ahead and do whatever you’re going to do,’ he said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ the Traveller said, and grabbed Fegan’s right ear.