‘I’m heading up to Glenmalin. Will you mind yourself with them thieving robbers in Carrick if I drop you there?’
‘I’d sooner go to where you’re heading,’ I said, wanting to put as much distance as possible between myself and Killybegs. The driver raised his eyes to heaven. I glanced back. Luke’s car was a hundred yards behind us.
‘Is it far?’ I asked.
‘We’ll get there when we get there,’ he said, ‘unless the bloody road has been swept out to sea for all them feckers in the County Council do to mend it.’
Luke had to be following us because he would never drive this slowly. There was nothing I could do. I felt safe as long as I was in the car. In whatever village the old man was heading for I’d have to find a crowded pub where Luke would be afraid to grab me. Mentally I counted whatever money I had, knowing it wasn’t enough for a flight home. There might be a cheap bus out of here. I should have left with Al last night. I wondered was he okay.
We passed a hamlet, which was no more than a wide bend on the road, then left the coast and climbed inland, following signposts for Carrick. My father had played there before Christmas in Byrne’s pub. I tried to imagine that solitary man walking these roads at all hours of the night. Sometimes Luke’s car dipped out of sight as if he was playing a game of cat and mouse, daring me to ask the driver to stop so I could slip out and hide. I knew he was picking up speed every few minutes, studying each ditch and bush he passed. He hadn’t planned to kill me in that lane in Killybegs. I was still ignorant of everything as far as he was concerned, and just upset after being dragged into a police station. The safest thing would have been to carry on with him until I got back to London, but even there he would never let me go. There would be a web of lies and compromises woven into my life until I came to depend on him. If I changed address he would stalk me; I’d find his car outside my door and learn to recognise his silence on the phone at night.
By running away I was putting myself in danger. Whatever game he was playing, nobody would be allowed to step out of their role. I kept glancing anxiously back at the road, but every time my gaze had to take in the driver as well. I sensed him become more self-conscious, suspicious that I was after something. He had found nothing to complain about for miles until we reached Carrick. I asked him to point out Byrne’s pub. He did and asked again if I would not get out. He wanted to be rid of me but the street looked deserted and Luke’s car had already crossed the bridge behind us.
‘I’ll go on to where you’re going,’ I said. The old man drove on grudgingly and I looked back at the small pub which doubled as an ordinary house and asked, ‘Is it true they’ve music there?’
‘Not so much lately,’ the driver complained, ‘with these new bloody drink driving laws. There’s men living up the mountains afraid to come down and meet their neighbours in case they’re done. It’s lonely enough in winter, and sure the only thing the poor feckers had was a bit of chat and music in the pub. Otherwise they’d not see a soul the whole day through. I was down in Byrne’s myself before Christmas to hear an old lad play, but half the pub were sipping fizzy lemonade with bastards of guards lurking outside. That’s no life for grown men, but it’s the same with all the new laws coming in. I don’t care how much money we got, we should never have sold ourselves to Brussels.’
People in Dublin had spoken about my father in terms of genius. But here he was just an old lad, an everyday wonder. It made him more human and I felt closer to him for that. After several miles the driver left the road for Glencolumbkille and swung left along a potholed road where two cars could hardly pass. I was disappointed and then relieved. Luke was lagging behind and wouldn’t have seen us turn. I was free. We drove for several more miles in silence. The road twisted its way along and it was hard to see anything behind us. A huge mountain lay to my left, sombre and almost sinister in its sheer bulk. A lake glinted in the distance, feeding a swollen river which gushed down the mountainside. We plummeted downwards, twisting through a maze of sally trees and hedgerows. I’d never seen anywhere to match this place. I even stopped glancing behind and now it was the driver who looked across at me. He slowed and I was suddenly nervous. Luke wasn’t the problem any more. The man was seventy if a day, but he looked strong and there wasn’t a house for miles. It was the sort of spot where a body might lie undisturbed for years. There was a laneway to the left, so overgrown with bushes it was almost impassable. The driver pulled up at the entrance to it and looked me up and down. His lip was flecked with white froth.
‘Glenmalin,’ he announced. ‘It’s a bloody desperate glen in winter but at least you’re dressed for the walk.’
‘This is it?’ I asked.
He sighed, exasperated. ‘I offered twice to leave you in Carrick.’
‘What’s up the lane?’
‘My house and another bachelor’s.’
Something about the way he said it suggested I was the predator. I remembered a story of Luke’s about a con-man who drove up isolated lanes with a prostitute in a horse box and robbed bachelor’s houses as the woman serviced them. The old man had brought me to my destination, now he wanted me to leave the car.
‘What’s on ahead?’ I asked.
‘You’ll meet the main road again two miles on. Turn right for Glencolumbkille or, if you’re daft enough, go left to Malinbeg. It’s a dead-end though. Only a fecking lunatic would go there on a day like this.’
A tractor with a trailer of hay came up behind us. We were blocking the road. I got out and watched the old man drive up the lane, with branches whipping against his windscreen, then stood back to let the tractor pass. The driver lifted a finger in casual salute and I saw Luke’s car stuck between the trailer and some yokel on a mud-splattered motor bike who was stuck behind him. The tractor went by slowly, leaving wisps of hay on the hedgerows. There was nowhere to run. Luke saw me and pulled into the laneway. The motor bike swerved past and drove on. To my relief, the tractor pulled into a gateway further on and the motor bike stopped too. There seemed something wrong with the way the engine was firing. The yokel turned the engine off and dismounted, kneeling to try and adjust it. The tractor driver called over to him, then glanced back at me. He reached for a sack of sheep nuts and threw them over the iron gate into a field where hungry sheep crowded up, baaing wildly. I felt safer with the men there. Luke got out of the car and looked as me like I was a wayward child.
‘What will I do with you, Tracey?’ he asked. ‘Do you think I’ve time to chase half way across Donegal? I came here for your sake. Can’t you see the hassle I get every time I come home? Now I promised to bring you to your father, if it was the last thing we did, and I’ll keep my promise.’
‘Stay away from me.’ I stepped back. ‘There’s people watching.’
Luke glanced at the tractor parked with the engine running. The farmer had disappeared into the field. The yokel kick-started his bike but the engine spluttered out again.
‘What’s got into you, Tracey?’ Luke asked, puzzled. ‘It’s like you’re scared of me. You know I’d never harm a hair of your head.’
‘Then leave me alone, please.’
‘Here in the middle of nowhere? Get into the car. I’m responsible for you. What would your Grandad …?’
‘Leave him out of it! Stop dragging him into your games.’
‘What games?’
There was the faintest crack in Luke’s forbearance. I should have stayed quiet but I couldn’t stop my anger coming out.
‘How did you know the number of Gran’s hospital?’ I said.
‘I’ve a friend who’s a porter there. I often phone him. What difference does it make?’
‘You set this whole business up. The police, everything. You used me as an alibi.’
Luke looked baffled, but watchful too. ‘An alibi for what?’ He took a step forward, forcing me further down the lane. ‘I knew you were unstable from the very start. The Irish police hated Christy. They could prove nothing against him, now they’re sta
rting on me.’
‘Keep back,’ I said, frightened, ‘I know about you …”
‘You know nothing, Tracey,’ Luke said more firmly, taking another step. ‘You’re getting above yourself now. Three months ago you were a nobody living a nothing life until I took you up. You didn’t even know how to suck cock properly till I showed you.’
‘Luckily you’d such a good teacher in Brother Damian!’
Luke stopped dead. It was the sort of mistake he would never have made. His features looked different than I’d ever seen them before. This is the real Luke, I thought, what he actually looks like. He walked towards me with exaggerated calmness as I backed down the overgrown lane, out of sight of the men. With the noise from the tractor and the motor bike engine occasionally spluttering into life they probably wouldn’t hear if I screamed. We had gone twenty yards when I stopped, scared of Luke, yet too scared to venture further away from the road.
‘I never mentioned Brother Damian’s name,’ he said, quietly. ‘Luckily I love you, because you’re full of surprises. Suddenly you think you know a lot.’
‘Let me go, Luke. I’ll say nothing to nobody.’
‘I’m not holding you,’ he said. ‘It’s you who keeps walking down this lane. Brother Damian, eh? What else do you think you know?’
‘Nothing. Please.’
‘Could our friend Al have been talking?’ Luke asked. ‘I thought I kept you apart in London, but I must have been wrong. Like I was wrong to flatter myself that it was me you wanted, when really you couldn’t wait to take your knickers off for any Irishman.’
‘It was never like that, Luke.’
He took another step forward. The ditch beside us was deep and flooded with plastic sacks of rubbish. The tractor sounded like it was trying to reverse into the field with difficulty. Luke put his hands out, with the palms wide.
‘What else did Al tell you?’ he asked. ‘That all his life he’s been a failure? That I had to take him to London and knock some manhood into him?’
‘Maybe he didn’t want to go.’
‘None of my family ever wanted to do anything. Did he tell you about Shane growing up, never wearing a stitch of clothes I hadn’t already worn and Christy before me? About the three of us freezing in one bed in winter? Did he tell you what hunger was like? He did not, because he’s never known it. Did he tell what it felt like to have the Vincent de Paul call with their stinking charity vouchers while our two uncles swanned about picking up whores in Dolly Fossett’s? Or what it was like to have a father labouring in England, too stuck up to accept cash from his brothers? Did he tell you that my whole family would be still dirt poor if it wasn’t for me? That I’ve had to sort out every dogfight and piece of shit they’ve walked themselves into? That I’m stuck half way up this fucking bog still trying to do just that?’
‘Please, Luke,’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything.’ I’d never seen him angry before. Beating up Al had been a carefully controlled act. This was different, like he was in pain. Then his manner took on that unearthly calmness again.
‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter what Al said.’ Luke took another step so that I was forced towards the ditch. ‘It’s rumour and innuendo, useless against a good barrister. I’m sorry, Tracey, but you’re still a nobody. What you know is immaterial unless you can prove it. What’s real is the power of what we have going between us. You can’t honestly believe it’s over. There were nights you drenched your knickers just walking into that hotel room.’
The tractor roared at full throttle as it emerged from the field and came into view at the mouth of the lane. I hoped it would try to turn up the lane past Luke’s car but it just went past. I was shaking. I grabbed a branch to stop myself falling into the ditch.
‘It’s over between us, Luke. Let me go.’
He was suddenly desperate. He shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t part of my life.’
‘You knew it could never last. Let me go, please.’ Luke came closer. I was scared of the way he looked. ‘Grandad will report me missing. The police know I’m here with you.’
He smiled. ‘Can’t you see that I made sure the whole of Ireland knows you’re here with me? I would have brought you quietly if you hadn’t been unfaithful with Al. You needed to be taught a lesson. But that’s behind us now. What’s important is that we find your father.’ Luke put a hand to my cheek and I flinched. ‘You’re quite safe, Donegal is swarming with guards. They even have Ireland’s excuse for a navy sweeping the coast.’
The pride in his voice gave me the answer. This whole trip was a decoy, the yacht being tracked at sea, Luke slipping in through a remote airport like Knock. Everyone knew that three quarters of a million pounds was missing. Since Christy’s funeral all eyes had been on him.
‘Where are you really landing the drugs?’ I asked.
‘That has nothing to do with me,’ Luke said. ‘I’m just sorting out another family mess. But one of Ireland’s joys is the hundreds of miles of remote bays with few natives left to ask questions. What navy could patrol that, particularly when it’s camped off Donegal? But it’s nothing to do with you or me. I’m happy selling wall tiles and keeping my kids out of Dublin. That city has gone to hell, with little wankers throwing their weight, thinking they’re someone because they’ve an Armalite in one hand and a condom of heroin up their arse. The Duggans never did drugs. We earned respect the hard way before Christy went crazy and signed his own death warrant, taking these young thugs on.’
Luke had already re-written the story of this robbery in his own mind, absolving himself of any blame. He genuinely saw himself as picking up the pieces of other people’s mistakes. I thought I had glimpsed every side to him, but now I realised that only somebody half deranged would have ever dared to pick me up like that in the Irish Centre.
‘If they want heroin in Dublin, then they deserve all they get,’ Luke said. ‘It can sell so cheap that babies will crawl from their prams to queue for it. But I want no part of it. Let the place self-destruct with gangs of punks killing each other. But wait and see, before long one of them will employ outside muscle, the Triads or the Russian mafia. Strangers will sweep in to pick the place clean. Any state worth a wank would have these punks behind bars years ago. Now let’s find your father and get the hell out of here.’
I had closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear looking at Luke’s face. He still honestly believed we had a future. I opened them again when I heard the motor bike engine start. The yokel had got it working at last. Luke turned in surprise, having forgotten about him too. I dodged past Luke and ran towards the road, shouting for the motor bike to stop. The motor cyclist came into view and turned down the lane. I stopped, recognising him, not from the bike which was different, but from that blue helmet with the dent in its side. The visor was pulled down. I don’t know why my father’s song came into my mind.
What brings you here so late, said the knight on the road,
I go to meet my God, said the child as he stood.
And he stood and he stood, ’twas well that he stood,
I go to meet my God, said the child as he stood.
I stood perfectly still like the words instructed me. Luke had reached my shoulder. He stopped, puzzled looking, then backed away and began to run, leaving me to face the bike which approached leisurely. The motorcyclist turned to stare into my face, only he had no face. There were just the shapes of bushes reflected in the visor’s smoked glass. I realised who he had been searching for as he weaved his way through the cars waiting to board the ferry in Dublin. He passed me in silence and I turned to watch Luke run. He stumbled on a pothole and crashed to the ground. It was ridiculous but I wanted to tell him that if he stayed still the devil couldn’t touch him. The bike stopped. Luke looked up and then back at me.
‘The girl is just some cheap tart,’ he said. ‘She knows nothing.’
He didn’t look at me again, but stood up and started walking away. This time he didn’t run an
d I realised that he had only done so the first time to draw the motor cyclist towards him and give me a chance to flee. But I couldn’t move. I was amazed at how simple it was to die. Luke fell forward when the first bullet tore into his back, but managed to sit up and stare at the motor cyclist who slowly aimed the gun at Luke’s groin. Luke’s face changed.
‘No,’ he said. He looked back at me. ‘Please.’
It was not clear what he was pleading for, but it wasn’t mercy. He ignored the gun as he struggled up again and walked a few paces forward. The motor cyclist raised the pistol to aim the second shot directly through the base of his skull. Luke fell into the ditch and there was no further sign of him. The bike slowly wheeled around and came back towards me. I couldn’t stop the singing in my head:
Hark, I hear a bell, said the knight on the road,
And it’s ringing you to hell, said the child as he stood.
He stood and he stood, ’twas well that he stood,
It’s ringing you to hell, said the child as he stood.
The bike barely seemed to be moving as it drew alongside me. I couldn’t move. I watched the motor cyclist hold the gun out, almost in slow motion. It seemed to brush very lightly against the side of my cheek. I had a sense of how hot the barrel was, and the smell of petrol fumes blended in with a scent of lost childhood afternoons. There was a moment’s hesitation, then, almost against his will, he was gone past. The engine roared and finally faded away. Luke lay in those bushes. The thought struck me that somehow he might still be alive, but I was too afraid to look. I don’t know how long I stood there until I turned to run past his parked car, in total silence except for the scream which I couldn’t shake from my head.
TWENTY-THREE
I HAD LOST any sense of time so I don’t know how long it took me to reach the main road leading back into Glencol-umbkille. The late afternoon was utterly still. Even the breeze had stopped stirring. There wasn’t a sound, except for the echo of shots in my head. I kept walking at the same pace, resisting an urge to run because there was nowhere to run to. I told myself that if the motor cyclist wished to kill me he would have done so back in the lane. But I was still certain he would change his mind and return.
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