The Kill Zone

by Chris Ryan

  He offered his hand and Gresham shook it, not knowing quite what to say.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Nat. I have enjoyed our meeting.’

  ‘Me too,’ Gresham murmured, ‘me too.’ And then, as Khan headed towards the door to leave, he spoke up. ‘Mr Khan!’

  ‘Yes, Nat?’

  ‘We keep the details of the President’s foreign engagements under wraps for obvious security reasons. The announcement of his visit won’t be made until the day before. I can rely on you to respect that, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Khan smiled, nodded and quietly left the room, leaving Gresham to stare once more out of the window at the parkland beyond.

  The Horse and Three Feathers, a stone’s throw from the Falls Road, had a colourful past. During the Troubles it had been a well-known Republican hang-out. Stories abounded about what would happen if a Loyalist stuck his nose past the front door, but stories were all they were because no one ever did. This was PIRA turf, pure and simple.

  Times had changed, but the Horse and Three Feathers hadn’t. Not really. If any stray tourists happened to venture in here, they’d have to be pretty thick-skinned not to realise how unwelcome they were. The management of this pub wasn’t fussed about customers, after all.

  Kieran O’Callaghan stepped into the main lounge bar. It was dim in here, dingy enough to hide the fact that the red fabric on the seats was almost uniformly worn through, and The Corrs played blandly in the background. Behind the bar, a fat woman with a bored expression and huge arse sat smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. It sometimes seemed to Kieran that Fat Betty had been in that exact same position for twenty years. She was as much a part of the furniture as the defunct cigarette machine hanging on the wall, or the sticky, shamrock-green carpet. Betty was like a gatekeeper. No one got in to see Cormac O’Callaghan without getting past her.

  She looked up at Kieran, then nodded at him. ‘He’s waiting for you,’ she said.

  Kieran sniffed, looked around the empty room, then walked towards her. At the end of the bar was a section that could be raised to allow access to the serving area. He did so, then squeezed past the fat woman, along a row of optics that hadn’t been changed for months, through a door that led into a thin corridor, and from there into a back room.

  It was dark in here, too, lit by a single low-wattage bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. This had once been the games room of the pub, and there was still a pool table and a football table in the middle. They were seldom used, however. No one came here to play games. No one came here for any reason other than to have an audience with Cormac. Why would they? It was a dump. Kieran could never understand it. His uncle must have been one of the richest men in Belfast, but he still lived as if he were some shitkicker from the estates. Sometimes he wondered if money meant anything to Cormac, other than just a way of keeping the score.

  ‘You’re late.’

  Cormac’s voice was as rough as his surroundings. Kieran licked his lips. They were dry. Just looking at his uncle, knowing what he was about to do, made his skin cold and sweat drip down the nape of his neck.

  ‘Sorry about that, Cormac,’ he said. ‘Trouble at home with little Jackie. The missus is—’

  ‘I’ve got a little job for you. The usual. Sit down.’

  Kieran hesitated. His right hand was in his pocket and he was absent-mindedly fiddling with the listening device the pig bitch had given him.

  ‘I said, sit down.’

  Kieran did as he was told, taking a seat on the other side of the small, round pub table at which Cormac was himself sitting. Kieran’s uncle’s face was thin and lined, his eyebrows as grey and bushy as his hair. His skin was inexplicably tanned for someone who spent almost all his time in this dimly lit room, and on one side of his mouth there was a scar that followed the line a clown would paint to give himself a big smile. The scar didn’t make Cormac O’Callaghan look happy, though. Not even half happy.

  Far from it.

  He was a thin man, and he wore – as he always did, no matter what the weather – a heavy overcoat. Some people said he favoured this garment because he could easily hide weapons underneath it; others said that it was because he wanted to look more impressively built than he actually was. Kieran didn’t believe either suggestion. Cormac was too smart to carry firearms; and he had no need to appear more threatening than he actually was. Tales of his ruthlessness and brutality were almost part of the fabric of Belfast.

  If you weren’t scared of Cormac O’Callaghan, it was because you hadn’t heard those tales.

  ‘When you say the usual, Cormac . . .’

  ‘Young Michael Elliott is giving me grave cause for concern, Kieran. I think we need to make sure that we can rely on his continued support, do you not?’

  Kieran felt a twist in his stomach. ‘If you say so, Cormac,’ he said, his voice several notches quieter.

  ‘I do say so. You know the drill.’

  Kieran nodded. He knew. His uncle ran his drug distribution network by fear. Every so often – at irregular intervals and without warning – he would decide to make an example of one of his employees, then spread the word that the unfortunate victim had been tempted by disloyalty. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true – nobody was going to go to the police, after all – but it was certainly effective at keeping the workforce on their toes.

  But Mikey Elliott. No one could be more loyal than him; and no one had more to lose.

  Kieran stood up and wandered over to the football table, standing on the side furthest from Cormac. He spun one of the rows of men round. Mickey had a family, two kids not much older than Kieran’s own little Jackie.

  ‘Are you sure, Cormac? I mean, Michael Elliott, with the young ’uns and all . . .’

  His speech faded away under the withering heat of his uncle’s gaze.

  ‘I’d hate to think,’ the older man said in little more than a whisper, ‘that it was you, Kieran, whose loyalty was in doubt. My own flesh and blood.’

  It was all Kieran could do to look his uncle in the eye. ‘Course not,’ he said. But what he really thought was, If you’d do this to Mikey, what’s to say you wouldn’t do it to me? And where would that leave little Jackie then? And where does it leave me? Should I play for your side, or the police’s side?

  Or maybe, he thought to himself, maybe I can play for both.

  He casually felt the underside of the football table. Cold metal, so he pulled the listening device from his pocket and held it underneath the table. Immediately he felt it being sucked firmly up.

  ‘Course not,’ he repeated, deeply aware that his voice was quavering slightly.

  Cormac didn’t notice the quaver – or if he did he gave no indication. ‘Then do it,’ he said. Across the table he pushed a small piece of paper. Kieran walked back towards him and picked it up. An address scrawled in spidery writing. ‘There’s tools for the job stashed here, along with one or two other bits and pieces. Take what you need and be sure to replace them when you’re done. I want it done quickly, Kieran. Tonight. Don’t let me down.’

  Kieran nodded and put the scrap of paper in the pocket recently vacated by the listening device.

  ‘I won’t let you down, Cormac,’ he said. ‘You know you don’t need to worry about that.’

  Kieran couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He nodded, then turned and left, squeezing past Fat Betty and out into the relatively fresh air of the Belfast dusk.

  Mikey Elliott lived in a good part of Belfast, near Osbourne Drive just off Lisburn Road. Whereas most of the men who earned their living working for Cormac’s drug empire squandered their cash-in-hand earnings, Mikey put his own income to good use. The semi-detached house outside which Kieran now stood was trim, almost middle-class. The hedge had been recently cut, and a child’s bike lay in the driveway.

  Kieran took a moment to steady himself. The handgun that he’d acquired from Cormac’s lock-up weighed heavily on the inside of his jacket; the job
weighed heavily on his mind. Mikey was a good man. A friend – or as near to a friend as Kieran had. His blood tie to Cormac meant that people always trod lightly around him.

  He stepped round the child’s bike as he approached the house, then knocked on the door. Mikey’s wife answered. Maddy was a good-looking woman, but as fiery as her flame-red hair. Her piercing green eyes now looked at him with suspicion.

  ‘What is it, Kieran? We’re about to go to bed.’ She didn’t like him and she never had.

  ‘I just wondered if I might have a quick word with Mikey.’ He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘Business, you know. Won’t take a minute.’

  Maddy didn’t move from the doorway. Instead she looked over her shoulder and called to her husband. When Mikey appeared he had a beer in his hand and a slightly vague look on his face. He’d been drinking. Might make it easier, might make it harder. Could go either way.

  ‘Let the man in, Maddy,’ he said.

  Maddy stepped aside, but she didn’t look any less unwelcoming as Kieran stepped past her. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ he asked Mikey.

  Mikey looked at his wife. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and check on the boys, my love?’ he said. ‘Kieran and I won’t be long.’

  Maddy gave them both a cool look. But she knew her place. She shut the door and wordlessly climbed the stairs.

  The men walked through the ground floor of the house until they reached a living room at the back. The decor was chintzy, but it was comfortable enough, with a large sofa and smoked-glass coffee table. Mikey was a music lover, and he had a large selection of classical music CDs that took up most of one wall. Kieran’s host pulled a bottle of Jameson’s and a couple of glasses from a cabinet at one end of the room, before pouring out two shots and handing one to Kieran.

  ‘That’s quite a collection,’ Kieran said, nodding at the CDs.

  ‘More than a thousand,’ Mikey replied. ‘More Beethoven there than you get at the Waterfront Hall. So what’s the craic? Business good, as far as I can see.’

  ‘Put one of those CDs on, why don’t you?’

  Mikey shook his head and pointed at the ceiling. ‘The kids,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t want to wake them.’

  ‘Put one on, Mikey.’ Kieran took a sip from his glass.

  Mikey’s eyes narrowed, but he did as he was told. Classical music seeped through the speakers of his stereo system. Kieran’s eyes caught the CD box. Wagner. It meant nothing to him. That shit all sounded the same to his ears. But as the orchestral strings swelled, he pulled his handgun from his pocket.

  ‘Sit down, Mikey,’ he said as he nudged the gun in the direction of the sofa.

  Mikey didn’t seem to know, as he stepped backwards, whether to look at the gun or at Kieran’s face. He’d gone white, though. He flopped backwards on to the sofa as the music grew louder.

  Kieran placed the whiskey bottle on the table. ‘Go ahead,’ he told his friend. ‘Pour yourself another.’

  Mikey did – half a tumbler, which he necked in a single gulp.

  ‘Nice music,’ Kieran said, as if he was just making idle conversation.

  ‘Jesus, Kieran. What the fu—’

  ‘I’ve got a message from Cormac. He’s worried, Mikey. Worried that he can’t trust you. Worried that he might have a rat on his hands.’

  Mikey shook his head. ‘For God’s sake, Kieran. I’m not a rat . . .’

  And Kieran knew it was true. He also knew that if he’d tried harder, perhaps he’d have been able to talk Cormac out of making an example of the terrified man in front of him. As he stood over his friend, though, the image of the female cop rose in his mind. She had him by the bollocks, and his only option was to carry out Cormac’s instructions to the letter if his uncle wasn’t going to start getting suspicious.

  ‘That’s not what Cormac thinks, Mikey.’ He raised the gun, pointing it at his victim’s head.

  A trumpet fanfare over the speakers. And, almost as if someone had orchestrated it, Kieran saw a wet patch spread across Mikey’s crotch; moments later, liquid started dripping from the hem of his trousers.

  ‘Will you not turn that music down, Mikey?’ Maddy yelled from upstairs.

  ‘Mind your own business, woman,’ Mikey shouted back. Then he closed his eyes and spoke more quietly. ‘I’ve got kids, Kieran . . .’ he whispered. ‘You can’t leave them without a pa—’

  ‘Turn round, Mikey. Hands on your head.’

  Mikey was shivering with fear. He’d performed enough punishments like this himself, so he knew what was coming. It looked like a huge effort to twist his body round so that he was face down on the seat of the sofa, his legs kneeling on the floor, his hands on the back of his head.

  The music was loud now. Just loud enough. Mikey’s head was pressed into the cushions so he didn’t see Kieran lower the weapon so that it was pointing not at his head, but at his bent left knee.

  Kieran sniffed.

  Then fired.

  Kieran liked to think of himself as something of a kneecapping expert, thanks to his days in the nutting squads. A shot through the front of the knee was commonplace for minor offences; going through the back like this was a more serious punishment because it would fuck up all the soft tissue and blow the kneecap away from the body – a much more difficult wound to repair. But the surgeons had begun to get adept at both, so the nutting squads started targeting the ankle. You’d need Christ Almighty himself to lay hands on you if you wanted to be healed from a wound like that.

  During the Troubles, punishments like this were two a penny. Nowadays a kneecapping was rarer, but just because the IRA had gone the way of the dodo, it didn’t mean their techniques had. It was a messy business. As the round slammed into Mikey, his whole body shook like he’d been given an electric shock, and blood sprayed over the carpet, some even landing on Kieran’s shoes.

  And then the scream. There weren’t many more painful places to shoot a man. Mikey’s short, sharp scream only stopped because he bit on the fabric of the sofa. By that time, though, Kieran was already walking out of the room. He strode to the front of the house and quietly let himself out.

  Outside, he could still just hear the Wagner playing. Tucking his gun back into his coat, he bent down and picked up the child’s bicycle. As he propped it neatly against the wall, he knocked a button on a brightly coloured electronic bell. It started playing the theme tune from a children’s programme that Kieran vaguely recognised from when little Jackie watched TV at home.

  He stood in the darkness and listened to it for a few seconds, but that was all. The gun needed returning, and he didn’t want to be in the vicinity when the ambulance arrived.

  27 JUNE

  7

  In the Strandtown Police Station in East Belfast, two officers sat in the corner of a large, busy room. Photocopiers chuntered under the strip lighting; colleagues examined wall-mounted maps of the city; secretaries typed up SOCO reports. One of the officers – an older man with a balding head, a tubby stomach and tufts of chest hair escaping from the top of his open-neck shirt – had his feet up on his table and a half-drunk plastic cup of coffee in his hands. If he worried that his boss – a DCI sitting alone in the glass-walled office in the far corner of the room – might disapprove of his inactivity, he didn’t show it.

  The other man was much younger and new to the Drugs Squad. You could tell at a glance. He sat up straight and wore a jacket and tie. Both men had their gaze firmly fixed on one of their female colleagues – shoulder-length blonde hair, large eyes, figure-hugging jeans and a leather jacket. Their eyes followed her as she headed towards the door, like spectators at a tennis match watching the ball.

  As she walked out of the room, the rookie looked at his colleague. ‘I wouldn’t throw her out of bed for farting.’ He grinned.

  ‘With an arse like that, I wouldn’t throw her out of bed for shitting on the pillow.’ The older cop’s voice sounded like a thousand cigarettes. ‘But take some advice and forget about it, Dan
ny boy. You might as well stick your johnson in a cigar trimmer as start chasing that bit of tail.’

  Danny gave him a casual look. ‘What’s the matter, Frank? Wanting to keep her for yourself? Face it, man, you’re an old-timer. You should just step back and let the young ’uns take a crack . . .’

  Frank Maloney sighed, hauled his feet off the table and turned to look at his partner. ‘Listen and learn, Danny boy,’ he said. ‘That piece of eye candy getting you all chubbed up is Siobhan Byrne. Currently officer in Her Majesty’s Drugs Squad, formerly of the Det. Mean anything to you?’

  Danny shook his head.

  ‘Hmm . . .’ Frank breathed. ‘The Det,’ he said clearly, like he was talking to a child, ‘14 Company. Jesus, where’ve you been for the last twenty years? Oh, I forgot – having your little botty wiped by your mam.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Frank.’

  ‘Happy to, Danny boy.’ He brushed some imaginary crumbs from his paunch-filled shirt. ‘Closest I get to a half-decent shag these days, anyhow. But allow me to enlighten you with my great and superior experience. The Det: the best surveillance operatives in the world, trained up in Hereford by the SAS to work in the Province – you know who the SAS are, do you?’

  ‘Very funny, Frank.’

  ‘Aren’t I though? You’re too young to remember how much the Provos hated the Det, Danny boy. That’s why agents like your girlfriend there had to be ready for the worst. Those Regiment lads used to administer beatings to the Det in training far worse than anything they had to deal with themselves, and with good reason. Ever heard of Operation Congo, lad?’

  Danny shook his head.

  ‘It’s what they put in place if a Det officer ever went missing in the Province. Every operation stopped, every military and police asset was directed to recover them, because they knew it’d be curtains for the poor bastard the minute the Provos got their clutches on them. Don’t you worry about it, lad – that girl’s harder than a gravedigger’s heart. I’ll bet you a pint of plain that she’s pulled more pieces on our Republican brothers than you’ve had hot dinners, but she wouldn’t need a PPK to put you in the Royal if you got fresh with her. Unarmed combat being one of their specialities and all.’