If Alex doubted what Stefan knew, he doubted no longer.
‘So did he say something to Maeve, that made her think he—’
‘I’m sure he said a lot of things to a lot of people. Has no one told you there is little profit listening to the ramblings of a madman? However much I care for my brother that is, to put it crudely, what he is, old man.’
‘But he’s not a murderer.’
‘Is anyone but you suggesting he is?’
‘He knows you are, Alex. He is the one person who knows.’
Alex smiled; he had no doubt of his invulnerability.
‘I guess some allowance still has to be made for the loss of your wife, but isn’t it all a stretch, unless you have a complaint – of the Stuart variety.’
‘I don’t think Kate O’Donnell’s mad, do you?’
‘Not at all, but she certainly is a piece of action worth having.’
‘Were you going to rape her too? I assume that’s what happened with Charlotte Moore when you were a teenager, and later with Marian Gort.’
‘What a grubby turn of phrase you have, Gillespie. Do they teach you that in the police? Sorry, old man, but your lovely lady was asking for it, and I mean asking. Don’t imagine you’re the only man she wanted it from. That’s not how women are. But she panicked at the close. They do. It did get a little rough, but isn’t she the kind of woman who likes a bit of that?’
He spoke with calm assurance; he believed what he said.
‘You didn’t meet Kate by chance, did you?’ said Stefan.
‘Not quite. When you started poking around at Christmas, I did find out what I could about you. I found out who your tart was, and when I learned she was coming to London, well, our Irish Mafia is small, within a respectable class. She knows some quite decent people. It wasn’t difficult.’
‘But why? What was the point?’
‘Keeping an eye on you. I got a whiff of this trip to Spain. That was a surprise, I have to say. And ambassador or no ambassador, I couldn’t believe a bloody-minded feller like you wouldn’t follow his leads – apt word, for policemen and dogs. Following the scent of Billy Byrne’s trail.’
‘You knew all about Byrne from Stuart.’
‘Of course, sooner or later he does tell me everything.’
‘The brakes on the car – you tried to kill me first.’
‘No need to be overdramatic. I was still home when you began stirring up the past. I hoped a warning would be enough. You’ve got people to think about, your brat, etc. I thought you just might see sense and leave things alone. Leaving things alone is usually the answer. But you were never welcome here. There are people who belong. You never did.’
‘Yes, I heard that from your mother.’
‘Maeve belonged here in more than one sense. In every sense.’
As Stefan looked at Alex he could see pain in his face.
‘Jesus, you mean – she should have belonged to you?’
‘I don’t owe you any explanation. I know exactly who I am. I know how life is to be lived. It’s nothing unless lived at the edge. The moment is more than the before or after. “The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind. In balance with this life, this death.” You know the words? If you do, how could you even understand them?’
Stefan knew; from Alex they were the words of a precocious boy.
‘You’re a very ordinary man, Gillespie.’
‘I have no problem being an ordinary man.’
‘That’s what’s wrong with you. It’s what’s wrong with everything. To be ordinary is to be nothing, one of millions and millions of nobodies.’
‘I’m not sure you’re fighting on the right side in this war, Alex.’
‘The sides don’t matter. Being in it matters.’
‘This shite isn’t why I’m here, Alex. You know why I’m here.’
‘There’s nothing you can do, old man, you must realize that. Even if everything you think you know is true, everything I did, every little mistake I made, no one’s going to believe you. A policeman who forced a mental case to confess to other people’s murders and say he killed two women who died in tragic accidents? My brother will never speak against me. I have to give you some credit for tedious persistence, but in the end it’s worthless.’
Stefan didn’t reply. It was true; what he had was only in his head.
‘You could shoot me, something like that, if you had the guts.’
Stefan was holding the revolver in his pocket.
‘I can’t say it’s not in my mind, Alex.’
‘You’ve a bit more about you than I expected. Not much, but a little.’
‘Do you really think this is over?’ said Stefan.
‘Yes, I do, because it is. You’ll have to leave it to the Luftwaffe.’
‘I have a feeling you’re a survivor, Alex.’
‘Yes, I rather think I am. Goodbye, Stefan. It’s finished now.’
The front door of Mullacor House closed shut. Stefan got into the car, not knowing what he could do. It wasn’t the end, whatever Alex Sinclair believed, but what the end was, he couldn’t know. He wanted to believe he could use the gun he carried, if not now, eventually. But even if Alex hadn’t had a rifle, could he have simply taken out the revolver and killed him there and then? There was a part of him that said he had a right to, but there was too much that told him he didn’t. Yet what else was there? He turned the ignition. Nothing happened. He tried again. It was dead. He got out and pushed up the bonnet. He saw that the distributor cap was off; the rotor arm was gone. He knew that Alex had taken it, and that he could have only one reason. He did not intend to let him leave Mullacor. Stefan recalled the rifle Alex had almost been caressing. He heard his final words: ‘It’s finished now.’
Behind the car was the drive and the track to the road. Beyond the gates there were straggling trees and half a mile of grass and heather. In front was the house and its outbuildings; Alex Sinclair knew that like the back of his hand. Stefan looked at the dark rhododendrons framing the lawn at the side of the house. It was all there was. He had already stood still too long. He ran, zigzagging over the grass, through the torn wire of the tennis court, out the other side into the trees. A shot sounded, very close. He heard the bullet thud into a tree. He moved into the rhododendrons, crawling. He stopped and took out his revolver. Looking back, he could see no sign of Alex. Another shot. He felt the bullet sing past him. He guessed where it had come from. He fired. But he saw nothing to shoot at; a wasted bullet.
He pushed the gun into his pocket and half crouched, half crawled further into the trees. A third shot, to his left this time. Alex Sinclair knew where he was. He was a man who had hunted all his life; he had stalked deer since childhood. Another bullet whined past, this time to the right. Stefan crawled on, sheltered by the thick green of the rhododendrons and azaleas. But he knew he wasn’t taking his own course. Those shots, left and right, closer and closer, had nothing random about them. He was being driven in the direction Alex wanted him to go. He knew if he broke cover he would be dead. He was being stalked. He was being pushed through the trees. Two more shots in quick succession made it clear.
As he broke through the undergrowth that once marked the boundary of the demesne at Mullacor, there was a stone wall; beyond that a thistle-strewn field and then the rough grazing that soon gave way to the mountain slopes of Lugduff.
Ahead there were only ancient Scots pines and oaks and the tumbled stones of the broken-toothed wall. Sheep netting stretched along the demesne side of the wall. Beyond, in the field, there were a few small trees and a line of sprawling, unkempt gorse. The gorse was high in places, but once past that there was only the hillside; pale grass and the purple of new heather. He turned back into the trees. At least there was cover. In the open he had no chance against a rifle. But two shots rang out, only yards away, one biting the flesh out of a Scots pine. Alex was invisible behind him but the slightest movement in the undergrowth was enough
to show where Stefan was. Back into the gardens wasn’t the way he was meant to go. He was being pushed over the wall, into the mountains. He had no choice but to go. Alex Sinclair was not trying to kill him, not yet; he had to take whatever moments he had left.
Now he was at the broken wall. He was sure he couldn’t be seen but once he was out on the hillside he could be picked off when Alex chose, without ever coming near enough to be at risk from the revolver. ‘When he chose.’ The words sounded in Stefan’s head. Disappearance was what this was about. Hadn’t it worked with Charlotte Moore and William Byrne? A bullet in a Garda inspector would take some explaining, but if he was never found, what did it matter? Yet he felt there was more to it. He could see the smile on Alex Sinclair’s face as he left Mullacor. It was a game. There was pleasure in it. The end was inevitable, but Alex was taking his time. Whatever that time was, Stefan knew the fact he was being played with was all he had. He had to go another way to the way his pursuer was trying to make him go. He had to move down the mountain and not up it. He had to make Alex come closer.
He stepped over the sagging sheep netting and huddled in a gap in the wall that ran in a curved line between the trees of Mullacor’s demesne and the rough grazing beyond. There was cover between the wall and the gorse beside it. He inched forward, looking out at the hillside. He knew this place. He had been here before. Then he remembered the time he walked in Glendalough with Maeve, before they were married, when they had only known each other a matter of weeks. They came here, following the Lugduff Brook from the Upper Lake. He remembered her talking about the house beyond the trees and her friends there. Somewhere near here they turned back, through the narrow gorge the brook had cut through the rock. They stopped by the waterfall at Poulanass and ate a picnic. He saw the beer they put into the water below the fall to cool. He listened. There was something he heard, a low hum. The waterfall. He remembered the wooded valley. It wasn’t very far away.
That was the way he had to go.
Following the wall, with the gorse on one side, he would be hard to see. Further along he knew the hill sloped steeply down to the gorge of the Lugduff Brook. If he could get far enough ahead he might make it to the trees. A shot rang out to his left as he looked along the wall. It was there to keep him on track, to keep him going right, across towards the slopes of Lugduff. Alex felt in control. He was confident Stefan was going the right way. At some point his quarry would have to break cover; all he had to do was keep driving him uphill.
Stefan ran, crouching low, keeping the wall tight on his left. The gorse was hard up against the stones, scratching and tearing at him. He was going uphill, just as Alex Sinclair expected, but soon the land to the left would drop away abruptly. The wall seemed to peter out ahead, close to a clump of Scots pines; that was where he had to turn the other way.
He would have to run for his life down that slope, hoping that by the time Alex had him in sight again he would be close enough to the gorge itself to make the trees.
There was another noise along with the sound of the waterfall. He saw another wall. It was the same dry stone that ran round Mullacor House, but there was nothing broken-down about this. The noise was sheep, a lot of sheep, packed together. The wall was one side of a sheep pen, where the hill shepherds brought their flocks for feeding in winter and for whatever else in the way of lambing and drenching and foot-trimming and shearing through the year. The hope of finding people there was soon gone. When Stefan reached the pen there were several hundred sheep, eating the dregs of last summer’s hay. As he looked over the wall two shots sounded in quick succession to his left. Alex Sinclair had seen him now. He was driving him again, right, up towards Lugduff. Stefan threw himself over into the pen.
The ewes bleated more noisily, gazing round at him, but the sheep were his allies. There were two gates to the pen, one giving on to the slope up from Mullacor across to Lugduff, the other, in the opposite wall, opening down towards the Lugduff Brook itself. Stefan ran to the second gate and pushed it open, then launched himself back at the ewes, careering through them shouting, ‘Go on, go on, you bastards!’ He didn’t need to hide his presence. Alex knew where he was, but there was a wall and there was distance and there was confusion.
As Stefan drove them across the pen, the ewes burst through the gate and streamed down the slope towards the trees that marked the gorge of the mountain brook. And Stefan was with them, driving them on. He tore down the hill, scrambling as fast as he could, stooping and zigzagging, the sheep all round him. He wasn’t impossible to pick off, but with speed and the melee of dirty-grey bodies, it wasn’t the kind of shot even the most practised stalker would make easily. Alex Sinclair would be running to catch up now because Stefan had gone the wrong way after all. He would be breathless, shaking, angry, because the simple process of driving a man where he wanted him to go with a rifle, had failed.
There was a shot. It was close, but not as close as before. It missed, but the next might not; the game would be over. Stefan reached an outcrop of rock; the gorge was near.
The sheep knew their mountain; they scattered away left and right, aware of another wall ahead of them. Stefan leapt off the rocky outcrop; for an instant he was a sitting target there. He fell heavily and rolled downhill, hitting the stone wall at the bottom. He clambered over it, tearing his legs on the barbed wire along the top. The noise of the waterfall was a loud rumble now. It was close. And there were trees and bushes, not thick, but new cover.
The gorge cut by the Lugduff Brook was narrow. There was no forest to disappear into, but as Stefan scrambled down to the river at the bottom the trees were thicker. He couldn’t know what his hunter would do; he had to make a guess. Alex was nearer. He would know roughly where Stefan went into the trees. He would also know the only way of escape was down. He would work out Stefan’s plan because it was the only obvious plan. Down was where there were farms, roads, people. So Alex Sinclair would go further down than his quarry, then work his way back up to meet him, or simply lie in wait. And it was because the only escape was down, down towards the Upper Lake, that Stefan turned the other way and went up, back towards the mountainside he had left. He could not do what Alex could do and kill at a distance, but he did have a gun.
The odds were in the hunter’s favour; he still knew this place far better than Stefan. But Stefan could wait too. There were trees, rocks, small cliffs, cracks in the walls of the gorge. If he could make Alex come close, he had a chance.
Stefan walked along the bank of the stream, keeping as far as he could from the water’s edge, where his footprints would show. He threaded his way through the thinly leaved beeches, alders and hazels. He moved slowly in order to make as little sound as possible and to avoid anything that might give him away. A few pigeons bursting up from the trees would be enough to tell Alex where he was, and which way he was going. But his leg was slowing him now. He could feel the pain pulsing in his left ankle; the leap off the rock had done damage there. It would make running hard, but running wasn’t going to save him.
The rumble of the waterfall had become a roar. Stefan turned a bend in the gorge to see water cascading from a high, black overhang. The sun was shining. Poulanass sparkled as it had sparkled many years before. He spun round as a flock of pigeons flew over the gorge some way behind him. They had been disturbed. The hunter wasn’t waiting. He was working his way up the brook to find him. Stefan was looking for somewhere to hide. It had to be a place Alex could miss, or tight enough, narrow enough, dark enough that the odds between rifle and revolver would even. Stefan had five bullets; Alex Sinclair would have a lot more.
Above him there was a ledge, to one side of the waterfall. If he could get up there he would see his pursuer coming. It was narrow. He wouldn’t be completely invisible from below, but he decided to try. If Alex Sinclair was working up the gorge, there was little time.
He crossed the stream and reached the rock wall, but as he began to climb his ankle gave way. Pain shot through him. It wouldn’t w
ork. He might get halfway, but the last few yards would take real climbing. If his ankle gave then he would fall. He stared at the waterfall. He would have to keep going. He would have to climb the track to find another place to hide, and it would need to be on a gentler slope.
He felt the spray on his face. And then he saw the place.
Alex would have to come this way. It was the narrowest part of the gorge.
Stefan was standing on a stone in the middle of the brook, gazing at the Poulanass Waterfall, when he heard a noise. He reached for the Webley, then stopped. A small stag was at the water’s edge behind him, drinking. It had the black coat and white rump of the Sika deer that lived in the mountains. He had been standing so still that it hadn’t seen him. It looked up. He didn’t move. It stared a moment before walking slowly back into the trees.
He stepped straight into the water. There was a pool at the base of the fall. The water was deeper here. He was up to his thighs. The spray was heavier. He was soaking. He took the revolver and wrapped his jacket round it, then held the package to his chest. He stepped through the waterfall. Poulanass beat down on him, then the pool was shallower, the battering flow a trickle. The black rock-face sloped slightly outwards. He was still up to his knees in water as he pushed his back against the rock. The curtain of water was only feet away but in the dark he was invisible. He crouched over the package clasped to his chest. He waited, staring at the cascading water. As his eyes adjusted he found he could see. He could make out trees, rock, branches in the breeze. The water was very cold, but at least it numbed his ankle.
He stood behind the waterfall for what seemed a long time, growing colder. He had only thought about survival since running from the car outside Mullacor House. Now those thoughts were harder. Now he had time to think about other things. He tried to drive them out, especially thoughts about Tom. They didn’t help here. Only what happened next could help. The cold was biting into him. He couldn’t escape it. And he was shivering almost uncontrollably. The numbness was spreading up from his legs. Although he could see beyond the wall of water, he could hear nothing but the roar of Poulanass. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand there. Could he wait until night? Darkness would come. Alex Sinclair would not leave until then; but even after nightfall he would be waiting for him somewhere.
The City in Darkness Page 30
