Disappeared

by Anthony Quinn

  “Exactly,” said Dermot. “That’s what they want you to think.”

  “What proof could you give a court of law that you’re telling me the truth?”

  “Hughes will back me up. That’s why we need to find him. Why else would I have contacted you?”

  When they got back to the cottage, Daly asked Dermot for the cigarette lighter.

  “I don’t want you losing vital evidence,” he joked, placing the lighter safely in his pocket. In truth, he was worried about what might happen if he fell asleep with Dermot as a houseguest. His father’s cottage was insured against fire, but not one started by a boy with a track record of arson. From the hallway, he phoned headquarters to organize a search for Hughes. A helicopter was mobilized to sweep the fields and roads around the scene of the accident while officers were dispatched to carry out house-to-house inquiries. The police officers would have their work cut out for them. The moon had yet to rise and the darkness was dense. Anxious to dispel his sense of hopelessness, he brought the boy into the living room and made coffee.

  Over a turf fire, Dermot opened up about his feelings.

  “All I ever wanted to know was where my father was buried,” he told Daly. “I didn’t care about his killers or what happened to them. As long as I never had to meet them. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Then I learned from Hughes that Sweeney was involved in Dad’s abduction. The great politician and peace broker. It sickened me to see he was still alive, feeding his rotten soul with the illusion he was a man of peace. I couldn’t forgive him. Now that I knew who he was and where he lived, I wanted to finish him off. It enraged me to think he had profited so much from the Troubles. He should have spent the last thirty years of his life hiding like a leper.”

  The turf burned quickly, inflaming their eyes with its sweet smoke. Outside a branch cracked and an owl hooted in the darkness. Dermot crouched by the fire, wanting to give himself up entirely to the comfort of heat.

  “But he’s dead now,” he continued. “I thank God it wasn’t me that did it. He wasn’t worth it. I would have slipped to his level, fallen into a hole with him, never to get out again.”

  A lump of bog root burst into flames, sending out a shower of sparks. Daly’s head felt light and fuzzy. The blue smoke of the turf was redolent with so many memories.

  “My mother was killed in SAS crossfire,” he said. “The day it happened I wanted to go and find her killers. I was fifteen.” He stopped suddenly, regretting the words he had let slip, as if he had betrayed a secret and now wanted to recover it. Dermot’s anger had ignited an adolescent rage within him.

  He had let that anger go, as he had let everything else go. Never putting up a fight for anything. All he had wanted to do was look after himself, no one else. In the same way, he had let his wife go. Work had just been an excuse, a means of avoiding getting too close to anyone. He had walked alone all his life, like an escaped convict, shackled to his fear. Cramped up by the dread of losing another loved one.

  The fire burned down to its embers. Daly went out for a fresh load of turf. The darkness was filled with the sound of the wind howling through trees. He felt the wild air of the lough blow through him. He was surrounded by memories, the wind puncturing holes in the darkness through which ghosts could stream.

  “Tell me about David Hughes,” he asked on his return.

  A grim expression appeared on Dermot’s face. “What is there you don’t already know? He’s a confused old man carrying a load of terrible memories. Like a boat that can’t find a safe harbor. He’s plagued by ghosts and visions from his past.”

  “Some of his ghosts are substantial enough, whatever you might think. I ran into a few of them myself.”

  Daly described his suspicions that Devine had dressed up as the ghosts that appeared around Hughes’s cottage.

  “Why would he do a thing like that? That’s sick.”

  “He wanted Hughes to talk about the past. A bit like what you were doing in the nursing home. Call it reminiscence therapy with a supernatural twist.”

  “Why didn’t he just ask him straight-out?”

  “And have Special Branch alerted? Devine knew that however Hughes might try to explain their secret meetings along the hedge, the whole thing would always sound unreal, ghostly, even to Hughes himself. Remember, Hughes had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He didn’t believe his own eyes, so how could he persuade anyone else?” Daly threw some more turf onto the fire. “Hughes had once been the spymaster, but now Devine was pulling the strings. This time it was the informer who was extracting the information from the spymaster.”

  “Was there a pattern to his visits?” asked Dermot.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did they occur at a particular time of the day or week?”

  “I don’t think so. According to Hughes’s journal, the ghosts came anytime they pleased.”

  “He told me he could always sense when they were due.”

  Daly took out the journal and they examined the entries. There were no obvious clues of the ghostly visits following a timetable or plan. Dermot took the book and began leafing through the pages. He only paid attention to the dates and began writing them down.

  “Have you a calendar?” he asked.

  Daly retrieved one from the kitchen wall. He gave a low whistle of surprise as Dermot marked down the dates. They corresponded with the nights of the full moon. They sat quietly for a moment, taking in the pattern.

  “The last full moon was February fourth,” said Daly.

  His finger followed the days until he came to the start of March.

  “We need to get going. There’s a full moon tonight. Hughes might be waiting for a rendezvous with his supernatural friends as we speak.”

  The wind that blew from the lough was cold, the moonlit sky clear of clouds, the water gleaming silver in the distance. The cottage lay abandoned, and the fields empty of human life. Lurking in the corners of the field were the whitethorn trees, their blossoms pale in the moonlight.

  As Daly and the boy skirted the hedgerows around Hughes’s cottage, he had the impression he was approaching the advance posts of a hidden enemy. He hoped to find the old man quickly so they could all return to his house, eat, sleep, and build up their strength before dawn. A new day would give him the chance to clear his head and put everything right. Perhaps he would take the cowardly approach and lay the entire case at Inspector Fealty’s feet. Absolve himself of any responsibility for what happened after Dermot and the old man had been found.

  In the moonlight, he could see the figure of a man sitting on a stone. He had his chin propped on a stick and was gazing out at the lough. Daly called to him, but the person did not hear. He went up close and saw that it was Hughes. He looked up at Daly and shook his head.

  “Joseph Devine and then Owen Sweeney, both dead. What’s bad is that I pushed Devine when he didn’t want to carry on. He begged me to let him go. He wanted a green card, and a new life in the US. But I kept jerking him into the air. Like a puppet. I kept him walking and talking the way I wanted. I told him he could never leave. His only way out was to tie a stone around his neck and throw himself into the lough.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Dermot, appearing at Daly’s side.

  “I can’t ignore what’s in my heart. Your friend here and the ghosts need to hear this. I went to your father’s memorial service all those years ago, and I watched your mother cry. Now I feel her weeping inside me. It’s as if she’s wringing out my soul.”

  He caught Dermot by the arm. “Tell the ghost I didn’t mean to do all those things. They were just orders I was obeying.”

  “Tell who?”

  “The ghost that’s come to sniff out its killers.”

  “There are no ghosts,” said Daly. “It was Devine impersonating dead people all along.”

  Hughes’s eyes grew terrified. “Devine? Has he come back too?”

  The old man looked at Daly. “Do you know what’s going
on? What secrets are you hiding?”

  There was a soft cough in the darkness behind them, like a cork popping out of a bottle.

  Then the flare of a match as someone lit a cigarette.

  “Excuse me, but I couldn’t stay quiet for much longer,” said Grimes, striding toward them, the cigarette blazing and the steel muzzle of a gun gleaming in his outstretched hand. “Though I have been very discreet up until now.”

  He studied Dermot’s frightened face. “I respect your resourcefulness, but it’s the end of the road for you now, young man. You’ve run out of options.”

  Daly tried to appraise the situation as quickly as possible.

  “Whoever it is you’re trying to protect, they’re safe,” he said. “No one’s interested in unraveling Hughes’s network of spies. The boy just wanted to find out where his dad’s body was buried. There’s no reason to do away with any of us. Nothing to be gained, a lot to lose.”

  Grimes appeared to listen. He blinked at Daly. He looked down at the old man for a while, weighing up his silence and confusion, the loneliness that was plain to see in his gaunt features.

  “I’m taking on board what you’re saying,” he replied. “But you see, I’ve been made an offer. An opportunity to make some really big money. Plus I’ve a gilt-edged reputation as a reliable hit man. Letting you lot go would do it serious harm. Now, tell me why should I risk that?”

  Daly searched for an answer and found it. The answer was he shouldn’t. Of course not. All three of them were expendable. All three of them were tarnished in some respect, and discredited. The teenage arsonist, the senile spy handler who talked to ghosts, and the police detective with the flawed judgment and misplaced loyalties. Had he only known it, Dermot had done Grimes and whoever was paying him a favor by entangling Daly in the trap. There’d be no one left to question the circumstances of their deaths. No one else in the police force pointed in the right direction. It was an overwhelmingly persuasive argument from Grimes’s viewpoint.

  “How well do you know the people you’re working for?” asked Daly. “Can you trust them?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you really think you’re going to be able to grab your money, take off, and disappear? Have you not thought of what arrangements they might have made behind your back?”

  “You’re trying to distract me from my mission. Maybe even buy yourself some more time. It’s to be expected. I’d do the same in your circumstances.”

  Daly persisted, hoping to press home his advantage. “You’re doing all their dirty work for them. What’s to stop them from eliminating you, too? Look at it from their perspective. It’s the only way to ensure the truth will never come out.”

  “I’m getting tired of this silly conversation,” said Grimes, a forced smile playing on his lips. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve made my own contingency plans. I treat all my employers with the utmost suspicion.”

  “I hope you’re relying on something more than their goodwill. Just think about it. Three unexplained murders are going to raise a lot of questions. People will want a scapegoat, someone to blame.”

  “I can give you some reassurance that won’t happen. Unfortunately, it might not be to your liking.” He paused to take another drag of the cigarette and fill his lungs with pleasure. “This gun I’m holding is a Glock 19. There’s nothing special about it. It’s as good a killing device as any other gun. Except that it’s registered in the name of David Hughes. For his personal protection.”

  Daly went cold.

  “I’m keeping to my agreement. I’ve told you that already. Do you still have any reason to doubt that?” He smiled at Daly, coaxing him to join in his good humor. It looked like checkmate.

  Daly realized he had just one remaining chance to save the three of them. And he needed to take it while he still had strength.

  Grimes lined the three of them up and made them walk down toward the lough. They gave little resistance as he started tying them up, first Hughes and then Dermot. Grimes had no reason to be impatient. He took his time, making sure the knots were strong. It was a misconception that fear made people unpredictable, he thought. On the contrary, it was like a numbing drug. Fear made its victims very boring.

  Finally, it was Daly’s turn. Grimes pushed him to his knees and leaned over him with the rope. Daly raised his hands upward and then at the last moment let them drop.

  “Lift them up!” barked Grimes.

  Daly leaned back into a squatting position and raised his hands slightly, luring Grimes closer.

  “Sit up.”

  Grimes paused but Daly refused to budge. Cursing, he swung his boot at the detective’s ribs. Daly dodged the blow and waited until the arc of Grimes’s kick flew into thin air, then rammed his body into the hit man’s standing knee. Grimes saw it coming and tried to cling on to Daly’s propelled body, but his leg buckled from underneath. The hand carrying the rope fumbled in the darkness for a grip before he fell back with a heavy thud.

  Daly wondered if he should take another swing at Grimes, for good measure, but he feared his physical strength might not be enough. Instead, he flew forward. Keeping his head low, he scurried for cover. Soon he was running into the darkness of a hedge, a hail of thorns pricking his face and hands.

  He scrambled along the roots of the hedge, feeling as though he had spent the entire month in the shadow of thorn trees. Running up and down, doing little more than beating the hard winter ground harder. Grimes’s flashlight tracked back and forth behind him.

  “If you don’t come back, I’ll shoot the boy,” warned Grimes.

  Daly lost time pausing to get his whereabouts, searching for the gap in the hedge that had been sawn down months ago. The hole through which the ghosts and Hughes’s dark wind had blown all winter. A crashing sound alerted him to Grimes’s approaching presence. He flung himself deeper into the hedge, fearing each moment was going to be his last. He crawled along the muddy track of a ditch. Even if he managed to escape, Grimes would undoubtedly go back and shoot the old man and the boy. Running away was pointless. Instead, he had to find another way out, one that would include the rescue of his companions. The moon came out and an owl hooted nearby. He was close to the gap in the hedge and its uninterrupted view of the cottage’s back door. Somewhere in the wizened branches above him lurked the hidden eye that had tracked Hughes’s movements through the winter.

  He fumbled through the earth and wet leaves until he found it—a heavy metal object buried like a log in the hedge bank. He pulled at it and a cable sprang out of the earth. He had located the battery pack and lead for the surveillance camera that he’d guessed had been concealed somewhere in the branches above. The device had probably been operating for months, Daly reasoned. It had been monitored by Special Branch, who alerted Devine via the pager whenever Hughes had wandered from the house.

  It was easy to disconnect the lead from the battery pack. He watched as a warning light flashed silently on the pack. Eyes on target no longer.

  The wind picked up, sending the branches slashing sideways. The scent of the ditch’s leafy dregs rose from the disturbed earth, filling Daly’s nostrils. A pang of doubt and anxiety overcame him. Perhaps all he had done was ensure that his final moments at the hands of a bloody assassin would never be recorded. He turned and walked back toward the torchlight with his hands raised in the air.

  When Grimes had tied Daly securely, he dragged him back to where the old man and the boy were kneeling. Only Hughes struggled now, twisting and turning his body in an attempt to loosen the ropes, knocking shoulders with Dermot, grumbling in desperation. His confusion no longer seemed irrational or berserk, but necessary in a blind, stubborn way. Perhaps it was this refusal to give in that had helped him stagger through the unwinding events of the past few weeks. The boy was kneeling beside Hughes, his head bent, like the prow of a boat cleaving through the wake of madness stirred up by the old man. It seemed to take all his effort not to fall forward.

 
Daly felt as though he did not quite belong to this final scene. The old man and the boy might be father and son, their huddled silhouettes merging together in the moonlight. Daly knelt on his own, waiting for the darkness to be punctured by the rip of gunfire.

  “It was you that murdered Devine,” said Daly, still playing for time.

  “Please,” said Grimes. “Murder is not a kind enough word. I eliminated an individual who betrayed countless victims and thought he had evaded all his enemies.”

  “He left a message behind. In a newspaper obituary.”

  “And what good did that do him?”

  The patience of Grimes’s wait, the mildness of his movements as he took the final drags of his cigarette seemed unbearable to Daly. The way in which Grimes was dragging out their execution was the mark of a man who took pleasure in never hurrying.

  Hughes’s breath rose and fell like the bellow of a bull about to die: sharp, and hoarse, and then sharp again. The old man had given up his struggle. He was exhausted.

  But when the shots went off, they sounded farther away and higher up than Daly expected. From behind them, there was the sound of a rotten branch being kicked. He turned around and saw Grimes’s body fall to the ground, his spine crumpled by a series of high-caliber bullets. Daly crouched against the ground and closed his eyes.

  When he looked up again, he saw two soldiers with night-vision goggles breathing heavily and staring at him, semiautomatic guns nestled in their arms. Another two soldiers were helping Hughes and Dermot to their feet.

  One of them introduced himself to Daly as Captain Shane Kerr, the head of an SAS unit that had been dug in at an abandoned cottage nearby. Their mission had been to pick up Hughes if he ever returned to the house. They had been monitoring the camera and its view of the cottage when the alarm went off, alerting them to the fact that someone had tampered with the equipment.