The Ghosts of Belfast (The Twelve) jli-1

by Stuart Neville

  McGinty snorted, but his eyes gave him away. “He’d never get to me. There’s boys have been trying to get to me since 1972, and nobody’s even come close, even Delaney and those two UFF boys you fingered. Why do you think Fegan could do it?”

  Campbell locked eyes with McGinty. “Because I think he’d die trying.”

  McGinty’s stare fell away and he cleared his throat. He set off towards the car again. Campbell followed.

  “All right, I’ll tell you what,” McGinty said as they neared the Lincoln. “The cops will let Fegan go in an hour or so. You follow him and make sure he goes home. Get into the house and do him there. Lock the place up good and tight. With a bit of luck nobody’ll find him for a day or two. That’ll give me time to get what I can out of the press coverage.”

  “What about the woman?” Campbell asked. “She might twig if she tries to reach him.”

  McGinty lowered himself into the back of the Lincoln as his driver held the door. “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “She’s already taken care of.”

  Campbell hunched down in the rusting Ford Focus and watched Fegan clamber out of a taxi and pay the driver. As the cab pulled away, Fegan took delicate steps towards his front door, his hand pressed to his abdomen. Campbell’s Focus sat at the far end of Calcutta Street. He sucked air through his teeth when his quarry stooped to spit blood on the pavement. Fegan straightened, wiped his mouth clean, and let himself into his house.

  Christ

  , Campbell thought,

  the message must have been loud and clear. He’s really hurting

  .

  A part of Campbell wished Fegan would have a crack at McGinty. His skin still tingled where the politician had slapped him. The world would be no poorer for that bastard’s passing, just as it was no worse off without McKenna or Caffola. In fact, Campbell would have been delighted to help Fegan in a cull of the party. But for every politician like McGinty there were ten thugs who would gladly take his place and guide the party away from weapons like newspapers and television cameras, and back to AK47s and mortar bombs. It was sad, but true: Paul McGinty was the lesser of many evils.

  The greatest of those evils was the Bull.

  Terrance Plunkett O’Kane, a thickset man who stood six foot four, had risen to prominence as the Seventies became the Eighties, that turbulent time when the party’s political wing began to branch away from the paramilitary side. Campbell had never met the Bull, but the old man’s reputation travelled far and wide. When Campbell was still a corporal in the Black Watch he heard stories of O’Kane’s bloody ways. And when he left the barracks for the back streets of Belfast the stories grew more horrific.

  As the political process had gathered momentum, it seemed the Bull’s time had come and gone. The twenty-first century belonged to men like McGinty and his nose for a headline. Thus, as his sixties edged towards his seventies, the Bull seemed content to retire and let McGinty and his political colleagues take the reins.

  Apparently not

  , Campbell thought.

  McGinty and O’Kane were two sides of the same coin. O’Kane still commanded the loyalty of the old foot soldiers, the Eddie Coyles, and McGinty and the party leadership relied on them for their power on the street. At the same time, the party’s political influence had allowed the Bull to operate his fuel-laundering plants in relative peace for the last ten years. Each needed the other, and it was a precarious balance between the old ways and the new.

  Now Fegan was tipping that balance. Whatever insane vendetta he was bent on had the potential to wrest the wheel from the politicians’ control altogether. If Campbell’s hunch was right, and Fegan managed to get to McGinty, it could tear the party wide open. The party could fill his position, all right - in fact, rumor had it they had someone lined up to take his place if they could find a way to sideline him - but McGinty’s crew wouldn’t stand for it. A feud would almost certainly follow. Stormont was fragile enough as it stood; losing McGinty would leave it on a knife-edge.

  There was no question: Fegan had to disappear.

  And after that?

  Campbell thought about the handler’s words. He couldn’t imagine quitting. When he closed his eyes and pictured leaving this life, it was like walking off a cliff. A long drop into nothing. It made him dizzy just to picture it.

  When Campbell first came to Belfast with the Black Watch, everyone said it would never end. The divisions and hatreds were too deep-rooted. The dirty war would roll on and on, bomb upon bomb, body upon body. The politicians were too busy pandering to the bigotry of their constituents to solve the issues, and the paramilitaries were making too much money to consider any other way.

  But, in spite of every apparently insurmountable obstacle, it looked like they had finally done it. Campbell still couldn’t quite believe it. It didn’t seem real. The politicians had been cajoled, blackmailed and bullied by the British and Irish governments into figuring it out. After eighty-odd years, this tiny country finally had a future.

  And Campbell did not.

  He remembered an ancient Chinese curse as he opened the car door.

  May you live in interesting times

  , he thought.

  Campbell crossed to an alleyway between two houses. It opened to another alleyway that ran parallel to Calcutta Street, acting as a border between it and the rear of Mumbai Street. He crept along the wall, hugging the brickwork, counting gates as he passed enclosed yards. The paint on Fegan’s gate was flaked and blistered, and the wood shifted in its frame when Campbell pressed it with his fingertips. A firm kick would set it free, but he was wary of undue noise. He wasn’t keen on scaling the wall here, either. Fegan would only have to look out of a window to see him coming.

  Instead, Campbell moved back along the alleyway until he was beyond sight of Fegan’s rear windows, two houses down, and hoisted himself over the yard wall. His soft-soled trainers made no noise as he lowered himself on the other side. He went to the house’s back wall and used a bin to climb over to the adjoining yard. A small dog yapped at him as he landed on a collection of pot plants. He cursed under his breath and kicked the little mutt away. Christ, he might as well have ridden up on an elephant.

  Campbell moved fast in case the dog’s owner came to investigate. Sticking close to the wall, he peeked into Fegan’s yard. It was a simple weed-strewn concrete patch. Campbell threw his leg over the wall and let his body follow, dropping to a crouch on the other side. His back against the brickwork, he looked up at the kitchen window. The small upper pane was open. He would be able to reach in and down to open the lower latch and slip inside.

  Like most old terraced homes in Belfast, the house was a two-up-two-down with an extended kitchen at the back and a bathroom built on top. Amid the dog’s frantic barks, Campbell heard a cough and splutter from the open bathroom window above. He pictured Fegan folded over the toilet bowl, retching up gobbets of congealed blood. He pushed up with his legs to peer through the kitchen window.

  Empty.

  Another cough, then a sniff, from above. Campbell grabbed the window frame and lifted himself up onto the sill. He reached under the small open pane and down to the lower latch. With a little fumbling, he was in.

  Carefully, he maneuvered over the few dishes in the sink and gently lowered himself to the kitchen floor. His shoes barely made a sound as he moved across the linoleum, breathing through his mouth. The room was sparsely furnished and clean, apart from some hand tools arranged on a cloth. It opened onto a living room with a staircase to the left. A few pieces of shaped and polished wood sat shoulder to shoulder with a cheap radio and an empty whiskey bottle on the sideboard. More crude sculptures stood along the fireplace, and an old-looking guitar was propped in the corner.

  Now he was inside, Campbell didn’t hesitate. He went to the foot of the stairs, treading lightly. Although his pistol nestled at the small of his back, he reached for the small Gerber knife in his inside pocket. Quiet would be better. He pressed the thumb stud and the b
lade, razor sharp and gleaming, snapped open. Fegan would die with barely a sound.

  Campbell tried not to think of ripping flesh, the soft tearing sound of a blade parting meat and gristle. He ignored the racing of his heart and began his climb.

  He placed his left foot at the outer edge of the bottom step and pushed upward, bringing his right foot to the far edge of the next so the boards wouldn’t flex under his weight. Not a single creak announced his ascent. He made his way upwards, his feet to the outside of each step, silent as a ghost.

  The bathroom door was closed over, a shaft of light emerging from the crack, and Campbell heard miserable coughs and moans from the other side. Now, at the top of the stairs, he was at the mercy of hundred-year-old floorboards. He had to move quickly and decisively. He waited for another spasm of retching and spitting.

  When it came he hit the door hard, his knife ready to open the first vein it found. Instead, it found air as it swung in a useless arc over an empty toilet bowl.

  A cold hardness pressed against the skin beneath Campbell’s ear.

  “Don’t move,” Gerry Fegan said.

  28

  Fegan listened to Campbell’s deep, steady breathing. The Scot stood primed, ready to move, the knife held before him.

  “Don’t do it,” Fegan said. “I know you want to, but don’t. You’ll be dead before you move a finger.”

  Campbell’s body rippled with coiled energy. Slowly, his shoulders slumped and the energy evaporated.

  Fegan reached out and took the knife with his free hand. He folded the blade back into its grip with his thumb. It fitted neatly into his jacket pocket. He patted Campbell’s sides and back until he found a Glock 23 tucked into his waistband, underneath his denim jacket. Fegan heard the other man exhale as he removed it.

  “Turn around slowly and sit on your hands,” Fegan said.

  “Can I put the lid down?” Campbell asked.

  Fegan increased the Walther’s pressure against Campbell’s ear. “Just do it,” he said.

  Campbell reached forward and lowered the toilet lid. He turned and sat down, slipping his hands beneath his thighs.

  “Under your arse,” Fegan said. “Palms down, thumbs to the back.” He watched Campbell shift from side to side until his hands were in position.

  Campbell looked up at him. “What now?” he asked.

  “We have a talk,” Fegan said, dropping the Glock into his pocket to clank against the knife. He kept his Walther trained on Campbell. As chilled as it was, his heart hit his sternum like a battering ram, and his temples pulsed. He blotted out everything else, every shadow at the corner of his vision, and focused on Campbell.

  He’d known that someone would follow him from the police station, and he’d had a good idea it would be Campbell. During the taxi ride he saw the same Ford Focus too many times. When he got home, he went straight to his bedroom and retrieved the pistol before going to the bathroom. Fegan hadn’t faked the first retches. The water in the bowl was stained deep red, and strange aches turned in his belly. He hadn’t really expected Campbell to come into the house after him, but then he’d heard the little dog’s panicked barking from the back.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Campbell’s reddish-brown mop spilled into his eyes and he flicked his head to clear it away.

  “McGinty sent you,” Fegan said.

  “Of course.”

  “So, he’s going to do me.”

  “That was the idea,” Campbell said.

  “Why?”

  Campbell laughed and shook his head. “Jesus, why do you think?”

  “He knows what I did. He didn’t come right out and say it at Michael’s funeral, but he knows.”

  Campbell nodded. “That’s right. And the priest confirmed it this morning.”

  The chill at Fegan’s center intensified. “What?”

  “Father Coulter. That old bastard couldn’t hold his own piss. That was a stupid move, telling him.”

  The shadows pressed against Fegan’s consciousness. “I never thought he’d . . .” He pushed them back and swallowed. “I never thought he’d do that.”

  “Now you know different.”

  “Yeah, I do.” Fegan nodded, letting the betrayal sink to the bottom of his stomach. It settled there, joining the rest of the slithering aches in his gut. “What about Marie?” he asked.

  “McGinty said she’d been taken care of,” Campbell said.

  Fegan stepped closer and lowered the gun to rest on the Scot’s forehead. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Campbell said.

  Fegan snapped the Walther against Campbell’s cheek. “What does it mean?”

  Campbell slumped sideways to rest against the wall. “Fuck,” he said.

  “Sit up straight,” Fegan said. “Get your hands back under you. What does it mean?”

  Campbell did as he was told. “That’s all he said. She’d been taken care of, that’s all. I don’t know what it means.”

  Fegan raised the pistol again and Campbell screwed his eyes shut. He lowered the muzzle and pressed it against Campbell’s temple. He wanted to pull the trigger. He wanted to hear the roar in this small tiled room, then the whistling in his ears, feel the warm, gritty spots on his face, taste the copper on his lips. He wanted all that and for the two UFF boys to be gone. Christ, they wanted it too. He could feel them, watching, waiting, longing for it. Fegan so wanted to do it, to pull the trigger, but there were things he needed to know. He thought of Marie and the fine lines around her eyes, and of Ellen. The image of them in fear and pain tightened his finger on the trigger. He inhaled, the air cold at the back of his nose, clearing his head.

  “Did he hurt her?” he asked, taking the Walther away from Campbell’s temple.

  A little of the calm returned to Campbell’s face, along with a shadow of anger. “I told you I don’t know. Now, either take my word for it or shoot me, for fuck’s sake.”

  Fegan swung the Walther at Campbell’s cheek again and the impact sent a jolt up to his shoulder. The Scot slumped against the wall, his eyes glassy, blood seeping from the growing welt below his left eye. Fegan took a glass tumbler from above the washbasin, filled it with water, and threw its contents at Campbell’s face. Two more glassfuls and Campbell was upright again, sitting on his hands.

  “Who’s the cop?” Fegan asked.

  Campbell’s mouth curled in a smile. “The one who did you over? I don’t know him.” He hunched down, his head between his shoulders, when Fegan raised the gun again. “I don’t know, for Christ’s sake! He’s Patsy Toner’s contact. He knows him. I only heard of him today.”

  “I need to know who he is,” Fegan said. “I need to know why the RUC man wants him.”

  “What?” Campbell raised his head from between his shoulders, a knot in his brow.

  “If I’m going to finish this, I need to know why him. What did he do to deserve it?”

  Campbell shook his head. “What are you talking about, Gerry?”

  Fegan sighed and shrugged. “Christ knows.” He put the Walther back to Campbell’s forehead. “Well, that’s that, then.”

  “Wait!” Campbell said. “For fuck’s sake, wait.”

  “What for?” Fegan said.

  “There’s a way out of this. A way to stick it to McGinty.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “No, no, listen to me. There’s a way, I swear.”

  Fegan sighed and lifted the pistol slightly. “Go on.”

  Campbell’s quick eyes revealed the working of his mind as the words spilled out of him. “McGinty’s milking Caffola’s killing for everything he can get, saying the cops did it. And Eddie Coyle, too. He’s saying the cops beat the shit out of him. If you give yourself up, go to the law, tell them the truth, everyone will know McGinty’s a liar. He’ll be disgraced. Tell the press, tell the TV people. They’re McGinty’s lifeblood.”

  Campbell was smarter than Fegan had thought. “No, that won’t be good enough,�
� he said.

  “Come on, Gerry, you know you can’t get to him.” Campbell’s voice belied his wide, easy smile. “He’ll get you first. This way, at least you’ll live. You’ll see him destroyed and you’ll live.”

  “No.” Fegan shook his head. “I’m not going back inside. I’ll die first. Besides, McGinty can get me just as easy in prison as he can outside. Easier.”

  Campbell leaned forward, his face upturned and pleading. “Just think about it, Gerry, eh? Just take a minute and—”

  “Shush.” Fegan pressed the Walther’s muzzle against Campbell’s lips to silence him. “You know I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  Campbell gave a nervous laugh as Fegan raised the gun slightly, but he didn’t answer.