The Ghosts of Belfast (The Twelve) jli-1

by Stuart Neville

  A boom filled the hallway, and the chair jerked from Fegan’s grip to fall to the floor with a wooden clatter, the torn curtain fabric fluttering after it.

  Ellen’s scream was followed by seconds of silence, and then McGinty hissed and cursed. One more shot wasted.

  “You’ve only two left, Paul,” Fegan said.

  “That’s one for each of them, Gerry. You don’t want that to happen. Don’t make me do it. Don’t come up here.”

  “I have to, Paul.”

  “Don’t! Don’t, or I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll what?”

  “Christ,” McGinty said.

  “Killing isn’t easy, Paul. Not when it’s your own finger on the trigger.”

  “I’ll do it. Believe me, I’ll do it.”

  Fegan stood back from the doorway. He saw McGinty’s shadow against the wall as early light made its way down the stairs. “You’ve never had the guts to do it yourself, Paul. It was always people like me. The ones you filled full of hate. You never got blood on your own hands.”

  McGinty’s shadow moved back and forth as he paced above, Ellen locked in his grip. “Don’t push me, Gerry.”

  “You used people like me. You told us we didn’t have a future. You said we had to fight for it. You put the guns in our hands and sent us off to do your killing for you.”

  “You volunteered, Gerry. Just like the rest of us. Nobody made you do anything.”

  “You lied to us.”

  “Nobody made you pull the trigger, Gerry. Nobody made you plant that—”

  “You lied to me.” Fegan rested his forehead against the wall, feeling the cold dampness against his skin. “You said there was a Loyalist meeting above that butcher’s shop. You told me there was UVF and UDA, all sitting together. You said the timer was set for five minutes. Time to get the people out.”

  “It was a war. Sometimes innocent people get hurt.”

  Fegan laughed. “Sometimes. It’s never the guilty, is it? But everybody pays. What day’s today?”

  “What?”

  “It’s Sunday, isn’t it? Is it a week ago? Jesus. This day last week an old woman told me everybody pays, sooner or later. A woman whose son I killed. Michael McKenna paid for him. Now you have to pay. Three of them died. A butcher. A baby, for Christ’s sake. A mother and her baby.”

  Fegan lifted his forehead from the wall and looked back out to the hall. McGinty’s shadow was still now.

  “Just go, Gerry. Just get out of here. No one else has to get hurt.”

  “She’s here, Paul.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman. And her baby. Christ, I don’t know her name. She’s here and she wants you. Her and the butcher. You remember how it happened? It was on the news at the time. He went to pick it up, probably thought someone had forgotten their shopping. Him and the woman were closest.”

  “Don’t, Gerry.”

  “And what was it for?”

  “I was told the same as you. The Loyalists were meeting above the shop.”

  “You’re lying. You knew it was just storerooms above that shop. What was it for? Tell her what she died for.”

  McGinty’s shadow struggled with a writhing shape. Ellen jerked in his arms, still trying to break free.

  “Tell that woman and her baby what she died for, Paul. She deserves to know.”

  “There’s nobody there, Gerry. Don’t you understand that? She’s in your head.”

  “Tell her, Paul.”

  McGinty’s sigh slithered down the walls of the stairwell. “To make my mark.”

  Fegan brought his right hand to his left shoulder, feeling the heat there. Blood trickled down to his fingertips. “Make your mark.”

  “Yes. To make the leadership notice me. I’d been on the sidelines too long - I needed something big to get the headlines they wanted.”

  “You had me plant that bomb, kill those people, for headlines? To make a name for yourself?”

  “I had to, Gerry. And it worked. I saw the way things were going, even then. The politics, the elections. I had to get a leg up then, or I never would. I’d just be another foot soldier like you or Eddie Coyle.”

  Fegan looked to the woman and her baby. And the butcher with his round, red face. “To make a name for yourself. They died to make your name.”

  “But I did good, Gerry. Think about it. I helped build the peace. I kept the boys on the streets in line. Me, Gerry. It would’ve fallen apart if it wasn’t for me. But you’ve risked it all. Do you hear me? All those lives for nothing, all that labor, the heartbreak, the years - you might have wasted them all. And what for? For some figments of your imagination?”

  McGinty’s voice had taken on that familiar color: the politician’s sheen, the twisted rhetoric.

  Fegan rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, the Walther still in his grip. “What was her life worth?”

  “Enough, Gerry.”

  “And her baby’s?”

  “Come on, you know the—”

  “And the butcher. What was his life worth? Or any of them? What were they worth to you, Paul?”

  “It was you, Gerry. You killed them. Nobody else.”

  Fegan brought his bloodied hands to his temples, the Walther cold against his scalp. “I know.”

  McGinty’s voice hardened. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like it. Don’t tell me you didn’t love the power of it.”

  “Shut up.”

  “All that respect you got. Everywhere you went, people looked up to you. The great Gerry Fegan. And you pissed it all away. What are you now, eh?”

  “Shut up.”

  McGinty laughed. “You’re just a drunk who’s gone soft in the head. So you turn against your own just so you can make yourself feel like a big man again. Is that it, Gerry? Is that what this is about? You’re just a lonely, drunk has-been who’s nothing without a gun and someone to point it at.”

  Fegan screwed his eyes closed. “Shut your mouth!”

  “And what about when it’s over, eh? What then? What’ll you be, Gerry?”

  Fegan dropped low and ducked his head out into the hallway, the Walther aimed upwards. McGinty’s revolver flashed and a bullet threw splinters and plaster dust into Fegan’s face. He fell back into the room, coughing as dust hitched in his throat. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes.

  One left.

  He looked up to see the woman and her baby, the butcher at their side. The infant squirmed as the woman and the butcher pointed up at McGinty. Fegan watched the shadow move along the wall as the politician paced. Ellen whimpered and moaned, seemingly too exhausted to wail as she had before.

  “You didn’t answer the question, Gerry.”

  Fegan got to his feet, wincing at the throbbing from his left shoulder. His arm grew heavier by the moment and his legs quivered as fatigue dissolved his strength. He had to end it soon.

  “You’ve only one bullet left,” he said.

  “One’s enough,” McGinty said.

  “Not if it doesn’t put me down.”

  “It’s not for you. It’s for her.”

  Fegan looked to the shadow. The shape was becoming clearer, harder in the growing light. He could make out McGinty’s form, crouched, Ellen held close. Where was the gun?

  He looked to the woman. “Jesus, where’s the gun?”

  She had no answer; she just kept her fingers trained on McGinty. The politician’s shadow shifted on the wall.

  “Come and see, Gerry.”

  58

  Fegan edged to the doorway and slowly leaned out to see the window at the top of the stairs. McGinty hunkered down beneath it, Ellen held in front of him, the revolver behind her head where she couldn’t see it.

  “Gerry,” she said, “I want to go home.”

  “Soon, sweetheart. You and your Mummy and me. We’ll all go home together. I promise.”

  McGinty gave a high, watery laugh. “You didn’t answer me, Gerry. What happens next?”

  Fegan stepped out into the h
allway, the Walther lowered to his side. He moved it behind his body so Ellen couldn’t see it.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Do you think you’ll go home and play happy families with Marie McKenna? Do you think you’ll be a father to this wee girl? You think Marie’s going to want anything to do with you, now she knows what you’ve done?”

  The woman and the butcher made way as Fegan moved towards the bottom step. “I don’t know.”

  McGinty’s hand trembled. Pale slivers of early light reflected on the revolver’s barrel. “You don’t know. There’s a lot you don’t know.” He smiled, sweat shining on his upper lip. “You don’t know about Marie calling me when she found out that cop was cheating on her. Or how I went round to see her that night, and how she pulled me into her bed. She did it just to spite him, to get back at him, same way she’s used you to spite me.”

  Fegan climbed up two steps.

  McGinty pressed his lips against Ellen’s hair. “She never told me if the child was mine. Stop there.”

  Fegan froze with his bloody hand on the rail, his right foot two steps above his left, the Walther pressed against his thigh.

  McGinty’s eyes went far away. “I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

  Fegan brought his left foot up to join his right. The smooth rail slipped through his blood-slicked fingers. “I don’t want her to see this,” he said. “Neither do you.”

  “Just let me go, Gerry.”

  “I can’t do that. Where’s Marie?”

  McGinty nodded to the side, somewhere beyond Fegan’s vision. “She’s in there. Bull knocked her out. Let me go, Gerry.”

  Fegan climbed another step. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. She’s just sleeping. Let me go. Please.”

  And another step. “No, Paul, I can’t. Let Ellen go to her mother.”

  “I’m taking her with me.”

  And another. “No, you’re not.”

  McGinty’s shoulders shook as he exhaled. “Christ, please, Gerry. Let me go. I’m begging you. Don’t make me do . . . this.”

  One more step. “You won’t hurt her,” Fegan said. “Let her go to Marie.”

  McGinty’s eyes were blue and glittering. Fegan’s own stare fixed on them as he took another step. McGinty’s breath came in thin, keening whines. He blinked sweat away from his eyes. His lip trembled.

  He pushed.

  59

  Ellen slammed into Fegan’s chest, sending him reeling backwards. He grabbed at the rail with his left hand to save them both from tumbling down the stairs, and pain flared as he wrenched his injured shoulder. His good arm snaked around the girl as McGinty disappeared into the shadows above.

  Ellen scrambled up Fegan’s torso as he found his balance, wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his middle. “Gerry,” she cried, ‘take me home.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

  She buried her face between his neck and shoulder. The sweet smell of her hair filled his head and his heart.

  “You’re cut,” she said.

  “I’m all right. Where’s your Mummy?”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No, sweetheart.” Fegan climbed the last few steps to the top, keeping his eyes on the shadows that had swallowed McGinty. “Where’s your Mummy?”

  She looked to the door to Fegan’s left, the opposite direction to McGinty’s flight. He opened it and took one glance back at the shadows before slipping inside and closing it behind him.

  A single stained mattress lay on the floor at the center of the room. Marie McKenna sprawled across it, her mouth open, her eyes moving behind closed lids.

  Fegan carried Ellen to the mattress and lowered her to rest beside her mother. Marie’s eyes fluttered open, her pupils dilated, unfocused.

  “Gerry?”

  Fegan kneeled over her. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”

  “Safe,” she said. She smiled once, and then her eyelids flickered and closed. Fegan smoothed Ellen’s hair, tainting the strands red.

  “You wait here with your Mummy till I come and get you, all right?”

  Ellen grabbed his lapels. “Don’t go!”

  “I’ll be back soon. I promise. Stay here with your Mummy. Don’t come out, no matter what you hear. All right?”

  She nodded and released his jacket.

  “Good girl,” Fegan said. He touched her cheek as she lay down and rested her head against her mother’s bosom. Then he stood and went to the door. Turning back to her, he said, “Remember, stay with your Mummy, no matter what you hear.”

  Fegan put his eye to the crack of the door and eased it open. The corridor was empty. He opened the door fully, slipped out, and closed it again. There were two more doors: one just beyond the stairway, facing back to the rear of the house, and the other at the end of the corridor, facing him. Both were closed.

  He raised the Walther and inched forward, his breathing slow, listening, as the followers stayed close behind him. Two steps took him to the top of the stairway, another three to the door beyond. He pressed his ear against it. Nothing but dripping water. The doorknob was slippery in the bloody fingers of his left hand. Weakened and clumsy, they struggled to grip the brass. He turned it, pushed hard, and raised the Walther.

  The door swung back on its hinges to collide with the wall. Dislodged tiles splintered on the floor. Fegan winced at the noise. The room held an old scroll-top bathtub, a toilet and a washbasin. Water pooled on the linoleum-covered floor, and a deep, dank smell climbed into Fegan’s nose and mouth.

  No McGinty.

  He looked to the other door. A noise, the faintest of rustlings, came from beyond it. Fegan took slow, soft steps towards the room. The rustling stopped. He reached out to the doorknob, his pistol ready, his breath held firm in his chest.

  Fegan moved fast, turning the handle, pushing, dropping to his knees, aiming. The door frame exploded in a shower of rotting wood and he fell back, landing on his wounded shoulder. He pushed the pain away, and scrambled to a crouch. The room was in darkness. He’d barely seen the muzzle flash from inside.

  The woman and the butcher stepped forward. They both looked at Fegan and stabbed their fingers towards the room. McGinty was in there, hiding in the thick shadows.

  “He’s got no ammunition left,” Fegan said.

  The woman smiled and nodded as she rocked her baby.

  Fegan stood upright and advanced slowly to the door. His eyes searched the darkness but he found only shades of grey and black. He raised the Walther in his right hand, and tried to bring his left up to steady it, but it was too heavy. His left shoulder throbbed with a spiteful heat, and he felt warmth spread down his side.

  The dark shapes solidified as Fegan’s eyes attuned to the shadows. Old furniture was piled in here, tables, chairs, cupboards, dressing tables. McGinty could be hiding in or under anything. Fegan eased over the threshold, floorboards creaking under his feet. Dust crept into his nostrils and he fought the urge to sneeze. It snagged the back of his throat and he wanted to—

  A thunderbolt struck Fegan’s head and the room spun away from him. He careened into the wall, the Walther slipping from his fingers to skitter across the floorboards into the shadows. McGinty screamed as he brought the revolver down again, but Fegan got his forearm up in time to deflect the blow. He pushed back and McGinty stumbled away, crashing into an upturned table. Fegan dived at him, but McGinty threw himself to the side, leaving Fegan to fall against the upended table legs. He cried out as the wooden feet gouged his stomach and ribs.

  McGinty tried again to slam the side of the pistol into Fegan’s temple, and he came close, but Fegan pulled his head back, leaving McGinty punching uselessly at empty air. Fegan turned as McGinty’s balance deserted him and he drove his fist into the politician’s temple.

  McGinty went down hard, his chin cracking on the floorboards, and Fegan was on his back before he could recover. Fegan wrapped his right arm around
McGinty’s neck, the crook of his elbow beneath the other’s jaw, and squeezed. McGinty bucked and writhed, and Fegan put his weight on the other’s back, but still he struggled. He clawed at Fegan’s hand, scratching, but Fegan only increased the pressure on his neck.