“Ye’ve seen Pamela, then?”
Patrick had never been one for small talk, and now it would have been ludicrous to even attempt it. It was one of the things that Jamie had always appreciated about the man.
“Yes, last night. She held it together well, but it was clear how distraught she was.”
“Aye,” Pat said grimly, “distraught is one way to put it. I don’t know what to do for her or how to make it better. There aren’t words with which to reassure, because the truth is, I’m as fearful as she is.”
“I’m sorry, Patrick.”
Pat nodded, face suddenly tight with repressed emotion.
“Jamie, if you could have seen her that first night—just running through the woods calling his name, getting more desperate by the second, calling until her voice left her and she was scratched and bruised and bleeding from running headlong through every gully and patch of shrubs that she came across. I thought she might go mad in those first few days. I thought I might, come to that. There was no trace, and it doesn’t matter who she has appealed to for help, nor what questions she and I have asked—it’s truly as if Casey did disappear into thin air. But ye know as well as I do that’s none so rare in this country as it might be in others.”
Unfortunately, this was all too true. In Northern Ireland, with clandestine illegal armies and their countless splinters operating at all times, people disappeared on a regular basis. Someone with Casey’s history—well, it wasn’t a stretch to think that he was just another casualty in this never-ending little war. Yet, Jamie had a niggling feeling that whatever had happened to Casey wasn’t so simple as that, and that finding the answers was going to be very difficult, particularly in a culture where talking often meant an unpleasant death.
“Pamela says you’ve been in law school. I’m glad for you. It suits you. I can see a man like yourself doing great good as a solicitor in this country.”
“I need to make a difference in some way. The gun is not a natural fit, so I thought I could bash some civility into my fellow man through the uses of the law.”
“I wish you luck with that. I’ve had more than one briefing on the state of things here in our wee country this morning, and I can’t say it filled me with optimism.”
“Aye, it’s worse, though ye’ll know that by now. The violence has escalated, lots of tit-for-tat killings, an’ of course no results that anyone could agree on from the convention. It seems attitudes an’ positions have hardened just that bit more, an’, as is usual, total intransigence rules the day. It seemed for about two minutes that somethin’ might come of the convention, but in the end ’twas the usual that won out—no emergency coalition, no compromise—the usual Ulster slogan ‘Not an Inch’. We seem to have stagnated into an endless cycle of violence. The Brits are hardened into their role of the caretaker an’ peacekeeper between the warrin’ factions of the insane Irish. I guess it allows them to sleep at night, even if the tale they tell themselves bears little resemblance to the truth.”
“I suppose we all need our illusions about who we are, even on a national level, but it’s costing us a bit too dear here in Northern Ireland for the British to keep their tale of imperial glory.”
“There’s more too, somethin’ that maybe ye’ve not heard yet.”
Jamie arched a brow in inquiry, a small thread of unease spooling at the base of his spine. Patrick had a look on his face that said the man was about to tell him something awful, and Pat Riordan wasn’t a man who frightened easily.
“There’s been some killings that are different. These aren’t the normal level of violence. These seem something else altogether, an’ it worries me.”
“Go on.”
“There’ve been two incidents so far. The first was in a spirits shop. They killed the two sisters that ran the shop, an’ a teenaged boy that filled the orders for them an’ such. While that, sadly, isn’t out of the normal line of things, the way they were tortured before death is.”
It was like something cold had crept in under the study door with Pat’s words. Jamie remained silent, listening.
“They pulled a few teeth—molars—a few fingernails, an’ the head was almost severed from the boy’s body. The next instance, it was a Catholic man in his twenties, grabbed off the street while he was makin’ his way home after the pub closed for the night. He was a bit worse for the wear when he left, the publican said, but not so much that he couldn’t find his way home. Only he never did. The body was in a terrible state. My source says some of the police—hardened veterans—threw up at the scene.”
Jamie felt as if his blood had pooled in his feet.
“Are you afraid Casey might have been a victim of this gang?”
“Aye, I am, though ‘tisn’t so much their style to hide a body an’ that’s the one thing that gives me hope that he’s still alive, or that he met a much swifter an’ more merciful end.”
“Do you think he’s dead, Pat?”
He would not have dared to ask the question of Pamela, but Patrick had been born to this hard little city in this hard little country, and had long been toughened to its harsher realities.
“I don’t know, Jamie. I hope he’s alive. I pray for it every moment that I am awake an’ I come up from sleep with that same prayer on my lips an’ a flame of hope in my heart. But if he were alive, what’s keepin’ him away? Because you an’ I both know there’s not a thing on earth that would keep him from Pamela an’ the babbies. An’ that’s where the prayer turns to ashes in my mouth an’ that small flame in my heart sputters.”
They sat in silence for a moment, because there weren’t words to fill the void that hung in the air or the years that had lapsed since they had seen each other and all that had taken place in that time. They were friends enough not to try. There was, however, still one thing left to be said.
“Pamela will have told ye about David, then?” Pat asked, voice no more substantial than the smoke that filtered up from the peat in the hearth.
“Yes, she did.” He chose his next words carefully. “If you ever want to speak of it, Patrick, then you know I will listen. I was so sorry to hear of his death. I will miss him.”
David Kendall and Patrick Riordan ought to have been natural enemies. One a British agent and the other a Nationalist boy from the hard end of Belfast and yet through strange circumstances they had become best friends. Jamie knew David’s death and the circumstances surrounding it would weigh hardest on Pat.
Pat shook his head. “Thank ye, Jamie. If the time arrives that I feel I must talk of it, then likely I will come to you. I know ye cared for him. Just now, I feel as if I don’t have words in my heart for it.”
He knew that only too well. He had a list of names in his own heart right now, for which there were no words to speak.
“Robert tells me that Joe Doherty was killed a year back. I understand someone worse has taken his place.”
“Ye know how it is, it only takes a few to cause disproportionate trouble in this town. The faces change, the numbers don’t.”
He understood what Pat was saying. A dirty war was like that, attrition came in a number of ways: violent death, aging out of the cause, the lure of money found on the edges of any illegal organization, the exercise of personal power where men became kings of their own cause, modified along more violent lines and with far more dubious aims. Some left for higher motives, like Casey who had left in the end because he loved his family more than he loved the conflict. Which begged the question of why someone had chosen now to see him as a threat.
“Thus far, I haven’t found out anything new, Patrick. I will continue to make inquiries. I’ll do everything I can to help.”
Pat acknowledged this statement with a weary smile that did not reach his eyes.
“Ye’ll have yer own worries, Jamie. An’ I’m told ye’ve brought a son back with ye.”
“I have indeed, in fact I think I hear his roar right now. Come meet him.”
They followed the outraged howls
to the kitchen where Kolya had worked himself into a fine temper over Vanya’s removal of a teacup from his hand.
Jamie picked him up and swung him over his head and Kolya’s fury changed instantly to shrieks of joy.
“There now, mishka moy, you are all fine now.”
“He’s a hale little mannie,” Pat said. Kolya went quiet and looked with wide blue eyes at the big, dark man in front of him. He took him in in parts and Pat smiled when the blue eyes reached his face. Kolya put his arms around his father’s neck and peeked out shyly at Pat.
Jamie put him down on the floor. Kolya wobbled for a second and then got his bearings. If it were possible to look like a Russian emperor at age one and one month, Kolya most assuredly did. He walked directly to Pat, as though there had been no fit of shyness, holding his arms up when he reached the support of Pat’s legs. Pat swung him up easily, resting Kolya’s bottom on his forearm.
Pat stayed awhile longer, dandling Kolya on his knee, while they shared a pot of tea and some of Maggie’s biscuits. He chatted with both Shura and Vanya, taking the presence of these two men in Jamie’s home in stride, as if everyone brought home Russian dissidents from their time in the gulag.
“I ought to head home, I suppose,” Pat said as the twilight began to creep in at the windowsills and slip over them, gathering in soft pools where the walls met the stone-flagged floor.
“Stay to supper. Maggie’s trying to fatten me up, apparently within a week judging from the amount of food she has cooked since our arrival.”
“It’s kind of ye to offer, but well,” his face flushed, “supper will be waitin’ for me at home.”
Jamie raised one gull-winged eyebrow in surprise.
“Aye, there’s a woman,” Pat said answering the eyebrow with a tentative look. Jamie understood, for he had been very fond of Patrick’s young wife, Sylvie, who had worked for him for a short time. She had died the day after they had married, killed by a car bomb that had been meant to kill Patrick.
“I’m glad to hear it. I hope she makes you happy.”
“She does, but there is the one thing, an’ I’d as soon ye heard it from me. She’s Noah Murray’s sister.”
Jamie coughed, giving himself a minute to cover his surprise.
Pat gave him a sardonic look. “Aye, I know what ye’re thinkin’ but it happened before I even realized it. I never meant to care for someone so, didn’t think I could really, not after Sylvie. Kate was just there though. She’s the most maddenin’, stubborn, infuriatin’ woman imaginable, an’ I adore her, an’ she loves me despite her own good sense.”
Noah Murray. Possibly the one name in the six counties most likely to make a man’s blood run cold in his veins. And Patrick was in love with his sister. Mind you if the man hadn’t killed Pat yet, he might spare him a bit longer.
Noah Murray ran one of those infamous splinter groups that Pat had mentioned during their conversation. In truth, it wasn’t so much a splinter group as an army and a fiefdom unto itself. Noah Murray was the king of South Armagh and he ruled the Provisional IRA in that area, and a more ruthless lot was not to be found in all the various groupings of the Irish Republican Army’s history. Not many men frightened Jamie Kirkpatrick, but given thought, Noah Murray might.
“An’ on that note,” Pat said, “I’d best get myself home before I’m late for my supper.”
Pamela arrived some time after Jamie’s own supper, when he had removed himself to the study to take a phone call which went on in length and content until he realized he was making noises of agreement but not listening to what was said any longer. He knew it was her because Montmorency, curled up on the rug before the fire for most of the day, had shot out of the study door like a much younger dog. He found his visitors in the kitchen, Pamela talking to Maggie while a small boy played at her feet with a set of wooden cars. Wee Isabelle was held over her shoulder, and the dark eyes stared wide-eyed at him, the tiny face surrounded in its halo of wild curls. He smiled at her and she smiled back, a resplendent expression of healthy pink gums and tongue. Pamela turned and he saw something relax a tiny bit in her expression, at the sight of him.
His own child was dragging himself up on Pamela’s leg by clutching her jeans, one jammy hand over the other. She looked down at his son, Isabelle bouncing in her arms and then glanced back at Jamie, her eyes bright with tears. “Oh, Jamie, he’s beautiful. I’m so happy for you.”
“And I for you,” he said softly, looking at her two healthy whole children, and thinking how far they had both come in a short time, and yet such a long time in a myriad of other ways.
“I thought I had half dreamed your return, but seeing you here in your own house makes it real. You really are home.” She said it with a sort of relief, as if his presence eased her burdens a little. If only, he thought, that could be so.
“It could hardly seem otherwise with all this chaos,” he said, for Kolya was making his usual imperious noises that meant he needed a cup of milk immediately. Conor was emitting steady car noises and Isabelle, not to be outdone by some impertinent Russian upstart, was escalating from coos to indignant teakettle noises between vigorous chews on her mother’s sweater, the shoulder of which was wet with drool. He found the sound of it all quite lovely.
“Did ye bring a bottle with ye?” Maggie asked, walking over and taking Isabelle from Pamela’s arms. “I’ll sit an’ feed her if ye did.”
“I did.” She bent and took a bottle from the baby’s bag at her feet. “It ought to be about right; I heated it before we left home as I knew she’d want feeding soon.”
Kolya, handed a warm cup of goat’s milk, released Pamela’s pant leg and sat on the floor at her feet, big blue eyes intent on her face as he drank with the intense focus of the young with their food.
Pamela’s son looked up then, his big dark eyes meeting Jamie’s with the calm assurance of one far older. Jamie’s breath caught in his chest. Small as he was, Conor so resembled his father already that it caused a small jolt of shock to go through him.
“I know,” Pamela said quietly, taking in his reaction. “He’s the spit of him, as Casey always says. We joke that Casey brands his children, they both look so much like him.”
He smiled at the boy, and knelt down so that he might show him his car collection, which Conor did in such an easy manner that it was as if he had known Jamie since the day of his birth. Each of the small trucks he played with had been carved from blocks of wood, beautifully grained and exquisitely detailed; they were clearly a product of Casey’s love and skilled hands.
“My da’s away. He be home soon.” The little voice was grave, as he continued to run his small wooden trucks across the freshly washed floor.
Jamie did not answer the boy’s words, for the self-possession that came off the small, solid body was such that he knew for the boy it was just a statement of fact, and he required no reassurance from an adult.
He caught the expression on Pamela’s face as he stood up, and it felt like someone had hit him, for the pain in her face as she looked at her son’s bent curly head, absorbing his words and the pragmatic faith that his daddy would come home simply because that’s what daddies did, was profound. He reached out and touched her arm lightly.
“Come into the study, there’s a fresh pot of tea and a roaring fire.”
She looked at him, face almost blank now, and he realized she was ready to collapse in exhaustion. He wondered if she had managed to sleep at all last night, or any of the endless nights that had preceded it.
She glanced back at Maggie who was still holding Isabelle and crooning to her in a soft tone.
“Go on,” Maggie nodded at her, “ye know they’re fine with me. I’ll come get ye should she need ye.”
Pamela bent and kissed the top of Conor’s head, murmuring a few words to him. He nodded, still preoccupied with his toys, and Pamela took a deep breath and turned to join Jamie.
The study was a harbor of warmth and quiet. The peat hissed gently under the sou
nd of the clinking of china and the liquid purl of hot tea pouring into cups. He carried a cup to her and she clutched it gratefully. She was shivering. He handed her a sweater that was over the back of one of the chairs by the fire.
“Pamela, forgive me for stepping over the line immediately, but you look like you’re going to collapse. Have you slept at all these last few weeks?”
She answered the question indirectly, which told him all he needed to know. “The doctor gave me sedatives to sleep,” she said.
“Do you think perhaps it would be a wise idea to take them?”
She shook her head. “No, I know I need to sleep, Jamie. To sleep though means to forget for a little bit and then to have to remember when I wake in the morning. Right now I don’t think I could bear that—to think he’s there for a minute and then have to remember that he isn’t.”
“You can’t keep going this way, Pamela. You’ll wind up in hospital.”
“I’m managing,” she said. “I realize I have to sleep for the children’s sake, if for no other reason.”
“Would you like a drink?” he asked.
“Maybe just a little of something; I’m still nursing Isabelle.”
He poured her a couple of fingers of Hunter’s Vodka, knowing it would be best to warm her blood. Vanya had found some in the two brief days they had been in Paris and bought several bottles claiming it heated the body like nothing else. Jamie knew it to be true. He hoped it might take the edge off her nerves which were as taut as a thrumming wire.
He watched her as she sat, legs curled under her, wrapped in the sweater, but still shivering. He realized that she had become, in his absence, an integral part of this household; it was she who had made the decisions, kept a hand on the tiller and become the most important cog in the wheel of the estate. It was what he had intended, thinking he might not survive to return, and now he wondered if he had been wise. He wondered if the burden he had put upon her had cost her the father of her children, had cost her the love of her life.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 3
