Tomas was in the kitchen where Kate was cooking on the gleaming stove, which Pamela had taken the time to black and polish during her cleaning spree. Pat sat at the table, a stack of papers three feet high in front of him, and a steaming pot of tea adorning the center of the scrubbed oak. Jamie set the crate of food down, and took out the bottles of Connemara Mist and placed them handily by the tea. Pamela added the smoked salmon and bread to the array of food Kate already had simmering, baking and braising in and on the ancient stove. Isabelle was playing with a stack of rings and Conor was next to her, absorbed in a coloring book.
“Tomas, this is Jamie, Jamie, Tomas.” She stood back a little as the men shook hands, Tomas eyeing Jamie up and down in his usual bluntly assessing manner. Jamie was genial but cool, as was his own wont when first meeting someone.
“It’s all right, lass, I won’t bite him,” Tomas said, lingering back with her as Jamie moved forward to hug Kate and Pat, Conor already looking up at him and smiling.
“I’m not certain I believe that,” she said, but she heaved a sigh of relief nonetheless.
Twenty minutes later they were all settled with tea in hand, Tomas’ fortified with a tot of Connemara Mist. Kate had just put a plate of still-warm ginger snaps on the table and the children were still happily occupied with toys and crayons and books.
There was a palpable tension around the table, everyone eager to hear what it was Jamie had found out.
“Well then, Mr. Kirkpatrick?” Tomas said, voicing the impatience everyone was feeling.
“It’s safe to talk?” Jamie asked, and Tomas needed no further explanation. He did seem to bristle a little in his reply. She saw what Patrick meant about the badger being his spirit animal.
“I’ve had it swept for bugs, just two days ago. Someone has been in situ ever since.”
“Good,” Jamie said, blandly, as if everyone had their house swept for listening devices on a regular basis. She knew he had his own house swept every few months, the way most people would have their chimneys cleaned or their windows washed. It was a hazard, she supposed, of working for a spy agency.
He took a swallow of his tea, and then set his cup down on the table.
“Here it is then. There were at least four policemen involved in the matter. Certainly there are more that knew—one died of a heart attack six months back. The other two have some sort of oath of secrecy, even my source couldn’t get a peep out of them. The remaining member of the quartet might be amenable to certain kinds of persuasion. He’s drowning himself in drink, due, my source believes, to guilt over Oggie’s conviction. My source says the other two men are worried about him because they think he’ll talk when he’s drunk. He hasn’t so far—though I think the biggest fear they have is pillow talk, as he’s a bit of a womanizer. He’s on his own, an outsider, because he was discharged from the RUC only six months after the trial. His name is Andrew Donaldson, and he is your weak link.”
“How is it this man hasn’t come to our attention before?” Tomas looked over at Pat, who shook his head.
“He didn’t come up in any of the interviews, this is the first I’ve heard of him. He wasn’t involved in the initial investigation that’s for certain, because there’s no documentation—the little I’ve been able to access—with that name on it.”
Jamie took a bite of a ginger snap and another swallow of tea before answering. “He tried to make complaints, but it’s not on the record, anything he said or did has been erased or not taken down in the first place.”
“So how does yer source know this then?”
“Because he’s placed to know such things,” Jamie said. “He can be trusted; his information has never been wrong.”
“Because ye pay him?” Tomas asked.
“No,” Jamie replied coolly, “I don’t pay for information, it taints it and then the informant tries too hard to please and tends to jolly up the information in order to make it as palatable as possible. What I’ve given you is only slightly useful because without a named source or witness it’s inadmissible in court anyway, as you well know.”
Tomas tapped his finger to his pursed lips. “Aye, it is, but I think we might be able to pull a few strings usin’ the information to encourage others to talk, or even to scare a few of them.”
“You’ll have to be exceedingly careful,” Jamie said, “these people have lied for some time, and they aren’t going to take kindly to anyone trying to open up a worm can they thought they had put the lid on long ago.”
They got down to work then, with individual breaks to see to the children, or make fresh tea or go outside and get some fresh air to relieve burning eyes and stiff backs. Pamela had, with Tomas’ permission, cleared the formal dining table and they set up in the big room which had the advantage of light pouring in from the garden, and no other distractions beyond the sound of the birds and the occasional exclamation over just how corrupt the entire proceedings around Oggie Carrigan had been.
They stopped near to six for dinner, Maggie’s salmon, bread and cheese and Jamie’s whiskey having made a neat tea earlier in the day. They had accomplished a fair bit, sorting through endless paper and placing each piece in its appropriate stack as to its importance and relevance. Over the ambrosial dinner Kate had made, the chat was general and light, flowing along with the food and drink.
After dinner, they moved to Tomas’ library, where the fire was built high and hot in the huge hearth. Between the food and drink and heat there was a soporific lull to the atmosphere.
“How did the two of yez meet?” Tomas asked, leaning back and folding his hands over his belly and looking pointedly at Pamela and Jamie. Pamela was settling Isabelle who had fallen asleep on her shoulder at dinner and so she let Jamie answer for the two of them.
He looked over at her and smiled. “On a midnight shore, far distant from here, a very long time ago. I mistook her for a selkie dancing in the waves.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale,” Tomas said.
“It felt like one at the time,” Jamie said. “I thought I had maybe imagined her at first, until she had an accident involving a horse and I came across her just as it happened.”
“He rescued me and in thanks I threw up on his shoes. At which point he knew I wasn’t a mystical creature of any sort.”
Jamie laughed. “I wasn’t going to mention that.”
“Jamie is my oldest friend in the world,” she said, turning back toward Tomas. It was true, he was the oldest and dearest, as well as the person to whom she had turned during some of the hardest times in her life. Just as she had these last months. He had never once let her down. Jamie smiled at her, and she noticed Tomas watching the two of them with a shrewd light in his eyes.
She looked about her, Kate’s cooking and the small glass of brandy she’d had after dinner relaxing her so that the bird in her chest was, for a small space, quiet. The firelight gilded the shabby edges of the room, rendering the entire scene into a sort of Renaissance painting, brushed fine with gold leaf round its edges. The scarred desk, heaped high with papers, the scored floor, where she was certain badger droppings still lurked, despite her best efforts. The bookshelves chock-a-block with legal tomes, history books, and papers tied with fading ribbons, for Tomas kept to the old system of tying documents with the affiliated colors—black for wills and probates, green for land matters, pink for defense briefs and white for prosecution briefs.
And the people inside the painting, the living heart of it. Patrick all dark shadows, whiskers tinted blue in the light; Kate straight-backed beside him on the lumpy sofa, but with a hand laid lightly within his; Tomas lord of the wild manor, his veined nose and reddened eyes softened by the firelight; Isabelle, asleep on a mattress that had been dragged down from the attic. On the hygiene of this article Pamela chose not to dwell, and at least the blankets were clean. Jamie was sitting opposite Tomas, now engaged in the sort of debate the old lawyer loved, on the topic of just where Irish history had slid off the rails, and what exact eve
nts had led to their current quagmire in Northern Ireland. Conor was falling asleep, curly head propped up against Jamie’s knee, with Jamie’s hand on his head, steadying him so that he didn’t fall over.
She waved off Jamie’s offer of a chair and curled up on the rug at his feet beside Conor. She sat quiet and let the words flow back and forth over top of her, from Tomas to Patrick, to Jamie and back again, the conversational ball never dropping, but lofting from one man to the next, sometimes with great fervor and at others with a gentle sally.
Around her Elizabethan Ireland came to life through its lords and peasants, its wars and famines as they discussed the history of the house in which they all sat.
“Yer own ancestor was one of the twilight lords, as Patrick calls them, was he not? Silken James Kirkpatrick, first of the name.”
“He was, indeed,” Jamie said with a smile.
“He was rather legendary,” Tomas said, “for more than one reason, if the history books are to be believed.”
Jamie laughed. “Yes, he was fairly illustrious, to use a polite term. He was once in great favor with Queen Elizabeth, but fell from grace rather spectacularly by the end of his life. He fought in the Desmond Wars. That is the fate of so many of we Irish, to fight in losing battles, sometimes all our lives.”
Tomas’ eyes lit up and he rose without explanation and went to his shelves, where he began to rummage, muttering to himself all the while. He came out with a sheaf of papers between two blackened and bowed boards, the whole thing held together with dusty and moth-eaten ribbon. He walked across the room and handed the whole parcel to Jamie.
“Yer ancestor stayed here for a bit, did ye know that?”
“No, I did not,” Jamie replied, taking the bundle of paper into his own hands.
“Those are a few letters, an’ a sort of journal. I’m certain they’re his. Ye’re welcome to have a look. Take it home if ye like, ye can return it through Miss Pamela here, next time she chooses to grace me with her presence.”
“Thank you,” Jamie said. He laid the papers to the side, though she saw his eyes linger on them for a moment with a curious longing.
“Does his blood run in you?” Tomas asked, and there was no mistaking the challenge in his tone.
“If by that you are asking if I’m willing to throw myself on the blazing pyre of republican martyrdom, the answer is a resounding no.”
“Most men would be proud to have such an ancestor.”
“Most men, yes, but not me. He was, after all, like every rebel before him and every one since. He died worn down and humiliated, just as did the Great O’Neill and Tyrone, and Wolf Tone and Parnell. This country will take every last drop of blood a man has, and every last drop of pride until finally it takes his last breath, and then the wheel simply grinds on without him. Was it Spencer who said that change is like the wind on the sea? Water moves, but it never alters. The history of this country is as water, it moves but it never truly alters. And so we continue to fight and shed blood and revolve in our unending cycle of patriot martyrs.”
“O-ho, a poet and a cynic. Well, laddie I know better than to fight with such a creature. A man might as well try to fight with the wind. It does not bother ye then, to have British soldiers in the streets of yer own city, to see young men on their knees with machine guns held to their heads?”
“It bothers me more than I could express to you had we a month of conversation ahead of us, but I do not see how more blood is going to finish it and give the next generation hope for a better life, one without soldiers in the streets and killers in our country lanes.”
Pat, ever the diplomat, changed the tack of the conversation.
“Perhaps we should get back to the business at hand?”
Jamie smiled gratefully. “Yes, Pat you’re right.”
“So what can we do with the information we have? Is there a way to turn it to our advantage? There’s only one man who we know of that is rotting with guilt, and he’s where—I think we can all agree—we will have to make our attempt. Is the alcohol a big enough weakness? We need somewhere,” Pat said, “to poke in the knife.”
“Well,” Tomas said, “beyond the drink, his weakness, as ye mentioned, is women.” His eyes lit on Pamela, and he opened his mouth to say something only to have both Pat and Jamie abruptly cut him off.
“Absolutely not,” Pat said, glaring at Tomas.
Jamie, the wiser and more experienced man in this situation, directed his glare and comment at Pamela.
“No damn way, don’t even think about it, Pamela.”
“Think about what?” she asked, her indignation fueled more by the fact that he had guessed her thoughts so quickly, rather than any innocence of said thoughts on her part.
Jamie merely raised one golden brow at her. “Seducing information out of some sot in a bar. It would be far too easy for you, and far too dangerous.”
“Good heavens, Jamie, I wasn’t planning to do anything of the sort.”
Jamie made a sound that could best be described as dubious. She stood, attempting to look offended at his doubt and began to clear away the glasses and dishes that had collected in the room over the evening. She took them to the kitchen, and ran water in the ancient stone sink, absentmindedly swooshing her hand through the water to encourage the soap to bubble. Jamie’s words had upset her because there was a dark truth to them, and at the heart of that dark truth were the things Casey had believed, the things of his past which he had been trying to leave behind so that their own future might be more secure. It bothered her also because she knew Jamie only partially believed his own words, for many of his actions, however covert he might believe them to be, spoke the opposite of the eloquent speech he had just given in Tomas’ study.
It was easy, she knew, to judge and draw conclusions from the outside. It was easy to say what was right and what was wrong when you weren’t afraid of dying, when you hadn’t been born to a particular world and could draw conclusions from books and two minute montages on television. What she had believed normal even a few years ago, no longer held authority in her world. Normal was something else entirely in gritty Belfast, in green and austere South Armagh, in wee Derry with her winding walls. Normal looked very different even now in her own home than it had just a few months ago.
Tomas came up beside her, and began to dry the dishes.
“I have a woman comes in to do this, ye know. Ye don’t have to clean every blessed time ye’re here. Ye’re meant to be a guest, not a housekeeper.”
“I know you have a housekeeper, I’m just not certain whose house it is she’s keeping because it’s certainly not this one,” she said tartly.
“I like him,” Tomas said.
“Really? It was a little hard to tell.”
“The man is no fragile flower, he held up just fine. He’s the sort of man ye can’t quite get on an equal footing with—mind, you seem to hold yer own with him well enough.”
“Jamie has been my friend for so long that I don’t always remember how intimidating he can sometimes be.”
“I suppose it helped bein’ a child when first ye met the man.”
“It did, I didn’t know well enough to be intimidated. He was incredibly kind to a lonely child; the poor man hasn’t been able to rid himself of me since.”
“He doesn’t seem to mind,” Tomas said. “He’s right fond of ye.”
She cast a glance over her shoulder to make certain that neither Pat nor Jamie had moved into earshot.
“That matter you were discussing before, about the weak link?”
“Aye?” Tomas said.
“I think I can help.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Nothing to Lose
PAMELA LINGERED A LITTLE at the entrance to the hotel. She was, to be frank, still quite stunned that Tomas had agreed to her plan.
“Come on, Pamela, buck up, you’ve faced worse,” she muttered it under her breath, but the man passing by on the sidewalk still gave her a bit of a berth. She t
ottered a little on her heels as she crossed the marble floor of the hotel lobby. She hadn’t worn pumps in a very long time since her life rarely called for dress up of this sort. She pushed down her nerves as best as she could and thought that she was going to allow herself a drink, a large one, to quell the racing of her heart. She had, indeed, faced worse before, and managed to walk away from the situation, if not triumphant, at least still with all her bodily parts intact.
Tomas had had his misgivings right up until he had watched her walk off across the street to enter the hotel. “He likes all women—short, tall, narrow, wide, young, old—but I suspect he’s never seen a woman quite like yerself. He’ll be round ye like a bee to a honey bowl. It’s gettin’ him to talk that will be the trick.”
“Don’t worry, just leave that to me,” she’d said. She didn’t feel quite so confident now in her ability to make the man open up. In the drink or not, he was likely to be wary if she started quizzing him about particulars. From somewhere Tomas had procured a wire, which felt like a burning brand against her skin. She hoped it would work, the setup hadn’t exactly looked like the latest in spy gadgetry.
Forgive me, she said to the man who lived in her heart. She seemed to spend more time in silent communion with Casey these days than she did with God. He would be beside himself with worry if he knew what she was about to do. Or, if she were being honest with herself, he would be so furious he wouldn’t have the space for worry. She had a fleeting fantasy of him coming into the bar and putting her over his shoulder and carting her out. She smiled. It was a nice fantasy, but she needed to keep her focus in the here and now. Never mind Casey, Jamie and Patrick would have her head if they knew what she was up to.
The hotel bar was a nice one, as such things went. She knew it was a place for people to relax after a day of business, to unwind before heading up to their hotel room, or a place for assignations. Tomas was waiting outside for her, though they had come in separate cars.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 24
