“That man in there,” she said, calmly, even though her heart was banging against her ribs like Thor’s hammer, “that man in there is Special Branch.”
“Aye, I’m aware,” he said, as if he’d just admitted to preferring one brand of tea over another. “What I’m goin’ to ask you is this—what was Special Branch doin’ in yer house riflin’ through yer cupboards? We caught him with a bundle of money in his hand, an’ a pile of letters. I see by yer face ye know exactly what it is I’m referrin’ to.”
“Are you accusing me of something?” she asked, not liking his tone in the least.
“No, I’m merely askin’ ye if ye know why these things might be of interest to a Special Branch officer? So much so that he felt the need to break into yer house.”
“I found the money one day while I was putting something in the cupboard. It was in a paper bag, I have no idea where it came from. He wants me to believe that it was pay-out money to Casey from the British. For all I know he planted it there, being that my house seems to be some sort of central station for spies and soldiers to come by and either terrify or blackmail me.”
“Aye, he says the money was there an’ he only knew it had to be hidden in the house somewhere. The letters, I take it, were hidden near to them.”
She nodded.
“Ye ought to have told me about the letters, Pamela. I cannot protect ye properly if I don’t know the threats ye have against ye.”
“Can we talk about that later? I want to know what he told you.”
Noah put one gloved hand into the other. “Here’s the thing, it may be true or not because he was afraid we’d kill him, I think, so he was desperate when he said it. He might have been just buyin’ time, an’ maybe thinkin’ ye’d be able to sweet talk me out of hurtin’ him. He’s barely been touched, but I don’t think his tolerance for pain is all that high. Ye’d think they’d train them a little better to withstand this sort of thing, but apparently he’s not the bravest soul.”
She felt oddly remote, standing here in this frosty field with a man who was feared country-wide for his ability to find a man’s breaking point, calmly discussing beating a man.
“He says he has information to do with Casey. He says he knows what happened to him.”
She nodded. The lovely day at Jamie’s had evaporated as if it had never happened. Here, she thought, was the truth of her life—blood and hurt and weighing the cost of truth and lies.
“Sometimes it’s easier not knowin’, Pamela. It’s for you to decide where your limit on that is. Ye have to ask yerself how he knows what he says he does about yer husband. An’ if so, how high a price would ye put on extractin’ that information.”
That was the million-dollar question. How badly did she want to know exactly what had happened to Casey? Would having an answer or details allow her to sleep better? Would it lay his ghost to rest eventually, both for his sake and her own?
“So, knowin’ that, what is it ye’d like me to do with him?”
“Do with him?”
“Aye, it’s not a euphemism, Pamela. I’m askin’ do ye want him dead or just beaten to see if he has any more information to offer?”
“Can I just talk to him before I make any decisions?”
“Aye, as I said it’s yer call here tonight.”
She walked into the byre. “I want a moment alone with him,” she said to the man standing guard. Noah was behind her and nodded to the guard and they went out together leaving her alone with the man she knew only as Andrew Davison. She wondered if that was his real name. He looked at her, one eye swelling shut, and a certain defiant anger in the other.
He started the conversation. “Is this your Christmas present from your man out there? Deliver you a Brit on a silver platter? Tenderize me a little before he kills me?”
She sat down opposite him on a wooden chair and then wondered uneasily if this was where Noah had sat to begin the interrogation.
“You were in my house, stealing both money and personal items so please don’t play the innocent victim in this. I want to know what it is you claim to know about my husband.”
“And if I don’t tell you?”
She shrugged, feigning a nonchalance she most certainly did not feel. “Then I don’t care what he does with you tonight.”
“You like the bad ones, do you? Are they good in bed? Is that the attraction? Does that turn you on—the thought of all the blood they have on their hands?”
“You want to bait me, Mr. Davison? I wouldn’t if I were you. I don’t think you can afford to antagonize me too much. I suspect what you were doing—stealing from my house, on Christmas night no less—wasn’t sanctioned by your bosses, was it?”
“Oh, it’s not the first time we’ve been in your house. And we’re clearly not the only ones who’ve crossed the threshold. Those letters were very interesting. Someone certainly hates you with a certain vigor, no?”
“You said you knew something. Do you want to tell me or not? Because I’m happy to call Mr. Murray back in here to deal with you.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Murray. This whole thing comes back around to him.”
“I’m not here to talk about him. I want to hear what it is you claim to know about my husband.”
“Are you familiar with the Nutting Squad, Mrs. Riordan?”
“Yes,” she said. The Nutting Squad was the IRA’s internal security unit. They investigated breaches of discipline and enforced rules and regulations. They were also responsible for vetting new recruits, but everyone knew their real role was to collect and collate information on suspect or compromised individuals. How they ‘collected’ this information was left to them. Casey had once told her he’d rather face a lifetime of incarceration than spend a day with the Nutting Squad. He’d said the man who ran it could make a man confess to things he’d never even dreamed of much less done.
“This is what I know, Mrs. Riordan. Your husband is dead and he was killed because he found out about an informant who was higher up the food chain than he was. An asset so powerful and in so deep with the IRA that his handler would throw your husband to his own side, knowing they would rip out his throat like the wolves they are.” He smiled, and the gesture split his lip causing blood to run down his chin. “It’s a long seven days with the Nutting Squad, and those boys revel in the infliction of pain. Do you know what they did to your husband, do you know how he would have been choking on the smell of his own fear and piss by the time they put a bullet in the back of his head? He died as he lived—by violence and crime.”
She had a knife in her pocket. Casey had insisted she get one years ago. It was a pretty pearl-handled thing, with a blade that was as sharp as a razor. She stood up and walked over to the man and stuck it to his throat.
“How is it you know this?”
“Imagine that there’s an informant for the British Army and he kills Special Branch’s informant to protect himself from being exposed.”
“Casey never had anything to do with Special Branch,” she said. She felt suddenly so tired as if her legs couldn’t possibly bear her up any longer. Certainly her heart could not.
He reeked of fear. He was trying to buy time but antagonizing her seemed a poor way to do it.
“You don’t actually know do you? You’re just guessing, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” he said and smiled again.
“Is there something about this that amuses you?” A trickle of blood ran down the man’s neck and there was a fleeting second where she wanted, very badly, to just shove the blade in. She threw the knife to the floor, frightened by the overwhelming urge to hurt the man.
“I’m just telling you how it is—you wanted the truth and now you find it unappetizing. It’s hardly my fault your husband died in pain, probably screaming or drowning in his own blood.”
Her vision pulled in so that all she could see was a narrow field. She thought maybe she was going to faint when suddenly she realized she was hitting the man over and over in a blinding wa
ve of fury and anguish. His arms, his face, his shoulders and he was laughing. The laughter was the last straw; she picked her knife up from where she’d thrown it. She would stick it in his jugular vein and just have done with it. Anything to shut him up, anything to make the pain stop. She raised her hand and the light from one of the lanterns flashed along the blade like a flame. Her arm came down and then other arms came around her from behind and pinioned her. It was Noah.
“See to him,” he said shortly to the man who’d run into the byre with him. Awareness of her own state came to her. She was breathing hard and could feel tears building up, the pressure nearly unbearable behind her eyes. She still felt a blinding red rage; her whole body throbbed with it.
“You can’t just leave me here. Pamela!” Davison’s voice had risen to a high pitch, a screech of real fear as if he only realized his mistake now.
She turned back, even while Noah still held her in a firm grip, and looked Davison square in the eyes. “Don’t you ever say my name again. I don’t care what they do to you. No more than you care that my husband was tortured for days and then dumped in some shallow grave so that I will never even have the comfort of finding his bones. I truly don’t care if you suffer or if they kill you quickly.”
“Pamela, come on,” Noah said and gently led her out into the night. She half-stumbled, half-ran to the wall and then bent over the top of it and was sick, more than once, in the snow. Noah gave her a few minutes alone. She slowly sank down to the ground, too weak and dizzy to stand any longer. She had almost killed a man. A silly, weak man.
Noah came and sat down beside her on the frozen ground. “Ye all right now?”
“You did warn me,” she said, weary. “I have only myself to blame.”
“Aye, I warned ye, but there is some knowledge that no amount of warnin’ can prepare ye for.”
“I already knew,” she said, wearily. “It’s just another step down the road to where I finally truly understand it, that’s all.”
“He pushed ye because he thinks he’s goin’ to die tonight anyway. He thought a woman would give him a quicker an’ more merciful death.”
She wiped a hand across her clammy brow. “He almost got his wish.”
“One way or another my men an’ I have to deal with him. What would ye have done?”
This moment was her Rubicon. If she crossed it there would never be any returning to the girl she had once been, there would be no pretending that she was somehow different than these men in the field or the dirty players on either side of the divide. This was different than asking Noah to kill a man for her, because the constable had been a direct threat to her life and her children’s well-being. This blood would be on her hands and there would be no rationalizing it away. Right now, she wasn’t certain she cared. She knew later when rationality returned and took a higher hand than emotion, she might feel very differently.
“Am I a coward if I don’t want to see him killed?” she asked, and wondered if she was asking Noah or herself.
“No,” he said. “He has a gamblin’ problem an’ a wee issue with prostitutes as well. He’s got a family back in England; he’ll be amenable to blackmail. If not, we’ll finish it.”
“Thanks for stopping me in there,” she said after there had been a long silence between them.
“Aye, I wouldn’t let ye do that. Ye don’t need that sort of thing on your conscience. It might not weigh on ye tonight, but later on it would haunt ye.”
“I need to go home, Noah,” she said. He nodded and walked her back to her car.
“Are ye certain ye’re all right to drive?”
“Yes, I’m all right,” she said, and found oddly enough that she was. She felt vaporous, as if she was so tired she was near to invisible. The anger was gone leaving behind a dull ache in her chest.
He nodded and turned away, walking back toward the byre. She had no idea what they would do to Davison. And as long as they didn’t kill him, she could not find it within her to care.
She turned the car on and let it warm enough to thaw the windscreen so she could see to drive. She drove partway down the track and then stopped. She sat for just a moment, trying to remember if she needed to turn right or left when she came to the larger road. She wasn’t quite certain how to get home from here.
And then she thought there really was no set of directions, no map and no guide by which to find her way home. It was a strange word—home, and one she thought no longer meant to her what it once had.
The Christmas festivities wound up shortly after Pamela left. Jamie’s temper was well disguised but the tension emanating off both him and Patrick was not. Pat and Kate bundled up Conor and Isabelle and left an hour after Pamela. Gert, Owen, and Lewis went too. Before Tomas departed he took Vanya to one side.
“Keep an eye on him tonight,” he said, nodding toward Jamie who was helping his grandmother into her coat. “He’s been on a fine edge all day, only I thought it was goin’ to be all right as long as Pamela was here. I saw them in the hall earlier, an’ I think you did, too. He’ll be like a bee trapped in a bottle, an’ I can’t say I blame him. I don’t know what that woman is thinkin’ sometimes.”
“I think,” Vanya said quietly, “the only thing that would make her leave on such a day is information about her husband. She was very agitated when she left.”
Tomas nodded. “That might well be part of the problem. Jamie is a patient man, but even he has his limits. A blind man could see things had changed between them after they came home from the summer, an’ now they’re back to walkin’ around each other like two porcupines with their quills up. We all know who she left to see.”
It was true. Vanya had been coming through the upper hall and both Pamela and Jamie were unaware of him, invisible in the shadows at the top of the stairs. He had seen Jamie bend down to kiss her. And he’d seen her body melt into Jamie’s and heard Jamie’s whispered question and seen her response. Yes, Jamie’s senses had been primed for something else altogether tonight. And Vanya thought it was a pity it hadn’t happened, even though the thought hurt him in myriad ways.
Long after the guests departed and Kolya was asleep, Vanya went in search of Jamie. The dark was thick and stranded with narrow silver threads of rain. The snow was melting away, opening up raw patches of earth here and there. It was hard to believe they had all been out in the sleighs only hours before.
He found Jamie by the paddock, sitting on an upturned barrel. He was braced against the paddock rail as a chilly mist of rain fell all around him. His fingers, tensile and strung like wire over his face, ran with silver beads of water, the emerald he wore a cascade of fire against the translucent gold of his hair. Vanya stood beside him, quiet.
“Yasha?”
“It’s all right,” Jamie said, though he was shivering hard, his sweater soaked through with rain. “Just one of my headaches.”
“Not only the headache, I am thinking,” Vanya said.
“No, not only the headache. Percipient as always, Vanya.” Jamie said, a long shudder rippling through his body.
He put a hand to Jamie’s shoulder. “Yasha, we need to get you in the house. You’re freezing.”
Jamie spoke as if he had not heard Vanya’s words. “When I first came home,” he said quietly, “I thought it was enough, this friendship, this strange love she and I have always shared, but now even friendship has become insupportable.”
“I think this is not entirely true. I think you cannot have it now. I think if you are patient, the day will come when she will have a whole heart to give to you. It is already partly yours and has been for a very long time, no?”
“I know this, but some nights half a heart is worse than no heart at all.”
“You have known this for a long time so what is different tonight?”
Jamie laughed, a hollow sound and turned his face up to the rain, his eyes dark.
“Good old-fashioned jealousy, I suppose. He called and she ran. I know there was probably some emerge
ncy on the other end which she felt could not be ignored. I do wonder how often he manufactures something to keep that chain he has on her in working order. I’m afraid for her, and I’m angry with her. It’s not a comfortable mix. There’s a side of Pamela that’s ruthless, and it’s due to everything she’s had happen to her here and the losses she’s suffered, which have been too many. I believe Noah sees that ruthless streak in her as well, and he exploits it. I think he believes it brings her closer to him, and I fear he’s right.”
“You think he is not truthful with her?”
“I think he mixes small bits of truth into a larger fear, the one she carries with her always that she will never know what happened to Casey. He lets her believe he might know things, or find something out and it’s enough to keep her coming back and to keep her hope alive.”
“It seemed like something more tonight,” Vanya said.
“I know and that worries me.” He looked at Vanya, meeting his eyes through the drizzle. “I’m sorry. When I am like this I’m stripped bare of my usual defenses. I have been reckless today and others have paid for it.”
“Do not apologize to me, Yasha. I do not require it from you. We need to get in out of the cold or both of us will have the noo-munny, as Shura would say.”
Jamie nodded, a movement that was almost imperceptible.
“Come, my Yasha, let us put you to bed and then we will send you off to your elephant dreams.”
They walked back to the house in silence, Jamie shivering hard enough that Vanya could feel it in the space between them. He knew what plagued Jamie was more than a headache. He knew there were pills prescribed by a doctor, which Jamie never took. Jamie had, one night, explained it to him.
“There are times when I can’t control the stimuli coming in; it’s like there’s a gate inside my head and my soul that is stuck fast in the open position, and it allows a flood to come through—sound becomes color, and color becomes texture, and texture becomes sight. It feels like this amazing rush when it’s happening but then after, on the down-swing, everything is so grey in comparison. Nothing feels right or good. And sometimes, during the grey patches, the nights are particularly long.”
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 77
