Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

“She didn’t say.”

  Buddy nodded, another tilt of his head, a tiny movement. There was a long silence. Connolly wondered whether it was time for him to go. Buddy reached for the photograph.

  “So where do you fit?” he said. “In all this?”

  Connolly gave the question some thought. He could see the pine trees, out on the mountainside. He realized how cold it was, here, in this room.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last.

  Back in the kitchen, Buddy settled into a chair at the big table. Miller offered him tea. He shook his head. Then he laid the photograph before him, squaring it inch-perfect on the table. He looked up. Miller was watching him carefully, remembering Venner’s message, the news from the SBS boys. He’d spent the last hour fitting it all together. Whether he’d got it right or not, he didn’t know. Though the next five minutes or so would tell him.

  “So how was it,” he said, “in Pompey?”

  Buddy blinked. “OK,” he said.

  “You were there this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Miller nodded. “But I understand it didn’t work …”

  Buddy looked at him. He said nothing. Miller smiled. “Well?” he said. “Did it, or didn’t it?”

  Buddy shook his head. “No,” he said at last, “it didn’t.”

  “Should it have worked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not your fault it didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Miller nodded again. There was a long silence. “Abusing Her Majesty’s property,” he said. “Would that cover it?”

  Buddy gazed at him. “It didn’t work,” he said. “I just told you.”

  “Not the point.”

  “No?”

  “No. Conspiracy’s just as bad. Worse sometimes.”

  “Oh.”

  Buddy looked wooden. He didn’t seem to care. Miller got up and walked slowly to the window. He’d known for a day now that this was Scullen’s place. They’d found books upstairs with his name in, a spidery hand, black ink, the careful ex libris signature of an academic or a priest. There was a high, narrow bed, iron framed, and sepia photographs. It fitted exactly with what he knew about the man, his sentimentality, his very Irish attachment to land, to history, to the ancient Gaelic values. This was the man’s spiritual home. He’d be back. Miller had never doubted it. But he’d be back long after they’d been obliged to go, to retreat back to the north, before the Garda got their act together, and began asking the more obvious questions. What he needed now was a representative, a proxy, someone who’d complete what they’d come to do. He turned from the window and looked at Buddy, putting it at its bluntest. “I could take you back to the UK,” he said. “It’s just up the road. Six hours.”

  “You could,” Buddy agreed.

  “You’d go down for a while.” Miller paused. “Quite a long while …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Buddy nodded. There was another silence. Miller walked back to his chair and sat down. Buddy eyed him. “Tell me,” he said. “No bullshit.”

  “What?”

  “Who kiled my wife?”

  Miller glanced down at the file. Thompson was studying a line of stonework half-way up the opposite wall. Connolly was staring at the photograph over Buddy’s shoulder. Miller looked up. “Scullen,” he said quietly, “Scullen killed your wife.”

  Buddy nodded but said nothing. Miller’s eyes flicked up, to Thompson. Thompson crossed the kitchen, pulling out a drawer on the big pine dresser. Connolly recognized the plastic bag he’d brought south. He could tell by the way Thompson handled it that the gun was still inside. Thompson put it on the table. Miller reached for it. He took the gun out and checked the breech. Then he reached inside the bag again and found the box of shells. He put them both on the table between himself and Buddy. The butt of the gun, Connolly noted, was angled towards Buddy.

  Miller glanced up, a question on his face, the shape of the deal quite explicit. Buddy was still looking at the gun. He didn’t pick it up. He didn’t touch it. Instead, he smiled. A small, wistful smile that started at the corners of his mouth and went no further. He looked up at Miller. He sounded tired.

  “I won’t need that,” he said. “But thanks all the same.”

  Ingle flew back to Belfast next morning. He’d talked to Davidson on the telephone from a call box outside the West London air terminal. He’d dialled through as soon as he’d got the message, and had hung up, as instructed, and had waited in the call box for the phone to ring again. By the time he was back in contact with Davidson, there were three people waiting to use the phone. One of them, third in line, was large, and female, and very angry.

  Davidson had been brisk. He’d offered Ingle his congratulations saying that Ingle should feel proud of himself. And he’d added – almost as an afterthought – that the inquiry would now be handled at a higher level. Ingle wasn’t happy, and had queried the latter point, but Davidson had dismissed his questions with another pat on the head, and a rather wooden reminder that he’d signed the Official Secrets Act. Ingle, who recognized where the conversation was going, had pursued the point. Someone had tried to blow up a capital ship, he’d said. This was hardly a parking offence. There’d been a silence at this, and Ingle wondered briefly whether he’d gone too far, whether the man had lost patience and simply hung up, but then Davidson had come back again, his voice quite empty of warmth or congratulation.

  “I understand you were running an informer,” he said, “a man called Connolly.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And I understand that Connolly is wanted. For alleged murder.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then I suggest you find him.”

  Ingle had gazed at the phone, the threat spelled out. Back to business, Davidson was saying, back to Belfast. He’d bent to the phone again, angry now, but this time Davidson really had gone. Leaving the phone box, Ingle had paused for a moment, fumbling in his pocket for the new packet of Polos. The woman at the back of the queue had gazed at him, hostile.

  “What are you doing in there?” she said. “Running a business?”

  Ingle had looked at her for a moment, pulling his coat around him. “Painting and decorating, love,” he said, “whitewash a speciality.”

  Now, back in Belfast, he took the bus in from the airport and walked the half-mile to his office. He pushed in through the armoured doors, still dog-tired, and made for the lifts. As he did so, the girl behind the switchboard recognized his coat. “Sir,” she called, “Mr Ingle …”

  Ingle hesitated, and changed course. The girl beamed up at him and handed him a folded slip of paper, the standard message form. “This morning,” she explained, “first thing.”

  Ingle looked at her a moment, a little dazed, then unfolded the piece of paper. The message was timed at 05.36. It had come through Bessbrook. “13.30” it read, “34 Clonkilty Road, Andersonstown. A little present. For services rendered.” Ingle paused, reading the message for the second time. The address was familiar. He ran through it again, trying to part the curtains on what was left of his memory. Then he got it. Connolly’s bird. The woman in the white coat. He glanced at his watch. It was ten past eleven.

  Connolly and Miller left Kerry at dawn, Thompson driving the Vauxhall. They dropped Buddy at the hotel in Waterville, stopping for an early coffee, and the last Connolly saw of him was the back of his head, buried in the local directory, looking for the number of a hire car company. He needed a van, and a spade, and a good map. The rest, mercifully, he left to Connolly’s imagination.

  They drove north-east, up from Kerry, up through Mallow, Cashel, Portlaoise, up round Dublin towards Belfast, one corner of Ireland to the other. Connolly sat in the back, his legs stretched out along the seat, his back against the door, thinking of Mairead. Miller had been onto her again. He’d said so. She’d passed a message through. She was dying to see him. It was an odd phrase. He’d never heard her use it before. But there i
t was. Better than nothing. Better, certainly, than the limbo he’d left behind him.

  He gazed out at the flatlands north of Dublin. In less than an hour, they’d be over the border. By lunchtime, with any luck, he’d be back in Andersonstown, back in that steamy, damp little kitchen, back with Mairead. He settled himself deeper into the corner of the car. She must have forgiven him. Or she must have forgotten. Either way, it was going to be OK.

  Buddy buried Jude at noon.

  He hired a van from a man who ran a hardware store in Waterville. The shopkeeper lent him a spade, and sold him a map, spreading it on the counter and showing him where to find the Lambs Head. When he asked about the spade, a matter-of-fact enquiry, Buddy said he was planting his potatoes. The shopkeeper looked at him, smiling, and Buddy knew at once that he’d got the wrong season for potatoes, and that it didn’t matter in the slightest. These people were like the weather. Soft.

  He drove back, away from the coast, towards the mountains. He parked the van outside the farmhouse and went inside. The house was empty now, the men from the north gone. Miller had told him that the place belonged to Scullen, but he didn’t know for sure, and just now he didn’t care. There’d be plenty of time for Scullen later. Time would be the least of his problems.

  Back inside the house, he went into Jude’s room. It was the first time he’d seen her in daylight. It made little difference. The real Jude, the Jude he’d known, had long gone. Not yesterday, or the day before, or whenever it was that the bullet had torn through the window and into her skull. But months ago before Christmas, when she’d saddled Duke for the last time, and ridden off into the icy morning. Since then, it had never been the same, and even if Pascale had worked a miracle, he knew it never would. She’d been right all the time. She should have died. It would have been better.

  He took the folded eiderdown from the bed and carried it out to the van. He laid it carefully on the metal floor. Then he went back into the house, and opened all the doors, and stepped back into her room, smelling the smell again, the sweet stench of rotting flesh. He collapsed her body over his shoulder, and stood up, his arms around her legs, making for the door. One of her buttocks was wet to the touch and he could feel the hollow of a deep wound through the thin cotton nightdress. He thought at first that it might be another bullet, but when he laid her carefully in the back of the van, on top of the eiderdown, he saw the stains on the nightdress, great circles of the stuff, and he knew it was an ulcer. Scullen, he thought to himself again, closing the doors of the van. Scullen not caring. Not looking after her. Ignoring the warning he’d issued, all those weeks ago, the promise he’d made. If she comes to any harm, he’d said, then I’ll kill you. He climbed into the van, remembering the man again, his careful ways, his voice, knowing that life was a contract, and that Scullen’s was due for termination.

  He drove away from the farmhouse, back down the road, taking it easy on the bends, not wanting to disturb her. It was a fine day again, a bright eager sun in a nearly cloudless sky, the kind of day he and Jude would have made their own, and as the road dropped steadily down towards the coast, and he saw the first blue daubs of ocean in the distance, he began to talk to her, telling her about it, what a rich day it was, how lucky they were, how lucky they’d been finding this peace of theirs, then and – in some curious way – now.

  At the coast, he turned left, up a long pass, the road tucked into the flank of the mountain, the air cooling as they climbed. At the top of the pass there was a statue of the Virgin Mary, and some flowers in a jam jar, and then the road dropped down again, spectacular views, the huge beach that Buddy had seen from the aeroplane, and in the distance that long finger of rock and tussock he’d circled on the map, the Lambs Head. He liked the sound of the place, the shape of the phrase. Peace, he thought again.

  The road dropped to sea level again. At a tiny village – a pub, a handful of bungalows, a general store, a church – he turned right, and the road narrowed between banks of fuchsia, and he could hear water over the clatter of the engine, the lick of the waves on the rocks below, the springs bubbling out of the hillside above. He drove west, way, way out, as far as the road would go, and when it came to an end, no more than a track, the boulders no longer passable, he stopped, and parked, and fetched the spade from the back, and climbed up the rocks onto the tussock, looking for the spot he knew would be there, the spot where he’d finally lay her to rest. He found it almost at once, fifty feet above the track, a hollow amongst the rocks, sheltered from three sides, gloriously warm, utterly windless. The view to the west, colonnaded by rocks, was breathtaking, three thousand miles of nothing. He began to dig, cutting through the springy turf, shovelling it aside, praying that he didn’t hit rock too soon, that there really was room for Jude in this little crypt of theirs.

  He dug for an hour, naked above the waist, down through the black earth, judging it by eye, and when he was shoulder deep in the hole, and his muscles were on fire with the incessant twisting and heaving, he climbed slowly out, and stood in the sunshine for a full minute, his back to the sea, thinking of nothing. Then he went back down to the van, and opened the doors, easing Jude out, the fireman’s lift again, scrambling up through the rocks, the pressure on his thighs, leaving the track below him, willing his body to make this last big effort before he could put her down for the night, the baby he’d never had. He made it, laying her body on the pile of earth, getting his breath back, wondering whether she really would fit.

  She did. Perfectly. He laid her on her back, and covered her face with his shirt. Then he slipped off his watch and glanced at it, making a mental note, 11.57, wanting their time together to stop exactly here, on this day, under this sky, blessed by this sunshine. He folded her hands over her belly, and laid the watch on top. They’d never had any kids, never wanted any. What they’d created instead was this little pocket of warmth, into which he knew he could forever plunge his hands. Come what may, she’d never leave him, and he knew it, getting out of the grave, smelling the rich smell of the turned earth, shovelling in the first spadefuls, burying her.

  Miller and Connolly got to Mairead’s at two in the afternoon. They’d dropped Thompson at Bessbrook on the way up. He’d nodded goodbye to Connolly in the back, and gone off without a word. He’d looked, if anything, amused.

  Now, parked outside the little council house, Miller glanced across at Connolly. On his face, was the unvoiced invitation. Go in first, he was saying. Go in now. Say your hallos. I’ll be in later. Connolly smiled at him, genuine gratitude. He’d no idea what business the man had with Mairead, but there was a gentleness, a tact about him. He liked the man. He trusted him.

  Connolly got out of the car and walked to the front door. He rang the bell. He rang again. He heard footsteps along the hall. The door opened. It was Mairead.

  Connolly blinked in the sunshine. He felt tears again, that same hot sorrow he’d dumped on her months back. He reached out for her, tried to kiss her, following her into the hall, smelling the damp, doggy smell of the house, hearing the radio on in the kitchen, the old familiar music. He stopped. Something was wrong. Mairead was looking at him. He might have been a stranger. He might have forced his way into the house. She was shaking her head.

  “I’m back,” he said hopelessly.

  He reached for her again, pursuing her up the hall, calling her name, stumbling into the kitchen. Bronagh was sitting on the kitchen table tugging at a stick of liquorice. The child looked at him, inquisitive, huge eyes, her mouth smudged with black. Connolly grinned at her, pulled her favourite monkey face, bent to kiss her, then heard Mairead again, snatching the child away, turning her back to him.

  “No,” she pleaded, “no, no.”

  Connolly looked up, surprised. There was someone else in the room. He could sense it. Someone big. He looked round slowly, behind the door, recognizing the long coat, the flat, wide face, the coal-black eyes. He reached for the table, thinking suddenly of Leeson, of Charlie, all reason gone. Bronagh started
to cry. Mairead pushed from the room, holding the child very tight.

  “Shit,” Connolly said quietly. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  He heard the kitchen door slam. He heard Mairead’s footsteps, running up the hall. He heard the front door open. Then there was silence. Ingle began to button his coat.

  “You’re under arrest,” he said, “for killing Charlie McGrew.”

  Connolly looked at him. He was suddenly very tired. “She told you?”

  Ingle nodded. “Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, “she did.”

  Buddy settled in Kerry.

  He found work as a night porter in a new hotel up the Kenmare River, and he took a six-month lease on a near-derelict bungalow on a windy bluff outside the village of Caherdaniel. He spent weeks reseating the window frames, repairing the worst of the leaks in the roof, drying the place out. He slept when it felt right, and spent long afternoons on the road out to the Lambs Head, finding new paths to the end of the promontory, making friends with the sheep, leaving fresh flowers on Jude’s grave. He led a modest, austere life, keeping himself to himself. He neither sought, nor missed, company. To his own surprise, he quite liked it.

  Of Scullen, there was no sign. He never saw the man, never heard the name mentioned. If he was anywhere, he thought, he’d be back in the farmhouse in the mountains. Sooner or later, he’d have to come out. Then, and only then, would there be a decision to take.

  The Falklands War came and went. Of the detail, Buddy knew very little, only that Invincible survived the attentions of the Argentinian Air Force, and returned in one piece to Portsmouth Harbour. Of that, he was very glad.

  One night, at the hotel, he phoned Harry. It was two in the morning. He got the old man out of bed. He sounded groggy. Buddy told him who it was. He said he was living in Ireland. He thanked him again for the gear. He apologized for not being in a position to return it. The old man grunted.

  “What happened?” he said. “Job go well?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t do it?”

  “Yeah. But the stuff didn’t work.”