“Not for his parents.”
“There you go again. A catastrophe. It doesn’t have to be like that. Just give the parents the cash, then sort McGowan and Hart out. Then it’ll all be over, you can go home to your wife, and life goes on.”
“It’s not right,” Shields said.
“I never said it was,” McGinty said. “I’ve made my decision. Just do what I’ve told you.”
Shields hung up and said, “Fuck.”
He set the fat envelope on the kitchen table.
The mother’s eyes streamed, a constant flow of tears. The father looked defeated, like all the life had been sucked out of him. Her fingers were stained nicotine yellow. He smelled of whiskey. They all sat around the table, the two brothers and three sisters in the other room. Fegan waited outside in the car.
Silence. A deeper quiet than Shields had known since his own child’s wake.
“His name was Kevin,” the mother said. “Kevin Doherty.”
“I’m sorry,” Shields said.
“Kevin was a good boy,” the mother said. “He didn’t deserve it. He was just home from university for the holidays. He was over in England. He took the chance to get out, make a decent life for himself. He never wanted anything to do with your lot.”
“I’m sorry,” Shields said again, his voice not even a whisper.
“Them two wouldn’t leave him alone that night, kept at him, why wouldn’t he join up. Why did he run off to England? Did he think he was better than them?”
Shields went to speak, but she raised her hand like she was his mother, ready to slap him across the head. He reflexively ducked, as if he was a child, as if this was his mother’s kitchen and he had done some terrible mischief for which chastisement would surely come.
“Don’t you dare say sorry to me again,” she said, venom on her tongue. “They picked the fight because they didn’t like him, because he was different. And you know what? He was better than them. Better than that bastard Bull O’Kane. Better than you. And they couldn’t stand it, so they killed him.”
Shields cleared his throat and said, “McGowan and Hart will be punished for what they did. I’ll see to it myself.”
The father paled further, his shoulders slumped, folding in on himself.
“Punishment,” the mother said. “You’ll break their knees, maybe shoot them in the leg. And they’ll go on living while my boy’s lying up in Belfast waiting for someone to cut open what’s left of him.”
For a moment, Shields considered telling her about the baby. He knew what it felt like to lose a child. But your child wasn’t murdered, she’d say. And he would have no answer for that. He would have to turn his face away.
Shields pushed the fat envelope across the table to her. She looked at it as if it were some foul thing. Then she reached for the envelope, lifted the flap, looked inside.
“How much?” she asked.
“Five thousand,” Shields said. “It’ll cover the funeral, and you’ll have enough left to maybe take a holiday, or whatever you—”
She threw the envelope. The weight of it smacked against Shields’s cheek. It burst. Tens, twenties, fifties, they all scattered and fluttered to the floor.
The mother stood and said, “Get out of my house.”
The father slipped from his chair, got down on the floor, gathered up loose bills.
“Leave it,” she said.
Shields went to say sorry one more time, but her fierce stare carried a warning. He got to his feet, left the kitchen, walked along the hall and out through the front door.
Fegan looked up as he approached the Granada. Shields opened the passenger door and lowered himself inside.
“Okay?” Fegan asked.
“Just drive,” Shields said.
They waited in the barn. McGowan and Hart in the centre, under the glare of the heat lamp. The Bull with a shotgun slung across his forearm. Four more men, two of them armed with AK47s. Hart stood silent while McGowan trembled and whimpered.
Shields let Fegan enter ahead of him, then followed. He smelled the men, the odour of their sweat cutting through the lingering animal scents.
McGowan burst into tears, snot dripping over his lips.
“Christ almighty,” the Bull said. “Pull yourself together, boy, you’re getting off lightly.”
McGowan wiped his cheeks and mouth on his sleeve, leaving a trail of mucus on the fabric.
“We ready?” Shields asked.
“Aye,” the Bull said. “Let’s get it over with.”
He stood back, let Shields come close to the two men.
Shields took the pistol from Fegan’s outstretched hand. A Walther PPK, now that he saw it up close. Compact and light in his grasp. Shields checked the chamber; the cartridge was still in there. He thumbed the safety off.
“It’s a small calibre pistol,” he said to the two men. “.22 rounds. They won’t do too much damage. Now lie down.”
McGowan and Hart hesitated, looked to the Bull.
“No getting out of it, lads,” the Bull said. “Do what you’re told and we’ll get you to hospital when it’s done.”
They both lowered themselves to the concrete floor, lay on their backs. The two unarmed men hunkered down and grabbed their ankles, held the legs steady.
Shields stood over them and thought of the fat envelope hitting his face, the money scattering. He thought of the mother and her vicious tongue, the pain scorched onto her face. The father and his narrow shoulders unable to bear it.
“The Bull’s right,” he said. “You’re getting off lightly.”
Shields aimed the muzzle at Hart’s left knee, put his finger on the trigger. He imagined the small hole appearing, the gasp and the scream that would follow.
He saw money flutter. Saw a boy boarding a boat to England, maybe a plane. A life ahead of him, away from all this.
He thought of his own son, Ruairi, dead and gone. He thought of how the baby cried. How the noise had been the worst thing in the world, drilling into his head every night until he couldn’t think. How he had just wanted him to be quiet.
He hadn’t meant it.
Honest to God, he didn’t mean for it to happen. But the noise, the constant crying, crying, crying.
The baby weighed almost nothing. Like shaking a doll. Stiff for a moment, then loose like a handful of rags.
Then no more crying.
Shields blinked, cleared his head.
“The young fella’s name was Kevin Doherty,” he said, “and you killed him for no good reason.”
Before anyone could stop him, he moved his aim to the centre of Hart’s chest. Pulled the trigger twice. Saw Hart’s eyes widen in the fraction of a second it took to shift his aim to McGowan.
McGowan’s tongue went to the back of his front teeth as if making an N sound, as if he were going to scream no, don’t, don’t kill me. But he never got the chance.
A ringing in Shields’s ears, a billow of smoke in the air above the two dead and dying men.
He tossed the pistol away. It clattered across the concrete, into the shadows.
The two men who held McGowan’s and Hart’s ankles let go and stood. The other two raised the AK47s and aimed them at Shields.
“Jesus, Tom, I wish you hadn’t done that,” Bull O’Kane said.
“I had to,” Shields said.
The Bull let the air out of his lungs, shook his head. He turned his attention to Fegan, who lingered by the door.
Fegan stood with his weight on both feet, his hands out from his sides, ready to fight.
“Go on home, Gerry,” the Bull said. “I’ll deal with this.”
Fegan met Shields’s gaze. Shields knew then that Fegan would fight for him if he asked it. But he would not.
“Yeah, go home, Gerry. It’ll be fine.”
Fegan stared for a mom
ent longer, then turned to the door.
“Gerry,” Shields called after him.
Fegan stopped in the doorway, looked back into the shed.
“Tell Nuala I love her,” Shields said. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
Fegan nodded and pulled the door closed behind him.
Shields got to his knees, closed his eyes, and waited for the world to end.
The Traveller
A Novella
1
The Traveller let himself free of the shadow and walked into the feeble light. His footsteps on the grimy tiled floor sounded like those of a child, soft and unsure. The air around him was weighted by the odour of stale beer, just as it had been the last time he’d walked across this dim room.
Tommy the barman stood at the till counting change. Smoke ribboned from the cigarette he held pinched between his lips. The coins clattered in their compartments, metal on plastic. The visitor’s eyelids twitched at the noise. The Traveller drew closer to the bar until his fingertips felt the thick tacky varnish on the wood.
How long?
Days? Weeks? Centuries?
The Traveller couldn’t be sure. Time had come to seem like warm water to him, a thing he could feel but could not grasp. Gaps in his memory, hours lost to blackness, his awareness coming and going. His mind disappearing then coming back, finding himself in places he had no recollection of arriving at.
Like here. Like now.
Tommy stopped breathing. The cigarette fell from his lips into the open till drawer. His eyes met the visitor’s in the mirror behind the stacked glasses and suspended optics.
“Hello, Tommy,” the Traveller said.
Tommy dropped his gaze and took a shuddering breath.
“No, no, no,” he whispered.
The Traveller said, “I want a drink.”
Tommy shook his head. “No. Not real. Not real.” He brought his hands to his face, covered his eyes. “You’re not real,” he said.
“Tommy, I want a drink.”
Tommy spun, threw a bag of coins at the Traveller’s chest. The bag burst. Ten-pence pieces scattered, jangling, glittering, rolling. The sound went on forever.
The Traveller said, “I want a whiskey.”
“You’re not real,” Tommy said, the first tear beading on his cheek. “You’re dead.”
“So they say,” the Traveller said. “But I still want that drink.”
“Get the fuck out,” Tommy said, no force behind the words. “Get out. Now.”
The Traveller ran his gaze along the row of optics. He found a bottle made of green glass, the amber fire held within, a cream-coloured label. He pointed.
“There,” he said. “Jameson’s.”
“Please go.”
“Give me a Jameson’s.”
Save for the slightest shake of his head, Tom stood still.
“A Jameson’s,” the Traveller said.
Tom swallowed. He took a glass from under the bar and went to the optic. A round bubble floated up through the bottle as the glass filled with whiskey. He brought it back to the bar and set it on the wood. He stepped back.
The Traveller reached for the glass.
“It’s been a while,” he said.
Tom kept his gaze down. “Drink it and go.”
The warm scent of earth and spices filled the Traveller’s head, and caramel, sparking a memory of a small boy that might have once been him. The whiskey warmed his lips and tongue. The heat crept down his throat to his chest. It glowed in him like his burning soul.
He set the glass back on the bar.
Then he noticed his fingers.
He splayed them on the bar top, one long, thin hand beside the other. The lines and the scars. He thought about bringing his fingertips to his face, but something told him no, he would only feel madness there. Or he could look into the mirror behind the bar and know himself.
But the Traveller wanted no such thing.
“I told you to go,” Tom said.
The Traveller heard the words, sounds in the air around him, but they held no meaning. He kept his gaze on his hands. The memory of touch prickled his skin. He felt the bone, the flesh, the blood, broken and spilt so many times. Had he done those things?
“What time is it?” he asked.
Tom said, “Please go.”
The Traveller turned his head from side to side, saw the dingy bar all around him. “How did I get here?”
He felt air move. Before a further thought had formed in his mind, he raised his left forearm, met Tom’s wrist. The baseball bat waved uselessly above the visitor’s head. He reached up with his right hand, plucked the bat from Tom’s grip.
Tom backed away until he bumped against the till’s open drawer. The Traveller held the bat in front of himself, felt the weight of it, the chill of the metal.
“I’ve no cash for the drink,” he said.
“Just go,” Tom said, tears dropping from his cheeks.
“No,” the Traveller said. He dropped the baseball bat to the floor. It rang hollow against the tiles. “I came here for something. What did I come here for?”
“How should I know?” Tommy asked. “I’ve nothing for you.”
The memory came back to him. The job he came to do.
“I need some things,” he said.
“I can’t do anything for you,” Tommy said, anger growing within the fear.
“Yes, you can,” the Traveller said.
“I can’t.”
The Traveller remembered it all now. Who he was, why he was here, what he needed.
“I need weapons,” he said. “And I need information.”
“Please just go,” Tommy said.
“Not on your fucking life,” the Traveller said.
2
Ellen McKenna pressed herself into the farthest corner of the seat, her shoulder against the window, becoming as small as possible. She upped the volume on her phone, pushing more sound into her earbuds, letting the abrasive noise of Morbid Angel drown out everything else, even the rumble of the bus’s engine. Her school bag acted as a shield, held tight across her body.
No one spoke to her. No one looked at her. Not today, anyway. There were other times when they did. When they called her Freak McKenna, when they accidentally clipped her with an elbow or a foot, when they pushed her down one of the staircases at Ballycastle Grammar. She had learned how to hide in plain sight, to go unnoticed. It was the only way.
She had tried fighting back once, like her father had told her. The other girl had shoved her into a corner, held her there, and spat in her face. For a dare, probably. Ellen had used a move her father had taught her, jamming her fingertips hard into the base of the girl’s throat. The girl had staggered back, coughing, clutching at herself. Ellen should have left it at that, walked away. Instead, she punched the girl with as much force as she could channel into her fist. The girl went down, blood spouting from her nose, spilling on the floor. The other kids gasped, some screamed.
That was when the name Freak took hold. At least they didn’t come at her so often now. A stupid name was a price worth paying. Her father had stopped asking her about friends.
The bus journey from Ballycastle to Cushendun took thirty-eight minutes. By car, it was only twenty, but her father slept in the afternoons. In the mornings, when he came home from his night shifts at whatever security job he was working, he would sometimes drive her to school before returning home, getting drunk, and going to bed by noon.
They’d been up here on the coast for seven years now. Her memories of living in Belfast, and her mother, had grown more vague with each year that passed. Over time, they had become tangled with the darker shadows that she tried to forget. Her father had told her they were leaving all that behind when they moved here. Those terrors could not follow them out of the city. A
new start, he had said, a new life. Ellen had seen more human cruelty in those few years than most do in a lifetime, was too well acquainted with death. Coming here was supposed to be an escape, but she knew now there was no such thing.
She had loved it when she was small. Living so close to the beach. Her father took her paddling in the waves almost every day back then. Sometimes down to the caves, through the echoes and darkness, to the strange gate at the end. Nuns had lived in the house on the other side, he’d told her, cut off from the world. The house was a shell now, waiting for demolition, but the idea of it remained. A place so separate from everything.
She thought she would like that. Not to be a nun, but to be isolated by the sea, a passage through the cliffs the only way in or out. An iron gate between her and everyone else.
Except she was never really alone, was she?
She never had been. They were always there with her, the Others. She had forced them into the background over the last few years, their faces becoming indistinct, their presence more shadow than light. By force of will, she had silenced them, but they had never truly left her.
Ellen and her father had stopped talking about the Others years ago. He didn’t want to know, as if acknowledging the reality of them would shift the balance of his world. And she couldn’t blame him. These days, they didn’t talk about much of anything at all.
Through the bus window, the pine forest gave way to scrubland, churning hills of coarse grass yellowed by wind and rain. Sheep dotted the slopes, foraging. She had thought this place beautiful at one time, a landscape where adventures could be had. But now it appeared desolate, the sky forever grey, rain constant and insistent, like a headache that won’t lift.
In the longest hours of the night, when she was alone—but not alone—in their small house while her father patrolled some housing development, Ellen considered the possibility that she might never leave this place. In only a couple of years, she could do whatever she wanted, move away to a different town, a different country. But her father would still be here, digging his grave a little deeper each day. She knew if she wasn’t here with him, he might not be alive to grunt at her across the table as he ate the dinner she’d made for him.
The Traveller and Other Stories Page 14
