Lennon unlocked the front door and turned to Ellen. “Go on inside, get yourself something to eat. I’ll not be long.”
Ellen watched Montgomery as she entered the house, not looking away until she closed the door behind her.
“How much does she know?” Montgomery asked.
“Enough,” Lennon said. He moved between Montgomery and the door, blocking the view of Ellen’s silhouette through the glass. “The Traveller came at her earlier. He tried to snatch her, but she got away.”
“I think it more likely he let her get away,” Montgomery said. “He was probably sending you a message. Trying to get you on edge. You know how he operates. Have you thought about what we discussed?”
“No,” Lennon said. “I’m not going to be the worm on your hook, and neither is my daughter.”
“I don’t see that you have much choice, Jack. He’s coming for you, no matter what. You know you can’t go to the police, they can’t be trusted. You can run, but he’ll track you down. Anybody you turn to for help, they’ll be in danger too. What other options do you have? Are you going to fight him off yourself?”
“I’ve done it before.”
“Yes, with the help of a madman. And how’s the blood pressure these days?”
“What do you mean?”
Montgomery’s face remained impassive. “You collapsed about, what, eighteen months ago? Had to go to A&E, or so I hear. They took samples for testing, but you never called for the results, did you? You’re a wreck.”
Lennon stepped close to him, chest to chest, eye to eye. “Yeah, I’m a wreck,” he said. “Look at the shape of me. Look at where I live. How I live. All this is because of men like you, toy soldiers and crooks, pulling other people into your schemes. Well, not me. Not this time. You want to get the Traveller, you bloody well go and get him, but leave me out of it.”
Montgomery smirked. “Leave you out of it? You’re in it whether you want to be or not. Your only choice is do you accept my help, or do you fend for yourself?”
“You know my answer,” Lennon said.
Montgomery took a card from his coat pocket and extended towards Lennon. “Fair enough. Call if you change your mind, day or night.”
Lennon glanced at the card but did not take it. Montgomery reached around him and pushed it through the letterbox.
“See you, Jack,” he said, and left by the driveway gate.
Lennon watched as he walked towards the village, whistling, hands in pockets.
Inside, Ellen waited at the kitchen table. “What did he want?” she asked.
Lennon didn’t have an answer for her.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Lennon said.
“Are we going somewhere?”
“I don’t know!”
He regretted raising his voice before the last word left his mouth, hated himself for the wounded look on her face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I should have the answers, but I don’t. We’ve nowhere to go, but we can’t stay here.”
“Then why not call the police?” Ellen asked. “You still know people there.”
“No one I trust,” Lennon said. “Last time I got the police involved, it cost your mother her life. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Before Ellen could argue, his phone chimed and hummed. He pulled it from his pocket. Unknown caller, the display said, and he knew. He thumbed the green icon and said nothing.
Long seconds passed before he heard, “How’re ya, Jack.”
He didn’t reply.
“Who’s your man that’s been hanging round, Jack? The big lad with the fucked-up face on him.”
Lennon’s teeth ground against each other, the muscles in his jaws tightening.
“Former military, I’d say. He has that swagger about him. The way he walks, like he’s on parade or something. You know the type. What is he, MI5? MI6? Something else?”
Let him run his mouth, Lennon thought, see if he gives something away. Ellen watched from the other side of the kitchen, her eyes questioning. He realised he’d pressed his hand against his chest, as if to hold his heart in place.
“You think he can help you, Jack? You think he can stop what’s coming? I’ll tell you now, Jack, he can’t. No one can. It’s been too long in the making, this fight. Too many old scores to settle. But I’ll tell you what, I’m going to offer you a kindness. I’ll only offer it now, just this once. Yes or no, your choice.”
“Go on,” Lennon said, his voice rattling in his throat.
“My client made it clear to me that she’d prefer you to see your little girl suffer before I end it for you. A bonus for her, a few extra quid for me. But it wasn’t a deal breaker. I could leave her be, if I wanted to. All you have to do is come to me. You do that, you take what’s coming, save me coming after you, and I’ll leave her alone. How’s that sound? Take it or leave it, Jack. Yes or no. Five seconds to decide. Four, three, two—”
“All right,” Lennon said.
“Good man yourself. I’ll call you when it’s time.”
The line went dead.
12
Ellen watched her father as he stared at the phone in his hand.
“That was him, wasn’t it?” she asked. “What did he want?”
Lennon stayed quiet for a moment, then said, “Yeah, it was him. Just more threats.”
“You agreed to something,” she said. “What was it?”
“No,” he said, “nothing.”
Ellen knew he lied. She weighed whether to push him for the truth or not, decided now was no time for secrets.
“Tell me,” she said.
“There’s nothing to tell. Look, I need to show you something.”
He reached around to the small of his back, pulled something from his waistband, and set it on the table. It gave a heavy clunk as it met the wood. She stared at the object, her mind unable to decipher what her eyes were telling her. Eventually, she knew what it was. A pistol. A revolver, not the other kind. She knew that much.
Her father pushed the gun across the table towards her, pointed at what looked like a small lever near the grip. “That’s the safety catch,” he said. “It won’t fire unless you push that down. Once you’ve done that, all you have to do is point it and pull the trigger. If it’s cocked, it takes less pressure to fire, but you’re more likely to have an accidental discharge. But if someone’s coming for you, don’t think about it, just aim and—”
“No,” Ellen said. “I don’t want it.”
“Doesn’t matter what you want,” Lennon said. He reached into his jacket pocket and dropped a handful of bullets on the table. “You keep this close, right? Anyone comes to the door, front or back, to the windows, whatever, you shoot first. Do you understand me?”
Ellen backed herself into the corner. The tears that had been threatening since that man had taken her arm at the bus stop began to rise along with her fear. Fear turned to anger as it reached her mouth.
“I wish you’d never come back for me,” she said. “I wish I’d stayed with Aunt Bernie.”
He tried to hide the sting of her words, but he could not. His gaze remained fixed on the table, a quiver in his voice.
“You deserved a better life than this,” he said. “I know that and I’m sorry. But Bernie and her people are poison. They would’ve . . .”
“Would’ve what? Made me one of them? I used to wonder why you hate them so much, but it’s obvious. It’s because they’re my mother’s family. They remind you of what you did.”
She regretted the words as they left her mouth, even if they were true.
“What I did? If your mother hadn’t got mixed up with Gerry Fegan, we never would’ve—”
The regret dissolved.
“If you hadn’t run off and left her when she got pregnant, she never wo
uld’ve had anything to do with him. We wouldn’t be here now. She’d be alive and we’d have a proper home. We’d have a real life.”
Lennon leaned on the back of a chair, gripped it, his knuckles white.
“I would’ve let her down sooner or later,” he said. “Both of you. I’m not a good man. I never have been. I cheated and lied and drove away anybody ever cared for me. I know you’ll be out of here as soon as you’re old enough, and I can’t blame you. But picking over all that won’t do us any good now.”
“But a gun will?”
He made no reply, and she saw how he slumped against the chair, as if he would collapse to the floor without it. Ellen had seen photographs of him as a younger man, and he had once been handsome in his own coarse way, not the wretched creature who stood before her now, broken by his own sins. Yet the hard vein of pride remained in him.
“Call the police,” she said.
“No,” he said. “There’s no one there I can trust.”
“What about that woman? She helped you before.”
“Flanagan? I’ve not spoken to her in years. Uprichard’s retired. There’s no one left.”
“Then just call the closest station, ask them to send someone. Explain what’s happening. That man won’t come near here if there are police.”
“No,” Lennon said.
She hated him then, as she had done so many times before. But this time, she felt no shame in it. He would not be helped, sacrificing them both to his pride.
“If you won’t call them, I will.”
Ellen pulled the mobile from her blazer pocket, thumbed the Emergency icon on the lock screen, confirmed the call.
“Hang up,” Lennon said.
She pressed the phone to her ear, listened to the dial tone. Her father crossed the room to her, reaching. She slapped his hand away, turned her back to him. He tried to grab her hand, and she twisted away.
“Nine nine nine, what’s your emergency?”
“Police,” Ellen said.
“Hold, pl—”
Lennon seized her hand, crushing her fingers against the phone, pulling it away from her ear. He prised her fingers loose and the phone dropped to the tiled floor, its already cracked screen shattering. Before she could retrieve it, he drove his heel down hard, sending sparkling fragments in all directions. He bent down with a grunt, picked the phone up, and threw it against the wall. It splintered into pieces.
Ellen stepped back, staring at him.
“You’re insane,” she said.
He stood, breathless, unable to return her fiery gaze.
“You want to die,” she said.
“No, I—”
She went for the door, the hall beyond, but he took her wrist.
“Ellen, wait, I—”
She slapped him hard, rocking his head on his shoulders, and he staggered back, releasing her. As he recovered, she hauled the door open, ran to the hall, to the front door, and out. She heard him call her name, but she kept her focus on the path ahead, the gate, the road, ignoring the cold. As he limped after her, panting, shouting, she ran.
The cold air seared her lungs, but she knew he would not, could not catch up with her. She left him far behind, no idea where she would go.
Away.
Anywhere, so long as it was away from here.
13
The Traveller stood up to his knees in the water, cold shooting up his legs, cutting through muscle and tendon, until it reached the core of him.
“Jesus,” he said between chattering teeth.
He looked back to the shore and tried to recall wading out here. No memory of it, nor of walking to the beach. He had parked the car in the yard of a derelict farmhouse not far from the village, then called Lennon. It had been the dim end of the afternoon then, but now the coming dusk turned the world grey. Around four, he thought. Thirty minutes gone, at least. In that time, he had left the car and walked here to the beach, and out into the waves.
His first thought was that he needed to see a doctor about the blackouts, the gaps in his consciousness. They had become more frequent, along with the headaches. He wondered if there was a cancer there, some dirty tumour eating his brain one cell at a time. Then he remembered he was up to his knees in the winter sea, and his torso almost folded in on itself with the cold.
He waded back to the beach, fighting against the water, wondering if he’d have drowned if he hadn’t come back to himself. Probably, he thought. As the water fell below his ankles, he became aware of how the denim of his jeans clung to his lower legs, weighing them down, and slopping in his shoes.
“Fucking arsehole,” he whispered. “Stupid fucking bastard.”
Anger swelled in him, at himself for losing his place, and at Lennon for bringing him here. He slapped his own cheek, hard, felt the sting on his hand, but nothing but a faint pressure below his eye, the nerve endings long gone. On the sand, barely beyond the reach of the tide, were the two bags. The girl’s rucksack, and his own holdall.
Jesus, what if someone had come along? He’d have killed them, yes, but what then?
“Fuck’s sake, get a hold of yourself,” he said as he picked up each bag. “Stop shaking.”
His body would not listen, the shivers seeming to have taken him whole. Lucky he hadn’t gone out much farther. Up to his midsection, and he’d have gone into hypothermic shock. He cursed himself again and carried the bags farther along the beach, north, away from the village. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the clusters of houses, their whitewashed walls still visible in the sinking darkness.
When he was far enough away, he dropped the bags in the sand and knelt down, the soaked jeans chafing the skin of his calves. He opened the girl’s schoolbag and looked inside. Textbooks, notebooks, a pencil case with strange letters and icons drawn on it with black and blue ink. He couldn’t read them, but he guessed they were whatever bands she liked. Nothing he could use, he threw the bag across the sand.
Opening his own bag, he fetched the cheap mobile phone and dialled. He expected an immediate answer, but it didn’t come.
“Fuck you, Jack,” he said after the tone. “I’ll try one more time. If you don’t answer, the deal’s off. I’ll do the girl first while you watch, and I’ll take my time about it. Maybe I’ll feed some of her to you. How would you like that? Answer your fucking phone.”
The Traveller hung up and dropped the phone back into the bag. He slumped down onto the sand, lay back, and gazed up into the sky, which had turned from milky white to slate grey. His feet ached from the cold. He wrapped his arms around himself.
Maybe he should have kept walking into the water, just kept going until it swallowed him up. Breathed in the salty murk, let it fill his lungs. But that would mean allowing Jack Lennon to live, and he could not do that. Yes, the contract from Strazdienė paid well, but the money didn’t matter. He had more of that stashed away than he could ever spend. The truth was Lennon had to pay for what he’d done to him, for leaving him to burn. It had been years, and he was finally here, ready to do it. Ready to take what he was owed.
And then what?
He didn’t know, and his mind refused to follow that path. There was only this job and contemplating anything beyond felt like falling from a cliff. Part of him knew why he had taken so long to come back to this miserable scrap of a country, why he had only done so when Strazdienė tracked him down. She had asked why he’d allowed Lennon so many years of life, and that had been his answer: because he didn’t know what was on the other side. He had an idea, perhaps, but he could not form the thought in his mind, could not hold it to the light. If he did that, he might as well walk back to the sea right now and keep going.
“Fuck it,” he said.
He sat up, reached into his bag, and took the phone out once more. The dial tone purred in his ear.
“Yeah,” Jack Lennon s
aid.
“You’re a lucky man, Jack.”
Heavy breathing at the other end, wind against the mouthpiece. The boy Jack was out and about somewhere.
“Just tell me what you want me to do,” Lennon said, wheezing.
“I will, don’t you worry,” the Traveller said. “What are you doing, Jack? Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” Lennon said, gulping air. “I just stepped outside, that’s all.”
“Don’t fuck me around, Jack. You know what I’ll do.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“All right, listen,” the Traveller said. “The caves in thirty minutes. You go first, I’ll follow you in. You try to act the smartarse, you bring anyone else, you bring a weapon, then it’ll go bad for you, and worse for your girl. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah,” Lennon said.
“Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
“You know what’s going to happen. You know I’m going to kill you. I’ll make it quick so long as you don’t give me a reason to make it slow.”
“I won’t,” Lennon said, “but I need more time.”
“Time? No, you’re all out of that, Jack.”
“I just need to take care of some things, then you can do whatever you want with me. I’m done. I’m fucking ready to go, believe me, I’ve had enough of living like this. You’ll be doing me a favour. But there’s something I need to do.”
“No, Jack, sorry. Thirty minutes, that’s all. I don’t find you in the caves, it’s not you I’ll go looking for. Just you remember that. See you there, big man.”
He hung up.
14
Lennon stared at the phone in his hand, the screen dotted with fine rain drops.
He stood at the centre of the road, the post office to one side, the old red phone box, the bus stop. No one on the street. Not Ellen, not anybody. She had run, and he could not keep up, his lungs heaving, his hip aching. He put his hand to his chest once more, as if he could steady his heartbeat by touch alone. A dizzy wave rocked him on his feet, and he lurched to the footpath and leaned on the low wall that fronted the gardens of the row of cottages. His breath came in gulping swallows, and a dagger of pain stabbed the upper left of his chest, sent a charge down his left arm. The phone slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground.
The Traveller and Other Stories Page 19
