The Traveller and Other Stories

by Stuart Neville

  “Fuck,” he said, the word forced between his teeth.

  Black circles floated in his vision. He tried to blink them away, but they remained, pulsing with the thunder in his head.

  “You all right there, fella?” a voice said from behind.

  Lennon turned, saw a man, tall, the hood of his coat pulled up against the drizzle. He held a large white dog on a lead. Lennon recognised him as living in the cottage by the bridge, but he didn’t know his name.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” The man took a step closer, and the dog sniffed at Lennon’s trousers. He bent down and picked up Lennon’s phone. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”

  He thinks I’m a drunk, Lennon thought. First time in a month he hadn’t been. Straightening, he took the phone from the man’s hand. Without offering any thanks, he turned his back on him and walked back towards the bridge, struggling to steady his gait. He felt the man’s gaze on his back all the way across to the other side. It took longer than it should have to reach his home, and too much effort to fit the key into the lock.

  Inside, Lennon found the card on the floor, the one that Montgomery had slipped through the letterbox. He placed one hand on the radiator to steady himself as he bent down to retrieve it. A groan escaped him as he stood upright. He stumbled to the kitchen, his shoulder sliding along the wall, and slumped into a chair. His breathing became no less ragged as he sat with his head in his hands, willing the storm in his head to ease.

  He searched for some feeling for what lay ahead but found none. No regret, no fear, no anger. Only a sense of inevitability, as if every choice in his life and been for the purpose of leading him here, to this, to now.

  Eventually Lennon realised he could leave it no longer. He retrieved the phone from his pocket and squinted at the card that now lay on the table. The numbers beneath the name were a blurred jumble. He blinked and moved closer until he could read them, then dialled.

  Montgomery answered after the first ring.

  “Yes, Jack.”

  “I need your help,” Lennon said.

  “Of course you do.”

  “It’s Ellen,” he said, the words coming in sputters. “She’s run off. We argued. She’s upset. I can’t. Look for her. I have. To go to him.”

  “What do you mean, go to him?”

  “He promised he’d. Let her be. If I went to him.”

  “He’ll kill you,” Montgomery said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Listen. I need you. To find her. Keep her safe. I don’t trust him. You find her. First. She has. Family. In Belfast. You get her to them. Keep her safe.”

  A pause, then, “All right, Jack. I’ll find her. What about you? What are you going to do?”

  “Go to him,” Lennon said, feeling the hateful weight of metal tucked into his waistband. “And I’ll kill him. If I can.”

  “Good luck, Jack.”

  Lennon dropped the phone to the table and rested his head on his forearm as it swayed in another dizzy wave. God help me, he whispered into the warm space between his arm and his chest. God help me.

  Fifteen minutes later, he limped along the road that ran between the river mouth and the row of apartment blocks that had been built against the cliff face. Before he left his house, he had chewed half a dozen aspirin tablets, and the grit of them remained on his tongue. The hammering in his chest had eased enough to let him breathe, but the world had taken on a sickly shimmer, as if he saw it through a veil.

  He passed the holiday cottage on his left, the bay stretching out into the gloaming beyond, then the water pumping station, both low buildings made from stone. The road curved around to his right, seeming to disappear into the cliff face. As he followed it, he saw the two mouths of the caves, the road swallowed by the larger of them. He hesitated, gazing into the black maw. Waves broke on the rocks just feet away, and for a moment he considered throwing himself on them, cracking his head, letting the water take him.

  But he couldn’t die yet. Not until he was sure.

  Lennon got moving, each step causing his hip to grind, the pain cutting through the fog in his head. His heart maintained an erratic rhythm of its own, sometimes hitting hard, sometimes barely there at all. Once again, he pressed his hand to his chest, as if to soothe it. The darkness crept up around him as he entered the cave, and when he heard his breathing echoing between its walls, he realised how desperate and jagged it was.

  He limped towards the rear of the cave and the hint of evening light that loomed there. As he walked, his feet barely left the ground, dragging on the stones and sand. At last, he reached the gate at the far end, where the cave opened onto the gardens of the old house, the derelict building not visible from here. The gate was padlocked, with barbed wire protecting the spaces around it, discouraging anyone who might dare to climb. Lennon turned and leaned against it, the iron hard against his back.

  A memory flashed in his mind: walking Ellen down here for the first time, her small hand in his. Seven years old then, maybe eight. Her eyes wide as they entered the gloom, staring at the thousands of stones suspended in volcanic rock, her gasping at the echo of her own voice. She had run to this gate, peered through the bars at the banks of crocosmia, orange in their fiery bloom. He told her about the nuns who had lived here, isolated, the Sisters of Mercy. She had insisted on coming back down here every day for a fortnight, clapping her hands so she could hear the sound bounce off the walls. Now all he could hear was the angry crash of the waves, and he couldn’t be certain if the noise was real or only existed in his head.

  His heart seemed to shift and turn in his chest, like an animal struggling in a trap. The cave floor tilted beneath his feet, and he would have fallen had it not been for the gate. A fresh spear of pain ran from his chest down to his left bicep before dulling to an ache in his wrist. With his right hand, he reached behind his back and found the grip of the pistol. He withdrew it from his waistband and kept it hidden as he pulled the hammer back.

  As his heart stuttered, as his breath came and went, Lennon waited.

  15

  Ellen ran until her thighs ached, until each footfall sent a shock of pain into her shins, until her lungs grabbed at the air. She stopped and turned in a circle, realised she didn’t know where she was. A country road, far enough inland that she couldn’t see the grey of the sea, the sky above bruising into darkness.

  Fear crept in, seeping through the anger, telling her she’d gone too far. Told her she was in danger out here.

  Where was out here?

  A cottage a little farther along the road, empty, but not derelict. Another holiday home, like so many scattered around here. A ruin of a building the other way. No sight of water, the thing she had learned to navigate by these last years. The great constant. If the water is there, everything else is here. That she could not see it frightened her.

  But she could smell it. Hear it, if she held her breath. It was not far away, and that gave her comfort enough to keep her mind from panic.

  Ellen’s hand went to her blazer pocket, meaning to find her phone there, open a map, and get her bearings. Then she remembered it lay shattered on the kitchen floor, reduced to plastic and glass and metal.

  She had called 999 before her father took the phone from her, had asked for the police. It was a myth that the emergency services could pinpoint a call, she knew, but they could tell the nearest cellular mast. Maybe they would send a patrol out, a police car looking for trouble. Probably not. She couldn’t hope for that.

  The phone box in the village, a red one, like the olden days. By the post office and the bus stop. She had run past it not long ago. Surely if she turned back, went the way she’d come, she would wind up back there again.

  Ellen closed her eyes and listened. The sea rumbled somewhere off to her left, which meant she faced south. She reached her hand out, towards the water, as if she
could feel it there. And she could, like it was magnetic, the waves sending signals to her.

  She opened her eyes and walked, first past the ruin, then the bend in the road, listening as she went. Hearing the roar, even though the clamour in her own mind tried to drown it out. But she knew where to go, like a migrating bird, chasing some primal instinct.

  Soon, she saw the caravan park, the same one she passed every day on the way home from school. And she knew where she had been, the road and the houses seen from a different perspective than before.

  There, the sea. Bleak and grey and beautiful and always.

  Ellen walked, hard stepping, the terror kept at bay by the purpose of her mission: get to the phone box. Call the police. Get help.

  The whitewashed buildings appeared ahead of her now, low blocks in the dim distance, curving around the bay, the ugly scar of the new apartments on the cliffs farthest of all. The caves beyond, burrowed down under the rock. A stone wall ran along the far side of the road, weathered down, like a long row of stumped and blackened teeth. Grass on the other side, dropping down to the beach. Not far to the village, only a few minutes. A phone call, then she could find somewhere to hide.

  Ellen crossed to the footpath that skirted the wall, folded her arms across her stomach, put her head down, and walked. The drizzle had soaked her blazer through, her hair clinging wet and heavy to the back of her neck, around her cheeks. She passed the clumps of trees that backed onto the old church, the lane cutting through them. Not once in the seven years she’d lived here had she ever seen the building that lay beyond the trees. A certainty settled on her: that she never would. And she didn’t mind. She only cared that she reached the phone box, that she made that call.

  As she walked, the village coming closer, she became aware of an engine behind her, a car slowing. The tyres hissing on the tarmac. She did not look around. Would not.

  The car levelled with her, and she saw the white paintwork in her peripheral vision, the neon yellow livery. A police car. She stopped, turned to it. The car stopped. The passenger door opened.

  A policewoman inside, a yellow hi-vis jacket wrapped around her tactical vest, equipment everywhere. Light brown hair, tied up and back. Wide, friendly eyes.

  “Are you all right there? It’s not a good evening to be out.”

  Ellen could find no words. She saw the driver duck down to look up at her, a young man, an earnest face peering around his partner.

  “We had an emergency call,” the policewoman said. “It ended before the operator could establish who the caller was, but we traced it to the mast near here. Have you seen anything while you were out and about? Anything that concerned you?”

  Ellen stood, quite silent, rainwater dripping from her hair.

  The policewoman turned in her seat, placed her booted foot against the kerb.

  “Anything wrong, love?”

  Ellen opened her mouth.

  “Nothing at all,” the man said.

  The man who had been waiting on the doorstep earlier. The Englishman with the broad shoulders and the scarred face. The man who had no business here. Ellen didn’t know where he had come from, only that he was now by her side, leaning down, talking to the policewoman.

  “And you are?” the policewoman asked.

  “Preston,” he said. “Preston Montgomery. I’m a friend of her dad’s. She ran off earlier and he asked if I’d keep an eye out. A little family squabble, you know the sort of thing. I’ll bring her home now, don’t worry.”

  “No,” Ellen said, snatching her elbow away as his fingers closed on it.

  “Honestly,” he said, “just a little family argument, nothing to worry about.”

  The policewoman looked to Ellen.

  “Is that right, love? Do you know this man?”

  “No,” Ellen said.

  She tried to walk away, but Montgomery took hold of her sleeve.

  “Don’t be silly, now,” he said.

  “Sir, do me a favour and let go of her,” the policewoman said.

  She gripped the car’s door and hoisted herself up.

  Montgomery pulled something from inside his coat, and it spat at the policewoman. The policewoman’s cheek and forehead cracked open. She slumped down like a bag of meat between the kerb and the car. Inside, the policeman scrabbled for something at his hip. Montgomery crouched, bending at the knees, reached towards the open car door. The thing in his hand spat twice more, phut-phut, and the policeman jerked and bucked, his hands reaching for his throat, before he slumped in his seat.

  Neither of them had made a sound, not even a gasp or a sigh. Like week-old birthday balloons deflating, sinking.

  Ellen wanted to scream, but she closed her mouth, remained still and silent.

  “You need to come with me,” he said. “Quick, before someone comes along.”

  She said nothing.

  “They would’ve killed you,” he said, coming in close. “You know who your father was up against. You knew they’d come for him. Come on. He told me to take care of you. Your relatives in Belfast. I’ll take you there now. Come on.”

  Ellen looked down at his reaching hand, saw the rough skin, the veins, the dirt under his nails.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  She pushed past him, towards the village. The phone box still fixed in her mind. Like an island to swim towards, a safe harbour.

  “Ellen, stop,” he said. “Your father asked me to help you.”

  She ignored him, shut it all out, kept walking, knowing is she stopped and allowed her mind to grasp what she had just seen, then it would come undone.

  His hand closed on her collar, the other clasping tight around her mouth. She thrashed, tried to remember what her father had told her. Make it hard, difficult. Kick, punch, scratch. Become heavy, immovable.

  None of it mattered. She was no more than a bag of twigs in his arms, carried away like a leaf on a breeze. He pulled her over the wall, dragged her across the grass, her heels kicking at the clumps of green. Down over the verge, onto the damp sand. He threw her down, kneeled on her belly before she could writhe away.

  “Stop it,” he hissed. “Be still.”

  Ellen slapped him, slashed at his face with her nails. With one hand, he pinned her wrists to the sand.

  “Fucking stop it,” he said. “Stop it or I’ll put your fucking lights out.”

  He leaned down, his nose an inch from hers, and she saw his eyes. Saw him.

  Ellen stopped fighting.

  After a few seconds, he said, “Good.”

  They both became still, breathing in time with the waves, his hard hand over her mouth.

  “They would’ve killed you,” he said. “The Traveller has them all in his pocket. They would’ve brought your body to him, showed you to your father. Then he would have killed him too. Do you understand? The Traveller wants your father to see you dead before he finishes him. He’s a bastard like that. The longer you live, the longer your father lives. Do you understand? Tell me you understand.”

  Ellen nodded, her neck straining against the force of his hand.

  He sat up, peering across the grass towards the wall and the road beyond. Where the police car still idled, its occupants dead.

  “We need to get moving,” Montgomery said. “Right now. Go.”

  He stood, hauled Ellen to her feet. Shoved her hard in the back.

  “Move,” he said. “We can’t stay here.”

  She looked back over her shoulder, saw him bring a phone to his ear. He pushed her again, and she staggered forward, towards the village.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s all right. I’ve found her.”

  16

  The Traveller heard Lennon before he saw him, his ragged breath echoing through the cave. Jesus, he sounded like he’d run a marathon to get here. As he moved deeper into the darkness, and
closer to the pale remains of light at the far end, he saw Lennon slumped against the gate that closed off the house and gardens on the other side. He stopped.

  “How’re ya, Jack,” the Traveller said.

  “You’re late,” Lennon said.

  “Time’s a funny thing, isn’t it? There’s never as much of it as you think. But I’m here now, that’s what matters, right?”

  He peered at Lennon’s silhouette, barely the shape of a man. Hunched against the iron, his legs quivering at the effort to keep him upright.

  “Fuck me, Jack, you look like shite. You ought to look after yourself better. Not that it matters much now, mind you.”

  “I think—”

  Lennon interrupted himself with a fit of coughing that bent him at the waist, each hack coming from down deep inside of him.

  “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  The Traveller couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that burst from him.

  “No, big man,” he said, taking a step closer. “No way you get off that easy. You don’t get to die of natural causes. No chance.”

  Now Lennon laughed, but it sounded painful, rattling out of him like broken glass.

  “You’d hate that, wouldn’t you? You have to make a production out of it. If it was just a matter of killing me, you could have put a bullet in my head any time you wanted. Over and done. But that’s not how you want it to go, is it?”

  “Ah, you know me too well, big man.”

  The Traveller slipped the holdall’s strap off his shoulder and lowered the bag to the ground. He hunkered down, unzipped it, and sorted through the contents. First, he removed the Glock 19 and the suppressor, screwed the two together. He popped the magazine, checked it was fully loaded, then slapped it back into place. Pulling the slide back, he saw there was a round in the chamber.