“Suicide.”
“That’s good, Harry. That’s good for you. What can I do you for? Kidnapping? Sure, that’s only five years. You’ll be out in three. That’s nothing.”
I started moving towards the door.
“Stay were you are!” he growled.
“No, I’m going, Harry. I’m going to walk out of here and back down the hill to my car and you’re going to let me go. There’s no point escalating this. All I have is a piece of forensic evidence that says O’Rourke was stored in this freezer at some point. I can’t prove you kidnapped him. I can’t prove anything. So there’s no sense killing me with that there shotgun, not when a half decent lawyer will get this case thrown out of court. Okay?”
I started inching closer to the door and I gave him a wide berth as I went past. He kept his gun on me, I kept mine on him.
“It’ll ruin me,” he said.
“No, not if you’re acquitted. You’ll be fine.”
“I won’t be acquitted. You’ll fit me up. And I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill him.”
I was at the door.
“I believe you, Harry. And I’m leaving now. You’ll not do anything stupid, will you?”
“You’re not going anywhere, peeler!”
He should have fired the Remington from his hip – sure, there would have been a nasty kick but I’d have been wasted.
He didn’t, though. He was too well trained in the use of firearms. His father must have imprinted that lesson in him at an early age and in the second it took him to raise the shotgun to his shoulder I dived out into the rain.
There was a blast behind me and fire spat out of the barn door into the darkness.
I ran to the wall and hid behind an old combine.
I was plotting my next move when I suddenly heard a klaxon blaring up at the house. It sounded like one of those air-raid sirens from the war. It was no fucking air raid, it was Harry calling in his tenants. I’d have to get bloody moving.
I ran from behind the combine straight into a spotlight. There was a shotgun blast from somewhere near the house.
White hot shot flew over my head.
I ran behind a hay rick.
Men were yelling now. A posse of Harry’s friends and tenants. Old fucking retainers who would do anything he wanted, no questions asked, even if it was killing a copper. Maybe
“He’s down there!” someone said.
“I seen him!” someone else shouted, and fired.
I hit the dirt, slewing into the mud.
“I nailed him!” a voice yelled.
I climbed over the stone perimeter wall that surrounded the estate.
“There he is!”
“He’s going over the wall!”
“After him! Billy, get your dogs! And Jack, cut the landlines at the junction box! He’ll not get away and he’ll get no help.”
I tore up into hills, heading out into the bog where the dogs would hopefully lose my scent. I ran through a stream, tripped on something, took a nasty spill and lay there panting for a minute before I got up again.
I doubled back towards the lane and Emma’s cottage. My ribs were screaming and I was covered in filth. Cora barked at me as I shambled across the farmyard.
I ran into the house.
“My God! What’s happened?” she said, her hand to her mouth.
“Where’s the phone?”
“What?”
“Where’s the fucking phone?”
“In the bedroom.”
I limped into the bedroom and dialled 999.
“Which service do you require?” the operator asked.
“Police! Quickly, Islandmagee out at—”
The line went dead.
I tried again and again but there was no dial tone.
“What happened?” Emma asked.
“Harry tried to kill me. He killed O’Rourke and threw him in his freezer. I’ve got the proof.”
Her face fell and she shook her head.
“No, Sean. He didn’t kill Bill O’Rourke,” she said in a monotone.
“He told you? You believe that?”
“It’s true.”
I took her by the shoulders and squeezed. “Tell it and tell it fast!”
“O’Rourke was spying on DeLorean. Causing all sorts of problems. Harry is landing something for DeLorean at his private slipway on the lough. The one you saw. Drugs, I think. It’s a big deal. They had to know if it had been compromised. Harry had Martin and a couple of his lads grab O’Rourke off the street. They were wearing balaclavas. They were only going to interrogate him and then let him go. They took him to the salt mine to question him. They must have gotten rough with him or he panicked or something. They weren’t going to kill him. They left him alone down there and one morning when they came to wake him he was dead. Martin thought he’d had a heart attack. Nobody knew what to do.”
She looked me square in the face. She’d confirmed Harry’s story and there was no nonsense about tears or throwing herself on the mercy of the court.
“It was no heart attack, Emma. He was smart. He knew this could happen in Northern Ireland so he made his own fucking suicide pill. Planted the plants, refined it himself. He didn’t want to be tortured to give the game away.”
She nodded. “We didn’t know about that.”
“Martin told you about O’Rourke’s death, didn’t he? And you told him to go to the police, and Harry—”
She laughed bitterly. “Me? Me tell him to go to the police?”
And then the tears did start welling in her eyes. “The police? Nobody in this part of Islandmagee would ever go to the peelers.”
“So what did happen?”
She shook her head. “They put the body in the freezer. They would have cut him up and got rid of him and it all would have been fine, but for Martin. Fucking Martin.”
“What about Martin?”
“Martin was a fool. He had found Jesus. Jesus didn’t mind him helping his big brother do a dodgy deal with John DeLorean but Jesus apparently told him that now a man had died he had crossed a line and he had to tell his commanding officer about this entire fucking escapade.”
“Martin wanted to turn you all in?”
“Yes.”
“So you shot him?” I asked, astounded.
She shook her head. “I didn’t shoot him.”
“Who did?”
“I called Harry and told him about Martin’s plans. He said he would take care of it,” she said simply, and sat on the sofa. “Martin was going up to check on the yearlings but Harry came down over the fields. I heard them talking. Harry gave him every chance, but Martin wouldn’t take it. Jesus wanted him to tell the truth to his
