Fegan edged to the doorway and slowly leaned out to see the window at the top of the stairs. McGinty hunkered down beneath it, Ellen held in front of him, the revolver behind her head where she couldn’t see it.
“Gerry,” she said, “I want to go home.”
“Soon, sweetheart. You and your Mummy and me. We’ll all go home together. I promise.”
McGinty gave a high, watery laugh. “You didn’t answer me, Gerry. What happens next?”
Fegan stepped out into the hallway, the Walther lowered to his side. He moved it behind his body so Ellen couldn’t see it.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you think you’ll go home and play happy families with Marie McKenna? Do you think you’ll be a father to this wee girl? You think Marie’s going to want anything to do with you, now she knows what you’ve done?”
The woman and the butcher made way as Fegan moved towards the bottom step. “I don’t know.”
McGinty’s hand trembled. Pale slivers of early light reflected on the revolver’s barrel. “You don’t know. There’s a lot you don’t know.” He smiled, sweat shining on his upper lip. “You don’t know about Marie calling me when she found out that cop was cheating on her. Or how I went round to see her that night, and how she pulled me into her bed. She did it just to spite him, to get back at him, same way she’s used you to spite me.”
Fegan climbed up two steps.
McGinty pressed his lips against Ellen’s hair. “She never told me if the child was mine. Stop there.”
Fegan froze with his bloody hand on the rail, his right foot two steps above his left, the Walther pressed against his thigh.
McGinty’s eyes went far away. “I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
Fegan brought his left foot up to join his right. The smooth rail slipped through his blood-slicked fingers. “I don’t want her to see this,” he said. “Neither do you.”
“Just let me go, Gerry.”
“I can’t do that. Where’s Marie?”
McGinty nodded to the side, somewhere beyond Fegan’s vision. “She’s in there. Bull knocked her out. Let me go, Gerry.”
Fegan climbed another step. “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. She’s just sleeping. Let me go. Please.”
And another step. “No, Paul, I can’t. Let Ellen go to her mother.”
“I’m taking her with me.”
And another. “No, you’re not.”
McGinty’s shoulders shook as he exhaled. “Christ, please, Gerry. Let me go. I’m begging you. Don’t make me do . . . this.”
One more step. “You won’t hurt her,” Fegan said. “Let her go to Marie.”
McGinty’s eyes were blue and glittering. Fegan’s own stare fixed on them as he took another step. McGinty’s breath came in thin, keening whines. He blinked sweat away from his eyes. His lip trembled.
He pushed.
59
Ellen slammed into Fegan’s chest, sending him reeling backwards. He grabbed at the rail with his left hand to save them both from tumbling down the stairs, and pain flared as he wrenched his injured shoulder. His good arm snaked around the girl as McGinty disappeared into the shadows above.
Ellen scrambled up Fegan’s torso as he found his balance, wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his middle. “Gerry,” she cried, ‘take me home.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
She buried her face between his neck and shoulder. The sweet smell of her hair filled his head and his heart.
“You’re cut,” she said.
“I’m all right. Where’s your Mummy?”
“Does it hurt?”
“No, sweetheart.” Fegan climbed the last few steps to the top, keeping his eyes on the shadows that had swallowed McGinty. “Where’s your Mummy?”
She looked to the door to Fegan’s left, the opposite direction to McGinty’s flight. He opened it and took one glance back at the shadows before slipping inside and closing it behind him.
A single stained mattress lay on the floor at the center of the room. Marie McKenna sprawled across it, her mouth open, her eyes moving behind closed lids.
Fegan carried Ellen to the mattress and lowered her to rest beside her mother. Marie’s eyes fluttered open, her pupils dilated, unfocused.
“Gerry?”
Fegan kneeled over her. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”
