“Safe,” she said. She smiled once, and then her eyelids flickered and closed. Fegan smoothed Ellen’s hair, tainting the strands red.
“You wait here with your Mummy till I come and get you, all right?”
Ellen grabbed his lapels. “Don’t go!”
“I’ll be back soon. I promise. Stay here with your Mummy. Don’t come out, no matter what you hear. All right?”
She nodded and released his jacket.
“Good girl,” Fegan said. He touched her cheek as she lay down and rested her head against her mother’s bosom. Then he stood and went to the door. Turning back to her, he said, “Remember, stay with your Mummy, no matter what you hear.”
Fegan put his eye to the crack of the door and eased it open. The corridor was empty. He opened the door fully, slipped out, and closed it again. There were two more doors: one just beyond the stairway, facing back to the rear of the house, and the other at the end of the corridor, facing him. Both were closed.
He raised the Walther and inched forward, his breathing slow, listening, as the followers stayed close behind him. Two steps took him to the top of the stairway, another three to the door beyond. He pressed his ear against it. Nothing but dripping water. The doorknob was slippery in the bloody fingers of his left hand. Weakened and clumsy, they struggled to grip the brass. He turned it, pushed hard, and raised the Walther.
The door swung back on its hinges to collide with the wall. Dislodged tiles splintered on the floor. Fegan winced at the noise. The room held an old scroll-top bathtub, a toilet and a washbasin. Water pooled on the linoleum-covered floor, and a deep, dank smell climbed into Fegan’s nose and mouth.
No McGinty.
He looked to the other door. A noise, the faintest of rustlings, came from beyond it. Fegan took slow, soft steps towards the room. The rustling stopped. He reached out to the doorknob, his pistol ready, his breath held firm in his chest.
Fegan moved fast, turning the handle, pushing, dropping to his knees, aiming. The door frame exploded in a shower of rotting wood and he fell back, landing on his wounded shoulder. He pushed the pain away, and scrambled to a crouch. The room was in darkness. He’d barely seen the muzzle flash from inside.
The woman and the butcher stepped forward. They both looked at Fegan and stabbed their fingers towards the room. McGinty was in there, hiding in the thick shadows.
“He’s got no ammunition left,” Fegan said.
The woman smiled and nodded as she rocked her baby.
Fegan stood upright and advanced slowly to the door. His eyes searched the darkness but he found only shades of grey and black. He raised the Walther in his right hand, and tried to bring his left up to steady it, but it was too heavy. His left shoulder throbbed with a spiteful heat, and he felt warmth spread down his side.
The dark shapes solidified as Fegan’s eyes attuned to the shadows. Old furniture was piled in here, tables, chairs, cupboards, dressing tables. McGinty could be hiding in or under anything. Fegan eased over the threshold, floorboards creaking under his feet. Dust crept into his nostrils and he fought the urge to sneeze. It snagged the back of his throat and he wanted to—
A thunderbolt struck Fegan’s head and the room spun away from him. He careened into the wall, the Walther slipping from his fingers to skitter across the floorboards into the shadows. McGinty screamed as he brought the revolver down again, but Fegan got his forearm up in time to deflect the blow. He pushed back and McGinty stumbled away, crashing into an upturned table. Fegan dived at him, but McGinty threw himself to the side, leaving Fegan to fall against the upended table legs. He cried out as the wooden feet gouged his stomach and ribs.
McGinty tried again to slam the side of the pistol into Fegan’s temple, and he came close, but Fegan pulled his head back, leaving McGinty punching uselessly at empty air. Fegan turned as McGinty’s balance deserted him and he drove his fist into the politician’s temple.
McGinty went down hard, his chin cracking on the floorboards, and Fegan was on his back before he could recover. Fegan wrapped his right arm around McGinty’s neck, the crook of his elbow beneath the other’s jaw, and squeezed. McGinty bucked and writhed, and Fegan put his weight on the other’s back, but still he struggled. He clawed at Fegan’s hand, scratching, but Fegan only increased the pressure on his neck.
Fegan tried to find his pocket with his left hand, to get Quigley’s .22, but his dull, stupid fingers only fumbled at the fabric while McGinty threw his weight from side to side. Fegan put the last of his strength into his good arm and squeezed harder.
McGinty’s thrashing became more desperate and he reached up, searching for Fegan’s face. Fegan ignored the scratching and grabbing, feeling McGinty’s body slowly soften.
“Everybody pays, Paul,” he said through gritted teeth. “Sooner or later. That’s what she said to me.”
McGinty’s thrashing began to fade, and his hands fell away. Fegan kept the pressure on the man’s neck as his body twitched, fighting to live.
“Everybody pays,” Fegan said again. “Everybody. Even you.”
McGinty shuddered once as his life slipped away. Fegan lay there, across his back, for what seemed like centuries, feeling the stillness of McGinty’s body as his own screamed with adrenalin and pain. When his heart came under control, Fegan looked up to the shadows of the room. He released McGinty’s neck and gently lowered the dead man’s head to rest on the floor.
Fegan climbed to his feet, feeling the steady throb from his shoulder joined by new shades of pain. He turned in a circle, alone, all alone, nobody here but—
The woman stepped out of the shadows, her face slack, her hands outstretched. She looked down at her fingers, her arms, so empty now with no infant to carry. Her mouth was open and her eyes were bright circles. She held her hands out for Fegan to see how empty they were.
Empty.
