“No, I’ll go on.” Fegan pulled away from Caffola. “Sure I’ll see him tomorrow. At the funeral.”
“Suit yourself.” Caffola slapped his back as he left. “I’ll see you later.”
Fegan gulped cool air when he got outside, relieved to be free from the crushing stomachs and shoulders. Men were still gathered in front of the house, smoking and swapping stories. Again, he returned respectful nods and mumbled greetings until he was clear of them. He gripped the lapels of his jacket, flapping them to cool his body. He wiped a slick layer of sweat away from his brow and began his walk home.
The eleven followed.
“Don’t you lot get tired?” he asked. He turned to look at them. Eleven dead people, big as life, trooping along the pavement and looking right back at him. A laugh escaped his belly, and a giddy wave passed across his forehead. None answered his question, so he asked another.
“What was that about in there? What was I doing going after her? What was I going to say to her if I got her?”
The woman, her baby supported in one arm, stepped ahead of Fegan and turned to face him. She brought a finger to her lips. Shush. With the same finger she pointed over his shoulder. Fegan heard a car draw up, then slow down beside him. He looked towards it. A Renault Clio, a new one. The passenger window lowered with an electric whirr and Fegan stopped walking.
“Can I give you a lift?” Marie McKenna asked, her blonde head dipping to see him from below the car’s roofline.
Fegan looked back towards the house, then in the direction he’d been walking. He looked at his followers. The woman with the baby gave him a single nod.
“All right,” he said.
Fegan kept his hands in his lap and his mouth shut for the duration of the short journey. His knees pressed against the Clio’s dashboard, but the heavy silence caused him more discomfort. He almost wished the followers were in here with them. Marie had been on the verge of saying something from the moment he lowered himself into the car, but she seemed unable to let it out. Now, parked outside his house on Calcutta Street, off the Springfield Road, she struggled visibly with whatever she needed to say.
He was just about to thank her and go when she said, “I didn’t mean it.”
“Mean what?” he asked, even though he knew.
“What I said back there, by the coffin.” Marie stared straight ahead.
“I didn’t hear you say anything.”
“Yes, you did. I didn’t say it out loud, but you know what I said.”
“I suppose so,” he said, unable to put his heart into a lie.
“Well, I didn’t mean it. Please don’t tell anyone I said it.” She turned to face him. Fegan expected to see pleading in her eyes. Instead, they were cool like slate. Only their tiny movements betrayed her.
“Why would I tell anyone?” he asked.
“I know who you are. I know you were his friend. It must’ve really offended you. I’m sorry. Please don’t tell anyone.”
Marie’s voice cracked and her eyes softened. Fegan wondered if she feared him, and he hated the idea. Once he might have taken pleasure in it, but now it clawed at him.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “I’m not . . . with them any more. I don’t . . .”
She waited while he struggled. “Belong?” she asked.
Fegan reached for the door handle, uncertain whether to stay or flee. “That’s right,” he said.
“I know the feeling.” A tentative smile flickered on Marie’s lips. “You can’t choose where you belong, and where you don’t. But what if the place you don’t belong is the only place you have left?”
Did she expect an answer? She had enquiring eyes, like the psychologists in prison. Fegan considered it. “Then you get on with it, or get out,” he said.
“Okay.” Her smile bloomed to fullness, and she reddened. “Listen to me, questions, always questions. Well, thank you for understanding. And I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did,” Fegan said. The words fell from his mouth before he was conscious of the thought.
Her face paled, the red sinking beneath her skin. Her smile disappeared. “What?”
“You meant it,” he said, opening the passenger door. “And you were right.”
Fegan climbed out and stepped onto the pavement. He bent down and looked back into the car at her. “He deserved it,” he said before swinging the door closed.
Marie stared back at him through the glass for endless seconds before swinging into the traffic, tyres squealing, forcing a black taxi to brake. Its horn blared as the Clio disappeared down the street.
Fegan turned in a circle, looking for shadows. “What’s happening to me?” he asked.
9
Blankets of gloom filled the bar, layer on layer, concealing those men who wished to drink unseen. Fegan moved among them, avoiding their eyes and words. He sipped Guinness, not whiskey, to keep a clear head for his work.
He had always thought of killing as work. Just a job to be done, with no care or feeling behind it. He hadn’t considered himself a craftsman, more a skilled laborer. Not like those assassins who made it art. It only took a certain hardness of the soul, a casual brutality, a willingness to do what other men wouldn’t. He supposed he had a talent for it, just as Caffola had a talent for inflicting pain. And that talent had earned him respect.
