brave or strong, but because they never knew of any plot to hit McGinty. All the while, Fegan’s face remained blank, his eyes far away. Apart from one moment, that was. When one of the Loyalists wept for his mother, Fegan might have come to himself. Campbell thought he saw a wave of revulsion or pity - he couldn’t be sure which - on the other man’s face. It was gone before he could be certain.
When the screaming was over, and there was no more blood to spill, Fegan dropped the pickaxe handle to the floor. He finished them with a .22 pistol. Its sharp report boomed in the empty concrete room.
Fegan stood silent for several minutes. Campbell noticed the tear tracks glittering on his face.
“They didn’t know anything,” Fegan said.
Campbell leaned against the wall, fighting his own churning gut. “Delaney said it was them. He named them.”
“He lied,” Fegan said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Campbell said. “McGinty wanted them dead. That’s all there is to it.”
Fegan wiped his face with the back of his hand, leaving a red smear. “I put my mother in the ground yesterday,” he said.
Campbell said nothing.
Fegan’s eyes turned glassy, staring at something miles away. “She hadn’t spoken to me for sixteen years. She told me she was ashamed of what I did. That was the last thing she ever said to me. They let me out to go and see her in the hospital. She wouldn’t let me into the room. She died hating me.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Campbell asked.
Fegan snapped back to himself and looked at Campbell, his face creased with confusion. “I don’t know,” he said. “Can we go now?”
Campbell followed him out into the darkness. As he drove them back to the city, he kept one eye on the road and one eye on Fegan, his heart thundering in his chest.
That had been nine years ago. And now Fegan knew of Campbell’s deceit. Did he know he was a plant? Campbell had to assume as much.
The handler wanted Fegan dead. McGinty wanted Fegan dead. Campbell
Fegan dead, because if McGinty learned the truth ... well, the politician wouldn’t let Campbell die easy.
30
Fegan waited in the darkness. From downstairs he heard the patient ticking of the clock over the priest’s fireplace, marking time as the last of the day’s light faded to black, chiming on the hour. Just past ten, now. Marie’s flight for London Gatwick would be in the air, somewhere over the Irish Sea. An associate of McGinty’s was to meet her at the other side when it landed at eleven, and escort her to whatever accommodation had been arranged for her and Ellen. That didn’t leave much time, but it shouldn’t be long until Father Coulter staggered home. Caffola would have been in the ground and the last speeches made by early afternoon. Father Coulter would have drunk his fill by now.
Fegan sat on a hard wooden chair in a corner of the priest’s bedroom, behind the open door. The followers wandered between the shadows. Sometimes it was hard to tell where the shadows ended and the followers began. If he concentrated he could focus on them, draw them out of the dark, and separate them from the blankets of gloom. He tried pushing them from his vision, and then drawing them in. But they were always there, watching.
Always watching.
There was no danger Fegan would fall asleep, even as tired as he was. Every time his eyes grew too heavy to bear, their screaming snapped him awake. When tonight was done, when the work was over, maybe they would let him have some silence. There were long hours ahead, but he could steal some sleep on the road, and the promise of a soft hotel bed somewhere miles from here made the task easier to imagine. He would make it quick for Father Coulter. He was a man of God, after all.
Fegan shifted in the seat, trying to dislodge the pain that clambered across his gut. He had stopped spitting up blood hours ago, but the aches still picked through his organs whether he was moving or still. And it was warm. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Father Coulter kept his house well heated, even during what was for Belfast an unusually clement spring. The heavy overcoat Fegan had found in the priest’s wardrobe didn’t help, but he needed something to keep the blood off his clothes. There shouldn’t be much if he did it right, but he had to be careful.
But it was more than heat making Fegan sweat. He remembered the symptoms from watching his father fight the drink. Nearly forty-eight hours had passed since he’d swallowed that last mouthful of whiskey. The shakes were mild yet, just the slightest of tremors, but bouts of clammy nausea came and went. Dryness dusted his tongue, and he gathered saliva to roll around his mouth. He remembered his father’s screaming nightmares, the horrors that would send him back to the bottle. Fegan wondered if the followers would let him dream.
Shafts of light moved across the ceiling, squeezing through the gap above the drawn curtains, and the clattering of a diesel engine came from outside. The creak of the taxi’s handbrake, a door opening and closing, a hearty voice wishing someone goodnight. A grumble as the taxi moved off, then the scratching of a key trying to find its home.
The shadows stirred and drifted to the darkest corners.
Fegan felt a cool draught around his ankles as the front door opened below. Light switches clicked on and off. There was a flutter and a high screech as the cockatiel in the living room was angered by the priest disturbing its sleep.
Fegan heard Father Coulter slur, “It’s all right, Joe-Joe. Sure, it’s only me. Go back to sleep, now.”
Another light switch clicked off and Fegan heard the priest begin to climb the stairs, huffing as he went, the steps creaking beneath his weight. Fegan heard the bathroom light’s pull-cord, then a fly unzipping. Father Coulter hummed to himself as he thundered into the toilet bowl for what seemed like hours. There was a softer running of water, then the rustling of a towel. All the while, the priest hummed some tuneless song.
Fegan tensed as the lumbering footsteps came closer. He kept his own breath quiet and even, while Father Coulter’s came in heavy rasps. He heard the priest pause in the doorway and then the click of the light switch.
