Campbell knew the answer, but asked the question anyway. “What do you want us to do?”
McGinty gave him a hard stare. “Take a wild guess.”
“And what about the woman?”
McGinty’s eyes flickered for just an instant. “If she gets in the way, do whatever you have to.”
Coyle mopped drool from his chin with a stained handkerchief. He leaned forward in his seat. “And the wee girl?”
McGinty swivelled in his chair to look out the window at the greying sky. He wiped his mouth and looked at his hand, as if expecting to see blood there. “I said do whatever you have to.”
“No way I’m doing a wee girl.”
Squeezed between tight lips, Coyle’s words were hard to hear over the van’s rattling engine. It had been bought from a scrap dealer that morning. Red paint and rust had flaked at the touch of Campbell’s finger. He drove.
“It probably won’t come to that,” he said.
“But it might.” Coyle dabbed at his mouth.
“We’ll see. Do you know how to get to this place?”
“Sort of. Head for the M2. Keep going till you hit Antrim, then Ballymena. After that, we’ll have to go by the road signs.”
Campbell headed east across the city, onto the Falls Road and past the imposing Divis Tower, once a focal point of violence in the city. The top two floors of the twenty-storey block of flats had been commandeered by the British Army in the early Seventies for its views over the city. Because it stood at the heart of militant Republicanism, they could only access it by helicopter. Campbell had often wondered what it was like for the residents in the floors below, hearing their enemy’s footsteps above their homes, and the thunderous clatter of the helicopters bringing soldiers in and out, day and night. The army had abandoned it two years ago. Campbell imagined they were as glad to leave the tower as the residents were to see them go.
The van joined the Westlink, which in turn would lead them to the M2 and north towards the rugged Glens of Antrim. He winced now and then as the van’s jostling sparked painful flares in his side. The heavy clutch pedal did little for his injured thigh. The stop-and-start of traffic, backed up by roadworks to the south where the M1 joined the Westlink, only made it worse. What use was progress if all it caused was traffic jams? Peace had cost the people of Northern Ireland dear, but Campbell wouldn’t have been surprised if road congestion irked them more than anything else.
He looked across to Coyle in the passenger seat. “Tell me something. What is it with McGinty and that woman? There’s got to be more to it than her shacking up with a cop. What’s the story?”
“That’s none of your business,” Coyle said.
“Aw, come on.” Campbell shot him a grin. “Just a bit of gossip for the road, eh?”
Coyle sighed and shook his head.
“Jesus, come on, you miserable bastard. Why not tell me?”
“Three reasons.” Coyle counted them on his fingers. “One, you’re a cunt. Two, asking questions about Paul McGinty’s personal life is a fucking good way to get your legs broke. Three, talking hurts like fuck. Now shut your fucking mouth and drive.”
38
The air was heavy with coming rain as Fegan watched Patsy Toner’s office from the bus stop opposite. The solicitor ran his practice from rented rooms above a newsagent’s shop on the Springfield Road. His Jaguar was parked outside. It was seven o’clock and the sky made a grey blanket over the city.
A headache came in waves, punctuating the swells of nausea. The windows of an off-licence two doors down gleamed in the bruised evening. He ignored it. He knew Toner would come out soon. The lawyer would want to go drinking. Then Fegan would find out why the followers wanted that cop. When he knew who he was, he’d draw him out, get the cop to come to him.
Then he’d do it.
The RUC man would leave Fegan, just as the others had. Then Campbell and McGinty, tomorrow or the day after, and he would be free. He closed his eyes and pictured it: a dark, quiet room where he could lay his head down without fear of screaming.
Alone.
That word was bitter-sweet. He could close his eyes in peace, but he would be alone. He would have to run, leaving Marie and Ellen behind. At least they’d be safe and, really, that was all that mattered.
He opened his eyes as a chill crept to his center. Shadows gathered to him.
The light in Toner’s window died.
“He’s coming,” Fegan said.
He made his way across the road, squeezing his hands into a pair of surgical gloves. The Jaguar’s passenger side faced out, and Fegan hunkered down at its rear door and gripped the handle. A narrow staircase descended from Toner’s office to the doorway below. Fegan heard the door wheeze open and closed, and the jangling of keys. Toner talked on his mobile phone.
“So, it’s sorted?” he said. “Fucking glad to hear it. So long as they don’t make a balls of it.”
Fegan held his breath, readying himself.
“Let me know when it’s done. I’ll have a drink to celebrate.”
He heard a beep as Toner disconnected, then a whir and clunk as he unlocked the Jaguar.
