“Who’s the cop?” he asked.
“Oh, Jesus . . . Jesus . . . Brian Anderson. He’s a sergeant. We’ve had him for years. Since the Eighties.”
“What does he do for you?”
Toner breathed deep through his nose, his face twisted in pain. “Not much these days. Tips us off sometimes, if there’s a raid coming. McGinty pays him a few quid every week just to have him on side.”
Fegan let his hand drift down so Toner’s palm rested against his. “Not much these days, you said. Before that, what’d he do?”
“Information,” Toner hissed. “Other cops. Their cars, where they lived, where they drank, where their kids went to school. He used to sell information to McGinty.”
Fegan remembered. He remembered the RUC man’s face when he saw the gun in Fegan’s hand.
“He got hurt when he was a month on the job,” Toner continued, panting between words. “A coffee-jar bomb when he was on patrol. Fucked up his hip. Crippled when he was twenty-three. He’s been riding a desk ever since. Admin, records, answering phones, that sort of stuff. He’s a bitter fucker. Started selling out his mates. I always handled the money. I paid him. Aw, Christ, Gerry. McGinty’s going to kill me.”
Toner’s whimpering and pleading went on, but Fegan couldn’t hear him. He had stopped listening and started remembering.
It was Fegan’s first kill. Less than a week after his twentieth birthday he stood in the snow watching children emerge from a primary school. There was no sign of the RUC man’s Ford Granada. McGinty said he always arrived five minutes early when he picked his son up on a Friday.
Fegan looked across the road. A boy stood apart from the others, looking up and down the street. Nine years old, McGinty said. He wouldn’t see it. He wouldn’t be out of school yet when his father arrived. That’s what McGinty had said. McGinty was wrong. The RUC man was late, and the boy would see everything.
A bitter wind tore along the street, pulling snow with it. Fegan’s nose tingled with the cocaine the lads had given him for courage. The buzzing in his head couldn’t keep the cold or the urge to run out of his feet. Some of the parents looked at him, their faces lined with concern. They didn’t recognise him. That’s what they’d tell the police later. He was just some man, another parent they hadn’t seen before. A little odd-looking, maybe, something about the way he wore his hat, or the strange lankness of his hair. Fegan had seen himself in the car’s rear-view mirror and the wig looked convincing enough. They had dropped him at the corner and were parked up a street away, waiting for the sound of gunfire.
Fegan stopped breathing as the kid’s eyes met his. The boy’s brow creased as he stared back. Fegan couldn’t look away. The kid’s jaw slackened, parting his lips to let misted breath escape on the breeze.
He knew.
The sound of a car dragged the boy’s gaze away. A Ford Granada slowing to a halt. The boy ran onto the road, screaming at his father, waving his arms at Fegan. The RUC man stood hard on his brake pedal, skidding on the snow. He stared at his son, confused. As Fegan approached, the gun already in his hand, the boy pointed at him.
The RUC man turned his head, slack-jawed, his face showing no understanding of his own death. That changed as Fegan raised the gun. He understood. His eyes saw his end and Fegan squeezed the trigger twice. The car lurched forward and stalled as the RUC man’s feet left the pedals.
Quiet. A few seconds before, there had been the noise of children streaming from the school, the honking of car horns, the calls of parents. Now there was only the rushing in Fegan’s ears.
The boy stood still, snowflakes glistening on his hair. He watched Fegan. His eyes were small dead things, black holes in a white face.
Then the screaming started and Fegan ran. The lads skidded to a stop at the end of the street and he dived into the back of the car. They cheered and whooped and slapped his back as the engine roared.
Fegan drank until he threw up all over the floor of the pub, then wept, then drank some more. Michael McKenna hugged him and Paul McGinty shook his hand. His back was sore from slapping, his throat and nose stinging from the vomit and cocaine. A black taxi carried him home to his mother’s house and he struggled to let himself in.
One small suitcase and a bin liner lay in the darkened hallway. He looked inside the bag. It was stuffed full of his clothes. His mother stepped out of the shadows. He could see her eyes glint, fierce and bright.
“I saw the news,” she said.
Fegan wiped his mouth.
Her voice cracked. “I saw what you did.”
Fegan took a step towards her, but she held her hand up.
“Get out and never come back,” she said, her voice soft and sad. She started climbing the stairs. She was almost gone from view when she turned and said, “I’m ashamed I carried the likes of you inside me. I’m ashamed I brought up a man who could kill someone in front of his child. May God forgive me for giving birth to you.”
A gust of wind rocked the Jaguar on its suspension and dragged Fegan back to the present. The sky outside greyed and fat drops of rain splashed on the windscreen. The followers watched and waited.
“Phone him,” Fegan said.
Toner stopped whimpering. “Phone who?”
“The cop. Tell him to come here.”
“Why?”
Fegan squeezed Toner’s hand and waited for the screams to die away. “Just do it. Tell him he has to come now. Tell him you have something for him.”
