breast pocket and looked at the display.
His heart leaped in his chest. He thumbed the green button and brought the phone to his ear. “Marie?”
There was nothing but a soft static hiss, the sound of weight shifting on floorboards, and grating sobs.
“Marie?”
A man’s voice, hard and thin, whispering words Fegan couldn’t make out. Something lodged in Fegan’s throat, thicker than his aching thirst.
“Marie?”
“Gerry?”
Fegan closed his eyes.
“Gerry, they’ve got me and Ellen . . .”
45
“He’s coming,” Campbell said. He stood in the shelter of the barn, dark now, trying not to gag at the stench rising up from the pit.
“And?” the handler asked.
“And what? Fegan’s a dead man. They’ll take care of him as soon as he gets here.”
“Don’t they know what’s happened?”
“The cop in Toner’s car. Yeah, they know.”
The handler was silent for a moment. “But surely that’s changed the plan. If they don’t offer up Fegan to the authorities, the Unionists will hold them responsible for the cop. They’ll have McGinty by the balls. They could bring down Stormont with this.”
“I told McGinty that,” Campbell lied. “He wouldn’t listen.”
“But McGinty’s smarter than that. He never took a stupid breath in his life.”
“They want Fegan dead. That’s all.”
“Christ,” the handler said. Campbell listened to him breathe. “Christ. There’s no way to stop it?”
“None,” Campbell said.
“You’ve got to try. This could set the political process back years. See if you can—”
Campbell saw a shaft of light break on the concrete beyond the barn door. “Got to go,” he said, and hung up.
He heard footsteps, two people, one walking steadily, the other shuffling and faltering. Campbell eased back into the shadows of the barn.
“You should’ve gone when you had the chance,” McGinty said. “You wouldn’t be in this mess if you’d just gone.”
“Let me go back inside,” Marie said. “Please, let me go to Ellen.”
“She’s all right with Eddie. Why didn’t you go? I couldn’t have made it easier for you.”
“Because I didn’t want to go. I shouldn’t have to go. Things are supposed to have changed. Jesus, Paul, it was so long ago.”
“It doesn’t feel like it. It still hurts me to think about it.”
Marie laughed, the sound dry and hateful in the darkness. “Hurts you? Nothing hurts you.”
“You’re wrong. People think I’m a hard man, but I’ve got feelings. Seeing you with Lennon - a cop, for Christ’s sake - what do you think that did to me?”
“I couldn’t live like that any more. Can’t you see that? Pretending to myself you weren’t married. Pretending all that . . . that . . . other stuff didn’t matter. The things you did.”
“I never did anything to—”
“You pulled the strings. Stop passing the blame, Paul.”
McGinty’s voice hardened. “There were people wanted you dead back then.”
“You think I didn’t know that? Have you any idea how scared I was?”
Campbell edged to the barn door until he could just make out their shapes in the poor light from the farmhouse.
“Maybe I should have let them kill you and that cop,” McGinty said.
Campbell flinched as Marie lashed out, and the sound of her palm on McGinty’s cheek reverberated around the yard. He flinched again when McGinty returned the blow, sending her sprawling on the wet concrete. She stared back up at him.
“And what are you doing with Fegan?” McGinty asked.
“Go to hell.”
“Answer me.”
Marie spat at him.
