McGinty’s eyes darted from O’Kane to Fegan, his cigarette held two inches from his mouth.
O’Kane stared back at McGinty. “You mean Paul? Did Paul make you do it?”
McGinty dropped the cigarette. “Jesus, Bull, he’s mad. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
O’Kane turned back to Fegan. “Did Paul McGinty and Davy Campbell make you do this?”
“No, not them,” Fegan said.
“Then who the fuck were you pointing at?”
“Them.” Fegan aimed his finger at each of the followers in turn. “The people I killed.”
48
Campbell floated above them, watching from the ceiling, seeing them as shadows and light, hearing their voices as echoes and memories. He could see his own body down there. That was where the pain lay. It had almost broken him, almost eaten him up, but now it was away from him, bound up in that body on the couch.
A strange, cold sweetness flooded him, like he had drowned in sugary water. He tried to find order in his mind, but it was so hard to hold onto his consciousness when it drifted free like this. There had been the pain, thunderous and boiling hot. Then there had been a great tidal wave of joy, euphoria sweeping through him as someone poured the sweet, cool liquid into his nose and mouth.
And then there was this.
But there had been something else. Some thought that had pierced his mind just before it was cut adrift from his body. He tried hard to sort through the misted fragments of himself. What had it been?
A voice rose up from below in anger. The sound of one man striking another, the wailing of a child.
Oh, yes.
Now he remembered: a secret thing, only for him to know. It was cold and hard and jagged. It clung to his ankle, waiting.
49
O’Kane rubbed his stinging palm, and turned to the wailing child and her mother. “You shut that kid up or I will.”
Marie pulled the girl close and rocked her as she stroked her hair. The child squealed into her mother’s bosom and O’Kane grimaced at her piercing cries. He liked children well enough, but he couldn’t be doing with their tears. If any of his seven sons and daughters had ever wailed like that, they’d have got a slap to shut them up. He looked down at Fegan, sprawled on the floor.
“Pick yourself up.”
Fegan climbed back into the chair.
“Are you saying you did all this because the people in your head told you to?”
Fegan kept his gaze on the floor. O’Kane reached out and grabbed his hair. He pulled Fegan’s head up so he could see the madman’s eyes. Anger churned in his belly, anger at the stupidity and the waste of it. He looked to Marie and her child, and then back to Fegan.
“Answer me or I’ll cut their throats.”
“Yes,” Fegan said.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” O’Kane released his hair and took two steps away. He turned it over in his mind, trying to find some kind of reason in it. Of course, there was none. He regarded Fegan’s blank face. “And why now, after all these years? What set you off?”
“His mother,” Fegan said.
“Whose mother?”
“The boy’s. The boy I killed for McKenna. She came up to me in the graveyard. She knew who I was, what I’d done. She asked me where he was buried.”
O’Kane shared a glance with McGinty. “And you told her?”
Fegan nodded.
“That’s why there’s cops digging up the bogs round Dungannon,” O’Kane said. “What good did you think that would do?”
“I thought he’d leave me alone,” Fegan said. “He didn’t. He wanted more. He wanted Michael.”
“Christ.” O’Kane struggled to grasp the madness of it.
“His mother told me something else,” Fegan said.
“What?”
Fegan looked up at O’Kane, and a sudden fear brightened his eyes. Not fear of the Bull, or of anyone here. The fear was of something else, something far away.
“Everybody pays,” Fegan said. “She said sooner or later, everybody pays.”
O’Kane shook his head. “So you did all this, caused all this damage, because some woman tackled you in a graveyard?” He turned to Marie. “And you helped him.”
She looked up from her daughter. “What?”
“You helped him after he killed my cousin.”
