“Don’t worry about him. I’ll take care of it. Just you wait here. We need to have a talk when this is done.”
O’Kane turned his eyes to the kitchen door. “Kevin?”
Malloy entered the room, his pistol drawn.
“Make sure our guests don’t go anywhere.” O’Kane walked towards the kitchen. “I won’t be long.”
50
For just a moment, Campbell was dragged back to his body where the pain waited for him. He screamed inside his own mind, unable to draw the breath to make the sound real. And then he was free of it again. From above he could see the vague forms carrying his body out into the gloom and the rain. Even up here the stench of the place was inescapable.
The procession marched across a sea of grey to a burning sun. The barn, lit up for their arrival. Campbell knew that much. This was the place where the dogs fought for their lives.
The dogs.
In Campbell’s swirling consciousness, he imagined them, the dogs, slavering over his body. He was going to die soon, he knew, and the dogs would have him.
No. Not like this. Not here.
Wake up. No matter how much pain lies below, no matter how much it hurts, wake up.
51
Fegan saw the first hint of dawn beyond the stable roofs as he crossed the yard. Coyle and Padraig heaved Campbell’s limp form into the mouth of the barn. The Scot gasped and moaned as they lowered him to the ground at the edge of the pit. Downey kept the shotgun’s muzzles at the small of Fegan’s back all the time.
Five shapes followed in the emerging light, shadows no longer.
O’Kane fetched a roll of plastic sheeting from a dark corner. He brought it with him to the pit and unrolled it on the blood- and feces-stained earth. Padraig helped him. The smell rising up clung to the back of Fegan’s throat, and he forced himself not to gag. He didn’t want to die here.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the followers. The UFF boys looked up from Campbell’s unconscious body. The woman and the butcher stood by his side. “I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
O’Kane looked up from the pit. “Are you talking to your friends, Gerry? The ones in your head?”
Fegan nodded. “Yes.”
O’Kane beckoned. “Come on, son.”
Fegan stepped down into the pit. Downey followed, pressing him forward. “You’ll let Marie and Ellen go?” Fegan asked.
“I told you, didn’t I?” O’Kane said. “Jesus, whatever happened to you? The great Gerry Fegan. You remember the last time we met? How long did you say, twenty-five years ago?”
“Twenty-seven,” Fegan said. “I was eighteen.”
O’Kane addressed the others. “He was just a kid, but he had a reputation already. The only fella ever raised a hand to me and lived to tell the tale. That was the first time we met. The next time would’ve been, oh, 1980. Those were fierce times. We had a tout to deal with. This girl from Middletown was fucking a Brit. She’d tried to run, tried to get a boat from Belfast, but McGinty’s boys caught her at the docks. McGinty and Gerry here brought her down to me. Isn’t that right, Gerry?”
Fegan remembered. “That’s right.”
“McGinty puts the gun in his hand, says, ‘Here you go, Gerry. Now you can break your duck.” O’Kane pointed to Campbell. “Bring him down here.”
Padraig walked over and helped Coyle to lower Campbell into the pit. The Scot’s face contorted as they laid him on the plastic and he cried out in his stupor. Coyle drew the pistol from his waistband and put it to Campbell’s head.
“What are you at?” O’Kane asked.
“I want to do him,” Coyle said.
“All right, but you’ll do it when I tell you, not before.”
Coyle gave an impatient sigh and tucked the gun back into his waistband. Padraig went to his father’s side.
O’Kane continued. “Anyway, Gerry here takes the gun and just looks at us. McGinty asks him what’s wrong, and Gerry goes ‘No, I can’t, I can’t.”
“She was just a girl,” Fegan said, ‘no older than me. She was scared. And she was pregnant.”
O’Kane stepped closer. “Aye, she was pregnant. She had a Brit’s bastard inside her. So what? She was a tout. That’s all there was to it. And you didn’t have the guts. I had to do it for you.”
Fegan remembered her eyes, pleading, terrified. Tears burned his cheeks. “I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t stop it.”
“No, you didn’t even have the guts to watch. You ran away. You were weak. She was a tout, the lowest kind of shite that walks the earth. The kind that turn on their own people. Like you, Gerry. And touts get no mercy.”
He reached out and wiped the tears from Fegan’s cheeks. “No mercy, Gerry. Not then. Not now.”
The woman took Fegan’s hand, her fingers cool and soft. He turned to see her smile up at him, her eyes sad,
