Marie and Ellen had been waiting for him in reception when he emerged at two the following morning. Marie had given her statement to a sergeant. There hadn’t been much to say, there or on the journey to Roscoe’s apartment in Carrickfergus; she’d seen nothing.
Daylight found the crack in the living room curtains. Seagulls screeched over the marina outside the window. Fatigue saturated Lennon’s mind. He drifted.
Lennon dreamed of the women he’d known, the women he’d lied to, the women he’d let down. He passed among them, tried to speak to them. They turned away. They would not listen. His mother stood at the centre of them clutching a tattered shirt. As he drew close he saw the blood on it. Liam’s shirt, the one he’d died in.
His mother said something, her words lost beneath the growing clamour of the women.
She opened her mouth, the sound eaten by a new noise, a high chiming.
‘What?’ he asked again.
She smiled as she faded into darkness and said, ‘Answer the phone.’
Lennon sat upright, his head buzzing, his heart hammering. ‘Jesus.’
That high chiming again. He scanned the room looking for it. Marie’s shoulder bag lay on the glass coffee table, its mouth agape. Something glowed inside. Lennon leaned forward on the couch and reached inside the bag. The phone vibrated in his hand. He thumbed the green button and brought it to his ear.
‘Hello?’ he said, breathless.
A pause. ‘Where’s Marie?’
‘Who’s this?’
A loud speaker made an echoing announcement somewhere. ‘I want Marie,’ the caller said.
‘She can’t come to the phone,’ Lennon said.
‘Where is she?’
‘I can’t tell you that. Who are you?’
Another pause. ‘Is she safe? Is Ellen safe?’
‘They’re both safe. Who is this?’
‘Where are they?’
‘Are you … are you Gerry Fegan?’
Quiet for seconds, only bustle and echoes, then, ‘I’ll kill anyone who touches them. Keep them safe till I find them.’
‘Stay away,’ Lennon said. ‘Don’t come near them, do you hear me? Stay away from my daughter.’
‘You’re that cop she told me about,’ Fegan said. ‘You walked out on them.’
‘That’s nothing to—’
‘Keep them safe.’
Lennon heard a click, and the phone died.
‘Who was that?’ Marie asked from the doorway.
60
Fegan slipped the phone back into his pocket and leaned against the toilet cubicle wall. That cop had Marie and Ellen. He was the girl’s father. Maybe he could protect them. But he couldn’t know the kind of men who wanted to hurt them. Fegan knew because he was that kind of man.
He picked up his bag and let himself out of the stall. No one had looked twice at his passport on either side of the Atlantic. He had tried to sleep during the flight, but the fear of the dreams of burning kept him awake, his legs and arms aching in the cramped seat.
As soon as he’d landed and cleared immigration, he found the nearest private spot to retrieve the voicemail. He dialled the number Marie had left. The call had led to nothing but more worry. He had to find Marie and Ellen, make them safe. The only place he could think to start was at her flat on Eglantine Avenue. He went to the bureau de change and traded the last of his dollars for pounds.
The morning sky was grey and heavy when he went outside to wait for the bus into the city. Marie and Ellen were somewhere under that same sky. So were the men who wanted to harm them. Fegan would find them first. Anything else was unthinkable.
61
They fed him tea and toast. The tea was cold and the toast soggy. The Traveller’s head hurt like a fucker. The best they could give him was paracetamol. Waste of time, but he swallowed the tablets anyway.
The strapping on his left wrist made it stiff and clumsy. He laid it on the tabletop. The skin between the fingers itched. A wad of cotton and gauze was taped over his right eye, the eyelid hot and slick beneath it. A cop stared at him from across the table, all business. Gordon, he said his name was. Another cop stood in the corner and said nothing. He was pale and sweaty like he had the shits.
Gordon spoke to the tape recorder. ‘For the record, the suspect who identifies himself as Barry Murphy has declined legal representation.’ Gordon spoke to the Traveller. ‘Now, Mr Murphy, we have checked with our colleagues in the Garda Siochana, and they tell us there is indeed a Finbar Murphy living at the Galway address you provided. They asked the county records office to email us an image of his driving licence.’
Gordon turned over a sheet of paper. A standard European Union licence was printed on it. It carried a picture of a red-haired man with jug ears and a prominent overbite.
‘Jesus,’ the Traveller said. ‘Looks like he should be playing a banjo in front of a log cabin in Alabama or somewhere.’
Gordon didn’t return the Traveller’s smile. ‘So you agree that the man pictured on this licence, a licence registered under the name and address you provided to us, is not you?’
The Traveller shrugged. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’
‘Care to tell me your real name?’
‘Thomas O’Neill,’ the Traveller said.
‘And your address?’
The Traveller gave the cop the Wicklow address he’d memorised.
Gordon ripped the sheet from his notepad and went to the door of the interview room. He handed the paper to someone outside and returned to his seat.
‘Should I expect that name and address to check out,’ Gordon said, ‘or have you provided more false information?’
‘You never know,’ the Traveller said.
‘Your fingerprints don’t match any record we have access to,’ Gordon said. ‘It’ll be some days before the DNA swab we took comes back, but am I correct in expecting that to shed no light on you, either?’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ the Traveller said.
‘Quite,’ Gordon said. ‘What were you doing at the Royal Victoria Hospital yesterday afternoon?’
‘No comment,’ the Traveller said.
‘What did you want with the little girl?’
‘No comment.’
‘When Detective Inspector Lennon arrested you, you were in possession of a firearm, namely an Israel Military Industries Desert Eagle .44 calibre semi-automatic pistol. An unusual weapon in this part of the world. Did you bring this weapon across the border, or did you acquire it in the North?’
No comment.’
Not the most articulate individual, are you?’
‘Me?’ the Traveller said, grinning. ‘I’m articulate as fuck. But all the same, no comment.’
62
‘Tell me about Gerry Fegan,’ Lennon said.