knee and punching the stump of his severed arm repeatedly. He seemed oblivious to O'Neill's screams and looked only to Kell to find renewed vigour in his master's approval.
O'Neill's agony ended mercifully in unconsciousness. He was no longer in Cladeen. He was sixteen years old and leaning on a fence at the farm in Valeena where he and the family had spent their last summer holiday together. The sun was shining and the grass was green. He could feel the warmth of it on his back as he waited for Maureen, the girl from the village, to come across the field. He could see her; she was wearing the white dress that he liked so much and her hair was bouncing on her shoulders as she moved. She was smiling and her eyes were filled with the frankness of young love. God, it was so good to be young and in love. Life was so good, so full of… icy-cold wetness and pain… excruciating pain.
'He's coming round,' said Nelligan after dousing O'Neill with cold water.
'Give him more of the same,' spat Kell.
'Stop it! This is what you want!' said Kathleen coming in through the door. She threw the letter at Kell and pushed Nelligan out of the way to kneel down beside her brother.
She cradled his head in her arms and said, I'm sorry, I couldn't bear what they were doing to you.'
'You always were around to wipe my nose,' gasped O'Neill through his pain.
Nelligan moved in to separate them but first looked to Kell for approval. Kell dismissed the notion as being unimportant with an impatient wave of his hand and returned to being engrossed in the letter. Nelligan stood back to watch as Kathleen continued to administer to O'Neill's needs.
Reagan and the other man returned from their fruitless search for Kathleen and stood sheepishly by while Kell continued to read, fully expecting to receive the brunt of Kell's wrath when he was ready. Instead The Bairn remained fully preoccupied with something else. There was silence in the room while Kell, having finished reading, stared into space for a long time. After a while he suddenly appeared to become aware of the others in the room again and smiled. 'Well, well, well,' he said softly. 'So our intellectual friend wasn't lying after all. I think we owe him an apology, Nelligan.'
Nelligan grinned unsurely.
'Take them to the Long House,' Kell snapped.
Reagan led out Kathleen and O'Neill at gun-point. Kell did not bother to look up as they passed for he was deep in thought again.
'Are we going back too, Mr Kell?' asked Nelligan cautiously when he and Kell were alone.
'No,' replied Kell. 'I want to speak with Harrigan in England. Get him on the phone.'
The meeting with the McGlynn brothers took place in the Council Room at the Long House on Thursday. Nelligan and Reagan and two others stood, stony-faced, behind Kell as Dominic and Sean McGlynn were escorted into the room with two of their henchmen in attendance.
'Good to see you, Finbarr,’ said Dominic McGlynn.
'And you, boys,’ replied Kell softly. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?'
'To come straight to the point, Finbarr, we've been thinking that the time is right for us to bury our past differences and join forces again.'
'And what brings you to that way of thinking?' asked Kell evenly.
'O'Donnell's death,' said Sean McGlynn flatly. 'O'Donnell was a man we could never get on with, but you, Finbarr, well, you are different. We think alike. We know all this political pissing around is useless. We should be giving the British what they understand best.'
Kell stared at the McGlynns for a moment then his face relaxed into a smile. 'Well, boys,' he said, 'it so happens, you could not have come at a better time.'
The McGlynn brothers exchanged glances and visibly relaxed as did everyone else round the table. 'Whiskey for our guests, Nelligan,' said Kell.
'You sound as if you have something in mind, Finbarr?' said Dominic McGlynn accepting his glass.
'Indeed I do,' smiled Kell. 'Listen carefully.'
When Kell had finished everyone tried to speak at once in an atmosphere that had become electric. Kell held up his hand and the noise subsided.
'But have you checked it out?' asked Dominic McGlynn.
'Of course I've checked it out. What do you take me for?' snapped Kell.
'And?'
'The place is tighter than a drum. No one is saying anything but no one has seen him in the last three weeks.'
'Don't you have anyone on the inside?'
'A domestic. The official story is that we have made some kind of death threat and that's the reason for the low profile.'
'But why didn't they ask the British for the money?' asked Sean McGlynn.
Kell smiled and said, 'It's always easier to deal with friends than enemies.'
Dominic McGlynn, who had been keeping quiet, said softly, 'If we had him we could bargain for anything we wanted.'
'Exactly,' said Kell.
'Where do we come in?' asked Sean McGlynn.
'Money,' said Kell. 'You boys have always had to make your own arrangements for 'funding'.' Kell paused and smiled.
‘The banks?'
‘The banks,' agreed Kell.
'But we could never get that much,' said Dominic McGlynn.
'No,' replied Kell, 'But I was thinking, if you were to hit four banks simultaneously you could get quite a bit.'
'Four?' protested McGlynn. That would stretch us to our limit. It would need every man we had in the field at the same time.'
‘This is going to stretch all of us to our limit,' said Kell.
'And what are your men going to do?' asked Sean McGlynn.
Kell shook his head and said, 'We've lost O'Donnell, and O'Neill has turned out to be a traitor. We're in a mess. The best we can do at the moment is to create a diversion for you boys, if you let me have the details.'
'Where are you going to get the bulk of the money?' asked Dominic McGlynn.
‘The Americans,' replied Kell.
'But they always keep a tight grip on the purse strings,' argued McGlynn.
Kell nodded and said, 'Maybe this time I can persuade them different.'
FIVE
It was raining when Avedissian arrived at the hospital and the wetness made the stonework black. The whole building had an air of gloom about it. Avedissian picked his way through a muddle of ambulances parked outside the Accident and Emergency Unit and paused outside the swing doors to shake the water from his coat before entering. Once inside he stopped again at a barrage of directional signs and found the one that he was looking for. It read, Dr S. Harmon, Consultant. A amp; E.
The highly polished corridor led along past a waiting room with perhaps twenty people inside and somewhere nearby a child was crying loudly in defiance of a nurse and its mother who were trying to pacify it. A teenage boy lay on a trolley outside the X-Ray Department with his right foot bare and a large swelling round his ankle. Nurses moved quickly to and fro across the corridor, their feet squeaking on the linoleum.
Avedissian came to the door he was looking for and knocked once. He understood a muffled sound from within to be an invitation to enter and stepped inside.
Harmon turned out to be a thin man in his forties with jet black hair which gave him a very dark beard shadow. He looked at Avedissian over half-framed glasses and released the 'record' button of the dictation machine he had been using. 'Yes?' he asked.
