lifeboat stanchions. He felt the ship's engine at idle, resonating underfoot. And something else, he sensed: the slightest tick, a vibration nearby. A footstep on the stairway? Through a window he glimpsed a figure running inside. Another one. Had to move now.
He stepped abruptly to the foot of the stairway and aimed up. The figure had one foot tentatively on the step down and he was already turning sideways. The first shot staggered O'Rourke. The tanned man saw something fly up from the head with his second shot, as the head jerked. The arms flopped and O'Rourke fell, as a puppet dropped. He tumbled down the stairway flopping loosely, without any attempt to slow. O'Rourke's pistol clanged, fell down a step, then another, and lodged. His leg caught in a support and the rest of him fanned bumpily against metal, pivoting around head first.
The tanned man had three steps to the doorway. He was through the second and reaching for the handle when a blow to his left side danced him sideways. Shot, he thought remotely. Must be the one coming up behind me. This is what it is like to be shot? No pain yet, why? He almost lost his balance.
The shout from behind seemed to be coming from the far end of a playing field. Must have been the guy behind. The other one inside would have reached the door by now too… yes. He felt himself swaying. Dizzy a little, but things were clear, not like being drunk even.
He turned and fired, wondering. He heard the shot ricocheting angrily off metal. The ejected shell pinged and rolled lazily along the deck toward the door. He felt hot, things were loud. Can't even try to go up the stairs, he thought. He wondered if he had spoken aloud. He tried to grasp a railing again, but he couldn't feel it. Another shot, but this didn't hit. He strained to see where the one who had shot him was. The after-image of the flash wavered as his eyes scanned dully along the deck. Someone crouched by that big box near the stanchion…? Not sure, keep looking, a movement… For a moment the tanned man was back in the water again, a child, listening to the voices of people on the beach, so far away, a plane droning overhead in the blue Florida sky. Ah, shot. Mistakes but tried, tried hard. Yes, there was someone crouched down there… The tanned man levelled his pistol. A chance, he thought. Done tougher shots on the range a couple of times anyway… He thought of his father's face turning back to the newspaper, tight lips: his mother kneading her hands at the door, always defending 'He couldn't help it Seamus, he's only a boy'
Out of the corner of his eye, the tanned man saw the door fly open. He started to draw his gun arm around toward the doorway, knowing he was too late.
Already braced in the doorway, Gibbons fired. The shot caught the man behind the ear and his chin rocked onto his chest as he fell forward. His knees hit first and Gibbons heard the thunk of his forehead hitting the deck. A spray of blood flicked onto the deck around the head. The body rolled slightly but then seemed to right itself, face down. Gibbons stared at the gun next to the right hand, and he walked slowly over the jamb of the door. He looked up the stairway at O'Rourke. The side of his head showed purple in the light. A steady stream of blood had run across two steps and was draining onto the last step. Gibbons could see it moving like there was no end to it, edging and pouring over onto the deck now, mixing with the wet gleam left by the rain. Quigley was running toward him, shouting. How could people have so much blood?
'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' Gibbons whispered. He remembered something out of his youth, long gone now, and not knowing what else to do for O'Rourke, he started on the Act of Contrition.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
On Wednesday, Kilmartin had met him for dinner in the Civil Service Club in St. Stephen's Green. After the soup, Kilmartin winked at Minogue.
'Will you take a glass of whisky with me beyond in Dwyers pub afterwards?'
'No thanks, Jimmy,' Minogue murmured.
Kilmartin nodded slightly and toyed with his fork.
'It'd put me to sleep for the afternoon, so it would. Thanks anyway,' Minogue offered.
'I see, I see,' said Kilmartin, still observing the fork studiously. 'To be sure, I understand.'
The waitress clumped a plate in front of Kilmartin.
'Cod?' she said to Minogue. Kilmartin forked a piece of stringy beef.
'He flared up only the once yesterday, Loftus. But then he shut up very quickly,' said Kilmartin. Minogue worked on the batter around the cod.
'Something about 'duty.' I asked him if he thought it was the duty of an officer in the Irish Army to resign his commission and work against the laws of a democratic state just because he didn't agree with the way the country was being run. I thought he was going to spit at me, so I did. But he clammed up then after a dirty big sneer at me. That's as far as we've got with that boyo.'
Minogue nodded but stayed silent. By unspoken agreement, they had given up on Loftus. They had tried to lever him with news that the Yank had been caught and that he was telling all. Loftus, it seems, knew better. He said nothing. He had withdrawn, leaving a composed expression. It struck Minogue that Loftus seemed relieved now that he had done his duty.
'Some duty,' Kilmartin said. 'Ah, but something will turn up on this Yank, you'll see. Then Loftus'll say his piece.'
Kilmartin had been wrong to date. The most that Loftus said in the days after his arrest was couched in a mixture of disdain and a half-hearted effort to explain by allusion. He soon stopped that, even, apparently sure in his mind that the audience of interrogators would never understand. That left Kilmartin to wonder if the Irish Army really would have gone into Derry in '69 like Loftus said. They had field hospitals and vehicles gathered up near the border, everyone had known that. Should they have gone in? Against the British Army, could they? Loftus had resigned within the year.
'I think maybe his trip to the States is what turned the corner for him,' Minogue said finally.
'You mean all the hardware and blather they have over there? And where did it get them in Vietnam I ask you, Matt?' Kilmartin replied.
'America is a country full of savages. They don't know what they're at half the time. Look at the telly, I mean. Or should I say, don't look at the telly,' Kilmartin said indignantly.
''Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,'' Minogue murmured.
'What?'
'It's about dying for your country.'
'I have a brother out in the States. The wife is always at me to go over and have a look at the place. What about yourself, Matt?'
'I don't think so. I don't think I could manage over there at all. It's a different life entirely,' Minogue replied.
Kilmartin affected to be considering some other matter and attacked the limp broccoli. Minogue waited. After several minutes' silence, Kilmartin looked up from the wreckage of his dinner. Minogue met his gravely gentle look reluctantly. Kilmartin's voice was barely above a whisper.
'Matt. What did you tell the Walshes out beyond?'
Minogue remembered Mrs Walsh dropping cup and saucer on the fireplace. A stain started in the carpet, her shaking hands reaching under cuffs for a hanky. Walsh had changed. No speech from him. He sat across from his broken wife, not wishing to be involved in weakness before a visitor. He told his wife she mustn't upset herself and she stopped. Minogue told them the truth. No, he couldn't be sure, but it was the most likely turn of events.
'How did they react, I mean,' Kilmartin probed.
Minogue's anger turned the potato quite tasteless, an obstruction in his mouth. He waited, disguised in eating.
'I don't know how they reacted, Jimmy.'
And he didn't. His thoughts went back to the Walshs' sterile living room, his attempt to explain the run of events to them… How Jarlath Walsh's knock on the door had probably not been heard by Allen because he was on the phone. The door was ajar, visualise. Jarlath puts two and two together and sees several things. Your son Jarlath sees credibility, a scoop if he can bring Allen to admit things out in the open. He doesn't know Allen is being blackmailed. Jarlath seems to have wanted to keep this all to himself. An exclusive. He tells nobody. He drops hints
