Gunner Kelly

But I was a man alone. And I am not the Special Bureau No 1 of the KGB.”

“True.” Audley’s face creased suddenly, as though with doubt, and then cleared slowly as the doubts resolved themselves. “But there is ... something else which I think you should know.”

“Something else?” It was disturbing that the Englishman had not been frank with him. “Something you haven’t told me?”

“No — not really . . . Something which has only occurred to me since Aloysius Kelly came into the reckoning, you see.”

“Yes?” An instinct told Benedikt that the man was not lying. He had seen that creased look not long before, while Mr Smith had still been with them.

“I don’t know quite how to put it ... Aloysius Kelly’s not been my concern for years — never was, really, I’ve only read the reports . . . The American one originally, and then the others, four or five years back, when he was killed.”

“Yes?” But this was the man’s true skill; to distil truth from the merest broken shards of knowledge buried in ground thickly sown with lies and rumour.

“I swear there’s something Gunner Kelly knows that we don’t ... a certainty — almost a serendipity . . . But more than that.” The creases were back. “It could be just that he’s stopped running and started fighting . . .”

“Or?”

Audley faced him. “Or we can turn the whole thing round.” He dummy1

paused. “Like, bring it back to Mr Smith’s old auntie. Because if there was one thing Comrade Aloysius Kelly was, he was a damned downy bird, and he wouldn’t be easy to kill.” Another pause. “So let’s suppose he wasn’t killed. ”

“Wasn’t — ?” Those creases were justified. “Then who — ?”

“Any tramp by the wayside would do. Any homeless vagrant —

any drifter . . . Aloysius Kelly could have spotted the bomb — he knew the form: he’d more likely set one than be caught by one. But if the KGB set it — if he gave them a body . . . then no more pursuit: out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety —

the old, old story, Benedikt, man!”

Benedikt stared at him. More likely to set a bomb than be caught by one —

“And Michael Kelly?”

“And Michael Kelly ... It would have been Michael who set him up in that cottage — if he gave Michael money years before, some of it would have been for the betting shop debts, and some for the bolt-hole . . . But after the bomb, if Michael knew he was still alive, then Michael was a little nettle still growing among the flowers. And little nettles have a way of growing bigger.”

But that didn’t fit. “Are you suggesting that Michael got away from Aloysius? That he realised he’d be next?” He shook his head.

“No.”

Audley frowned. “Michael’s no fool. Damn it—you can see that for yourself.” But then he shook his head. “No ... I take your point

—it isn’t likely. But there was something that bound them dummy1

together: blood had been thick enough for Michael. It could have been thick enough for Aloysius ... at least to start with, until the idea of being absolutely safe began to corrode his mind.” Pause.

“Remember Mr Smith’s parting shot? Running changes a man?”

That was more like it. To kill a blood-relative who had also been a friend . . . that might daunt any man; and the Irish were a strange race, in which poetry and romantic chivalry mingled with dark notions of blood sacrifice. Yet also that image of corrosion was right: to leave one’s life in another man’s hands . . . for Aloysius Kelly could never be sure that the KGB would not reach Audley’s conclusion, and look to confirm their suspicion from Michael. And Aloysius of all men would know how unremitting they were in pursuit, too ... to leave one’s life to such a chance—

“Perhaps he just gave Michael a sporting chance, for old times’

sake. ‘I’ll count from one to a hundred—and then watch yourself, me boyo.’ ” Audley’s eyes widened in amazement at his own imagination. “That’s the trouble—why I’d never take an Irish job: I like them too much as people, and I find them totally incomprehensible—I studied their history at Cambridge from Strongbow to Parnell and Gladstone, and I could never answer a single question right, even when I knew the facts. And I wish to hell I’d never promised Jane and Becky— that I’d never promised to make sense of this, damn it!”

Jane?

But Jane didn’t matter. Audley had lifted the stakes far above little girls with the possibility of this final duel between the two Kellys, Aloysius and Michael.

dummy1

The outer door of the museum banged behind him, and the Corporal’s boots cracked like rifle-shots on the concrete floor.

“I have a car for you, sir.” The Corporal addressed Benedikt as though Audley was as invisible as he’d promised to be. “Major Kennedy’s wife’s car actually, that the lady brought back with her from our last posting ... I hope you have no objection to a foreign car, sir?”

Benedikt goggled at him. “A f-foreign car, Corporal?”