‘You didn’t make any fucking deals with me.’
‘I’ll tell you where the graves are. I said I would.’
‘No, fuck that,’ Doyle hissed. ‘We’re not running around like headless chickens on your fucking say so. You’re not going to tell us where they are, you’re going to show us. Every one of them. And when we get to the locations, you’re going to dig up the bodies. Got it? You show me ten corpses and your part of the deal is fulfilled. You try to piss me about and I’ll put you in the fucking ground myself.’
Leary eyed the counter terrorist angrily.
There’s a shovel in the boot of the car,’ Doyle said. ‘You start digging tomorrow. And you’d better hope you can remember where all those poor bastards are planted.’
The stench was appalling. Mel put a hand to her nose and stepped back from the edge of the shallow grave.
Doyle merely stood impassively, hands dug deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. There was a cigarette screwed into one corner of his mouth.
The grave was less than three feet deep and the counter terrorist could only guess at how long its contents had been there.
The skeleton still wore its clothes. A sweatshirt. A thick anorak. Jeans. All rotting, just as their owner had done.
There were bullet holes in the coat. In the skull. Pieces of jawbone had come loose.
Leary looked up from the grave and tossed the shovel to one side.
‘Right?’ he said, sucking in lungfuls of the rancid air.
‘One down, nine to go,’ said the counter terrorist. He reached for his mobile phone and jabbed a number. He wandered back and forth waiting for it to be answered. When it finally was he spoke immediately. ‘Robinson? It’s Doyle.’
The RUC man wanted to know where they were.
‘Just listen to me,’ Doyle said. ‘You wanted bodies? You’ve got them. First one’s in a field off the A31, about two miles south of Milford. There’s woods on either side of the road. Send your forensics boys about fifty yards in.
They’ll find it. I’ll call the others in as we find them.’
Robinson wanted to know if Leary was co-operating.
‘All the way to a nice cosy five stretch,’ Doyle said. He drew on his cigarette one final time then tossed the butt at Leary. ‘We’re moving on.’
He switched the phone off.
They found two more bodies that first day.
Doyle lit a cigarette, drew on it then passed it to Mel. She accepted it gratefully and sank lower in the passenger seat of the Astra.
‘So this was your world, Doyle,’ she said, staring out of the windscreen.
About fifty feet from where the car was parked, Declan Leary, his clothes spattered with mud, was digging again. Ten or twelve yards away, leaning against an old barn, Joe Hendry stood with his arms crossed. He gazed at the grey sky, at Leary working away with his shovel and at the hills that rose steeply all around. Most of them were heavily wooded and the trees seemed to be clinging to the precipitous slopes with difficulty.
The farm that Leary had brought them to had been abandoned over a year earlier.The farmhouse and most of the outbuildings lay over five hundred yards away at the perimeter of the field in which they now found themselves.
‘My world,’ Doyle muttered. ‘What do you mean?’
‘People like Leary. Jobs like this.’
‘It was all I knew. All I wanted. I was good at it. I still am.’
‘I’d noticed.’
‘We’re not that different, Mel. It’s just the surroundings.’
I’d take a hotel in Mayfair over a field in Ulster.’
Doyle chuckled. ‘I might have to agree with you on that one,’ he smiled.
‘Why did you want to get back to it so badly?’
‘I told you. It’s all I know. What made you want to come with me?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ she confessed.
Again Doyle smiled.
‘And when it’s over?’ Mel asked.‘What then? Leary’s only got to show us two more graves and that’s it. Job done. What do you do then? What do any of us do?’
‘It’s up to you, what you do. I’m sure Cartwright would be more than happy to have you and Joe back working for him.’
‘What about you?’
‘I belong here, Mel.You asked me what I’ll do when it’s over. That’s simple.
It’s never over.’
‘You sound happy about that.’
‘What am I supposed to do? Retire? Sit around in a cardigan and slippers for the rest of my fucking life waiting for the day when I can’t take it any more and I decide to chew the barrel of a 9mm?’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘Maybe somebody like Leary’ll catch me out. Perhaps I’ll be the one in a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere. But I can’t give up. I don’t want to give up.’
‘Do you love it so much?’
‘Perhaps I’m just scared of what I’ll be without it.
I’ve had a taste of that and I didn’t like it.’
‘You were great in the security business, Doyle. Why not come back to it?’
He shook his head. ‘Like you said, Mel,’ he told her. ‘This is my world.’
‘And you’re happy here?’
‘I never said that. I just said it was where I belonged.’
‘Are you happy?’ She glanced at him.
All he could do was shrug. To be happy, you have to want something, don’t you?’ Doyle murmured.
‘And what do you want?’
‘I have absolutely no fucking idea. What about you?’
‘I’ve never really thought about it.’
‘So think now. You’ve got the time. Husband? Kids? What would make you happy?’
‘I wanted a career in the police.That was taken from me. I found something else I could do and I enjoy it. But ask me where I want to be in ten years’
time and I couldn’t tell you.’
‘If I last another ten years it’ll be a fucking achievement,’ Doyle grunted.
‘Does that bother you?’
‘Why should it? If I don’t know what I’m living for then I’m hardly likely to be scared about the prospect of dying, am I? Besides, so many doctors have told me how lucky I am to be alive now. How I should thank God I can still walk. All that other bullshit. I’ve got scars on every part of my fucking body and I’m supposed to thank God that I’m lucky. I should have been dead long before now. Sometimes I think it might have saved some pain if I had been.’
So much pain.
‘Pain for who?’
‘Me. Others too. The only thing I’ve ever learned from this job is that you should never get close to anyone. They might not be around for too long.’
They locked stares for a moment then Mel returned to gazing out of the windscreen. ‘Do you know what frightens me about dying? That no one will come to my funeral. That the only one at the graveside would be the priest. I’ve got no family. No close friends. I don’t think anyone would miss me if I died tomorrow’
The counter terrorist sucked hard on his cigarette and tossed the butt out of the open window. ‘Join the fucking club,’ said Doyle, with an air of finality.
