‘Think, man, think. How many sets of twins did you deliver then never lay eyes on again, for fuck’s sake?’
It was no good. He was straining for an answer but couldn’t latch on to one. By this stage, if he had, it would only have been his way of attempting to appease me. Therefore I wouldn’t have believed him. That’s the trouble with this lark – nobody bothers to remember fuck all about you. Fuck it. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Sean. You were born first.
‘Why did she give us up? And don’t give me any doctor–patient confidentiality crap.’
‘But you don’t understand. I was standing in for my predecessor. He was off sick. I was only here for a few months. I loved it here. When he retired five years ago I bought his practice. I had always practised in Dublin. I wanted to end my working days in the countryside. I … I …’
Fuck it – this wasn’t working out at all. Nobody lies with a gun in their neck. I’d felt sure he could help me. I didn’t ask him who my father was. He wouldn’t have known that either. If he had, he’d have known why we’d been given into care. ‘Care.’ There’s a word if I ever heard one. I looked it up in a dictionary once. It had a lot of definitions – but not the one that applied to me and Sean.
‘Take the next left.’ It had a long stretch of narrow road that rounded a sharp corner. ‘And hurry up, for fuck’s sake. Hit the throttle.’ I doubt he’d ever hit it as hard.
I couldn’t leave him to talk.
I slammed his head down onto the wheel hard enough to knock him out, then dived down behind both seats a split second before the car smashed into the high wall bordering the field that formed the corner. It hit it a fair old whack too. Hard enough to make the back end leave the ground. If I’d been in the front, I’d’ve wrecked my hair smashing through the windscreen. What was left of his was already wrecked. I was all right though, no damage done. Just a pain in my side. That’s what I get for not wearing a seat belt.
I got out and opened the bonnet.
The trouble with this method is that sometimes the ‘whack’ fucks the bonnet catch and it won’t open. Makes it hard to pour petrol over the engine. Half a Lucozade bottle’s usually enough. You have to be quick though. No need to strike a match – the heat of the engine sets it alight then it’s drop the bonnet and get the fuck away from it as fast as you can.
The only thing I didn’t like about this was that the law’d find out he was a careful driver and wonder if foul play had been involved. On the plus side, this was the country, and sheep are forever darting in front of cars. Maybe he got caught out swerving to avoid one. The bump on his head would be consistent with hitting the wheel on impact, leaving him unconscious to be barbecued. And although cars rarely burst into flames on impact, the fuel pipe would be destroyed and forensic wouldn’t be able to tell conclusively what had happened.
Which left the little matter of my prints. They were all over the inside of the car. It goes without saying that they’d end up as charred as the good doctor. That’s what he gets for giving people lifts. I waited for a few minutes to make sure he didn’t come round. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have survived long enough to get out anyway. I’d nearly wound down the back-door window before the impact to let the air in on it. Air would’ve got the flames going faster, but the law might’ve wondered why it had been left open on a winter’s night. Had he been carrying a passenger? Who? It doesn’t do to give the bastards too much to think about. Besides, you’re only talking about getting it going faster by a matter of seconds.
Leaving the windows closed of course meant that the heat from the flames made pressure build up inside, and the only way it could escape was by blowing the windows out. I legged it way before that happened, empty Lucozade bottle in hand. Can’t leave evidence like that lying about. I have to take my time when it comes to legging it. That’s why I always have to be choosy when it comes to the likes of this. I can’t do anything if it involves lifting. I heard the glass blowing out though. Not much of a bang. More of a boomph. I doubt the doc’d heard it or gave a fuck. He was approaching the rare stage. Another ten minutes and he’d be well done.
The following morning I went straight to the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Dublin and applied for a birth certificate for Frances Anne Donavan and gave them the mother’s details. They phoned the maternity ward, did their confirming and issued the cert. Anne Donavan now had a baby called Frances she didn’t know about.
Didn’t matter: she wasn’t gonna bring it up. It had gone from being a Winters to being a Donavan, and now it was in for another name change. I’d already taken it to experts in that department.
The day the kid was snatched by two of Charlie Swags’s finest, I was waiting in the lower ground floor of the same car park. They bunged it into the back seat and I drove straight to the west of Ireland to an orphanage in Connemara. It cried for most of the 200 miles. I got some of it on tape for Whites’ farmhouse attic. Mustn’t forget the special effects. It was only when I arrived at the orphanage that I noticed what was making
