calling at a house, or whether they’d just taken it into their heads to bowl out for an evening spin and count their money. I kept them in our sights, and then lost them as the Merc crested the incline; when we made it to the top, I saw the road drop and cut right against the side of the mountain; far below us the city lay, an irregular blur of lights in the mist and cloud. There was a lay-by halfway along, used as a viewing point; the Reillys, having slowed down near the lay-by, picked up speed again and then turned off to the right about half a mile further on. I kept the car moving slowly, wary of running into them if they were doubling back, wary of blundering about in the dark.
“I know where they are,” said Tommy. “Pull into the lay-by.”
I did as he said. There was a grass verge with picnic tables and purple Hebe and St.-John’s-wort and a framed guide to the flora and fauna and a wooden gate across a rutted lane that led up into a forest of pines. Tommy hopped out and opened the gate, and we ran the car up and off the side of the lane.
“Used to bring a girl up here. There’s a quarry about half a mile along. That’s where they turned in.”
“Wait here,” I said.
Tommy shook his head.
“No way man. I may have made it up to you for getting involved with these cunts. But I haven’t made it up to me yet. Anyway, I know the way.”
Before I had a chance to argue, he set off up the lane, dragging his ruined foot as if it was weightless; I followed. We climbed a couple of hundred feet and then bore left through the trees, picking our way over uneven ground. I kept my balance by hand, steering my way along the densely packed pines; resin clung to my fingers and the pungent smell burned clean in my lungs.
At the sight of light ahead, Tommy began to sidle gradually down the hill; when we began to hear the rumble of voices, we made our movements slower and more deliberate; finally, we reached the edge of the pines, dropped to our knees and moved carefully between clumps of gorse and tangled bramble and fern for about twenty feet, until we were almost at the edge of a quarry. The sheer face, silver grey and orange slashed with purple and white, was to our right; opposite and beneath us, a sloping of mud and heaped stone fell to a dust floor of shale and rubble. There was an orange digger at rest, and an unlit grey and green Portakabin with Norton Excavation written on it; the lights came from the Reilly brothers’ Mercedes and a navy blue Bentley. The Reillys were standing by the Merc, the silver and blue drug company bag full of money between them. A man sat in the front seat of the Bentley, smoking, but I couldn’t make out who it was. Standing near the Bentley was Sean Moon, or someone who looked like Sean Moon might have if he’d had a shower and put on a suit and a dark coat; he was still pretty fat, but he didn’t look like a down-and-out. They were talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying; Tommy turned to me and put a finger to his ear to say he couldn’t hear them either.
Darren held up the bag, but when Sean Moon stepped forward to take it, Wayne moved between them. There was another set of exchanges, then Sean Moon called “Maria!” to someone in the Bentley, and a very nervous- looking woman with snow blond hair got out. At first I thought it was Anita, then I realized it wasn’t, but that I had seen her before and she had reminded me of Anita then too. It was the woman who had been in both porn films, the woman Moon had called Wendy, and was now calling Maria.
Maria was shaking, and didn’t want to go to the Reillys, but Sean Moon was insisting, dragging her across the gravel; she stumbled, and broke a heel, and he held on to her and swore and she stood straight, crying now, and he laughed and made an expansive gesture, and said “Women! Jaysus!” and the Reillys laughed too, and Wayne took hold of Maria’s other arm and dragged her across toward the Merc, and Darren handed the bag to Sean Moon, who quickly turned and tossed it in the front seat of the Bentley beside the smoking man, and as quickly shouted “Maria” again, very loudly, and she hit the dirt as quickly and when Sean Moon turned he had a compact submachine gun, the kind you can fire in one hand, and two or three bursts of automatic fire sang out and echoed around the hills, and when it was over, the Reillys lay dead, and all you could hear was the sound of a woman crying.
The man in the car got out. He had a large head of hair in a bouffant style and a mustache and wore a long pale-colored wool coat; he knelt down to comfort the weeping Maria; after a minute she rose to her feet, seemingly unharmed, and he walked her back to the car. Tommy turned to say something to me, but I didn’t hear what it was because in the act of turning he dislodged a clump of earth or a pile of stones, and whatever it was skittered down in a trail, right down to where Sean Moon stood. He trained the SMG in our direction, and before I could do a thing, Tommy said quietly to me, “One man, in the back lane,” and was on his feet, shouting “It’s okay, Tommy Owens, it’s all right.” He began to walk unsteadily down the slope, hands up, repeating the same words over and over, like a prayer.
“Who else is with you?” Sean Moon said when Tommy was about halfway down. I had the Sig in my hand and the slide pulled back, but unless I wanted to take Moon out now, it was useless, and even if I did, he’d still most likely be able to rake us both with a single burst.
“Nobody,” said Tommy. “I’m on my own. After those fucking Reillys.”
He stumbled down to the bottom and walked toward Moon, who gestured first at his clothes. Tommy pointed at the Reillys and then at himself; I guessed he was saying that part of the ransom belonged to him. The bouffant-haired man appeared above the low roof of the Bentley, and Sean Moon went around and explained the situation to him. He nodded Tommy into the back of the car, then pointed up in my direction and whispered an instruction. I eased back on my hands and knees as quietly as I could before Sean Moon pointed the SMG up where I had been and sprayed a few more bursts of automatic fire around.
I jammed myself low behind a charred gorse bush; my irrational prayer was that the more the needles hurt my head and face and ears and neck, the less likely I was to catch a stray slug. The musk of the gorse flowers had long gone; in its place was the smell of charcoal and ashes. The gunfire stopped. In the silence following, I heard the liquid purr of the Bentley and the crunch of gravel as it pulled away. I shinned down the slope and watched it slide majestically down the narrow road like a great sleigh on ice. I flashed on Denis Finnegan: the same luxury class, the same ooze through life. The Punto was well hidden above the lay-by; I decided to take the Merc; it would be better suited to what I had in mind. Even if the Guards found the Punto, chances were the owner had reported it stolen by now. I was halted momentarily by the Reillys’ massacred bodies, bleeding on the shale. Their deaths probably wouldn’t make the front page, or cause the people of Dublin more than a moment’s pause: just another gangland killing, another pair of dead hoods.
I got behind the wheel of the Merc and lorried it down on the Bentley’s trail; I almost drove off the narrow roads a few times until I adjusted to the increased power of the engine. A waft of cheap aftershave and hash smoke and body odor clung to the interior: human traces that now evoked the sickly sweet smell of death. I became aware that I was shaking, and sweat was prickling at my scalp; I found the switch that rolled all the windows down and let the cold damp air into the car. I didn’t catch sight of the Bentley for a while, but I didn’t need to; I was pretty sure I knew where it was headed; I finally caught sight of it ahead of me on Templeogue Road; when I saw it was going on down through Rathmines, I cut right through Ranelagh, running a couple of red lights and piling along Leeson Street, then down Fitzwilliam Place and left along the lane to the rear of the south side of the square, where residents could park their cars if they hadn’t built mews houses in their backyards. Brock Taylor hadn’t. I parked right up against his barred electric gates and cut the engine and got out the passenger side and crouched below it and let the slide back on the Sig. “Brock Taylor” was what Tommy must have said to me, what I hadn’t heard above the sound of the rubble he kicked down. And then, “One man in the back lane.” I thought of the boy who cried wolf. Tommy had invoked Brock Taylor so often, and it had almost all been fantasy. I hoped, for his sake as much as anyone’s, he had it right this time. The gates swung open, and a large uniformed guard appeared and rapped on the driver’s window of the Merc. I stood up and let him see the gun, and said “Hands” and walked around and frisked him. His big pink face was round-eyed with surprise. He didn’t have a weapon, which made sense; this wasn’t some gangster’s ranch in the mountains, this was Fitzwilliam Square, where the big rich kept town houses and solicitors had their offices. No one got shot around here. I took his phone and walked him through the gates and into a little booth on the left of the yard with a heavy metal door and a console and a CCTV screen and an armchair, and I gave him a tap or two on the back of the head with the Sig and pushed him into the armchair. There were no lights on in the house. I went out and reversed the Merc into the yard and around the corner so it wasn’t visible from the street, then I went into the little booth and consulted the console and flicked the switch that shut the gates. I waited for long enough to worry that the Bentley was going to dispose of its extra cargo first. Then lights appeared in the lane, and the gates swung back to admit the great car. Brock Taylor was driving, with Maria in the passenger seat; Sean Moon was behind Taylor, Tommy beside him.
