6

“Very well,” she said and closed the door behind her.

I drank some tea and ate a couple of the chocolate biscuits that came with it. They’d also provided that needle and thread. I started running the shower to get the hot water warmed up.

I picked the phone up from the bedside table. I found Bridget’s number at the Europa.

Well, this was it. Your last chance, my dear. She’d have to be pretty bloody convincing. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…

I dialed the Europa Hotel, got through to her room. “Who’s this?” a man asked.

“Who’s this?” I asked. “Moran.”

“I want to speak to Bridget, this is Michael Forsythe,” I said. “Hold on,” the man said with cold anger.

“Michael, are you in Belfast?” Bridget asked urgently. “Am I hell. I’m not in the grave, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Despite your best efforts I am still walking the same planet Earth as you,” I said.

“Michael, I don’t have time for this, come to the point,” Bridget muttered impatiently.

“Honestly, this is getting very tiresome,” I said.

“Tiresome for me, too. What are you talking about?” Bridget yelled.

“Your boy tried to kill me, as if you didn’t know,” I said. “What boy?”

“Your boy, the cab driver. Surprise, surprise, he knew my name and he tried to fucking kill me.”

Bridget considered the information. Her breathing became shorter and she sounded irritated.

“Michael, I don’t know what is going on. If someone tried to kill you, it was nothing to do with me.”

“Bridget, I know you’re playing. Do you think I am that stupid?” I said, a half-rhetorical, half-real query.

“Michael, believe me, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t send anyone to kill you. Why would I do that when I could have killed you in Peru?”

Fair point.

“You didn’t send someone to the airport to meet me?” “No.”

I leaned back in the leather chair, tapped the phone against my forehead. Just exactly how good was she? Was she good enough to send two hit teams at me in two days, fail in both the hits, and still convince me that she wasn’t trying to knock me off?

“Bridget, I know it was you, I—” I tried to say but Bridget cut me off.

“Listen to me, you worthless shit. You killed my fiancé and I’m giving you a chance to fucking balance the ledger. My daughter’s gone missing. Do you understand? I don’t know what the fuck you’ve been doing in Dublin, I don’t care. I need your help. The most precious thing in the world to me is Siobhan. Not you or what you’ve been up to, you son of a bitch. I don’t have the time to talk to you anymore. I’ll be in the Europa, you’ll either come or you won’t, it’s up to you. You are not my concern right now. Ok? I have a million things to do, so I have to go. Hell with you, Michael, useless as fucking usual.”

She hung up.

I listened to the dial tone and then the recorded operator told me to put the phone down. Jesus. Where did that leave me? It

was back to the original question. Was she good enough to hit me and still make me come to her in Belfast?

I groaned, put my head in my hands. She was.

What was happening to me? What kind of an idiot had I become? Was my judgment going? Either that or a possibility that was worse. Maybe I really didn’t buy it, maybe I didn’t believe her at all. I didn’t believe her but I wanted to go to Belfast anyway. I was being drawn to her even though I knew it would bring death. I wanted to see her this one last time whatever the cost.

Was that what was going on?

I shrugged. Nah. It wasn’t as complicated as that. I simply believed her. She was telling the truth. What was happening to me had nothing to do with her. It was a coincidence. I had more than one enemy in the world, after all, and maybe I had several in Ireland. And by now, my presence was known about and advertised.

I removed the duct tape, took my trousers off, and climbed into the shower.

Quick shower. Quick dry.

I wrapped the towel around me and sat on the end of the bed. I ripped off a piece of pillowcase, dipped the needle in the hot tea, and double threaded it. I grabbed the flesh on either side of my knife wound. Easy does it. I pushed the needle through the epidermis, threaded it over the wound, drove it through the skin on the other side of the cut. I repeated the procedure five times in a crisscross pattern and gently pulled the stitches tight. When the wound was together, I tied off the thread, wiped away the blood, applied a bit of pillowcase as a bandage, and rewrapped the duct tape around the whole thing.

I spent a while recovering from the waves of pain and then I started dressing.

There was a knock outside. Ah, Lara with the T-shirt. I pulled on my trousers and opened the door.

Not Lara. A six-foot-four bald guy with a goatee, a black suit, narrow slits for eyes, and a six-shot .38 revolver in his meaty paw.

“What the fuck is all this?” I asked. “The lady of the house and I have an arrangement.”

“Are you Michael Forsythe?” he asked in a Belfast accent.

If I hadn’t learned in the last ten years, certainly the last two days had taught me the inefficacy of answering to that name.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Oh, you don’t need to know who I am. Put your hands on your head and make like a fucking statue. One move and there’s a bullet in that bandage in your gut.”

I put my hands over my head. The man rummaged through my things and found my passport. That wouldn’t help him. I was called Brian O’Nolan on that. Still, he looked at the picture and at me and compared it with a mental picture.

“I think it is you,” he said rhetorically. “The foot too, bit of a giveaway.”

“You want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked.

“No, I want you to put these on,” he said and threw me a pair of handcuffs. I let them drop on the floor.

“And if I don’t?”

“Just put on the cuffs,” he said. “Bridget sent you?”

He didn’t offer any information, but perhaps that was a tell in a very slight shake of the head.

“I won’t put the cuffs on unless you tell me what’s going to happen after I do.”

“You’ll be going on a journey, see some old pals. Now put the cuffs on. You’ll be fucking sorry if you don’t, it’s all the same

to me.”

“Did the madam tell you I was here?”

“Yeah, she did, now get those things on,” he yelled. “At least let me get dressed first.”

He thought about it for a second.

“Ok. No funny stuff or I’ll top ya.”

I put on my clothes, taxing his patience with my Stanley boots. I picked up the handcuffs. Standard cop jobs. I placed one over my wrist and casually tilted my arm so he couldn’t see exactly what I was doing, and closed the cuff about halfway. I tugged the metal between my finger and thumb to show him that it was locked. The man seemed satisfied. Of course it wasn’t locked at all. I put the second loop over my other wrist and closed it, this time all the way. I held my hands in front of me with the big gap on the right side, underneath my wrist where he couldn’t see it. If he had any brains he’d kick me in the balls, kneel on me, put the gun in my face, and make sure the handcuffs were really bloody tight.

But he was a trusting son of a bitch and either not very good at this or was under orders to go softy softly with me.

“You walk ahead of me, we’ll wait downstairs, there’ll be a car along in a couple of minutes.”

“Where are we going?” “Doesn’t concern you.”

“The Garda is looking for me. You can’t just take me away, they’ll spot you in a second.”

“Aye, heard about that. How long have you been in the city? About four hours? And they already have a photofit of you up on the telly for attempted murder. Nice work. But don’t you worry about the Garda, mate, we know all the ins and outs of this town, believe me.”

“Where we going?” I tried again.

“North,” he said ominously. So it was Bridget.

I walked along the oak-paneled corridor and into the foyer. It had been cleared of girls, clients in pig noses, and Albanian cleaning ladies.

He was behind me. I looked at our reflections in the polished oak. He was following me about four feet back.

I wriggled out of the right handcuff. A tiny clinking sound, but he couldn’t see what I was doing.

I wouldn’t have long to make my move. A car was coming. Presumably with more men inside.

Three steps led down from the hallway into the foyer. It would have to be now.

I tripped and fell down the steps, keeping my hands in front and landing on what looked like my unprotected face.

“Jesus,” the man said and ran over to help. He transferred the revolver from his right to his left hand and pulled me up by the hair. I let him lift me six inches off the ground then I made a grab for the gun. My left hand found his wrist, I stuck my knuckle into the pressure point an inch below his life line.

He screamed, his grip loosened, and I grabbed the pistol. He threw a punch at me with his right, missed, smacked his fist into the hardwood floor. I kicked his legs and he fell on top of me. He landed with a two-hundred-pound crash on my back, crushing the air out of my lungs and nearly opening my stitches.

Painfully I rolled to the side just as he was drawing back a big fist to smash into my face, but there wasn’t going to be a fight. I wriggled my arm free, held the gun out horizontally, and pulled the trigger. A bullet caught him in the armpit. He screamed and writhed, and I pushed him off. And as he made a desperate lunge for the gun, I shot him in the shoulder. The second bullet knocked him on his spine.

I stood up and backed well away from him. “Who do you work for?” I asked.

Through one of the brothel windows I could see that a red Range Rover had pulled up outside. Men getting out. Bollocks. No time for twenty questions.

“Ammo,” I said.

He pointed to his jacket pocket. I reached in and pulled out a bag full of assorted .38 shells. Old, new; still, they would do the job.

“Handcuff key?” “Other pocket.”

I reached in and took out the key. “Don’t kill me,” he pleaded.

“This is your lucky day, pal,” I said and ran back up the foyer steps and along the corridor, kicking open doors until I found a room with a girl inside.

Mousy little brunette taking a break.

“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked her. “What?”

I put the gun on her forehead.

“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked again.

Running. Those stars again. My eyes were definitely fucked up. Couldn’t see properly. I rubbed them. Big red birds sitting around a black mark in the road. As I got close they turned into kids in Man. United shirts.

I looked back.

No one behind me.

“Over here, mister,” a voice said, and a tiny hand tugged me down a narrow lane. Dogs barking. Papers. Cardboard boxes. Beer cans. Bottles. Narrow streets. An outdoor toilet. Smell of bacon fat. Curtains of gray slate, yards of washing.

“This way,” the voice said.

Finally I stopped seeing the stars. But Jesus, I’d have to get to a doctor for that.

We went into a court between some back-to-backs and then across a yard full of burned-out cars. In front of us was an open space where a block of flats had once stood and now was derelict. Kids playing in the cement, women talking. Caravans. Trailer homes.

“You’re safe now, mister,” the voice said. The kid was a boy of about thirteen. A dark-haired wee mucker with a scar on his face below the ear. He was wearing a patched sweater, dirty plimsolls, and trousers miles too big for him. Clearly he was a Gypsy kid, or a traveler, if you wanted to be politically correct about it.

“Who ya running from? The poliss?” the kid asked when he saw that I had my breath back.

“Sort of.”

“Aye, thought so. I just seen this eejit running and I thought the poliss are after him. That’s why I done come after ya, show ya a wee route.”

“Thanks.”

The kid looked at the handcuff still attached to my left wrist. It was also still holding a silenced revolver, but the boy didn’t give a shit about the gun.

“Did ya make a break for it? Outta the car?”

“Aye. Sure,” I said. I found the key, took the handcuffs off, and gave them to him.

“Did ya have that key made? How did ya get out of those things?” he asked.

“You ever heard of Houdini?” “Nope.”

I drank in air, safetied the pistol, and shoved it down the front of my trousers.

“Ya want me to get ya a drink or something?” the kid asked. “No. Thanks.”

“Are ya heading back?” “Yes.”

“Where to?”

“Belfast,” I found myself saying. “I’m going to Belfast to get some answers.”

The boy was looking at me funny now. Squinting as the sun came out and then smirking as it went back behind the clouds. I stretched my shoulders where they hurt and reached in my pocket. I found a twenty-euro note.

“Buy yourself some candy,” I said.

“I will,” the kid said, with a trace of ungracious defiance, as if he was just begging me to tell him to say thank you, in which case he would be ready to tell me to fuck away off. But I wasn’t falling for it. I looked at the wee lad and found myself breaking into a grin.

“Have you any brothers or sisters?” I asked. “Jesus, you’ve no idea, mister.”

“Give them a share of the candy.” “I will,” the kid promised.

“Give you another twenty if you could russle me up a T-shirt, this one’s fucked.”

The kid nodded, walked across the waste ground, walked into the nearest caravan, came out with a black Led Zeppelin T- shirt. A man appeared and said something to the kid and

pointed at me. The kid replied, nodded. Brought me the T- shirt. I put it on.

“What did that man want?” I asked.

“Nothing. He was just telling me there was two men who came after ya, looking for ya, loike, asking questions.”

“What did he say to them?” The kid grinned.

“Nobody saw anything or anybody.”

“Ok. Good. Which way back into the city center?” “Down to the right. All the way down the hill.”

I left the boy and walked down the hill, past boarded-up houses and a few scary-looking hoods keeping watch at the corners. This was the heart of a bad area (interestingly, just behind the façade of new Dublin) and I walked fast to get out of it, but not so quickly that I would attract attention. If they thought I was an undercover cop or a rival hood I’d be approached at gunpoint, bundled into a van, and taken somewhere to be interrogated. Take me bloody hours to get out of it.

At the bottom of the hill I came to a bus station and then I saw some familiar street signs.

I was near the river again.

Belfast, I’d told the kid. And Belfast it would be. The peelers.

Oh, they’d send a couple of beat cops to the exit points. Avoid the train station, avoid the bus station, avoid the airport, but there was no way the Garda could control cars leaving the city, not these days. Dublin was a big, modern commuter city with a thousand roads in and out.

Piss easy, steal a car, drive out of town. Shit, hire a car. They didn’t know who I was. Get my credit card, dial Hertz.

I found a quiet nook and took out my cell phone.

I called up every car-hire place in County Dublin but in every one the story was the same: “We’re all out of cars, there’s a big festival in Dublin to do with James Joyce. You’ll have no problem tomorrow, but not today.”

So, it was either thieve a vehicle or risk the bus or train stations. I really could chance the latter two. I didn’t have much respect for the Garda’s ability to apprehend someone even if they did have a photofit. But then again maybe that would be pushing my luck just too far.

As for the first option. There were hundreds of cars parked right here in the street, but who knew what fuckwit would miss his vehicle fifteen minutes from now, call the cops, and then they’d circulate the license plate and some keen motorcyle cop would lift me. What then? Shoot an unarmed Garda Síochána just trying to do his duty?

Nah. I had another idea. I found the card in my trouser pocket. I phoned the number.

“Hello,” I said when I got connected. “I can’t hear you.”

“Hey, it’s me, the old geezer from the parade.” “Oh, you, where did you go?” Riorden asked.

“Hey, let me ask you something, have you got a car, a Volkswagen?”

“Yeah, I do, a Volkswagen Beetle. One of the new ones. Why do you want to know?”

“Uh, I don’t. Just checking. Friend of mine wants to buy a car, he really likes Volkswagens, that’s all. You’re not in the market to sell it?”

“Is that why you called me up?”

“No, you got me. It’s only an excuse, I wanted to see you again and I couldn’t think of a reason for calling you. Where are you?”

“We’re still at Jury’s, do you know it?”

“Aye, I know it.”

Twenty minutes later I walked into Jury’s. A party was in full swing. It was a nice June day, the international media were in town, term was winding down. What more excuse did you need for celebration?

In any case it was packed with students. Standing room only and there wasn’t much room to stand. Two hundred dead easy if someone shouted “Fire.”

I found the girl talking to an enormous black-haired English rugby player in an Aran sweater. She was on lemonade, but he was half wasted and thought his luck was in. I waited till she took a bathroom break before I approached him.

“Fuck off, Hercules, the lady is spoken for,” I said with menace.

“Are you talking to me?” the rugby player asked.

“No, I’m talking to the midget who works you by remote control, now fuck away off before we test the adage, the bigger they are…”

“You’ve got to be pulling my leg?” he said.

“No. I’m not pulling your fucking leg. I’m not climbing up your fucking beanstalk to steal your magic beans either. I’m telling you to fuck away off before I get upset.”

“Jesus, are you looking for trouble?” he persisted.

“Believe me, I don’t have to go looking. I’ll count to ten and you better be out of here, this lady is spoken for.”

“You picked the wrong guy to start a fight with,” he maintained.

As I began my countdown, he clenched his fists.

“One, two, three, four,” I counted and kneed him right in the nut sack. He sank to the floor and as he tumbled I grabbed him by the hair and smacked my fist twice into his face. He wilted, wobbled, fell. I checked to see if anyone had spotted my assault on a brother student, but everyone was drunk,

exuberant, not paying attention and I was a fast wee turd when occasion arose.

“Lend a hand here, Nigel can’t hold his drink,” I shouted and pushed the big guy’s head backward onto the concrete floor.

A couple of his mates, looking round for the first time, saw that their pal was out for the count and ran to help him. Just then the girl came out of the toilet.

“Your boyfriend can’t take his drink,” I said.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” the girl said, looking to see that he wasn’t dead, but not much beyond that.

“Good, you deserve better,” I said.

“Who are you?” she asked, exasperated. I bit my lip.

I was going to romance her but suddenly, from out of nowhere, I was fed up with this story. I wanted to expedite matters. I wanted to bring things to the goddamn climax. There wasn’t time for an hour or two’s worth of bullshit.

“You want the truth?” I asked. “Yeah?”

“I’m a police officer, I’m undercover. Inspector Brian O’Nolan. Dublin CID. I know you don’t want to hear this in the middle of a party but someone broke into your car,” I said deadpan.

“Someone broke into my car?” she said, horrified.

“That’s right. We ran the plate, your name and number came up and I thought, Jesus, that’s a coincidence, I was talking to that wee lassie this morning.”

“Is that why you asked about it on the phone?”

“Aye, but I hate to tell people bad news on the phone. Thought I’d come in person. Come on. We’d like you to ID the vehicle and drive it to the nearest station for us, if you don’t mind.”

“Jesus, I’m glad I gave you my number,” she said, happy enough to buy the story without a heartbeat.

“Come on, let’s go ID the car.”

Five minutes later and we were at a small parking lot near Trinity. I deflected easily the many “You don’t look like a cop” or “You have a bit of an American accent” questions, reassured her that her car was relatively unharmed, and asked her a couple of details about her habits, friends, and teachers to see if she would be missed.

“There’s the car,” she said, pointing to a blue Volkswagen. “Shite. It looks ok from here.”

I checked the street.

There were people about but no one paying us any particular attention. We walked to the vehicle.

She looked at me with first a puzzled and then a suspicious expression playing across her pretty face.

“No one broke into the car,” she said.

“Don’t scream or I’ll fucking shoot you,” I said, taking out the revolver and shoving it into her ribs.

“Are you serious?” she asked, wondering, no doubt, if this was all some nasty practical joke.

“Aye.”

“W-what do you want?” she asked, a little bit more frightened this time.

“Well, I want your car, but you’ll have to come with me, because I don’t want you reporting me and I’m not feeling well enough to drive.”

“You must be kidding,” she said, her big eyes widening in terror. Her chest heaving up and down. It was not unattractive. I pushed the gun farther into her body.

“No joke, love. Now unlock the fucking car and get in.” “You wouldn’t kill me in broad daylight.”

“I fucking would,” I said savagely. This was the turning point for her.

“I don’t want to get shot. I’m, I’m…I’m pregnant,” she said and began to sob.

It threw me for a second, but only for a second.

“You listen to me, honey. You’re going to live till you’re a hundred and twenty years old. You’re going to be popping champagne corks in the year 2100 and you’re going to be here when the aliens show up with all their videos of Jesus and Alexander the Great. Either that, or you’re going to be fucking dead with a bullet in your skull, thirty seconds from now. Your call. And if you die, the bairn dies too.”

She composed herself a little, looked at me, stared at the gun. “What do you want?” she asked.

“We’re going to get in your car and you’re going to drive me to Belfast and you’re going to drive back down to Dublin and never bloody mention this to anybody. Now enough yakking, get in the fucking car and drive.”