Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (5 page)

The kiss was long and spoke of many things neither of them could find the words for. Their mutual sorrow at the loss of the trust they had once taken as a given, the fear around this newly begun life they had created, the relief that their bodies still knew one another and responded with gratitude for the touch of the other. The knowledge that eventually they would heal this and the many other things that needed time and chance.

She got out of the chair, thoroughly cold now, and climbed back into the bed beside Casey. He was hot to the touch and roused a little at the icy contact of her hands. She snuggled tightly along his length and he murmured in his sleep, a sound of contentment and intimacy, then pulled her closer with his left arm, drifting back into the deep sleep she had disrupted.

Chapter Four
February 1973
The Boy from Liverpool

The powers that be had chosen Liverpool
as David’s cover. Liverpool with its centuries of Irish immigration and history or, as his boss had put it, “Liverpool has always been an Irish cesspit. No one could ever trace you there, and it’s not likely anyone would ever try.”

Not likely, but he had his facts in order just in case. His family and siblings, where they had lived—Merseyside of course—had been there since the first great influx of Irish after the 1798 Rebellion. The numbers were so high of those who had fled Ireland in those days, and the record keeping so poor that no one could trace a family in the tangled web of Liverpool’s Irish history. He was meant to be the product of an English father and an Irish mother, thus explaining his sympathy to the Loyalist cause. He had spent a few weeks in Liverpool, familiarizing himself with the Merseyside and nursing a headache from his practice of the Scouse accent and dialect.

As covers went, it was less flimsy than most and he could occasionally take refuge in acting the foreign naïf. That didn’t wash with Billy though, who was as tough a little cur as David had ever had the misfortune to meet. He was a touch leery of the child, for he had fixed himself to David like a barnacle to a weathered boat from the first day he had taken up residence in the big, drafty old house. He was a suspicious lad, with big white teeth in a narrow, pale face that made him look like a cagey squirrel. He was fifteen, a slip of a child who would likely one day be wiry and tough. Right now he seemed like a wee boy trying to stand in a full grown gangster’s boots.

David doubted that much got past this child’s screen. It had likely been a matter of survival for Billy much of his life. David had noticed the boy watching him several times.

It was as they were walking on the Protestant side of the Shankill divide near a particularly grimy drinking club on Centurion Street that Billy finally confronted him. David had been half expecting it, and half praying he was wrong about the boy’s suspicions. He was not.

“So what bit of England was it ye said ye came from?”

The boy was direct if without finesse, David thought.

“Liverpool.” He didn’t offer any more explanation than that. It was always a mistake to offer more information than had actually been requested.

“Ye might have Boyd fooled, ‘cuz he’s so busy lookin’ at yer arse that’s he’s not payin’ attention. But ye don’t seem right to me.” Billy leaned up against the filthy wall of a betting shop and took a speculative drag on his hand-rolled. David was in no way prepared for the next question.

“Did ye know Lawrence?”

He schooled his face quickly to a bored nonchalance, fairly certain there was a method to the boy’s queries and that he was going to have to play this situation carefully, but he saw little reason to prevaricate. If he was made, he was made. He had learned long ago to make the best of a bad or even lethal situation and he was highly trained in the art of playing both ends against the middle. Besides, if the child was going to rat him out, it was likely he would have done so already. If he hadn’t, then he had an angle, and David was a big fan of angles because they could always be worked in both directions.

“Lawrence who?”

But Billy’s attention had been sidetracked.

“Yer bein’ stared at, well, glared at, really,” Billy said and nodded toward a man who stood in the doorway of a corner shop, newspaper in one hand and a bottle of milk in the other. David looked and then looked again, thinking it was quite possible to jump out of one’s skin in startlement. For standing on the corner, and most definitely not being fooled in the least by David’s disguise, was Patrick Riordan, as tall and dark and even slightly more fearsome than the version David had held, somewhat gilded, in his heart and mind.

Pat tilted his head, hesitated for a moment and then stepped across the pavement, making toward David, who realized he had to move, and move now before disaster struck right here in the middle of this narrow road.

He walked toward Pat, fishing out a cigarette so that he could ask for a light and ostensibly have a reason to be chatting to this man should any interested eyes be observing him.

Christ, he breathed deeply through his nose as Pat came within feet of him, a look of furious incredulity on his face. He had forgotten how big the man was. Long and lean with it, so it wasn’t as apparent, but a big bloody bastard nevertheless. They stopped at the same time, like two wary dogs about to square off.

“What the hell are ye doin’ in this neighborhood?” David said, trying to avoid the dark eyes and look nonchalantly off into the distance.

“What the hell am
I
 doin’ in this neighborhood?” Pat asked indignantly.

“Point taken,” David said, eyes low and scanning the area for potential witnesses to this unlikely and dangerous meeting. “Look, just pretend you’re giving me a light for a cigarette or something, and then we’ll move on and I’ll get word to you on a safe place to meet. Just act like you don’t know me.”

“All things considered,” Patrick said, with a pointed look at Billy still standing on the sidewalk, eyeing them with great interest, “I think maybe I don’t.”

“It’s not what you think,” David said, thinking that what it was was going to be even harder to explain—not that he owed him explanations—and yet he supposed that in some way he did. For this man was his friend, the best one he had ever had, and friendship was owed a debt, if nothing else.

“Oh, I’m afraid it probably is,” Pat said with no small sarcasm, and kept on walking, “but I’ll reserve judgement for now.”

“Kind of you,” David muttered under his breath, slouching his way back to where Billy stood.

“Know him?” Billy asked, his face suspiciously innocent.

“Aye, somewhat,” David said, striving to sound as nonchalant as his pounding heart would allow.

“Really? Seemed as if ye knew him pretty well.”

David shrugged as if to say it didn’t matter to him one way or the other if Pat Riordan dropped off the face of the earth. He did not want the man targeted because of the last five minutes.

Billy tossed his cigarette to the ground, stepping on the spark of ash that was left. He was a small boy, even for his age but he more than made up for it in sheer bravura. David knew to be wary around him. If the child even breathed his suspicions to Boyd or any of his ilk, David would be found in several pieces out back of some grotty drinking club. He waited, drawing out the smoking of his own cigarette to give the boy time. He wasn’t going to speak first. A mistake like that would only confirm the child’s suspicions.

“Well then, here ‘tis. Maybe I don’t give a fock if yer a copper as long as ye take care of Boyd.”

“How do you mean—take care?” David asked quietly, careful to keep his accent in place, even if it wasn’t fooling this child.

Billy looked at him, a long assessing look, his blue eyes as dark and clouded as the sea that lay beyond this troubled city.

“I think ye know fine what I mean, Davey.”

Unfortunately, David thought, that was all too true.

“I’ll tell ye what though—there’s one other thing I want in trade for my silence.”

“Aye,” said David dryly, “an’ what would that be?”

“I want to talk to Casey Riordan.”

Chapter Five
February 1973
Billy

David had weighed his options
before giving Billy an answer. However, in the end he had gone to see Casey, not trusting the telephone for discreet communication. He had bearded the lion in his den, so to speak, sneaking in the back door of the Youth Center on the one night of the week that Casey still worked there.

It had been a less than auspicious start to the proceedings, as Casey had greeted him with a gun and a brusque,

“Who are ye and what the hell do ye want?”

At least, thought David, swallowing hard to digest the heart in his throat, his disguise had fooled one of the Riordans. Then again, it was dark in the back entry and this was not a good neighborhood in which to be lurking unexpectedly around back doors.

After David had stated his name and purpose, Casey had eased back on the gun but still sounded as though he would be happy to shoot David should he move too suddenly or say something Casey didn’t like.

“Well now that I know who ye are, I’ll ask again. What the hell is it that ye want?”

David explained about Billy’s request and the reasons behind it, then went on to explain how the request had come to him.

“Me?” Casey Riordan demanded, raising a black brow and giving his visitor a narrowed dark eye that produced a familiar clench in David’s gut. Why he found Patrick’s brother so fearsome, he wasn’t certain. It wasn’t as if the man had ever harmed him—threatened it by his mere presence and aura, certainly, but never actually
done
it. Perhaps it was just that he really looked as though he would like to occasionally.

“Yes, you,” David said trying to sound assertive. “He won’t talk unless it’s you. I’ve done my best to persuade him without your help, trust me, but he says it’s you and no one else. He was a friend of Lawrence’s, you see.”

Casey nodded and sat, rubbing his large hands over his face and sighing heavily.

“Aye, I see. Alright, tell the lad I’ll listen to what he has to say, but whether or no’ I can help is another matter altogether.”

“You don’t need to. I’ll get him somewhere safe and set up. I’ll do it myself if the company won’t back me.”

This received another raised eyebrow and a look of profound cynicism which David was all too well aware the British special forces had more than earned here in Northern Ireland. Often people who were lured into working for either the army or any of the more shadowy organizations that proliferated here like wheat on a threshing floor, were promptly and callously discarded once they had outworn their usefulness. At that point, the inevitable usually took place. If they were lucky—and they rarely ever were—it was a quick, if brutal, death. The unlucky ones found themselves bound and gagged and tortured in an isolated cottage for days until the merciful bullet to the back of the head was administered. Casey’s cynicism might be profound, but it was also the opinion and experience of a realist.

“You loved Lawrence and he thought the world of you, so yes, I’d little doubt on that score alone that you would talk to Billy. We need to finish this for him, Casey.”

Casey didn’t reply, and the dark eyes were as unfathomable as a lake in winter, but he nodded curtly. “Bring him then.”

He had given David directions to a location in the countryside where he felt they could meet unobserved.

The upshot of this consisted of David escorting a nervous Billy, who chewed his nails non-stop during the hour-long drive and was so tense that David’s shoulders felt as though they were up around his own ears by the time they arrived. If arriving was the correct state to describe the location Casey had chosen for their meeting.

Ireland was scattered with small abandoned cottages, left as they stood generations before. The Irish did not believe in tearing down such buildings, for what if their inhabitants were to return and find their home gone? What if ghosts lingered near and sought shelter within walls that had once rung with laughter and song, once been both shelter and sanctuary?

David thought even a ghost would be hard put to find adequate harbor from the elements in this particular cottage, for there were only three walls remaining and a tumbledown chimney wound about with vines and mortared with moss and lichens. A fingernail paring of moon sat, gold and watchful, just above the scrim of stone.

The inside was empty, the only noise that of the wind moving through the trees and whistling softly against the ancient grey stone. A raven came flapping down and perched ominously on the top of what had once been a doorway. David felt an urge to quote Poe at it, but squelched it quickly for Casey had come round the edge of one ragged wall, silent as a wolf in the night.

Billy quailed a bit when brought face to face with the man about whom he had heard much but never encountered in the flesh. David had a great deal of empathy for him, but pushed the boy forward with a gentle hand.

“Sit an’ relax. I won’t bite ye,” Casey said to the boy, attempting to break the tension that lay over them all like glass.

“Yer a wee bit more imposin’ than I imagined,” Billy said and sat as though he dared not disobey the big, dark man in front of him.

“Aye, well, that may be so but Lawrence never feared me, not even when he first met me and nor need you. I’ll not hurt ye lad, nor abuse ye in any way. Just be straight with me an’ I’ll give ye the same in return. Fair enough?”

Billy nodded and swallowed. Casey looked him in the eye and asked, “Will ye want yer man there to stay? I’m comfortable either way but I realize ye may not be, so what would ye prefer?”

Billy looked at David, who nodded in assurance that whatever he wanted was fine by him.

“He can stay. It’s better if ye both hear what I have to say, I think maybe.”

Casey nodded. “Yer right. Good thinkin’, man.” He nodded to David to sit and David wondered how he had so completely taken control of the situation. The man was a natural, if at times reluctant, leader and all in his aura seemed to respond immediately to this fact.