The Bloomsday Dead (32 page)

I thanked Phil profusely, ran out to the car.

I reversed the taxi out of the pub car park, sped along the Knockagh Road, hammering down the foggy track at ninety miles an hour. A Jeep passed me doing fifty in the other direction and it distracted me enough so that I almost drove straight past the lane.

Almost.

I slammed on the bloody brakes, skidded, nearly rolled, recovered, stopped, reversed, read the “Trespassers Prosecuted, No Shooting” sign, pulled in, parked the car, and grabbed the gun.

I felt my way forward gingerly and arrived at a second barbed-wire fence and a gate with another sign, which said “Keep Out. Trespassers Strictly Prosecuted.” This sign was new and there were tire tracks in the mud.

A big vehicle and a couple of smaller cars. I bent down to examine them. Definitely fresh, in the last day or so, I would have guessed.

The path seemed to diverge now, left along the contour of the hill, but straight on took you farther down the slope. A bite of wind came from the high bog, a cold blade moving over the shadowy hills. While I zipped my jacket, the gust opened a gap in the mist. Fences hugging the hills, separating one desolate little sheep field from another. But what was that at the bottom of the slope? A house, a ruined lodge? Definitely worth investigating. I’d have to get closer. My hands tensed on the cold fence.

I opened the gate and walked onto a metal cattle grid, got one pace, immediately skidded, slipped, and fell. One of my Stanley work boots came off and my plastic foot got caught between the gaps in the metal rollers.

“Bloody hell.”

A cattle grid is a series of metal tubes usually placed over a trench in front of a gate. People can walk on the rollers and cars can drive over them, but cows cannot cross them. The cows don’t even have to fall one time to get it, instinct keeps them away. It’s a handy device that allows you to keep your gate open without worrying about your cows, pigs, or horses bolting.

A clever contraption, and it’s the rare fucking eejit that gets his foot caught in a cattle grid. But he was here tonight. I tugged at it, but my artificial foot was completely wedged. I unhooked the straps and pulled as hard as I bloody could. It didn’t move an inch.

I removed the sock and heaved on the bastard, but there was still no way it was coming up. A better option would be to push it through the rollers. I could get the whole weight of my body behind it, but the problem there was that I couldn’t see how deep the pit went under the rollers. I didn’t want to lose my foot in a bottomless hole, not when I might need to run on it in a second. And anytime now the car with the kidnappers and Siobhan inside was about to drive up from the house.

That would be a nice fucked-up and ignominious way to end my existence on planet Earth. Hunting for my foot in a cattle grid while they drive past, stop the car, look at me in amazement, and then shoot me to blazes.

“Come on,” I said as I tried pulling it again, but it was pointless. I would have to push it through. The pit couldn’t be that deep. They didn’t want cows to break their legs. They just wanted to spook them a bit.

Have to check it out. I lay down on the metal rollers and felt underneath. I stretched my arm to full extension and touched years’ worth of sheep, cow, horse, pig, and dog shit, as well as leaves, garbage, and other assorted filth. Disgusting, but not deep.

I leaned with my full body weight on my foot. I pushed, and it sank through the rollers and landed in the shit.

“Ah, Jesus,” I said aloud.

I reached for the foot, found it, grabbed it between my fingers, and maneuvered it to the big gap in the rollers at the edge of the pit. I pulled it out, cleaned it as best I could, and strapped it back on. I spent another two minutes rummaging in the murk to find my boot. I saw that the cause of this minicatastrophe had been when the lace had broken and the boot had skittered off. The lace was neatly bisected, so I could tie up only the top four holes.

I stood. The boot didn’t feel remotely comfortable on the stump, but it would have to do.

The wind had killed the fog completely now and I found that I was looking at a one-room building. Very old, but far from being a ruin. It had a corrugated iron roof, a working chimney, and glass windows. It was a very old Orange Lodge, perhaps one of the original ones, and the fact that the kidnappers were using it made two things clear. First, whoever had kidnapped Siobhan certainly wasn’t a member of the Orange Order or the Protestant paramilitaries. They would never countenance the possibility of being traced back to an Orange Lodge. It wouldn’t look good within the community to use a semisacred place, even a partially ruined one, for a high-profile organized crime. This in itself was also puzzling because it didn’t seem likely that Catholic paramilitaries would use such a place either. They’d pick somewhere they were comfortable in, safe, a territory they knew well. An old Orange Lodge deep within a Protestant farming area? No chance. Bridget had been told the same thing from both sides and Body O’Neill hadn’t known a thing about the kidnap.

But if it wasn’t the Protestant paramilitaries and it wasn’t the Catholic paramilitaries, who in the name of God had grabbed the wee girl? Try to be an independent hoodlum in Ulster without being allied to one of the two sides and you’d very quickly end up as fish food. Was it a foreign organization? If so, they’d recruited local talent; but the masterminds could easily be from abroad—like that old guy on the phone. A risky game, but why not?

Well, we’d soon fucking see.

I crept my way closer. The lodge fifty feet away. Two cars outside. A beat-up Ford Sierra and a new Camry. Two cars—so what was that, maybe eight or ten guys?

If time wasn’t such a big factor, I would have stalked the place for at the very least twenty-four hours. In the gorse and heather there were dozens of places to hide. A pair of binocs and a notebook and I could have sussed the whole operation.

But I had no time for that shite.

Close enough to be seen, so I got down on my belly. The smell of slurry was strong and the ground was damp from a rainstorm earlier in the day. I slithered through the tuft grass until I came to a small stone wall that surrounded the building.

I looked at my watch. Ten-fifteen. They wouldn’t be on the move just yet. They’d be nervous; but they wouldn’t be shitting bricks. Keeping up one another’s bravado. I looked over the wall. Just a few paces to the lodge. If she was still alive the girl would be there with them, so I couldn’t just storm in, killing everything that moved.

There was only one way. In with the gun. Give them a chance to put their hands up, and if they tried anything, shoot the fuckers. But protect the wee lass at all costs.

I slithered over the wall.

I could hear voices now. At least two, possibly three men. I crawled my way around the lodge so that I was facing the only door.

The voices were quite distinct. All of them Northern Irish, all from the Belfast area.

“Fucking peelers deserve it.”

“Aye, you’re right, they’ve had it far too easy.”

“What’s that about a wedding, it’s not Charles and Camilla, is it?”

“Nah, it’s about Paul McCartney, getting married to yon awful woman.”

“I had one of her pies once, it was lovely.”

“She doesn’t make pies, you’re thinking of Linda. Hey, I’m going for a jimmy.”

More like three or four different men speaking. Maybe another two or three keeping their own counsel. Could be seven targets in there. I’d have to reload the bloody gun. Tricky, but you could do it if you’d practiced. And I’d have surprise. I grabbed three shells and held them in my left hand. I checked the .38. It looked clean. I eased the hammer back.

Here goes, I thought, just as the door opened. I ducked into the shadow beside the wall. A heavyset man in a checked shirt and body warmer came out carrying an old-fashioned shotgun. He didn’t see me. Even though the fog was gone, it was close to full dark now. He walked to the wall, set down his shotgun, opened his fly, and pissed.

Quietly I got to my feet, eased in behind him, put the gun to his neck.

“This is the police, don’t move a fucking muscle or I’ll top you, do you understand?” I said in a whisper.

He flinched and urinated on himself.

“I understand,” he said in a croak.

“Keep your cock out and put your hands on your head. If you make one sound I’ll shoot your dick off. Get me?”

“Aye,” he said, frightened out of his mind.

He put his hands up and I patted him down. He had a penknife in his back pocket, a wallet with some low-denomination bills, and the driving licenses of three different people.

I dropped the wallet in the mud. I knew I had to work fast.

“Ok, get down on your knees. Keep those hands on your head,” I said.

He knelt down. He was physically shaking. Terrified I was going to kill him.

“Ok, what’s the story, pal? Tell me everything in a fast whisper,” I said.

“What about?”

“The girl.”

“I didn’t touch the girl, I promise, I didn’t touch her, the—”

He was starting to raise his voice.

“You better learn how to fucking whisper pal or you’re a dead man,” I said.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“You were talking about the girl,” I said.

“I didn’t touch her. The boss said no one was to touch her. He gave her the drugs, and we weren’t supposed to go near her, it was Slider, it wasn’t me, I didn’t lay a finger on her.”

“What did Slider do?” I asked coldly.

“He felt her tits, that’s all, I tried to stop him. He said he wanted to see if they were coming along. He made me do it. I didn’t even want to. I mean, the boss told us not to. He said we weren’t to do a thing while he was away. I only did it once. Not like Slider. She was out the whole time, mind. Well out.”

“Is she ok?”

“Where’s the other cops?” he asked.

“Never mind that. How is the girl? Is she ok?”

“She’s alive, she’s fine, doped up but fine. I promise.”

“Ok. How many people in there with you?” I asked.

“Three people.”

“Only three, don’t you bullshit me, I saw two cars out front,” I said.

“The others have left,” he said.

“Left where?”

“Left with her.”

“Fuck,” I said, biting down an urge to yell the word. “Ok, ok, when did they go?”

“Twenty five minutes ago,” he said.

“Twenty-five minutes ago. Jesus. Not in a goddamn Jeep?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

I cursed inwardly.

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know.”

“I said where did they fucking go?” I demanded, pushing the revolver between folds of fat in his neck.

“I don’t know, Slider knows, he talked to the boss, he suggested the handover place, I don’t know where it’s going to be, I’m not supposed to know. I promise, I don’t fucking know.”

“Slider’s still in there?”

“Yes.”

“And the boss?”

“He left with the others and the girl.”

“You have no idea where they went? You better not be lying.”

“I don’t, I really don’t know,” he said.

“How’s your shotgun? Do you keep it clean?”

“It’s clean, but I only have the left barrel loaded.”

“Ok.”

I didn’t have time to tie him up. If I knocked him out he could come to at any time. Really, there was only one course of action. And he had fondled her breasts while she was unconscious. That was enough for me. I unfolded the penknife. I put the gun in my jacket pocket. I quickly threw my hand over his mouth and locked his head between my shoulder and arm. I shoved the blade into his throat, missing the carotid artery by an inch. It was ok, I dragged the blade through his flesh, found the artery, lifted it out, and cut through it. Blood spraying everywhere.