Falling Glass (15 page)

“Oh yes, of course sir, let me see… 7.00 a.m.”

“Thank you.”

The Ambien kicked in and he was asleep by nine. He didn’t dream and he woke before the alarm on a cold, foggy, rainy morning feeling refreshed. He cracked his door and saw no one. He went down the fire-escape stairs and by five-twenty he’d checked out and was on the N45 west.

He pulled in for petrol at a truck stop where the N56 met the R257. He got a coffee and did a lengthy spot check for tails. Nothing. He entered Dave’s buddy’s address in the satnav and followed the 257 into a bleak rainy country of new forest, slippery roads, and tiny wee places filled with fishermen, artists, German architects and nutcase survivalists.

The 257 became a local road, curving through big wet pine forests that were spiderwebby and dark and elemental and appealed to him. He wound the window down. The air was good. There was moisture in it and it was
filled with ions and oxygen. The smell was tree fern and seaweed and a hint of mountain ash. Moss was growing in the petrol-station toilet where he stopped to get a Snickers bar and a coffee. He checked his directions with the petrol-station attendant, but the guy was from Belfast and before that, nine months ago, a delta city in Bangladesh.

But the satnav didn’t let him down and he’d made it to Dave’s buddy’s cabin by 9.30.

A long stony beach, breaking surf, white caps dissolving into the sort of gentle haze Impressionists painted when they went to Normandy. The cabin itself was a box rough hewn from a dark hardwood with big windows facing the cold, Prussian-blue Atlantic which was minding its business and rolling by just a few hundred yards away. She liked the ocean did this girl, Killian thought. He killed the engine and got out of the car.

He rubbed his hands. Jesus, it was colder than it looked. It looked cold but it was colder than that. This goddamn wind was probably coming all the way from Greenland.

He walked across the cement car park to the cabin. He knew she was gone. No car. No sign of life. The cabin was locked, the lights off.

He lifted the lid off the garbage can.

Cans, a milk carton, cereal boxes. Nappies. Nappies? How old was that youngest kid? Five? What age did you stop wearing nappies? Killian knew that he should know the answer to that question but he didn’t. He had a vague painful stab of guilt that he crushed by slamming the lid back on the garbage can.

He did a circuit of the cabin and peered in through the glass.

That stuff he thought was sea spray was really rain. He turned up the collar on his coat.

He banged on the wooden door.

“Hello?” he tried. The haar fog that was smothering the littoral part of the beach took his voice and flattened so that it sounded unfamiliar and alien. It weirded him out. He had the feeling he was being watched. He looked back up the road for the tail but there wasn’t a ghost of a car up there.

He examined the lock on the cabin door.

A rusted iron affair that he could have open in a minute.

“Hello?” he tried again.

He took out his pick kit and smiled as the tines moved and the lock turned. He pushed open the door and attempted a third “hello”.

The pen flashlight revealed a twenty-four-hour/two-day dust layer. Not much more. He found kids’ clothes in a bottom drawer and a meticulous read-through of the yellow pages revealed nothing.

He went back to the garbage can and dumped it.

Zilch.

The place was a bust. He closed the door, locked it, went back to his car.

He sat in the Ford and got hungry waiting for the tail to come round the bend but the tail didn’t come. No one came.

It was raining hard now. He flipped on the heat, tuned the radio but all he could get was Radio Iceland. In Icelandic.

He buttoned his coat and checked the passenger’s seat for a hat he knew wasn’t there.

“Stuff this,” he said. He got out of the car and ran across the beach to the only other house here, which was a little further down the beach. He banged on the rickety door. There was no answer and he was examining the lock and thinking
one good kick
when a man peeked his head round a wood pile.

“Who are you?” the man asked. He was wearing an anorak and a Man City hat. His nose was red and his eyes yellow, watery. He had obviously seen the car in the car park and maybe he’d even seen Killian break into the cabin. He was a toting an ancient-looking air rifle and although it was early yet he had been drinking.

“Put that fucking thing down,” Killian said.

“Asked you a question,” the man persisted.

“Put that fucking thing down now!”

The man broke open the air rifle and showed Killian that it was empty.

“I’m looking for Rachel Coulter.”

The man shook his head. “Never heard of her.”

“Thirty, brown hair, two kids, she was probably calling herself something else,” Killian said.

The man nodded and walked over.

“Oh aye. Said she was called Julie.”

“Two kids, brown hair, thirty-ish?”

“That’s her.”

“When she cut out?”

“Wednesday.”

Two days ago. Could be anywhere by now.

“Say where she was going?”

“Are you a peeler?”

“No.”

“Who are you?” the man asked with a cunning leer on his face. Killian handed him his card. The man leaned in. His breath was bad and yes there was booze on it. Those yellow eyes could be the early signs of renal failure.

“Did she say where she was going?” Killian repeated.

“What’s it worth to you?” the man asked.

“Can we go inside?” Killian asked.

The house was shite. Boards had sprung from the floor. The roof leaked. There were pictures ruined by moisture in antique frames. The TV was covered with a plastic sheet.

Killian sat in an armchair that smelled. An old blind poodle-cross came over and started sniffing around him.

“Sorry about the place. I might move over to the rental – this place is, this place… isn’t so great,” the man said, as if becoming aware of it for the first time in a long time.

“So – Rachel Coulter.”

“We were talking money.”

They did the dance and the man took Killian’s fifty without much of a fight.

“She told Reese she was driving to Fermanagh. To Enniskillen. That’s not a lie, that’s what she told him.”

He was a sleekit wee drunk and Killian could tell that was only a part of it. “What else have you got? You’ve got something?” Killian asked.

“She told Reese she was going to Fermanagh. That’s worth fifty. But that isn’t all I got.”

Killian nodded. “Okay, what else is there?” he asked.

The man went to a back room and came back with a letter that he had steamed open. The envelope was addressed to her and had a return address. Killian could easily have taken it. One light push and this character would have fallen over.

“She was bad news. Reese says she was all over him. She was after me too. I wouldn’t fuck her though, probably all poxed up.”

“How much?” Killian demanded.

“Hundred euros in my hand,” the man said.

Killian gave him the money. “You got anything else?” Killian asked.

The man shook his head.

Killian went back into the rain and read the letter in the car.

It was short:

Honey I hope you and the girls are well. We’re doing just fine and you know I’ll support you whatever you decide. I’m sure you have got your reasons. I never trusted that man in the first place. Anyways keep in touch and remember that I love you. Hope you can use this fifty. Get the girls something fun, Dad.

But like a good citizen, Rachel’s father had filled in his return address on the back. It was from his RAOB lodge in Ballymena. That’s where she wrote to him, that’s how they avoided a peeler or private eye mail tap on their house.

And it had been two days now.

There was a pretty good chance that her father would have already received a postcard with her new address.

“Guess I’m going to the arsehole of the universe,” Killian said to himself.

He left this scene, went outside, and called Sean.

“News.”

“What?”

“Can’t say over the phone, but I got a letter that’s going to give us the next step.”

“You know where she is?” Sean asked.

“I know a man who does and he’s not too far from the old home base.”

“Good stuff. What about our boy? The tail?”

“He was a punk, I lost him.”

“Great work. You still got it, brother. You want Mary to book a hotel somewhere?”

“Nah, I’ll go home tonight and hit my lead in the morning.”

“Where are you now, Letterkenny? That’s a long oul drive to Carrick. You should take it easy mate.”

“Thanks, Sean. I’ll be fine.”

It took Killian four hours to get to Carrickfergus.

It took Markov three and a half.

He was impressed by the town. There was a castle and sail boats and the air was pleasantly moist and cool. Marina would love it. He booked into a place called the Coast Road Hotel and phoned Marina in case it all went wrong.

“Hello?” she said.

He smiled. Unlike him she instinctively answered the phone in English. She read English novels, she watched American TV. She had even forgotten some of her Russian. He’d actually met her in English class at the North Las Vegas Community College. She’d been two grades above, but now even he was reasonably proficient.

“It’s me,” he said.

“Oh, darling. Where are you?”

“I’m still in Ireland.”

“I have never been to Ireland, is it good?”

“It’s okay,” Markov said. “It’s better than Mexico.”

Marina’s voice sank to an embarrassed whisper and she said in Russian: “I miss you.”

Markov grinned and switched to Russian too. “I miss you more than anything. I will be home soon.”

“You got a cheque.”

“Oh yeah? Who from?”

“The IRS.”

Markov laughed. “That’s a first. How much?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Great.”

“When will you be back?” Marina asked.

“I don’t know. I’m on a case. It’s important. It could be a lot of money.”

Marina said nothing. She was worried about him. “Look, I wasn’t expecting that fifteen hundred, why don’t you go to the mall and get yourself something. Don’t get crazy on me, but, you know, get something special.”

“I could get something for the nursery,” Marina said brightly.

“No, no, no, get something for you, you deserve it,” Markov said.

Marina gushed and Markov told her he loved her and she said that she loved him. He hung up feeling good and he went for a walk to a local pub called the Jordanstown Arms and had good food and whisky.

Back to his room.

He surveyed his equipment. He’d been sceptical at the Crime Con in Vegas but the man had been right on. Plastic strip cuffs disguised as luggage locks, pepper spray disguised as deodorant, a glass cutting tool disguised as a pen. A pen flashlight disguised as nothing. All that gear he’d taken through airline security twenty or thirty times and not once had anyone asked him about it. It was a beautiful thing.

Of course the baseball bat he’d had to buy in Belfast and that had been
a chore because they didn’t play baseball in Ireland. The Colt .45 ACP had been bought from a gun shark in the easiest fashion imaginable.

He watched TV until it was one in the morning and then loaded the gear in his pockets and tucked the nub of the aluminium baseball bat under his armpit, beneath his raincoat. He buttoned it up and exited.

Carrickfergus at one in the morning was ghostville. No people. Drizzle. Lights illuminating a power station along the coast to the left and the old castle to the right.

He took the red rubber ball from the pocket of his leather jacket and bounced it off the sidewalk ten times. He put it back in the pocket and walked to Killian’s house.

Lights off, no sound. Markov’s mouth was dry. He dabbed sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. There was a chance that Killian hadn’t taken the Ambien tonight or that he was in there with a prostitute or something. Anything really. A one-man tail ran such risks. You needed a team to be really safe. But of course that meant splitting the greenbacks.

He unbuttoned his jacket, walked down the path and listened outside the door.

Nothing.

He stepped into the garden and cut a circle of glass from above the window handle. He turned the handle, pushed opened the window and climbed into the living room. He turned on the flashlight and went upstairs.

First bedroom nothing.

Second bedroom, a person in the bed snoring.

He had to go fast now. Markov closed the door behind him and carefully took off his jacket. Some people you could cuff while they were asleep, especially if they were in a drug sleep, but Killian was a dangerous customer. It was better to go in heavy.

He took the lid off the pepper spray and gave him a five-second burst in the face from a foot away.

“Aaaghhh, what the fuck!” Killian gasped and as he tried to suck air, Markov smashed the baseball bat into his ribs and ankles. He pulled
Killian off the bed by the hair, give him another burst of the pepper spray and kicked him hard in the balls. Killian doubled over in pain and Markov smacked the baseball bat into him again and again.

When Killian came to everything hurt and he had been tied with plastic handcuff strips and dumped naked in the bath.

Markov had gagged him with two of his own ties and was pouring water on him from the shower.

“Wake up,” Markov said with a blunt and scary lack of emotion.

The gag made Killian panic.

You didn’t gag people that you needed information from. You gagged people you were going to torture or kill.

Killian opened his eyes but his vision was blurred, his head spinning.

“Can you hear me?” Markov said.

Killian fought the panic, grunted.

“I want you to know who I am. Who it is that does this to you.”

If he could have talked Killian might have gone for a mistaken ID rap but all he could do was grunt again.

“They call me Starshyna, old man. It means sergeant. I am what you can never be. I kill you, but you are very old man. I take pity on you. I let you live. You hear what I am saying to you? This is business matter, do you understand? I now have letter from Rachel Coulter’s father. I reach him first, I reach her first. I not kill you. I let you live. This is how civilised men behave. We beat you at your game. You are old man! You retire now. You are Jay Leno. I am Conan O’Brien. I respect age. I don’t break legs, I don’t cut off dick. I think you understand. I kill you if I want to. Kill you like pig. Yes. You are lucky man. Very lucky man.”