Falling Glass (26 page)

“You see?” Rachel said. “You see?”

Her voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a ravine.

Killian nodded and closed the laptop.

“Did you watch the whole thing?” he asked.

“No. When I saw McCann and Richard that was enough. I had to get out of that house, I had to get the girls away from him, you see that, don’t you?”

“Aye.”

“I mean, what else could I do?” Rachel said.

Killian stood and took big gulps of air. “I don’t know. Go to the newspapers? Go to the
Sunday World
? The British tabs?”

“Are you kidding me? I’d be on an IRA death list immediately. You see who that was?”

“I saw.”

“They’d kill me. This is big. They’ve been protecting him this whole time,” Rachel said.

Killian shook his head. “They’ve been protecting each other, haven’t they? McCann and Coulter. Catholic and Protestant. Player and politician.”

“It’s fucking sick. It’s sick. I wasn’t crazy, was I? That is Dermaid McCann, isn’t it?”

Killian nodded. “Oh aye. Without question.”

“And then there’s Richard himself.”

“Did you watch the whole thing?”

“No. Why?”

“At the very end, I think that’s Tom Eichel on there too.”

She gasped.

Tom.

“If Tom went down he’d make sure I’d never see the kids again. He’d use the drugs against me. He’d destroy me.”

“How did you get mixed up in drugs?”

She shook her head. “I’m just a wee girl from Ballymena. I didn’t know that world. Richard’s world. That lifestyle.”

“Smack wasn’t it?” Killian said trying to recall the notes.

“It was just marijuana at first, then cocaine, then the bad stuff. That’s the way of it. We had so many fucking hangers on. It was like Michael Jackson when Richard became a media star. Of course Richard found out and hit the roof. I was pregnant. He went fucking mental at first but then he got the job done. He got me into Crossroads in Antigua. Eric Clapton’s place. It worked. I went off everything for a while. But then you relapse. I made terrible decisions. Look at poor Sue. Learning difficulties, behaviour problems, you name it, it’s my fault.”

Killian looked at Sue and Claire playing together by the water. Both of them were happy and Sue, at least to him, seemed fine.

“I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that girl except perhaps overly high expectations,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? Social services would never give me custody if they found out what I had done. I’d lose the kids and the IRA would put me on their fucking death list. What else could I do but run? Get them away from him and run.”

Killian shook his head. “No, a better play would have been to leave the laptop where it was. Pretend you’d never found it. Or, if you’d wanted the evidence, copy the files onto a disk. He didn’t need to know that you knew.”

“But then I’d have to go on sharing custody with him! I’d have to see him! I’d have to pretend!” Rachel said indignantly.

Killian looked at the hut and the beach and the mist rolling down the lough shore.

“But you wouldn’t have to live like this, you’d be safe and your kids would be safe…”
and your parents would still be alive
, he almost added.

“Besides, I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m clean now. I’ve been clean since those men came for me. This time it’s for real.”

Killian nodded. He hoped that was the case. A corrupt father, a junkie mother, dead grandparents, the kids didn’t have much hope, did they?

“What would you have done?” Rachel asked.

“You should never have taken the computer,” Killian said dourly. “You
grew up in Northern Ireland, you know the rules: you don’t talk, you leave secrets well alone.”

“I panicked. I had to get out of there. To think, that man did those things – I just got the kids and I ran.”

Killian shook his head, smiled at her compassionately. “You didn’t panic. You took it on purpose. You were thinking blackmail. You were thinking you could use it as a chip. It was stupid. You should never have done it. It was proof that you knew. Richard tried to play it close for the first few weeks but now he’s told Tom.”

“I told Tom. I called him. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Regardless, now Tom knows and Tom’s ruthless. He sees right through all the bullshit. He has sent a man to silence you.”

Rachel look frightened. “You?”

Killian shook his head. “Not me. My job was to find you. What time do you have?”

“Nine-fifteen.”

“We’ve got about an hour. We better get moving.”

“Where?”

Killian walked to the water’s edge and examined the still, green water. What are you talking about, mate? he asked the reflection.
Go somewhere?
There’s no going anywhere. Your job is to find the kids and make a phone call. Sit back, do not pass Go, collect half a million quid.

The reflection looked uneasy. But Ivan was going to kill her and where was there to go?

Not a hotel. Not a motel. Credit cards, traces. Certainly not Carrick. Ivan had been there once already.

It didn’t seem doable. He’d be jumping off this island, but still be trapped on the big island of Ireland.

The whole situation was bollocks.

Killian looked at the phone clock again: 9.16. Ivan was getting closer by the minute.

In the distance he could hear a tapping sound.

His head was throbbing.

What was that noise?

A woodpecker? No. There never was such a thing in Ireland. Someone chopping a tree. Nah. The bilge of the ferry? Not that either.

He looked across the lough at the little car park beyond. Three cars over there now. The Merc and two others. He squinted. And the ferry wasn’t there. And it wasn’t on the water either.

It had brought someone over.

And then he knew.

Ivan had stroked him.

He’d turned the kid.

Paid him more money or put the fear in him.

He was here, right now, on this island, “Bouncing his rubber ball up and down on the dock at the terminal stop,” Killian said, recognising the sound.

He was here and he was going to kill everyone. He was going to kill everyone and make it look like he – Killian – had done it before turning the weapon on himself.

“No Sean, I’ll be fine, I don’t need a gun for a wandering-daughter job,” Killian said ironically to himself.

He ran to the girls and pulled them to their feet.

“Come on lasses, we’re leaving,” he whispered.

“Where are we going?” Sue said loudly

“Ssshh!” he said.

Rachel looked at him “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Killian put his finger to his lips.

“There’s someone coming,” he hissed. “Very dangerous, I don’t have a gun.”

“I do,” Rachel said. She ran into the cabin and returned with the laptop and a Heckler and Koch 9-millimetre wrapped in a freezer bag.

Killian took the gun, checked the mechanism and bent down to talk to Sue.

“Sweetie, you’re going to have to be very quiet. What’s the highest you can count to?”

“Fifty,” Sue said.

“That’s brilliant. I want you to count to fifty in your head, okay, sweetie?”

Sue nodded enthusiastically.

Killian turned to Rachel and Claire. “He’s coming to kill us. We have to get out of here now.”

“Do as he says,” Rachel added and they ran to the woods keeping low to the ground. They hadn’t got twenty feet when they saw Markov walking down the trail.

He was wearing a balaclava, holding his pistol in front of him and walking cautiously towards the cabin. If he had looked to his right just then he would have seen them, despite the trees and the mist.

“Everybody down,” Killian hissed and they ducked behind an elm tree.

They lay on the ground until Markov had passed their spot.

Killian peeked above a low branch and saw Markov’s back entering the campsite.

He was a pro. It would take him only seconds to scope it.

“Now we run,” he said and picked up Sue.

She was heavier than he’d been expecting but Killian was a big man. He could carry two of her without much difficulty.

They ran through the woods and got to the butterfly meadow before they heard Markov yell behind them.

Killian turned, Markov was running, but they had a hundred yards on him.

“Keep going!” Killian yelled.

Branches were cracking under their feet.

“He’s shooting!” Sue said.

“It’s just the tree branches!” Killian assured her.

“He has a gun. We’re sitting ducks!” Rachel said.

“He’ll never hit us at this range and he knows it,” Killian said and hoped that that was the case.

They ran through the meadow and reached the jetty.

“Everybody get on board,” Killian said.

He loosed the ropes and pressed the start button. The engine sputtered into life. He looked at Rachel. “Head for the shore. Don’t wait for me.”

“What are you going to do?” Rachel asked.

“I’ll give our Russian friend something to think about.”

He boomed off the little boat with his foot and it started moving into the water.

Killian crouched behind an oak tree and waited for Ivan.

One gut shot would take that motherfucker out.

He wait and lined the sight along the barrel.

But Markov was a paratrooper who had fought the Chechen mujahideen.

That was a school where you learned or died.

Frontal assaults got people killed.

He didn’t know if Killian was armed or not, but he had to assume that he was. And Markov had risked too much and had too much to live for.

Killian looked into the gathering mist and saw no one.

“Where is he?” Killian muttered.

His nerves were jangled.

He was tense.

Fog was still drifting across the meadow but visibility wasn’t that bad.

He counted out seconds and made it to 30 Mississippi.

“Where are you, dickhead?” Killian shouted.

Nothing.

“Come on, I’m waiting for you,” Killian said.

Markov wasn’t interested in Killian.

The personal was the realm of the amateur.

The computer, the wife, were on the boat. Killian was nothing to him. Less than nothing.

He ran to the left, off the meadow, into the bog grass and then the reeds that led to the lough. He took off his leather jacket, zipped it and ripped the laces out of his sneakers. He tied off the jacket arms and folded it in on itself. He shoved the gun down the back of his jeans. It would get
wet, but it was a Colt .45 ACP, a mother of a gun, blowing people’s heads off since 1911. It would work.

He waded into the reeds and pushing the jacket in front of him he launched himself into the lough using the jacket as a float and kicking with his feet.

The water was warm, calm, the distance to shore wasn’t a kilometre.

They had a start on him, but the lady couldn’t steer for shit. The ferry was zigzagging across the gap and every time she corrected her mistake it cost her more time and distance.

Markov was eating up the metres in a straight line.

He felt a little sad. It was just going to cost him time, it was going to cost her her life.

“Where are you, eejit?” Killian said and couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d been made a monkey of yet again.

He walked back into the meadow.

Butterflies, mist, no fucking Ivan.

Aye, he’d been stroked.

Twice in one day.

He turned and stared at the lough water and there he was, sure enough, two hundred yards from the shore.

“Christ!” Killian said.

Ivan was like swimming like a bloody torpedo.

Like someone who’d been in the friggin’ Olympics – or who’d had special forces training.

He was going to catch her. He was going to climb up on the ferry and shoot her and he had taken her only defence, her pistol.

“Rachel!” Killian screamed, his voice carrying all the way down Lough Erne.

She turned to look at him.

“The Russian, he’s in the water behind you!”

He pointed to where the assassin was swimming.

He was now more than a third of the way across the lough.

And she was still halfway to the shore.

Killian not only couldn’t swim but didn’t know the first thing about it.

He was damned if that was going to stop him. He ripped a tyre from the side of jetty, threw it into the water, jumped on top of it and started kicking with his feet. As long as the tyre was underneath him he was pretty sure he couldn’t drown.

The tyre was steady, the water still, but even so he was terrified.

On the ferry Rachel saw Killian launch himself into the lough.

It was too late.

The Russian was going to catch them.

After all this. “No,” she sobbed.

Claire started to cry.

“Is he going to kill us?” Sue asked calmly.

“Help us! Somebody help us!” Rachel screamed at the car park, but there was no traffic on the water or on the road.

“Somebody help us! Help us! Please!” she screamed till her lungs were burning.

She urged the boat faster but it was at the limit of its capacity.

“Somebody help us! Please!”

“Mummy, what’s happening?” Sue was asking. “Mummy!”

The ferry was barely over halfway to the mainland and the Russian was fifty metres away. He’d be here in seconds.

She could see the assassin’s face.

He was in his thirties with blue eyes.

There was a coldness in those eyes.

He’d be clinical, emotionless, like a surgeon.

She turned to Claire. “Take the wheel and keep steering for the shore. Don’t stop.”

She pulled off her sweater and grabbed one of the orange life rings from its hook and shoved it inside the sweater. She tied the arms underneath the life ring so that it was taut.

She went to the back of the little ferry and waved at the Russian.

“Hey you! You!” she yelled.

Markov looked up at her.

“You don’t want us. You want the money? Right?”

She picked the laptop from off the deck.

“This is what you want, isn’t it? It’s all here. This is what he’s paying you to get. Right? Look what I’m doing.”