In the Morning I'll Be Gone (36 page)

He was bristling now, ready for a fight, but I wasn’t going to take the bait.

“The money? Is that what they tell you? I’m living in a council house in Carrickfergus and my car certainly isn’t a Toyota Celica Supra!”

Of course, I didn’t tell him that I owned the house and my car was a BMW—that would have diluted the message.

“So why did you join the black bastards, Sean?”

“I wanted to put a stop to this madness. To hunt down nutters from both sides and put them away where they can’t do any more harm.”

He sipped more of his tea and grew thoughtful.

“I remember a rather different Sean Duffy who came to see me in Derry in 1972 begging me to take him into the Provisionals. A Sean Duffy that I turned away with tears in his eyes because he was doing his doctorate at Queen’s University. I told the soppy wee shit that the movement needs thinkers! Do you recall that Sean Duffy?”

“I do. It was right after Bloody Sunday. I’m sure you had every man in Derry knocking down your door that weekend.”

“That I did, Sean. That I did. But I remembered you. With your long hair and your beard and your sheepskin jacket and your university scarf. And I remember that look on your face when I said no . . . Is that what this is all about? Is that why you joined the fucking peelers? To get back at me?”

It was a fair point. Dermot, who’d been Head Boy, Dermot, who’d captained the hurling team, Dermot, who’d always been on top of the latest music, the latest trends, Dermot, who always got the girls, always impressed the boys . . .

“You think too much of yourself, mate. Until I was recruited to get on your trail your name never crossed my consciousness. When I made detective you were already in jail, weren’t you? And who are you, anyway? You’re nobody in the big scheme of things. What have you done since you escaped from the Maze? Written a few poems in the Benghazi Hilton? Cooked up a few wee plots and schemes? But what have you actually done?”

Martin could contain himself no longer. “You’ll see what he’s done very fucking soon, mate! You’ll see! Lee Harvey fucking Oswald will be a fucking footnote.”

So it
was
Thatcher.

I was right.

And if not a truck bomb? What?

A Carlos the Jackal-style machine-gun attack? No. Too many cops and soldiers.

What, then?

A lone gunman in the conference hall?

How could they possibly get a rifle through the metal detectors?

I raced through schemes and came up empty.

“What’s going on in that noggin of yours, Sean?” Dermot asked.

I grinned and shook my head. “I can’t figure it out, Dermot. I’m baffled. How are you going to get near enough to get her?”

Dermot lit himself a cigarette and offered me one. I nodded and he lit it and handed it over.

“It’s your turn, Sean,” he said. “What have you got on me?”

“Me personally?”

“You, the MI5, the RUC.”

I drew in the tobacco smoke. There was no angle to be had in giving Dermot any bullshit. He’d see right through that in an instant.

“They’ve got a whole team on you, Dermot,” I said, flattering him. “They seem to think that you’re the leader of all the cells that trained in Libya. That you’re some kind of kingpin. I told them that all the cells would be operating independently once they hit the UK but I don’t know if they really listened to that.”

“What intel have they got on me?”

“Well, we know Gaddafi had you arrested and kept you in a cell for three months. MI5 or maybe MI6 got a hold of the journal you were writing there. We read that looking for clues but you were too clever to leave any clues there . . .”

Dermot smiled. He liked having his ego stroked just as much as the next man.

“What else have you got?”

“That’s it. Of course, they’ve been wire-tapping the phones. Your ma, your sisters, your mates. Annie’s ma and da. Your aunts and uncles. All your bloody friends and neighbors. But you never called any of them, did you?”

“Of course not!”

“There was a rumor that you were in Germany. Most of them still believe that one.”

“Germany? What the hell would I be doing in Germany?”

“They seem to think you’re going to attack a British base there.”

He shrugged. “Aye. That’s not a bad idea. But that’s more the Red Army Faction’s turf, you know?”

“Well, that’s all we have. A waste of thousands of man-hours.”

Martin laughed. “We’ve got you running in circles!”

“We had nothing at all until we got the anonymous call about this safe house. And even that was beginning to look like a hoax until, well . . .”

“You have no idea who called this place in?” Dermot asked.

“Search me. It was the confidential telephone and you know they don’t tape those calls. Policy.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Before he could ask me whether I was, maybe,
lying
about the anonymous nature of the information I quickly asked: “Have you got any enemies within the movement? Someone jealous of your position?”

Dermot rubbed his chin. “Maybe. We’ll have to have a wee think about that, won’t we? Was it a man or a woman who left the tip?”

“A man.”

“Hmmm, I wonder.”

Martin examined his watch again. “We should fucking top this guy and head on, don’t you think, Dermot? If this place is blown it’s going to be crawling with bloody peelers in a couple of hours, isn’t it?”

Dermot nodded. “Yeah, Marty, me old mucker, I suppose you’re right. It wouldn’t do for me to ignore my own rules, would it?”

“No, it bloody wouldn’t.”

Dermot passed Martin his teacup. “Wash these out thoroughly and put them back on the shelf.”

“What for?” Martin said.

“If you would broaden your reading from
Penthouse
to
New Scientist
magazine, Marty, me old china plate, you’d know that there’s this thing called DNA evidence. If you so much as spit in the wrong place these days the police can track you down and nail you.”

“It’s not quite as accurate as all that,” I suggested.

“Better safe than sorry, eh, Sean?”

I nodded weakly.

Martin took my teacup and went into the kitchen.

Dermot eyed me in a bored, abstracted way. Rather the way an old cat does a much-toyed mouse.

“So you don’t really know anything, do you, Sean?” he surmised.

“I know you’re going to try and attack Thatcher.”

“But you don’t know when and you don’t know how and that’s the key thing, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“I could leave you here and you’d have no idea where we were going to go next, would you?”

“You already told him London!” Marty shouted from the kitchen.

“Aye, but where in London?” I said. “And maybe it’s a double bluff.”

I began to have a glimmer of hope. Was it possible that he was going to let me live? Tie me and gag me until it was too late for me to do anything about it? It might be just his thing. Cloak an act of sadism in an act of mercy—by allowing me to live while others died, my failure would be manifest. I’d have to go the rest of my long days knowing that he’d bested me. The great Dermot McCann outfoxes the not-so-great Sean Duffy once again.

“I really have no clue where you’re going next, Dermot,” I said.

He looked at his watch. “Well, this has been very interesting. And fun. And there’s so much more I’d like to ask you, but as my rambunctious young colleague keeps reminding me, we must be away. Tick, tock, tick, tock.”

Realization flooded over me. “I think I get it,” I said.

He smiled. “What do you get?”

“A time bomb. That’s it, isn’t it? Planted weeks ago. No, months ago. In the hotel? Right?”

Dermot laughed again. “You’re too clever for your own good, Sean. Martin! Get in here!” Martin came back into the living room and stood next to me, ready to do the necessary when his boss gave the order.

“I told you he was a tricky customer, didn’t I?”

“That you did, boss.”

“When is the bomb going off, Dermot? Is it tonight?”

No reaction.

“It
is
tonight, isn’t it? When? How long have they got?”

Dermot raised the Glock and pointed it at me.

“How long?”

“They’ve got a bit longer than you, mate, that’s for sure.”

I was suddenly terrified. I didn’t want to die. Not here, not like this.

“No. Dermot, don’t! Please, I’m sorry,” I said, pathetically.
I’m sorry for joining the wrong side. I’m sorry for fucking your ex-wife. I’m sorry about everything
. . .

“Sorry?”

“Maybe you made the right choice and maybe I made the wrong one. We were both doing what we
thought
was right, weren’t we? Are you going to kill me because of that?”

Dermot sighed and looked at Martin. “Did you know that in India there’s a priest who spends his entire life counting the integers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. You know why he does that?”

“No idea, Dermot,” Martin said.

“Do you know why, Sean?”

“No.”

“He’s doing it to make sure they’re all there. Do you understand, Sean?”

Yeah, I understand. You’re fucking nuts, pal.

“Not really, Dermot,” I said.

“You have to be meticulous. You have to count the integers. There are half a dozen reasons why I have to kill you, Sean. Being a traitor is certainly high on the list, but denying British Intelligence even a single clue as to who planted the device in Brighton has got to be a more pressing consideration.
Is binn béal ina thost
. You’re a canny lad, Sean boy, surely you can see that I can’t possibly let you live?”

“We were friends, Dermot.”

“And if our positions were reversed would you let me go or would you do your duty and—”

I sprang to my feet, hooked my right leg around Martin’s calf, and toppled him backward with my right elbow. As he went down I fell on him, and as his face smashed into the hardwood floor, I made sure my elbow crashed down on his temple. A bullet whistled past me and another round thudded into the floor inches from me. I flipped the unconscious Martin over and grabbed his 9mm. Another bullet whizzing past centimeters away.

I scrambled into the kitchen, adjusted the semi-automatic in my handcuffed wrists, shot out the living-room light, and sent another round into the bulb directly above me in the kitchen as I dived under a table and Dermot shot twice into the space where I had been.

I put the gun down to flip the kitchen table over.

It landed on the linoleum floor with an almighty crash.

“Everything OK in there, Sean?” Dermot yelled from the living room.

I crouched behind the table and picked up the gun again.

“It’s an impasse, Sean. You’re in there and I’m in here. How are we going to resolve this little stalemate?”

Always the talker, always the big mouth
. I grabbed a teacup from the sink and threw it toward the sound of his voice. It crashed somewhere near him and, furious, he shot into the kitchen twice.

I shot back three times at the muzzle flash of his 9mm.

Silence.

Five seconds.

Ten.

“Dermot?”

“Ugh.”

“Dermot, are you hit?”

“Ugh.”

I walked into the living room, turned on a side lamp, and saw him sprawled face down on the living-room floor. He was still holding the 9mm.

I stood on his wrist and kicked the gun away from him.

I rolled him over. It was a stomach wound, a bad one, gut shot.

I knelt beside him and took his hand. “When is the bomb going to go off, Dermot?”

“Is that you, Sean?” he said.

“Aye, it’s me, Dermot.”

“How did it come to this?” he groaned.

“I don’t know, Dermot.”

“Am I hurt bad?”

“I don’t think so. I can get you help. But the bomb, Dermot. Innocent lives . . .”

He thought for a moment. “Sean boy, listen to me.”

“I’m listening . . .”

“You want to be the hero?”

“Tell me.”

“You’ve got until four in the morning.”

“It’s going off at four?”

“The sixth floor, Sean, get yourself to the sixth floor by four—”

A sudden gunshot smacked Dermot in the cheek.

Fuck!

I hit the deck.

Martin had a second piece or had grabbed the gun I’d scooted away from Dermot.

I shielded myself behind Dermot’s body and tried to figure out where the bastard was.

A shadow flitted past the window heading for the front door.

I shot at it.

The shadow shot back twice.

I emptied my clip.

The shadow fell.

Martin and Dermot were both still. Blood was weaving serpentine trails on to the cork floor from the place where Dermot’s face had been ripped open by a bullet.

And me?

I was unhurt. I wasn’t hit at all. Not even a scratch. Shook up. But untouched.

I knelt next to Dermot McCann.

Morrigan of the crows, daughter of Emmas, goddess of war, receive thy faithful son.

I looked in the pocket of his trousers, found a key chain with the car key and the handcuff key. I uncuffed myself, went to the sink, turned on the tap and poured water into a mug.