Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (104 page)

“It has to be,” she said simply, watching as a lone tear slid down his cheek, lending a pure light to the skin beneath.

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance,”
she said, hardly realizing she spoke as the words returned to her from childhood. “Jo knew well enough to dance while she could, now’s your time for weeping Robin.”

He looked up, the twisted smile in place. “Even if I can only manage the one tear at a time?”

One tear at a time, it was all, she knew, that was given to any of them. For the man in front of her, she only hoped it was enough. If not, then God help them all.

PATRICK RIORDAN HAD BEEN in the habit of exercising caution most of his life. It came with the territory of being born into a notoriously Republican family in Belfast. Their father hadn’t wanted them to grow up paranoid, but had stressed the need for a certain amount of wariness in their daily lives. There were streets you simply didn’t travel down, tribal zones you’d have to be a madman to venture into. Not to mention that innocents were caught in the crossfire all the time.

He tried to vary his route every once in awhile, to throw both the Brits and any other disgruntled elements off his trail. This morning though he’d taken the most direct route, stopped for tea and the papers and then continued briskly on his way. He’d gone down Dunmurry way the day before to see a young couple living in a caravan. The thing was ancient and rundown and he’d winced as the young man had opened the door, disbelieving of the conditions some people lived in in the so-called civilized world.

He’d a lead on a two-up two-down in Andersonstown that he was going to have a look at this morning. He had a busy day facing him, more than a hundred families on wait lists for housing, at least eight phone calls he needed to return, as well as the mountain of paperwork and bureaucratic red tape he had to burrow through on a regular basis.

When he saw the man slouched against the wall by the door of his ramschackle office, he sighed inwardly. Another person whose problems he wouldn’t be able to solve, but he’d at least have to offer tea and comfort, which meant a late start to the one hundred and one other things on his plate today.

The man smiled and nodded at his approach. Pat shifted his bag from his right hand to his left, and returned the nod.

“Can I help ye with something?” he asked, fixing a look of polite interest on his face. The man was neatly dressed with good shoes, and didn’t wear a look of hopeless desperation like most of Pat’s usual clientele.

“I’ve a message for ye.”

The man was extremely soft-spoken and Pat had to lean in to hear him properly.

“Yes, what is it?” Pat fumbled in his pocket for the keys, the man’s words sending a chill down his spine. In Belfast those words could be harmless, or they could be the prologue to a neatly placed bullet. He wasn’t aware of anyone in particular wanting him dead, but having grown up on these streets he didn’t take it for granted that someone
didn’t
want him dead either.

“George Barclay said to tell ye—”

Whatever the man had been about to say was cut off by the screech of car tires at the head of the street and the sound of an engine gunning directly their way. Pat didn’t dare look round, though the man’s eyes flicked up at its approach, a look of surprise flitting across his face.

“Pat, get in the car, he’s going to kill you!”

Pat started back, the car was coming up rapidly. He half turned toward the voice, knowing it was David, scared to take his eyes off the man in front of him. The car was in his peripheral vision now and driving erratically. He chanced a look to the side, saw that David’s right arm was coming up and that he had a gun in his hand.

“Get in!” David yelled, car still moving. Pat hesitated, momentarily paralyzed, until he saw the man reach into his pocket.

David was half out of the car now, a pistol leveled across the roof at the man. When he spoke his voice was even and calm. “Patrick, get in the car. Now.”

Pat didn’t waste another second on thought, he ran and yanked the car door open then leaped into the passenger seat, barking his shin hard on the frame as well as giving his head a good knock. A metallic whine shot past his ear and exploded out the opposite side of the car as David swung back into the car, pistol leveled at a man running toward them. Pat was vaguely aware of the man dropping to the street, a splotch of red on his forehead before his vision was blurred by the speed of the car.

The car careened around the corner, tilting for a split second onto two wheels. Pat hung onto the dash for dear life as David floored the gas pedal, sending the little car hurtling down the rutted street. He slowed slightly as they approached an intersection.

“It’s too quiet,” he said, just as a car emerged on their right side, pulling into the street and effectively blocking them off. David stomped on the brake, the car squealing in protest and throwing them both forward.

“Back up, and do it fast,” Pat said, adrenaline shooting directly to his chest and making his heart pound madly. “They know yer Army! For fuck’s sake,” he yelled, “back up!”

David shifted the car down hard, glancing behind as he rammed his foot on the gas. “Christ there’s someone blocking up there too!”

Pat twisted around and saw that two men had stepped out of a car that was t-boning off the top of the street. Each held an Armalite in the crook of his elbow. “It’s a setup—Jesus—” He pounded the dash trying to think through the panic flooding his brain.

“Here.” David tossed a pistol on Pat’s lap, then cranked the wheel of the car hard to the left, causing the car to spin madly. It banged hard off the corner of a warehouse, but its end swung into the narrow alley backing an ancient building.

“What the hell do ye want me to do with this?!”

“Use it,” David said tersely. “We’re in a blind, there’s a wall at the end of the lane.”

“We’re stuck in here,” Pat said in disbelief, as the car ricocheted back and forth down the dark, overhung laneway which ended in a high, very solid brick wall.

“It forces them to come in after us,” David replied, seeming remarkably cool, considering four killers were even now converging on them.

The car screeched to a halt, lurching them both toward the dash. David swung his door open and rolled out onto the stinking pavement. “Get out and keep your fucking head down!”

Pat did as he was told, coming up with the pistol just as he heard the first shots crack out at the head of the alley.

He shot blindly, with no idea of whether he was aiming at the men or merely giving the walls a good thumping. He heard a howl of pain from the head of the alley, another sharp report from David’s pistol and an answering volley, which sounded as if the gunman were advancing toward them. He could no longer tell which bullets were incoming and which were leaving David’s gun. The tang of cordite was thick on the air, air which pulsated with the high-velocity thump of ammunition. A brick exploded by his head and a sharp pain lanced through his neck. For a moment he thought he was hit, but then realized a small sharp chip of brick had cut across his collarbone.

Suddenly it was over, the silence more unsettling than the gunshots had been. The nerves in his shoulders were jumping, his heart still pounding fit to come out of his chest. He turned his head to the right, afraid of what he might find.

David was still cautiously crouched behind the car door. He seemed miraculously free of blood or inconvenient holes in his anatomy.

“Are you alright?”

Pat nodded, brick dust coating his throat and rendering it immobile.

“Good. I’m going to go move the bodies and then we’d best get the hell out of here. When I wave, pull the car up and be ready to drive out of here.”

David walked to the head of the alley with his pistol still drawn and cocked, keeping his body tight to the filthy brick walls. Pat held his breath, waiting for another burst of gunfire to erupt into the disturbing stillness. A minute later David waved him up and bent over to pull the first body out of the street opening.

Pat swung down into the driver’s seat, closing the door and popping the clutch simultaneously. The car rolled forward, the sudden movement startling to his shattered nerves.

David yanked the driver door open when he hit the head of the alley. “Get over, I’ll drive, you don’t look in a fit state for it.”

Pat got over quickly, despite the car’s cramped interior.

David swung the car out into the street. Pat looked about, there didn’t seem to be a soul around and there was no sound of sirens in the distance either. It was, in fact, eerily quiet other than the hum of the car’s motor as they headed north along the street.

They didn’t speak for several minutes. Pat finally managed a terse, “What now?”

“I’ve got to get us good and clear of Belfast and then I’ll figure out what to do.”

They continued north, leaving the city behind them. Pat felt strangely blank; the beginnings of shock he supposed. Yet there was a slight horror at the back of it all that he didn’t feel more appalled by what had happened. Then again, if David hadn’t happened along when he did, it would be him lying in a heap in the street right now.

“How did you happen to come along just then?” he asked, seeing that it was too coincidental to be happenstance.

David did a swift survey of rear and side mirrors before answering. “I had information that you were pissing off some members of the Black Roses. We’d been watching one of them and when he went missing this morning I figured they might have come looking for you.”

“The Black Roses?” Pat swallowed, throat suddenly as tight as if it had been neatly noosed. “I thought they were just an unpleasant rumor.”

“Unfortunately not,” David said grimly. “There’s not many of them, but like sharks they don’t really need large numbers to do a great deal of damage.”

The Black Roses were a radical splinter group that had broken off in the wake of the Provisional split away from the Official IRA. Their name derived from the flowers they often sent to those they had marked for death. The Provos had disowned them and their methods, which bordered on the psychopathic. They were not a group a man wanted to have notice him.

“Why in the hell would they want to kill me?”

“They had a nice little graft situation going on with the construction company that was building your little utopia. When you got the construction company fired they lost their side income. Didn’t know what you were starting when you got them fired, did you?”

“No,” Pat said rather weakly. It was hard to imagine the domino effect such a minor action could have, but very small things could ripple out in this country, until a man was caught in a riptide of events that drowned him. Or was in a getaway car wondering how many deaths out of four he was responsible for.

David flicked him a sideways glance.

“If it’s any consolation, you didn’t hit anyone, though there’s a few bricks that will never be the same.”

“It’s been a lot of years since my Da’ taught me to shoot. I didn’t like it then, an’ I can’t say my feelings have changed much over the years. My brother was a crack shot though, never missed a target. My da’ used to say Casey could take the eye out of a mosquito at sixty paces.”

“Can’t say that surprises me,” David muttered. “On the few occasions I’ve seen him, he always looks as though he’d
like
to shoot
me
.”

“Yer British an’ yer army. It’s not a combination an Irish Catholic can trust.”

“Then why do you?”

“Ye’ve given me no reason not to.”

David laughed. “I’d think I’ve given you
every
reason not to.”

“Exactly. Which told me one of two things, either ye were dead awful at yer job or ye weren’t actually tryin’ to cultivate my trust. I’ve reason to think, particularly after today, that yer not inept at whatever it is ye actually do.”

They drove up the Antrim Coast, past the small fishing village of Carnlough and continued north along the coast. Fifteen minutes beyond the village David slowed the car.

He turned down a narrow rutted lane that dead-ended in a crumbling pasture fence. He stopped just shy of the fence, shifted the car down and turned off the ignition. The sudden quiet filled the small space between them. Pat could feel the density of it in his lungs. David left the car without a word, the driver door open behind him.

Pat opened his own door and stood, knees feeling distinctly rubbery. The field was dry and thick with overgrown spurge. He stayed by the car for a minute, watching David walk toward a bank crowned with a small stand of stunted birch trees, that lifted suddenly out of the flat pasture.

His entire body felt slippery, the residue of adrenaline pooling in his joints and muscles. He took a few deep breaths before following the trail David had left through the tall plants and new grass.

“Going to have to talk to them about equipping the cars with stun grenades,” David said, before flopping onto the ground and lying back in the long grass. “Do you have any cigarettes on you man?”

“Jaysus Christ,” Pat sputtered. “We’ve left a heap of dead bodies behind us, an’ believe me there’ll be some ugly retribution for this, an’ ye want to know if I’ve cigarettes? Christ!”

“Well do you?” David persisted.

“No, I don’t smoke, an’ nor do you. I’m not in the habit of carryin’ them about should I need a post massacre hit of nicotine.”

David merely raised his eyebrows, before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

“Are ye havin’ a nap now?” Pat asked in disbelief at the man’s calm exterior.

“No,” David said patiently. “I just need a few minutes to get myself back together here before I set fire to the car and we start the walk back.”

“Before ye set fire to the car?”

“Yes. Forensic evidence you know. It’s not likely their deaths will be questioned that closely as they were all Black Roses, violent death is merely an occupational hazard for them—still, it’s best to err on the side of caution.”

Pat sat down beside David, legs shaking fit to drop him where he stood. “Grass is wet,” he said inanely, feeling like he’d been hurtled without warning into an alternate universe.