Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (107 page)

“Careful what ye wish for,” he said, ramming his feet into his shoes so forcefully that the laces snapped, “ye just may get it.”

He opened the door and looked back. “I’m goin’ to the center to sleep, if ye—” he stopped taking in the look on her face, then continued in a nasty tone, “if ye need anything, perhaps ye can call on Jamie.”

THE MISSES GEORGINA AND EDWINA ROBINSON lived in a genteely rundown section of Protestant Belfast. Their house was a small, brick Georgian, with the highly desirable quality of being fully detached on a small patch of land that was well away from its neighbors.

The qualities of desirability and convenience were strictly in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder in this case was the Belfast IRA squadron, headed up by Joe Doherty, whose interests in said property were being represented by one Mr. Michael Gillivray, who was more commonly known to his own people as Robin Temple.

Mr. Gillivray was known to the Misses Robinson, as he had approached them some weeks ago with the notion of purchasing their property. While they had insisted in Miss Georgina’s budgie chirp, and Miss Edwina’s school mistress tones, that they couldn’t possibly sell—as their family had owned and lived upon said land for the last one hundred years—still, they being both spinsters and rather lonely, found themselves succumbing to the charms of Mr. Gillivray and looking forward with a most girlish anticipation to his weekly visits.

Casey supposed that it was his own fault that he now found himself sitting in the starchy parlor of said ladies, watching Robin seduce a woman who likely had moths in her drawers.

The brief had been simple enough, and Robin had brought enough of such things to him over the course of the last six months that Casey wasn’t surprised and had simply put the shrewd tactical side of his brain into gear and come up with the obvious solution. The problem the Belfast Brigade had presented him with was thus—if the local chapter of the IRA was to effectively protect the Catholic population and prepare itself for what appeared to be an inevitable conflagration with the Loyalist population, they needed the time and space to rebuild their ranks. A way was needed for senior IRA men to travel throughout Belfast and to meet away from the all-seeing eyes of military intelligence.

To Casey the answer was simple; since the IRA had always operated in areas that were staunchly Republican, and therefore easily found and targeted for surveillance, the key was to move the safe houses and bases into areas of the city which were predominantly Protestant or middle class, or the rare patches of the city where there were no politically defined boundaries. To that end Robin, in the guise of Michael Gillivray, real estate speculator, had already managed to either buy or rent three separate residences in such areas. The Misses Robinson were his last assignment, and he had persuaded Casey to join him for this final sales pitch, using the argument that it was better than moping about the Youth Center, waiting for his wife to forgive him, or more unlikely yet, for her to ask him to come home.

Casey had known bigger fools than himself in his lifetime. Just at the present moment, though, he couldn’t think who any of them might be. His false moustache was itching fiercely and his curls, never well behaved at the best of times, were threatening a full out riot against the pomade with which he’d slicked them down. In addition, the wire-framed spectacles that Robin had provided him with were of a thickness to render sight next to impossible.

“Will ye have a wee spot more of the sherry, Mr. McArthur?” Miss Edwina asked him. Casey thought it was likely that if he had another wee spot of sherry he was going to have to throw up over the back of the antimaccasared sofa. Nevertheless, he wasn’t about to let queasiness get in the way of the Republican cause. He bravely held his small glass out, thinking he would dump it in the potted ficus when Miss Edwina’s stiff, damask covered back was turned.

He shifted, grimacing inwardly. There was a spring sticking into his backside, though he hardly saw how such a cement-like sofa could be in possession of a spring. Robin had disappeared into the kitchen about twenty minutes ago, ostensibly to help Miss Georgina wet the tea, but from the giggles and gasps emerging from said room, tea wasn’t the only thing getting wet.

Miss Edwina had been left to entertain him, and a more sour-pussed, disapproving woman he could not have countenanced in all his life. She was the sort that could put coal in her arse and come up with a diamond and change a day later.

“Another biscuit, Mr. McArthur—Mr. McArthur, are ye perhaps hard of the hearin’?”

Casey started, realizing he was going to blow his cover. “Oh—erm—no thank ye, ma’am.” The proffered biscuits were dreadfully stale and had a whiff of dust in their flavor that Casey was still trying to clear out of his throat.

He glanced toward the kitchen, mentally cursing Robin for leaving him to the mercy of this gray baggage. She’d a face on her like a steel clamp—hard and tight. She reminded him rather forcefully of Sister Ignatia, a grammar school nun who had delighted in the corporal punishment of small, wayward boys.

There seemed to be a distinct absence of noise in the kitchen suddenly. Goddamn Robin, did the man have no limits on where and when he would bed a woman? Though, admittedly, one had to admire the raw nerve of the man.

“D’ye know where yer sister and Mr. Gillivray have gone?” he asked, taking the spectacles off. Miss Edwina’s eyes brightened considerably.

“I believe they’ve gone upstairs.”

“Oh—I—urm, it’s only that Mr. Gillivray and I have other appointments this afternoon.” Casey stuck a finger inside the tight white collar in an effort to loosen it. He was imagining seven different highly imaginative ways in which he planned to kill Robin once they got out of here. “Other prospects, ye know,” he finished weakly.

“Other prospects is it, Mr. McArthur? Or other women?”

“I am a married man, Miss Edwina,” he said as prohibitively as he could manage.

“Are you, Mr. McArthur?”

“I am.” He dug in his suit pocket for a handkerchief, feeling the first frisson of alarm in his innards. There was an avidity in Miss Edwina’s face that he knew all too well.

“My sister has no knowledge of men in that respect.”

“Erm, pardon me?”

“No bibilical knowledge,” she replied, her voice nowhere near as stiff as it had been a moment before.

Casey choked slightly, and unthinkingly took a large swallow of the sherry. He gagged and then blurted out, “Yer sister is a virgin?!”

Good Christ, he peered rather desperately toward the stairs. The woman must be fifty if she was a day. While Casey had some experience of older women, anything beyond forty was outside his ken. Should he create a diversionary emergency on Robin’s behalf?

“We both are,” Miss Edwina replied stiffly, two small patches of red burning in her powdery cheeks. She eyed Casey in a significant manner.

Despite the relative coolness of the day, Casey felt a fine dew of sweat break out on his forehead. Dear God, the woman couldn’t possibly think…could she? Apparently Miss Edwina, tongue lightly flicking the last of the stale biscuit crumbs from her bottom lip, could and did. He wished he’d not taken the spectacles off.

“I
haive
always preferred large men,” she said, a faint sheen of perspiration glossing her own brow. Casey began to sweat in earnest. He had a brief vision of Pamela laughing fit to die if she could witness his current predicament. “My state,” she continued, the spots in her cheeks flaming now, “is an impediment I should like to be relieved of. My sister will be insufferable if she is no longer a virgin and I remain one.”

Despite the utter ridiculousness of the situation, Casey felt sorry for the prim, gray woman across from him. To never have known the love of a man, to never have been touched with tenderness and desire, seemed a terrible tragedy to him. He thought of the heat and joy of his own bed, what it was to know another in that way, and compassion for the woman, who was asking him to relieve her of her virginity, flooded through him.

“I’m flattered by the—ahem,” he cleared his throat rather violently, “proposal. But as I said I am a married man, otherwise I should be glad to take you up on yer offer,” he finished in a rush, aware that he was blushing to the roots of his hair.

“Would you indeed, Mr. McArthur? I hardly think so; despite the ridiculous disguise I can see that you are a fine looking man. I doubt ye’d spare me a backwards glance should you pass me on the street. Your wife, I assume, is beautiful?”

“Aye, she is,” he said, feeling guilty for the answer.

“I thought so,” she replied dryly.

“It’s not why I love her, though.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, tilting her long face to one side in a thoughtful manner. “No, I don’t suppose it is, but I’ve nay doubt it’s part of why ye desire her.”

Casey opened his mouth to deny this, and then paused. He rarely thought of Pamela as a being with separatable qualities. But he supposed if he were honest with himself, he did take a certain male pride in the way she looked. And that a woman as beautiful as she was found him desirable. But it was so much more than that; without her he was only half of a puzzle, with her the picture completed itself. Yet when he thought of her; the fine white skin, the silky dark hair, the long legs wrapped around him and—he cut his thoughts off abruptly realizing that the woman was regarding every expression that crossed his face.

“It is part of my desire for her,” he said softly, “but I think only a small part.”

“I have often wished,” she said wistfully, the severe face relaxed into an expression that was oddly attractive, “to have a man look at me with desire. A good man. He wouldn’t need to be especially handsome, just kind. It doesn’t seem so much to ask, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Casey agreed.

She gave him a disconcertingly direct look then, pulse visible in the wrinkly hollow of her throat. “But to have a man such as yourself look at me with desire, well that I think might be a very fine thing indeed, Mr. McArthur.”

“My name isn’t Mr. McArthur.”

She shook her head. “No, I think it’s best if I don’t know your real name. I’m a dreadful liar and when the police ask me, I’d just as soon not know who you actually are.”

It was at this rather delicate juncture that Casey noticed a man was standing in the entry to the dark parlor, or rather filling the entry from one side to the other. And he was looking straight at Casey, with an expression as though he’d just caught a whiff of rotten fruit.

“Edwina, where is your sister?!”

Miss Edwina started, sending her sherry flying along with a tumble of stale biscuit onto the cabbage rose rug. “I—she—” she shot a look of pure panic in Casey’s direction, as though imploring that he come up with an innocent explanation for the whereabouts of her sister.

“I—I believe that she had taken Mr. Gillivray upstairs to check on a bit of dry rot,” he said rather unconvincingly.

“Mr. McArthur, this is my brother Edward,” Miss Edwina said rather weakly.

“Mr. McArthur, is it?” The walrus-faced man seemed even less gullible than his sister, and Casey started to assess the distances to the various exits, including the window behind him.

At this unfortunate and apparently cursed moment, a sound that was either a woman being murdered or in the throes of ecstasy issued loudly from the upstairs. The large man turned, looking like nothing so much as an apoplectic walrus, all long quivering moustaches and red, swelling fury. At present, he seemed in great danger of exploding.

Casey stood, estimating his odds of getting to the door and out before the man could lay hands to him. If he left Robin to die, he supposed his odds were fairly good. Unfortunately his Catholic conscience overrode his survival instincts and he found himself saying, “Sorry about this, man,” before knocking the walrus man to the side and bounding up the stairs, just ahead of the roars of outrage.

He didn’t pause to open the bedroom door, merely gave it a good kick and yelled at a very startled Robin, “Fer fock sake, RUN!”

Robin, who was rather too familiar with this sort of situation, reacted swiftly, leaping off the bed and leaving Miss Georgina clutching the sheet around her virginal bosom. At least Casey—having noted that her knickers were still in place—assumed she hadn’t yet given that commodity up to Robin.

Robin paused only long enough to grab his pants and shirt and was down the hall behind Casey like Satan and his pitchfork were directly behind.

There was no way back down the stairs, but Miss Edwina had made it up the stairs ahead of the enraged walrus and waved them toward a gabled window. Casey, having noted the exterior of the house on their arrival, knew the window sat just below the roof ridge.

He pushed Robin, half-naked and cursing, out the window ahead of him, hoping the man had the wits to scramble up to the ridge and not down toward the gutters. Casey paused, one leg over the sash and leaned back to give Miss Edwina a swift kiss on the cheek.

“Sure an’ it’s been a great pleasure meetin’ ye, Edwina.”

She flushed and put a hand to her parchment cheek and then he was up and away scrambling for the peak of the roof.

He could see Robin’s pale form swing off the peak into the branches of a pine tree that grew mercifully close to the house.

Casey ran along the ridge, thanking God and the fates that the tile was dry and rough, and not slick with wet. He was halfway down the tree when he heard Robin drop from the lower branches onto the ground. Then he heard the distinct
zing
of a bullet whizzing past his ear. He half slid, half fell down the remainder of the tree, hitting the ground at a run behind Robin who was still barefoot, and shaking a fist at the house.

“Run, ye daft bastard!” Casey bellowed, cuffing the back of Robin’s head as he flew past him. They vaulted the fence in unison, heading for the thick woods that bordered the property.

Robin kept up a steady stream of curses as rocks cut his feet and branches slapped them both in the face, arms, and legs. Another bullet zinged past and a large branch dropped from a tree and glanced off Casey’s shoulder. The pungent tang of resin filled his nostrils, the pain in his shoulder sharp as the scent. His eyes were streaming and his lungs burning, but he didn’t dare slow down the slightest bit. He did, however, make a note to quit smoking by tomorrow morning at the latest.