When he was finished, the cop stood back, proudly surveying his work. “There, now,” he said, still smiling, but a little breathless. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. “I’m glad we got that sorted out. Have you any questions?”
Fegan coughed, spattering a fine spray of blood on the floor. “Yeah,” he said.
The cop hunkered down. “Oh? What’s that, now?”
“Who the fuck
are
you?”
The cop laughed. “Don’t you know, Gerry?” He leaned in close and whispered, “I’m the rotten apple that spoils the barrel.”
Fegan closed his eyes and listened to the opening and closing of the door, the turning of keys, and the cop’s laughter receding in the distance. He rolled onto his back, feeling a deep, sickly weight in his midsection. The shadows gathered round, took shape, and he smiled weakly up at them.
“Are you enjoying it so far?” he asked.
The woman rested her cool hand on Fegan’s cheek, and the room slipped away from him.
27
Campbell marvelled at Paul McGinty’s ability to twist facts to suit his agenda. The speech was an incredible exercise in spin. The politician stood on the improvised platform just steps away from Vincie Caffola’s grave, blustering with all the indignation of the righteous. The same police force that left Caffola to choke on his vomit, he said, had beaten Edward Coyle, party activist, to a senseless mess after stopping his car on Eglantine Avenue. The crowd roared when McGinty vowed to see justice done, and it was all Campbell could do not to join in. No wonder the politician’s enemies respected and hated him in equal measure.
News cameras followed McGinty from the podium, but his security men blocked their path. The politician approached Campbell alone. “Walk with me,” he said.
They moved among the gravestones and memorials, working their way towards the gates where McGinty’s Lincoln waited. The sun warmed Campbell’s back.
“So, what do you reckon to our friend Gerry?” McGinty asked.
“He’s insane,” Campbell said. “That makes him dangerous. If I’m going to take him, it better be soon. He could do anything.”
“Our friend on the force gave him a message this morning,” McGinty said. “He made it very clear.”
“Threats won’t do it,” Campbell said. “You can’t reason with crazy.”
McGinty kicked gravel along the path and stopped. “Don’t worry, I won’t be reasoning with him. Not after what Father Coulter told me this morning. I knew it was him, but Christ, to come right out and say it. Even if he thought Father Coulter would keep that from me, he has some brass neck on him. But it’s a question of timing. I’ve got a press conference lined up for the morning. Eddie Coyle’s going to tell them how the peelers kicked the shit out of him. I don’t want anything to distract the press from that. It’s not just local press, either. Jesus, I’ve got CNN and Fox News coming. They love this sort of thing. See, this is what old Bull O’Kane doesn’t understand, what he never learned from us. As long as I’ve got the press lapping this stuff up, the Brits are on the back foot. I stir up enough shit, they’ll give us anything we ask for. They know we can bring Stormont down if we want to, and they’ll bend over backwards to stop it. They’ll be eating out of my hand, and the party won’t dare pass me over. Not when the cameras are on me. I’m telling you, the media’s a better weapon than Semtex ever was.”
“The media won’t be dancing to your tune if Fegan has a crack at someone else. He was ready to take me on last night, only something stopped him.”
“What?” McGinty asked.
“I don’t know.” Campbell shook his head. “Whatever it was, it was in his head. He’s snapped, completely gone, schizophrenic or some fucking thing.”
One corner of McGinty’s mouth curled up. “That’s your medical opinion, is it?”
“It’s no joke.” Campbell fixed the politician with a hard stare. “You better watch your back. I’m telling you, he—”
McGinty’s hand lashed out so quickly, Campbell felt the sting on his cheek before he knew it had moved.
McGinty cleared his throat and smoothed his jacket. He took a cautious look around to make sure no cameras had caught the slap. He leaned in close to Campbell.
“Watch your mouth,” he said. “You don’t tell me anything; I tell you. Got that?”
Campbell fought back rage as he brought his fingers to the heat on his bearded cheek. Blood rushed in his ears and his head seemed to float above his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Mr. McGinty,” he said. “But with all due respect, think about this: he hasn’t taken too kindly to Marie McKenna being strong-armed. What if he comes after you next?”
McGinty snorted, but his eyes gave him away. “He’d never get to me. There’s boys have been trying to get to me since 1972, and nobody’s even come close, even Delaney and those two UFF boys you fingered. Why do you think Fegan could do it?”
Campbell locked eyes with McGinty. “Because I think he’d die trying.”
McGinty’s stare fell away and he cleared his throat. He set off towards the car again. Campbell followed.
“All right, I’ll tell you what,” McGinty said as they neared the Lincoln. “The cops will let Fegan go in an hour or so. You follow him and make sure he goes home. Get into the house and do him there. Lock the place up good and tight. With a bit of luck nobody’ll find him for a day or two. That’ll give me time to get what I can out of the press coverage.”
“What about the woman?” Campbell asked. “She might twig if she tries to reach him.”
McGinty lowered himself into the back of the Lincoln as his driver held the door. “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “She’s already taken care of.”
Campbell hunched down in the rusting Ford Focus and watched Fegan clamber out of a taxi and pay the driver. As the cab pulled away, Fegan took delicate steps towards his front door, his hand pressed to his abdomen. Campbell’s Focus sat at the far end of Calcutta Street. He sucked air through his teeth when his quarry stooped to spit blood on the pavement. Fegan straightened, wiped his mouth clean, and let himself into his house.
Christ
, Campbell thought,
the message must have been loud and clear. He’s really hurting
.
A part of Campbell wished Fegan would have a crack at McGinty. His skin still tingled where the politician had slapped him. The world would be no poorer for that bastard’s passing, just as it was no worse off without McKenna or Caffola. In fact, Campbell would have been delighted to help Fegan in a cull of the party. But for every politician like McGinty there were ten thugs who would gladly take his place and guide the party away from weapons like newspapers and television cameras, and back to AK47s and mortar bombs. It was sad, but true: Paul McGinty was the lesser of many evils.
The greatest of those evils was the Bull.
Terrance Plunkett O’Kane, a thickset man who stood six foot four, had risen to prominence as the Seventies became the Eighties, that turbulent time when the party’s political wing began to branch away from the paramilitary side. Campbell had never met the Bull, but the old man’s reputation travelled far and wide. When Campbell was still a corporal in the Black Watch he heard stories of O’Kane’s bloody ways. And when he left the barracks for the back streets of Belfast the stories grew more horrific.
As the political process had gathered momentum, it seemed the Bull’s time had come and gone. The twenty-first century belonged to men like McGinty and his nose for a headline. Thus, as his sixties edged towards his seventies, the Bull seemed content to retire and let McGinty and his political colleagues take the reins.
Apparently not
, Campbell thought.
McGinty and O’Kane were two sides of the same coin. O’Kane still commanded the loyalty of the old foot soldiers, the Eddie Coyles, and McGinty and the party leadership relied on them for their power on the street. At the same time, the party’s political influence had allowed the Bull to operate his fuel-laundering plants in relative peace for the last ten years. Each needed the other, and it was a precarious balance between the old ways and the new.
Now Fegan was tipping that balance. Whatever insane vendetta he was bent on had the potential to wrest the wheel from the politicians’ control altogether. If Campbell’s hunch was right, and Fegan managed to get to McGinty, it could tear the party wide open. The party could fill his position, all right - in fact, rumor had it they had someone lined up to take his place if they could find a way to sideline him - but McGinty’s crew wouldn’t stand for it. A feud would almost certainly follow. Stormont was fragile enough as it stood; losing McGinty would leave it on a knife-edge.
There was no question: Fegan had to disappear.
And after that?
Campbell thought about the handler’s words. He couldn’t imagine quitting. When he closed his eyes and pictured leaving this life, it was like walking off a cliff. A long drop into nothing. It made him dizzy just to picture it.
When Campbell first came to Belfast with the Black Watch, everyone said it would never end. The divisions and hatreds were too deep-rooted. The dirty war would roll on and on, bomb upon bomb, body upon body. The politicians were too busy pandering to the bigotry of their constituents to solve the issues, and the paramilitaries were making too much money to consider any other way.
But, in spite of every apparently insurmountable obstacle, it looked like they had finally done it. Campbell still couldn’t quite believe it. It didn’t seem real. The politicians had been cajoled, blackmailed and bullied by the British and Irish governments into figuring it out. After eighty-odd years, this tiny country finally had a future.
And Campbell did not.
He remembered an ancient Chinese curse as he opened the car door.
May you live in interesting times
, he thought.
Campbell crossed to an alleyway between two houses. It opened to another alleyway that ran parallel to Calcutta Street, acting as a border between it and the rear of Mumbai Street. He crept along the wall, hugging the brickwork, counting gates as he passed enclosed yards. The paint on Fegan’s gate was flaked and blistered, and the wood shifted in its frame when Campbell pressed it with his fingertips. A firm kick would set it free, but he was wary of undue noise. He wasn’t keen on scaling the wall here, either. Fegan would only have to look out of a window to see him coming.
Instead, Campbell moved back along the alleyway until he was beyond sight of Fegan’s rear windows, two houses down, and hoisted himself over the yard wall. His soft-soled trainers made no noise as he lowered himself on the other side. He went to the house’s back wall and used a bin to climb over to the adjoining yard. A small dog yapped at him as he landed on a collection of pot plants. He cursed under his breath and kicked the little mutt away. Christ, he might as well have ridden up on an elephant.
Campbell moved fast in case the dog’s owner came to investigate. Sticking close to the wall, he peeked into Fegan’s yard. It was a simple weed-strewn concrete patch. Campbell threw his leg over the wall and let his body follow, dropping to a crouch on the other side. His back against the brickwork, he looked up at the kitchen window. The small upper pane was open. He would be able to reach in and down to open the lower latch and slip inside.
Like most old terraced homes in Belfast, the house was a two-up-two-down with an extended kitchen at the back and a bathroom built on top. Amid the dog’s frantic barks, Campbell heard a cough and splutter from the open bathroom window above. He pictured Fegan folded over the toilet bowl, retching up gobbets of congealed blood. He pushed up with his legs to peer through the kitchen window.
Empty.
Another cough, then a sniff, from above. Campbell grabbed the window frame and lifted himself up onto the sill. He reached under the small open pane and down to the lower latch. With a little fumbling, he was in.
Carefully, he maneuvered over the few dishes in the sink and gently lowered himself to the kitchen floor. His shoes barely made a sound as he moved across the linoleum, breathing through his mouth. The room was sparsely furnished and clean, apart from some hand tools arranged on a cloth. It opened onto a living room with a staircase to the left. A few pieces of shaped and polished wood sat shoulder to shoulder with a cheap radio and an empty whiskey bottle on the sideboard. More crude sculptures stood along the fireplace, and an old-looking guitar was propped in the corner.
Now he was inside, Campbell didn’t hesitate. He went to the foot of the stairs, treading lightly. Although his pistol nestled at the small of his back, he reached for the small Gerber knife in his inside pocket. Quiet would be better. He pressed the thumb stud and the blade, razor sharp and gleaming, snapped open. Fegan would die with barely a sound.
Campbell tried not to think of ripping flesh, the soft tearing sound of a blade parting meat and gristle. He ignored the racing of his heart and began his climb.
He placed his left foot at the outer edge of the bottom step and pushed upward, bringing his right foot to the far edge of the next so the boards wouldn’t flex under his weight. Not a single creak announced his ascent. He made his way upwards, his feet to the outside of each step, silent as a ghost.
