“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
O’Kane kicked the back of his knee. Campbell went down hard, his kneecap cracking off the wooden floor. He cried out, then grabbed for his side, his face reddening.
“We’re not fucking about here, Davy. No games.”
O’Kane could have told him he’d live if he spoke the truth, but Campbell wasn’t stupid. The Scot would know he was dead if he let the lie slip. He would string it out, hoping they’d eventually believe him. But O’Kane was certain of his facts. That stuck-up English ponce from the Northern Ireland Office was getting a holiday home in the Algarve for this information, along with a significant contribution to his retirement fund. Anyone in the NIO knew Bull O’Kane was not to be lied to, not for any price. The information was solid. Now he wanted more.
“You tell me the truth,” the Bull said. “Stop your shite-talking and you’ll go easy. Tell me who else is touting for your handler and I might make it even easier. I can’t be fairer than that.”
Campbell looked up from the floor. “I don’t know what you’re—” O’Kane drove his boot into Campbell’s ribcage with a solid thud. The Scot writhed in tortured spasms, his mouth wide in a soundless scream. Silent tears sprang from his eyes, giving O’Kane a sweet satisfaction. It took something to make a hard man cry, but he’d never found it difficult.
He looked at Coyle. “You want a go?”
“Too fucking right.” Coyle stepped forward, his battered face twisted in a pained sneer.
O’Kane moved back. “Work away, but stop when I tell you, right?”
Coyle reached down and grabbed a handful of hair. He pulled Campbell’s head upwards. “I’m going to enjoy this, you cunt.”
Campbell got his knees under him. “Fuck you,” he hissed.
Coyle swung his foot into Campbell’s crotch. The Scot gave a low groan and started to slip towards the floor, but Coyle held his hair firm. “Fuck me?” Coyle’s laugh was raw and savage. He leaned over and spoke into Campbell’s ear. “Fuck me? It looks like you’re the one getting fucked, Davy.”
Coyle drew his right arm back, made a fist, and punched Campbell’s jaw. The hard smacking sound made McGinty wince. O’Kane had to suppress a laugh when he saw Coyle grimace at the pain in his knuckles.
Campbell went limp, but still Coyle held him by his hair, keeping him from collapsing to the floor. He slapped the Scot hard across the cheek. “Come on, you fucker. Look at me.”
A small whisper came from Campbell’s lips. Unease pricked at O’Kane’s gut, but he held his tongue.
Coyle slapped him again. “What?”
Campbell lifted his eyes. His mouth moved as he mumbled softly.
Coyle leaned down, his ear close to Campbell’s mouth. “What?”
“Stupid bastard,” O’Kane said as Campbell’s teeth locked on Coyle’s ear. He sighed and shook his head at the scream. “All right, that’s enough, for Christ’s sake.”
Another kick to Campbell’s injured rib took the fight out of him and he sprawled on the floor, twisting his arms and legs, blood dribbling from his mouth. Coyle’s blood. Coyle fell to the floor beside him, crying and pressing his hands to his ear.
“Holy Mother of Christ,” O’Kane said to McGinty, ‘where’d you get this stupid shite? He’s as much use as tits on a boar.”
McGinty just shook his head as he ground his cigarette butt into the windowsill.
“Here.” O’Kane took a handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it to the floor. “It’s clean. Hold it against your ear. Pádraig, help the silly cunt up, will you?”
“Right, Da.” Pádraig heaved himself out of the couch and huffed over to Coyle. He picked up the handkerchief, wadded it into a ball, and held it to Coyle’s ear. “Come on, now. You’re all right.”
Coyle struggled to his feet and went to kick Campbell’s exposed cheek. Pádraig held him back.
“I want to do him.” Coyle’s voice was choked by tears. “When you’re finished, you let me do him.”
“Get him out of here,” O’Kane said. “There’s bandages and stuff for the dogs over in the barn. There’s a bottle of chloroform in there, too. Bring it and some cotton wool over, there’s a good lad.”
“Right, Da.” Pádraig led the weeping Coyle out of the room, into the kitchen. The sound of barking drifted in as the outer door opened to the night, and then disappeared as it closed again.
O’Kane stood over Campbell’s wretched form. “You know the score, Davy. You know there’s no getting out of this. You’re going to die tonight.”
He looked at his watch as he crouched down, his knees creaking. “Well, morning, actually. You’re going to die, and that’s all there is to it. The only thing you’ve got to worry about is how much you suffer. Can you hear me, Davy?”
He stroked Campbell’s sweat- and rain-soaked hair.
“Answer me, Davy.”
Campbell’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know what you want.”
“The truth, that’s all.”
The Scot turned his head, a bloodshot eye fixing on O’Kane. “But I don’t know what you think I’ve done. Please tell me.”
O’Kane sighed. “You’re a tout, Davy.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me, there’s no point. It’s not a question; I know it for a fact. You’ve been sold out by the same cunts you’ve worked for all these years.”
Campbell pressed his forehead into the floor.
“I’ve got it straight from the NIO. A stuck-up gobshite, talks like he’s the fucking Queen’s second cousin. He says him and you sat in a car in Armagh just a few days ago, talking about what our friend Gerry Fegan was up to.”
Campbell made fists with his hands.
“He says you’ve been working for Fourteen Intelligence Company since the Nineties. He says you’re the best they’ve got. But you’re not that good, are you, Davy?”
“Christ,” Campbell said.
“Now, listen to me, Davy. You can go easy or you can go hard.” O’Kane leaned down, watchful of Campbell’s teeth. “And I mean harder than anything you ever heard of, anything you were ever trained for, anything you ever had nightmares about.”
“No,” Campbell said.
“I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt you worse than you ever thought you could live through.”
Campbell closed his eyes. He wasn’t stupid. He’d heard of the things O’Kane had done to men like him.
“And if you don’t talk to me, I’m going to take you out to the stables. Those dogs don’t normally go for people, but if they get the smell of blood . . .”
O’Kane patted Campbell’s back and laughed. “Jesus, Davy, you’ll be watching them eat your guts. But you never know; one of them might go for your throat first. If you’re lucky, that is.”
“Please,” Campbell said.
O’Kane stood upright. “So, let’s get started.”
He reached down, gripped Campbell’s left wrist, and lifted his hand. He placed his foot on the tout’s injured side and put his weight on it while he pulled upwards.
Campbell screamed, then gasped, then screamed, then gasped. O’Kane took his foot away and lowered the arm slightly. He kicked Campbell’s ribcage once then waited for the writhing and ragged sobs to die away.
“Tell me the truth. Tell me who else is touting for your handlers.”
A line of bloody drool connected Campbell’s mouth to the floor. “I swear to God, I don’t know what—”
“Fuck’s sake.” O’Kane put his weight on Campbell’s side again and heaved on his arm. The ribcage flexed beneath his foot. Campbell’s scream became a high whine. O’Kane released the pressure before swinging his boot hard into Campbell’s flank once more. This time he felt a shift, a grinding, something giving way.
Campbell seemed to have lost the power to scream. He just opened his mouth wide, screwed his eyes shut, and leaked air. His cheeks glistened with tears.
“Christ, just tell me, Davy.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t . . .”
O’Kane brought his heel down on Campbell’s side, felt the spongy grinding, saw the coughed-up blood spill from his mouth.
“Tell me.”
“Toner . . . Patsy . . . Toner . . .”
“Jesus,” McGinty said.
O’Kane raised a hand to silence him. “What about Patsy Toner?”
Campbell hung from O’Kane’s grip like a bag of sticks. “He’s . . . their contact . . . he’s . . . he’s the . . . one who . . . who got me in.”
O’Kane lowered Campbell’s arm to the floor and squatted next to him. “Breathe easy, son. Small breaths. What else?”
“He tells them . . . everything . . . all the press . . . he tells them . . . before McGinty even gets it out. They know . . . every move . . . McGinty makes . . . before he makes it.”
O’Kane brushed Campbell’s cheek. “Good boy. Who else?”
Campbell shook his head.
“Now, son, don’t be stupid.”
“Toner . . . just Toner.”
Pádraig waddled into the room, a large brown bottle in one hand, a bag of cotton wool in the other. “I’ve got the chloroform, Da.”
“Good lad,” O’Kane said.
He stood and took the bag of cotton wool from his son. His thick fingers grabbed a ball of the white material and tore it from the bag. “Open that.”
Pádraig twisted the cap off the brown bottle and handed the chloroform to his father. O’Kane tipped the bottle up, soaking the cotton wool while he held it out at arm’s length. The cloying smell made his head tingle. He turned to McGinty. “We use this to put the dogs down when they’re hurt too bad to fix. We’ll knock him out till we see what Fegan has to say. We might have some more questions after that.”
O’Kane crouched down and pressed the soaked wad against Campbell’s mouth and nose. “That’s it, son, just breathe nice and easy.”
Campbell pulled away, batting weakly at the cotton wool. “McGinty,” he said.
“What’s that?”
His eyes held O’Kane’s, a sickly smile on his lips. “McGinty . . . he did it . . . he set them up . . . Fegan isn’t . . . working alone . . . it’s McGinty.”
McGinty stepped away from the wall. “He’s lying.”
O’Kane gripped Campbell’s hair and forced his face into the cotton wool.
“Jesus, Bull, he’s lying.”
Campbell fought against O’Kane’s grip. His eyes bulged and the Bull ignored the sting of fingernails tearing at his wrists. Soon, Campbell’s eyelids began to droop, his body grew limp, and the struggling died away.
O’Kane lowered Campbell’s head to the floor. A string of red-streaked saliva stretched from the cotton wool as he took it away from the Scot’s mouth. He stood and turned to face McGinty.
“He was lying, Bull.” McGinty’s face paled beneath the bare light bulb. “He was just trying to get back at us, to turn us against each other. You can see that, can’t you?”
O’Kane watched the politician’s veins bulge, his Adam’s apple bob above his shirt collar. “We’ll talk about it later. After Fegan.”
“Come on, Bull, you know he was—”
A burst of static made McGinty jump. O’Kane turned to see his son raise the walkie-talkie to his ear. A distorted crackle that might have been a voice came in a short burst of chatter.
Pádraig thumbed the button. “Right,” he said. He lowered the radio to his side. “It’s him. He’s coming.”
47
A flashlight waved from side to side twenty yards ahead. Fegan slowed the Clio as he approached the undulating light. The country lane was narrow, barely room for two cars to pass, and lined with hedges. Fields sloped up into the night on either side. A short, stocky man in a woollen hat and green combat jacket stepped into the road and raised his hand. Fegan brought the car to a halt. The man walked around to the driver’s side window and made a winding motion with the flashlight. Fegan did as he was told.
“You Fegan?” the man asked.
Fegan squinted against the torchlight. “Yeah.”
Another man, tall, thin and armed with a double-barrelled shotgun, emerged from the hedgerow. He aimed the gun at Fegan through the windscreen.
The stocky man shone the light into the dark corners of the car, into the footwells at the front, and then the back. “Get out,” he said. He stepped back to let Fegan climb out.
“Put your hands on top of your head,” the one with the shotgun said.
Fegan obeyed as the stocky one began searching his pockets. “I’m not armed,” Fegan said.
The stocky man spared him one glance. “If it’s all the same to you, mate, I think I’ll see for myself.”
Fegan stood still as warm rain licked at his closed eyelids. He sensed the shadows watching. His temples pulsed and a chill crept towards his center.
