Doyle heard more shouts coming from the rear of the house then, suddenly, there was the ear-splitting roar of a gun.
He glanced to his right and, in that split second, one of the men facing him dashed towards the window.
He hit the glass with the force of a steam-hammer, crashing through the dirtied panes, shattering the wooden slats and sending crystal shards flying into the air. He hit the ground, rolled over once and ran for the road.
‘Watch them,’ shouted Doyle and hurtled after the fleeing man. He vaulted the fence and sped after the escaping figure, who glanced over his shoulder to see his pursuer gaining.
Up and down Porten Road curtains were being drawn to one side as the commotion roused neighbours. Curious faces peered out into the night and saw the chase unfolding before them.
The man Doyle was pursuing was several years younger, but he had not counted on the other man’s fitness. He ran round a car and into the street. Doyle merely leapt up onto the bonnet then launched himself at his foe, missing him by inches. He rolled over and got to his feet, seeing the other man, dressed in a blue jacket and jeans, heading across the street towards a passageway between two houses.
Doyle followed as the man battered his way through a wooden gate at the head of the passage.
Blue-jacket ran on, spinning to his right, into the garden at the rear of the house. There was a high fence partitioning the back yards and Blue-jacket began scaling it. Doyle skidded around the comer in time to see the other man scrambling over the fence. Doyle holstered his pistol, allowing himself the use of both hands, threw himself at the partition and clambered up and over it. He dropped down beside a fish pond as he continued his pursuit.
A hedge was the next obstacle and Blue-jacket leapt it easily.
Doyle followed, his eyes never leaving his quarry, homed in on the fleeing man as if they were locked on by radar.
The man looked back, surprised to see Doyle still in pursuit. He was no more than ten yards away now and Blue-jacket could feel his own breath rasping in his throat as he desperately sought some way back into the road, some passageway.
If only he could get to the car.
Ahead of him there was another fence and a greenhouse, and beyond that a much taller wall. He leapt the fence, almost falling as he landed.
Doyle saw the obstacles too but he slowed his pace.
There was no way his quarry was going to get over the wall. This was the end of the road, he thought, grinning.
He pulled the CZ from its holster and stood still.
‘Stand still,’ he roared, settling himself, drawing a bead on his foe.
Blue-jacket spun round, saw the gun and slowed his pace slightly.
‘Fuck you,’ he bellowed back, stepping slowly towards the greenhouse, not really knowing where he was going but knowing that the Englishman would not fire.
His eyes widened in a mixture of shock and terror as he realized he was wrong.
Doyle fired twice.
The first bullet hit the man in the chest, the second in the throat.
The impact lifted him off his feet and his body catapulted several feet backwards, as if punched by an invisible fist. He crashed into the greenhouse, which promptly collapsed around him, showering him with huge fragments of glass. The noise was deafening as the crystal shards rained down around him, cutting his flesh. Blood from the lacerations mingled with the crimson fluid already spurting from the two bullet wounds.
Doyle walked across to the body and looked down at it, kicking one of the man’s outstretched legs. He noticed that the body was lying on some tomato plants, and blood had spattered the fruit.
Doyle, ignoring the smell which rose from the corpse, pulled a tomato free and began chewing on it, looking down at the dead man.
The back doors of the house opened and a man emerged. He looked at the scene of carnage and shouted something Doyle didn’t catch. Then, as the man repeated it, he heard the words more clearly.
‘Call the law,’ the man shouted to someone inside the house.
Doyle took another bite from the tomato, wiping the juice from his chin.
‘No need,’ he said, holstering the CZ. ‘I am the law.’
Eleven
The blue lights of the ambulance turned in silence, bathing the area in a dull glow. Without its siren the vehicle seemed curiously serene. Doyle leant against the bonnet of his car, smoking. The tableau before him looked like a film to which someone had forgotten to add the sound.
There were policemen, uniformed and plain-clothes, milling about in the road, some gathered around in groups, others talking to the occupants of other houses. Many were standing on their front doorsteps peering out at the activity. Two police cars were parked outside Number 22. Ten minutes earlier a van had arrived and the four remaining occupants had been bundled inside and driven off. The battered Capri had also been towed away by a police pick-up truck. Doyle sucked gently on his cigarette and watched the other men scuttle to and fro, his attention finally drawn to some movement off to his left.
Two ambulancemen emerged from the passageway between the two houses carrying the body of the man Doyle had shot.
His body was covered by a blanket.
A tall, slightly overweight policeman walked alongside the stretcher. He glared at Doyle as he passed but the younger man merely took a final drag on his cigarette and ground it out beneath his foot. He wandered across towards the rear of the ambulance, where the body was being lifted in.
As the men were about to lay it down inside the vehicle Doyle reached for the blanket, pulling it back.
He looked down at the waxen features, the eyes still open and staring, fixing Doyle in a blank accusatory stare.
‘Any I.D. on him?’ Doyle wanted to know, flipping the blanket back over the dead man.
‘Why did you kill him?’
The question came from the tall man standing beside him. Chief Inspector Ian Austin drew in an angry breath and puffed out his considerable chest. He was taller than Doyle and looking down on the younger man suited him.
‘Is it important?’ asked Doyle matter-of-factly.
‘Yes, it’s important,’ Austin said through gritted teeth. ‘He was unarmed, for God’s sake!’
‘I didn’t know that at the time.’
‘Would it have made any difference if you had?’
‘No. I’d still have shot him.’
Doyle dug in the pocket of his jacket for his cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it, flicking the match into the road. He stepped back as the ambulance doors were closed.
‘So what was his name?’ he asked.
‘Galbraith. Martin Galbraith,’ said Austin wearily. He walked with Doyle as the younger man headed for his car.
‘Any form?’
‘Suspected arms dealing, robbery. He did a couple of years inside, over here and in Ireland,’ said Austin.
Doyle nodded and drew on his cigarette.
‘What about the rest of the boys?’ he said, slipping into an Irish accent.
‘They’ve been taken to a police station for questioning,’ Austin told him.
‘Which one?’
‘That’s none of your business, Doyle. This is our game now,’ said the policeman irritably.
‘Bollocks,’ snapped the younger man. ‘Which nick have they been taken to? I want to speak to them.’
‘I told you, it’s our province. This was a joint operation between the anti-terrorist squad and the flying squad. It has nothing to do with you or your department. You were here tonight to observe and advise. Not to shoot the bloody suspects.’
‘You’re lucky I only killed one,’ Doyle told him. ‘You don’t know how to handle them, Austin.’
‘And I suppose shooting them is the answer?’
‘It’s my fucking answer,’ Doyle said. ‘Now, which nick have they been taken to?’
‘Why do you need to know? So you can torture information out of them? You’ll need official clearance before you interrogate pri
soners of this nature.’
‘I’ve got clearance. Call my superiors if you don’t believe me. Why do you think I was here tonight? I’ll tell you. Because no one trusted you and your boys to do this job without fucking it up.’ Doyle pulled open the door of his car. ‘Now, if you won’t tell me where they’ve been taken, I’m sure someone else will.’ He slid behind the wheel, winding his window down, looking up at Austin. ‘What did they find in the house, anyway?’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Number 22. ‘And don’t tell me that’s none of my business.’
Austin regarded the younger man angrily for a moment, the knot of muscles at the side of his jaw throbbing.
‘Two AK-47’s, three thousand rounds of ammunition and some Semtex,’ he said.
‘How much?’
‘About seventy pounds.’
Doyle nodded.
‘Enough to make half a dozen bombs. Enough to kill Christ knows how many people.’ He smiled humourlessly. ‘And you moan because I shot one of the fuckers.’ Doyle started his car, stepping on the accelerator, allowing the engine to roar for a moment. ‘I’m going home to change. I’ll probably see you later.’ He let off the handbrake. ‘Just for a little chat with our Irish friends.’ Doyle winked at the Chief Inspector and guided his car away from the kerb, banging his hooter as two men blocked his path. They jumped aside hastily as he drove by.
Austin stood and watched the Datsun disappear around a comer. He was clenching and unclenching his large fists, his eyes fixed on the path taken by Doyle.
‘Bastard,’ he murmured under his breath.
Preparation
The man had been hanged three days earlier.
His body dangled from the rope, twisting gently in the breeze. The wood of the gallows creaked mournfully, offering a final lament.
It was difficult to tell his age; most of his features were gone.
The crows had done their work thoroughly.
The eyes had been taken first, devoured hungrily by the carrion birds.
Flies had feasted on the open wounds, laying eggs in the lacerations so that now portions of the face seemed to move. As if muscles were still twitching in that dead visage.
Maggots writhed beneath the flaps of skin, eating their way free.
One eye-socket was bulging with them; the wriggling forms spilled down a tom cheek like living, parasitic tears.
The body continued to turn slowly as the night breeze stiffened, hauling the clouds around the moon like a cloak, bringing an even greater darkness over the countryside.
The two men who stood looking up at the dangling corpse did so with indifference.
They didn’t know the man’s name, they didn’t know why he’d been hung. They didn’t care.
The first was a tall, slender individual with bony fingers which he kept shuffling together as if they were playing cards. His companion was also tall but more stoutly built.
He was the one who carried the knife.
The moon disappeared behind another bank of cloud and the darkness returned.
The second man stepped towards the corpse, noticing, at last, how low to the ground the dead man’s legs were. His feet were only a foot or so clear. Indeed, whoever had tied the knot around the man’s neck had been no expert. The second man glanced at the dangling body more closely, noticing how the neck was stretched. The flesh was taut over the withering muscles.
The man had been choked to death, denied the mercy of a broken neck.
The second man was aware too of the stench that came from the body. The smell of putrefying flesh.
The hanged man’s clothes had been taken so there was nothing to contain the odour. He wrinkled his nose as he moved closer to the corpse, his gaze resting for a second on the ravaged, shrunken genitals.
Probably the crows again, he thought. The dead man’s scrotum had been torn open, most likely by a powerful beak. The testicles had been devoured, the penis savaged.
The feet of the corpse bore several bad cuts, too. Probably foxes or badgers, unable to reach the rotting carcass, had taken bites from the most accessible part. Three toes were missing.
The man seemed to tire of his appraisal of the dangling body and, instead, set to work. He seized the left arm in one powerful hand. Then, with the other, he pressed the knife against the wrist.
The dead man’s skin felt soft and pliant and he found it relatively easy to cut.
Until he reached the bone.
The knife blade grated against the radius and the ulna but the man persevered, smiling when he heard a dull crack. He continued with the knife, using a sawing action until finally, tugging on the appendage simultaneously, he severed the hand.
He held it up like some kind of trophy and walked back towards the first man, who had watched the whole episode unmoved.
Now he reached inside his jacket and took out a small wooden box about six inches by eight. He flipped it open and watched as his companion laid the hand inside. Then, satisfied, both men walked across to the horses that were tethered nearby, swung themselves into the saddle and rode off.
The hanged man twisted gently in the breeze.
Twelve
The green light was flashing on the answering machine when Doyle walked in.
He flicked on a light as he walked into the flat, crossed to the machine and pressed the button marked ‘Incoming Messages’. As he waited for the machine to rewind he pulled off his leather jacket and tossed it onto the sofa, walking across the sitting room of the flat towards the hi-fi.
The first message began to play back.
‘Is that Carol ...? Is Carol there ...? ...’ Then silence and a click.
Wrong number.
‘Prat,’ murmured Doyle, annoyed at the anonymous caller. There was a beep then the second message began.
‘Sean, this is Angela. Angela O’Neal. I hope you remember me.’ A chuckle. ‘I hope you enjoyed the other night as much as I did.’
Doyle turned and headed back to the answering machine.
‘I’m sure I gave you my number, but in case you’ve forgotten it I’ll give it to you again so you can call me. The number ...’
Doyle switched off the machine, turned and headed back to the hi-fi. He switched it on, the tape inside the machine turning immediately.
‘... In a hotel room I remember the way, we’d do what we do ...’
Doyle passed through into the kitchen, pulling off the shoulder holster as he did so.
‘Too long, without your touch, too long without your love ...’
The singer roared on from the sitting room as Doyle pulled a pint of milk from the fridge, removed the top and swallowed great gulps. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, took a glass from the draining board, blew in it to remove some dust, and filled it with the white fluid. He carried it back through into the sitting-room, putting the glass down for a moment as he undid the holster around his waist. He dropped the Charter Arms .44 onto the sofa alongside the CZ, glancing down at the two weapons for a moment before walking on through into the narrow corridor which led to the bedroom and bathroom.
Inside the bathroom Doyle turned on the shower, testing the water temperature with his hand as it spurted from the head. He sat down on the stool in the bathroom and pulled off his baseball boots and socks. Then he stood up, looking at himself in the mirror opposite. He pulled off his T-shirt.
His torso was a patchwork of scars, some running from his shoulder to his navel, others shorter, sometimes deeper, cutting across his chest and stomach. He turned, glancing at, the back where there were more. One in particular ran from his left scapula, across his back, then diagonally down to his lumbar region.
It was that wound which had almost killed him.
Doyle turned round once more, running the tip of his index finger over a particularly deep scar which had bisected his right pectoral muscle. There was no nipple there either, just a ragged hole which looked dark in the brightness of the fluorescent light above.
; He pulled off his jeans and tossed them to one side.
There were more scars on his legs and buttocks. Even his left shin was heavily marked, the scars looking white beneath the hair on his legs.
He looked like a road-map.
He accepted the scars now. In the beginning it had been difficult. Many times, especially when he’d first seen the extent of his injuries, he’d felt like weeping, not in self-pity but at the damage which had been wrought on his frame. He was grateful that his face had escaped relatively unscathed, but for a deep scar which ran horizontally from the corner of his left eye to his jaw. He had been lucky. His torso and legs had borne the worst of the damage.
Doyle stood staring at his body for long moments, memories flooding back into his mind, still uncomfortably fresh even after five years.
The man he’d been after had been responsible for three murders. All politicians. He’d been one of the IRA’s top hit men and it had taken Doyle more than three months to pin the bastard down. Weeks of trekking round Londonderry and Belfast looking and listening for any sight or sound of his prey until, finally, he’d found the man. McNamara. He could still remember him. Doyle had been given orders to bring the man in alive and that was precisely what he’d been trying to do when McNamara realized that he’d been cornered. The chase had taken them through the Creggan and Bogside estates but, by the time they reached the Craigavon bridge, McNamara had taken his fill of being chased by this maniac Englishman.
He’d been carrying a couple of pounds of explosive on him, possibly for an impending job. He’d jumped into a car on the bridge and, as Doyle had drawn closer to him, gun already aimed at the fugitive, McNamara had detonated the explosive he’d been carrying.
The car had been blown to pieces and the Irishman with it. Two passers-by had been killed by the flying pieces of pulverized car, many injured.
Doyle amongst them.
He could still remember lying on the bridge, unable to move, his body feeling as if it were on fire, yet being perfectly able to take in every detail of what was going on around him.
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