Kiss the Bullet

by Catherine Deveney

  “Okay?” Danni says as he slides into the seat beside her.

  Johnny nods.

  “Can we get something to eat now?” asks Stella.

  “We don’t have time to stop,” says Johnny. “Maybe you should get some sandwiches in that bakery over there.”

  “Why don’t we have time to stop?” says Stella.

  Johnny looks at Danni. “Maybe you should get the sandwiches and I’ll explain. With McConnell gone, there’s not much need for secrets any more …”

  Danni picks up her bag wearily.

  “What do you want?”

  “Anything.”

  “Useful,” Danni mutters, slamming the door shut.

  “What’s going on?” Stella asks.

  “The police know about Pearson and … and Myra’s client. They’re about to pull both of them in for questioning.”

  “You know what you’re doing?”

  Johnny doesn’t answer. He watches Danni inside the shop, picking up sandwiches from a chiller cabinet and examining the labels.

  “Why doesn’t she go home?” he says thoughtfully, more to himself than Stella.

  “Nothing to go home for,” says Stella. “Like all three of us.”

  Johnny glances over his shoulder at her, then turns back.

  “It could be different,” says Stella.

  “Could it?”

  He thinks she’s talking about Danni. About him and Danni.

  “Yes,” she says, so softly he catches the suppressed emotion in it and he stiffens suddenly but doesn’t turn round. He doesn’t know what to say.

  Stella bites her lip.

  “You fancy her don’t you?” she says. “I think you’re a bit in love with her.”

  “Am I?”

  Danni is paying now, the assistant stuffing packets of sandwiches into a plastic bag. A shaft of sunlight is catching Danni at the counter, giving a wax polish shine to her hair. He feels a perverted kind of pleasure in the fact that although he hasn’t agreed with Stella, he can’t deny what she says.

  “She’s lost a lot …” Stella says.

  “Yes.”

  “She told you?”

  Stella sounds surprised.

  “About her husband? Yes. Well, not about him. About the fact she lost him.”

  “Not just her husband. Her son.”

  Johnny tenses. He knows the pieces are falling into place, though he has not yet had a chance to stand back and see the full picture.

  “Her son?”

  “So she didn’t tell you.”

  Her eyes have always been so familiar, like eyes that have watched him all his life.

  “How old?”

  Don’t say it, he thinks, but he knows with an absolute certainty that she will.

  “Three, I think.”

  He closes his eyes.

  Her name isn’t Cameron.

  He feels as if he has cracked from top to toe, fault lines shooting throughout his body, and he’s simply waiting for the pieces to fall apart.

  The car door opens. Danni throws in her bag first then rummages in the plastic carrier for a packet of sandwiches which she throws over the back to Stella.

  “Tuna?” she says.

  Stella doesn’t answer.

  Danni looks up at her, then at Johnny, and stills.

  “What?” she says.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  They have a few hours to get their things together, Johnny says. The police will take them to a safe house, in case of repercussions when they lift Pearson. Danni and Stella should stick together to pick up more things from Stella’s flat. Johnny will drop them off, then go alone to his flat and come back to meet them both at Stella’s.

  “Do you think Pearson actually killed Myra himself?” asks Stella through a mouthful of tuna sandwich.

  “Coyle will have done the dirty work,” says Johnny, starting up the engine. “Pearson directs stuff; he doesn’t actually do it himself. He’d have no difficulty extinguishing Myra. Women like her …” He stops. “Women like Myra always … Pearson may have made his money out of them but he can’t handle them.” He glances apologetically in the mirror at Stella.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  Stella shrugs.

  “Why?” asks Danni.

  “They threaten him. He can’t take all that sexual overtness … It makes him feel …”

  “You mean he’s turned on by it and doesn’t like being out of control?”

  “No the opposite. He isn’t turned on by it but he’s in denial about why not.”

  “You mean he’s gay,” says Stella, raising her eyes. “So what?”

  “You didn’t know his father,” says Johnny wryly. “He was a ball-busting maniac and that’s part of Pearson’s problem. He’s a different generation to you, Stella, and the world he operates in …”

  “Wasn’t one of the Kray twins gay?” interrupts Danni, turning to Johnny.

  “Who are the Kray twins?” asks Stella.

  “Oh, old-time London gangsters … doesn’t matter.”

  Johnny shakes his head. “It’s not as simple as being gay. Everything about Pearson is twisted and that includes sex. Deep down it disgusts him. Women disgust him, though he won’t admit it. The women who work for him are just a reminder of something he’s not part of.”

  He stops at traffic lights and glances sideways at Danni.

  “What about Coyle?” she asks, avoiding his gaze.

  “A pretty little plaything for Pearson to have around. But he won’t admit it.”

  “Why did he marry?” asks Stella.

  “Cover,” says Johnny. “Margaret is …” he breaks off suddenly, looking down at the dashboard. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “The radiator light is on. It’s okay – it just needs water.”

  “What’s she like?” asks Danni curiously.

  “Who?”

  “Margaret, Pearson’s wife.”

  “Dumpy. Middle aged. She’s been with him since they were 17. They live in a fabulous house and she just stays there. She’s a recluse basically, doesn’t go out.”

  “So why make his money out of prostitution?” asks Danni.

  “He can do what he likes with them. They’re desperate because they’re addicts and they’re easy to control because they don’t have anyone looking out for them. All they are to Pearson is money-making tramps in cheap clothes and vinyl shoes.”

  “Cheers,” says Stella, a mouthful of tuna falling from her sandwich.

  Stella’s home is a cramped bedsit, a room in a larger flat occupied by three other women she barely knows, but with whom she shares a kitchen and bathroom. Johnny comes up to check everything is clear before going onto his own place. He goes into the kitchen to fill a bottle with water for the car radiator. Danni sits on the bed while Stella throws open drawers and cupboards.

  “Johnny’ll be okay on his own,” Stella says. “He’d know how to deal with Pearson.”

  She doesn’t sound certain. She wants reassurance.

  “Yeah,” says Danni.

  “He can be scary sometimes, Johnny.”

  He does not frighten her, Danni realises, lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling while Stella stuffs things into her bag. Why is that? She trusts him, she thinks, before she can stop the thought.

  “Are you scared of him?” she asks Stella curiously.

  “Not in a bad way. He’s … he’s got a kind of wild bit or something … a bit you can’t reach … but he’s good … like, if he’s on your side …”

  “Yeah,” she says, noncommitally. It’s true, she thinks, as Stella keeps talking, fumbling for words to describe Johnny. Danni has become used to Stella’s voice prattling in the background, listens only with half an ear sometimes. Then a phrase cuts through her reverie.

  “What do you mean, stained by the bomb?” she says sharply, sitting up and interrupting Stella mid flow.

  Stella turns from the cupboard, surprised at her tone.

 
“When he was ill …” she says. “He was trying to brush pink powder off himself, kept saying it was staining him.”

  “Johnny actually made the bomb?”

  “Think so.”

  “He said so?”

  Stella hesitates and comes forward to sit beside her on the bed for a moment.

  “I’m sorry Danni. I shouldn’t really … it must be hard for you because of … but Johnny … he … he …”

  Danni feels like the breath won’t come, that her lungs won’t fill. She feels sick.

  Stella looks at her and feels scared.

  “He’s finished with that stuff,” she says.

  Danni doesn’t even look at her.

  “It was scaring him … you know … when he thought the powder was on him,” she finishes lamely.

  He wasn’t just there, Danni thinks. Wasn’t just young and stupid and caught up in something he didn’t understand. He ground the explosives with his own hands. Planted the result. She says the words slowly, deliberately, inside her head: Johnny made the bomb that killed Marco and Angelo. The acknowledgement makes her gasp silently. Does it change things? Immediately. The responsibility is no longer shared. It is his.

  For a moment the world seems empty, bleaker than ever, because it is filled not just with loss but with disappointment. When hope flickers inside emptiness, and then gets snuffed out … What had she been building inside her head, she wonders, to cause this crushing sense of defeat?

  And maybe the anger that comes is conjured up in self-defence, the sorceress’s favourite spell, the old familiar cloak of bitterness she has worn so often. She has struggled to find anger, hold it, retain it, while she has been around Johnny, while they have been thrown together so artificially against Pearson, forcing them onto the same side. But now it flows inside her again without effort, a trickle, a river, a sea until it fills her up, every last part of her, and it washes away every trace of doubt and uncertainty. She knows what she wants to do, and the knowledge brings relief, an end to guilt and to struggle. She is free. Empty and free. “Bastard,” she whispers.

  She leaves Stella in the room, goes down to the car where Johnny is filling the radiator. She grabs his arm and he turns in surprise, his grey eyes resting on her fingers then flicking up quickly to her face.

  “The gun,” she says.

  He straightens, running his fingers back through his hair, in a way that is now so familiar to her, to catch the straying strands falling on his brow. They are coming to an end now, she knows it. Their forced togetherness, the false sense of being thrown onto the same side, will soon be over. She has to be prepared.

  “It’s still in the car …” he says, and his eyes don’t leave hers.

  “I know it’s in the car. I want it.”

  In the silence that follows she feels the erratic thump of her heart in her chest, and her breath quickens. She swallows.

  “Get in,” Johnny says quietly.

  She slips into the back seat, and closes the door. He moves to the other side and gets in, glancing round the back. As his door bangs, the noise of the street is instantly muffled and in here, in their space, the interior of the car feels suspended in another world. Danni stares straight ahead.

  “What do you want it for, Danni?” he says, his voice low and tight.

  “I think it’s best when we’re dealing with Parker if you don’t have a gun. He’s a policeman and he knows your background. If he’s suspicious … if you end up being searched … or taken in or …”

  She sounds strangely breathy, like her voice is running away without her and she can’t quite catch it.

  “Right,” he says. His eyes roam over the street and he turns and gives a quick glance behind the car.

  “And besides,” she says with sudden defiance, “I want to be in control.”

  Her stomach churns as he turns slowly towards her and meets her eyes. But he merely nods.

  Danni leans forward to reach under the front seat and tugs the box back from where they put it, lodged under the dip of the seat.

  He watches her open her handbag and then she lifts the lid of the box, as if she intends transferring the weapon out of it and into the open bag.

  The black gun sits dark and cold against the metal interior of the box on her knee. She hesitates.

  “Touch it Danni,” he says, quietly. “Hold it. Get to know the feel of it. The weight of it. The power of it. Go on, lift it.”

  She looks at it still, staring into the box. She hasn’t touched it since that first day in Donegal.

  “You don’t know how to use it,” he says, “but I’ll show you.”

  His voice is emotionless. She feels cold, nauseous.

  Johnny leans over and picks the gun up, glancing outside the car, keeping it low in his lap.

  “It’s a Beretta 92,” he says, and after that she hears his voice only as a drone in her head, telling her about the mechanics of the weapon. His eyes don’t leave her face and his attention is sucking the blood from her, draining it, making her consciousness swim into the distance away from her, and when he reaches out to hand the gun to her, she takes it from him and stares at her own hand as if it belongs to somebody else.

  Her hand is trembling now, shaking in a way that feel systemic, as if the shake comes not from her hand but from the core of her. It feels like it will never end. Silence fills up the interior of the car like a poisonous gas.

  “You could kill a man with that Danni,” he says, his voice low. “It would be quick.”

  She looks at the gun and she looks at the trigger, the small, silver trigger, and she thinks perhaps she could do it now, at close range, right now when she couldn’t miss. Isn’t this what she has been waiting for, him and her together, the perfect opportunity? And then she sees Stella, walking from the front door of the flats, looking anxious, wondering what they are doing.

  “Stella,” she says, and she drops the gun into her bag and stares at him.

  Johnny opens his window.

  “I thought you were going on to your place,” Stella says.

  “I am. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  Danni opens the car door and glances at Johnny. He gazes back with such loaded stillness that she is certain he knows what she was thinking, and she turns away from him, and turns away from what he sees in her eyes, and what she sees in his in return.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  When he opens the door to his flat it smells stale, cold stale, the floorboards contracting and creaking beneath his feet, the air itself tight and restricted like short breaths forced from ill, restricted lungs. The ceiling is lower than he remembered, like it can’t be bothered holding up the walls any more, and he’s weary with it already, just walking in here, with the hopelessness of it, the paper lampshade grown brown and grubby with the heat of the bulb above, and the thin carpet that feels like the hard, stiff bristles of an old shaving brush beneath bare feet, and the grim, grey stains round the cheerless gas fire that’s trapped like a fucking gashed mouth on the wall. The walls that once held him tight like a womb feel suffocating now, and he wants to leave the front door open, leave it wide open, to let heat and light in, to let the room turn inside out and breathe again with the air of the outside world.

  Only a fortnight, Johnny thinks … Two weeks and a lifetime since he was here. In the bedroom, the bedding piled high still where he struggled to find warmth. In good health it’s hard to remember illness, your own weakness. Or maybe that’s just because he doesn’t like giving into weakness much, never lets himself dwell on it. He picks the duvet up, lets it drop again. He looks round the bare bones of his life and knows he’ll never breathe life in this again, never resurrect it. He won’t live here again.

  He is expecting him already. He knows he will come. Pearson will come.

  He’d known that as soon as Parker had called on his way to the flat. The rest were in custody but they couldn’t find Pearson. Johnny gave him Stella’s address, told him to get a car there immediately. He’
d let Parker think he’d be there too but it’s better this way. He will be the magnet for Pearson. This way there will be resolution.

  In the bedroom, he puts his shoulder to the heavy old mahogany chest of drawers, manoeuvring it slowly, inch by inch, away from the wall and into the centre of the floor. Breathing heavily, he kneels down on the floor and rolls back the carpet, feeling along the edge for the small space at the edge of the wood. In minutes, he has a single floor board up and he slides his hand underneath, reaching for the small ledge. His hand bumps into metal and he stops.

  He had hoped never to look at it again. When he’d returned to Ireland, he had promised himself that if trouble sought him out, he would simply leave. People had long memories. The possibility of trouble was always there, especially with Pearson’s careless talk. The guns were the insurance policy he hoped never to have to claim. One in Donegal, of course, but one under the floorboards of his Belfast flat. And if things had gone right, he would have left it here when he moved on, buried under the floorboards where nobody knew it existed. Tenants would have come and gone above it, slippered feet and bare feet, children’s running feet, and the secret of another life, another existence, would have died with him.

  He fingers the trigger. He wishes … but there is no point in wishes. His life has not been like other people’s. Guns, prison … Principle or folly? A few weeks ago, he’d have killed Pearson rather than let him across the door. This world in here, for a time it was different. He wouldn’t have allowed Pearson to contaminate it. But this place, it’s empty now, finished, there’s nothing to contaminate. Spent like an empty cartridge. He looks round the bedroom and snaps the light off. He will sit down and wait until Pearson arrives.

  In the front room he looks through the window then crosses to a battered second-hand cabinet in the corner and opens a drawer. He lifts out a packet of cigarettes, then opens a pull-down door and takes out a bottle of whisky and two glasses, tucking the bottle under his arm and carrying the glasses between two fingers. The cigarettes are an old habit. He gave up in prison and hasn’t smoked since. It started out as a test of discipline to have an opened packet, though to tell the truth he hadn’t remembered in a long while that they were there.