The Storm Protocol
Page 33
The first thing I’d remembered about Irish pubs was how dim and dingy they were, compared to their modern American counterparts. In the US, you had a myriad of TV screens in the bars, each playing a different channel; a practice, I had to confess, I found intensely annoying. You didn’t go into a bar so people could shout at you; it was supposed to be a relaxed and peaceful area. That’s why there was something about the ambience of an Irish pub that you just couldn't beat. Some of them had been there for literally hundreds of years. When you sat at the bar, the building seemed to settle around you like a warm and friendly embrace. They were there for centuries for a very good reason.
I parked my rear on a stool, and caught the barman’s eye.
‘Be with you now,’ he shouted; an Irish euphemism for you’ll have to wait a second.
The subtle nuances were all coming back to me. I adjusted myself on the stool and pulled the hood off, safe in the relative anonymity. I let my gaze wander slowly around the interior, drinking in the atmosphere.
Even though the smoking ban had been in force in Ireland for a couple of years, the ravages of nicotine could still clearly be seen on the fabric of the building. Most pubs like these, true traditional pubs, had shunned the home improvement boom of the Celtic Tiger era. People came to pubs for their character, not the paisley print wallpaper and velvet throw cushions.
‘What can I get you, squire?’ asked the barman, interrupting my thought patterns.
I glanced at the bar menu. It was strangely reassuring to see that some things hadn't changed in decades. It was about as far from Tapas and Sushi as it was possible to get.
‘Pint of Murphy's and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, please,’ I said.
‘Home for good?’ he asked, as he worked.
It was half statement and half question.
I didn’t even bother quizzing him on how he knew I was home from the US; at this stage, I was beginning to settle back in. Maybe I really was home this time?
‘We’ll see,’ I said.
The sandwich, when it came, was just like I remembered. The pint, when it came, was just like I remembered too. I drank it slowly, savouring the bitter sweet bite as the alcohol hit the spot. I slid the newspaper across the bar and started reading the headlines.
I was adrift in a sea of relaxation, when I felt a waft of air and then a presence beside me. Definitely female, my subconscious told me, communicating a vague hint of an understated perfume.
‘Hello Thomas,’ she said softly.
She didn't even have to say my name; the initial word was all it took. For the first time in a long while, I was transfixed; like a rabbit caught in the proverbial headlights. A physical shock went through me. I turned my head slowly and dragged my gaze up to her face.
I wouldn't have immediately recognised her; fashions obviously change, and her hair was subtly styled and a different colour. But weirdly, I could see a ghostly shadow of the girl that I'd known, all those years ago; a vague outline, superimposed upon the statuesque and elegant woman standing next to me.
She looked at my face, and the first vestiges of doubt flitted behind her eyes.
‘It is Thomas, isn’t it?’ she asked again, this time with a slight hesitation.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak just yet, contenting myself instead with another sip of stout.
‘Would you like to get a table?’ I asked, cursing inwardly as my voice came out in a schoolboy squeak. ‘Maybe we can catch-up for a few minutes.’
She smiled at the shrill inflection. At least she was smiling. She looked at her watch, seemingly in two minds.
‘I’m meeting someone,’ she said, ‘but okay, I can spare half an hour.’
There was a measured pause.
‘It would be nice to catch up,’ she added, as an afterthought.
I ordered her a drink, as she settled into the corner table. I carried my half empty pint and placed the glass of cider in front of her. She smiled again, this time in genuine amusement.
‘I stopped drinking cider about twenty years ago,’ she said.
I coloured and made to get up, but she put a hand on my arm.
‘No, it's okay, I’ll have a few sips,’ she said.
I scanned her face, seeing if she had felt the same shock that I had; probably just static electricity.
‘So, how long has it been?’ she asked.
‘Twenty three years, twenty four maybe,’ I answered.
She put her hand on my arm again.
‘Thomas, just before you go on,’ she said kindly, ‘can I just say something.’
I nodded, unable to speak.
‘I forgave you long ago,’ she said.
My throat felt constricted and I couldn’t say anything.
‘Yes, I had my moments early on, but make no mistake,’ she said. ‘I didn't sit in a rocking chair facing the Atlantic, staring out of the window and pining for your return.’
‘I wouldn't have been so presumptuous,’ I managed to say.
‘Just to put you at your ease,’ she answered. ‘On the whole, the last twenty four years of my life have been blessed.’
‘You’re certainly looking good,’ I said, meaning it.
‘Thanks,’ she replied and then sat back, taking a sip of cider. ‘Marriage seemingly agrees with me.’
The two gold bands had been the first thing I’d noticed, but her mention of matrimony drew my attention to her left hand. She noticed me staring and moved the fingers self-consciously, causing the engagement ring to twinkle; it was one hell of a rock.
‘He’s a lucky man,’ I said.
‘Yes he is,’ she said, agreeing with me. ‘And I’m a lucky girl.’
We lapsed into a semi-awkward silence for a couple of minutes, sipping our drinks, while we racked our brains for something else to say.
‘Did you stay around the Cork area?’ I asked eventually.
‘You wouldn’t believe it, especially in this day and age,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never been any further than Dublin city since you left.’
I was about to ask whether she had any regrets, and then realised the possible connotations of that question, if it came from me. I kept my mouth shut; partly because I didn't want to know the answer.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Did you make that fortune?’
‘I'm fairly wealthy, yes,’ I answered. ‘In American terms, I would be nicely off.’
At that particular moment, I had just shy of twelve point six million dollars on deposit, in four numbered accounts.
‘You've seen a lot of life,’ she said.
It was a statement.
‘I’ve seen my share,’ I acknowledged.
‘It shows in your face,’ she said.
The slightly awkward pause again.
‘I always saw you as the boy with too much ambition,’ she said suddenly. ‘I would categorise you now as the man with too much....’
She searched for a word and found three.
‘....world weary resignation,’ she finished.
‘I’m not unhappy,’ I said defensively.
‘And therein lies the problem, I think?’ she ventured. ‘Oh Thomas, don't look so serious, it would never have worked out between us. We were two utterly different people; a star and a planet, in different orbits, in totally different solar systems.’
‘Funny,’ I said. ‘I always thought we were well suited to each other.’
‘I’ll let you in on a little secret,’ she said. ‘Even though I begged you to take me with you, I didn't really want to go. America sounded so cool, so exciting, but when I thought about it, everything I needed was here. When I thought about it some more, you were no longer one of the things I needed.’
‘That's a bit harsh,’ I said to her.
‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘How many times did you think about me when you were over there? How many times did you try and contact me in the last twenty four years?’
She looked at me; my silence was answer enough.
I sensed a hint of bitterness in her words, but if I looked inside myself, I could see that what she said was true. I hadn’t really given her a backwards glance. A bit of teenage angst and then; bang, gone. Pastures new, here we come. She nodded, as she saw my expression changing.
‘It’s been good to see you Thomas, it really has,’ she said, patting my hand. ‘It’s allowed me to square some things away in my own head.’
‘Glad I could help,’ I said, a trifle sarcastically.
‘Oh Thomas, look at you,’ she exclaimed.
She glanced at her watch.
‘I am going off to meet my husband in about seven minutes,’ she added. ‘Even the thought of it is brightening my mood. If you were a doctor and you were measuring my pulse, I bet you would find it increasing.’
She looked at me with a strange smile.
‘Do you not know what I’m talking about?’ she asked.
My problem was that I knew exactly what she was talking about; the mood lifting, the pulse quickening, the emotions building to the euphoria. That's how I felt when I killed. I smiled back at her.
‘You’d better go,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to be late for Mr Right.’
‘Don’t be nasty, Thomas,’ she said.
‘I wasn't,’ I protested.
And then suddenly the thought came to me.
‘Do you remember my confirmation name?’ I asked, straight out.
She looked at me and blinked.
‘Where did that question come from?’
‘Just popped into my head,’ I lied.
‘You know I don’t,’ she said with certainty. ‘You never told me; refused to in fact.’
She got up and struggled into her coat. I stood up too.
‘It’s Mary,’ I said softly.
‘What is?’ she asked.
‘My confirmation name.’
She glanced at me, and I noticed her eyes were a little misty. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t have to. There was an awkward moment, as I went to kiss her on the cheek at the same moment she went to kiss me, and we gently clashed heads. She dropped her eyes and turned away.
At the doorway, she glanced around quickly and waved; I could tell it was goodbye. The primary emotion that I could ascertain from her was relief; or maybe it was release.
As I sipped at my pint, something she’d said was nagging at the back of my mind. There was something about the feeling she’d described. Something had made me feel like that in the recent past. It had not been killing, and it had not been her. I drained the remainder of my drink, nodded my thanks to the barman and walked onto the street, eyes scanning the road.
‘Taxi,’ I shouted.
A car swerved over and the front door flew open.
‘Yes mate?’ he asked.
‘Hospital please,’ I said.
I told myself on the way up the stairs that it was a fool's errand. She wouldn't be there. But all the same, when I strolled in to find the bed empty and cordoned off with police tape, I couldn't help feeling a tiny bit diminished. A large, stern looking woman in an ill-fitting uniform approached me.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked suspiciously.
I had to act quickly; I needed to maximise my information advantage.
‘I'm hoping you can,’ I said, keeping my voice low like a conspirator. ‘I’m Charles Foster from the Cork Examiner.’
I was thinking on my feet, combining the two names of my new colleagues.
‘We got an anonymous tip-off from a staff member, telling us that something unusual had happened recently in one of the female wards.’
She relaxed slightly, and I could tell she was dying to disclose what she knew.
‘All our sources are strictly confidential,’ I said softly.
‘Meet me in the break room in about five minutes,’ she said, pointing down the corridor.
A few minutes later, when she walked into the room, I was sitting down sipping a coffee. A mug of the black liquid sat opposite me, with a jug of milk and the sugar bowl.
‘I didn’t know how you liked it,’ I said, as if in explanation.
She nodded distractedly. I had a sheet of paper and a pen in front of me; both stolen from the nurse’s station on the way down.
‘So, very unusual to find a police cordon around a bed,’ I prompted. ‘Did someone die? Was someone killed here?’
‘A lady of the night had been brought in,’ she said.
I smiled at the old fashioned verbiage.
‘She was bruised and slightly battered; cuts and scrapes. Her friend....’
She said the word friend with a sneer.
‘....He told us that someone had tried to rape her.’
I sighed inwardly with relief; I’d suspected they had from our last interaction, but at least the apes who handled her had bought that much of the story.
‘The timeline is all very blurry after that,’ said the matron. ‘We have been exceptionally busy over the last week, and I’ve been working double shifts, but I think it happened the following night.’
‘What happened?’ I asked, hoping to prompt her again.
‘It appears that the same man, the one who had originally attacked her, came back to try and finish the job. Anyway this poor girl’s friend, who’s coming back in after a cigarette, sees this man at her bedside, and the next thing, there are bullets flying everywhere.’
I had seen the plywood roughly nailed into place where the windows had been; in the double doors at the end of the ward.
‘Was the girl hurt?’ I asked.
‘More shocked than hurt, I think,’ she said.
‘What happened to the two men?’ I asked.
‘I don't really know,’ she answered. ‘They were out through the doors like a hound after a hare. The police took our statements, but they never told us if there had been any further developments, and we have more than enough to be doing, without checking on that kind of information.’
She delivered the last line a little defensively.
‘What about the girl?’ I asked. ‘What happened to her after that?’
‘The police took her into protective custody,’ said the matron flatly.
There was nothing else I could think of that a newspaperman would ask.
‘Thank you, you’ve been very cooperative,’ I said.
She hesitated; I knew why. I slid over the copy of the Cork Examiner that I had also liberated from the nurse’s station. It was folded in four. As she opened the first fold, I saw her eyes widen slightly, as she saw the neatly arranged fan of fifty euro notes. She let the folded page drop back, then rolled it and tucked it under her arm.
‘And none of this will come back on me?’ she asked.
‘No one will ever know, you have my word,’ I said.
I nodded pleasantly as she left the room. I sipped the remainder of my coffee, as two giggling nurses crashed through the door. One of them picked up the TV remote and switched it on. I couldn't figure out why, because as the national news blasted into the room, they seemed oblivious to it; caught up in their own conversation. Young people these days seemed to need multiple sensory stimulations.
I drained the last of my coffee and turned to leave, when I heard something that caught my attention. I walked over to the TV. They had one of those breaking news tickers across the bottom, so I could read it too, even though the volume was maxed.
‘And in local news,’ the honey voiced presenter was shouting, ‘ADXR, the international drug giant, have announced a joint-venture with G&E Chemicals, a New Jersey-based pharma company. The joint-venture is being established at the IDA campus in Clonakilty. According to IDA sources, the dual investment will bring fifty jobs to the area initially, with more planned in the next eighteen months. A spokesperson for ADXR told us they were delighted to be investing in both Ireland and the local
community of Clonakilty. G&E Chemicals have yet to release a statement, but are understood to be similarly delighted to have secured such a large and well known partner.’
What was it that Foster had said? That we needed a concrete link between Storm and Cork? Well, it appeared we now had one.
Chapter 35 – Anticipation
19th May 2011 – Nine days after the Storm.
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. – Aristotle.
Roussel watched with quiet amusement as Dale came to the end of the file. His lips were moving silently as his eyes scanned the pages. He was a faster reader than Roussel by a factor of two at least. He probably needed to be. The DEA would process an awful lot of paperwork.
‘Coffee?’ asked Roussel.
Dale nodded absently.
Roussel busied himself in the kitchen. He couldn't get over how small things were in Ireland. His own apartment back home was not even an apartment by American standards, but his kitchenette alone was half the size of the flat they had recently rented.
A sharp crack made him jump. He realised that Dale had closed the folder with a bang, making a sound like a thunderclap. He walked back into the living room with two cups of tea. Neither of them were strangers to the iced variety, but both had developed a real liking for proper English tea; the hot stuff, with plenty of milk.
‘It’s like being in a movie,’ said Dale, with his eyes closed. ‘I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Roussel. ‘It’s all a bit surreal, isn’t it?’
‘So, what do you make of our boy?’ asked Dale, opening his eyes.
‘It’s a strange one and no mistake,’ said Roussel. ‘After what I read about him; after what I know he is and what he does, I really wanted to dislike him. But do you know what, try as I might, I just can't.’
‘No, me neither,’ said Dale. ‘But, do you think he’s telling the truth?’
‘I do,’ answered Roussel.
There was a long and companionable pause.