Last Out From Roaring Water Bay

by Joe Lane

  The waiting game allows you to think and my thoughts drifted back to the rock face deep below Roaring Water Bay. I debated whether I should reconsider the use of air powered tools to dislodge the rock-face. And then I thought of the disadvantage of trying to handle heavy gear beneath the rampant sea without a full team and quickly dismissed the idea. It would be the manual effort or…

  “Well, well, well, Shackleton Speed, your ass hasn’t changed a bit!”

  I jolted upright. That voice? I spun round to face the woman’s beckoning voice and my heart bounced so irregular that it nearly popped out of my mouth. It was her again! The very same American terrorist I’d encountered at McClusky’s warehouse in London. It was the bitch herself and she was in cahoots with Deveron. She’d changed her hair colour somewhat to a strain of strawberry blonde. And by the description given at the hotel reception, I was looking at the very same short cropped strawberry blonde woman who hand delivered the letter from Deveron to my hotel. My eyes frantically scanned the bridge for her accomplices. She was quick to read my mind.

  “Don’t worry yourself, I’m alone.”

  I quickly recovered from the shock of meeting her again. “Aren’t you the confident one,” I scorned.

  “I’m confident for a number of reasons, Buster! So don’t even consider threatening me for whatever you blame me for,” she warned me with acute calmness, so I assumed she wasn’t bluffing.

  I’m not renowned for bullying women but I did found it hard to restrain myself from exploding in a fit anger right there on the bridge. In my opinion she deserved nothing less than to be thrown over my knee and have her arse spanked in public view, and that was being kind.

  I said, “Every dog has his day.”

  “You’ve lost me, Buster.”

  “You’ve easily forgotten the rough reception I received when we first met. And you left me sexually frustrated. And I almost got killed at McClusky’s warehouse.”

  “What have you to complain about, Buster? You came out in one piece didn’t you?”

  “Yes, by the skin of my teeth and the rags on my back!” I snapped.

  “You chose the wrong time to visit McClusky’s. That was your fault not ours. So forget any schemes of retaliation you have planned.”

  “What and spoil the surprise I’ve in store for you.”

  “I suggest you forget any surprises? This bulge in my right hand pocket isn’t just my hand keeping warm. I’m holding a small calibre hand gun; a Derringer actually, yet sufficient, I promise, to drop a full grown pig, human or animal.”

  She did indeed have her hand clasped around something bulky inside her jacket pocket. I couldn’t tell if there was a gun present and I wasn’t prepared to gamble to find out, at least not at that precise moment. If anything she interested me. There was something about her that I couldn’t fathom.

  I said with a touch of sarcasm, “What are the odds that you don’t have an up-to-date gun licence?”

  “Who’s checking?”

  “What happened to the frigging promise of immunity from death?”

  “That’s providing you keep your hands to yourself.”

  “I intend to, for the time being,” I conceded.

  There was a glint of uncertainty in her eyes.

  “I promise,” I reassured her.

  “Follow me. I’ll take you to Deveron.”

  “Suppose you tell me what Deveron wants or is your leader unlikely to divulge such secrets to an underling such as yourself?”

  “I should imagine Deveron will explain everything to you in good time.”

  She turned to go.

  “It’s impossible for me to go with you.”

  She stopped and looked searchingly into my face. “You’ve changed your mind?”

  “No, I’m concerned.”

  “Is it because of me?”

  “Partly; I was always warned not to go off with strangers. As you have the advantage of knowing my name, how about telling me yours. I can’t keep calling you bitch. Can I?”

  She took the insult admirably calm. “Shayna Magginty, now can we go?”

  With a wave of my hand, I said, “Lead the way, Shayna.”

  In spite of my initial shock at seeing her again, I definitely preferred her company than that of an old codger. There was also another point I wanted to take up with her as we crossed the bridge to the North side.

  “How come I seem to have a large flashing beacon on top of my head?”

  “What’s that suppose to mean?”

  “Well assessing the enormous size of the Irish Republic; and the estimated half a million visitors presently in the South of Ireland; how the hell did you know where I would be?”

  “We’ve certain resources available to us. No one is untraceable.”

  “Are you sure about that, Shayna? I know of a fellow by the name of Lord Lucan who might just question your theory that nobody’s untraceable; that’s if he were to come out of hiding and tell us his secret. But that still doesn’t tell me who betrayed my whereabouts?”

  “Does it really matter how?”

  “Yes, it frigging does!”

  “Do you really expect me to divulge our operating capabilities? It may surprise you that we have a highly organized network of intelligence. And it might doubly surprise you, Buster that Irish people are not thick paddies as some people like to think.”

  “You’re an American!”

  “Irish-American,” she corrected me, waspishly.

  “Is that so Shayna? Didn’t know much what McClusky was up too, this power of the organization shit, until it was too late.”

  She almost bit my head off. “Different matter!” she snapped. “McClusky was a double crossing bastard, correction, a dead double crossing bastard.”

  “Yes I’d heard he’d been killed in a gang war,” I said. “It was headline news in every London paper. Dead people left everywhere.”

  “We took no casualties.” There was pride in her tone.

  “Didn’t happen to come across two ugly bastards, who looked like vultures, during your gunfight?”

  “We hardly hung about for an identity parade. Our business was concluded. We fought our way out of the warehouse and came straight back to Ireland.”

  “Empty handed too. That’s not good business killing off your supplier.”

  She ignored me.

  “As a matter of interest where are those inept bastards you call your brothers-in-arms? Especially the spotty faced one with the darts. I want to meet him again on equal terms”

  “I’d be careful what you say. It’s possible you might just do that.”

  “Is that a threat, Shayna? Only I’ve been practicing with my own set of darts; mine are called a bow and arrow.”

  She was impervious to my challenge.

  I said, “So how did you get involved in terrorism? Or should I be asking, what persuaded you to turn into a cold blooded killer?”

  She stopped at a yellow two-seater Mazda sports car. “You ask too many questions, Shackleton Speed.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “Don’t be.”

  I nodded towards her car. “Impressive,” I said. “I thought my criminal ways paid well but terrorism pays extremely better.”

  She wasn’t amused. “Get in!”

  I didn’t argue. I clambered into the passenger seat and snapped on the seatbelt just before the engine roared and the car accelerated away with awesome power. She handled the car impeccably. She liked to race too. I judged that by the way she’d little respect for the road speed restrictions. She was my kind of woman; fast in all departments.

  We left Dublin and headed south along the N11 coastal road. We weren’t followed and if we had, I doubted that Team Ferrari would have kept up with us. I enjoyed the thrill of the ride as she crashed through the gears, which I know really pissed her off because I think it was her intention to scare the hell out of me with her erratic driving.

  I said casually, “Did you find what you were lookin
g for in my hotel room?”

  She wasn’t at all surprised by what I said. “What gives you the impression I was in your room? I came to deliver a letter.”

  “And you paid a visit to my room the other day too.”

  “That bump on your head has sent you crazy.”

  “The perfume you wear, Shayna, it’s nice, but a dead giveaway. The smell choked my room.”

  “You’ve got the wrong woman, Buster!”

  “What were you looking for when you rummaged through my belongings?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I know you did.”

  “Have you any proof?”

  “I don’t need proof, Shayna.” I leaned forward so I could see the corners of her eyes. “Do you realize your eyes twinkle like two diamonds when you lie?”

  “That’s pathetic!” But she automatically tilted and looked in the rear view mirror. “My eyes have always sparkled. It’s the amount of vitamins I take.”

  “Then how do you explain the smell of your perfume lingering inside my room.”

  “I was never in your room, period Buster!”

  “You’re wearing the same perfume now. Jean Paul Gautier ‘Classique’.”

  “So you have a nose for perfume. Been around a few wearers, have you?”

  I smiled impishly. “Do I detect a touch of jealousy?”

  She expressed her revulsion with such a notion. “You’re being ridiculous again.”

  “Anyway you disappoint me greatly, Shayna.”

  She dropped down a gear and eased the car through a sharp bend. “Why’s that?”

  “Well to have the audacity to sneak into a man’s room and not wait in bed for him. It’s shameful.”

  “Your mind is one tracked and disgusting.”

  “That’s frigging heavy coming from you. I seem to recall you taking advantage of a defenceless me when I was strung up at that remote farmhouse.”

  “That’s a woman’s prerogative to do as she feels. I told you that at the time.”

  I jolted upright in my seat. “Hang on a minute. If the roles had been changed you would have been crying rape and I would have been clapped in irons.”

  She shook her head. “Wrong, Buster,” and in a flash she had taken the gun from her pocket and angled it at my stomach while trying to focus on me and the road. “I wouldn’t be crying rape, I’d be saying this bitch bites back twice as hard, then I would have shot your balls off.”

  “I believe you would be that nasty. Do watch the road, Shayna,” I said calmly, and she just corrected the car’s path as it nearly collided with a horn blaring on-coming truck. I never flinched once

  “So where are we going, if it’s not too much trouble to ask?”

  “Yes, it is too much trouble.”

  She leaned forward and slipped a disc into the CD player which blasted out a Bruce Springsteen classic. I couldn’t hear her singing along but her lips were moving.

  I was…born in the U.S.A…I was…born in the U.S.A…’

  I took the hint and snuggled down into the car seat to relax.

  The remainder of the journey lacked any sort of conversation through no fault of mine, as she preferred to listen to the music. I took the opportunity to observe and memorized the route we were taking, as there was the possibility I would have to make an impromptu return in the near future.

  We finally left the N11 at Kilmacanago, took the R755 to Roundhouse, turned into a dirt track road and came to a shuddering halt outside large ornate gates wedged between a stonewall of fortress proportion. A camera mounted on the gateway scanned our arrival. Shayna pressed the button on a remote control device and the automatic gates opened. And then with her customary wheel spin we drove down a tree lined drive till we reached a large stone built manor house of impressive proportions. Deveron had been saving his wages over the years of military service.

  Shayna brought the Mazda to a skidding halt. I climbed out of the car and looked around in disappoint ment. I would have expected at least two armed burly guards to grab and throw me against the wall to search me for weapons. None showed. Surely I was worth some consideration for being dangerous? And Shayna, by her casualness, didn’t see me as a threat either as she entered the house. I followed her through the entrance and into the hall, along a corridor and into a spacious study with a well stocked library. The walls were decorated with beautifully carved oak veneer with a scattering of oil painting hanging there merely for decoration than viewing.

  Shayna pointed across the room to a frail, withered old man crunched up on a sturdy studded leather chair. She gave me a gentle nudge to make my way over to him and then without a word she disappeared leaving me alone with whom I considered to be a treble murderer.

  My first instinct should have been to dash across the room and grab Deveron by the throat and start to squeeze the truth out of him. Yet looking at his frailty he probably wouldn’t have survived even a short throttling. And then I couldn’t be sure if he had already anticipated the idea and had placed a hidden marksman to stop me.

  As for my first opinion of Dillon Deveron, it was hard to imagine him as a World War Two fighter pilot, doubling up as a stone-faced killer. His dried ragged facial features showed no hardness of a man capable of shooting his flying comrade in the back, as Billy Slade had witnessed. Though I saw no evidence of him actually smoking, he was wearing a smoker’s jacket and a cravat. His head turned. He didn’t rise to greet me.

  “Ah! Mister Speed, I presume! We meet at last.” Deveron’s voice sounded just like a Dalek from a television series of ‘Doctor Who’.

  “Please, please, come closer. You must excuse me for not rising to my feet. Alas brittle bone disease rather limits my enthusiasm to walk unassisted unless absolutely necessary. Please, sit down. There are refreshments on the way.”

  I gestured to the surroundings. “This place must have put you back a pound or two?”

  “Extravagance well earned, I can assure you, Mister Speed. And I’ve no wife to screw me for every penny in a messy divorce.”

  I sat, staring at Deveron in an attempt to understand the man. He took my staring as if I was confused about something

  “No doubt you’re wondering why my voice has a distorted sound, Mister Speed.” He pulled the cravat he was wearing sideways to reveal a metallic object embedded in the regions of his throat, “Cancer has attacked my voice box. It’s my own fault entirely; the legacy for my passion of Panamanian cigars. Without this voice-box device my speech would be useless.”

  “Ingenious invention,” I said, not that I really cared.

  “Do you smoke, Mister Speed?”

  It was a mistake on Deveron’s part to allow me the opportunity to criticize smoking as an occupational habit. I could have spent hours boring him to death on reasons of why smoking isn’t big and isn’t clever, but I decided to keep it short and simple.

  “It smells like burnt wood and probably tastes just as revolting.” I smiled and added, “I prefer drinking myself to death; far more enjoyable. And if you want my honest opinion, smokers are inconsiderate, self centred bastards, who insist on sharing their exhaled desire with other non-participating losers and then they are confounded when people object to having smoke blown in their faces. If I was to share my bad habit with others I end up pissing all over them.”

  Deveron was shocked by my bluntness. “Well… yes…I…er…see your point, Mister Speed.”

  “Good!” I said. “Now we’ve got that out of the way, you can start by telling me how you knew I was here in Ireland.”

  “Shayna told me, of course. She knew you were here somewhere.”

  “How did she know I was here?”

  “I never asked how she knew. I asked her to find you. She’s quite good at the huntress business.”

  “So she found me. Why?”

  “So we can talk about WWII.”

  “You could have done that in a phone call to my hotel,” I said sharply.

  Deveron frowned. “You seem
very hostile towards me, Mister Speed?”

  “I hate mystery games. I also hate being dragged across Ireland for reasons beyond sensibility. So why don’t you get to the point, and then I can judge whether I’ve had a wasted journey.”

  He raised his hand. “All will be revealed in good time, Mister Speed. The main thing is you’re here. Shayna did marvellously well in tracking you down. She also forewarned me that your temperament might be a little volatile and that you also have an obstinate attitude.” He snorted a small laugh. “She seems to know her men.”

  “Listen. I’ve little time for glad-chat.”

  “I neither have time on my side, Mister Speed…I’m a dying man. Old age is incurable. But I’ve had a fair run in life, I cannot grumble. So I would appreciate a little respect.”

  It couldn’t have happen to a nicer man, I thought. I said, “That’s unfortunate. Shall we get on with it then before you fade away?”

  Deveron composed himself and went on. “I’m interested in the Spitfire that was unearthed in Berkshire, Mister Speed.” He paused, probably expecting me to answer excitedly. “Shayna told me all about your discovery.”

  I superimposed an expression of surprise. “I’ve made a discovery?”

  “You’re teasing me, Mister Speed. Shayna said you mentioned the plane while you were engaged in riveting conversation with each other.”

  Either the bastard was taking the frigging piss or the bitch had neglected to tell him that the riveting conversation included the use of torture to extract the information.

  “As I recall, we discussed what I’d read in the newspapers; old news is hardly riveting.”

  Deveron went on. “Mm, she assured me that you were the finder, Mister Speed.”

  “I can’t see how or why I should have said that voluntarily.”

  “I read the papers too, Mister Speed. I did some checking myself through old colleagues at the ministry, but I must admit I was left a little confused with the results, especially by the name of the pilot found in the cockpit of the wreck. That name didn’t match the name Shayna mentioned to me. How would she know about the name Craven when the name was never printed in the newspapers, Mister Speed?”