Falling Glass

by Adrian McKinty

  When she reached Gartha the rain and lough spray and fog had commingled to produce a cold, seething blanket of unpleasantness.

  She eased along the road until she hit the BP station.

  The pumps were closed and although the general store’s light was on Kelly was nowhere to be seen. She went inside, lifted a Mars bar and left 50p.

  She started the Volvo and again it complained about it.

  She switched down to first gear and avoided puddles and potholes as best she could and finally after an even slower than usual drive she parked outside the cabin.

  The surf was pounding the beach in huge, close-rolling breakers. The rain was coming in horizontally from the Atlantic.

  She walked up the steps and knocked on the cabin door.

  “Who is it?” Claire asked.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “What’s the password?”

  “I don’t know, darling.”

  “You can’t come in without the password,” Sue chipped in.

  “Just unlock the bloody door, I’m getting soaked out here.”

  She heard the bolt unclick. She pushed on the door and went inside. The metal bucket she’d set up under the drip was overflowing.

  “You didn’t think to empty the bucket?” she scolded Claire.

  “Never told me to.”

  “You know what initiative is?”

  “Yeah,” Claire said glumly. “What is it?” Sue piped up.

  Rachel grabbed the bucket and carried it to the front door. She threw out the water and put the bucket back under the drip.

  “I’m hungry,” Sue said.

  Her cheeks were red and her eyes blue and faraway. She was pale. Beautiful. She almost looked like a normal kid. In fact she was a normal kid, physically at least. She just had what the social workers called “learning difficulties”, and what the day-care people in Belfast had called “challenges”.

  “Well, sweetie, I got some hot dogs and I thought I’d boil up a coup—” RAP RAP RAP on the front door.

  “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath.

  “You said the F-word,” Sue sang.

  “You don’t even know what an F is,” Claire taunted her.

  Rachel put her finger to her lips and got the 9-millimeter from the fridge.

  RAP RAP RAP.

  “Who is it?” Rachel asked and turning to Claire, she whispered, “Get your sister! Go to the back door, open it.”

  Claire picked up Sue and ran to the rear of the cabin.

  She took the semi-automatic out of the plastic bag.

  The rain had come on harder and once Claire had opened the door she could feel the breeze blow through.

  RAP RAP RAP.

  She held the Heckler and Koch two-handed and pointed it dead ahead.

  “Who is it?” she asked again.

  RAP RAP RAP.

  “Who is it?” Rachel demanded in a louder voice.

  “What?”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Eric.”

  “Oh…Eric. Hold on. I’m coming!” she said. She went to the back door and brought in Claire and Sue. Sue had stuck her face out into the rain and her hair was already soaked. Rachel put the gun back in the freezer bag and closed the fridge.

  She slid back the bolt on the front door.

  Eric was standing there in a sou’wester and tarpaulin hat.

  “Come in, come in,” Rachel said, faking concern as best she could. Eric was forty-five, with a thick beard, a barrel chest, salt and pepper hair. He drank. He’d inherited the main house and the “guest house” – as he called it – when his father died. He didn’t appear to do anything; apart from the rent he got on the cabin and the campsite in summer he didn’t have an income.

  Rachel didn’t like him. She got a vibe. It was true that she got a vibe from most people, but he creeped her out big time. Dave had known him when they were both in the navy. Dave had been a twenty-year man, but Eric had called it a day after five.

  “You got a letter,” Eric said, holding up a sodden envelope.

  Rachel took it. There was a Ballymena postmark.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Who do you know in Ballymena?” Eric asked.

  “Mummy, can we play Snakes and Ladders?” Claire asked.

  “Yes, play with your sister, I’m talking to Mr Brantley,” Rachel said and gave Eric a smile.

  The lightbulb flickered and a few moments later thunder crashed in the distance. “Well,” Eric said, rubbing his grey stubble with the back of his hand. “Don’t let me keep you from what you’re at.”

  “I’d ask you to dinner, but I just got back from Derry…we just got back from Derry.”

  Never let him ever know that you leave the girls here alone, she thought.

  “Dinner would be nice,” Eric said, looking at the girls over Rachel’s shoulder. She turned round. Sue had taken off her wet clothes. She was standing there naked.

  “Claire! Get your sister dressed this instant!”

  “She’s all wet,” Eric observed.

  “Put a blanket around her, she’ll catch her death,” Rachel told Claire.

  “You do it,” Claire said.

  “I’m talking to Mr Brantley. Do it this instant, young lady!” Rachel barked. Groaning, Claire got up, went to the bedroom and came back with a blanket which she draped over her sister’s back.

  The fixed smile returned to Rachel’s face.

  “Must be a handful,” Eric said in a kind of drawl, like he was Cornish or something, except that she knew he was from Ulster – it was an affectation he’d picked up in the navy and now was stuck with.

  “Oh, no, they’re pretty easy,” she replied quickly.

  “You were talking about a wee bite of dinner,” Eric said.

  “Yes, yes, how about Friday? How would you like to come over on Friday?” she asked.

  “What’s Friday?”

  “It’s nothing special, but if you give me a couple of days I can really prepare something. I can make a Chicken Kiev. Do you like chicken?”

  “Ach, I’m not choosy. Why not right now? Whatever you’re having would be fine by me,” he said and swayed a little toward her.

  His breath smelled of whisky. He was gazing right through her and when she turned again she saw that the blanket had again fallen off Sue’s back.

  “No, no, no,” she laughed nervously. “I’ll give you something to look forward to. A real treat. Chicken, potatoes, a real home-cooked meal and an apple tart; when was the last time you had a home-cooked apple tart, Mr Brantley?”

  “It’s been a wee while,” he admitted.

  “Shall we say Friday at seven?”

  “What’s today?”

  “Today’s Tuesday, Mr Brantley.”

  “Ach shite, that’s the whole week.”

  He blinked so slowly that she thought for a moment he’d taken a micro sleep. He made a fist and banged it into his leg. It made her jump. He wasn’t tall, but he had long, sinewy, powerful arms.

  “Love, just let me sit down for a wee minute,” he said and lurched further into the room. He grabbed the top of a chair, steadied himself. “I could have opened that letter, you know, it came to my house,” he continued and looked over at the girls for a third time.

  “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “You have a nice family,” he muttered.

  Rachel walked to the fridge and took out the bag. She set it on the counter next to the sink. She walked back to Eric, steadied him and leaned him back from the chair. Touching him sent a chill along her spine. He was burning up.

  “So are you on for Friday?” she asked as calmly as she could.

  “I dunno.”

  “I’ll get wine, or beer if you prefer.”

  “Definitely prefer beer,” he said and wiped his arm across his nose.

  He wasn’t that drunk, she concluded, not paralytic, just enough to plane off a little of his caution and reveal the inner psyche. She wondered if his name wo
uld come up under one of those paedophile checks at a public library.

  “So are we on for Friday?” she attempted again.

  He blinked, shook himself.

  “Friday? Oh. Yes. Of course.”

  She saw him to the door, opened it, gently pushed him out into the rain.

  “Goodbye, goodnight,” she said. “We’ll see you on Friday then.”

  “Huh, okay,” he muttered.

  She closed the door and put the gun back in the freezer.

  She opened the envelope.

  A letter from her father and four fifties.

  It wasn’t necessary. She’d been doing okay for cash; if it wasn’t for the problems with the Volvo…She had an idea. She went back to the front door, opened it. The rain had turned to drizzle and the wind had dropped. Out in the Atlantic she could hear white caps breaking on the reef.

  “Oh – Mr Brantley, what’s that boy called who does the tune-ups?” she yelled.

  He turned, looked at her for a second, processed what she’d said to him.

  “That’s Reese Piper. Sometimes we call him Rowdy. Fair special with his hands that boy.”

  “You couldn’t ask him to come over tomorrow morning to look at my car?”

  “Ask him yourself.”

  She mimed not having a phone.

  “Oh, aye,” he said. “I forgot about that. Well, if I remember I’ll give him a call.”

  “Oh, please do – and you’re definitely on for Friday?”

  “I’ll be there. Friday night, sounds good,” he said.

  She closed the cabin door, heard him trip on something and swear.

  Friday was good. She’d bought seventy-two hours. They’d be gone in twenty-four.

  She gave the girls hot dogs and put them to bed.

  She destroyed receipts and began packing suitcases.

  She slept well.

  In the morning the sun was shining, the sky an eggshell blue.

  She let the girls run out onto the sand. The cabin faced dunes and the long wide beach that hardly anyone ever came to because it was usually wet, windy and cold.

  “Keep an eye on your sister,” she told Claire and watched them from the porch, thumbing through a Vogue magazine she’d taken from the bin at the library.

  “Morning, love, what can I do for you?”

  Reese was six-three, blond, skinny as anything but he was only seventeen and wouldn’t fill out for a couple of years yet. He was wearing tight, old-style blue jeans, wrecked Converse hi-tops and a loose black T-shirt. His accent was a Sligo variety that could make him a small fortune as a barman in London.

  “The Volvo wouldn’t start yesterday. I have to go to Fermanagh tomorrow – you couldn’t look it over for me could ya?”

  “Not a problem,” he said.

  He popped the hood, did his thing.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Where do you want me to start?” he asked.

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Aye,” he said grinning.

  “What do you need to fix just to get me to Enniskillen?”

  He thought for a minute, scratched under an armpit, grinned.

  “Sparks, belt,” he said.

  “Do it.”

  “Need to go to the garage to get sparks if you want to wait.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  She called the girls and gave them cheese and pickle sandwiches and orange lollies.

  She sent them back onto the beach. Spring was coming, it could be lovely – she’d be sorry to leave. This was one of the places they’d all enjoyed together. Maybe it reminded the kids of Richard’s beach house, not a million miles away.

  She saw Reese driving back along the shore road with the supplies.

  She went inside the cabin and looked in the bathroom mirror at her hair. It was long and straggled and a lot of the natural copper had bleached blonde. The wind and elements had brought out her freckles. A huge line of them across the bridge of her nose looked like scar tissue. Still she knew she was an attractive woman. She brushed her hair and changed into a denim shirt and left the top three buttons undone so that her black bra showed. She disciplined the freckles with powder and applied a little dusky eyeshadow.

  She waved to him through the window. He nodded and went to work on the truck.

  She wanted him. Badly. Two birds with one stone. What did it matter what that made her? At least she wasn’t doing it for drugs.

  “Well love, I suppose that about does it,” he said after forty-five minutes.

  “What do I owe you?”

  “Forty euros would cover it.”

  She checked on the girls. The tide was two miles out and not due to turn for a couple of hours. Eric’s Ford Sierra was gone.

  She opened her purse, pretended to look inside. “I may be a little short,” she said.

  “Whatever you’ve got,” he said.

  He didn’t know his lines. She sighed. She found her purse and gave him the money, leaving him with a vague sense of disappointment.

  She watched his truck kick dust and called the girls and got them ready.

  It was hard to tell Claire that they were moving on again. She went to the bathroom to secretly cry. Sue didn’t really get it at all.

  Rachel packed the suitcases, made sandwiches, looked out the puzzles and games from the Coleraine drive.

  “Where this time?” Claire asked wearily.

  There was only one place left.

  “Well we can’t go east cos that’s the way we came.”

  “We can’t go west cos that’s the Atlantic,” Claire said, playing along.

  “We can’t go north because that’s the edge of the world,” Rachel said.

  Claire smiled, that little toothed double-dimpled grin of hers. “So, it’s south then.”

  “Yeah, south, south-east really.”

  I have one place left that’s off the grid, Tom, she added to herself.

  She loaded the Volvo and belted the girls in the back seat. She put the 9-millimetre in the passenger’s seat, safetied and trigger-locked, just like Tom had shown her.

  “Take a last look at Donegal, girls,” she said.

  “It’s too misty to see anything,” Claire muttered.

  “Look anyway.”

  She drove up the private road until it looped back and joined the N58.

  “South,” she said and turned the clunky dial that flipped the lights as a small spell against a fog.

  Rachel had good instincts. She was right about Tom.

  As soon as he’d finished speaking to her he’d gone to see his boss, who was packing for the return trip to Ireland.

  Helena was downstairs swimming a couple of laps.

  They’d talked about the laptop.

  The conversation grew heated.

  Tom was flabbergasted. Angry. Amazed.

  But then his temper cooled and he sat down to think.

  He thought for several hours.

  Killian was the wrong man for this job.

  He had read Killian’s CV. He was a thieving tinker’s brat from some shitehole north of Belfast. Unfortunately he and Coulter had hit it off, which was fine when all that was at stake was a couple of brats. Bints at that.

  But now everything was at stake.

  It would have to be someone from outside.

  No Irish or English sandman could risk the heat.

  The flight from Hong Kong to London was due to leave in an hour.

  Tom wanted it settled before they got into the air.

  He called Michael Forsythe in New York.

  “What is it?” Michael asked.

  “You sent us a fucking gyppo,” Tom said.

  “Jesus, don’t tell me you’re prejudiced.”

  “So you knew?”

  “Of course I knew. Listen, Killian’s one of the best.”

  “His name’s not even Killian is it? He’s one of the fucking Cleary Clan isn’t he? Fucking north Belfast fucking tinkers, the fucking worst.”

&
nbsp; “Tom, what is it? I did Richard a favour here. As a friend. I don’t normally deal with this kind of stuff. I’m up on a whole other level these days.”

  “Aye, I know, sorry – look Mike, I’m in the red zone here. There’s been a wee complication.”

  “Oh aye?”

  “Aye, nothing I can talk about over the phone even on this line, but Killian’s not the boy I want on this case. Pity of it is that he and fucking Coulter hit it off. Dick likes him.”

  “He’s good, he’s very good, Tom. Nearly as good as me back in the day,” Michael assured him.

  “It’s not that. It’s not just finding the bints. With this particular wrinkle I’m going to need an iceman.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “A real piece of work. He’ll do what he’s told, no questions, take the pay cheque and vanish. It’s not just that Killian’s a tinker, I need someone who isn’t squeamish. Someone who is not connected in any way to Belfast. Someone from your side of the sheugh.”

  “Outsider. That makes me think it – whatever it is – is very bad.”

  “It is. I’m thinking Killian stays in to find the hoor, but someone at a whole other level does the rest.”

  Michael didn’t hesitate. “You’ll be wanting the Starshyna then. I’ll have one of my boys give him a call.”

  And with that the last of the pieces fell into place.

  chapter 6

  starshyna

  THE PLACE STANK OF DEAD MEXICANS AND NOBODY WAS EVEN dead yet. He found a sports store at a strip mall outside of Nogales and bought himself a set of swimmer’s nostril clamps and a pair of golf gloves. At first they overcharged him thinking that he was a tourist but a moment later the manager followed him out into the street to give him his real change.

  Stuff like that happened to Markov all the time.

  He took the money and stood there on a sort of boardwalk.

  From his pocket he removed a hard rubber ball and bounced it into his left hand ten times and then put it away.

  The sports store was next to a shop selling cheap, crudely figured statues of the Virgin Mary, the pietas looking like a Finnish bog monster with its victim. They depressed him and he wondered if he’d made a mistake coming here. It was hot, you couldn’t get Coke Zero, and his phone didn’t work even after he’d pushed the + key. And the heat really was bothering him. In Vegas you could live in air-conditioning; but then again that was the kind of living that had made him soft.