Falling Glass

by Adrian McKinty

  Gently does it.

  That’s it.

  Perfect.

  Using the needle as a lever, you slide out one plastic rim of the cuff with your thumb. Centimetre by centimetre.

  If the needle snaps and gets stuck in there…

  But you’ve done this before.

  A hundred times.

  Your father taught it to you and the other boys.

  Escape from handcuffs, the picking of locks, the untripping of alarms… tools of the trade.

  Plastic handcuffs were after his time, but you’d learned their secret in an hour and a half from your Uncle Patrick: you create a lever, run the plastic tie over the lever and it slides completely out…

  You have the lever and all you need now is patience.

  A quarter inch, half an inch, an inch, an inch and a half…

  You manoeuvre out the strip and wriggle your wrist loose until it’s free.

  “Yes!”

  You stand, rip off the duct tape covering your eyes, run to the bedroom, call Sean.

  Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Mary, put Sean on, this is an emergency.”

  “Who is this?

  “Put Sean on now!”

  Pause.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Killian. The tail got me. Russian kid. Beat the shit out of me, tied me up. And now he’s gone to Ballymena to brace Rachel’s parents.”

  “What? Fuck. Okay. Okay. Well, that won’t do any good. They don’t know where she is. Tom’s operatives have been tapping their phone, intercepting their mail, following them and she’s wise to it. Doesn’t even bother trying.”

  “Nope. She’s been sending postcards to her da at the RAOB, the fucking Buffs lodge, in Ballymena. I found a letter from him to a place she was staying at in Donegal. She’s skipped, gone somewhere new, but odds are that he knows her new address and now our tail knows he knows. He’ll fucking brace them, get her location, get the drop on us and our fucking half mill.”

  “Jesus! How in the name of god did he get to you?”

  “I don’t know. He followed me. He’s good, okay? He’s must be Forsythe’s. I told you something was fucking fishy about this operation. He’s a fucking Russian. I’m playing with – at least – fractured ribs. He went easy on me. Could have killed me.”

  “Shit.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Two-thirty.”

  “Who do we know in Ballymena? UVF, UDA, must be somebody?”

  “Rocky McGlinn, old stager for the UFF, I think he’s up that way.”

  “Okay, find out the Andersons’ address and tell Rocky to get over there right away. Ivan might not have found it yet. If he has we’re fucked. Regardless I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “From Carrick? No chance.”

  “Call me with the address on the road.”

  “I can believe this bollocks,” Sean muttered.

  “I told you it was too good to be true. You know we could call the peelers. They’d be over in ten minutes and if the bastard’s in there torturing them they’d get him.”

  “Last resort, Killian. Get the peelers involved and there goes our dough.”

  “You’re right. Okay, bye.”

  Action stations.

  Second person to third.

  Killian hung up and pulled on a jumper, jeans and sneakers. He grabbed a coat and ran outside. He got in the Ford Fiesta and turned the key.

  The phone rang.

  “Aye?”

  “Are you sure about this, Killian? He sounds like a bad bastard.”

  “Mary giving you the old eggy?”

  “It’s not about Mary, it’s about you.”

  Just then Killian got a stab of pain from his left eye down to his toes. If he’d been driving he might have ended up in the bloody sheugh.

  “Christ!” he said to himself and groaned.

  He surfed the wave again.

  Let the pain disperse.

  “Killian?”

  “Ugh.”

  “Killian!”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I’m worried about you. Maybe this was a mistake. This is too big for the likes of us.”

  “No. It’s fine. Look, I’m hanging up. Find me that address. Call Rocky.”

  “Okay. If you say so.”

  He killed the phone and set it on his seat.

  Ballymena?

  Beltoy Road to Kilwaughter and then the A36. Twenty miles of single-lane country roads through bog and hill. Closer to twenty-five if he was being honest with himself.

  He flipped the lights, found Classic FM, and drove off. There was probably still that bug of Ivan’s in the car but he could do fuck all about that.

  Two miles later on a bleak stretch of the Tongue Loanen Sean called.

  “The address is 3 Slemish View Lane, Carnalbanagh Sheddings.”

  “Was that in English? Where the fuck is that?”

  “Near Broughshane. Satnav it.”

  “I’ll need to, never heard of it.”

  “Rocky’s on his way over. I promised him a grand.”

  “Tell him to be careful, the guy’s good.”

  “Ach, you know Rock. He’ll be fine.”

  “Aye that’s what I thought till Ivan fucked me up.”

  “Second thoughts, mate? Maybe we should let him take it if he wants it so badly?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Coulter hired me. I had dinner with him and his wife. I flew to fucking China for this gig. This is mine. I will fuck that skinhead up so bad he’ll wish his hoor ma aborted him.”

  He hung up, turned off the music, wound the window down.

  Muggy air had wafted up from Larne Lough into the boglands. The hard rain was over now and a drizzly warm front was hanging over the Antrim Plateau like a sculpture.

  A mile further down the road he saw a car ahead of him. Ivan?

  He took the Fiesta up to a hundred through the village of Glenoe and passed it but it was a Vauxhall Astra, not a Range Rover.

  The phone.

  “Bad news?” he asked.

  “Is there any other kind?” Sean said.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Rocky can’t find the house. He’s says it’s in the arsehole end of nowhere up near Slemish.”

  “Fucking hell. Tell him to keep on it.”

  “Did it come up your satnav?”

  “Haven’t done it yet, was waiting till I got to Broughshane.”

  “Aye well, hopefully one of you will find it. Where are you? How far are you away?”

  “I’m bombing it. I’m doing a ton on the A36.”

  “How long?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “What’s his start?”

  “Hours. Maybe three.”

  “Jesus fuck. Who do we call? Tom?”

  “Tom? Bollocks. This is his play. This is his boy.”

  “What then?”

  “Tell Rocky to get his head out of his arse.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell him to look out for a big white Range Rover – big honking thing, won’t be able to miss it.”

  “Watch where you’re going. Don’t fucking kill yourself.”

  “I won’t.”

  The warm rain was coming sideways from the mountains now and he had to flip the wipers. He turned on the radio again but the reception up here in the wilds was shite. All he could get was accordion music from Radio Scotland.

  He nixed it when the phone rang again.

  “Did you get Rocky?” he asked.

  “Aye, I did,” Sean said.

  “Says he wants two grand now.”

  “Cheeky bugger. What did you say?”

  “What could I say?”

  “Good man. So, what’s the story?”

  “He found the house, he was right, it’s on a country road, right out in the arse end of nowhere.”

  “That’s bad for us. No witnesses.”

  “It is. And there’s worse.�
�

  “Spill.”

  “Ivan’s already there.”

  “How does he know?”

  “He sees the car. Yon big white Range Rover.”

  “Damn it! I’m hanging up, tell him to call me.”

  “Okay.”

  The phone rang a few seconds later.

  “Hi,” Killian said.

  “This is Rocky, is that you, Killian?”

  “Aye.”

  “Thought you were retired? Off at college or something?”

  “You heard wrong. What’s going on, mate?”

  “I see your boy’s car.”

  “You’re at the house?”

  “Am I born daft? Good bit down the road, so I am.”

  “Nice. Now this house, lights are on or off?”

  “Off.”

  “Is he in the car?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Look, I’m going to go a wee bit closer and take a look. I’ll call you back.”

  “Wait a minute! Hold the fucking phone, Rock. This is only a scouting op, okay? You’ll do nothing until I get there? Understand?”

  “I got ya.”

  “Make yourself useful. Write down that licence number and check the car. Fucking approach with caution, mind? Our man’s a hard case from Yak Central. Be careful.”

  “Where am I from, Tickletown?”

  “Seriously Rock.”

  “Okay, okay, so do a scout and then what? Go in the house?”

  “No, no, no! Wait for me. If he drives off, follow him at a distance and I’ll meet you on the road, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And mate, please proceed with caution. This character already did a number on me. I’ll be along in ten.”

  “Dead on mate. I will. Over and out.”

  Killian had reached Ballymena now. Traffic was non-existent. Ballymena was the capital of Free Presbyterian Ulster, it was Paisley Country, Ireland’s most conservative town by a country mile and come midnight all good Presbies were long abed. By 1.00 a.m. you could have walked down the high street naked playing the tuba and not a curtain would have twitched.

  Killian kept his kit on but he hit 105 mph on the bypass to Broughshane.

  The only people who saw him at all were a couple of smack dealers who were in the middle of a moan about the collapse in prices of real estate, stolen cars and brown tar heroin.

  He finally plugged the address into the satnav and a Welsh voice took him through Broughshane, to a spot on the map where there didn’t appear to be anything at all – merely green blankness and dotted lines instead of roads.

  The windscreen told him the same story: rolling hills, boggy sheep farms, cottages abandoned since the famine and not much else. In the starlight you could see the looming presence of Slemish Mountain, which dominated this part of Country Antrim. St Patrick had been a slave on Slemish for seven years and it had a reputation among Killian’s folk as a haunted and unlucky place. Killian, who’d never quite got over his superstitious-in-fucking-spades childhood, shivered.

  The satnav was all Catherine Zeta Jones in the nineties. “You are approaching your destination. You are approaching your destination. You have reached your destination.”

  “I have?” Killian said and peered out into the gloom.

  Nothing.

  He was wondering if he’d programmed the thing correctly when he saw a car parked ahead. Not a white Range Rover.

  He flipped the Fiesta’s headlines to full beam.

  Aye, definitely not a Range Rover – a grey Renault Espace, a big family car.

  “Rocky’s wheels,” Killian said to himself.

  It unnerved him.

  He called Sean.

  “Sean, did Rock ever ring you back?”

  “Nope. I thought he was calling you.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I see his car but I don’t see the Range Rover. Can you give him a buzz while I park.”

  “Sure.”

  Killian pulled the Fiesta into the sheugh two hundred yards back from the Renault. He still couldn’t see the house from here but it must be just over the dip in the road.

  He killed the lights, got out, listened.

  Nothing.

  It was so quiet in fact that you could actually hear the sea, ten or fifteen miles away.

  His phone rang and he switched it to vibrate before answering it.

  “Yes?” he whispered.

  “Rocky’s not answering.”

  A chill went through him. He thought and said the same thing: “That can’t be good.”

  “No,” Sean agreed. “Killian, are you armed?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t have a gun?”

  “I don’t have anything. I’m retired, remember.”

  “What did you do with your shooter?”

  “I give it to Carly McAleese, ’member she was having a domestic with her ex?”

  “Well, that was a fucking buck eejit move wasn’t it? What are you going to do now without a piece?”

  “I’ll be okay, Sean. Look, I’m going in. Don’t call me back. I’ll call you.”

  “Son, I know you need the money, but this doesn’t seem like a brilliant plan – why don’t we abort and call the peelers like you said.”

  “Sean, I’m going in. I’ll call you in ten.”

  Killian hung up and walked along the boggy sheugh to the Renault. When he got there he looked inside. Nobody. A couple of school bags and a stuffed elephant.

  He looked back at the hill.

  The rain had stopped.

  The clouds had blown through and the moon was shining right down the road. If someone was up there by the hedges and they were a half decent shot at all they could take him out easy.

  He had to get off the street.

  He climbed out of the sheugh and up over the fence. He started hiking through a boggy meadow. The moon and the Milky Way had really turned it up a notch and he could see down into a flooded valley on the windward side and back to the town on the lee. It was a part of the country he didn’t recognise, he hadn’t been out here before, even in all his wanderings.

  He struggled to make out the main road to see if a distant car was driving away but another band of rain was coming in from the west and swallowing up virtually everything else in the valley.

  Ivan might indeed be down there legging it but he couldn’t tell.

  He had nothing else. He was all in on this plan.

  He ducked low and walked through the squelching waterlogged ground approaching the Andersons’ place from the back. He jumped a stone wall between the fields and on a rise he finally saw the house.

  No lights.

  No noise.

  No sign of the Range Rover.

  “Damn it,” he whispered.

  He walked on, wading through little mounds of sheep shit and sinkholes filled with water. He came to the edge of their field which was bordered by a river and it was either cross it or go back to the road.

  The road was out of the question with the situation unknown.

  The river was deep, fast moving, black. A barbed-wire fence had been stretched across it a little further up at another field boundary. That would do.

  He ran to the fence and with his Nikes on the bottom wire and his hands grasping at the gaps on the top strand of metal he made his way gingerly across. It vibrated with every movement and he had to lean in to compress it.

  Of course he got cut; in the darkness he couldn’t avoid it and at the end he nearly sliced his thumb on a barb and almost slipped down into the water.

  Blind panic.

  He closed his eyes and made it to the far bank.

  He stepped off the wire onto the tyre and sucked his thumb.

  The moon was moving slowly back behind the rain clouds – darkness would have been nice but he couldn’t wait for it.

  He cut through a crude path in the heather w
orn by stray sheep and reached the back gate of the Andersons’ house.

  He peered through the iron bars. A two-storey farm lodge in white stone. Nice wee spot. Picture postcard scene in the daylight with Slemish and the sea in the background.

  Killian scanned the driveway next to the house. An old farm Land Rover, no Range Rover, no other cars, no nothing.

  The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up.

  The gate was locked but he climbed it easily. He stood in the garden among rows of cabbages and clothes on a washing line. The house was still. Curtains drawn, back door closed, silent.

  Killian walked down the path. Net curtains over a dining-room window. He looked through but saw nothing. He tried the back door. Closed. It was a Northern Ireland Yale Standard. By the age of ten he could open those in two minutes. Every boy in his clan could.

  He took out his pick and was about to put the two ends in the lock when he remembered Ivan’s glass-cutting proclivities.

  He walked around the side of the house.

  Footprints in a rose garden and the kitchen window wide open with a circular cut in the glass next to the handle.

  Killian’s hands were shaking now.

  No gun.

  No clue about what to expect.

  This wasn’t a pathetic gambling addict in a beach town in New Hampshire. This was a pro doing what pros do. Sitting in there, quiet, waiting for him.

  Killian climbed onto the window ledge and noiselessly went through into the kitchen.

  No gun and no flashlight either.

  There was nothing else for it.

  He turned on the kitchen light.

  A tidy little Ulster kitchen: cooker, kettle, fox-hunting prints on the wall, chequered floor, a stack of crossword-puzzle books on a breakfast bar.

  The kitchen door was open and Killian could see into the hallway beyond.

  Something was on the ground.

  Someone.

  He turned on the hall light.

  Rocky McGlinn was lying there face up with the top of his head blown off and the exit wound sprayed all over the Fleur de Lys wallpaper. He’d been shot twice. Once in the gut and then that kill-shot in the temple. There was a lot of blood from the belly slug, which meant that Ivan had questioned him first before checking him in the brain.

  Killian knew what he’d find upstairs.

  His head was throbbing.

  He went back into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.

  He called Sean.

  “Sean boy, send someone to my house in Carrickfergus will you? There’s a chance Ivan will wait for me there to come back. I don’t think he will, but he might. He knows we set Rocky on him anyway.”