Falling Glass

by Adrian McKinty

  “Are you sure? I thought Douggie would be your backup. He’s got experience.”

  Douggie’s “experience” had resumé inflation written all over it. He was somebody’s nephew or little brother.

  “I’m sure he’s very capable, but I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

  “Yes, of course,” Paulson said, a little chastened.

  Michael left his gear, went back inside Terminal 5, had breakfast at Gordon Ramsey’s and read the English papers. He too tried The Times crossword but he had been so long out of the UK that he got few of the contemporary references.

  When he returned Paulson was standing beside the limo and smiling.

  “We got you a black BMW 5 series. Common as muck up there,” he said.

  “Great,” Michael replied with satisfaction.

  “And Douggie’s programming the satnav right now, he’s taking you the easiest route, i.e. not through London, is that okay?”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “Did you get breakfast?”

  “Went to Gordon Ramsey’s. Got the Spanish omelette.”

  “It was okay?”

  “If you want to eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day,” Michael said, attempting to diffuse the tension a little.

  It didn’t work. “You want another breakfast? Ramsey’s famous for his small portions. You know there’s a McDonald’s on the slip road. The last thing you wanna be is hungry on a job like this.”

  “Where’s this Beemer?” Michael said with a little inward sigh.

  He resisted the temptation of the McDonald’s and had no difficulty finding the M25.

  He listened to Radio 4 until the satnav’s saucy female voice began warning him about the turn-off for the M11.

  He took the M11 to Duxford and then almost immediately took the A505 and finally the A1301 to Sawston.

  He found that he was in East Anglia. A part of England he had never been to before.

  Flat: wheat, barley and rapeseed fields.

  It was attractive countryside.

  At the village of Sawston he let the satnav take him onto New Road, Babraham Road, Woodland Road and at last Gog Magog Street.

  He parked the car, got out, stretched.

  The street only had houses on one side. Nineteen-thirties-style Mock Tudor mansions that looked across the fields to a small set of hills to the north.

  It was drizzling.

  His watch told him that it was five past five in the morning, which meant that it was 10.05.

  The scouting reports had been consistent and at this time of the day he was not expecting trouble. Killian worked at the Royal Mail sorting office in Cambridge. He cycled the eight miles into the city each morning at five and came back around one.

  And the traveller camp itself was not difficult to spot. A line of a dozen caravans on the common next to the wood.

  The field looked boggy.

  Michael winced.

  It would play havoc with his shoe leather but there didn’t appear to be any actual road so there wasn’t much of a choice.

  He stood for a bit and let the warm English drizzle coat him. The rainwater slowly reservoired in his sandy hair, awaiting a critical mass when it would pour down his face in baptismal streams. “This is stupid,” he said and got back inside the car and texted Bridget:

  ARVD SFLY NO PRBS LUL M.

  He put the silenced Biretta in the specially cut pocket of his jacket, got out of the BMW and locked the car.

  He stepped over the sheugh onto the common and walked gingerly across the field to the traveller camp.

  A dog came and kept him company. Thinking he must have food or something, a goat began following him too.

  He reached the camp without adding to his menagerie.

  There were a few people pottering around. Michael nodded a good morning to a kid and looked for the caravan with the blue door.

  He found it a little apart from the others on a small rise near the wood. It was tiny and dented but on a good site, protected from the easterlies by an ancient oak tree and with a view to the north and west. There was a goat outside it too on a long tether. A nanny goat that Killian obviously used for the milk in his tea.

  It nuzzled at the pocket of his trousers and he had to shoo it.

  Michael looked for a spare key under a breeze block and a rubbish bin and finally under a spare tyre. There was no key.

  He went round the back to see if any of the windows were open, but they were all locked.

  “It’s the old skelly then, isn’t it?” Michael said to the goat. This was not his field of expertise and it took him nearly ten minutes to get the door open with the wire and the skeleton key. If any of his boys had ever taken that long he would have fired them on the spot.

  He was fortunate in having not drawn any serious attention or, worse, comments from any of Killian’s neighbours.

  He’d had a yarn prepared – “I’m a cousin from Belfast, I’m here to surprise him, don’t say anything” – but he was glad that he didn’t have to use it.

  Killian’s caravan was uninteresting.

  A fold-out bed. A TV. A radio. A tub of rice. A bag of new potatoes. Cans of mushroom soup. A couple of paperback novels. A distinct aroma.

  Michael sat on a rather grubby-looking sofa, set the Biretta on a Formica table in front of him and rifled through the novels, finally selecting a bruised copy of Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger.

  The first story was about a newly wed couple who were on holiday in Miami – she was uptight and he had mental problems. Michael had never read Salinger before though Bridget and Siobhan swore by him; that was perhaps the reason why he’d avoided him, he reflected: the girls, God love them, did not share many of his tastes.

  He pushed open the rear caravan window and let in a more pleasant odour of cut grass. He could hear kids talking to the billy goat in Irish and there was birdsong from the oak tree.

  If Killian had decided to cut across the fields that particular afternoon, which he did sometimes when it wasn’t raining, he would have seen the open window and Michael would have been rumbled; but as it was he stuck to the road.

  He liked this job. Delivering letters on a bike to the villages of South Cambridgeshire was like a profession from the sepia fifties that never were. The person who had had the route before him had obviously been some kind of slacker genius who had convinced the Royal Mail that it took you seven hours to do what you could have done hopping on one foot in half that time.

  Killian got to know his customers and they him. It was a mutual admiration society and everyone liked a bit of craic.

  A third of the way through his round he stopped to drink a pint of Greene King at the Pickerel which had been serving working stiffs like himself for half a millennium.

  After the pub it was a very light load and he’d stop to chat to anyone who wanted to talk. On this particular day he’d gotten the brief histories of concrete, colonial Simla and Dutch Jazz and listened to an unpatriotic attack on Lord Nelson, who apparently could have caught Napoleon with his pants down if he hadn’t been so hasty at the Nile.

  Killian was feeling good. He wheeled his bike into the tinker camp and nodded to the Coaghs, new arrivals from Donegal, who only spoke Irish.

  “A good afternoon to you, Eamonn,” Mr Coagh said to him in pure Gaelic, adding nothing about the visitor he had seen go into Killian’s caravan.

  “And to you a good afternoon, Seamus,” Killian replied.

  He wheeled the bike on. He didn’t really like the name, Eamonn, which he had assumed on hopping the ferry to England, but it was way too late to change it now.

  Of course he could never go back to Killian or even his real name. The Ulster peelers would be after him forever and he’d heard rumours that Michael Forsythe had a contract out on him too.

  He leaned his bike up against the caravan and rubbed the beard which the Communication Workers Union had fought to let him keep in the face of management�
�s displeasure.

  Molly was looking at him nervously and he could tell she had a guilty conscience about something.

  “If I find you’ve been at my carrots I’ll be furious,” he said.

  Molly bleated and shook her head as if she’d understood.

  Killian put the key in the lock.

  Michael was on the last paragraph of the Salinger when he heard Killian’s voice outside.

  He picked up the Biretta and slowly clicked off the safety.

  Killian came in, clocked Michael, tensed, thought about a sudden move.

  Michael disabused him of the notion with a shake of the head.

  “Close the door, sit down,” Michael said.

  Killian closed the door and sat opposite him in the rickety wicker chair he had found in a skip.

  What a bloody shitty chair to die in, was Killian’s immediate thought.

  “I’ll be with you in one minute,” Michael said. “Don’t, you know, fucking breathe.”

  Michael kept the gun trained on Killian, picked up the Salinger again and finished the story about the newly weds.

  He put the book down and shook his head. “Dear oh dear,” he said.

  “Which story?” Killian asked.

  “‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’.”

  “Ah,” Killian agreed.

  Michael dog-eared the book.

  “So,” Killian asked. “Why you?”

  “Why me? Me in person you mean?”

  Killian nodded.

  Michael sighed. “It’ll sound a bit old-fashioned.”

  “I’m all about old-fashioned.”

  “It’s my debt of honour, isn’t it? I recommended you to Dick Coulter. I told him you were the right man for the job. In a way it’s all my fault.”

  Killian rubbed his chin. “I take it you’re not of the school that believes everything worked out for the best?”

  “How so?”

  “Well, Markov took the fall for the hit on Rachel’s parents – which he did do, incidentally.”

  “I know,” Michael said, his eyes narrowing.

  “You want me to continue?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. So Markov takes the fall for that, the press loves it, blames the Russian mafia or the FSB, case closed on that. Tom dies of an overdose. I take the fall for the hit on Coulter, but nobody knows who the hell I am, except that I’m either Russian or Irish and probably involved with the FSB too. The upshot is that you’re not involved, Rachel inherits a chunk of change to provide for the girls, Helena inherits the bulk of the estate.”

  “Is that it?” Michael asked.

  “No. Dermaid McCann doesn’t get his name dragged through the mud, the IRA doesn’t erupt in civil war, the Northern Ireland Assembly doesn’t collapse, peace reigns in Ulster.”

  “So everybody wins?”

  “Everybody wins,” Killian agreed.

  “Except for poor old Tom and poor old Dick Coulter,” Michael said.

  “They were kiddie fiddlers. Pimps. Poor old Tom Eichel and Dick Coulter should be doing ten years.”

  Michael pursed his lips. “You’ve got proof of that, of course.”

  “Seen it with my own eyes,” Killian replied.

  “And now conveniently lost forever,” Michael said.

  Killian knew that Michael was smart. You didn’t get to be where he was without being extremely intelligent. So it annoyed him that Michael was being a prick.

  “Michael, Tom already told you all this – you don’t need the proof, you know it’s true. If you’re looking for an additional reason to top me, be my guest – add the fact that I’m a liar if you want, but I’m not lying and you know it.”

  “The Dick Coulter I knew—” Michael began but Killian interrupted him.

  “Aye, the Dick Coulter you knew was as pure as the driven snow, it was all a terrible misunderstanding. Rachel and me got the wrong end of the bloody stick…”

  Michael coughed. “All right. Let’s say I believe you. It doesn’t really change anything does it?”

  Killian smiled. “How many years since you’ve been on a job, Mike? Since you’ve been in a position like this?”

  Michael leaned back in the sofa. “Must be seven years now since I even picked up a gun. I wouldn’t have done it this time either, but for the fact that it was all so bloody personal.”

  “Okay if I smoke?” Killian asked.

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t. Can you hold off? Are you desperate?” Michael asked.

  “I can hold off,” Killian said.

  “Where was I?” Michael asked.

  “It was all so personal…”

  “Yes, I mean, I liked you, Killian. You had a rep. You were a quality closer. A first-class pressure man who could do the job without breaking a little finger. You were a bit of a wee local star and the fact that you were so conflicted about it made you even better. You were a class act. I heard about your Uruguay story. Genius.”

  Killian smiled. “You liked that?”

  Michael laughed. “I did, aye. And in many ways I’m sympathetic to your point of view. Avoiding the rough stuff. Using the old noggin…I dig it. But you’ve crossed a line here. What you’ve done cannot be allowed to stand.”

  Killian looked Michael in those blue-grey eyes, now a little greyer than blue.

  “No one cares, Michael. Coulter’s dead and buried and on his way to being forgotten. Everybody’s rich. Nobody gives a shit,” Killian said.

  “Not no one. I know and I care,” Michael said, his voice rising, becoming a little shrill. Killian’s eyebrows shot up. The Northern Irish house style was understatement. You didn’t get all shouty at the drop of a hat. Michael had been in New York too long.

  “Why don’t you have that cigarette now,” Michael said. “Maybe I’ll riff on the smoke.”

  Killian was wearing a light jacket over his blue post-office shirt. He reached in the outside pocket for his Marlboros and his lighter. He’d been easing off. He was down to five a day, not that that would matter much now.

  “Are you okay for one?” Killian asked.

  “I gave up,” Michael said.

  “I’m in the process, or was.”

  Michael sighed again. “Ach, I mean, what kind of a life is this anyway, eh? Always looking over your shoulder, stuck here in a dull wee corner of England?”

  Killian took a drag on the cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.

  “It’s not dull. Nowhere’s dull if you look hard enough. Take a gander at yon book at the end of the shelf there. Take a wee look, you might get a kick out of it. I know I did.”

  Michael picked up a book with the title Where Troy Once Stood by a Dutchman called Iman Wilkens. He flipped the cover, read the back, was completely uninterested, put the book down.

  “It’s this guy’s thesis that all the events of the Iliad took place in East Anglia. The whole of the Trojan War took place in Britain during the Bronze Age. It was so famous that the story got spread across Europe and adopted by the Greeks and so became part of their mythology.”

  “It sounds nuts.”

  “Oh, it is. Completely. Wilkens got the idea because it rains so much in the Iliad but not very much in Greece or Anatolia. So where does it rain a lot? England, of course. It’s so loony it’s kind of brilliant in a way. Anyway, you see that hill behind you through the window?”

  Michael smiled. “You think I’m gonna fall for that?”

  Killian chuckled. “Okay don’t look, but anyway that hill behind you is called the Gog Magog, we’re on Gog Magog Street and according to Wilkens’s theory that hill, that very hill is the hill of Troy.”

  “That’s why you moved here?” Michael asked.

  “No. We moved here because of the common land, but I found that book in the Oxfam Shop and started reading it and thought it was great,” Killian said and then in the voice of the preview guy at the movies: “Here we are in the shadow of ancient Ilium.”

  “Or not,” Michael said, laughing.r />
  Because of who he was and what he’d done Michael didn’t have many friends. He liked Killian. Killian could have been a pal, once. But, of course, not now.

  The laughter died on Michael’s lips. “Look, Killian, I don’t want to give you false hope. I don’t want you to be labouring under any illusions. You realise that, right? This isn’t a debriefing. I haven’t come here to get your side of events, I’ve come to end this sorry episode.”

  “I thought there might be a reason for the fancy-looking piece of equipment in your right hand.”

  “I mean, you see where I’m going with this? It’s for honour and, if you will, professional reasons.”

  “What if I put up a fight?” Killian asked

  “Do whatever you have to do, but only one of us is going to walk out of this…” Michael’s voice tailed off.

  “Caravan – you’re allowed to say the word, you won’t turn into a tinker just by saying it,” Killian said.

  “I wasn’t shitting on your accommodation, I was just trying to think of the British term. We call them trailer homes in America,” Michael said.

  “Aye, I know, trailer trash and all that malarkey.”

  “No, you don’t know. That’s got nothing to do with it. I’m not prejudiced. I’ve been through the mill myself a few times as well, mate.”

  Killian put his hand on his thighs and smiled. “By ‘put up a fight’ I didn’t mean fisticuffs. I meant me using my skills, what I’ve got, to make you change your mind,” he said carefully.

  Michael nodded.

  There was not a soul in the pasture behind him and it was beautiful out there: a golden sea of rapeflowers, an azure horizon, carnation-shaped clouds. The light was bending through the perspex making a halo in the dust thermals above Michael’s head.

  Killian liked that. An angel, even an angel of death needed a halo.

  “As I was trying to say, only one of us is going to leave this caravan alive. I know you’re good, mate, but you’re not talking your way out of this one,” Michael said.

  “You’re not going to fault me for trying though, are you?”

  “No.”

  Killian’s smile broadened. What more could you ask than to be given a chance to do what you did best.

  “Well then,” Killian said and out poured the words, which, of course, are deadlier by far than bullets in the hands of an expert practitioner.