“David, ye know that I can never return yer feelins’.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter though. Or rather it does, but somehow whatever the form of it, love seems a rare commodity in this country of late. So I thought perhaps,” his fair skin was flushed, though his eyes still met the stark honesty of Pat’s, “it only mattered that it existed at all, and not that it wasn’t proper.”
“Yer very brave to just say it out like that, my mood bein’ what it is today,” Pat said, expression unreadable.
David shrugged. “I did it more for myself than you, truth be told.”
“Well ye’ll forgive me if I don’t quite know how to respond to such an admission.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
Pat obviously took his words at face value, because he drank his tea without further comment. David supposed it was preferable to the punch on the nose he’d half expected.
“I would hope that,” David laughed, though it came out with a fractured note, “despite the travesty in Derry and uncomfortable admissions on my own part, we could still be friends. Unless of course I remind you of a part of yourself you despise.”
Pat looked at him for a long time, dark eyes giving away nothing of what went on behind them. Finally, he smiled wearily. “Can ye just give me a little time to figure out what that means? Right now, I’m not sure of much in my life an’ I’m so angry that I’m afraid of myself. Suddenly it seems I may be capable of things I wouldn’t have countenanced a month ago.”
It was a huge admission, David knew, for a man who was so intensely private. And who, admittedly, had no reason under the sun, at present, to trust him.
Except that he loved him, and thought perhaps Pat understood there was no force on earth that would cause David to betray that emotion.
Chapter Sixty-five
Neither Friend nor Enemy
STANDING IN THE RAIN on the Mullabrack Road, some miles beyond Portadown, Pamela was severely questioning the state of her sanity. She was on her way to a meeting with the most infamous Loyalist that had ever come out of the heartland of Protestant extremity. A man who was famous for his ‘shoot now, ask questions later’ policy.
The phone call that had drawn her here had come in three days earlier at the Tennant Street Station, where she’d been filing her pictures and conferring with one of the constables over a few details in the photos.
She’d answered with her mind still on the dumped body in the photo. The voice on the other end jolted her.
“I hear yer lookin’ into an old murder.” The tone was direct, and the phrase was not in the form of a question.
“Who is this?”
“William Bright. Is the name familiar to ye?
“Yes,” she’d replied, while a small snake of fear uncoiled in her belly. William Bright was a man one heard of, occasionally saw pictures of, and devoutly hoped to never meet in person.
“Scared yet, lass?”
“A little,” she admitted.
The chuckle on the other end of the line was dry.
“If ye want to know what really happened to Brian Riordan, ye’ll be on the Mullabrack Road just beyond the walls of Gosford House, Tuesday mornin’ round eight o’clock. A couple of my lads will pick ye up.”
“How did you know—” she began, then fell silent at the unmistakable click of the receiver going down.
“Problem?” the constable asked, not looking up from the negatives he was going over with a magnifying glass.
“No.”
Now standing here on this empty stretch of road, it took all her willpower not to jump back in the car and flee for the relative safety of home. She turned her keys over in her pocket, noting with part of her mind that the leaves on the beeches were beginning to unfurl, lending a soft green mist to the heavily wooded road. Then she wondered if this was the last time she’d see leaves open, or anything else for that matter.
“Get a grip, girl,” she told herself sternly under her breath. Just then, she heard the chuggy thrum of a car cresting the small rise. She braced herself, the teeth of her keys cutting deep enough to draw blood from her palm.
There were two men in the car, both hooded and both well armed. The one on the passenger side got out, pistol cocked casually in her direction.
“Get in the back, we’re blindfoldin’ ye first though.”
She’d anticipated this. They wouldn’t want her to know where they were taking her. She nodded and walked over to where the man waited for her. The blindfold was a grubby football scarf in the red, royal blue, and white of the Glasgow Rangers. It reeked of stale cigarette smoke and spilled ale.
After the man had fastened the scarf tightly across her eyes, he put a hand to the back of her head and shoved her roughly into the back seat of the small car, getting in behind her and pulling her head down to his knee.
“Don’t fuckin’ move,” he said, “an’ don’t try anything stupid or I’ll shoot ye as ye lie. Understood?”
She nodded, wishing fervently she’d given in to her desire to flee minutes earlier. The car made a lurching u-turn and then took off in the direction it had come from. They were heading back to the carriageway. The man kept a firm hand on the back of her neck, his denim leg hard and smelling strongly of car oil.
The car settled to a steady pace. They were traveling toward Markethill far as she could determine. An odd choice considering the IRA was extremely strong in that area. Though there were several desperately lonely country roads between here and there, the knowledge of which did little to calm her.
“Nice tits for a Fenian bitch,” the man above her said in a conversational tone to the driver. She swallowed hard over the lump of fear in her throat. She didn’t dare even wriggle under the hand, though the fear of rape was almost stronger in her than that of death.
“None of that, man. Billy said she’s not to be touched for now.”
The for now chilled her, but she was relieved to know that at least for the present she was kept safe by a hard man’s word. Inside her head she began her fifth round of prayer to ‘Our Lady’ as a way to calm herself and hopefully draw some divine intervention in her direction.
The hand on her neck pulled her back, until her face was only inches from the man’s groin. She stiffened her neck and gritted her teeth, knowing it was a game of intimidation, to show fear would be suicidal.
“Squeamish are ye?” he said, with a low throaty chuckle that would have stood the hairs up on her entire body were they not already stiff with fear.
The rest of the ride was accomplished in this fashion, until they turned down a considerably bumpy lane where she could hear the scrape of tree branches along the sides of the car.
“End of the line,” the man said as the car lurched to a rough halt.
Her first impression was a heavy smell of sap, which told her they were in a wooded area, with not another human soul around for miles. Not comforting, but what she’d expected.
The man pulled her out of the car by her collar, shoving her blind ahead of him. She stumbled and he caught her roughly by the elbow, shoving her forward again. She could feel the menace in his touch, and knew that only a word or two stood between her and the unpleasant thoughts in his mind becoming real acts.
He pushed her through a doorway. The driver seemed to be staying outside, for the door shut behind them. The scarf was then untied, but left looped around her throat. He put his hands in the waistband of her jeans, then slid them around.
“Have to check ye, boss’s orders.”
It was too dark to see his face but she could feel his smile as he opened the front of her blouse and put blunt fingers under the bottom edge of her brassiere cups in order to determine if she was wired.
“That’ll do Rob,” said a man who’d emerged from a shadowed doorway. “She’s clean, bring her in.”
She was pulled through the open doorway into a room with windows three-quarters of the way up the dank walls. She blinked in an effort to adjust her vision t
o the light, pallid as it was. It took a few seconds for the spots to clear and then she surveyed the man in front of her.
He was bald and barrel-chested with thickset arms sheathed to the wrists in Loyalist tattoos. Union Jacks, a single woman with a rifle facing defiantly forward, a masked gunman, and no less than four red hands between the two arms.
“Sit down,” he gestured to a chair that sat in the middle of the room. It was a rickety aluminum framed kitchen chair, covered with cracked and dirty yellow upholstery. She sat gingerly upon it. Despite appearances, it was sturdy and her jellied legs were grateful for the support.
“Rob, make tea.” He gestured curtly at the man who’d held her down in the backseat of the car.
“So ye want to know what happened to Brian Riordan?”
She nodded. The man had the flat, careful stare of a lizard. His eyes were the clear pale blue that was only found in Ireland. He clearly enjoyed his ability to unnerve, for he was relaxed, hands loosely linked together and one leg cocked up on the other.
“Why do ye want to know? Man’s been dead long time. It seems a bit risky pryin’ at his coffin lid now.”
“It’s a trail I’m following up. I stumbled across some information that indicated he’d been murdered rather than the accident it was made to seem at the time.”
The man eyed her quietly, not even the slightest flicker of concern or interest creasing his face.
“I’d advise ye not to lie to me girl, or I’ll let the boys out there do as they like with ye. Out this way there’ll be none to hear ye scream.” This was said without emotion or heat, but merely as a statement of fact.
The tea arrived then and William put a finger up to warn her to silence. The man named Rob had removed his hood, which worried her somewhat. He handed her a mug of tea. She took it, grateful for the small object that gave her hands something to hold.
“Drink it,” William said and it was not a suggestion but an order. She sipped carefully at the hot tea, hoping they’d not drugged it. It had come from the same pot that he now poured his own tea from, so it didn’t seem likely.
Rob absented himself from the room, but not before flashing a nasty grin in her direction. She shivered, hoping William Bright’s word would hold her all the way back to Belfast.
She took as deep a breath as she could manage and told him the truth.
“Had he lived, he would have been my father-in-law. His sons were led to believe he took his own life, when I found out that wasn’t the case I knew I needed to go after the truth.”
“And ye think they’ll thank ye for it?”
“No, maybe not, but I still need find the truth if I can.”
“Truth seekers in this country tend to end up dead.”
“You called me here,” she said.
His eyes narrowed the slightest bit and then he grinned, showing a tooth crowned in gold. “Fuck me if I didn’t, girl.”
Pamela chose to ignore the possible connotations contained in that simple Ulsterism.
“I’ll tell ye straight, because I’m a straight man, an’ if William Bright tells ye a thing on his word, ye know it’s true.”
She nodded, noting the man’s referral to himself in the third person, an oddity that seemed to crop up a lot with the men who ran in paramilitary circles.
“That he was killed comes as no surprise to ye at this point, but why and who killed him may contain a jolt or two.”
“So he was murdered?” she asked, needing to confirm it for once and all.
“Aye, shot through the heart—his request ye mind—at point blank range. The bomb malfunctionin’ was cover of a sort. Hard to tell that a man’s been executed when ye can’t even gather all the bits of him together.”
She clenched her hands around the teacup until it seemed in imminent danger of shattering under the pressure. Brian Riordan wasn’t just a statistic to her, he was the father of Casey and Pat. Through their memories and stories, and judging by the men they had become, she had grown to love and respect the man that she had never had the privilege of meeting. The thought of him on his knees having to choose the method of his own execution made her chest hurt.
“Why would it need to be covered up? Both sides are pretty blunt with their killing. Rather like sticking it in the public arena, I would think.”
“Times were different then, an’ ye need to ask yerself why it would need covering up? Who is it keeps their face in the shadows at all times?”
“Are you saying the government is behind this?”
He shrugged. “I’m makin’ suggestions, you take it where ye want. Maybe it was simply an own-goal an’ the IRA didn’t want the egg of it on their face.”
She gritted her teeth in frustration, had she really risked all this—the ride here, the leering man in the kitchen who would rape her with little more concern than he’d take brushing his teeth—for suppositions and half hinted at innuendoes that didn’t make the picture any clearer.
“I don’t think you would have called me here if his own side had him murdered.”
“I heard ye were a smart girl.”
“So not IRA, not your side. That only leaves the British. Which is supposed to be your side, but in this case isn’t.”
He didn’t respond, which she took for leave to continue in the direction she was heading.
“So the who is simple enough, someone in the government. I still don’t see the why.”
“They say a man is only as wise as the company he keeps, so maybe ye need to look at who he was spendin’ time with right before he died.”
“How am I to find that out?”
“It’s not that long ago, ten years is like a day here.”
“I feel like you’ve handed me a bunch of frayed strings and are asking me to knit them into a first class jumper,” she said.
“May be that I have, but yer a smart lass, put it together. It’s a small country. Everything is connected from the top of the hill to the whelp in the gutter.”
“But why—how—” she sputtered, trying to gather her thoughts together to see the path he was trying to point her down.
“Everything’s connected,” he repeated emphatically. She knew that to push any further would guarantee his warning coming to fruition about letting the men loose on her. Still, in the jumble of all the pieces, something was missing. Something that was hovering out at the edge of her consciousness and shrinking from coming into the light.
“You knew Brian, didn’t you?”
A look of annoyance flicked across the impassive features.
“I was familiar with him for a time.”
“Were you friends?”
“I wasn’t his friend, but nor was I his enemy. Look,” the man leaned forward, eyes snaking to the door and then back to her. “There were a series of meetins’ in sixty, sixty-one—people from both governments an’ armies—that’s where ye need to look. That’s how I knew him. There were men involved in those meetins’ that were involved in other things, still are. I think yer father-in-law came across some information it’d be better if he’d not. He never seemed a man to let evil lie. Now I think,” he continued in a louder tone, which she understood was not for her benefit, “it’s time ye left before I get bored with this conversation. Ye didn’t meet here with me either. Understand? If I hear that yer tongue’s been waggin’ I’ll hand ye over to Rob. I have mercy, a bullet to the head an’ I’m done, but Rob likes to play with his dinner before he eats it.”
As threats went, it was fairly effective. She stood, a cold trickle of sweat running down the groove of her backbone.
He escorted her to the door, nodding to Rob who stood outside it. “Ye take her back to her car, an’ no funny business mind. I’ll break yer head like a melon should I find out otherwise.”
She followed Rob down the hall to the heavily fortified door.
“Lass.”
She turned back to the man who was quite possibly the most feared Protestant in all of the British Isles.
&nbs
p; “Yes?”
“Mind what I said about truth seekers.”
THE RIDE BACK WAS ACCOMPLISHED in much the same fashion as the ride there had been. She was blindfolded, head down on the man’s knee. Above her, he conversed with the driver about football scores and a tart he’d met up with in the Capstan Lounge. He seemed to take particular relish in telling the story of his conquest in minute detail. One hand was kept firmly on the back of her neck; the other occasionally stroked itself down her arm and the side of her neck.
Then suddenly the driver who’d been entirely silent exclaimed, “Dere’s someone in the ditch—” He jerked the car hard right, and they flew off the road into the field.
“Did ye fuckin’ tell anyone ye were comin’ here?” Rob asked through gritted teeth, the pistol barrel biting sharply into her temple.
“No, I swear it,” she said, praying that he’d believe her. She didn’t think he’d hesitate to shoot her here and now.
The next few minutes were a blur of the car flying out of control through a hail of bullets. The scarf had come off and she had an impression of the color green, the man above her screaming obscenities and then just as suddenly he was completely silent and she could smell blood and feel the slippery warmth of it on her hands. The car was slowing in a huge spraying arc that made her stomach lurch up to her throat. It crashed into an immovable force and her head slammed into the door hard enough that a million stars exploded in front of her eyes.
And then suddenly everything was very, very still and she was miraculously still alive and seemingly in one piece, though her head hurt dreadfully and her ankle felt as though it had been sheared through by a sharp object.
She stayed low, knowing if the man outside saw her he’d shoot and worry about her identity later. She stayed perfectly still, the smell of gas dizzying her. As bad as the pain in her head was, she was thinking clearly enough to realize if she crawled out of the car they’d kill her. She could hear their approach even now. If she played dead would he leave her be, or torch the car? Which might be moot in another minute or two as the smell of gas was increasingly strong, and the car could well explode of its own accord. Should she hope to heaven it didn’t and pray he walked away, or take her chances with the man who now sounded like he was only feet from the car? She caught a whiff of smoke and made her decision.
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 74