‘I’m not saying,’ Drummond answered.
‘But he’s involved.’
‘Mr. Pagan, you asked for a name, I gave you one. Don’t be pressing me for more than I can give you.’
Pagan thought for a second. ‘Why would the Free Ulster Volunteers want me to have this message, Jerry?’
‘You’re looking for Jig, are you not?’
Pagan nodded. His mouth was dry. He filled two glasses with scotch and gave one to Drummond.
Drummond smacked his lips and said, ‘You’ve got the resources to find him. You and the Yanks between you. You can find him before he kills anybody else.’ The word ‘kills’ came out of the Leprechaun’s mouth as culls. Pagan disliked the hard accent of Belfast. The Dublin lilt, by contrast, could be musical and hypnotic.
‘How does the FUV come by this information?’ Pagan asked.
‘That’s something I wouldn’t know,’ Drummond answered. ‘I’m only told so much, Mr. Pagan, and it would be fruitless for me to speculate, wouldn’t it now? But the members of the FUV would like for you to get your hands on Jig and hang the bastard. They don’t like seeing somebody going around killing politicians who are sympathetic to the free Protestants of the North.’
Pagan sipped his drink. ‘We don’t hang people in this country, Jerry.’
‘More’s the pity.’
‘I almost agree with you,’ Pagan said.
There was a silence in the room. The missing money the Leprechaun had mentioned was presumably the same that had been on the Connie O’Mara. Attached, Pagan guessed, to the Courier’s wrist. But there was something here that didn’t quite fit, and he felt faintly uneasy. How the hell did the Free Ulster Volunteers get this information? How did they get so close to Jig that they knew his movements? Or had Jerry Drummond been sent here to convey false information? But that made absolutely no sense. Why would the little man come here with a pack of lies?
He looked at the Leprechaun. ‘What else can you tell me, Jerry?’
‘I’ve already told you a wee bit more than I intended, Mr. Pagan. What else is there?’
‘America’s a big place.’
Drummond finished his drink and stood up. He was twinkling again and there was a certain mischief in his eyes. ‘Oh, didn’t I mention New York, Mr. Pagan?’
‘No, you didn’t mention New York.’
‘And Father Tumulty? Did I mention him?’
Pagan shook his head. This was so typical of Drummond. He’d dole his message out in fragments, getting as much mileage out of it as he possibly could. He was like a comedian taking a tortuous, suspenseful route to his punch line.
‘Who’s Father Tumulty?’ Pagan asked.
‘Sounds like a priest to me,’ and Drummond smiled.
Pagan heard the night wind spring up again. ‘Is that the complete message now, Jerry?’
‘Aye.’ Drummond seemed hesitant. ‘Wait. There’s one other thing. Jig sometimes uses a passport made out in the name of John Doyle.’
Pagan took the empty glass out of Drummond’s hand. ‘Why don’t your friends in the FUV go after Jig themselves?’
‘All the way to New York, Mr. Pagan? They couldn’t afford that kind of expense. You, on the other hand, you travel all expenses paid, don’t you? Besides, they don’t have your resources, Mr. Pagan. Nor your expertise. And you’d have the Americans to help you out, with their computers and all. The only computer I ever saw belonging to a member of the FUV was a small Japanese thing he used for playing Pac-Man. Then it went on the blink.’
Pagan watched the little man a moment. ‘You really expect me to drop everything and transport myself to New York on your say-so, Jerry?’
The Leprechaun looked hurt. ‘Mr. Pagan, have I ever given you false information? Have I ever done that?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t I tell you about that shipment of rifles in Ostend? The ones in cool boxes marked butter that were destined for Dublin? Didn’t I do that for you? And wasn’t that true?’
Pagan nodded his head.
‘Didn’t I tell you about a small IRA bomb factory right here in Fulham? Right here on your own doorstep? Was that a lie?’
‘Jerry, your information has always been high quality. But this is something quite different.’
‘I don’t see why you would disbelieve me now.’
‘Maybe because I don’t exactly trust your FUV friends, Jerry.’
The Leprechaun got out of his chair. ‘Cross my heart, Mr. Pagan. This is all on the level. Jig is on his way to New York City. And you’d be a fool to ignore that fact.’ ‘Fool’ pronounced fule.
Pagan watched the little man go out. Alone again, he found the apartment smaller than before. The walls pressed in on him. It made sense, he thought, that Jig would be the one to track down the missing capital. The man was a hunter. He had predatory instincts and the capability of vanishing on the wind. But how did the FUV get hold of this information?
The question turned over in his mind again, and he had the feeling he was missing something, something important. Puzzled, he went back inside the bedroom and sat down. For a moment he tried to imagine Jig’s face. A young man, an unremarkable face you wouldn’t look twice at in the street, drab unassuming clothes. Perhaps a nervous mannerism. A tic in the jaw. A fingernail biter. A way of smoking cigarettes right down to the filter. Nicotine stains. Slightly discoloured teeth. And maybe there was a light in his eye, something that suggested intensity. He had to be intense, committed to his purpose. Highly trained too. The kind of training that wasn’t available in Ireland. The kind you went abroad to get in places like Libya and Cuba.
Pagan lay back across the bed. Had the American suppliers of the money somehow turned their thinking around and seized their capital back on the high seas?
Pagan sat up now. The sense of being perplexed wouldn’t leave him. There was something a little askew, out of joint. He couldn’t think what except that there were small threads he couldn’t quite stitch together. They kept unravelling in his mind.
He reached for the photograph of Roxanne and held it tilted under the bedside lamp so that the glass caught the yellow glow of electricity.
‘New York City,’ Pagan said to his ghost. ‘It’s been a long time.’
7
Dun Laoghaire, Republic of Ireland
Finn woke in his dark bedroom, his throat dry. He pushed himself into an upright position, and there was a pain at the back of his head. It was the whiskey he’d drunk at Molly’s. Now he had one hell of a hangover. He should have known better – his old body couldn’t take the drink the way it used to. Sweet Jesus! He could remember times when he’d wake with a big black dog of a hangover and start drinking right away and go on for three or four days at a time.
He left the room and stepped out onto the landing.
Halfway down the stairs he stopped. He listened to the darkness. He had a fine instinct for the night. He thought sometimes he had a personal angel who whispered nocturnal warnings in his ear. In the distance he heard the cry of an owl. But there was some other thing too, something he couldn’t altogether place, like the soft sound of an animal moving in the undergrowth.
He reached the bottom step and looked across the room filled with harps. There was thin crystal moonlight falling through the window. He stood motionless, listening. The owl had gone. But there was still something else, an undercurrent.
Finn padded inside the kitchen, bare feet slapping floorboards. He drew a glass of water from the tap and devoured it quickly. He rinsed the glass, because he was a tidy man and had always been fastidious in his way, perhaps because he’d lived a solitary life without a wife to help him. He was married to the Cause like a bloody nun married to Christ. If he could turn back the clocks of his life, what he’d do was marry Molly Newbigging and get a decent job and settle down with a big brood of kids. He thought of Molly’s white thighs and her large rounded breasts and that way she had of seeing straight through to the bones of him.
&nb
sp; He left the kitchen, moving along a narrow hallway in the direction of his small study. There was a loaded pistol in his desk. It was a Mauser that dated from the 1920s and it had once belonged to old Dan Breen, commandant of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the IRA. The pistol was of great sentimental value to Finn because it had been given to him personally by Breen shortly before the old fellow died in 1969.
Finn stepped inside his study. He stared at the gun, then reached down for it and picked it up, holding it loosely in his right hand. The feel of the weapon made him think of the first time he’d ever entrusted Jig with a task. It had happened during their third or fourth meeting, which had taken place on a cold morning at Glasnevin Cemetery.
Finn, who was invariably spooked by places of death because he resented anything as disruptive as the act of dying, had stared for a long time into the boy’s eyes. What the hell did he really know about this young man anyway? After a few clandestine encounters, what could he really say he’d learned about the young man’s history? The boy constantly dismissed his past as irrelevant. He was as much a mystery as he’d been in the beginning, and the only thing Finn didn’t doubt was his commitment to justice and his yearning for action. These were real enough. But there were walls around him still, and Finn was uneasy with men who erected barricades. If he was ever to know this young man, if he was ever to cross the wall, he was going to have to take the first step himself. A big step – because its only basis was Finn’s own hunch, his instinct that the boy could prove valuable to the Association of the Wolfe and the Cause in general. There were times in one’s life when intuition overrode the dictates of sweet reason, and this was going to be one of them. And Finn, who had an almost arrogant pride in his ability to judge character, had an instinct about the boy that was almost as clear as a melody in his head.
A certain man has to be eliminated.
Who and where? Jig asked.
Don’t you want to know the why of it, boy?
Jig shook his head and looked between rows of tombstones. I know what you stand for. If you consider this man your enemy, what else do I need to know?
I’m flattered by your trust in me, Finn had answered. But you’ve got a lot to learn. You trust too easily. You react too quickly. You’re too bloody impatient.
Maybe I need a teacher, Finn.
Finn had strolled among ancient graves, noticing broken crosses and moss climbing over stone and a bedraggled cat asleep on a fallen marker. He’d studied the names of the dead. O’Hara. Ryan. Corcoran. Fine Irish names. Brendan Behan, whom Finn remembered as a hotblooded young IRA recruit, was buried somewhere at Glasnevin, dead and wasted by drink.
Teach me, Finn, the boy said.
Finn had turned to look at the young man again. He’d seen it then in the boy’s face, almost as if a guard had slipped and fallen away. It was the face of a kid anxious to please an elder, a vulnerable look that Finn wouldn’t have thought belonged in the boy’s repertoire of expressions. It was uncharacteristic and eager, without a hint of toughness, and it was Finn’s first real encounter with what he thought of as the young man’s inner self. For the first time, too, Finn felt a strong affection for the boy, a sensation that took him by surprise. It was this moment, in which he perceived Jig’s naked enthusiasm, that made Finn take the revolver from the pocket of his overcoat and pass it slowly to the young man.
There’s no pleasure in killing, boy; if you’re after thrills, I don’t need you. Let’s get that straight from the start. I don’t need a vandal or a hooligan. I want somebody who understands the reasons behind his actions.
I’m not looking for thrills, Finn.
And when you work for me there’s no money in it. You’ll get enough to keep yourself in food and shelter, but nobody ever got rich from the Cause.
I don’t remember ever asking for money, Finn.
It was the answer Finn had expected. You’d have to go to Belfast, he said. A man called Cassidy is doing some damage to us.
That was all. Cassidy’s offence, which the boy hadn’t asked about, hadn’t even seemed to care about, was that he had been talking too freely with the British Army about IRA operations. Jig had gone to Belfast before the end of that same week and shot Cassidy as he was stepping out of a public house called the Butcher’s Arms at closing time. One shot, delivered with accuracy. One shot, then Jig was gone. He had the eye of a natural marksman and the affinity of a night creature for the crevices of darkness in which to hide. Later, when the young man had returned to the Republic, Finn had told him that in future he’d need a nom de guerre. We’ll call you Jig, he’d said. If you’re the dancer I think you might be, it’s a damn good name. I moulded you, Jig, he thought. You gave me the basic edifice and I improved it. And somewhere along the way we came to understand and maybe even love one another a little bit too. And where are you now, Jig? Where the hell have I sent you?
He wished Jig were beside him in this house. He needed the young man’s nerve, because his own wasn’t what it had been in the old days when he’d been as sharp as a razor and as daring as anything that ever cavorted on a trapeze. The old days! Jesus, the old days had been fine, but they were gone, and what faced him now was the stark reality of danger. With his pistol in front of him, he stepped back into the hallway and moved towards the room with the harps. He went to the window and looked in the direction of the gatehouse.
George Scully, reliable George, was on guard tonight.
Finn breathed on the windowpane. The guardhouse was in darkness, which meant nothing in itself because Scully might have turned out the light simply to enjoy the quiet of the night. George, who had been with Finn for years, had been known to turn the light off and lean against the wall and prop up his feet and breathe the sea air into his lungs while he recited the poems of W. B. Yeats quietly to himself.
A shiver went through Finn. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. Something was going on out there. Something that pressed upon the whitewashed house and set up a vibration audible only to his ears. He shut his eyes, listened. He thought suddenly of that poor boat hijacked on the high seas, he thought of the dead men and the missing money, and the shipload of arms that had slipped away from him. He was sick to his heart.
Eyes open now, pistol forward. Beware, Finn. It was the voice of his angel. He could hear it clearly.
He moved among the harps, his pistol trained on the doorway.
He held his breath and stood very still. It was always possible, he supposed, that someone had overpowered Scully down there in the gatehouse. But there would have been shooting, wouldn’t there? Scully would have fired off one of his weapons, wouldn’t he? Unless he’d been taken out suddenly, with no warning and no time to defend himself.
Finn moved very slightly.
His heart, his bloody heart, thumped upon his ribs like a rabbit stuck in a snare. He moved an inch, two inches, edging between harps, going in the direction of the doorway. Dan Breen’s Mauser was heavy in his hand.
Out in the hallway now. Facing the front door. Waiting.
Was that the wind that rattled the shrubbery and set it shaking?
He moved slowly down the narrow hallway.
He placed one hand on the door handle.
Then he drew the door open and peered out into the night, his Mauser raised for action.
There were two men outside, both holding automatic weapons. Finn barely had time to register this fact before he heard the first few rounds. He thought it strange that he felt nothing although he knew he’d been hit.
He staggered backwards down the corridor into the room of harps, aware of blood seeping out of his body, conscious of the hushed voice that said I told you, Finn. Beware. I told you that. Finn skidded across the floor of the big room, his legs abruptly cut out from beneath his body, his feet slithering over pools of his own lost blood, and he stumbled against a harp, his head tipping forward between the strings of the instrument so that he was stuck there like some beast cruelly trapped, aware of death coming in o
n wings. Finn gazed at the window where the halfhearted moon floated in the terrible night sky. There were footsteps behind him. There were other voices in the room. They made sounds he was beyond understanding because he was listening to something else.
He was listening to his angel, whom he had come to recognise as Death.
Come to me, Finn.
He blinked his eyes.
Then the room was filled with more gunfire, which he heard as a deaf man might hear thunder. Vibrations, not sounds. His face slid between harp strings, and the pistol dropped from his hand, and he went down slowly into his own blood where he lay very still.
Waddell placed the Stoeger Max II rifle on the floor. He was shaking violently, and when he looked down at Finn’s body, the long white hair covered with great scarlet slashes, he wanted to be sick. He put one hand up to his mouth. Houlihan came into the room and stared at the wasted body and there was no expression at all on his face.
‘I thought he’d never die,’ Houlihan said. ‘Did you see the way he was bouncing like a rubber ball about this fucking room? I thought he’d never go down! Tough old shit.’
Waddell nodded his head. There was excitement in Houlihan’s voice.
‘He had a lot of heart,’ Houlihan remarked.
Waddell wanted to be elsewhere. Another city. Another galaxy. He needed a drink, something to settle him down. Something to calm him. He looked around the room, found a bottle of schnapps and drank from it quickly.
‘Ah, John, you need to develop an attitude,’ Houlihan said. ‘You need to be hard as a nail.’
Waddell said nothing.
‘Finn’s a casualty of war. That’s all,’ Houlihan said. He took the bottle from Waddell. He didn’t drink. Instead, he turned the cap over in the palm of his hand so that Waddell could see several perforations in the metal.
Jig Page 10