In the Morning I'll Be Gone

by Adrian McKinty

  “All aboard that’s going aboard!” the pilot said.

  We sailed out of the harbor and into the chop.

  We rode under the black sky.

  We navigated the green waters . . .

  The Antrim coast advanced. Rathlin Island and the Kingdom of Scotland receded.

  I should never have come. I had always been curious to a fault. It was better not to know. Life was easier lived in the dark.

  Ballycastle loomed out of the sea mist. The row houses, the school, the proving ground for the horse fair.

  “Fenders away!” the pilot said as we glided into the harbor.

  He nudged the ferry up to the pier and they threw securing ropes to men in oilskins who fastened the boat to concrete bollards.

  “Sheets tight!” the pilot said when the Isolde was securely tied to dry land.

  He cut the engines.

  A deckhand lowered a wooden gangway. The schoolkids ran through the rain to the waiting school bus. The horse and man went more gingerly down the ramp.

  I cupped my hands around the Zippo lighter and kindled life into a cigarette.

  I went down the springy wooden gangway and walked to a sheltered overhang at the pilot house.

  Dry land.

  Ireland.

  Land of my fathers and of my birth. I had no love for it. All it was fit for was the ash from my cigarette and the slurry from the heel of my shoe.

  A klaxon sounded on the far pier where the hundred-and-twenty-foot-long daily car ferry The Lady of the Isles was about to depart for Campbeltown in Scotland.

  I was seized by a wild impulse.

  Run for it.

  Flee.

  Get on the boat and escape to Britain and leave all this . . . all this madness behind.

  Yes! Get out. They’ve got their plan but you don’t have to be part of it.

  Go to Scotland, England.

  Go.

  To do what?

  Something else. Anything!

  “All aboard that’s going aboard!” the skipper of The Lady of the Isles yelled through a megaphone.

  Was there anything keeping me here?

  I was beyond their words.

  I was free of honor and obligation. What use was a cop? A cop was a pawn. A cop was never in the endgame.

  “Last call for Campbeltown!” the harbormaster shouted. “Last call for the port of Campbeltown!”

  He looked at me. He sensed my interest. He was a trim man with a black beard, a black coat, and a cap that was reassuringly nautical.

  I caught his eye.

  The futures split.

  The paths diverged . . .

  For an instant.

  For the merest instant.

  And then they merged back into one.

  I shook my head, took a final draw on the cigarette, and threw it into the sea.

  I turned up the collar on my coat and walked toward the car, readying myself for what was evidently going to be a long, long war . . .

  I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University, I emigrated to New York City, where I lived in Harlem for seven years, working in bars, bookstores, building sites, and finally the basement stacks of the Columbia University Medical School Library in Washington Heights.

  In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado, where I taught high-school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full-length novel, Dead I Well May Be, was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the ten best crime novels of the year. The sequel to that book, The Dead Yard, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the twelve best novels of 2006 and won the Audie Award for best mystery or thriller. These two novels, along with The Bloomsday Dead, form my trilogy of novels starring hitman Michael Forsythe, the DEAD trilogy.

  In mid-2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia, with my wife and kids. My book Fifty Grand won the 2010 Spinetingler Award and my last novel, Falling Glass, was longlisted for Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year.

  Visit Adrian at http://adrianmckinty.blogspot.com/, and on Twitter @adrianmckinty.