Collusion

by Stuart Neville

  Last night, just before knocking off, Tommy Sheehy had given him a message from the Doyles. They wanted to see Fegan at the site this morning. The summons had been gnawing at his gut ever since. He knew about the Doyle twins, both round-faced, cheery men. They were forever slapping their workers’ backs, making jokes, sometimes slipping a little cash in their pockets, winking, saying, ‘Get yourself a drink, son, you’re a good grafter.’

  And the workers would smile, nod, say thank you, and never look the Doyle brothers in the eye. The boys on the site talked over sandwiches and flasks of coffee. Fegan didn’t join in the conversations much, everyone knew he was a quiet one, but he listened. They said Packie Doyle fed a man’s liver to his dog. They said Frankie Doyle made another man cut off his wife’s little finger in front of their children. Fegan knew enough of hard men to know the stories were most likely just that: stories. The truth would be much uglier.

  He knew a killer when he met one. Packie Doyle stank of it, Frankie more so. They wanted to see Fegan at nine. The radio alarm clicked on. He slapped it quiet. Car horns and shouts rose up from the street, echoing between the high buildings.

  Fegan got to his feet, crossed his one room, and raised the blind. He pulled the window up, ignoring its creaking protest. September warmth flowed around him. The air in this old building was always colder and wetter than outside.

  Just two months he’d been here, and he loved New York. Never mind the miserable room he shared with mice and cockroaches. This city had no memory. No one cared who he was, what he’d done. He could walk through the crowds, as clean as the next man, his guilt buried. Until last night. Until the Doyles sent for him.

  ‘You’re Gerry Fegan from Belfast,’ Packie Doyle said.

  ‘The Gerry Fegan,’ Frankie Doyle said.

  You’ve got me wrong,’ he said.

  The Doyles each grinned the same grin back at him, Frankie from behind the big mahogany desk, Packie from his perch on the windowsill overlooking the alley behind the bar. Plastic sheeting covered every surface to protect it from plaster and sawdust.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Packie said.

  ‘We’ve got you wrong,’ Frankie said.

  ‘My name’s Paddy Feeney,’ Fegan said. ‘I’m from Donegal. I showed your foreman my passport.’

  The foreman had no qualms hiring an illegal immigrant for the renovations. Most of the boys were illegals from one place or another. He’d given Fegan a day to prove his carpentry skills. He didn’t look too hard at the passport.

  ‘If you’re not Gerry Fegan from Belfast,’ Frankie said, ‘you’ll not be bothered that someone’s looking for a man of that name.’

  Packie said, ‘Someone’s willing to pay good money for the whereabouts of a Gerry Fegan from Belfast. They even sent out a photo.’

  Frankie placed a computer printout on the desk. It showed a man in his mid-to-late twenties, sharp, hollow features. The picture was at least two decades old, a police mug shot.

  ‘It’s not me,’ Fegan said.

  ‘Looks like you,’ Frankie said.

  ‘A lot like you,’ Packie said.

  Fegan looked at the young man in the picture. It made him ache at his centre. ‘It’s not me,’ he said.

  ‘We did some asking around,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Called some boys in Belfast,’ Packie said.

  ‘They said Gerry Fegan’s a mad bastard.’

  ‘Said he was hard as they come.’

  ‘Dangerous.’

  ‘A killer.’

  Both men had round heads like light bulbs, and thick bodies. If you were stupid, you’d think them fat and slow. Fegan knew different.

  Packie got off the windowsill, came around the desk, and sat on its edge. Cheap aftershave scratched at Fegan’s nasal passages.

  ‘I saw you take on that big Russian fella,’ Packie said. ‘He was twice the size of you, and you flattened him.’

  Fegan knew he’d regret that. Andrei wasn’t Russian, he was Ukrainian, and he had a bigmouth. He’d been needling Fegan all day. He said something ugly about Fegan’s mother. Fegan hadn’t lost his temper, his pulse had barely risen. ‘I just wanted him to leave me alone,’ Fegan said.

  ‘Fuck, he left you alone, all right,’ Packie said. ‘He didn’t even come back for his pay.’

  Frankie sat quiet, now, letting his brother talk. Hemet Fegan’s gaze and smiled.

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ Fegan said. ‘I’m not a fighter.’

  ‘Paddy Feeney may not be a fighter,’ Packie said, ‘but Gerry Fegan sure as fuck is.’

  ‘I told you, I’m not this Fegan.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m Paddy Feeney, and that’s all there is to it. If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do for you. I’ve work to be getting on with.’

  He turned to the door.

  ‘Sit the fuck down,’ Frankie said.

  Fegan turned back to the brothers. He’d thought he was done with taking orders from men like these. Hard men, men with a hollow place inside that allowed them to profit from the suffering of others. Fegan had known many such men. He’d killed some, but that was another world and another life. He sat down.

  Frankie smiled. ‘So, you’re Paddy Feeney from Donegal. Do you have a good life here, Paddy?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Fegan said.

  ‘You making a few bucks?’

  ‘A bit,’ Fegan said.

  ‘You’re good with your hands,’ Frankie said.

  Fegan didn’t like the way Frankie licked his lips. ‘I can cut straight. That’s all this job needs.’

  ‘But you’ve more skills than that,’ Frankie said.

  Fegan looked at his feet.

  ‘Do you want to earn a little more money?’

  ‘I earn enough,’ Fegan said.

  ‘No such thing as enough,’ Frankie said. ‘Just a small job here and there, nothing too strenuous. Good money for a man with good hands.’

  ‘I don’t need more money,’ Fegan said.

  ‘Maybe you don’t, but that’s not really the point, is it?’ Frankie said. ‘Let’s say we take your word for it. Let’s say we believe you’re Paddy Feeney from Donegal, not Gerry Fegan from Belfast. We don’t get in touch with the man who’s looking for this Gerry Fegan and tell him we might know of his whereabouts. There’s nobody by that name works for us. How much is that worth?’

  Fegan looked from Frankie to Packie. ‘I need to get back to work. I’ve the handrails for the staircase to finish.’

  ‘Sure, you take a day or two to think about it,’ Packie said.

  ‘Talk to us in a couple of days,’ Frankie said.

  Fegan stood and went to the door.

  ‘One thing, Gerry,’ Packie said.

  Fegan stopped.

  ‘He meant to say Paddy,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Don’t be going anywhere,’ Packie said. ‘Some friends of ours will be keeping an eye on you. You won’t see them, least not all the time, but they’ll see you.’

  Fegan didn’t look back. ‘Those handrails need doing,’ he said. He closed the door behind him.

  7

  The doormen at Lavery’s nodded as Lennon entered. The bar looked cleaner these days, lighter. The smoking ban might not have helped turnover, but it certainly sweetened the air. Belfast’s traditional student haunt seemed to draw an older crowd, now. No tang of cannabis tickled Lennon’s nose, the haircuts were less exotic, the dress code not quite so grungy. He allowed himself a small ripple of nostalgia as he took a stool at the bar, thinking of his student days when he and his friends blew their grants on cider.

  Lennon had studied psychology at Queen’s, managed a decent degree. He might have got that MSc, maybe even gone after a doctorate, if things had been different. As it turned out, he didn’t even attend his own graduation ceremony. His mother had bought a new dress for it, gone all the way from her home in Middletown, near the border, to Marks & Spencer’s in Belfast. She had borrowed money from the Credit Union to pay for it.

  He reme
mbered her parading up and down the living room of the old house, asking again and again if it was a good fit, did the hem hang properly, was it slimming on her. Lennon and his elder brother Liam exchanged weary looks as they told her once more it was beautiful on her.

  ‘But the money,’ she said, chewing her lip in worry. ‘I wouldn’t spend the money if it’s not right.’ She wagged a finger at them in turn. ‘Don’t you dare tell me it’s right if it’s not.’

  ‘It’s lovely on you, Ma,’ Liam said as he rose. His big shoulders stretched the fabric of his shirt tight. He still sported a black eye from the hurling match a few days before when he’d caught a stray swipe from a teammate’s stick. At least that’s what he’d told his mother. ‘Stop fretting about it. It’s only money.’

  ‘Only money,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘Listen to him. Wait till you’re raising wee ’uns and tell me it’s only money. Sure, it cost me every penny I had, and every penny I hadn’t, to put that one through university. And he spent the lot on beer and cider and chasing after women.’

  She pronounced it wee-men.

  Lennon feigned offence. ‘It was the rent,’ he said. ‘The grant hardly covered it.’

  ‘My arse,’ she said, the closest she ever came to swearing.

  A little more than a week later, a day before she was due to wear it to the graduation ceremony, she took the dress back to Marks & Spencer’s. She exchanged it for a black one so that she could bury what was left of Liam.

  Lennon remembered carrying his brother’s coffin. It weighed hardly anything. Sixteen years ago, and the silence of the mourners still came to him when he least expected it.

  He pushed the memory away, and scoped the bar. Early yet, plenty of room for improvement. He’d spent an hour at the station’s small gym, gone home to shower, blasted a ready-meal in the microwave, and then headed out. He had reason to celebrate. A meeting with DCI Gordon had been arranged for the morning, and he had a good chance of being back on an MIT before the end of the week. He ignored the sick bubbling at the pit of his stomach when he thought of Dandy Andy Rankin getting off with GBH. But he could live with it, drown out his own conscience, if it meant getting back into an MIT.

  No tourists in Lavery’s tonight, only midweek drinkers trying to recapture their student days. He caught the barmaid’s attention, a thin wisp of a girl with dyed black hair.

  ‘Pint of Stella,’ he said, dropping a fiver on the bar.

  A duo tuned guitars in the corner; a woman one-two’d into a microphone. She was tall, looked almost as tall as Lennon, with a mass of blonde curls. The blackboard outside had said ‘Nina Armstrong’. He sized her up, and the followers that gathered around her. Too many men vying for her attention, too much work. Pity. She looked good in a hippie kind of way.

  They started to play. She could sing, her voice clear and sinuous, and the guitarist wasn’t bad. More punters drifted in, pairs and larger groups. The Stella burned his tongue. He studied the women, found their weaknesses.

  A hacking smoker’s cough woke Lennon. Hard fingers of sunlight found his headache. He forced his eyes open, squinted at her, as the queasy pain pulsed inside his skull. She stood in a camisole and thong, a lighter in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He wondered what she intended to use as an ashtray for a moment before he noticed the half-full wine glass on the bedside locker, three butts already doused in it.

  ‘Fuck, look at the state of you,’ she said. A chesty laugh turned into a barking cough.

  He scrambled for a name. Something Irish. She wasn’t a Prod. Siobhan? Sinead? Seana? He rubbed his eyes, willing it to come. All he could remember clearly from last night was her shouting in his ear, telling him she was a nurse at the Royal, while he stared down her top.

  ‘Morning,’ he said.

  Jesus, rough as biscuits, she was. I must be losing my touch, he thought. The idea frightened him. He reached out. ‘Give us a drag.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t smoke.’

  ‘I don’t.’ He clicked his fingers at her.

  ‘Just one, right? I’ve only a couple of fags left.’

  She approached the bed and placed the filter between his lips. He sucked, inhaled, felt the heat, coughed, let it charge his brain. ‘Fuck,’ he croaked.

  She laughed, her breasts jiggling inside her camisole. She had a Celtic knot tattooed on the left one. He saw it through watering eyes, smelled tobacco and sex. He wondered if he could muster another go, but decided against it. He craned his head so he could see the clock past her hip. It had gone eight. He was supposed to be in DCI Gordon’s office at nine.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, throwing back the quilt. ‘I need to get moving.’

  ‘You can run me home, can’t you?’

  ‘Where?’ The wooden floorboards chilled the soles of his feet, clearing a little of the fog behind his eyes.

  ‘Did you not listen to a word I said last night?’ She pointed to her chest. ‘Or were you too interested in these?’

  He sighed. ‘Where?’

  ‘Beechmount Parade. Off the Falls.’

  ‘No. I’ve to be at work for nine or I’m in shit. I can’t get all the way over there and back again.’

  ‘At work?’ She stood with one arm across her stomach, her other hand pointing the cigarette at him. ‘You told me you were an airline pilot.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yeah, you fucking did.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘So, what are you? You’re hardly answering phones in the call centres if you can afford this place.’ She walked to the window and pulled back the blind. ‘River view and everything. Fucking nice. What do you do?’

  ‘Look, take a taxi.’ He pointed to his jeans, bundled on the floor. ‘Take the money out of my wallet.’

  ‘Fucking typical.’ She scooped up the jeans and dug for the wallet. ‘All big talk. Get your end away, everything’s all right, never mind me. Fucking arsehole.’

  She found the wallet, opened it, and smiled. The smile turned to a frown. She turned the wallet face out to him, showing him the photograph. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘My daughter,’ he said.

  The smile flickered and returned. He could tell she begrudged it. ‘How old?’ she asked. A year?’

  ‘Five,’ he said. ‘Coming six.’

  ‘Jesus, could you not take a newer picture?’

  He thought about answering the question, that he’d take a newer picture if only Ellen’s mother would allow him to know his daughter, that she never would because it was how she punished him for what he’d done, that they’d moved away months ago, that he’d been trying to find out where they’d gone since then.

  Instead, he said, ‘Ten quid ought to do you.’

  ‘All right, big spender,’ she said as she looked for the money. ‘I get the message. I’ll be out of your way in—’

  She stopped talking.

  ‘There’s bound to be a ten in there,’ he said.

  She stared at him, and he understood.

  He raised his hands, said, ‘Look, I—’

  ‘A fucking cop?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You’re a fucking peeler?’

  She threw the wallet. It slapped against his chest and fell to the floor. She looked down at it. She stooped, picked it up, pulled out two ten-pound notes, threw it again. This time he caught it. He tossed it on the bed beside him.

  ‘Jesus, if anyone knew I’d gone home with a cop,’ she said. ‘Fuck me, I’d be burnt out of my house.’

  Lennon smiled. ‘Then tell them I’m an airline pilot.’

  Arsehole,’ she said, gathering bits and pieces of clothing. ‘Jesus, I knew peelers made decent money, but a place like this?’ She pulled her jeans from the chair in the corner, disturbing the jacket underneath. ‘How much is your mortgage? Or do you rent? Must be a fucking—’

  Something heavy dropped to the floor. She stared down at the leather pouch.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  He shru
gged and nodded.

  She kept her eyes on it as she slipped her jeans on and tucked the money into her pocket. She picked it up. She turned it in her hands, slid the pistol from its sheath. ‘What make is it?’ she asked.

  A Glock,’ he said. He watched her drop the holster to the floor. She had chips in her nail varnish.

  ‘You ever shoot anyone?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. The lie was well practised.

  ‘That scar on your shoulder. You said you got it in a car crash.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He didn’t answer.

  She traced the Glock’s lines, brought it to her nose, smelled it. Her tongue brushed her upper lip. ‘It’s heavy,’ she said. ‘Is it loaded?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Shouldn’t you tell me to be careful? Shouldn’t you take it off me?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘There’s a safety catch or something, right?’

  ‘No,’ he said. He made a gun with his fingers and aimed at her. ‘You just point it and pull the trigger. Simple as that.’

  She looked up from the Glock. Her eyes couldn’t hold his. She walked slowly to the dressing table, cradling the pistol like it was made of tissue, and set it down. It hardly made a noise against the wood.

  She said, ‘I should go.’

  8

  The Traveller eased back onto the bed and pulled the sheet up around him. ‘Going away for a while,’ he said.

  Sofia kept her naked back to him, the late afternoon light pooling in the valleys of her flesh. A scar, pale against her tan, spread across the small of her back. He’d never asked how she got it, but he had a good idea. ‘What for?’ she asked.

  ‘Business,’ the Traveller said.

  She stretched as she rolled onto her back, her skin brushing against his, the stubble of her underarm scratching at his shoulder. ‘When will you be back?’ she asked.

  ‘Depends,’ he said. ‘Not long, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she echoed. ‘You said that last time.’