Six flights to the top floor. The Traveller peered through the glass in the door leading to the corridor. Soft lighting and no movement. He pulled the door as slowly as he could manage, but still it creaked. He froze as the sound reverberated in the stairwell. No other noise, no disturbance in the only slit of light beneath one of the four doors. He slipped through, keeping his hand on the door to soften its closing. He stepped quietly along the corridor, his shoes whispering on the thick carpet.
The flat was second on the right; he recognised the characters 4 and B. He watched the dim sliver of light below the door as he approached. No sound came from within, not even a television. He pressed his ear against the wood. Silence. He put his eye to the peephole. Nothing but distorted shadows. He stepped back and examined the door. Good hardwood, oak by the look of it, different from the other apartment doors. Fitted special, most likely.
The Traveller slipped the first key into the deadlock and turned it, wincing at the noise of the tumblers. The door loosened in its frame. He withdrew the key, and found the one for the cylinder lock at eye level. It slid home smooth and neat, turned easy, and the door opened. It met something solid and immovable after less than two inches. A rustle from inside, the mewling of a child, another voice shushing it. He pushed again with more force. The hard sound of a chain pulled tight.
A frightened whisper from within, the child crying briefly, the patters of socked feet on carpet. The Traveller shoved hard against the door with his uninjured shoulder. He might as well have pushed the wall. It was a good security chain, a proper locksmith’s job, not the crap you’d buy in some discount DIY warehouse. Doors slammed inside, followed by more whispering feet. He put his good eye to the narrow opening. Now the shadows moved.
‘I’ve got a gun,’ a woman’s voice called.
‘So have I,’ he said. ‘I bet mine’s bigger.’
‘I’ve called the police,’ she said.
‘That was quick.’
‘I’m doing it now.’
‘Can you work the gun and the phone at the same time?’
The Traveller lifted the Browning and stepped back. He pumped a shell into the chamber, steadied himself, and blew a chunk out of the door where he reckoned the chain was. He chambered another shell and blasted the same place again. Once the smoke cleared, he saw he hadn’t done as much damage as he thought. He stepped closer and examined the hole. A good amount of wood had been torn away, but twisted steel bordered the small tear the shotgun had opened. He looked through.
A shaking hand held a pistol, the same kind of Glock that Hewitt had given him, pointing back from a doorway. He could just make out her shape slumped against the door frame and heard a hiss, a moan, a gasp. The pistol’s muzzle flashed and he ducked away from the gap. No matter. The bullet hit the steel reinforcement at least a foot away from where his eye had been.
‘Jesus, you should practise with that thing,’ the Traveller said. ‘You’re a fucking terrible shot. Still, no need to call the cops now. I’m sure some of the neighbours has done the honours.’
‘Go, then,’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘Don’t think I will,’ he said. ‘Listen, open this thing up and I’ll go easy on the wee girl. Can’t say fairer than that.’
Another bang from inside, another slam like a fist against the door. Then he heard ragged weeping. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You had your chance.’
He examined the door frame, found where the chain was attached. He raised the shotgun, pumped a shell, and blasted the door twice, leaving mangled craters and twisted metal. He reloaded the shotgun, straining through the ringing in his ears for approaching sirens. Nothing but the child’s squealing from deeper inside the apartment, though even that was mixed with the high whine the shotgun blast had left behind. The bastards at the cop shop had taken his good Vater earplugs.
A mobile phone rang somewhere inside, its high chime cutting through the whine.
The Traveller took a step back, then forward, raising his right leg so his foot carried his body’s weight as it slammed against the door. It burst inwards and hit the wall. The Traveller peered through the smoke as he pumped the shotgun. The phone stopped ringing. He raised the shotgun when he saw the woman cowering in the living room’s doorway.
She did not move as he entered. He drew nearer and saw the red pocks on her cheek. A brighter bloom of red above her right breast. She inhaled and coughed as she stared up at him, her eyes full of fear and hate.
Beyond her, in the living room, the mobile phone rang again. Its screen doused the room in a dull blue glow. It inched across the coffee table as it vibrated.
‘Let me get that for you,’ the Traveller said.
72
Lennon kept the phone pressed to his ear as the Audi’s engine roared. He squeezed it tight with his shoulder as he changed gear, then brought his hand back to catch the phone just as it fell. The answering service again. He changed up, the car hitting sixty as he neared the junction of York Street and the Westlink. Lennon leaned on the horn as the lights turned red, barely slowing as the few late-night drivers braked hard to avoid his path. The Audi’s traction control indicators blinked on the dashboard, the car struggling for grip as it made the turn onto the M2. The wheels hit the kerb on the far side hard, and Lennon heard a screech as the rear quarter grazed a lamp post before the car bounced back onto the road.
He redialled for the third time, whispering, ‘Come on, come on, come on …’
No dial tone this time. Instead, it went straight to the answering service. Who was she talking to? Was she calling him back?
‘Marie, if you get this, call me right now. Right now, you hear me?’
Lennon hung up. His eyes flitted between the phone and the road ahead as he looked up his station’s number. The dial tone clicked and switched three times as the call was bounced around. The drama in the custody suite had left the phone unmanned. He would be routed to the nearest station. When he got an answer, he said, ‘Put me through to Carrickfergus.’
73
Fegan paced the small guesthouse bedroom listening to the dial tone. His fear fed on itself, remade itself again and again, stronger with each reincarnation. He had tried to sleep, but a vision of fire, the smell of burning flesh and hair, and a child’s screams had shaken him awake minutes ago. Sweat soaked the clothes he lay in. He had gone straight for the phone.
The dial tone ceased, replaced by steady breathing.
‘Marie?’ Fegan said, fear sharpening his voice.
‘She can’t come to the phone right now.’
A man’s voice. The kind of voice Fegan knew too well. His head swam. He sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘She’s right here,’ the voice said. ‘Her and the wee girl.’
‘Who are you?’ Fegan said.
A pause. ‘Would that be the famous Gerry Fegan?’
‘Don’t touch them.’
‘I’ve heard all about you,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve been dying to meet you in the flesh. Something tells me we’d get on like a house on fire.’
Fegan doubled over as his stomach cramped. ‘I’ll kill you if you touch them,’ he said.
‘Too late for that. I’ve got to be honest with you, Gerry. Marie’s not looking her best.’
‘I’ll kill you,’ Fegan said. ‘I’ll make it bad.’
‘It’s that cop you should go after. The kid’s father. You know what the useless shite did?’
‘I’ll kill you,’ Lennon said.
‘He left the child and her mother in a whorehouse in Carrickfergus. Just upped and left them here all on their own. Jesus, you wouldn’t do that to a dog.’
‘I’ll—’
‘Yeah, you’ll kill me, I heard you. Time’s wasting, Gerry. Gotta go.’
The phone died.
‘I’ll kill you,’ Fegan said to the lifeless plastic.
He stood and went to the window. His room took up half the first floor of a converted
terraced house. The street below ached with quiet, the lights making shadows pool around the parked cars and garden walls. The occasional rumble of traffic came from Botanic Avenue, less than a hundred yards away. It had been an hour, maybe more, since the last train had passed along the track that ran behind the guesthouse. Fegan had always cherished quiet, but now it lay heavy on him, like a cold, damp blanket.
The man with the mocking voice had said Carrickfergus. Where in Carrickfergus?
A screech split the silence. It echoed along the street, touching Fegan’s heart like an icy finger. He held his breath tight in his chest. It came again, a high animal cry, the sound of suffering. Fegan looked up and down the rows of houses, searching for the source.
Then he saw it. The animal came creeping between two cars, long snout to the ground. Its large pointed ears twitched, and it raised its head. It opened its jaws wide and screeched again, the sound tearing through the street and over the rooftops.
The fox sauntered out onto the road, following some scent that had caught its interest. It froze, tensed, lifted its lean body flexing beneath the fur. It stared hard at the window and quivered.
Fegan put a hand against the glass. The fox raised its snout to the black sky and screeched once more. It bared its teeth. Fegan couldn’t hear through the glass, but he was sure the fox snarled and growled before it blossomed in flame. Fegan blinked and heard the engine of a car. Its headlights burned and reflected on the fox’s pelt as it approached. The fox looked to the light, then back at Fegan, before it dashed into the shadows.
The car passed, the driver oblivious to the watching animals.
Somewhere in the distance, across the city, sirens rose. In the dark hollows beneath the window, the fox answered.
Carrickfergus. A whorehouse, he said.
Fegan pictured the office behind the reception desk downstairs. He’d seen keys on hooks through the open door. One of them had been a car key. Fegan left his room, quiet as air.
74
The woman and that creepy kid huddled silent in the back seat as the Traveller drove. He had gone north then west from Carrickfergus, rather than cutting through Belfast, then south from Templepatrick. He would avoid the motorway until he was across the border, and stay out of the bigger towns like Banbridge or Newry. A lost hour was a price worth paying to escape notice.
He wondered if the woman would make it that far. Now and again he heard her chest rattle before she coughed. He had given her wounds a quick look before they left. She had a couple of pellets embedded in her cheekbone, and more in her right shoulder. But it was the cluster above her breast she had to worry about. The Traveller reckoned some had punctured her ribcage, and maybe even her lung. He had patched her up with a towel as best he could, but she was probably bleeding inside. A hospital could fix it, he was sure. But they weren’t going to a hospital. Maybe she’d make it to Drogheda, maybe she wouldn’t. His only worries were how the kid would react if her mother died as they held each other, and how the Bull would react when he brought the two of them to his doorstep.
Maybe he should have done them in the apartment. Probably should. But there was something about the kid, the way she looked at him, like she knew all his secrets. Even the things he kept hidden from himself. Whatever it was, it stopped him from snapping the child’s neck. He’d let the Bull deal with them.
The woman and child had served their purpose. They’d got Gerry Fegan to show himself. Let the Bull decide the next move. Maybe he’d let the cops have Fegan. He’d be easier dealt with if he was locked up. But where was the fun in that? Either way, the Bull could do what he wanted so long as he paid up.
The car was approaching the roundabout at Moira when the woman asked ‘Where are you taking us?’ Her voice was small but strong. Maybe she wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. He glanced at her reflection in the rear-view mirror and saw her reading a road sign.
‘To see a man,’ he said.
‘What man?’
‘You’ll see when we get there,’ he said. He steered onto the long straight section of the roundabout. ‘Now be quiet, love, there’s a good girl.’
‘Is it O’Kane?’
‘I said be quiet.’
‘The last man who brought us to him is dead now.’
As he exited the roundabout, the Traveller switched his attention between the village of Moira ahead and Marie McKenna’s reflection in the mirror. ‘That right?’
‘Gerry Fegan killed him.’
The Traveller’s tongue slicked his upper lip. ‘Did he, now?’
‘He’ll kill you too.’
He watched the mirror as the little girl covered her ears and buried her face in her mother’s bosom. Marie winced at the pain but did not push the child away.
‘You think so?’ the Traveller asked.
‘I know so.’
The Traveller smiled at the mirror. He would have winked if he could’ve managed it. ‘Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’
The lights of the main street slipped past for a minute or two and then faded behind them.
Marie laughed, then coughed, then laughed again.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
She produced a tissue and coughed into it. Her face went blank. ‘What’s so funny? Earlier today I told someone I didn’t want to wind up a fucking damsel in distress again.’
The little girl took a hand away from her ear and placed it over her mother’s mouth. You said a bad word,’ she whispered.
‘I know, darling,’ Marie said against the child’s fingers. ‘I’m sorry.’
The girl, placated, covered her ears and buried her face again.
‘Tell me about Gerry Fegan,’ the Traveller said as they approached another village, smaller this time. Magheralin, he thought it was called, but he couldn’t be sure seeing as he couldn’t read the sign.
‘He’s a good man,’ Marie said, ‘despite what he’s done.’
‘A good man,’ the Traveller repeated, turning the words in his mouth, testing their weight. ‘And I’m not?’
Marie coughed, groaned at the pain. When she caught her breath, she asked, ‘What are you talking about?’
‘From what I hear, he’s an animal. A killer.’ He watched her face as the lights of the village caused shadows to flow across it. ‘Just like me. What makes him a good man? What makes me a bad man?’
The light disappeared from her face, leaving only the glint of her eyes in a silhouette. ‘You have me and my child as hostages, and you have to ask that question?’
More village lights ahead, and beyond them, the town of Lurgan with its knotted streets and traffic lights and cops. He took a left down a narrow country road to avoid them. The world darkened.
‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting Mr Gerry Fegan,’ the Traveller said. He grinned at the mirror, even though he could no longer see the woman or the girl in the blackness. ‘Might not happen now. Pity if it doesn’t. It’d be fun, seeing what he’s made of. From what I hear, it wouldn’t be easy. He’d put up a good fight.’
He waited for a response. None came save for the rattle of Marie’s chest.
‘I’d enjoy that,’ he said. ‘He might be a mad bastard, but so am I. I never met a man I couldn’t take, and I like a challenge, you know?’
The Traveller searched the mirror, found nothing. He couldn’t even hear the woman’s laboured breathing now.
‘You can be sure of one thing, though. Your friend Gerry is going to suffer for his sins. Whether it’s me or the cops do it, it’ll be bad for him. He’ll be hurting when he goes. He’s pissed off too many people to get off easy. Only question is, how ba—’
Fiery pain tore at his scalp as small hands jerked his head back. A high scream pierced his left ear as the hands twisted and pulled. He reached back with his left hand, but the strapping wouldn’t let his fingers find anything but strands of hair as the girl shouted and thrashed. The car bounced as it hit the verge, the steering wheel bucking in his good hand. The woman
cried out, and the girl was thrown to the side, but she kept her grip and now the Traveller was screaming as his scalp ripped. His right hand left the wheel and darted behind him, desperate to swat the shrieking child away, and then the seat belt grabbed his chest, his head whipped forward and back again, and everything was black and still and silent, apart from an insistent chiming as a cold breeze blew in from somewhere far behind him.
75
Lennon waited alone in the kitchen. A constable from Carrickfergus lingered uselessly in the corridor outside the flat while a sergeant took statements from the residents on the floors below. Everyone who could be spared was at the scene of DCI Gordon’s murder. The best the Carrickfergus station could do was send their one patrol car, which had been on traffic duty looking for drunk drivers, to the apartment block. Lennon got there before them and came straight up to find the door blown in and the place empty.
Worry and fear quarrelled within him like feral cats. He couldn’t keep his mind in one place long enough to plan a course of action. He phoned the station again, looking for CI Uprichard. When the duty officer finally answered the call, he told Lennon yet again: Uprichard was too busy, just wait there, secure the scene until a team from D District could be assembled.
‘I can’t just wait here,’ Lennon said. ‘He has my daughter. The same man you had in custody three hours ago.’
‘I understand that,’ the duty officer said, ‘but an officer has been murdered here. Everybody who can be contacted is being brought in. Besides, you know Carrickfergus is D District; we can only send men if it’s an emergency. Otherwise you’ll have to wait for a team from Lisburn.’
‘Emergency?’ Lennon said. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? This is my daughter. The same man who killed Gordon has her.’
‘But he doesn’t have her there,’ the duty officer said.
Lennon had no answer for that, no words to express his frustration.
‘To do any good, you need a proper MIT and forensics to go over the apartment,’ the duty officer continued. ‘Forensics are tied up here for the time being, and Lisburn will get an MIT over there as soon as they can. I’m sorry, sir, that’s the best I can do at the moment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s bedlam here.’
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