Jamie left. There was no more to say, no more information to exchange. They would leave separately, spaced by time so that there was no possibility of them being seen together.
He thought about what Sergei had said, as he walked the river embankment. The day was fine, though there were racing clouds coming in from the east. It would rain by the time his plane was leaving to go back home.
His life in Russia already seemed strangely distant in many ways, as if the people he had known and loved and left behind were figures in a play, one for which he did not know the ending and knew he might never find out. It was like he was peering through a frosted glass to watch each of them in their turn—Gregor with his fierce brutality, his friendship and the sacrifice of his life on the altar of their friendship. Nikolai who had felt like a father in ways he could not give words to and Violet, his wife. His traitorous, lying wife. Or so it appeared. In Russia, it did not serve to ever take things at face value, because all of life was a Potemkin village, a façade that served many purposes.
Vanya had asked him one night, as they sat quietly by the fire in the library, if he wanted to talk about Russia, about the people they had left behind. Vanya who, he thought, understood him better than most. He had quietly said, “No.”
Chapter Ten
The Devil You Have
THE WEATHER HAD BEEN filthy all week. Tonight the dark had come down early, the fog shuttling in thick as cotton, muffling the world and restricting sight to just a few feet in front of one’s nose. The drive home from work, with a stop to pick up the children and then a few groceries, had been a long one. Pamela had to drive at a crawl due to the limited visibility and Isabelle, hungry and teething, had been crying in the backseat from the minute they had left Gert’s until they pulled down the drive to the house. She’d had a long frustrating day at the building site, which had left her feeling completely helpless, a state which always made her angry.
She paused for a moment, putting her head to the steering wheel. She was exhausted. Sometimes it swamped her this way, the knowledge that she was so damn tired. It seemed to her that every cell of her body held grief, the weight of which was more than cold iron. She thought she might never be warm again, that she would never sleep a full night, that she would never be rid of this terrible pain in her chest and this ache over her whole body. She wanted to turn the car around, screaming baby and all, and drive into Belfast, turn up the mountainside and flee into the safety and warmth of Jamie’s home. She knew she couldn’t keep doing that, she had to learn to be on her own with the children, how to function, how to breathe without the distraction of Jamie’s house and presence. Better yet, she wanted to walk into her own home, and find her husband there, big and warm, his arms open, waiting for her like he had never left, never been taken from her. She wanted to fall asleep with his hands on her, wanted to hear his voice ribbon through bedtime tales for their children, wanted him to soothe the cries of their daughter and reassure their son.
Barring all that, she wanted to get out of this car, fall on the ground and beat her fists into the dirt until they were bloody. She wanted to tear her own skin away and get out of herself, walk away from the pain that seemed to be all that she was anymore. The only other thing that existed inside her was her love for their children.
Isabelle’s cries were escalating. Pamela gritted her teeth and opened the car door. Got out, got Conor out and took Isabelle from her seat in the back, her small face red with fury. She needed to freeze a clean cloth for her to chew and rub her gums down with whiskey. She grabbed the groceries, one-handed, awkwardly, not wanting to come back out to the car once she managed to get the children inside.
“Who dat, mama?” Conor asked. The hair on the back of her neck went up immediately, as she realized they were not alone in their yard. There was a man standing, legs apart, casual and yet with the sense that came with certain men that said violence was merely a matter of course for them.
“I don’t know, sweetie, you just stay behind mama.”
“Can I help you with something?” she asked, trying to sound brave and feeling anything but with two small children in tow and a stranger blocking her way to the door of her home.
“I’m here to collect on yer husband’s debt,” he said. He wore gloves and a dark coat, hobnailed boots and a knit cap pulled down to his eyebrows. He looked like a thug, likely because that’s exactly what he was. She could feel her groceries slipping from her hand and thought, rather ludicrously, that she would have to return to the store for milk, because the bottle was going to break. She let the bags go, hearing the crack of the milk bottle, and put her hand behind her to touch Conor’s head in reassurance.
“My husband isn’t here at the moment,” she said, striving to keep every trace of fear out of her voice.
“Yer husband isn’t ever goin’ to be here again, lady. I know that, so ye need not bother with yer lies. He owed us money, one last deposit so to speak, an’ I’ve come to collect it,” he hissed this last, advancing until he was almost close enough to touch her. Conor was hanging onto her leg and she could feel him staring at the man.
She judged the distance between herself and the house. Even had she been alone, key to hand, odds were she couldn’t outrun him. With the children and having to fumble through her pockets for the key, it would merely be reckless and likely to get one or all of them hurt.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said again, joggling Isabelle, who had passed beyond angry and was well on her way to inconsolable. It was the truth, she didn’t know, unless it was a continuance of the graft Casey had told her about after a terrible beating he had taken for his refusal to give any more money to a sordid pair of men who worked on the fringes of the PIRA.
She backed up, stumbling a little. Isabelle was howling now, both startled and feeling her mother’s fear. It wasn’t beyond some of these men to hurt a child, or to hurt a woman and leave her children to fend for themselves. Behind her sat the wood pile, if she could just grab a good-sized chunk of wood and throw it at him, maybe she could make a dash for the door.
“I suggest ye leave the lady alone.” The voice was quiet and emerged from the side of the house. Noah Murray walked out into the open, seemingly unarmed but with an authority, she knew, that one ignored at one’s peril.
The man swallowed and backed away a little. “Now, I never meant the lady any harm.”
Noah merely looked at him. Clearly the man knew just who he was facing, for the tension that came off him hummed in the air. Noah stood in a relaxed fashion, as if he had merely stumbled across them during a countryside ramble.
“Get off her property now, or I’ll take ye off myself. An’ tell yer boss that he’s to consider his bill paid in full. If he doesn’t like that, he can come to me for an accounting.” He made a clicking noise with his tongue, a dismissive sound, a sound one might level at a stray dog that posed no threat. “Threatenin’ women an’ babbies, is this what the Belfast chapter has come to?”
From the fish-belly hue of the man’s face, Pamela thought an accounting with Noah Murray had little to do with money, and a great deal to do with blood and pain. He added something then in Gaelic that made the man pale even further and then the man simply turned and ran. Her Gaelic had never been good, and Casey had only taught her the words of love, both the gentle ones and the blue ones, but neither served her now. She had caught the word pig and something she thought might be slit and she could understand all she needed to from those two words.
Noah turned to her. “Take yer children in the house, Mrs. Riordan, it’s best if ye’re not outside for the next few minutes.”
She nodded, leaving the groceries where they had fallen. Isabelle was taking long stuttering breaths now. Pamela’s hand was still clutched around Conor’s and he followed her inside without a sound.
She set Conor at the table with bread and jam and a glass of milk. His big dark eyes followed her as she sat on the sofa to nurse Isabelle. She couldn’t see
anything other than the side yard from her position, though she was aware of Noah moving around outside. It felt strange to have a man in the yard, walking about, checking things. She didn’t want to think of what else might be taking place outside. She took a breath and looked at her son.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” she said to him, forcing herself to sound brave. “The bad man is gone, and he won’t be coming back.”
He nodded, but she didn’t think he was convinced. He was such a steady little soul that she worried at times about what he kept inside, how he was dealing with this world of his which had been turned upside down with the disappearance of his daddy. She tried to present him with her brave face as much as she could, but she knew, small as he was, he wasn’t fooled by it often. She took a shaky breath, wondering just how gone the bad man was.
There was a light knock at the door just as she finished nursing Isabelle. She laid her down carefully, tucking pillows in beside the baby’s recumbent form, and called out. “Come in.” She swiftly checked her clothing to make certain everything was righted and that she was decent.
Noah stepped in, stood on the mat and took his hat off. He held her bag of groceries in one hand. The bag looked dry and tidy; he had clearly gotten rid of the milk and broken glass.
“There was a loose board on yer shed, I nailed that down, an’ fed the horse an’ the sheep. Ye’ll not have to venture out again tonight, though he won’t trouble ye anymore. There’s no one else about, an’ no sign of anythin’ amiss. He’ll take his message back to his boss, an’ there will be no more bother to ye. Just to be certain, I’ll have a word with the Belfast command. They don’t want to fall foul of me, so they tend to listen when I have a word with them.”
She was aware of Conor listening to the man, his crayon stilled in his small hand. She had to be careful of what she said. She didn’t want to make her wee boy any warier than he was already.
“How did you know?”
He merely looked at her, the gentian eyes clear and completely unreadable.
“How did you know to come along just then?”
“We made a deal, you an’ I, this is me holdin’ up my end. How I manage that is not for you to worry over.”
“I never asked you to protect me,” she said, worried that the parameters of their deal had shifted without her agreeing to the new terms.
“Not as such, but I did say that I would see that no harm came to ye.”
“Well, thank you,” she said, aware her tone was a bit stiff.
“Ye’re welcome,” he said, matching her tone. She had a feeling he was amused, and it made her somewhat prickly to know it.
“I’m making tea, you’re welcome to stay and have a cup.”
“Thank ye, but no, I’ve cows that need milkin’.”
With that he left, and she locked the door behind him, sighing with relief that he had not taken her up on her offer of tea. She could not quite imagine herself making small talk over a cuppa with the man. ‘So did you have to kill anyone this week? No? That must make a pleasant change for you.’
She sat down, her knees were as wobbly as jelly, and it took a few minutes to find her equilibrium. Conor had moved on to playing with his cars, running them over and around the very patient Finbar, whose expression was that of canine martyr. Isabelle slept, cheeks flushed shell pink, mouth a tiny oval of blissful unconsciousness.
Everything seemed extraordinarily ordinary, in that strange way life often did after a surge of adrenaline.
“For supper, mama?”
“Warmed-up stew,” she said.
Conor nodded, his curly head already bent back toward the dog and his cars. He took so much in his stride, so much he shouldn’t have to.
She watched him play, her mind going to what Casey would think of this situation. She knew exactly how the man would respond to the idea of soliciting Noah Murray’s help and she indulged in the small fantasy of him giving her what for in her head.
“Damn fool woman, always getting’ yerself out of one scrape only to leap headfirst into the next. Ye’ll be the death of me with yer antics.”
She allowed the fantasy to fill out, to see him in her mind’s eye, the frustration in his face, the way his eyes went a bit smoky when he was truly angry with her, how he would take her shoulders with those big hands and look into her eyes to reinforce whatever point he was trying to make with her. She could feel her heart speed up and her skin prickle with need, so vivid was her imagining. She could smell him, and breathed it in, the complicated notes that were only Casey—wood and musk and a deep, dark note that had always sent her pulse to racing.
It hurt too much to keep the image close, hurt too much not to have those hands on her, not to have those arms to go to when the world was a harsh, cold place. She opened her eyes to his absence, feeling the pain of it as if someone had cut off her oxygen and taken away her ability to breathe. She had to stop doing this to herself.
He had one last thing to say, before the fragile bubble of his presence floated away on the winds of reality.
“If ye make a deal with the devil, prepare to burn a wee bit yerself.”
She sighed, and got up to warm the supper. The words were true enough, but when the devil was all you had, you made your bargains and just hoped to get out alive.
Chapter Eleven
‘In Falls of Sky-Color’
April 1976
“CHRIST HAVE MERCY, it’s another young one,” Gerard said. Pamela nodded in agreement, for the victim was young. She was young and had died in a ditch filled with bluebells—falls, in the words of another Gerard, of sky-color filling the narrow ditch from side to side.
The present Gerard looked at her and said, “I don’t like the young ones. We’d best get to it, it’s fine now but it’s goin’ to rain soon.”
She nodded and took the cap off the lens of her camera. A half hour of quiet work ensued, with Gerard writing his meticulous notes and her slowly circling the body, recording the scene with each whirr of the shutter.
They were out in the countryside, on a narrow lane that petered out in a farmer’s field. She could smell the scents of freshly dug earth and steer manure and the light honey scent of the bluebells that proliferated all through the fields and ditches and even in the cracks of the roadway. The farmer’s collie had found the body early that morning.
Gerard was right, she was very young and there was something strangely lovely about her, even here in death. The breeze ruffled her hair, hair the color of a fawn, that light, silky brown which turned gold when the sun played across it. Her face, terribly still and blank, was delicate in its structure, and Pamela could tell she had been a pretty girl. She’d possessed the shy sort of beauty that isn’t first noticed, but which lasts longer with the observer than the more obvious sort. This one was going to stick with her, as she knew the sight of that face—so young that there was still a hint of baby softness around her jawline—would haunt her for a long while. The girl was lying on her side, knees curled up toward her body, fully clothed in a white blouse and thin white pants. She knew once the girl was turned over, the peace and stillness would be gone. She had been shot in the head at point blank range. The coroner’s van was sitting on the side of the verge, waiting to take the body when all the attendants of violent death had done their jobs.
“Pamela?” Gerard’s gruff voice startled her. “What’s amiss?”
“It’s just that this feels wrong.”
“Aye, well murder rarely feels right,” Gerard said, drily.
“I mean it’s not like the other scenes we’ve attended recently—neither kind.”
“No, it’s not.”
She knew he understood what she meant. Generally speaking there were two sorts of scenes they worked; the ones where the hate and violence were clear, and the other where the scene was almost clinical, despite the violent manner of death. There was just a feeling, an energy left behind on the air, the executions felt flat, as though the air were missing its whirl
of electrons. The ones motivated by hate felt dark, and the energy was still there swirling, pricking along her skin, warning, and often leaving her with a heavy feeling for days afterward.
“There’s not the same fury here. Gerard, you’ve seen exactly what I’ve seen. Can you tell me this one doesn’t look and feel different to you?”
He bent down next to the body again, his hands, still gloved, held casually over his knees. “All right, tell me what ye’re thinkin’ here.”
She hesitated for a moment, she often went on instinct, though in the matter of photographing bodies she operated from a place of logic and a methodical precision. Her private thoughts often went in a different direction. Once home, after attending and photographing such a scene, she couldn’t help but mull the details over in her head. She always knew which deaths were going to linger with her, like an oily smoke that coated her mind until something in the daily round of life banished it. What she thought of as the typical scene—executions, bar brawls gone too far—no longer stuck fast in her mind. They were all too common and she had seen too many of those scenes. It was work and she had learned to put it in its own drawer so that the stain of it did not leak into her home. Granted this had become a harder task since Casey disappeared, still she attempted to do it because she didn’t want the taint of those scenes to show in her face or to touch her children in any way.
“This seems personal,” she said trying to inject some certainty into her voice, because she couldn’t have said why it felt so, only that it did. “Like whomever did this loved her, or did at one time.”
Gerard squinted up at her. The day was fine, and the sunlight bright making it hard to see detail. “Loved her so much he shot her in the head?”
She gave him a pointed look. “Gerard, we’ve been in this profession long enough to know there are three reasons for murder—lust, lucre, and love and love’s opposite, which I suppose technically makes it four. Well, here you have to add in politics, too, but those first four reasons still stand good for much of what we see. It wouldn’t be the first time love thwarted turned out this way.”
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 11