Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  “Are you serious?” he said. “You want us to go in there?”

  Miller nodded again. “An uncle of Charlie’s,” he said. “There’s a bar at the back.”

  “But he’s an undertaker. He lays out stiffs.”

  “Yeah.” Miller reached for the door handle. “Mine’s a Guinness.”

  He got out of the car and walked across the road, his head down, his hands thrust deep inside the pockets of the ancient leather jacket. Thompson watched him for a moment, then retrieved his Browning from the parcel shelf beneath the steering wheel, and stuffed the automatic inside the waistband of his jeans. Camps and Venner would certainly spot the van. Whether they’d join them in the undertakers was anybody’s guess.

  Thompson got out of the car and ran across the road. By the time he caught up with Miller, the older man was opening the shop door. Inside, the place was dark. It smelled, faintly, of embalming fluid. There were three high-backed chairs against a wall, and a low table. On the table was a large Bible, metal embossed at the corners, and a catalogue of coffins. The catalogue was dated 1967.

  The two men stood together for a moment. A door opened at the back of the shop and light spilled in. A man emerged. He was old. He was bald. He wore an old black suit, with a cardigan underneath. The cardigan was yellow. Thompson noticed his hands, one held in the other, as if it might fall off. Miller looked at him, saying nothing.

  “You have a bar,” he suggested at last.

  The old man nodded. He had a soft Kerry accent. He spoke in a whisper.

  “We do,” he agreed.

  “My friend and I would like a drink.”

  The old man nodded again. “Do you have business in here?” he enquired.

  Miller glanced at the catalogue, and picked it up.

  “No,” he said, “not yet.”

  There was a long silence, Thompson staring at Miller, beginning to wonder about his sanity. Then the door opened suddenly behind them, and Thompson spun round, instinctive, stepping into the shadows, his right hand going down to the waistband of his jeans. Two men walked in, familiar silhouettes against the sunlight outside in the street. One of them was Venner. The other was Camps. Miller didn’t even bother to turn round. Thompson looked at them both for a moment, enjoying the expression on Venner’s face, bewilderment and disbelief.

  “Hi,” he said drily, “we’re here for a drink.”

  They went through to a room at the back, darker still, a single table beside an empty fireplace. The floorboards were bare. They’d been painted black. Drinks came from two shelves of bottles behind a tiny bar. Thompson drank lemonade. Venner and Camps settled for lager. Miller ordered a large glass of Guinness.

  They sat in silence while the old man found some glasses. When the drinks came, on a battered Aer Lingus tray, Miller distributed them round the table. Then, before the old man had even left the room, he began the final briefing.

  Fifteen minutes south was another town called Waterville. From Waterville, a road went east, inland, beside a river. Ten miles up this road they’d find Lissnatinnig Bridge. There, they’d turn right, up towards Knockmoyle Mountain. The target house lay at the end of the road. It was white. There were pine trees opposite. The area was called Glannadin. It would be dark by the time they got there. It would be cold. They’d recce from the south and the east, using the handsets. He paused, and then began to go through the instructions again, entirely unnecessary, a low, slow monotone, dictation speed, as if he were talking to a bunch of kids. The men exchanged glances. Thompson put his pencil down and swallowed a mouthful of lemonade. It was foul. No fizz, and a bitter, chemical aftertaste. He wondered briefly about the embalming fluid, and whether it might not, after all, have been wiser to stick to the black stuff.

  He looked up. Miller had come to an end. He was sitting back in the chair, gazing at the bottles behind the bar. No one else said a word. As a briefing, it had been a joke. Nothing settled. Nothing fixed. None of the really important details even mentioned. Just the route they’d take, and the name of the prizes at the end of the road.

  “Scullen,” he said again, softly, reaching for the last of his Guinness, “and the boy Connolly.”

  He drained the glass and stood up. The men followed him out of the shop, and across the street. He looked at his watch, waiting for Thompson to unlock the car doors, and then got in. They waited a full minute before Miller gave the signal for the off. Only when they were a mile out of town, heading south again, did Thompson voice the obvious thought.

  “Why didn’t you write it all out and stick it on a lamppost?” he said. “Give them all a treat?”

  Miller said nothing for a moment. Then he smiled.

  “Quite,” he said, opening the metal box at his feet and beginning to sort his way through the small armoury of weapons inside.

  Buddy found the gun as the last of the sunset expired over Gosport.

  They’d slipped from the pontoon at Warsash at three in the afternoon, easing into Southampton Water on the last of the ebb tide. They’d used the motor, hugging the coast, managing a half-decent four knots while the long straggle of weekend sailors beat their way back towards the Hamble marina. Out in the Solent, it was less crowded, and they’d made good time, puttering east past Stubbington and Lee-on-the-Solent, and then dog-legging round the broad shoal of Spit Bank before turning inland again towards Southsea Castle, and the deep water channel that ran in beside the mile of busy promenade.

  They’d entered the harbour at six o’clock, the air beginning to chill after the warmth of the day. The harbour had been busy – more yachts, commercial shipping, ferries to the Isle of Wight and France – but they’d found the marina berth and tied up alongside with no real difficulty. As Eva hopped onto the pontoon and threw a perfect half-hitch around one of the big mooring rings, the first of a squadron of Sea Harrier jump jets had appeared from the west, tiny grey dots that grew and grew as the pilots rotated the jet exhausts downwards, keeping the planes airborne on a column of raw thrust. Even a mile away, the noise was deafening and Eva had turned her back and put her hands over her ears as the planes dropped slowly towards the dockyard, one after the other, turning into wind and finally settling, like nesting birds, on the flight decks of the two carriers. Buddy had watched them, looping a second pair of fenders over the starboard quarter, thinking of the guys he’d met in the pub, their songs, their eager, frantic courage. Part of him still wanted to go. No question.

  Now, though, he’d something else to think about. The gun was small and black. It fitted snugly into the palm of his hand, and when he worked out how to open the magazine, he emptied seven bullets onto the table. The bullets were small, .22 calibre. To do anything with these, thought Buddy, you’d have to get close. Very close. The boat rocked. Eva had been away, up in the town. She’d said she needed to make a call. She’d said it was important. Now she was back, standing aft, hands deep in her bomber jacket, looking at him through the open hatch. Buddy had found the gun behind a cushion in the cabin. It had been wrapped in a dishcloth.

  “Yours?” he enquired. “Or does it come with the boat?”

  She looked at the gun, stepping down into the cabin, putting a Waitrose shopping bag on the fold-down table.

  “Mine,” she agreed.

  “You use it often?”

  She glanced at him, ignoring the sarcasm.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever used it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I missed.”

  “Thank Christ for that.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then held out her hand. He gave her the gun, and she examined it quickly, then swept the bullets on the table into a neat pile. Buddy watched her reloading the magazine. Whatever had been wrong with her marksmanship didn’t extend to the rest of it. She handled the gun with total confidence, securing the magazine, sliding the breech mechanism backwards and forwards, checking the safety catch. Finally, she wrapped the gun in the dish
cloth again and put it back behind the cushion.

  “You planning on using it again,” he enquired, “this time round?”

  She shrugged, starting to unpack the bag of shopping. More cold meats. A container or two of salad. Half a dozen crusty white rolls.

  “Hope not,” she said.

  “But you will if you have to?”

  “If we have to,” she nodded, “natürlich.”

  Buddy gazed at her for a moment, shaking his head, trying not to think too hard about the implications. He’d signed up to cripple an aircraft carrier. Not play Bonnie and Clyde with whoever happened to get in their way. She turned her back on him, ignoring him, busy with the food, and he looked at her a moment longer before returning to what he’d been doing earlier, laying out his equipment on the triangle of mattress in the forepeak, checking the charges, the clamps, fitting them carefully into the cheap shopping bags he’d bought in the market. The bags were latticed in plastic, strong enough to bear the weight of the clamps and the explosives, but open at the top. He planned to secure the tops of the bags with twists of wire, cocooning the charges inside. With one in each hand, underwater, they’d offer the minimum resistance, yet still be easy to carry. He knew it was a botch, a thoroughly makeshift solution, but twenty years underwater had taught him that the simplest, crudest ideas were often best.

  The charges packed, and the sonar detonators tuned to the blast frequency, he turned to the closed-circuit breathing set. On the way over from Warsash, sitting at the table, he’d run through his earlier calculations, checking his input figures – depths, pressures, swim times – making sure he’d calculated the right flow rate, the all-important trickle of pure oxygen he’d need to feed into the circuit to enable him to stay submerged and alive for long enough to complete the task. Now, he did the sums again, using a paper and pencil the first time, and a calculator the second. Both times, the result was the same. Unless there was a sudden need to go deeper, he’d have sixty-five minutes, more than enough to swim to the target, attach the charges, and then return across the harbour to the marina. Of the three elements to the operation, it was the third that worried him the most. Like most divers, Buddy didn’t much like swimming. Five hundred metres was a fair distance, and he only hoped he had the stamina to make it.

  An hour later, dark outside, Eva served supper. Buddy had thrown a blanket over his equipment in the forepeak, and had retired to the cockpit outside while Eva laid the table. She’d bought some cans of Pils in the supermarket, and he sat in the stern, his legs stretched out, sipping the lager. It was cold now, a brisk wind blowing down the harbour from the north-west, and he was wrapped in a heavy polo-necked sweater and a thick anorak. The water was black, beginning to stir with the incoming tide, the wind pushing against it, pocking the surface with tiny, fretful waves. Across the harbour, the dockyard was ablaze with lights, and he could see figures in blue overalls working around the Sea Harriers. He counted the Harriers. There were half a dozen, and he wondered briefly exactly what difference their temporary loss would make to the Task Force they’d managed to cobble together. Presumably, they’d ship south aboard some other vessel. Presumably, as ever, the Navy would cope.

  The door to the cabin opened, and Eva emerged. She had a cup of coffee in her hand, and she shut the door carefully before making herself comfortable on the bench seat opposite. Buddy looked at the coffee for a moment. The second can of lager had warmed him, a blessing, and he felt looser about everything, less anxious, even benign. What he had to do, he had to do. Thinking too hard about the implications was no longer worth the candle. Better, by far, to look ahead, beyond it all.

  He looked at her in the darkness.

  “Tell me …” he said, “about tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” She glanced across the harbour, towards the carrier. “Tomorrow we— ”

  “I meant afterwards. Me. My wife.”

  “Ah,” Eva nodded, “your wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s well.”

  “You’ve spoken to her?”

  Eva shook her head. “I’ve spoken to someone who’s been with her.”

  “And?”

  “She sends her love.”

  “Good.” Buddy tipped his empty can, a toast. “So when do I get to see her? When does it happen?”

  “We phone.”

  “We phone?”

  “I phone. I have a number. There’s a procedure. It’s all arranged.”

  Buddy nodded, watching her, impatient for the details, the small print that would bridge the gap, back to Ireland, back to Jude.

  “So how do I get there?” he said. “Ferry? Take the car?”

  “Plane. From Heathrow. You’ll need your passport. You’ll fly to Cork. You’ll be picked up.”

  Buddy nodded again, warming to the arrangement. Then he remembered the last conversation with the man in the cottage, the shape of the deal he’d offered.

  “I thought we were supposed to meet in Boston?” he said.

  Eva shook her head. “Ireland. It’s changed.”

  “But we’re still going to Boston?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Buddy looked away a moment, saying nothing, wondering about another can of Pils. Somewhere in the darkness he heard the sound of laughter, men, distant but distinct. He peered across the harbour. There were no clues aboard Invincible, just the silhouette of the Sea Harriers against the black of the night.

  “Tell me something,” he said at last, “where is she? Where have they put her?”

  Eva emptied the mug of coffee. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the truth.”

  After dark, lying in bed by the window, Jude felt her head beginning to clear.

  Most of the day had vanished, compressed into a meaningless series of hallucinations, the fever lapping at her brain, retrieving memories she’d long forgotten, phantom bodies skipping across rooms she’d known only as a child, up and down an enormous spiral staircase she must once have seen in a movie, the music coming and going, sometimes loud, sometimes indistinct, like a badly tuned radio. Then, abruptly, it had all gone, like summer thunder, rolling away, and she was left with squares of darkness in the window, and a very clear view of the door. She called out. The door opened. A face appeared, the boy who’d arrived later than the rest of them, the young academic from Belfast, the one she’d decided to trust.

  She looked up at him. She moved her head on the pillow. She realized that the pillow was soaking wet. She smiled. She could barely speak. He knelt down by the bed, on the bare wooden floor. She closed her eyes a moment, determined to concentrate, now that she could think it all through.

  There were details to sort out, important details. There was the question of dispatch. Her body. What she wanted to happen to it. Afterwards. After she’d gone. She didn’t want it to go back to the States. She didn’t want her family to see her this way, even dead. She pondered the problem. What difference would it make? Dead or alive, nothing worked. She thought about it some more, trying to be sensible, but it didn’t help. It had nothing to do with logic, this feeling of hers, this conviction. But then that wasn’t the point. She frowned, beginning to lose touch again. What was the point, she wondered.

  The boy from Belfast, Derek, came closer. She’d got to know him a bit. She liked him. She thought he might like her, might be extending something a little more than sympathy. If she had hands, she’d have touched him now, at the bedside. Instead, she moistened her lips with her tongue. She wanted to share with him something profound. Something important. Something central to her life. Now that it was so nearly over.

  “Buddy,” she whispered.

  Connolly nodded, catching the name. She’d talked about him. Described him. Offered snapshots of the relationship, how it had started, where it had been. Connolly had listened to her, recognizing the memories for what they were, travellers’ tales from a land he’d never visited, a country on no map. She’d shared everything with this man
of hers, everything it was possible to share. And sharing everything, dividing everything, they’d become one, indivisible.

  “Buddy,” he confirmed.

  She blinked up at him. “Tell him it was great,” she whispered, “all of it.”

  Connolly nodded.

  “I will.”

  “Tell him I’ll miss it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Here …” she closed her eyes a moment, trying to concentrate, “you’ll need the number.”

  “Number?”

  “The telephone number.”

  Connolly stared at her a moment. He’d never watched anyone die before, not the way Charlie had died, the death of the bullet, but the other kind of dying, the slower death, the death of the last vigil, the creak at the door, the sigh in the chimney, the rustle of the curtain, the last goodbye. People who had, people he’d talked to, read about, said that you knew when it was imminent, a wholly natural thing, complete with its own small surprises, and kneeling beside her now, he knew it was true. This woman was dying. Soon she would be gone. Yet still she had time to share a phone number.

  “0703 …” she said, counting out the numbers slowly, like coins, “834139.”

  Connolly wrote down the number. He wondered why it was so hard to keep his hand still. He looked at the number, and repeated it. She nodded, her breathing shallow now, her voice fainter than ever.

  “Will you phone him?”

  Connolly nodded. “Yes.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  She smiled, and Connolly looked at her, realizing what he’d become, the bookend to her life. He bent very low, his cheek close to hers, atoning for Charlie. Her face was very hot.

  “What shall I say?”

  She frowned for a moment, working it out again. “Tell him to bury me,” she said at last, “but here. Not there.”

  “Not where?”

  “Not in the States.” She smiled. “He can get as close as he likes but keep this side of the ocean. Eh …?”

  She left the sentence in the air and closed her eyes. There was peace in her face and a certain amusement, and when the first shots came out of the darkness, very distant, there was no sign that she’d even heard them.