The Dead Yard

by Adrian McKinty

  “I’ve filled him in already, Gerry, can’t let him know too much, though; I told him he’s going to be in purgatory for a wee bit,” Touched announced.

  “Of course. We’ll have to keep an eye on you,” Gerry said, slapping me on the back a little too hard.

  “Ok,” I said.

  “These are difficult times,” Gerry said, his eyes tight and betraying nothing.

  I nodded and Jackie came over and patted me on the back too. Not like Gerry. Gentle, affectionately.

  “I believe in you. You were cool under pressure last night and as far as I’m concerned you’re a mate for life. And, for, for, for my part that shit between us is all in the past,” Jackie said, his cheeks reddening.

  I give him a Gleason tap under the chin.

  “Thanks, Jackie,” I said, trying to sound moved.

  “Well, if the fucking lovefest is over, we have work to do,” Touched declared. “Gerry, since you are not the most physically able of the four of us, I’m going to have to ask you to keep Sean covered with the gun. I know it’s bloody distasteful but you’ll have to do it.”

  Gerry nodded and gave me a sympathetic look. Touched opened Gerry’s holdall, removed overalls and gloves. We put them on. Touched grabbed the sail bag and led us upstairs.

  We went into the Mediterranean blue bedroom, with the lovely pictures and new drapes. Jackie took one look at the bed and had to leave. We heard him retch into the toilet bowl.

  “Make sure you bloody flush,” Touched said.

  I looked at her again. Samantha was naked, cold, but she didn’t look dead. Even disfigured, there was, even now, a hint of the woman. That big personality who, if she could, would be telling me to keep a cool head and be careful.

  There she was, still and lifeless, three men in her web, looking at her.

  “Better get started,” Touched said.

  Gerry didn’t say anything, which in itself was remarkable.

  No “Oh my God, Touched, what the fuck have you done?”or “You’re a fucking animal, we need to get you help” or “This time you’ve gone too far,” nothing like that. Just a shrug and on with the bloody task at hand.

  I untied her wrists and lifted her by the head, secretly caressing her frigid cheek.

  “That’s the ticket, Sean. Hold her up. Get in here, Jackie,”Touched said, lifting her legs. We eased her into the sail bag and Gerry zipped it up.

  “I don’t recognize her at all, are you sure about this, Touched? I mean, just because she drove past our house a couple of times,” Gerry wondered.

  “No mistake, Gerry, I’m telling you she was FBI. I promise. I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

  Gerry nodded. That was good enough for him. It had to be good enough for him.

  We carried Samantha to the stairs and as far as I could I made sure the passage down was gently done. Gerry checked that the coast was clear and we heaved the body outside to one of his big white vans. We shut the van and closed, but didn’t lock, the back door of All Things Brit. Touched drove us away from the scene of butchery, Gerry pointing the gun from the front, Jackie and me in the back with Samantha.

  We hit the Plum Island turnpike, went over the bridge, and turned right towards the wildlife sanctuary. This was almost the very spot Samantha and I had been at last night. And here she was again in different circumstances entirely.

  We easily skirted the barrier the Department of Fish and Wildlife had put up to stop people going into the reserve after dark and drove about a mile down the single-lane road, finally coming to a halt at a sign marked “Salt Pan.”

  All four of us got out. A desolate part of the island, between barren sand dunes and the tidal marsh with no trace of people, birds, anything.

  Gerry distributed shovels and Jackie, Touched, and myself began digging a hole in the weird, sucking, salty earth.

  I began to get nervous.

  Of course, they could just as easily shoot me and throw me down this hole too.

  I could, at any moment, make a break for it, run off into the darkness. But Touched and Jackie were very fit. They’d track me and kill me for sure. And from what I’d read, Touched was a marksman.

  I looked up at the waxing moon and the surroundings.

  Not much cover in these dunes.

  I decided to play it cool, for now. Though I’d have to give it a go if I twigged that they were going to execute me.

  “Why bury her here, Touched?” I asked.

  “It’s a good spot,” Touched replied. “The ground is so salty no big animals can stand it, so nothing’s going to dig her up.She’ll stay here undiscovered, pretty much until the end of bloody time. I found out about this place, when, uh, when, well, let’s just say, I had a similar problem about a year ago. Woman trouble. You know what’s it’s like. ’Course I had to do the digging all by myself. Gerry would not help me.”

  “Damn right, Touched, you got yourself into that mess and no bloody mistake,” Gerry said and chuckled as if Touched had failed to pay his parking tickets or been caught sneaking into the cinema.

  Touched wiped the sweat from his brow and took a breather. It was now a hot, sweaty night and naturally the flies were murderous. Gerry, keeping the gun on me and excused from digging, passed us a water bottle. We all took a swig.

  “Have you been to Maine before, Sean?” he asked when I gave him the water back.

  “Nope,” I said, grunting between shovels.

  “You’ll like it. Fall in the Maine woods is a truly beautiful experience. And I think the leaves just might be starting to turn when we get up there, although it’ll probably still be too early. We’ll see.”

  We dug for another fifteen minutes. When Touched called a halt, I was relieved to see that there was room enough for only one body. We laid Samantha in her final resting place and threw in our overalls and Touched’s bloody clothes. When no one was looking, I put my cell phone in one of my gloves and dropped it in too, just in case they had the wit to check the call log. Now there was no link between me and her.

  I made sure my shovel was the first to throw the dirt on her. It’s not an insult, it’s a blessing, I said to myself.

  We filled in the hole quicker than we dug it. Touched stamped down the sand and put his hands on his hips, admiring a job well done.

  He looked at Gerry.

  “The old ways?” Touched asked.

  “We got time?” Gerry replied.

  “Aye,” Touched said. “Come on, lads.”

  Touched unzipped his jeans, took out his penis, and began urinating on the grave. Gerry began unbuttoning his fly and I saw that this was an opportunity not to be missed. I unzipped my pants and unleashed a strong stream of urine onto the grave.

  “Fucking bitch,” I muttered under my breath but loud enough for the boys to hear.

  Gerry laughed and Touched nodded with satisfaction.

  “Come on, Jack, you too,” Touched said.

  Jackie took out his prick but he couldn’t pee. He wasn’t a bad sort, Jackie, and this was all just too much for him.

  “I can’t go,” he said when the three of us were finishing up.

  “Forget it, Jackie. It’s enough. We better get cracking,”Gerry said.

  Touched grunted and took something out of his pocket.

  “I’d be much obliged if you put these on, Sean,” Touched said, passing me a pair of handcuffs.

  Jackie was incensed.

  “Is that really necessary? For fucksake, he’s one of us,” he said.

  “Jackie, you shut the fuck up now. I’m head of security here and I’ve already explained to Sean why I’m suspicious and he understands it.”

  “I don’t mind, Jack,” I told him.

  I zipped my pants and cuffed my hands in front of me. Touched checked that they were tight with a tug on both wrists that made me flinch with a momentary flash of terror, for now that I was safely restrained this was another occasion for an abrupt change of mood: screaming, yelling, kicking me to the ground. . . .

>   But it didn’t happen.

  “All right, job well done,” Gerry said.

  We walked back to the van.

  Gerry drove. He dropped Touched and me back at the house on PI and gave Jackie a lift back into town for his long hours ahead. Jackie would have to scour the place of blood and any clues that she’d met a violent end. Definitely an all-nighter. But at least he wouldn’t find a fax from the FBI or MI6 confirming Samantha’s request for a million dollars and a pardon from Spain and Mexico. She either hadn’t gotten round to asking for that yet, or, like the professional agent she was, she’d destroyed the note as soon as she’d gotten it.

  “This way,” Touched said, leading me not to the guesthouse but instead to a basement room in the main house.

  I was relieved. If I didn’t sufficiently convince Touched and this was to be my prison cell it would be ok. Eventually the FBI backups were bound to notice that Samantha was missing and they’d come looking for me; and if I was still alive they’d find me down here. Hopefully, before Touched had a chance to work his magic.

  * * *

  The dead channel of the TV casting a dismal glow out into the thick air of the musky room. The blinds drawn but sunlight filtering through the gaps, illuminating the dust spirals rising from the heat of the floor. Outside crickets and grasshoppers beginning their summer song and greenheads and biting flies waking from their nighttime slumber, ready for another day of greedy torment on the human population of the island.

  Morning.

  I was knackered, but Touched was exhausted too. He wasn’t up for this. Asking questions without torture, where was the fun in that? Harder than it looked.

  He had sat me in a comfortable old leather reclining chair, but five hours with my right hand cuffed to the radiator and the worry that one slip would mean certain death was still a dark night of the bloody soul.

  Touched yawned.

  “Let’s go through this one more time,” he said, rubbing at the blear in his eyes.

  He’d asked about random times in my life, what school I’d gone to, my teachers, where I’d shopped in Belfast, the names of various pubs. And of course he realized that if I was an Englishman or an American pretending to be an Irishman I was impossibly good. Still, that didn’t prove I wasn’t working for the FBI. He’d asked about every year of Sean’s life, asked names, contacts, addresses. But I’d broken the back of him in the wee smalls and after that his heart wasn’t in it.

  Or at least so it appeared.

  One thing you couldn’t do with Touched was underestimate him.

  That was ok too. I was patient and I’d wait him out. I wanted to wait him out. I was in a dangerous place, but the moment I’d seen Samantha I’d made a decision. The mission had changed. It was no longer about money or the Sons of Cuchulainn. Touched had taken it into the realm of the personal, and I’d decided that whatever else happened I wasn’t running now. I was in it for the long haul. Now it was between him and me. Let the Sons of Cuchulainn carry out their little fantasies, let them have their delusions of grandeur. Let them do what they wanted. But give me time alone with him. Before I escaped to the feds, before I got away from these people, I’d make bloody sure that he got what was coming to him. No trial for you, Touched. Gerry and the rest, yes, but I’m taking care of you myself.

  Touched yawned loudly and I could see he was hamming it.

  He was about to roll his final play.

  “So between March 1992 and November 1992 you don’t remember where you were working at all?” he asked quietly.

  I shook my head.

  “It was either in London or it was Spain, I don’t fucking remember, Touched, I really don’t. I’m beat,” I said.

  He stood up and got himself a drink of water from a tap in the corner. He hit the TV set to switch it off.

  He turned and looked at me.

  Carefully, he took his little green toolbox from an inside jacket pocket. He opened it and removed a blood-encrusted scalpel.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “You think you’re so fucking smart. Well, you’re not. You’re as smart as her and that’s not smart enough,” he said coldly.

  He walked over, threw his arm round my neck, pulled my head back, and brought the bloody scalpel up to my eyeball.

  “Tell me the fucking truth,” he said. “Tell me the truth or I’ll fucking cut you right now.”

  The bloody blade touched my eyelid. It made me wince.

  Fear rushed through me.

  But I wasn’t going to lose it now.

  “I don’t fucking remember, Touched,” I insisted.

  He pushed on the blade for a horrible ten seconds but then he let go the grip around my neck, removed the scalpel, and shook his head.

  He yawned.

  “Ugh, it doesn’t matter, Sean, I don’t remember anything of the 80s and not much of the early 90s either,” he said with a half-laugh.

  I nodded.

  “So you finally believe me?”

  “Aye, I think you’re ok. I have a sixth sense for these things.You’re one of us. I’ve thought so all along. . . . There’s just that one wee thing.”

  “What one wee thing.”

  “Well, ach, it’s nothing, it’s just that you’re a bit too good to be true, you know? You’re cool and you’re clever and you’re young. And you fell in our lap at just the right time. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Not really.”

  “No. Well, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, I want to believe you and it’s easy to believe you.”

  “You should believe me ’cos I’m telling the truth.”

  “Aye, so you say. You probably are. It’s nothing to do with you and I’m going to tell Gerry that. It’s my fault, I’m just a suspicious old dog,” he said with a mechanical wink.

  He gave me a cup full of water. I drank it and leaned back in the reclining chair. Touched rubbed his face.

  “It’s morning,” I said, looking out the basement window.

  “Aye, we’ve been at this all night, and I still have to go and check up on Jackie and ring my wee pal in Portsmouth Harbor. Fuck it. Ok. Ok. I think we’ll call it right here,” Touched said with weary eyes.

  “Fine by me,” I said. “You wanna undo the cuff?”

  With him tired and the cuff off and the gun in the other corner of the room I could fucking kill him right now. But Touched was an old pro.

  He backed away, got his gun, and took another drink of water.

  He shook his head.

  “Like I say, I’m a sussy oul dog. But still, we’re on the job today and I’m going to have to keep you under close observation until then. Do you mind?” he said, sounding a bit ashamed of himself.

  “You got to do what you think is right,” I said like a good little disciple.

  Touched stood, threw me another set of cuffs, and motioned me to fasten my wrists together. Only then would he undo the chain to the radiator.

  “Ok, what time is it? Let me see, six, ok, I can hear them moving around upstairs. Well, what I suggest is this. You and me go upstairs and get some breakfast and I’ll buzz Jackie and we both have a big bloody sleep for four or five hours. Let them do all the packing and hard work. We’ll kip, have some lunch. Go to Portsmouth, get our man, and head to the cabin.What do you say?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I muttered.

  “It wasn’t too bad, was it?”

  “I’m wrecked, Touched, totally wrecked. I hope you did all this with Jackie and Seamus, too, and all the others,” I said.

  He put his arm round my shoulder.

  “Come up for breakfast. Got to keep those cuffs on ya until after the op or at least until I’m sure. Do you think you can sleep with them on?”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “Cuff your good ankle to the bed. What about that?” Touched said in an attempt to be tender.

  It made me hate him all the more.

  “Whatever you say, mate,” I told him.

  He led me upstairs. He th
rew me the key so I could eat breakfast, but he was sitting at the other end of the table and he had the gun in his pocket now.

  After I’d forced myself to swallow some toast and eggs, he made me cuff myself again, took me to my old room upstairs, and handcuffed my ankle to the iron bedstead, only then undoing the wrists. Suspicious old dog was right. And from his extreme caution, it was not impossible that he’d seen through my act and actually he was the one fooling me, not vice versa.Not impossible, but not likely.

  Touched waved goodbye, shut the door, and I lay back on the bed.

  I closed my eyes. But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t come down from the high plateau of concentration. One wee slipup and I’d be joining Samantha in a hole in the salt pan.

  Samantha.

  Oh my God, Samantha.

  What a hero she’d been. Saying nothing, when it would have been so easy to give me up to end her pain. If I got out of this alive I’d make sure the Brits knew about her courage.

  I stared at the cloud patterns through the window and watched the tide come in, and then, despite everything, I did manage to doze for a while. . . .

  Two, three hours later?

  The door opened.

  Gerry was standing there.

  He walked to the bed and undid the handcuff at my foot.

  “We won’t be needing that anymore,” he said.

  I was free.

  I sat up, rubbing my ankle to get the circulation back. Gerry was easy, even if he was armed. A dropkick to the sternum. Get him on the floor, rip that revolver from him, grab a pillow to act as silencer, shoot the fucker twice, one in the gut, one in the head, run down through the house looking for Touched. But where was Touched and the rest of them?

  “Where is Touched? I should really tell him that there’s no hard feelings.”

  “Oh, he’s gone already, and listen, I want to talk to you about that, better that he’s not here.”

  “Go ahead.”

  His big frame lumbered up beside me and his sad eyes blinked slowly.

  “Sean, I just want to let you know that I’m very sorry about all of this. This is not how I customarily treat my guests,” he said.

  I don’t know what was worse, Touched’s suspicions or Gerry’s constant fucking apologies.