The Traveller remembered the little girl, no more than six when he’d spoken with her in a prayer room at the Royal Victoria Hospital, in Belfast. A teenager by now. She had terrified him then, the way she seemed to see right into the very soul of him.
“He works for a security firm now,” Hewitt said, his words quickening as he gave away his old friend. “Watching over building sites, patrolling warehouses, that sort of thing. He’s a wreck, from what I’ve been told. Working nights, drinking in the day. He’ll be no trouble. You won’t hurt the girl, though, will you? She didn’t do any—”
Before Hewitt could move, the Traveller was on him, pushing him back into the wall of the shed, in the darkness. He pressed the Glock’s muzzle against Hewitt’s lips.
“Open your mouth,” the Traveller said.
Hewitt tried to say no, but the metal jammed against his teeth and gums.
“Open,” the Traveller said.
Hewitt did as he was commanded, and the Traveller angled the muzzle up against the roof of his mouth. He heard the patter of fluid on shoe leather.
“You remember Tomas Strazdas? Arturas Strazdas?”
Hewitt choked in reply.
“Their mother sent me. Laima Strazdienė. She wanted you to know that.”
Hewitt tried to scream.
The Traveller pulled the trigger.
4
Jack Lennon walked his sixth tour of the site since coming on shift at ten the night before. He left the portacabin that served as the site office on the hour, every hour, and walked every path through the housing development. They were all roofed and glazed now, wired and plumbed, white goods ready to be installed. Turnkey homes waiting for their young, affluent owners, all built shoulder-to-shoulder so one kitchen overlooked another, with hardly any gardens to them. The developer had squeezed as many houses as could possibly fit onto the land, starting at £129,000 for a three-bed semi. Families would start moving in within the next fortnight and Lennon would move on to another job.
Sites like this were easy pickings for a thief. The building materials, before they were assembled, were always good for selling on to another developer. And now the houses had washing machines, tumble dryers, dishwashers, fridge-freezers and ovens, not yet fitted, all sitting on pallets and wrapped in plastic. Two men with a hand truck and a van could make thousands in a couple of hours. Thank God, or Lennon would be out of work.
Not that he’d be any use if a van full of thieves did show up. He was in no shape to tackle anyone, and he certainly couldn’t give chase with the limp that had been with him since he’d been shot in the short stay car park of the International Airport a few years back. Weeks in hospital, months of treatments and physiotherapy, all to get a young woman on a flight to Poland and safety, and he still felt like that leg wasn’t his own. Even if he could pursue a thief, he doubted his heart would stand it. But most thieves are cowards, so even a useless lump like him proved enough of a deterrent.
It took Lennon thirty minutes to make his way around the entire site, thirty-five if his hip and knee were giving him trouble. Tonight’s thin drizzle made it all the more miserable. The kind of rain that finds its way into your collar and your cuffs, down the back of your neck. The comparative warmth of the portacabin called, tempting him to cut short this round, but he would do his job. He didn’t have much pride left, but Jesus, he could still limp his way around a building site.
At 4:35 a.m., he finally arrived back at the portacabin, light glowing from inside. He let himself in with the key on the ring chained to his belt. The radio still played, and the electric heater still hummed. He wiped his boots on the sheets of newspaper that covered the floor and slumped into the chair. Placing his hand on his chest, he listened to his own thumping heartbeat. Even the modest exertion of walking around the site seemed to strain the muscle in his chest, stealing the air from his lungs. The sensation of floating washed through his head, and he breathed deep and slow to bring everything back into balance. There was still coffee in the thermos, but caffeine at this time was a bad idea. He had promised himself he would not open a beer when he got home and instead go to bed straight after leaving Ellen to school. Deep down, he knew he wouldn’t keep that promise, but he didn’t have to admit that just yet.
As the radio played inoffensively soft rock music, he set a timer on his phone for twenty minutes and folded his forearms on the desk. He rested his head there and closed his eyes. As his mind drifted, he thought of Ellen, and what had happened the afternoon before.
Her cry had pulled him from the depths of sleep, and he had clambered out of bed, tripping over the sheets. Downstairs, he found her on the threshold to the kitchen, staring at the ceiling, eyes wild.
She had come back to herself with a gasp and said, “He’s coming.”
Ellen couldn’t, wouldn’t tell him who. Lennon pressed her on what had happened, what she’d seen, but she had said nothing, nothing, and ran upstairs to her room. Sleep still blurring his mind and vision, he had looked around the kitchen, seeking some sign of what had left her on the floor. The place was a mess, but no more than usual.
It had been at least two, maybe three years since Ellen had experienced such an episode. She had learned to keep these things to herself—feelings, visions, visitations, whatever anyone wanted to call them—mostly because he didn’t want to hear about them. The idea of it unsettled him in a way that he had no desire to confront. The notion of things lurking beyond his sight was patently ridiculous. He would not consider such nonsense.
It didn’t matter that to acknowledge the things Ellen experienced would be to acknowledge his own fear. He simply didn’t think about that.
But this, hearing her cry out, finding her on the floor, could not be ignored. He had gone upstairs and knocked on her bedroom door.
“What?” she had called, as if he had knocked a hundred times already.
“You okay, love?”
A pause, then, “Yeah.”
“Do you want to talk?”
No answer.
“I think we should talk about it,” he said.
“I just slipped,” she said. “The floor must have been wet or something.”
“You said, he’s coming. Who’s coming?”
Music erupted from inside. Some death metal band or other, hard and grinding. Loud enough that he’d have to open the door if he wanted to be heard. But it was her space, the noise creating the shield she needed. He rested his head against the door frame and mourned for the little girl he had first brought to this house. The girl who squealed as the waves splashed against her legs, who kicked saltwater at him and giggled.
Lennon missed that little girl.
The timer on his phone sounded, twenty minutes up, jerking him awake from a thin and queasy sleep. He lifted his head and reached for the phone, fumbling for the icon to stop the abrasive jangle. Close to five in the morning now. The first workmen would be on site by seven and he could go home. Maybe Ellen would feel more like talking when he drove her to school. But probably not.
A craving for a cigarette dried his throat even though he hadn’t smoked in years. Instead, he fetched a blister strip of painkillers from his pocket. Not prescription strength, but enough to dull the edges. He swallowed three with the dregs of a bottle of water while Toto played on the radio. A fanfare signalled the hourly news bulletin, a syndicated report from an English station. He listened with half an ear: more turmoil in Westminster with a paralysed government in stalemate with an impotent opposition, a general election just days away; America dealing with the latest fallout from its leader’s Twitter addiction; more atrocities in the Middle East.
And reports of the death by gunshot of a senior police officer in Northern Ireland. Although official reports have given little information, a source close to the family has suggested a possible suicide at the property outside Belfast. More to follow.
; Lennon reached for the radio and switched to a local station.
More of the same sketchy details, no name, no exact location. Could be anybody. So why did the news cause an alarm in his mind, a chill that rippled out from his centre?
He told himself to forget it, to get on with his next round. But as he toured the nearly finished homes with their stickered windows and empty rooms, as his heart lumbered in his chest, he couldn’t shake the certainty that the reported death was the start of something.
As Lennon drove home in the early light, he gambled on his old friend Alan Uprichard being up and about. The former Chief Superintendent had retired not long after Lennon had quit the force, and they had stayed in touch, albeit infrequently. Uprichard was the closest thing he had to a real friend. Lennon called up the number on his contact list and pressed the phone to his ear. The Bluetooth on his ageing car had stopped working long ago. Uprichard answered almost immediately.
“Jack,” he said, “I thought you might call.”
“Who was it?” Lennon asked.
“Hewitt.”
The phone almost slipped from his fingers. He pulled into a bus stop and applied the handbrake.
“You there, Jack?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“How do you feel about it?” Uprichard asked.
“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “God knows, I’ve wanted to piss on his grave plenty of times. But now it’s real.”
“Hmm. Death has a funny way of clarifying how you feel about a man. You hated him, I know, but he was your friend at one time. One doesn’t cancel out the other.”
Bloody Uprichard, Lennon thought, always too wise for his own good.
“He got Marie killed,” he said. “My little girl doesn’t have a mother because of him.”
That was only one of Hewitt’s sins. The bastard had once paid another cop, a young Detective Sergeant in need of money, to kill Lennon, and the hit had almost succeeded. Lennon had a limp, no spleen, and regular nightmares as reminders of the incident.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you got a visit from some of our former colleagues,” Uprichard said, “asking you to account for your whereabouts yesterday evening.”
“Don’t worry,” Lennon said, “it wasn’t me. Even if I’d wanted to, or I was fit for it, I’m not that stupid. The news report said something about suicide.”
“No,” Uprichard said, “that was some relative running their mouth off. His wife called it in as self-inflicted, it was his own weapon after all, but there was a set of footprints at the scene. Someone came in over the back fence and left the same way. Just dropped the pistol and ran. Still, whoever did it made it look self-inflicted enough that the first responders weren’t as careful about preserving evidence as they should have been.”
“Have they anyone in mind for it?” Lennon asked.
“No one in particular. It happened in a blind spot behind a shed. No one checked the CCTV until they found the footprints, but all it got was a glimpse of someone going over the fence. I’m sure forensics will turn up more.”
Lennon remained still and quiet, thinking of Dan Hewitt and all the times he’d wanted to choke the life from him.
“Listen, Jack.”
“Yeah?”
“He had it coming. You and I both know he was a wrong ’un, into all sorts of bad doings. You’ve nothing to feel guilty about.”
“I know,” Lennon said. “Thanks.”
“Anyway, how’s your girl getting on?”
“I need to go,” Lennon said.
He hung up and pulled out of the bus stop.
5
Ellen knew the questions would come. She had hoped her father would be late home so she could go for the bus, but no luck. He ignored her suggestion of getting some rest while she made her own way to school. There was no avoiding it. They had barely left the house before it started.
“So, you want to tell me what happened yesterday?” Lennon asked.
“I told you already,” Ellen said. “It was nothing. I just slipped and fell.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing.”
“Can we just leave it?”
“No, we can’t,” he said, his voice hardening like it did when he wanted to show his authority. Not that he had any.
“I just . . . I maybe hit my head when I fell, that’s all.”
“Did you see something?”
Ellen concentrated on her fingers, twined in her lap.
“What did you see?”
“I don’t do that anymore,” she said. “Like you said, it was never real. It was just my imagination playing tricks.”
“All right, then, what did you imagine you saw?”
Ellen turned her gaze out the passenger window. The yellowed grass, the endless sloping hills, the bleary sky. Rain streaked the glass. She wanted to tell him to shut up, to mind his own business, but she didn’t have the will to endure the fight that would follow.
“Don’t get upset about it,” she said. “Don’t get angry.”
“I won’t,” he said.
Ellen knew there was no point in asking her father to promise. Jack Lennon was not a man who kept promises.
She took a breath and said, “The thin man.”
If he reacted, she couldn’t see. She kept her eyes turned to the passing hills.
“It’s been a while,” he said, eventually.
“His name was Gerry, wasn’t it?”
“Gerry Fegan,” Lennon said. “He was a killer. I don’t know what drew your mother to him.”
“I remember holding his hand,” Ellen said, feeling the dry skin against hers, the bones within the flesh.
“He died a long time ago,” Lennon said. “Same time as your mother.”
“He helped us,” Ellen said. “Didn’t he? He was a friend. I remember that.”
A few moments passed, then Lennon said, “Your mother shouldn’t have got mixed up with him.”
Ellen had little memory of the fire, the house that burned, or what brought her and her mother there. She knew Marie McKenna more as a photograph, a still image, than as a living person. And she recalled the thin man as a dream, a visitor in the night who used to speak softly to her when she was small and afraid. His presence had always been a soothing one, not the fearful vision she saw the day before.
“There was blood,” she said. “Yesterday, when I saw him. On the walls. On the floor. Everywhere. Then it caught fire and I was burning.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He said, he’s coming. He said, run.”
She looked to her father now, and he stared at the road ahead. His hands tight on the steering wheel, the muscles in his jaw working. His breathing seemed more strained than usual.
“It was just a dream,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just a dream.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey to Ballycastle. Total silence, not even the radio to break it. Lennon normally kept it on one of the news stations, but not this morning. When they pulled up outside the school, double-parked, she undid her seatbelt and opened the passenger door. His hand on her arm made her pause.
“Listen, I’ll maybe pick you up today. Save you going for the bus.”
“Why?”
“Just . . . because.”
“I can get the bus, it’s fine.”
“No, I’ll lift you. I want to.”
“Then you can’t drink this morning.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Ellen examined her father’s face, searching for the lie. She found none, and it frightened her.
“All right,” she said.
“And if you see anyone hanging around today, outside the school or wherever, anyone you don’t know, anyone paying attention to you, you call me right away, okay? Don’t
worry about waking me.”
“Dad, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he said. “You need to get going or you’ll be late.”
Ellen climbed out of the car and walked towards the school gates. She looked back over her shoulder to see her father watching from the car, still double-parked, no sign of moving even though he blocked traffic. Her shoulder brushed a tall man coming the opposite way, and she mumbled sorry. She gave her father one more glance. He did not pull away until she was inside the gates. She paused there and watched him pass. Neither of them waved.
She took the earbuds from her blazer pocket and inserted them, chose a Cannibal Corpse album, and jacked up the volume. Her head down, she walked along the drive to the main school building, avoiding the gazes of the other kids filtering in. Above the guitars and blast beats, she heard Freak, Freak, Freeeaaaaak, shouted after her. She ignored it as she always did. Instead, she focused on her phone, where she called up the web browser and opened the local BBC news page. The first headline made her stop in the school doorway.
Slain PSNI Officer Named: Detective Superintendent Daniel Hewitt Murdered at Home.
Shoulders and elbows buffeted her, and one boy leaned in close, shouted, “Get out of the fucking way, Freak.”
Ellen got moving, found her way to the girls’ toilets. She locked herself in a cubicle, removed the earbuds, lowered the toilet seat, and sat down to read.
A senior officer of the Police Service of Northern Ireland found dead at the rear of his property outside Belfast has been named as Detective Superintendent Daniel Hewitt of the Intelligence Branch, based at Ladas Drive station.
PSNI sources have confirmed that it has now become a murder inquiry. It is reported that sometime after 8:00 p.m., DSI Hewitt’s wife heard a gunshot from the family’s back garden. When Mrs. Hewitt went out to investigate, she found her husband’s body with his personal protection weapon by his side. It is understood that Mrs. Hewitt made a panicked 999 call stating her husband had taken his own life, but sources say that evidence at the scene indicates another party was involved. The killer is believed to have entered the property by scaling a fence at the rear, used DSI Hewitt’s own weapon against him, and escaped the same way.
The Traveller and Other Stories Page 16