Collusion

21

The Traveller lay on his stomach, the sheets bunched at his feet. He couldn’t get comfortable. His left hand tingled; his fingers felt distant, like they were attached to someone else’s hand. The old bitch had missed any big veins, but the Traveller feared she’d done something to his nerves. He’d heard about that sort of thing, how all the nerves were joined together, and injury to one part of the body could have repercussions for another.

Same thing with that lump of Kevlar they’d taken out of his brain. The Traveller remembered little of the moments leading up to the explosion, only fragments of images, the wires coming into view as he’d pulled the sheets of rusted corrugated iron aside, the idea that he might die. After that, waking up in some dirty foreign hospital, unable to remember his name, unable to speak. He’d spent months there being poked and prodded. They showed him the piece of his helmet that had wound up inside his head. Who would think a little piece of plastic could take so many things away from him? Everything was connected. So, the tingling in his fingers bothered him.

If he’d been able to read, he’d have looked it up on the hotel room’s Internet connection. The foreign girl at reception told him he could get the Internet through the telly when he checked in yesterday. That had been before he headed out to see Quigley. She’d watched him when he came back in, doing his best to hide the stiffness in his arm. The Traveller smiled at her as he passed. When he got to the lift, he turned and studied the floor in case he’d left any blood in his trail. None, thank Christ.

He stared at the shaft of light at the centre of the drawn curtains. How come hotel room curtains never closed properly? The light hurt his head, so he screwed his eyes shut. He rolled onto his right side, and the movement caused his left upper arm to flare in distress.

‘Fucking old bitch cunt bastard fucking shite-licking arse-fucker,’ the Traveller said. He’d thought Mrs Quigley was too soft in the head to be a problem. A fucking knitting needle, for Christ’s sake.

The wound hadn’t bled that much, really, but it hurt like holy fuck. He wondered for a crazy moment if he should go to another hospital, let them look at it, see if she’d done any real damage. He could give another false name. He’d done it before. But those had been emergencies where one risk outweighed the other. This just hurt.

The Traveller threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. No use in lying there, wallowing in the pain and tingling and anger. He twisted his arm to see the wad of toilet paper he’d taped to the small pinhole of a wound. A blotch of dark red was all the paper showed for the pain, but a fucker of a bruise had begun to spread out from it. He’d seen it before, just the once. A stupid bastard called Morgan had got stabbed by his wife with a knitting needle. A peculiar thing, it was. The shape of the needle meant the wound sealed shut almost completely, letting little blood seep out. But the damage was done, the bleeding hidden beneath the skin. Morgan had almost died. The Traveller had finished the job with a screwdriver a week later. The wife’s father had paid him well for the job.

He turned the bedside clock so he could see it better. Coming seven forty-five. Traffic noise rose up from University Street. He would have preferred a better class of hotel, maybe a nice little boutique place, or that new Hilton over by the Waterfront theatre, but this one offered more privacy. It was a cheap chain hotel, the kind of place sales reps and those too drunk to drive themselves home would stay in. Normally he would have slept deep and well, but the hole in his arm put an end to that. The Traveller wondered for a moment what he’d do with the early morning. It didn’t take long to decide, even if he knew it would cause some annoyance. He picked up the mobile, thumbed in the password, and dialled.

‘What?’ Orla O’Kane answered.

‘It’s me,’ the Traveller said.

‘What the fuck do you want this time of the morning?’ she asked. ‘I’m not even out of bed yet.’

‘Were you asleep?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t sleep too well.’

The Traveller twisted his back, trying to find somewhere for his left arm that didn’t hurt like a bastard. ‘I know the feeling,’ he said.

After a short pause, Orla asked, ‘So what do you want?’

‘Tell me about Gerry Fegan,’ the Traveller said.

‘My father told you about him already,’ she said. ‘You’d find out some more if you could read the fucking files he gave you.’

‘Tell me about him,’ the Traveller repeated.

‘Why?’

‘Quigley talked about him last night,’ the Traveller said. ‘He talked about him like he was something …’

‘Something what?’

‘I don’t know.’ The Traveller thought hard about his words. ‘He talked about him the way my ma used to talk about charms, and spirits, and seventh sons of seventh sons. The old stuff, you know? Quigley had this look on his face when he talked about this Fegan fella. Like he was something else. Something … other.’

Orla sounded very tired. ‘Listen, if you don’t think you’re up to the job, tell me now. We’ll pay you for what you’ve done so far and call it quits. We need a solid man on this, not someone who gets the fear because he hears some stories.’

‘No,’ the Traveller said. ‘I’m sound. I just want to know who I’m going after. When we draw him out, when I take him on, I want some notion what he’s made of.’

‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘Gerry Fegan is the only man ever struck my father and lived, and he did that when he was a teenager. He’s a killer, just like you. I’ll tell you the truth, if you can take it.’

The Traveller stopped picking at the wad of tissue over the wound in his arm. ‘Yeah, I can take it.’

‘If I tell you this, there’s no going back. It’s final. You either see this job through or there’s a price on your head. Do you understand me?’

‘I understand,’ the Traveller said.

Orla O’Kane sighed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you can kill Gerry Fegan. I don’t know if any man can. You’re right, from what my father says, he’s something other. He watched him walk out of a gunfight that left four men dead and my father gut-shot, and Fegan didn’t have a scratch on him. He just walked away. I’ll tell you something now, and if you repeat it, I’ll find out. And if I find out you repeated it, I’ll send every man we’ve got after you. Are you ready for me to tell you?’

The Traveller said, ‘Yes.’

‘Gerry Fegan is the only man alive my father is afraid of.’

For a moment the Traveller thought of some glib response, that he wasn’t afraid of anyone, even if the Bull was. He thought better of it. Yeah?’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ Orla said. ‘My father made a bargain with him that day. He said he’d leave Fegan and Marie McKenna in peace if Fegan let him live. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

‘What?’

‘My father is Bull O’Kane, for Christ’s sake. The Bull. The cops, the British Army, the SAS, MI5, the fucking UVF, the UDA, every fucker out there that ever stood against him. He never bowed to any of them. But he begged Gerry Fegan for his life. Like a fucking whining dog, he begged Fegan not to kill him.’

The Traveller sat silent, unsure how to respond to Orla’s confession.

‘Do you hear me?’ she asked.

Yes,’ the Traveller said.

‘Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

‘No,’ the Traveller said, honestly.

‘I can’t allow a man my father is afraid of to live. It’s as simple as that. Now listen to me carefully. I’ve made a confession to you I’ve never made to another living soul. I’ve made that confession because I think you’re the only man who stands a chance against Fegan. Your life comes down to a couple of choices. You kill Fegan, or Fegan kills you. That’s all that’s left for you now. There’s no walking away. Not any more.’

The Traveller swallowed and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll—’ He stopped talking when he realised the phone was dead.