Collusion

76

The Traveller put his shoulder to the door and pushed. It budged only an inch or two before the hedgerow pushed back. ‘Fucking bastard arsehole,’ he said. He slid the other way and struggled over the armrest, going head first. The gear stick caught him in the balls and he groaned. In a second or two, that sick, heavy ache would join the throb in his chest where the seat belt had crushed the air out of him. And his neck hurt too. That pain seemed to begin in his shoulders, creep up to the back of his skull, then trace a line up and over to his forehead.

He opened the passenger door and climbed out. He grabbed Marie’s mobile phone and hit a button. The screen had cracked, but it still worked, casting a weak light. He used it as a makeshift torch so he could inspect the damage to the car. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. The hedgerow had cushioned its impact with the embankment, and the old Volkswagen was built tough. He shone the light down at the tyres. The earth wasn’t too wet; he should be able to reverse the car out of the tangle of green.

The light died as the phone went back into standby. The Traveller turned in a circle at the edge of the little country road. An orange glow hovered over Lurgan to the west. To the north he could make out the soft rumble of night-time traffic on the motorway, lorries hurrying to make the early ferries to Britain, or holidaymakers heading to one of the airports.

He listened hard for noises closer to the road, for the sound of feet creeping through the hedges and fields. Was that a wheeze and a rattle from across the way? The sound was so small, perhaps he only imagined it. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and listened harder. A cold, damp breeze washed across his face.

There, a child’s soft cry, then a hoarse whisper.

The Traveller opened his eyes. He looked in the direction of the sounds. A light, maybe a window, glowed dim in the distance. A farmhouse, about half a mile away. He thumbed the phone again. He turned, crouched down, and used it to find Hewitt’s Glock in the passenger footwell.

As he straightened, the pistol cold in his hand, a weariness came over him. He leaned on the car’s roof and breathed deep. New pains signalled from all over his body. He wished he’d never entered the bar in Finglas. He wished he’d never taken the note from Davy Haughey, the one with Orla O’Kane’s phone number on it. He wished he’d never accepted her invitation to that fucking convalescent home near Drogheda, the one where Bull O’Kane wallowed in his own hate and shit-smelling stink.

An insane notion flitted through his mind, one so ludicrous he couldn’t help but examine it as it passed. Just get in the car, reverse out of the hedge, and drive away. Leave the woman and her kid to their fate out here. Whoever was in that house would take them in, see them right. The Traveller could go to one of the flats he kept in Dublin, Drogheda or Cork, gather up his passports, and disappear. He had money stashed in accounts in Ireland, Brazil, the Philippines and more places besides, enough to see him to his dying day if he was careful with it.

But what kind of life would that be, hiding under stones like a woodlouse? And then another thought came to him.

Gerry Fegan.

The Traveller wanted to know if he could take Gerry Fegan. He considered his condition, the injured shoulder, the sprained wrist, the stinging eye. He inhaled, igniting a fresh pain in his chest. Maybe add a cracked rib to that list. He’d be at a disadvantage, and that gave Fegan a fighting chance.

If the cops didn’t get to Fegan first, the Traveller could have a go at him. May the best man win, and all that.

Alone, in the dark by the side of the road, the Traveller smiled to himself as he made his mind up. He turned towards the sound he was now sure he had heard and started walking. When the crunch of country road under his feet turned to the soft squelch of damp grass he thumbed the mobile and let its glow reach into the dark. He watched and listened.

Another rattling inhalation. He trained the light on its source. Eyes glittered there. He marched forward, and he heard, ‘Go, go, go!’

A small shape sprang from the hedge and disappeared into the black. The woman tried to raise herself from the tangle of greenery, but stumbled. He was on her before she could move. She didn’t have the strength to struggle, just lay limp beneath him, her breath shallow and stuttering.

‘Easy now,’ he said, letting her feel the cold of the Glock against her neck.

The Traveller put the phone into his pocket, then eased back and slipped an arm around her waist. He got to his feet, taking her with him. She shivered against his body as he held her close, the pistol’s muzzle beneath her chin.

‘Call the wee girl,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘No.’

‘Call her.’ He jabbed her chin with the muzzle and she whimpered.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t.’

‘All right then, I’ll do it.’

‘She won’t come to you,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Oh, she will.’ He pulled Marie tight to him. ‘A wee girl like that won’t leave her mammy. Watch this.’

She inhaled to call out, but he sealed her mouth with his strapped-up hand.

‘Ellen!’ the Traveller called.

Marie tried to prise his hand away. He pressed it harder against her lips and her teeth nipped at the skin of his fingers, trying to get a hold. He twisted her neck around.

‘Quit it,’ he said, his mouth buried deep in her hair. ‘Quit it or I’ll break your neck.’ He looked back out to the darkness. ‘Ellen!’

The Traveller slipped the Glock into his waistband and took out his phone. It lit up in his hand, and he held it out in front of the struggling mother.

‘Your mammy needs you, Ellen. Come on back, now. You don’t want to be out there in the dark, all on your own. There’s bad things in the dark. Things that’ll get you. Things with teeth. Things that sting.’

He stopped, listened. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Your mammy needs you.’

A shadow moved out there in the layers of black. He saw a glint. Then she came running from the darkness, fell, picked herself up again, and threw herself at her mother. Ellen wrapped her arms around Marie’s thighs, pressed her face to the warmth.

The Traveller said, ‘Good girl.’