Collusion

88

Fegan stood silent in the drawing room, his hands loose at his sides. Ronan stared from the other side of the room, that same pistol held useless at his side.

Fegan knew five paces would take him across the space between them faster than the other man could react, and he’d have the gun off him before Ronan could think of pulling a trigger. But what then? Better to stand and wait.

They’d stood like this for ten minutes now; not a word had been spoken since he’d been led into the room. Fegan closed his eyes and let his mind rest. An image of a face in a newspaper burst brilliant in his consciousness, but was gone in an instant, along with the smell of burning flesh. Sweat broke on his forehead. His stomach reeled. A weight settled in his gut, dense, sickly and insistent. He swallowed. A chill rippled from his heart to his groin, then down through his thighs to his calves, and on into the soles of his feet. He shivered like a horse overjoyed with exertion.

When Fegan opened his eyes again he saw Orla O’Kane by the open door. Something moved across her face. Fegan recognised it instantly, like a brother lost but not forgotten. Fear, sweet and giving, the one emotion Fegan knew by sight.

‘Come on,’ she said, dropping her eyes from Fegan’s gaze.

Ronan indicated that Fegan should follow Orla to the grand entrance hall. Fegan did as he was told, glad to be moving, glad to get it over with. The thug closed the door and came behind them as they crossed the hall to the staircase.

Fegan’s heart quickened as he climbed. The stairs levelled to a gallery, then doubled back on themselves to form an atrium beneath a stained-glass ceiling. Morning light shone through it, making orange, green and red shapes on the walls. When Orla reached the first floor gallery she turned right into a corridor leading to the east wing. Ronan gripped Fegan’s shoulder to steer him after her.

Half a dozen rooms branched off the corridor, but Orla kept walking to the double doors at the end. She threw them open in an ostentatious gesture and stepped inside. Fegan entered the room and was met by a low smell of human excrement. He stopped, but Ronan pushed him ahead. Fegan halted as the plastic sheeting rustled beneath his feet.

‘Hello Gerry,’ O’Kane said, his lips parting to form a jagged smile.

The Bull sat in a wheelchair, a blanket covering him from midriff to feet. The chair was high-backed with small wheels, the kind hospital porters used to ferry invalids along disinfectant-smelling corridors. The Bull’s flesh hung loose from his face. His eyes gazed too bright from their darkened pits, his cheeks sunken and hollow. A small bubble of spit glistened at one corner of his mouth.

Two men flanked the chair. Fegan recognised one of them, Ben O’Driscoll, who’d done a short stretch in the Maze during his own time there. He had fat hands and a pugilist’s build, thick around the torso and broad at the shoulders. But the other man was something different, something altogether more dangerous. Medium height, wiry build, and dead eyes. A killer. Fegan smelled it on him through the haze of odours that tainted the air. He knew beyond doubt this was the man Tom the barman had told him about, the one who had prowled Belfast in recent days.

From its size, Fegan guessed this to be some kind of recreation room for the convalescent home’s patients, but all the furniture had been hastily pushed to the walls. Formica-topped tables stood stacked alongside vinyl-coated chairs, overlooked by paintings of the Drogheda countryside. The floor was empty save for the six people gathered there on the plastic sheeting that covered the parquet flooring.

‘Where’s Marie and Ellen?’ Fegan asked.

‘Don’t worry about them,’ O’Kane said.

‘Me for them,’ Fegan said.

‘That was the deal last time.’ O’Kane nodded. He laughed then, high and fractured. ‘Didn’t work out that way, though, did it? It’s not going to work out this time either.’

Orla went to her father. She took a tissue from her sleeve and wiped the spit from his mouth. He slapped her hand away.

‘Da,’ she said, leaning down to him. ‘I don’t want to watch this.’

‘All right, love,’ O’Kane said. ‘You go on, take a walk or something. I’ll call you when it’s done.’

Orla did not meet Fegan’s gaze as she passed. He heard the double doors close behind him, followed by footsteps fading into echoes. Five in the room, now. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Ronan resting against the wall. Fegan noted their positions. The man at O’Kane’s right hand, the killer, stepped forward.

‘I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine,’ the Bull said. ‘He’s been dying to meet you.’