The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Sixty-Three

Staring down the wrong end of the Winchester’s octagonal barrel, Ben dropped the shotgun.

‘Long gun too,’ said Finn McCrory.

Ben unslung the M4 and let it fall.

‘And the rest,’ Finn said.

Ben drew the trench knife out of its scabbard and thought about throwing it at McCrory. But of all the knives in the world, none could have been less suited to throwing. The weight of the big steel knuckleduster would pull it completely out of balance as it flew. Whereas McCrory only had to flick a finger and Ben was as dead as the deer who’d donated his antlers for Big Joe’s wall.

Ben dropped the knife.

Finn’s eyes glittered. ‘So you thought you’d come in here and shoot me, did you, dipshit?’

‘You have it coming, McCrory.’

‘You’re talking about the girl, right? Kristen Hall?’

‘Surprised you even remember her name,’ Ben said.

‘You think I wanted that to happen? Think I wanted her dead?’

‘I’m sure she left you no choice,’ Ben said.

‘That’s how I see it. Anyone in my position would’ve done the same thing.’

‘Of course. You’re just a normal guy.’

‘You think I should’ve paid her off? You think she’d have gone away? Forget it. No chance. She’d’ve bled me dry.’

‘She was the one who did all the bleeding,’ Ben said.

‘Everyone has secrets, Hope. Just happens I have more than most people, and your friend knew way too much about them.’ Finn smiled at Ben over the rifle sights. ‘But what am I saying? You do too, don’t you?’

‘It was Kristen who worked most of it out,’ Ben said. ‘All I did was fill in the gaps. I think she picked up on the name McCrory from her history research, and connected it with this up-and-coming US politician she must have read about, who was getting so much mileage out of his grandfather escaping Ireland and becoming a success in America. Good human-interest angle, McCrory. But you should’ve kept your big mouth shut. It was the dates that gave you away.’

Finn chuckled. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘Yes it is, because Kristen dug deeper and found out from the birth records in Glenfell that the real Padraig McCrory, a simple Irish stable hand who worked on the Glenfell Estate, was born in 1809. He’d have been a hundred and seven years old when your father was born. Biologically impossible. It didn’t add up, and Kristen was the kind of journalist who likes to get their facts straight. When she contacted you initially, she just wanted to tidy up the details. She told you about the anomaly with the dates in the parish records. You could have brushed it off so easily. But instead you flipped, because that’s the kind of stupid arsehole you are. That just raised her suspicions and made her dig deeper. By the time she contacted you again, she knew the truth and challenged you with it. By doing that, she made herself a target. Because you had so very much to lose if the truth came out, didn’t you, McCrory?’

Finn’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. His finger twitched on the trigger of the Winchester.

‘That’s how she found out who your real grandfather was,’ Ben said.

‘Really. You know that, do you?’

‘He was born in 1822. That still makes him a very old man when his only son was conceived, but then, your family are a long-lived bunch. His real name was Edgar Stamford.’

Finn cracked another smile and shook his head. ‘I’m impressed, Hope. Truly, I am. You get the cigar. That’s right. Who’d have thought that my granddaddy was a blue-blooded lord?’

‘That’s not all he was, is it?’ Ben said. ‘He was a bully and a coward who enjoyed having people beaten and hanged, who abused his servants and tormented his wife. Then he murdered the real Padraig McCrory and stole his identity, so that he could fake his own death and escape to America before the things he’d done would catch up with him. That’s what you’re descended from. Funny how your genetics will catch up with you.’

Finn’s smile didn’t waver. ‘Got me all sussed out, don’t you? That’s what the family legend says, all right. My daddy didn’t know it himself until 1937. My grandmother Charlotte waited sixteen years, ’til he was twenty-one, before she told him what ol’ “Padraig” had told her on his deathbed. His final confession. Or did you know that as well, you limey smartass?’

‘Does the family legend mention what your granddaddy Stamford had been cooking up in his lab with his crony Heneage Fitzwilliam?’ Ben asked. ‘The disease agent that Elizabeth Stamford discovered by accident and wrote about in her journal? Phytophthora infestans. They engineered it. Cultivated it. Contaminated the potato crop with it.’

Finn nodded slowly. ‘Oh, sure. That is part of the family legend. I don’t mind telling you, seeing as I’m gonna kill you pretty soon anyway. The old bastard spilled the whole story out when he was rat-ass drunk one day. Told me everything. I must’ve been twenty-six, twenty-seven.’

‘It must have come as quite a shock to discover that your grandfather was a cold-blooded mass murderer responsible for implementing a deliberate plan of genocide against the Irish people and causing up to two million deaths,’ Ben said. ‘And that he was a British government spook.’

‘There’s no goddamn proof of that part,’ Finn said, flushing.

‘Wrong,’ Ben said. ‘Kristen hadn’t figured that part out yet. But I did. After Elizabeth Stamford got back on her feet in England, in 1851 she went to consult a London lawyer called Abraham Barnstable. A real high-flyer. I think it was to tell him what her former husband had been involved in, and that she intended to spill the beans. That was her big mistake. She didn’t know that Barnstable was connected with government intelligence. All the way to the top of the pyramid. The only people who could have known that Stamford and Fitzwilliam were secret agents on a mission to wipe out half of Ireland’s population so the English could move in on their land.’

Finn’s eyes had narrowed to slits. He clenched his jaw. ‘You just keep talking, Hope. I’m not in a hurry to blow your goddamn head off.’

‘When they knew what she knew, they didn’t waste any time in orchestrating her murder, which got pinned on some innocent teacher. Three days after Elizabeth was killed, Heneage Fitzwilliam was shot dead in his room in Cambridge. He must’ve managed to warn Stamford before his death, maybe that someone had been following him and they were in danger. Knowing what was coming, Stamford set his plan. He needed a corpse, a big one that could double as his own. The stable hand Padraig McCrory fitted the bill very nicely. Stamford murdered him, dressed him in his clothes and put a family ring on his finger that would identify him. Then he burned down the mansion with the dead man inside, and fled to America with all the money he could carry. He discovered that keeping up the Irish image was good for him in the New World. Or maybe he was just too scared to drop the pretence in case someone cottoned on to who he really was, and the British intelligence guys decided to come knocking on his door to cut the last connection between them and what had happened in Ireland in 1847. Whatever the reason, he kept up the lie until almost the very end of his twisted life.’

‘Smart. Very smart. Finished now?’

‘You were just continuing a family tradition, you and your father before you. After all, the McCrory reputation was built on your phoney Irish heritage. It was too good a thing to let go of, especially for a man of your political ambitions. You had too much to gain from the whole deception, and too much to lose if your future electors found out that their poster boy was not only about as Irish as the Queen of England, but that his ancestor was the guy the British government paid to lay waste to their country and murder millions of their people. Can’t see that going down too well with the Irish-American voters. You said you had no choice but to murder Kristen Hall. You know what, McCrory? I believe you.’

The whole time Ben had been talking, he’d been moving towards McCrory, maintaining eye contact to distract the man with the gun from the barely perceptible shifting of his feet. The desk was between them. Ben was now almost close enough to make a grab for the rifle.

But Ben never had the chance.