In Too Deep (16 page)

‘Some setup, huh?' he said. The strain was clear in his voice as well as in the pallid jowls of his face. He tried to smile, showing a lower row of small neat teeth, but the expression did him no favours.

I shrugged in reply, reached out and lowered the volume on Frankie Valli.

‘You blow your safe-house?'

He nodded. From the way he looked at me, it was clear that he was content to let me call the shots. Well, that was fine by me. I hunched against the cold and, watching the rain smatter against the windshield, told him that I knew of a place, a fair distance out of town, but safe. I'd vouch my life on it.

‘You are,
'
he said, but that was a wisecrack without any real intent, nothing more than a reflex action. I explained that the safe house was the summer place of a lawyer that I had in my pocket. It was ideal for what we needed: small town, set back from the main road, two clear ways in and out, cosy but plenty big enough for two. ‘No one will get the drop on us, up there,
'
I said, and Farina studied me and decided, at last, to believe it, a decision made easier by the knowledge that he didn't have much in the way of choice. It was either dance to my tune or dance alone, and he was too far gone for that.

‘We may as well get moving,' I said. ‘We're looking at the bones of a four-hour drive. If we get separated on the highway, there's a truck-stop joint outside of Henderson. We can meet there.' Then I wrestled the door open and stepped out, grimacing hard against the rain. The past few minutes had done their part in breaking up the worst of the darkness, but out on the road a street lamp still burned in a way that set the sodden ground to shining. I bunched my jacket tight around my throat and moved at a jog around the back of the sedan to my own car. Just as I reached my door, I heard his engine rumble to life and gun once, and I turned, as if remembering something. Farina looked up, and began to wind down the window in anticipation of my words. I drew the gun from my pocket and shot him in the face, twice, keeping just enough distance to avoid taking on any of that mess.

An hour later, I was out of state. The rain stopped, but the sky refused to clear. The horizon line lay swollen and bruised, with the promise of worse up ahead. Well, that was all right. I could handle a little rough weather. I drove, keeping to a steady sixty, with the radio tuned to an oldies station, and listened without spending much on concentration to a parade of Roy Orbison, the Beatles, the Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival, songs that fit a comfortable place in my mind.

Everything had gone exactly according to plan, every single step of the way. Farina had been the easiest of the four to kill, dispatched with those two close-up shots, the second unnecessary as anything other than a slice of insurance. His eyes had seemed to bulge with a glare of shock in that instant before I pulled the trigger, and even though I questioned whether I had seen that or merely imagined it, because there had hardly been time, not even a split second, for him to piece together the entire score, I understood that it would etch a permanent mark in my memory, one to be revisited in the small hours of distant nights. Still, an occasional ghostly visitation was a small price to pay for the jackpot I had hit.

Eventually, they'll come looking. I am, after all, dealing with people who don't easily forget a slight. I realise that the whole thing was quite a stunt – the heist, obviously, but the string of executions too. Maybe the executions even more so than the heist. There will be a lot of anger in certain circles as soon as all the details emerge, but I plan to be long gone by then. My reasons for hiding are pretty much the same as my reasons for stealing and then killing. If I am ever asked, I can reply, truthfully, that those reasons number somewhere in the region of about seventy million, and I really do feel that such a figure provides more than ample motivation for keeping my head down and staying forever out of sight.

After a while, Fr James opened his eyes and just lay motionless in his bed, no longer fighting the insomnia. His throat felt parched with the sort of thirst that could be terribly dangerous for a man like him, but even though there was a tap not twenty feet from where he lay, he refused to get up, refused to disturb the rut that he had forged in the corn-shuck mattress. He held his place, hardly even breathing, and listened to the slapping of the ocean against the broken shore until, at last, some strain of music began to emerge, the gentle sway of a bel canto beneath the slow cadenzas of a breeze.

Then, suddenly, he could bear the stillness of his room no longer and he leapt from the bed, hurried through to the pantry and splashed some whiskey into a cup. Not much, just a tot, but he swallowed it hard and then stood there, hip braced against the counter-top, panting. The whiskey ripped through him, bringing that familiar heat. He filled the cup with tap water, emptied it into the sink and then rinsed and emptied it again. Mrs Kelleher, who looked after the rectory, was thorough when it came to cleaning, conscientious far beyond the call of duty, and he knew from experience that the less fuel that he gave her for village gossip, the better.

The whiskey unnerved him. To escape the clutches of the bottle, he took to drifting around the dark house, moving from room to room, sometimes lingering to gaze out at the night that lay beyond. Whenever he listened, really listened, he could hear the ocean. And he was at the great old casement window of his living room, peering out past his own vague reflection into the darkness and turning melodies out of the music of the night, when the clock on the mantle struck three.

Without thinking very much about what he was doing, he went outside and stood barefoot in the garden. Rain had fallen some time in the past few hours and the long grass was cold and sodden, the earth beneath clammy. The breeze was strong, rustling the roadside alders and moaning in the eaves of the house, and rags of cloud dragged across the sky, obscuring stars for seconds at a time, blurring the pale conch moon that slouched low in the south.

Fr James was tall, almost six foot, though with a notable drooping of the shoulders that gave him a beaten, almost cowardly, stance. Thin far past the point of gaunt, he looked quite a bit older than his age of forty-two should suggest. His face wore an expression of permanent strain, his slatted mouth working ceaselessly at trying to shape some impossible or unutterable words, and his grey eyes stared with an intensity that hinted at some medical trouble; an overactive thyroid, perhaps. He always seemed somehow ill at ease with daylight, and was one of those men better suited to the hours of darkness.

No one had accused Fr Larkin of anything yet – not outright, at least – though there had been whispers, and he saw the way that people looked at him. Already, the police had questioned him, but that was hardly much of a surprise. Fr Larkin was well into his sixties and boasted what could most charitably be termed a colourful past. Most pertinently, there had been that business with the woman. The smallest amount of mud, they say, leaves a stain.

Still, questioning was one thing, proof quite another. And, so far, the boom had yet to fall.

The cold didn't touch him, though it was mid-November. He could still taste the sharpness of the whiskey at the back of his throat and, also, the memory of its heat. A few spatters of rain began to fall, though they were sparse enough to raise some doubt about the matter, but instead of returning inside, he walked around to where his bicycle leaned against the side of the house, and climbed on. A quick wander through the village often helped to alleviate the worst of his tensions; the stormy rush of air pummelling his face, filling his lungs, had a magical way of revitalising his tired mind. No one would think it strange to see him hurtling through the streets at this time of night; these small hours where invariably when sick people chose to die, and a priest's duties were never limited by the confines of a usual working day. So, he was free to cycle where and when he wished, but tonight, for some reason, that freedom didn't feel quite enough.

He reached the edge of the village in a matter of minutes, considered turning back for home, then on a whim decided to keep going. The road wound out along the coast, a single narrow lane all overgrown by ditches of haw and shedding sycamore, and with every twist the darkness seemed to swell to an even greater depth. He didn't think about where the road would lead, didn't want to care, just then, about such things. He simply cycled, enjoying how the slack muscles of his legs strained to push the pedals, and remembering how, as a boy of perhaps ten or twelve, he and his friends would often sneak away in the night-time to go swimming. Children have one set of fears, adults entirely another. Neither he nor his pals had worried about the dangers of drowning, just as they never thought to fear such real-world threats as heart attacks or strokes. Instead, they exchanged ghost stories, reciting as sworn testimony their fathers' or their grandfathers' encounters with the Banshee, or the Pooka or the Coach de Bower, the Death Coach, and wrapped in the delicious dread of those tales, they shivered and threw darting glances at the road that stretched behind them or searched the pitted blackness between the leaning trunks of trees for the vaguest hint of some terrible watching face. Fear had held such an element of fun, back then.

He recalled that the swimming on those nights as being especially invigorating, how the very blood in his body had prickled with such joyous cold, and every worldly worry seemed to just fall away as unimportant, because all that truly mattered was staying afloat, trying to breathe, trying to wrestle against the currents and the tidal sway. The rules of the game had been simple: survive.

A couple of miles outside the village, the road bent away from the coast and twisted inland, leaving only a small rutted pathway, a boreen, to continue down towards the shoreline. Without the least hesitation he steered his bicycle onto the rough surface, slowing his speed just enough so that he might guard against punctures or unexpected changes in the terrain. He held the vague idea of enjoying a stroll along the shoreline. Or perhaps he'd even roll up the legs of his trousers and allow himself the pleasure of a paddle; after all, his feet were already bare, and the salt water might do them good. But when he reached the beach and surveyed the situation, he saw that the sand stretched hardly more than fifty yards or so before it hit a rocky wall of shale, and the option of a walk no longer seemed to offer quite the level of fulfilment that he had imagined.

The sky had completely clouded over now, and there was no light to be had at all. Even the moon was lost. The breeze, too, had stiffened into a strong westerly wind; it sluiced through the rocks and buttresses, its gusts moaning canticles of disquiet. And all the time, the ocean beat against the shore, darkly brooding and bullying with its heavy swell, breaking in feathers that hung for long moments in gossamer reels across the dim sand. He stood there at the top of the beach, absorbing the details of the night, then hurriedly peeled off his clothes. In his priestly garb, his flesh had all the sallow hue of newly churned butter, but naked he turned a milky shade of pale and seemed the night's brightest offering.

Feeling like a boy again, he ran down towards the water, waded quickly out to a depth chest-high and plunged under. A moment later, he resurfaced, flailing to stay afloat and fighting for breath against the engulfing cold. When he regained his composure, he stretched out in a clumsy but effective freestyle stroke, and began to crawl out to a greater depth. The water was rough, and he could feel currents dragging him this way and that, wanting to haul him under. He tried to rise with the waves as they came, because to struggle against them could wear you down in a hurry, but even out here, some thirty or forty yards from the shoreline where the fullness of the swell should have assured some sense of calm, the surface of the water remained rough and choppy. He dropped his crawl and tried to find contentment in simply staying afloat. All around him, the ocean felt immense. He could have been ten years old again, hardly even a speck in the grand scheme of things. His teeth chattered loudly, though the worst of the cold had passed now that his body had begun to adjust to the bleak temperature, and he pulled breath in loud sodium-tinged rasps. The shore had come to seem very far away, a faint boomerang of grey pinned like a smothered sunrise between the immense black sheets of sky and ocean. The waves broke in similar shade, the ruptured crescents sparking flashes that bloomed and then were lost, devoured by the darkness.

Just as the rain began to fall, he was struck by a terrible thought. What if he were to drown? He was a long way from shore, in the sort of swell that would challenge even the most seasoned of swimmers. There had been a time, perhaps, when he could have managed in conditions like these, but he was in his forties now and hadn't been in the sea in years. He was out of his depth in every imaginable way. Panic sluiced through him with each forced breath, and every wave seemed to crash a little harder around his head and shoulders. If he drowned, what would people think? No doubt, he'd be labelled a suicide, and all the things that hung in such tenuous balance would suddenly make sense. He'd be missing for a full day or even two, maybe longer. It was, after all, November. For the first twenty-four hours, people would wonder about his whereabouts but almost certainly not act on their theories, not beyond a few cursory calls to known friends and then, when every other avenue of possibility had been exhausted, to the nearest hospital. Just in case there had been an accident. But as the time built, more serious questions would be asked, and at some point a search party would have to be organised. It might take days before anyone thought to turn their attention out to this small, sheltered stretch of beach. By then, the tides would have had their way with him, and there'd be no guarantee that his body would ever be found. A boat might get lucky, or he may become snagged on the rocks, but those things left a great deal to chance, and the odds were, at the best estimate, slender. But whoever did come looking out here would find traces of him, and the folded pile of his clothes, his priest's clothes, would strip away all doubt as to what had happened. They'd survey the situation and jump to the inevitable conclusion. Nobody would believe that he had simply got into trouble while swimming, because even though that was exactly what was happening, it made no sense. Men didn't get up in the middle of a cold, wet November night and simply decide to go for a dip. So they'd weigh up the ample evidence and chalk up a result of suicide.

He couldn't let that happen. Well, not without putting up a fight. The panic threatened to overwhelm him now, and he had to battle the urge to kick, knowing that, by doing so, he would waste energy in a hurry and that what little hope there was would be quickly lost. Instead, he continued to tread water and fought for calmness, forcing himself to draw a series of deep, steady breaths. The shoreline did seem a long way off, but when the next big wave hit he lunged forward and began to swim. His technique was inevitably poor, and he felt himself drift as currents rode across him and waves beat hard over his body, trying to force him under, but he kept his focus and stretched out, undeterred. It was clear that he had to use the tide, that fighting against its pull was a useless undertaking.

Twice, he was forced to stop in order to regain his strength, and by the second time he was so weak that it seemed the easiest option was just to close his eyes and let himself go under. There would be peace then, at least. All the problems would slip away, all the worries about what lay ahead for him in the weeks and months to come, times when there'd seem little difference between innocence and guilt and when facts hardly mattered at all. But sometimes it was not a question of coming down on one side of a choice, not when muscles fought and worked of their own accord, even when, drawn to the very brink of exhaustion, they were beginning to knot and cramp. The second time he stopped, he considered his distance from the beach and it was clear that he had gained considerable ground. Though he had a long way yet to go, some part of him was able to grasp onto this small hope and use it to force himself on.

Hours seemed to pass, and at times his arms felt so heavy that he didn't believe he could raise even one more stroke, but when he pushed his body there was always the strength for another, and another. He really might have been ten again, because all the unimportant things had been lost to the depths; but the difference was that, where it had been simply instinctive back then, he understood this now. Even if he failed to make it, he'd have taken this small but absolute knowledge from his life.

The sand that bit into his knees felt like a coarse lie. His hands tore channels in that sand and he was crawling. Rain fell in torrents, lashing his head and back, and a thin sound, like small screams, whistled through the clotted air. It was some minutes before he realised those screams were his, the noise of his lungs taken to the very brink and trying desperately to re-inflate. The ocean's spent waves washed foam around his knees, and sand clung to his flesh as he scrambled a little further up the beach, still crawling. Then, finally collapsing, he became one with the darkness.

He awoke to a vague cracked dawn. For a moment, he lay still, just staring up at the heavy sky. Clouds folded one across another, dull, angry shades of steel. He tried, finally, to raise his head, but could hardly muster the strength. His body had turned to stone, and every breath felt brushed with salt and something vaguely metallic. Wind blustered, tossing flecks of sand over his naked body. The strongest gusts drew howls where they sifted through the crevices of the rocks, tinny wails rising up out of flapping whimpers and just as quickly dying away, and they made him recall the old stories of the Banshee. Was that all it had ever been, he wondered, just the wind sluicing through trees or outcroppings of rock? Or had it once been something more?