Jig (68 page)

He heard something then.

It was barely audible, but there it was.

A movement on the balcony. Leather on concrete.

McGrath whispered, ‘There could be twenty men out there.'

‘Either we go out or we sit back and let them come in,' Houlihan said. He stepped towards the doorway.

‘Who goes first?' McGrath asked.

‘We go together.'

McGrath moved to Houlihan's side.

‘Just think,' Houlihan said with a smile. ‘If you were a Catholic you'd be crossing yourself right now.'

Frank Pagan saw the shadow fall in the doorway. He brought his pistol up, caught his breath, waited. He stared at the shadow, which was massive and still. Jig, who was perhaps two feet in front of him, stopped moving. The open door was three or five yards away at most.

Pagan lost his concentration a second. He wasn't sure why. Tension probably. He gazed down at the motel office where the two neon lights had gone out. Had the clerk gone to sleep? Had he slept through the sound of Jig's gun? Lucky man. It was another world down there, something that came to Pagan as if through filters, gauzy and indistinct. He stared back along the balcony at the dead man, who lay in his very awkward position. Death could be highly unflattering. Pools of liquid, urine and blood, had gathered around the body. Frank Pagan thought he could catch the odour of urine from where he stood.

The shape in the doorway appeared to grow, but then Pagan realised it wasn't a solitary shadow at all, it was the darkness cast by two men who stood very close together. He tightened his grip on his gun. Fear, he understood, didn't have that legendary cold touch at all – rather, it was a warm thing, the temperature of your blood rising and the surface of your skin turning hot.

The shapes moved again. Deliberately, slowly. Pagan glanced at Jig, who was going down as close to the balcony floor as he could. Frank Pagan did likewise, feeling hard concrete against his face.

And then the silhouettes took on flesh and substance, emerging from the doorway, turning from two ghostly things to forms that had an imposing reality about them. The sound of Jig's gun was suddenly loud, ferocious in Pagan's ears, and he must have flinched or briefly closed his eyes because when he looked again and fired his own gun he was aware of a man falling back into the doorway and the fierce rattle of an automatic weapon, which sprayed the air randomly as the man went on falling. The second man, who had been behind the first, shot from his hip in a series of small flashes, and Pagan heard Jig groan, a sound that was less pain than one of surprise.

Pagan rolled on his side and fired his handgun again even as the automatic weapon continued to stutter, pocking the concrete and zinging off the handrail, creating a tympany of destruction. Pagan kept rolling and turning until his body was jammed against the metal rail. His eyes were filled with dust and small chips of shattered concrete and he had difficulty focusing, but he understood that the one man left standing had either used up the clip in his gun or the damned thing had jammed on him and he was now reaching into the pocket of his seaman's coat for something else, another clip maybe, another weapon. Pagan didn't wait to find out. He fired quickly, striking the tall man somewhere in the region of the shoulder. The man spun around and, clutching his shoulder, began to move along the balcony in the direction of the stairs.

Pagan got to his feet. He was conscious of several things simultaneously. The man running. The fact that the two lights below had come on.

And Jig, sitting with his back to the wall, his head tilted back and his mouth open in pain.

Pagan gaped at him a moment and then ran towards the stairs, which the man in the seaman's jacket was already descending loudly. Pagan's feet encountered the M-16 the man had discarded, which slid away from him on contact and went out beneath the rail to clatter on the court below.

The running man was heading for the yellow truck. He stopped suddenly, took a gun from the pocket of his jacket, turned and fired. A window exploded in a place just beyond Frank Pagan's skull. Pagan reached the bottom of the stairs, and the man fired again – a hasty shot that went off harmlessly into the darkness. Now the man was reaching up to the door of the cabin, apparently fumbling with a key in the lock. Pagan ducked beneath the overhang of the balcony where he was absorbed by shadows, and he took very careful aim. His shot went wide, hammering into the side panel of the truck.

He moved out from under the shadows and took aim again. Before he could get a shot off, the big man had fired twice in rapid succession. Both shots went whining past Pagan's head. Then the big man was climbing up into the cabin of the truck, grunting as he moved.

Pagan levelled his pistol.

This time his shot struck the man directly in the side of the face. He staggered out of the cab, flailing his arms as he fell to the concrete. There was one terrible cry of pain and then a silence that stretched through the night.

Now
, Pagan thought.
Now Jig
.

He raced up the stairs.

There was no sign of Jig.

Pagan looked the length of the balcony. The two dead figures lay where they had fallen, one slumped in the open doorway of the room, the other close to the rail.

But no Jig.

Frank Pagan hurried to the other end of the balcony. He realised there was a thin trail of blood underfoot, which must have spilled from the place where Jig had been hit. He reached the stairs. Then stopped.

The red Dodge was pulling out of the parking-lot below. Pagan saw the tail-lights dwindling as the vehicle moved away.

Pagan went quickly down the stairs. He sprinted towards the yellow truck. The keys dangled from the doorlock. He climbed up into the cabin, stuck the key in the ignition, turned it, listened to the big engine come to life. As he backed the ungainly vehicle out of the forecourt he thought he knew where Jig was headed. It was inevitable. Since he couldn't go back to Kevin Dawson's, and since he wasn't likely to go into hiding and leave his quest for the missing money in some unacceptable limbo, that left only one place – the last address of all.

Roscommon, New York. The home of Senator Harry Cairney. Where else would he possibly go after Mulhaney and Linney? Where else after Kevin Dawson?

Pagan found Highway 9, which went north. This truck was no match for the Dodge, which meant Jig would reach Roscommon before he could. But there was nothing he could do about that. He'd drive as hard as he possibly could and hope that whatever wounds Jig had sustained would slow his progress north.

When he reached a sign that said Tarrytown, he became conscious of something that lay on the floor of the cab, something bulky stuck between seat and dash. At first he assumed it was a sack of some kind, but when he passed under the sudden glare of a roadside light, he realised that his guess was quite wrong.

This particular sack had eyes.

Shocked, Pagan braked very hard, pulled to the side of the road. He turned on the overhead light. The face he saw half-turned away from him was chalk-white and ghastly. The eyes were open in a way that suggested some cruel realisation at the abrupt end of life. They had about them a certain knowing quality. The mouth was twisted and stiff and the one hand that was visible was bent in a spastic fashion. Frank Pagan reached out and touched the side of the corpse's jaw, almost as if to reassure himself that this figure had once been flesh and blood and not always the wax effigy it resembled now. A ghoulish moment. He pulled his hand away quickly.

He recognised the man. And as he did so, as he realised that this was the body of one John Waddell, whom he had interviewed last year in connection with the murder of an IRA member in London, he perceived a pattern of events, a meaning in the mosaic that was Ivor McInnes's bizarre story, a flood of understanding. He wondered how he could possibly have missed the truth for so long. Because like most truths, it had been self-evident all the way along.

Blind, Frank.

Very blind of you.

He dragged the body out of the truck and laid it among a clump of bushes at the edge of the highway. And then he was driving again, thinking of Ivor McInnes and the man's scheme, which was luminous in its simplicity and savage in its execution.

26

Roscommon, New York

Celestine Cairney had been unable to sleep. It was five past three and totally dark when she decided she'd tossed and turned on the bed long enough. She got up, went to the window, looked out across the blackness of Roscommon. Earlier, there had been a wisp of a moon in the sky, but even that had gone and the waters of the lake were invisible. She sat in the window-seat and listened to the uneven sounds of Harry breathing.

She looked at the luminous figures on the dial of her watch. When you were excited, when anticipation touched you like this, time had a way of prolonging itself. She got up from the seat and moved through the darkness of the bedroom. She rubbed her hands together because she was tense. She wanted Patrick Cairney to come. She wanted to see Patrick Cairney alone.

She caught this thought and held it.

She was remembering Patrick Cairney again as she'd seen him that night in his bedroom. And suddenly she felt sad. There were times when you wished everything had been different. Birth and circumstances, the history of your heart, every damn thing about you.

She sat in the armchair in front of the cold fireplace, legs crossed, placing her hands flat on her stomach. Her nipples were hard, and the very soft hairs that grew on the lower part of her belly stirred.

Patrick Cairney.

She wanted him to be the first to get here.

‘Can't sleep?' Harry's voice startled her.

‘A little restless,' she said. She lowered her hands to her side and clutched the silk of her nightgown, bunching it in the palms of her hands. It felt like Patrick Cairney's flesh to her.

Harry turned on the bedside lamp. He reached out for a Kleenex and blew his nose. It was a trumpeting sound, an old man's sound. Even this room smelled like an old man's flesh. She had the urge to get up and throw the windows open and let the cold Roscommon night perfume the air with winter.

‘Come here,' Harry said.

She rose slowly, went to the bed, looked down at him. He wore maroon pyjamas with his monogram stitched into the breast pocket. HC, in fine gold thread.

‘A kiss,' the old man said.

She lowered her face, brushed her lips against his, stepped back from the bed. ‘Get some sleep. You need it.'

‘What about you?'

‘Don't worry about me.'

Harry Cairney watched her with eyes that never ceased to be adoring. She rearranged the bedsheets, turned off the lamp, returned to the window. The room seemed even darker than it had before. She placed one hand under the cushion of the window seat, where she'd concealed Harry's old Browning, and she removed it. There was a terrifying certainty about the gun, the weight of it, the hardness in her hands. She turned it over a couple of times, then returned it to its hiding-place.

Make him come here, she thought.

Just make him come here
.

Soon. Soon now. Soon she'd be gone from this house.

She laid her cheeks against the glass and looked out across the night, and thought how hard she'd tried to pretend she cared for Harry Cairney. And how close she'd come to the peril of actually believing she felt something, when all she carried in her heart for him was no more feeling than a slug had when it slinked insensately through blades of grass and left a trail of crystal. When you pretend to be something for long enough, you become that thing.

But she'd done her duty. She could always say that about herself.

Poughkeepsie, New York

Patrick Cairney pulled into a closed gas-station and turned off the engine of the car. The pain he felt was searing, as if the flesh were peeling away from the bone. He reached down and turned up the left leg of his pants and gasped because even something so simple as the brush of clothing against the wound was excruciating. He drew his hand back up. It was covered in blood. He knew that a bullet had passed through, close to the shinbone, burrowing a ragged hole in his flesh. Pretty soon he'd feel numbness around the wound, and then there would be the sensation of uselessness in the limb. He wondered how much blood he might have lost since leaving the River View Motel.

He struggled to take off his coat, which he tossed into the rear seat. Then he removed his shirt and tugged at the sleeve, managing to separate it from the rest of the garment. With this improvised bandage twisted around a ballpoint pen he found in the glove compartment, he made a very crude tourniquet which he applied to the wound. It was extremely painful to do so, but he realised his choices were more than a little limited. He could bleed to death or he could attempt to stem the flow of blood with anything he had at hand – and hope he'd make it to Roscommon before he became weak and delirious.

He rolled the window down and breathed night air deeply into his lungs. He had to keep a very clear head. When he reached Roscommon he'd make up some kind of story – something about an accident. He wasn't sure quite what yet. That was the easy part anyway.

For a moment he sat with his eyes closed and his head tipped back against the seat. It was odd how, when he thought of Finn now, he was unable to bring into his mind an image of the man's face. It was lost to him suddenly. He could hear the voice still and he imagined he was listening to Finn whispering quietly in his ear.
I asked too much of you this time. I sent you in there on a wing and a prayer. I was only thinking of the money. I wasn't thinking about the danger to you. Nobody could have done anything better in the terrible circumstances. I'm sorry, boy
.

Cairney shook his head, opened his eyes.

Roscommon. He'd go there and see his father. He'd go there and heal for a time. It was a safe place for him now. He'd avoid Celestine. He wouldn't think about her. When he passed her in the hallway or ran into her at mealtimes he'd be polite but aloof. She'd get the message quickly.