Jig (72 page)

The woman gave him a look of mild disgust. ‘Do you expect me to admit that?'

Frank Pagan didn't know what to expect. He stared at her a moment, then turned towards Ivor. If he couldn't have Jig, then by Christ he'd bring McInnes to some kind of justice.

He said, ‘I almost didn't see your plan, Ivor. I almost missed it. I was looking for the complex when I ought to have been looking for something simple.'

Ivor McInnes moved just a little closer to the woman, cupping her elbow in the palm of his hand.

‘You brought your thugs into this country,' Pagan said. ‘You orchestrated acts of violence and placed the blame on the IRA.'

‘Is that what you think, Frank?'

‘It's what I
know
,' Pagan said. He was hoarse all at once, depleted. ‘I only fully realised it when I found the body of John Waddell. You lied to me from the start, McInnes. And then you compounded your lies with even more lies. Bullshit about trying to make some kind of peace with an IRA faction. I never bought that story. Jig did. But not me. Unfortunately, I was in no position to argue with him at the time. You set out to discredit the IRA in the most callous way imaginable. You set out to turn public opinion totally against them by directing the FUV to act as it did.'

McInnes was quiet for a moment. He said, ‘Northern Ireland is a sad society, Frank. You've been there. You've seen it. You've seen what happens when warring factions can't find a peace plan. And the sorry thing about it is that there's no possibility of any peace in the future unless the IRA is squashed.'

‘Along with the Free Ulster Volunteers,' Pagan said.

‘I agree with you, Frank. In the Ireland I want, there's no place for hoodlums.' McInnes glanced at the woman. ‘When you want to provoke outrage, you strike at the innocent, Pagan. It does no good in this day and age to assassinate a President. People expect that kind of atrocity. They're numbed by that. But blow up a church and then massacre some children on a school-bus, and suddenly you've got the public attention. They howl. Jesus, how they howl! And then they strike back with a vengeance at the perpetrators. In this case, Frank, the Irish Republican Army is the culprit.'

Pagan felt a numbness in the hand that held the gun. He was thinking now of the school-bus and the dead children and the fact that Jig had been murdered, and all the deaths congealed inside him, a knot in the centre of his chest. He realised he wanted to kill McInnes then and there. Shoot the man on the precise spot where he presently stood. Shoot him directly between the eyes. All along McInnes had been manipulating events, plotting destruction.

‘You knew the names of the Fund-raisers, didn't you, Ivor?'

‘Of course I did.' McInnes smiled at the woman. ‘Mrs. Harry Cairney kept me well informed.'

‘Mrs. Cairney?' Pagan asked.

The woman smiled coldly at Pagan from behind her dark glasses. Frank Pagan wondered what inestimable treasons had been going on in this large gloomy house.

‘You could have made my life easier if you'd supplied me with the names, Ivor,' he said.

‘I'm not in the business of making my enemy's life easier, Frank. Why tell you their names? It was nice to think of you busily running around trying to find out. It kept your mind off me for a while.'

‘And you knew Jig was coming to the States,' Pagan said.

‘All along, Frank. From the moment Finn first sent him. We knew he was coming here to find the money. We told you about that. We wanted you to have a gift from your friends inside the FUV, Frank. We wanted you to come over here and catch him. We were much too busy to be sidetracked into getting him ourselves. Besides, we didn't have the expertise for that. And I assumed you did. You and the FBI. But you failed to catch him. You let me down there. It doesn't matter now, of course. We didn't expect to find Jig was part of this particular household, but you know what they say about gift-horses. And Jig did us a favour by rendering the Fund-raisers obsolete.' McInnes was lightly rubbing the woman's neck. ‘Besides, Jig wasn't what I was after. Jig was only a part of a larger entity. I want the IRA in its entirety, Frank. Not just one assassin.'

Pagan said nothing. He kept looking at the woman's expressionless faces.
Mrs. Harry Cairney
.

McInnes looked suddenly solemn. ‘The trouble is, Frank, your government hasn't done a damn thing about the IRA. They pussyfoot around, the problem. They send in bloody soldiers, young kids who're too scared to act. And then when they do get their hands on the IRA, it's your court system that protects the bastards. It's your courts that say these gangsters have rights. They can't be hanged. They can't be flogged. They can't be tortured. Good heavens, don't lay a hand on them or else they'll be sending out for their lawyers and making depositions to the bloody Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Jesus Christ! The IRA aren't people, Pagan. They aren't human beings. They're rodents. And you people don't have a clue about what to do with them.'

Rodents
, Pagan thought.

McInnes said, ‘I'm sick and tired of violence, Pagan. I want an end to it. I want an end to the IRA. I want to see peace in Belfast and through the rest of Ireland. And if the British can't do it, then perhaps the Americans will.'

The Americans. Frank Pagan rubbed the corner of an eye. Here he was now, standing on the precipice of Ivor's dream and looking down a dark slope into the abyss. ‘Was that it, Ivor? You brought violence into the United States because you hoped it would outrage Americans enough that they'd send some troops over there to wipe out the IRA?'

‘It's going to happen,' McInnes said. ‘People in this country are sick to death of terrorists and their threats. They're tired of all the anti-American activities that go on throughout the world. The Americans hate two things, Frank. They hate being put on the defensive, especially in their own country. And they hate to be inconvenienced. My God, do they ever hate that! They can't go to Europe, because they're afraid. They can't cruise the Med, because the bloody Libyans will likely hijack their ships. They can't do business in the Middle East without fearing for their lives. They're tired of it all, Frank. And now they're ready to hit back. And they've got a target all set-up for them. The IRA. It's going to happen because there's a weak President in the White House who's going to be swayed by public outrage. A man who's personally suffering at this very moment from his own loss. His two nieces, Frank. His brother's children. The IRA killed his own flesh and blood. Tell me he won't react to
that.
'

Pagan thought McInnes had to go down as the worst kind of monster. The monster who dreams and who doesn't care what his dreams destroy or whom they touch or the lives they shatter. He thought about Kevin Dawson for a second. He thought about dead kids and a shattered school-bus and a silent country house near New Rockford, Connecticut. For the rest of his life Kevin Dawson would only have pictures of his daughters to look at. Pictures on a mantelpiece.

‘You want your own fucking little Vietnam in Ireland.'

‘I don't think so,' McInnes said. ‘It wouldn't take the Americans long to crush the IRA.'

‘No, Ivor,' Pagan replied. ‘It would take forever. You don't see very far, do you? The IRA would thrive in the end because it's always thrived in one form or another. The English couldn't kill it. The Irish themselves couldn't stamp it out. It passes between father and son. It goes from one generation to the next. The Americans might subdue them for a while, but sooner or later the Americans would have to go home. That is, if the governments of Ireland and Britain approved of their intervention in the first place, which is highly unlikely.'

‘No, Frank. It's the logical step for this country. And do you think the governments of Ireland and Britain are going to turn down a helping hand when it comes to a problem they've been battling with miserable success one way or another for centuries? I don't think so.'

Pagan was quiet again. Ivor's dream, grandiose, elaborate, made a jarring sound inside his head. He said, ‘If it hadn't been for your own troops killing Fitzjohn in Albany and calling the FBI, the name of the Free Ulster Volunteers wouldn't ever have entered into the picture, would it?'

McInnes nodded. ‘It was a bad moment for me, but it doesn't matter now,' he said.

The woman, who'd been listening to this in a distant kind of way, tugged at McInnes's sleeve impatiently. McInnes looked at her, taking his hand away from her neck. It suddenly occurred to Frank Pagan that this pair expected to walk out of the house and take their leave as if nothing had ever happened here, as if McInnes had nothing to answer for.

McInnes said, ‘You'll excuse us now, Pagan.'

‘Don't make me laugh, Ivor. Where the hell do you think you're going?'

McInnes looked at the gun. ‘I haven't seen my wife in two long years, Frank.'

‘Your
wife?
'

McInnes slung an arm round the woman's shoulder. Pagan couldn't see her expression for the dark glasses.

‘You sound surprised, Frank.'

‘You said she was Mrs. Cairney.'

‘So I did, so I did.' McInnes smiled. ‘You can figure it out for yourself, Frank. I know you're capable of it. But you shouldn't sound so surprised. Why shouldn't an old warhorse like me have a wife as beautiful as Celestine?'

A match made in hell, Pagan thought. He stared at McInnes's large hand on the woman's shoulder.

‘Two years is a long time,' McInnes said. ‘And I've come a long way to take her back home, Frank. I'm sure you understand.'

‘The only thing I understand is that you're going straight to jail,' Pagan said.

‘I don't think so.' McInnes smiled. It was an infuriating little movement of the lips. ‘For one thing, Frank, you've got nothing in the way of evidence that links me with anything. For another, my dear wife here had no part in the tragedy that took place in this house. Father finds out about son, shoots son, turns gun on himself. You've seen the headlines before, I'm sure.'

‘There are some corpses in Hudson,' Pagan said. ‘The valiant men of the Free Ulster Volunteers. The people you betrayed. How would you explain them away?'

‘Do I have to? They had nothing to do with me. Show me a connection, Frank.'

Pagan hesitated. He saw it now. He saw the flaw in Ivor's scheme, and he circled it in his mind briefly before pouncing on it joyfully. ‘They had
guns
, Ivor. Presumably the same guns used in the attack on the school-bus.'

‘Guns?' McInnes appeared surprised. ‘They didn't have any guns!'

‘What's the matter, Ivor? Did you expect them to be unarmed? Was that what you wanted? That they wouldn't have anything that might tie them to the school-bus? Tough shit. What happened? Did they decide not to follow your orders?'

McInnes said, ‘They were supposed to get rid of the goddam weapons.'

‘Terrible how unreliable the hired help is these days,' Pagan said. ‘It isn't going to be difficult to show that these men weren't members of the IRA. As soon as they're fingerprinted and run through the computer, everybody's going to know that they were connected with the FUV. Fingerprints and weapons will prove conclusively that the attacks weren't carried out by anyone associated with the Irish Republican Army.
How does that grab you, Ivor?
If only they'd tossed their weapons away, everything would have been neatly blamed on the IRA.'

McInnes was quiet for a time. He seemed rather pale to Pagan. ‘It might change things a little,' he said and there was a certain raspiness in his voice.

‘It might change things quite a lot,' Pagan said. He was savouring this moment, the punctured expression on Ivor's craggy face, the way the man's mouth had slackened, his smile erased. ‘It demolishes your notion of blaming the IRA. And there goes your case, Ivor. If you hadn't betrayed your own chums in Hudson, my friend, you might
just
be able to walk out of here. But you were so bloody anxious to get rid of your own thugs you didn't stop to think. You didn't want them around as a potential embarrassment, did you? You slipped up there. You should have let your killers leave the country.'

The woman asked, ‘Is he serious, Ivor?'

‘Deadly,' Pagan replied. ‘Don't you hear it? That long drawn-out sound of a man's scheme dying?'

McInnes made a small fumbling gesture with his hand. He looked lost, but then he appeared to gather himself together again.

‘It could still work,' McInnes said. ‘I know it could still work.'

‘Ivor,' Pagan said. ‘It's not going to work.'

‘Jesus,' McInnes said angrily. ‘I'm telling you it could still work. I'll think of a way. I'll think of something.'

‘How, Ivor? How is it going to work now? You can't think of anything that could make it plausible now. There are corpses in Hudson. You can't fucking wish them away, Ivor.'

The woman placed her hand on McInnes's wrist as if to calm him down. She had a small smile on her face. ‘They still can't link you with any killings,' she said. ‘They can't tie you into anything that's happened, Ivor.'

Pagan looked at her. It was obvious she provided some kind of support system for McInnes, which made her as crazy as he was. The little wife comforting the distraught husband, laying out his slippers in front of the fire and massaging his weary shoulders. The lethal little woman. But Ivor looked despairing again, a chessplayer who has overlooked some simple strategy, who has made a bad pawn move at a bad time.

Pagan thought for a moment. ‘Even if you could walk out of here, I could make a case, Ivor. You know I could do it. I'd backtrack. I'd go over all your movements. All your associations. I'd go back ten years if I had to, but you know I'd make a damn good case. There are links between you and the killers because somewhere you had to sit down and plan this whole thing out with them. I'd find those links. And when I did, I'd squeeze you like a fucking cherry.'