Safe House (10 page)

“I think so. Except the blind part. What is it again?”

“‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.' Mahatma Gandhi said it. What do you think he meant?”

“I thought you said it was an old Irish saying.”

His da's thick black eyebrows disappear for a moment under his mop of hair. “Mahatma Gandhi was Irish, everyone knows that. His real name before he ended up in India was Mickey Gannon, from County Clare.”

Liam thinks for a few seconds and then he says, “I give up. I don't know what he meant.”

“Think about it while you're dribbling your dinner down the front of your sweater.”

His mum cries, “Oh, Liam. That's your new school sweater. You're supposed to take it off when you get home! What have I told you?”

Liam dabs gravy off his sweater. “Sorry. I forgot.”

His mum sighs. “What are you two going on about anyway?”

His da nods toward the newspaper. “Story about a young eighteen-year-old man stabbed to death by a nineteen-year-old man. Both of them Protestants. Pictures on the front page. Liam was asking why a Protestant would kill another Protestant. The police think it's a feud between two gangs.”

His mum says, “They're killing each other? Is that it?”

His da shrugs. “Gang warfare. Crime, drugs, who knows?” He turns to Liam. “Did you figure it out, the meaning of ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind'?”

“Revenge is a bad idea? Everyone loses?”

“Good lad.” His da ruffles Liam's hair.

Liam grins at his mum. His mum winks back at him.

…runaway boy…

Daylight. Rain and wind. Summertime in Belfast. He peered out the dirty windows of the cold and drafty bus depot. Glengall Street was deserted. He turned away from the windows and sat huddled on one of the wooden benches and waited.

After a while, the ticket booth opened its shutters. A couple of people were waiting, a man and a woman.

He got to his feet and walked up and down, reading the place names on the buses in the depot as they waited to begin their journeys: Omagh, Londonderry, Dungannon, Enniskillen, Dublin. Just names to him. What would it be like to see different places? If he lived in Dublin the Mole would never find him. He could get a job, change his name, dye his hair, travel around Ireland. But what about the two killers. They would go free. He hated them. He wanted them punished; he wanted them sent to rot in jail for the rest of their lives. He wanted revenge.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

His da believed it. He loved his da. Could his da be wrong? Could Mickey Gannon of County Clare be wrong?

The coffee shop opened. He thought about food. But no; he might need his money later. People were starting to arrive at the bus station.

He watched as a woman dragged a small boy along behind her to the ticket office. The child was crying. “I told you to stay with me,” barked the woman. “Someone will snatch you away and then I will never have you anymore. And you will never have me.” This made the child cry even louder.

He had checked the timetable. The Dublin bus was due to leave at a quarter past eight. He looked up at the clock: 7:45. The driver of the blue Ulsterbus express to Dublin arrived, climbed up onto his bus and left his raincoat beside his seat. Then he hopped down again and headed over to the coffee shop to join two other drivers seated at a table.

Liam looked out the windows again. By now the wet street was busy with traffic.

Suddenly a police Land Rover!

He stepped back from the window. It was the Mole, he was sure of it, slowly cruising the street, searching for him.

Had the Mole seen him before he stepped away from the window?

The door of the Dublin bus was open. No one was looking. His gray wool cap pulled down low over his head, he stepped quickly onto the empty bus and sat on the floor at the back, behind a seat, where he hoped nobody would see him. He pushed his backpack under the seat and waited anxiously. If the driver saw him then he was finished.

After a while, when there was a small crowd of people lining up outside the bus, the driver slid into his seat behind the wheel and began punching their tickets. A plump woman sat at the back of the bus, close to Liam's hiding spot. She gave him an angry look. He ignored her.

When everyone was aboard, the driver started the engine. So far, the only one who had noticed Liam sitting on the floor at the back of the bus was the plump woman. She was well dressed in a brown coat and hat, with a large handbag and brown gloves. Liam couldn't wait for the bus to get rolling and on its way. His stomach swooped with anxiety. What was holding the driver up? Go, go!

It was possible that the Mole had seen him waiting in the station; there were very few people about, and the Land Rover had been moving slowly enough for the Mole to spot him.

The bus started moving. Liam breathed a sigh of relief. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He was going to make it.

The bus stopped. What now? He heard the door opening. Pause. A voice: “Anyone seen a runaway boy? He was in the bus station a few minutes ago.”

The Mole!

What lousy luck. His heart plunged.

The plump woman yelled, “Back here! He's sitting on the floor,”

He was done for. He was as good as dead. The Mole had him. He peeped out from behind the seat. The Mole, larger than life, in uniform, making for him, lunging down the aisle with his big shoulders and dead eyes.

Then the big arm was around his neck, cutting off his air. He felt himself hoisted easily off the floor. His wool cap fell to the floor. The Mole hauled him effortlessly to the front of the bus. Liam managed to slide his hand into his hip pocket and grasp the potato peeler. The Mole dragged him down the steps of the bus and out the door. Liam could not breathe. Gripping his potato peeler firmly, he plunged it into the Mole's thigh. The Mole groaned with pain, released his hold, and Liam fell to the ground. The potato peeler skittered away. Liam gulped air into his tortured lungs. The Mole reached down, grabbed him again, hauled him across the parking lot to the Land Rover, tossed him like a sack of laundry into the backseat and slammed the door shut.

…trapped…

It took a while for him to recover his breath while grenades exploded in his lungs. His windpipe felt crushed. The Mole was behind the wheel, and the Land Rover was speeding away from the bus depot. He checked the doors, searching for a handle, but the rear door handles had been removed. He was trapped.

His feet became entangled in something on the floor. He bent down and pulled it away. It was a traveling rug. He picked it up off the floor and threw it onto the seat beside him.

Was this it, then? Was this the end—the Mole taking a witness who knew too much to some deserted place to kill him and then toss his corpse into a rubbish tip?

The anger boiled up in him. “You killed my mum and da!” he screamed at the back of the Mole's head. “And now you want to kill me!”

“Shut up you grubby little Taig!” growled the Mole, adding several swear words. “You're gonna be real sorry for sticking me. I'm gonna make you suffer for that, wait and see.” He removed his uniform cap and tossed it onto the seat beside him. Then he popped several pills from the palm of his hand into his open mouth and swallowed them.

Liam peered beyond the bouncing windscreen wipers and saw that they were near Donegall Square. He could see the domed top of the city hall up ahead.

He was about to be tortured, by the sound of it, and then he would be killed.

But not without a fight.

They were now speeding along May Street, not far from the intersection with Oxford Street.

The light was green. He was desperate. It seemed to him that sometimes you only got one chance and if you didn't take it…It was now or never, like reaching for the swinging trapeze. Only a split second to act. If you missed the bar you dropped like a stone to the ring floor, or to the catch net, and broke your legs. Or, worse, your neck. He had already snatched the rug from the seat beside him and was now spreading it out between his hands. He reached forward over the seat and quickly threw the rug over the Mole's head, winding it tightly round his neck and jerking it back, hard and fast. The rug covered the Mole's eyes and mouth, blinding him and cutting off his air. Liam held on with all his strength, pulling the Mole's head back hard against the headrest.

Muffled yells. The Mole thrashed about and slammed his foot hard on the brake. Liam was thrown forward between the seats and into the front of the Land Rover. His head struck the dashboard. The car skidded out of its lane, collided into the car beside it with a scream of metal and plastic, and careened on, skidding and fishtailing wildly before walloping the side of a second car hard and coming to an abrupt stop. The Mole's rug-covered head slammed into the steering wheel. Liam was tossed about like a ping-pong ball. Adrenalin pumping through every vein and artery, he quickly recovered, shoved frantically at the front door handle, threw his weight against the door and fell out into the debris-strewn intersection.

He clambered to his feet and did not waste time looking to see if the Mole was following as he ran shakily into St. George's Market. He fled through the shoppers and the aisles of fish, fruit and vegetables.

But the Mole wasn't far behind; Liam could hear him yelling, “Stop that boy!”

He glanced over his shoulder. The Mole, wearing his uniform cap and running with a limp, was chasing him. He kept going, pushing his way through the crowd.

“Stop him! Stop that boy!”

A dutiful, law-abiding fruit vendor reached out toward Liam, trying to catch him. Liam dodged around him and ran, pausing only to pull over the man's cart full of watermelons. The melons crashed to the ground and bounced about. The Mole fell and crawled about on hands and knees amid a green sea of melons. Liam ran on, darting around a fishmonger and upsetting his display of fish, filling the aisle with halibut, haddock, cod, skate and skittering pellets of ice. Liam skidded on ice and fell forward into the stall. Behind him the Mole slipped on ice and fell again, this time onto his back. Liam scrambled to his feet as several shoppers moved in. They tried to grab him but he dodged, turned and ran. He looked back; two stout fishmongers in white-striped blue aprons were helping the Mole to his feet.

Liam ran on. His head hurt. He felt with his fingers as he ran. There was a swelling on his right temple from his collision with the dashboard. He made for the market's Oxford Street exit. Now what? He didn't know. Find a place to hide? That would be difficult; the Mole, in spite of his thigh wound, was close on his heels.

He ran through the market looking for the exit. He was scared. Terrified, more like. He wanted to kill the Mole. He wanted to kill him slowly, wanted to make him suffer.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

He was now outside, on Oxford Street. The rain had stopped.

The fearful sound of Lambeg drums—like a dozen jet planes breaking the sound barrier—made him realize that today was July twelfth and the annual Orange Day Parade. He saw the marchers, hundreds of them on May Street, heading toward city hall with their flutes, bagpipes, accordions, trombones and kettledrums. The thunder of the giant Lambegs could be heard all over the city. People turned out in their thousands to watch the parade. There were dozens of banners and flags, paper Union Jacks and orange balloons. It was the marching season, and all over the North of Ireland the Orange Parade was taking to the streets to celebrate the victorious 1690 Battle of the Boyne, and the Protestant Loyalist ties with England. The Orange Lodge men wore dark suits, black bowler hats, white gloves, and orange sashes; other marchers wore a mix of orange lilies, orange shirts, orange jackets, orange ties, orange vests, or orange armbands. Some of the marchers threw orange-wrapped toffees to the eager children on the sidewalk.

Liam raced down Oxford Street into May Street. He looked back. The Mole was just emerging from the market but hadn't yet spotted him. Liam snatched an orange paper hat from an unresisting bystander's head and ran into the middle of the marchers. He pulled the hat down low over his ears to hide his long dark-brown hair and moved gradually through the parade, away from the Mole.

He looked back. The Mole was holding his thigh with one hand and limping quickly along the sidewalk, searching for him among the marchers. He had guessed that Liam might join the parade. Liam kept his head turned away. If he left the parade and attempted to find a hiding place, the Mole would see him for sure. It was better to keep making his way forward through the marchers and watch for an opportunity to disappear.

But he saw no opportunities.

The march eventually brought the parade to the city hall, where it stopped. He kept moving, leaving the marchers and hurrying across to the Linenhall Street entrance of city hall. It was a mistake: He should have stayed with the parade. When he looked back, he could see that the Mole had spotted him.

He ran into the city hall. A large group of tourists stood between the marble statues in the ornate entrance hall, blocking his way. He pushed through into the center of the tourists and hid among them like a bird in a cornfield. His right temple hurt. He felt the spot with his fingers, checking for blood, but there was none, only the swelling. He let his orange hat drop to the floor.

“It's a copy of the dome on St. Paul's cathedral in London,” the guide, a thin bushy-haired university student, was saying as he pointed up to the roof.

Liam, peeping out from his hiding place, saw the Mole arrive and stare about him wildly, his face streaked with traces of blood, probably from the car crash. He limped to the staircase, searching for Liam, and looked up toward the gallery. Then he hurried back to the tourist group and started pushing his way through them. “Stand aside!” he yelled.

Liam could almost smell the hatred and violence burning out of him.