Seventy Times Seven (22 page)

Owen had to talk fast before the money ran out.

‘Everyone including the cops is looking for Finn O’Hanlon. It’s all over the news here. But O’Hanlon is Sean McGuire.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘God knows how all this’ll hit the ground, but I can guarantee there’ll be blood enough to turn the Shannon red. We need insurance. Get McGuire’s ma and the missus in detention as quick as possible and tell no one. Not a soul. I need to talk to The Farmer, but I want to do it in person. You’re the only one who knows this information, Slim. If this leaks out before I get back you’re dead: understand?’

‘Understood,’ replied Slim. ‘D’you want the daughter too?’

‘All of them.’

‘Sean McGuire, Jesus‚ eh?’ said Slim.

‘Big fella?’

‘What?’

‘Put the kettle on, I’m coming home early.’

The line went dead as the coins tumbled into the belly of the telephone.

Órlaith had run out of ideas of who to phone. It was the fifth call she’d made: after this there was only one other person she could try.

The young girl on the other end of the line said, ‘I’m sorry Mrs McGuire, I don’t know. D’you want to speak to my ma again?’

‘Don’t worry, pet. Yes, put her on would you?’

There was a moment’s silence while the young girl passed the phone to her mother.

‘Sorry about that, Órlaith! Let us know what happens and be sure to call us if we can help. I’m sure she’ll turn up. Have you tried Betty Devlin? Niamh’s probably round there.’

‘She’s next on my list. Thanks anyway, Lucy. Sorry to have troubled you.’

‘No trouble at all, hon. Keep us posted. I’ll call you if I hear anything this end.’

Órlaith held down the black buttons on top of the phone for a few seconds before dialling again.

‘Betty? It’s me! You haven’t seen our Niamh, have you? She’s not come home. I just wondered if she’s round there playing with Lisa?’

‘She’s not here, Órlaith, I’m sorry,’ answered Betty Devlin. ‘Hold on and I’ll ask Lisa if she’s seen her.’

Órlaith heard Betty shouting to her daughter, and Lisa’s small voice in the background, innocent, unaware of the impact her words would have as she replied. ‘Yeah, she went in the car with the men. They said they would take her home.’ Órlaith immediately felt the knot in her stomach tighten and had to concentrate hard not to throw up.

‘Jesus! Órlaith, did you hear that?’ asked Betty.

Órlaith couldn’t speak: she could barely breathe.

Just over forty miles away in Belfast, Angela Fitzpatrick was sitting in the back of a maroon-coloured Vauxhall Astra staring out of the window at what passed for normal life. Her hair was scraped back off her face and what little make-up she was wearing did nothing to disguise the fact that she looked drawn and tired. She’d just finished a long shift at the Royal Victoria Hospital on the Falls Road and had been looking forward to nipping into Shannon’s Café for one of their famous home-made sausage sandwiches before heading home for a long hot soak and a few hours’ sleep. She was hungry: wishing now she’d taken up the offer of lunch in the staff canteen.

The weedy guy in the driver’s seat kept checking the rear-view mirror like he was expecting her to disappear.

The guy sitting next to her on the back seat with the handgun digging into her side didn’t look like he needed to eat anything else for the rest of his life. He was known as Slim Jim McMahon and had a huge stomach bulging over his tautly stretched tri-colour snake belt. Her nurse’s training had him down as a candidate for late-onset diabetes.

They were travelling south on the Lisburn Road past shops and bars she knew well. Today, however, they appeared alien to her, almost like she was seeing them for the first time. Even the people in the street seemed different. It reminded her of arriving in a foreign country and driving in from the airport: everything familiar, but somehow unrecognisable: her perceptions coloured by fear.

The situation she found herself in was linked with Danny McGuire, but she had no idea how, or in what way. For the first time since she had met him, Angela wished she had driven past the half-naked figure she’d found collapsed by the roadside.

‘If we’re going somewhere posh I’ll have to go home first and change,’ she said, trying her best to sound casual.

There was no response.

She had tried a few times to get a conversation going, but each time she had been ignored. Neither of the men had spoken a word to Angela since they’d grabbed her in the street and bundled her into the back of the car. ‘If you’re the taxi I ordered, you’re heading in the wrong direction.’

The big guy with the gut gave her a sideways glance. ‘If you don’t keep your gobby mouth shut you’ll get a punch in the fuckin jaw, all right? Keep it buttoned.’

Angela pressed her knees together to try to stop them trembling. She turned her face to peer out of the window, hoping that Slim Jim couldn’t see the tears rolling down her cheek.

No one spoke again for the rest of the journey.

The telephone started to ring. Órlaith jerked her head up and snatched the receiver from its cradle.

‘Hello.’

‘Órlaith?’

‘Jesus Christ! Where the hell are you?’

‘Órlaith, I’ve got no time so just listen. You, Niamh and Ma need to get out of there. Don’t take anything with you. Use the money Angela gave you to buy whatever you need, but get out of there now. Don’t go to your sister’s or your ma’s, d’you hear me Órlaith? Nowhere anyone would think to look!’

‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘Go to the hotel you had your honeymoon in. Go there and wait for me to call, but you have to go now. And tell no one, not a soul, d’you understand, Órlaith? Órlaith, are you there . . .
Órlaith
?’

‘You’re too late,’ whispered Órlaith. ‘They’ve got her, they’ve already got Niamh.’

On the other end of the phone she heard Danny cursing.

‘And Eillean McGuigan called here yesterday,’ continued Órlaith. ‘Quig has been murdered. That’s Eamon Ò Ruairc and Quig McGuigan both murdered in one week.’ Órlaith started screaming down the phone.
‘What’s going on? What the fuck is happening Danny? They’ve taken Niamh, for fucksake.’

‘I’m coming home, Órlaith, and I’m going to fix everything, okay? Just get yourself and Ma away from the house as quickly as possible . . . I’m going to fix it.’

The Vauxhall Astra making its way through the quiet housing development in the north of Newry took a sharp right and drove into the garage of a small semi-detached house. The house was painted the same ‘council cream’ as all the others and had nothing to distinguish it from every other two-up, two-down on the estate.

The skinny guy got out first and pulled the shuttered doors down behind them, plunging the garage into darkness. The car door flew open and Angela was dragged out and shoved towards the internal door connecting the garage to the house.

The skinny guy pushed her through into a dim, airless hallway that smelled of damp and decay. At the other end of the hall she could see the dark, distorted outline of two figures gesturing animatedly behind the mottled glass of the kitchen door. There was a heated argument taking place, but the conversation was too muted to hear clearly.

‘Up here,’ said the skinny guy, pointing to a steep set of stairs that led up to a half landing.

Slim Jim McMahon was standing behind her, digging the gun into the small of her back. ‘She’s to go in the same room as the other one,’ he said.

The skinny guy nodded back at him. ‘Sure enough.’

The bedroom walls were draped in a black fabric and the windows had been boarded over with the curtains still in place. From the outside it gave the impression that the curtains were drawn, but it was really just a makeshift prison cell. Aside from a single metal-framed chair placed in the centre, there was no other furniture in the room. The carpet around the chair was heavily stained and the air choked with a rotting smell that made Angela gag. When her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness Angela noticed the young girl cowering silently in the corner of the room. ‘Dear God,’ she exclaimed. Angela recognised her straight away. ‘You’re Niamh, aren’t you? I met you the other day with your ma.’ The look of fear on the young girl’s face made Angela instinctively reach out to her. ‘Come on over here, love, you’re all right. I won’t let those animals lay a finger on you.’

Kathleen McGuire stood on the top stair, looking down at the crumpled figure of her daughter-in-law sitting at the foot of the stairs, weeping silently, her hands cupped over her face. An image flashed into Kathleen McGuire’s mind. She saw herself sitting in exactly the same position, years earlier, when she had heard the news of her son Sean’s death. Kathleen knew instinctively that something terrible had happened.

‘What’s going on, Órlaith?’

Órlaith struggled to answer through her tears.

‘Someone’s taken her.’

Kathleen McGuire’s knuckles whitened as her grip tightened on the banister.

‘They’ve taken Niamh,’ continued Órlaith. ‘Danny called. We have to leave here right away.’

‘We’d better get going then,’ replied Kathleen.

Danny stood clutching a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, trying to attract the attention of the man serving coffee at the other end of the counter.

The ‘Must-go-Jean’ truck-stop café was quiet, but the guy was engaged in a conversation with a heavily tattooed truck driver who had pulled in off the road just in front of Danny. From the length of time it was taking to pour one coffee it was obvious the two knew each other. Neither of them seemed in much of a hurry.

Eventually the guy serving looked over his shoulder at Danny.

‘Be right with you.’

Danny had to wait another few minutes while the truck driver’s order was shouted through to the kitchen.

‘Sorry for the delay! Sinner Joe was just telling me why he was late. Usually here exact same time every week. Never missed it yet. What can I get you?’

Danny held up the twenty. ‘I just need some change for the phone.’

‘Much d’you need?’

‘The whole twenty if you can.’

The guy made a clicking noise in the side of his mouth. ‘Be lucky to get you five, but I’ll have a look.’

The guy moved over to the till and sprung the drawer open.

‘This morning he’s over an hour late so I’m thinking something must be wrong, maybe he’s got the shits again or maybe he’s been in an accident, but I’m wrong on both counts . . . Can do you three in quarters, that any good to you?’

‘Whatever you have,’ replied Danny, doing his best to stop himself from dragging the guy over the counter. He’d been waiting for nearly ten minutes already and the guy hadn’t stopped talking once.

‘If it’s long-distance you can use the phone on the wall there and do a reverse charge. Sinner Joe says the tailback’s got to be three or four miles long up on the 59. He’s just after telling me he’s late cause of the roadblocks. Sheriffs are stopping every goddamn vehicle on the road. Just do it to inconvenience the whole population, seems to me. Did the exact same thing a few years ago looking for a shipment of guns and didn’t find a goddamn thing: not so much as a stray bullet. Too many ways to go other than the 59 if you’re a smuggler. Upshot was they caught a lot of locals with weapons they wasn’t supposed to have, and no permits. In the end they had to declare an amnesty cause no one was gonna vote the sheriff back in again if he was gonna start pushing for prosecution. What you gonna do?’

Danny looked up from the counter. He’d only been half listening.

The guy gave him a strange look. ‘You want the quarters or you gonna use the phone on the wall?’

Someone was banging at the front door.

Órlaith stood frozen at the head of the stairs with a small holdall slung over her shoulder and a case filled with clothes hanging by her side. She cursed under her breath. She had spent nearly half an hour gathering some things together: clothes for Niamh, et cetera, but now, as the door rattled again, she wished she had done exactly what Danny had told her and left the house straight away.

Mrs McGuire was waiting for her in the kitchen downstairs.

‘Kathleen!’ whispered Órlaith as loudly as she dared. ‘Kathleen!’

‘What?’

‘Head out the back and wait for me at the top of the lane.’

The banging stopped momentarily and Órlaith heard the flap on the letterbox being lifted. Both women stood still, barely daring to breathe.

After a few moments the banging started again.

Órlaith slowly made her way down the stairs, lifting the case one step at a time in front of her. She was just over halfway when the phone started ringing. The sudden noise startled her and caused her to lose hold of the case.

She watched helplessly as it tumbled down the remaining steps and crashed into the small table at the bottom of the stairs.

The flap lifted again. This time she could see eyes peering through the letterbox, staring straight at her.

‘Off on a trip, Órlaith? Nice! Let us in, we’d like a wee word.’

Órlaith didn’t answer. She descended the rest of the stairs as quickly as possible and grabbed the suitcase.

There was a loud thud. Whoever was outside was trying to kick the door in. Each blow ripped the screws holding the lock out a little further until eventually the door was ready to give.

They were shouting through the letterbox again.

‘Be a shame to miss your daughter’s funeral. C’mon, open the door.’

The telephone was still ringing.

Órlaith ran into the kitchen and grabbed a long carving knife from one of the drawers then headed back along the short hallway towards the front door. There was another loud crack as the lock finally gave way. But the door only opened three or four inches: it was held in place by a taut brass chain.

A hand appeared through the gap: the fingers fumbling around trying to free the chain from its holder.

Órlaith didn’t hesitate. She raised the knife and plunged it as hard as she could into the back of the hand. There was a scream as the attacker tried to pull free, but the knife had driven all the way through. It was acting like a split pin: preventing the hand from being withdrawn. Every attempt caused the knife to cut deeper into the flesh.

Órlaith started kicking against the door and screaming at the top of her voice. ‘Touch her and I’ll kill every fucking one of you. Every . . . fucking . . . one.’

There was a loud splintering of wood and glass as the first shot was fired. A hole appeared halfway down the door followed quickly by another, then another just above it.

Órlaith turned and ran, leaving the phone still ringing.

‘C’mon, pick up, for God’s sake.’

Danny slammed the receiver against the cradle in frustration. A few seconds later he dialled the operator again. ‘I’d like to make a reverse-charge call please . . . Northern Ireland . . . sure.’ Danny read out the number and listened as the operator asked the person on the other end if they would accept the charges.