The Bloomsday Dead (28 page)

“I’m ok, Mommy, I’m ok, Mommy, I’m ok—”

“What have they done to you, have they been feeding you? Are you ok?”

“Um, I’m ok. . . . I feel funny.”

“Oh, Siobhan, darling, it’s going to be ok, I’m going to see you in a couple of hours, be brave, honey, I love you so much,” Bridget said soothingly.

“Love you, Mommy,” the girl said dreamily.

Silence. Bridget choked down sobs and the second kidnapper came on again.

“Did you get the money?”

“I got the money,” Bridget said.

“Good. Ok, you know she’s alive, and you’ll get her back and everything is going to go very smooth if you fucking cooperate. Ok. I have a list of things to tell you. Tell the fucking peelers to write this down. The first thing is this. All helicopters in Belfast need to be grounded at eleven o’clock. If there’s one helicopter flying in the sky after eleven, the deal is off and the girl dies. Second, there’s a phone box at the Albert Clock. We’ll be calling at twenty to twelve. You have to come there alone with the ten million. If we see one peeler, or one of your fucking boys, the deal is off and the girl dies. Third, we are going to be bouncing you all over the city, so you better come in a car, and you better fucking know how to drive, because if we see anyone else in the car, the deal is off and the girl dies. Fourth, do not let anyone try to follow you, if we see anyone following you, the deal is off and the girl dies. Fifth, when you meet with the middleman, he is going to search you. If you don’t have the money or you’re wired up in any way, the deal is off, he walks away, and the girl dies. No GPS, no bugs, no transponders, no mobile phones. Have you understood these arrangements?”

“The pay phone at the Alfred Clock,” Bridget said.

The line went dead.

The constable who had given the thumbs-up came back into the interview room.

“Well?” the chief super asked.

“Oh, we traced it, no problem, sir, but the bad news is that it’s from a batch of phones stolen from a shop in Larne. The cards were all canceled, but they’ve obviously reactivated them somehow,” the constable said.

“So you couldn’t find out anything?” the chief super asked.

“Well, they’re almost certainly calling from Belfast. It was a strong local signal. Tech boys say a radius of about five miles. That’s about all we can tell,” the constable said.

The chief super groaned.

While the two cops talked and the other peelers pretended to be busy, Bridget was quietly sitting there sobbing. Gone was the general, the bitch boss, all that was left was the frightened mom. I pushed past Moran and the goons and sat next to her. Gently I put my arm around her.

“Bridget, are you ok?” I asked.

She nodded, didn’t push my arm away, continued crying.

“Siobhan is still alive, it’s wonderful. I knew she would be, anyone with your genes is a survivor. She’s alive and she sounds good. And you’ll be seeing her really soon,” I whispered.

Bridget smiled.

“Oh, Michael, I hope you’re right,” she said.

The chief super began barking orders to the peelers, who were standing around gawking.

“Oliver, you see about the helicopters, get on to the army and the airports. Pat, get a team of detectives over to the Albert Clock; Erin, you see about a car for Ms. Callaghan, get a bug in it, get a camera in it if you can; Lara, you make sure Ms. Callaghan gets rigged up. Sam, he said no helicopters, but see if we can get a microlight up there with a camera. Ari and Sophie, find out the locations of all the phone boxes within a mile radius of the Albert Clock; we’ll stake out every bloody one of them if we can.”

Bridget stood.

“He said no cops,” Bridget said. “He said if he saw one cop, he’d kill Siobhan.”

“Don’t worry, miss, these will be plainclothes detectives; he won’t even notice us, it’ll be very discreet, I assure you,” the chief super said.

Bridget was angry now.

“No fucking cops. Ok? This is my show. I’m cooperating with those sons of bitches. Cancel your fucking microlight and call back those detectives,” she said vehemently.

The chief super shook his head, but her eyes turned him.

“Ok, if that’s what you want,” he said reluctantly.

“It’s what I insist upon,” Bridget said.

“At least let us put a bug in the car and on your person—”

“You can bug the car but not me, he was perfectly clear about that. I don’t want you Paddy fucks ruining this for me. You haven’t been able to find my daughter, you haven’t been able to do anything. So now it’s over, just keep out of it and let this go ahead. Once I get Siobhan, you can do what you like finding these bastards.”

The chief super was about to add something but bit his tongue instead.

“If that’s what you need, fine,” he said finally.

Bridget dabbed her eyes, took a sip of water.

“It is,” Bridget said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go to the ladies’ room.”

She got up. A female constable helped her out.

Moran stood behind me and hauled me to my feet. I would have smacked the fucker but for the presence of the Old Bill. I pushed his hand away from me.

“Keep your fucking paws off me. Touch me again and you’re a dead man, peelers or no peelers,” I snarled.

“Yeah, well, you heard the lady. You better pull the cord and get out of here, Forsythe, your services are no longer required,” he said.

“I have things to do anyway. Don’t be such an asshole.”

We stared at each other and one of the younger detectives came over.

“Is there a problem here?”

“No problem, run along, sonny, the adults are talking,” Moran said.

The cop couldn’t think of a reply and walked shamefaced back to his colleagues.

“Ok, Moran. Fine, you’re a big man. Great. It’s not midnight yet. You can tell me this—Bridget’s pretty emotional—was that definitely her? Definitely Siobhan?” I asked him.

“It was her,” Moran said.

“And that first voice, have you ever heard it before?”

“Nope.”

“It was foreign, wasn’t it? There was something about it,” I said.

“I told you, I haven’t heard it before. You’re trying my patience, Forsythe. Well, you won’t be trying it for too long. As soon as we get Siobhan back—”

“Aye, I know. Well, like I say, join the queue, I’m not exactly Mister Popular round these parts.”

“Price you pay for being a rat murderer,” Moran said.

Bridget came back into the interview room. She couldn’t stand now. Moran helped her into a chair. She blew her nose. She’d been crying on and off for hours. For days, really, but once again I was struck by her. She was haggard and she was older but she looked extraordinary. Age had only deepened her loveliness. It had removed the rawness of youth and replaced it with an elegance, a charm, a breathless quality. No longer a bubbling champagne. Now a cognac of the first reserve. Smoldering, earthy, vulnerable, pure.

And in a way, looking at her was like looking in a mirror. We had both done terrible things. We had both changed so much.

And I saw something else.

I knew I loved Bridget now. I’d always loved her, from that very first moment, and all through the years and even now when she was trying to kill me. I couldn’t help it. No one could. I could even forgive Darkey White for what he did to us, to me and Scotchy and all the rest. Our lives were worth it, for a chance of happiness with this woman.

A constable came in with a large briefcase full of money. It brought me back to my senses. Ten million in sterling and international bearer bonds. How much was that in dollars? Was Bridget worth that much? Of course she was. That and much more. She’d have paid fifty million to get Siobhan back. Kidnappers couldn’t be that savvy, then, or they would have known that. Or maybe they did know it, but wanted a sum she could raise quickly. Or perhaps there was more to all this than just the cash.

“Let’s get you a cup of tea and get you prepped,” the chief super said to Bridget.

“Ok,” she replied meekly, tired now, close to the edge.

She was led away by the chief super and one of the female constables. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to me. I stood awkwardly for a moment, wondering what to do next. Moran made his presence felt at my arm.

“Make yourself scarce, Forsythe. We’ll count to a thousand and then we’re coming,” he said. No smile on his face, just those brutal, vengeful eyes.

“Ok,” I said, stole his cigarettes and lighter from the table, and walked out of the interview room.

In the corridor I found the constable who’d been doing the trace. He looked keen and amenable; he might do.

“Listen, mate, I’m a private detective working for Bridget, can you do me a wee solid? I need the address of a Slider McFerrin in Bangor, he might be involved in all of this. I don’t know, but I think he might be the one that stole those phones of yours.”

“Do you now? Slider what?”

“McFerrin, he lives in Bangor.”

“Ok,” he said, but he didn’t rush off to go check it out.

“Come on, mate, quid pro quo, I gave you the name, tell me his address and I’ll check it out. It might be a dead end, but I promise I’ll give you everything I get,” I said.

“You’ll give who?”

“I’ll give you personally.”

“Fair enough. I’ll see what I can do, hold on there.”

I took a seat in the corridor and closed the door on the two peelers watching the German porn flick.

The keen copper came back.

“Slider McFerrin?” he asked.

“Aye.”

“James McFerrin, lives with his ma at 6 Kilroot View Road, Bangor. You think he’s mixed up in this?”

“He might be.”

“Well, he’s a player all right.”

“What can you tell me?

“I can’t tell you anything. Watch your step, though. Bad family. He’s one of six boys. Eldest was killed by his own side, the ma runs bootleg whiskey, and he’s done time in the Maze for murder, assault, and grievous bodily harm. He was released under the Good Friday Agreement. Nothing about theft, phones or otherwise, but he’s a bad ’un.”

“Cheers, mate.”

I walked out into the station car park. It was raining again now. The drains had been blocked up and narrowed to tiny slits so that a terrorist couldn’t crawl into the sewers and blow the police station up from underneath. The car park was flooding and a peeler with a foot pump was trying to get the water out of the bigger potholes. It was a sorry sight.

“You couldn’t give us a hand there?” the peeler asked, mistaking me for a plainclothes detective.

“Fuck, no,” I told him.

I left the cop shop, walked a few blocks, found a taxi stand outside the Ulster Hall. They were just letting out a revival preacher, a Dr. McCoy from the Bob Jones ministry in America. Revival meetings were popular in Belfast. From the airbrushing on his poster, Dr. McCoy seemed a wee bit more suspicious than most, and sure enough, the patrons had been so thoroughly fleeced that no one even had any dough left for a taxi. I skipped to the front of the line.

The driver of the black cab was glad to see me.

“Hanging about here for bloody ten minutes,” he complained. “I suppose the rest of your mates are waiting to get beamed up.”

I got the joke, told him the address in Bangor.

“I see you’re wearing a Zeppelin T-shirt. Did you know that the Ulster Hall was the very place where Zep played ‘Stairway to Heaven’ for the first time?”

I said I didn’t know, but there was an extra fifty quid in it if he shut up and another fifty if he drove to Bangor like the hounds of hell were after him.