The Bloomsday Dead (9 page)

“Will that be all now, sir?” Lara said, having rehearsed the phrase to sound like an Irish girl.

“If someone could get me a T-shirt, it would be great. This one’s ruined.”

“Very well,” she said and closed the door behind her.

I drank some tea and ate a couple of the chocolate biscuits that came with it. They’d also provided that needle and thread. I started running the shower to get the hot water warmed up.

I picked the phone up from the bedside table. I found Bridget’s number at the Europa.

Well, this was it. Your last chance, my dear. She’d have to be pretty bloody convincing. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice . . .

I dialed the Europa Hotel, got through to her room.

“Who’s this?” a man asked.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“Moran.”

“I want to speak to Bridget, this is Michael Forsythe,” I said.

“Hold on,” the man said with cold anger.

“Michael, are you in Belfast?” Bridget asked urgently.

“Am I hell. I’m not in the grave, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Despite your best efforts I am still walking the same planet Earth as you,” I said.

“Michael, I don’t have time for this, come to the point,” Bridget muttered impatiently.

“Honestly, this is getting very tiresome,” I said.

“Tiresome for me, too. What are you talking about?” Bridget yelled.

“Your boy tried to kill me, as if you didn’t know,” I said.

“What boy?”

“Your boy, the cab driver. Surprise, surprise, he knew my name and he tried to fucking kill me.”

Bridget considered the information. Her breathing became shorter and she sounded irritated.

“Michael, I don’t know what is going on. If someone tried to kill you, it was nothing to do with me.”

“Bridget, I know you’re playing. Do you think I am that stupid?” I said, a half-rhetorical, half-real query.

“Michael, believe me, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t send anyone to kill you. Why would I do that when I could have killed you in Peru?”

Fair point.

“You didn’t send someone to the airport to meet me?”

“No.”

I leaned back in the leather chair, tapped the phone against my forehead. Just exactly how good was she? Was she good enough to send two hit teams at me in two days, fail in both the hits, and still convince me that she wasn’t trying to knock me off?

“Bridget, I know it was you, I—” I tried to say but Bridget cut me off.

“Listen to me, you worthless shit. You killed my fiancé and I’m giving you a chance to fucking balance the ledger. My daughter’s gone missing. Do you understand? I don’t know what the fuck you’ve been doing in Dublin, I don’t care. I need your help. The most precious thing in the world to me is Siobhan. Not you or what you’ve been up to, you son of a bitch. I don’t have the time to talk to you anymore. I’ll be in the Europa, you’ll either come or you won’t, it’s up to you. You are not my concern right now. Ok? I have a million things to do, so I have to go. Hell with you, Michael, useless as fucking usual.”

She hung up.

I listened to the dial tone and then the recorded operator told me to put the phone down. Jesus. Where did that leave me? It was back to the original question. Was she good enough to hit me and still make me come to her in Belfast?

I groaned, put my head in my hands.

She was.

What was happening to me? What kind of an idiot had I become? Was my judgment going? Either that or a possibility that was worse. Maybe I really didn’t buy it, maybe I didn’t believe her at all. I didn’t believe her but I wanted to go to Belfast anyway. I was being drawn to her even though I knew it would bring death. I wanted to see her this one last time whatever the cost.

Was that what was going on?

I shrugged. Nah. It wasn’t as complicated as that. I simply believed her. She was telling the truth. What was happening to me had nothing to do with her. It was a coincidence. I had more than one enemy in the world, after all, and maybe I had several in Ireland. And by now, my presence was known about and advertised.

I removed the duct tape, took my trousers off, and climbed into the shower.

Quick shower. Quick dry.

I wrapped the towel around me and sat on the end of the bed. I ripped off a piece of pillowcase, dipped the needle in the hot tea, and double threaded it. I grabbed the flesh on either side of my knife wound. Easy does it. I pushed the needle through the epidermis, threaded it over the wound, drove it through the skin on the other side of the cut. I repeated the procedure five times in a crisscross pattern and gently pulled the stitches tight. When the wound was together, I tied off the thread, wiped away the blood, applied a bit of pillowcase as a bandage, and rewrapped the duct tape around the whole thing.

I spent a while recovering from the waves of pain and then I started dressing.

There was a knock outside. Ah, Lara with the T-shirt. I pulled on my trousers and opened the door.

Not Lara. A six-foot-four bald guy with a goatee, a black suit, narrow slits for eyes, and a six-shot .38 revolver in his meaty paw.

“What the fuck is all this?” I asked. “The lady of the house and I have an arrangement.”

“Are you Michael Forsythe?” he asked in a Belfast accent.

If I hadn’t learned in the last ten years, certainly the last two days had taught me the inefficacy of answering to that name.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Oh, you don’t need to know who I am. Put your hands on your head and make like a fucking statue. One move and there’s a bullet in that bandage in your gut.”

I put my hands over my head. The man rummaged through my things and found my passport. That wouldn’t help him. I was called Brian O’Nolan on that. Still, he looked at the picture and at me and compared it with a mental picture.

“I think it is you,” he said rhetorically. “The foot too, bit of a give-away.”

“You want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked.

“No, I want you to put these on,” he said and threw me a pair of handcuffs. I let them drop on the floor.

“And if I don’t?”

“Just put on the cuffs,” he said.

“Bridget sent you?”

He didn’t offer any information, but perhaps that was a tell in a very slight shake of the head.

“I won’t put the cuffs on unless you tell me what’s going to happen after I do.”

“You’ll be going on a journey, see some old pals. Now put the cuffs on. You’ll be fucking sorry if you don’t, it’s all the same to me.”

“Did the madam tell you I was here?”

“Yeah, she did, now get those things on,” he yelled.

“At least let me get dressed first.”

He thought about it for a second.

“Ok. No funny stuff or I’ll top ya.”

I put on my clothes, taxing his patience with my Stanley boots. I picked up the handcuffs. Standard cop jobs. I placed one over my wrist and casually tilted my arm so he couldn’t see exactly what I was doing, and closed the cuff about halfway. I tugged the metal between my finger and thumb to show him that it was locked. The man seemed satisfied. Of course it wasn’t locked at all. I put the second loop over my other wrist and closed it, this time all the way. I held my hands in front of me with the big gap on the right side, underneath my wrist where he couldn’t see it. If he had any brains he’d kick me in the balls, kneel on me, put the gun in my face, and make sure the handcuffs were really bloody tight.

But he was a trusting son of a bitch and either not very good at this or was under orders to go softy softly with me.

“You walk ahead of me, we’ll wait downstairs, there’ll be a car along in a couple of minutes.”

“Where are we going?”

“Doesn’t concern you.”

“The Garda is looking for me. You can’t just take me away, they’ll spot you in a second.”

“Aye, heard about that. How long have you been in the city? About four hours? And they already have a photofit of you up on the telly for attempted murder. Nice work. But don’t you worry about the Garda, mate, we know all the ins and outs of this town, believe me.”

“Where we going?” I tried again.

“North,” he said ominously.

So it was Bridget.

I walked along the oak-paneled corridor and into the foyer. It had been cleared of girls, clients in pig noses, and Albanian cleaning ladies.

He was behind me. I looked at our reflections in the polished oak. He was following me about four feet back.

I wriggled out of the right handcuff. A tiny clinking sound, but he couldn’t see what I was doing.

I wouldn’t have long to make my move. A car was coming. Presumably with more men inside.

Three steps led down from the hallway into the foyer.

It would have to be now.

I tripped and fell down the steps, keeping my hands in front and landing on what looked like my unprotected face.

“Jesus,” the man said and ran over to help. He transferred the revolver from his right to his left hand and pulled me up by the hair. I let him lift me six inches off the ground then I made a grab for the gun. My left hand found his wrist, I stuck my knuckle into the pressure point an inch below his life line.

He screamed, his grip loosened, and I grabbed the pistol. He threw a punch at me with his right, missed, smacked his fist into the hardwood floor. I kicked his legs and he fell on top of me. He landed with a two-hundred-pound crash on my back, crushing the air out of my lungs and nearly opening my stitches.

Painfully I rolled to the side just as he was drawing back a big fist to smash into my face, but there wasn’t going to be a fight. I wriggled my arm free, held the gun out horizontally, and pulled the trigger. A bullet caught him in the armpit. He screamed and writhed, and I pushed him off. And as he made a desperate lunge for the gun, I shot him in the shoulder. The second bullet knocked him on his spine.

I stood up and backed well away from him.

“Who do you work for?” I asked.

Through one of the brothel windows I could see that a red Range Rover had pulled up outside. Men getting out. Bollocks. No time for twenty questions.

“Ammo,” I said.

He pointed to his jacket pocket. I reached in and pulled out a bag full of assorted .38 shells. Old, new; still, they would do the job.

“Handcuff key?”

“Other pocket.”

I reached in and took out the key.

“Don’t kill me,” he pleaded.

“This is your lucky day, pal,” I said and ran back up the foyer steps and along the corridor, kicking open doors until I found a room with a girl inside.

Mousy little brunette taking a break.

“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked her.

“What?”

I put the gun on her forehead.

“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked again.

I looked back.

No one behind me.

“Over here, mister,” a voice said, and a tiny hand tugged me down a narrow lane. Dogs barking. Papers. Cardboard boxes. Beer cans. Bottles. Narrow streets. An outdoor toilet. Smell of bacon fat. Curtains of gray slate, yards of washing.

“This way,” the voice said.

Finally I stopped seeing the stars. But Jesus, I’d have to get to a doctor for that.

We went into a court between some back-to-backs and then across a yard full of burned-out cars. In front of us was an open space where a block of flats had once stood and now was derelict. Kids playing in the cement, women talking. Caravans. Trailer homes.