Marie coughed, groaned at the pain. When she caught her breath, she asked, ‘What are you talking about?’
‘From what I hear, he’s an animal. A killer.’ He watched her face as the lights of the village caused shadows to flow across it. ‘Just like me. What makes him a good man? What makes me a bad man?’
The light disappeared from her face, leaving only the glint of her eyes in a silhouette. ‘You have me and my child as hostages, and you have to ask that question?’
More village lights ahead, and beyond them, the town of Lurgan with its knotted streets and traffic lights and cops. He took a left down a narrow country road to avoid them. The world darkened.
‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting Mr Gerry Fegan,’ the Traveller said. He grinned at the mirror, even though he could no longer see the woman or the girl in the blackness. ‘Might not happen now. Pity if it doesn’t. It’d be fun, seeing what he’s made of. From what I hear, it wouldn’t be easy. He’d put up a good fight.’
He waited for a response. None came save for the rattle of Marie’s chest.
‘I’d enjoy that,’ he said. ‘He might be a mad bastard, but so am I. I never met a man I couldn’t take, and I like a challenge, you know?’
The Traveller searched the mirror, found nothing. He couldn’t even hear the woman’s laboured breathing now.
‘You can be sure of one thing, though. Your friend Gerry is going to suffer for his sins. Whether it’s me or the cops do it, it’ll be bad for him. He’ll be hurting when he goes. He’s pissed off too many people to get off easy. Only question is, how ba—’
Fiery pain tore at his scalp as small hands jerked his head back. A high scream pierced his left ear as the hands twisted and pulled. He reached back with his left hand, but the strapping wouldn’t let his fingers find anything but strands of hair as the girl shouted and thrashed. The car bounced as it hit the verge, the steering wheel bucking in his good hand. The woman cried out, and the girl was thrown to the side, but she kept her grip and now the Traveller was screaming as his scalp ripped. His right hand left the wheel and darted behind him, desperate to swat the shrieking child away, and then the seat belt grabbed his chest, his head whipped forward and back again, and everything was black and still and silent, apart from an insistent chiming as a cold breeze blew in from somewhere far behind him.
75
Lennon waited alone in the kitchen. A constable from Carrickfergus lingered uselessly in the corridor outside the flat while a sergeant took statements from the residents on the floors below. Everyone who could be spared was at the scene of DCI Gordon’s murder. The best the Carrickfergus station could do was send their one patrol car, which had been on traffic duty looking for drunk drivers, to the apartment block. Lennon got there before them and came straight up to find the door blown in and the place empty.
Worry and fear quarrelled within him like feral cats. He couldn’t keep his mind in one place long enough to plan a course of action. He phoned the station again, looking for CI Uprichard. When the duty officer finally answered the call, he told Lennon yet again: Uprichard was too busy, just wait there, secure the scene until a team from D District could be assembled.
‘I can’t just wait here,’ Lennon said. ‘He has my daughter. The same man you had in custody three hours ago.’
‘I understand that,’ the duty officer said, ‘but an officer has been murdered here. Everybody who can be contacted is being brought in. Besides, you know Carrickfergus is D District; we can only send men if it’s an emergency. Otherwise you’ll have to wait for a team from Lisburn.’
‘Emergency?’ Lennon said. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? This is my daughter. The same man who killed Gordon has her.’
‘But he doesn’t have her there,’ the duty officer said.
Lennon had no answer for that, no words to express his frustration.
‘To do any good, you need a proper MIT and forensics to go over the apartment,’ the duty officer continued. ‘Forensics are tied up here for the time being, and Lisburn will get an MIT over there as soon as they can. I’m sorry, sir, that’s the best I can do at the moment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s bedlam here.’
Lennon hung up. He paced a single circle around the small kitchen and stopped at the sink. He ran the tap, splashed water on his face, dried himself on his sleeve. He walked out through the living room and into the hall. His Glock lay on the floor. It hadn’t done Marie any good. He stooped and picked it up.
The constable shuffled his feet and coughed in the doorway. Wallace, his name was, and he watched Lennon with nervous deference. He didn’t look like he’d been long on the job, most likely a probationer paired up with the older sergeant to learn the ropes.
‘Should you lift that, Inspector?’ His face dropped as Lennon gave him a hard look. ‘I mean, it’s evidence at the scene, isn’t it?’
Lennon patted his shoulder as he stepped past him to the corridor. ‘You’ll go far, Constable Wallace,’ he said.
The lift doors slid open and Sergeant Dodds stepped out. He reviewed his notebook as he walked.
‘Anything?’ Lennon asked.
‘Nothing useful,’ Dodds said. ‘Only three other flats occupied. All of them heard the gunfire, and two of them called 999. Everyone locked their doors and kept their heads down till they heard our siren. Nobody saw anything.’
Lennon had expected nothing more. ‘All right,’ he said. He walked towards the lift. ‘An MIT from Lisburn will be here when they have the people gathered, and forensics when they can get away. Wallace, you stay here. Dodds, you wait downstairs at the entrance. Don’t let anyone use the stairwell if you can help it.’
Dodds followed Lennon into the lift. ‘And where are you going?’
‘To see a man.’
‘What man?’
‘Just a man,’ Lennon said. He prayed Roscoe Patterson was on drinking form tonight.
76
The Traveller put his shoulder to the door and pushed. It budged only an inch or two before the hedgerow pushed back. ‘Fucking bastard arsehole,’ he said. He slid the other way and struggled over the armrest, going head first. The gear stick caught him in the balls and he groaned. In a second or two, that sick, heavy ache would join the throb in his chest where the seat belt had crushed the air out of him. And his neck hurt too. That pain seemed to begin in his shoulders, creep up to the back of his skull, then trace a line up and over to his forehead.
He opened the passenger door and climbed out. He grabbed Marie’s mobile phone and hit a button. The screen had cracked, but it still worked, casting a weak light. He used it as a makeshift torch so he could inspect the damage to the car. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. The hedgerow had cushioned its impact with the embankment, and the old Volkswagen was built tough. He shone the light down at the tyres. The earth wasn’t too wet; he should be able to reverse the car out of the tangle of green.
The light died as the phone went back into standby. The Traveller turned in a circle at the edge of the little country road. An orange glow hovered over Lurgan to the west. To the north he could make out the soft rumble of night-time traffic on the motorway, lorries hurrying to make the early ferries to Britain, or holidaymakers heading to one of the airports.
He listened hard for noises closer to the road, for the sound of feet creeping through the hedges and fields. Was that a wheeze and a rattle from across the way? The sound was so small, perhaps he only imagined it. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and listened harder. A cold, damp breeze washed across his face.
There, a child’s soft cry, then a hoarse whisper.
The Traveller opened his eyes. He looked in the direction of the sounds. A light, maybe a window, glowed dim in the distance. A farmhouse, about half a mile away. He thumbed the phone again. He turned, crouched down, and used it to find Hewitt’s Glock in the passenger footwell.