Lennon said, ‘I think of the things I’ve done, the things I’m ashamed of. It makes me sick to my stomach. How can you stand to—’
‘Stop talking,’ Fegan said.
‘How can you—’
‘Stop,’ Fegan said, his voice tight like a fist. He turned his eyes away from the window and back to Lennon.
Lennon swallowed his retort and stared at the road ahead. They continued in silence, the motorway stretching into the grey morning ahead.
The Audi’s satnav gave directions in its soothing voice. A woman’s voice, refined and calm, as if the world still turned. Lennon had stopped twice so far to throw up at the roadside, the fear too heavy for his stomach. His nostrils stung, his throat burned. Fegan had watched him with those cold eyes, making the act all the more emasculating.
The speedometer read eighty-five as they approached the last exit north of the Boyne. The satnav’s disembodied voice told Lennon to turn off here for Torrans House. A convalescent home, a place for the elderly to recover from broken hips, a place for Bull O’Kane to nurse his ruptured gut and his devastated knee, injuries caused by Lennon’s passenger. The other man would also be there, the southerner who talked like a traveller, but who Lennon suspected was not. Two monsters in one house, surrounding the only good thing he had ever done in this world.
And now Lennon ferried a third monster to this place. That idea forced bile up from his stomach once more, but he willed it to subside as he hit the slip road.
His foot barely touched the brake as he reached the roundabout. Lights flashed, tyres screeched and horns blared as he cut across the early traffic. They might as well have been moths against a window.
83
Orla O’Kane stood over her father’s sleeping form. His throat rasped with every breath, a line of drool across his chin as if a snail had crawled from his mouth. A carapace of a man, skin laid loose over old bones and hate. No longer a giant of the soul, no longer a warhorse thirsty for the fight. Just an old man without the sense to know his true enemies. The giant vanquished.
She reached out and smoothed the wisps of white hair across his scalp. Love swelled in her until she feared it might burst from her breast. She took a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed at the drool.
Orla had lost count of the times she’d had to push that panicky feeling back down to her belly, the one that told her that her father had lost his grip on the world he had built for her, leaving it to career into the sun. It would burn up, along with everything she knew.
And no one would mourn its passing.
She thought of the little girl upstairs. The mother didn’t have long. Even if someone got her to a hospital, the greyness of her skin said it was too late.
But the little girl.
Maybe, when it was over and done with, the Bull might allow the little girl to live. He was not a monster, after all. Orla knew this to be true. She had not been raised by an animal, surely?
No, she had not. When things were settled, the little girl would live. And the little girl would need a place to live. A home. Orla had a house in Malahide with a sea view and a beach not twenty yards away.
Maybe, Orla thought.
‘I hope …’
She put her hand to her mouth when she realised she had spoken out loud. Her father stirred.
‘Hmm?’ He blinked at her, his eyes like fish mouths gasping in the air. ‘What’s wrong? What time is it?’
‘Shush,’ Orla said. ‘It’s early.’
‘Then what the fuck are you waking me for?’ He tried to push himself up on the bed, but his flailing moved only blankets and sheets. ‘What’s going on?’
Orla put a hand on his chest. She arranged pillows behind her father’s head. ‘Easy, now. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just the wee girl.’
As she hoisted him up to a sitting position, the Bull asked, ‘What about her?’
‘She said something.’ Orla pulled the blankets up and smoothed them. ‘Some nonsense about Gerry Fegan coming.’
The Bull’s eyes narrowed. ‘Nonsense? But worth coming in here and waking me up for.’
‘Maybe she contacted him somehow,’ Orla said. ‘I don’t trust that gyppo fella you hired. Christ knows what happened when he took them.’
‘Quit with the maybes and the somehows,’ the Bull said. ‘Tell me what you think. Is Fegan coming?’
Orla looked her father hard in the eye. ‘We have to assume so. If he’s as dangerous as you say, we can’t take any chances.’
The Bull stared at the far wall as he thought. ‘Right,’ he said. He reached for her hand, squeezed it. ‘You’re right. You’re a good girl, you know. Better than any of the men I raised, if you can call them that.’
Orla pulled the blankets back while she tried to hide the tears welling in her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She pulled his legs off the edge of the bed and knelt to fetch his slippers.
‘It’s nearly over,’ she said. ‘Gerry Fegan will be dead soon, and it’ll be over.’
The Bull’s shoulders dropped as he exhaled.
‘Thank Christ,’ he said.
84
Lennon followed the satnav’s directions west, then south. He and Fegan crossed the River Boyne via a small bridge, then cut west again. The car’s navigation had deserted him at the last junction, leaving him only a one-track road to follow. Up ahead, between the high treetops, he saw the roof of a grand old building.
Sickness and hunger wrestled in Lennon’s gut. His eyes dried with tiredness, his mind flaking with the rust of fatigue. He blinked hard and wound the window down. Cool damp air rushed in to meet him. He breathed it in deep.
The road curved south, mirroring the river’s arc through the countryside. A rabbit sprinted across his path, its white tail bobbing madly until it disappeared into the undergrowth. He’d travelled little more than half a mile when he slowed to a stop.
‘How do we do this?’ Lennon asked.
Fegan shifted in the passenger seat. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean we’re here,’ Lennon said. ‘How do we do this? Do we find a way in or what?’
Fegan opened the passenger door. ‘You can do what you want. I’m going in.’
‘Wait! You can’t walk straight in there, for Christ’s sake.’
‘They know I’m coming,’ Fegan said. ‘No point in sneaking around.’
‘How do they know?’ Lennon called after him, but the door slammed closed before the question was out.
He watched Fegan walk along the road ahead, sunlight creeping through the branches above and glancing off his shoulders.
‘Fucking madman,’ Lennon said.
Would he get Marie and Ellen killed? Possibly, but what other options were there? He and Fegan had discussed precious little on the journey here, let alone what they were going to do when they arrived. Now Fegan disappeared around the bend up ahead.
Lennon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he worked through the possibilities, panic edging in from the outer limits of his consciousness.
Surely they would kill Fegan as soon as he showed his face at the gates?
Yes, so they’d be busy there. And who were ‘they’ exactly? Bull O’Kane’s people, Lennon supposed. Henchmen, maybe that was the word. Lennon thought of the useless lumps of belly and muscle Roscoe Patterson kept around him. O’Kane’s men would be of a different order, Lennon was certain. But they still had Fegan to deal with.
Lennon looked to his right, along the river shore, beyond the woods. Did he have a better idea?
‘Nope,’ Lennon said to himself.
He pulled the Audi into the treeline, felt it buck and jerk over the terrain until the nose pitched downwards. He saw moss and earth spewed into the air in his rear-view mirror. He shut off the engine and got out.