I waited until everyone had settled back into their drinking. Waited until the boys who’d helped McKenna outside had returned without him. Waited until I could make my excuses to look for the ladies’ room without it seeming obvious that I wasn’t going there.
Then I slipped out of my seat and walked into the cold little back corridor where the toilets were located. I kept walking, moving past them and out through the back door at the end. From there I picked my way round the crates of empty bottles and aluminium beer kegs, and headed for the front of the building.
I spotted McKenna almost right away. He was standing leaning against the tailgate of one of the Manor trucks. If I was going to find out what he meant by his outburst, I reckoned, then doing it while he was half-cut and disorientated might be the best time.
I walked over to him. As I approached he dragged out a packet of cigarettes and lit one with a disposable lighter, cupping his hand around the flame. He still looked a little unsteady on his feet, but when he heard my footsteps he lifted his head and stared at me with perfect focus.
“What do you want?” he said. Not roughly, but with no sign of the slurring that had marked his earlier speech, either. It was embarrassment I could hear there, I realised, as though he’d fallen for some cheap stage hypnotist’s trick in front of his mates.
“I just wanted to check you’re OK,” I said.
“I’m fine,” he said shortly.
I waited a beat, but he wasn’t going to follow that up with anything else. I stuck my hands in my jeans pockets and jerked my head towards the bar entrance. “So what was that all about?”
He shrugged, as if to loosen a stiff neck. “Just had a bit too much to drink, that’s all,” he said, sucking in on the cigarette and blowing the smoke out down his nostrils.
If that was the case, I thought, how come he was stone cold sober now? I nearly left it there, but I couldn’t let the opportunity slip. “What did you mean about people dying here?” I asked carefully, and so as not to lead him I added, “Who died?”
McKenna’s face closed in. He took a final deep drag on his cigarette and dropped the half-finished butt to the floor, stamping it out with more vigour than the task demanded. Then he glanced up and stared at me, his eyes shrewd. “You really want to know?” he asked. “Why don’t you ask them?”
He nodded to a point over my shoulder as he pushed himself away from the tailgate and headed back towards the bar.
I turned and followed the direction he’d indicated. Just in time to see a dark coloured Peugeot saloon on the other side of the square start up. It moved off fast, the driver not switching on his headlights until the car was nearly halfway down the far street.
Even so, there was enough illumination spilling out of the windows of the bar and the surrounding houses for me to recognise the outline of four men inside.
Eleven
The next day, during rapid de-bus drills in the rain behind the Manor, Figgis was back to his usual relaxed self. So much so, in fact, that I began to wonder if I’d imagined last night. One look at McKenna’s wary face told me I hadn’t.
More than ever, the youngster seemed to be avoiding contact with everyone else. Where another of the pupils might have brushed off his foolish challenge to Blakemore as drunken bravado, McKenna was finding it hard to let it go. Maybe the fact that he hadn’t been nearly so drunk as he’d been pretending had something to do with it.
And with that in mind, what had he hoped to achieve by starting a fight with Blakemore, other than concussion and stitches? The more I turned it over in my mind, the more I came to the conclusion that there’d been something calculated about his words in the bar. They weren’t just random ramblings. There was a point to them. A message. But was it about Kirk? And if so, who was it aimed at? I’d really no idea.
I’d switched the phone on and tried to reach Sean when we got back from the village, but his mobile rang out without reply until it finally clicked over onto his voice mail. Disconcerted, I’d left him a brief message, telling him I’d call him in the morning. I’d tried again before breakfast, but still he wasn’t answering.
For the first time since I’d arrived in Germany, I felt cut off, and alone.
Phys seemed to be getting harder every day, which didn’t help. This morning, one of the blokes had packed up and left shortly after our usual pre-dawn marathon, claiming he’d aggravated an old back injury. It was clear from Todd’s dismissive reaction to his departure that the staff believed he simply couldn’t hack it.
Now, I stood trying to keep the rain from sliding down my neck while a group of us watched Romundstad, Craddock, and two of the others pulling up fast in one of the school Audis and hustling Todd out of the back seat in a suitably protective scrum.
At a shout from Figgis that signified a gunshot, they had to get their principal back into his car, throwing themselves on top of him to provide body cover, and then get the vehicle away from the danger zone as rapidly as possible. They were piling in on top of the phys instructor with great gusto, eager to get their revenge for the punishing early morning regime any way they could.
“Do it again. That was crap,” Figgis said mildly when they’d finished. “You’re anticipating too much. This time there might be a threat, or there might not. I’ll decide. And don’t forget, you’re supposed to be blending in with a big business atmosphere. If you do every de-bus like that, you’ll give your principal a nervous breakdown inside the first day. Not to mention breaking most of his ribs.”
He glanced round at the sheepish faces. “You’re supposed to be giving him confidence, making him feel protected, not looking like you’re expecting a full-scale assault every time. If you was looking after me like that, you’d be frightening me to death. Go on. Get back out there and do it again.”
The rest of us stood and grinned as they set up for another run, but as I watched them swing the car round again I suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling that I, too was being watched.
I turned my head to find O’Neill standing a few feet away. He was regarding me narrow-eyed through the smoke from his cigarette. When he saw that I’d clocked him, he took that as his invitation to come over.
“I was just thinking back to our little conversation in the pub last night,” he said, a mite too pally in his approach.
I said, “Oh yes,” in what I hoped were entirely neutral tones, while I frantically searched my memory for anything I might have said that he could possibly have taken encouragement from. After a few moments I gave it up as futile.
“Yeah,” he said. He put his head on one side and looked at me with an expression of exaggerated puzzlement playing across his scarred features. “Y’know there’s something familiar about you. I thought that first time I saw you. I keep getting this feeling that I know you from somewhere.”
I cocked him a quick look to check that it wasn’t a chat-up line. Believe it or not there are still some guys out there who think that kind of remark qualifies.
“I don’t think so,” I said, turning away. Jan, standing close enough to overhear the exchange, flicked me a sympathetic glance. Hofmann’s group had started their approach now. I concentrated on watching them roll to a halt and begin their second de-bus.
“You sure about that are you now, Charlie?” O’Neill said softly. He’d moved to just behind my shoulder. There was something intimately knowing in his voice, the blur of it halfway between a threat and a caress.
“I guess I must just have that kind of face,” I said through clenched teeth.