Sweeney said, ‘There was a bomb today.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was on the six o’clock news. Three bodies recovered. No names.’
Hood said nothing.
‘It sounds like the Trots,’ said Sweeney. ‘Do you know anything about it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Southeast London — that’s what they said on the news. You just came from there.’
‘It’s a big place,’ said Hood. ‘And I wasn’t listening.’
‘We’ll be blamed for it,’ said Sweeney.
‘You can take the credit for it.’
Sweeney said, ‘Bombing’s messy. Point a machine gun at a fella and he does what you say. Show him a bomb and he’ll laugh. You might be carrying a sack of flour. You have to blow him up to convince him, and that doesn’t get you anywhere. Well, you know. You were in Vietnam, weren’t you?’ He regarded the two twisted fingers on the stump of his right hand. He said, ‘But Rutter’s got all the guns now.’
Hood stood up. ‘I’m going.’
Sweeney sighed and said, ‘I’ll make an exception in your case.’
‘Don’t do me any favours.’
‘I’ll let you quit. We’ll say you had battle fatigue. You’re an American, you’ve got no business here. It was a mistake.’ He smiled. ‘You did a lot for my wife. She’s the nervous type — she never knew anything. But she really fancied you. You should have heard her talking about you — you’d have thought you were as Irish as Paddy O’Toole, with the sun shining out of your arse.’
Hood said, ‘I met her at Ward’s. She was drunk. She told me a ridiculous story about how she was going to steal a painting.’
‘I hope you didn’t laugh.’
‘She scared me,’ said Hood. ‘She was so drunk. Incapable — isn’t that the word they use? I felt sorry for her.’
‘You’re sounding like a bloody curate.’
‘I knew if I helped her she’d succeed.’
‘Don’t think I’m not grateful,’ said Sweeney. His manner had become genial, his talk soothing. He got up and came around the table to where Hood was standing. ‘Maybe the mistake was mine. I listened to my wife — that’s many a man’s downfall. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. What are your plans?’
‘I don’t have any.’ And he thought: It’s over. He was certain now that Rutter was dead: three bodies recovered. How little it had to do with politics. But perhaps Sweeney was more right than even he knew — it had always been a family affair. Weech had brought him to it, and he had had to become Weech to complete his revenge. And though he knew that tactic was a brutal amputation, it was the revenger who was left the cripple. There was nothing more. He reached into his inside pocket again.
‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ said Sweeney, joshing, as if Hood had misbehaved. ‘A parting of the ways. Let’s do it the Irish way, with a jar of Liffey water.’
Hood said, ‘Some other time.’
‘You can’t deny me a last drink,’ said Sweeney, slapping him on the back. ‘Come on, I know a good pub.’
‘I thought we were in one.’
‘Not this piss-hole. I never drink here. Bad for the discipline if your men see you drunk.’
‘Then why drink with me?’
Sweeney smiled. ‘You’re not my man anymore.’
Hood went first, at Sweeney’s urging, downstairs and out the back door to a side street. Sweeney chatted in his friendly way, his accent broadened by his good humour; he talked about the offensive, about Ulster, about Murf and Mayo. He said, ‘I told her not to come back without the painting — not that I care a tinker’s curse for the bloody thing. But it’s all we have at the moment. And it’s the principle, see. I said, it’s the principle.’
‘How much further?’ said Hood.
They were in a dark street, lined with cars, and something Hood was unaccustomed to seeing in London — a row of trees, all the way to a lighted junction. They were tall, leafless, and looked dead, as if at any moment they might thunder down.
‘Just over the road.’
‘I don’t see any pub.’
‘You will in a minute,’ said Sweeney. ‘Sure, it’s a beauty —’ He stopped speaking, crept behind a tree and looked back. ‘What’s that? Did you see someone down there?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not looking.’ Sweeney had become short of breath. He sounded asthmatic. He said, ‘I think we’re being followed.’
Bein follered. Hood registered the accent. He had been prepared for a deception, but he had not thought it would be so transparent. He obliged Sweeney by glancing down the street, going through the motions, acting at Sweeney’s direction. It was, as he expected, empty. But it was familiar. He saw the wall, the white letters ARSENAL RULE in damp chalk, and he was certain.
‘There’s no one,’ he said.
‘In here,’ said Sweeney, motioning to a door in the wall. He was making a convincing show of fear. He pushed at Hood and Hood could feel in the shove the man’s trembling hand.
‘That’s a cemetery,’ said Hood.
‘It is. Now hurry — I tell you we’re being followed. We can duck out by the side entrance and ditch them.’
Hood thought: The simplest trick of all. There was no pub, there was no pursuer. Sweeney had taken him here to kill him. What he hated most was Sweeney’s lying, his pretence of fear, the acting. Yet Hood remained calm. There was justice in this trap. Lorna was safe, and he, for his murders, deserved to die. The executioner could be ignorant of the crime. But he was appalled by the place, the empty street, the dead trees, and at the cemetery wall he resisted, hardly knowing why — because he thought it would save him, because he thought resistance was expected of him. He would not go willingly to his death. He was empty of rage, but he could play the victim and fight. He said, ‘I won’t go.’
‘Move,’ said Sweeney. ‘There’s someone after us.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m not! Now’ — he pulled a pistol from his coat pocket — ‘get in there and be quick.’
‘You’re going to kill me.’
‘Get in!’ Sweeney screamed into his fist. His face shone with sweat, and still he pretended to cower behind the tree.
To be killed by this jabbering play-actor! Hood walked ten steps to the cemetery gateway and looked in. He saw the dark humps and shadows, the grim London light behind the far wall that gleamed like a tidemark of surf on the highest tombs. Appalling because it was so ordinary, so empty, so dark; it was too cold to die tonight. But he thought: If I had died yesterday before that phone-call, it would have been worse. His life had stopped with that bomb; it had blasted away the ramparts of his heart and he had not been able to face the painting after that. He was too ashamed. He had led himself to this death, this suicide. And yet he fought against the logic. He did not want to die. Tomorrow, tomorrow. But Sweeney was armed. I will run, he thought, and if I’m saved I’ll keep running.
He darted through the door and leaped towards the darkness between two monuments, his legs numb and working clumsily. Ahead of him he saw the eclipse of Sweeney’s shadow in the doorway’s reflection on the burying-ground. He remembered Murf: I hate this boneyard.
Crack!
He tumbled, feeling nothing, a miraculous transparency in his mind, a winded zero in his chest. I’m dead, he thought. But he saw he was still moving quickly on all fours, a monkey motion over a clump of gravestones. He was conscious of a sensation of sudden lightness: the painting had bounced up and dropped from his pocket. He spun round and saw Sweeney on his knees, toppling, trying to aim.