“You’re looking a bit too relaxed there,” Cully said.
Fanning was undecided yet on Cully’s tone. It was probably the sly mockery he suspected.
“I’m fine,” he said, and scratched at his face again where some of the rubber glue had been hard to get off.
“Wasn’t so hard, was it. The shop? Nice little acting job there?”
Fanning wouldn’t tell him it was more embarrassing than nerve-wracking. That it had felt like some stupid dress-up, with a kinky undertow to the whole thing. They weren’t porno mags in the bag either, just crap celebrity stuff. It was when he took the full weight of the plastic bag on his fingers that it turned nerve-wracking: a handgun weighed a lot.
He pressed his window up. The night air had a bite to it up here.
A signpost glowed in the lights: Cruagh. That was a mountain road too, he remembered dimly, leading up through the forested state lands of the Dublin Mountains. Cully steered left. The car began to make its way through steep, wooded hills looming close to the road. Fanning felt the uneven tarmacadam patches and the half-repaired potholes thump at the BMW’s tires. He searched for any patch of sky ahead to give shape to the darkness.
He looked across the dashboard again at the glow from the panel. Cully’s hand, rather his wrist, rested on the gearshift between them. He steered with his right hand only. The car shuddered once on a deeper pothole and Fanning heard a hiss of water sprayed from a puddle along with pebbles scattering.
“How far?”
“Not far,” said Cully.
“You know a good spot?”
“A good spot for what?”
It was a wot, more than the Dublin whah, Fanning registered.
“For what you said.”
Cully looked over. Fanning refused to take his eyes off the windscreen ahead.
“For the…?” Cully said.
“You know.”
“Definitely, feeling quite at home, I have to say. Aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Fanning asked.
“Snappy comments. Much more, what’ll we say, assertive?”
“Is that bad?”
“Who said anything about it being bad.”
“Okay. I’m just trying to get some information.”
“Research,” said Cully and made a quick jerk of the wheel to steer around a long puddle.
“Right.”
“Good.”
“Nothing to worry about then, is there.”
Fanning hesitated. He wondered if Cully was inviting some kind of bluntness. Maybe it was a test of some kind.
“Sure there is. There’s a hell of a lot to worry about. There’s a loaded gun in here.”
“A pistol — call it a pistol. A gun can be anything. Or call it a firearm.”
“There’s a loaded gun under my seat. A ticket to a ten-year stay in Portlaoise Maximum Security.”
“Well you’re not going to advertise the fact it’s there, are you?”
“What do you think.”
“Well no worries then. Right?”
Fanning said nothing.
“Oh wait,” said Cully after a few moments. He shifted in his seat and half-turned to him. “I get it.”
“You get…?”
“You’re thinking, this a one-way trip. Aren’t you?”
Fanning examined the beads of muddy water that had been flung up from the puddles on to his window.
“Of course you are,” Cully said. “You’re not an idiot. You’ve weighed it up right?”
Fanning shrugged.
“And I’m not an idiot either. You told people where you went, didn’t you?”
“Do I even know where I’m going here?”
“Too bloody right you did. I would too.”
Fanning looked over at him.
“We’re adults, remember,” Cully said. “What we’re doing is getting established. Just getting to know the ground. Sussing things out.”
“A recce, like.”
Cully glanced over.
“You used the word before,” Fanning said.
“You have a good memory then.”
“Just don’t say ‘relationship,’ or ‘win win.’”
“Why?”
“It’s a joke. PowerPoint talk. You know what PowerPoint is, right?”
“Of course I do.”
Fanning didn’t try to hide his skepticism.
“You didn’t expect that, did you.”
“Actually no,” Fanning allowed. “Do you give seminars or something with PowerPoint?”
Cully seemed to consider a response.
“As a matter of fact,” he began, but then shrugged away the rest of what he was about to say.
“Go on.”
Cully shook his head
“Some other time, maybe.”
The road through the pine forest crossed the river that ran along the valley floor dividing Two Rock Mountain, whose coastal side was part of the skyline of Dublin city, from Djouce, the first of the mountains that backed higher into Wicklow.
The car began to sway and even wallow as the roadway cut its way around the side of the valley. Fanning was visited by brief, scattered memories now of picnics when he was small, of the rock-strewn stream in the darkness alongside.
The headlights tunnelled in to the night, revealing the clumps of died-back grasses that the winter had bleached. Fanning inclined closer to his window and again looked up to the sky. There was only the faintest lightening high up where the slope met the night sky over Dublin City.
Cully was humming.
“Creepy isn’t it,” he said. Innit, Fanning heard.
“Be different now in the summer,” he added.
“You know the place here?”
“Well, I did. Some time back.”
Then, when Fanning didn’t follow up with questions, Cully added, “Boy Scout stuff? Didn’t get out of the city much then.”
“Dublin, like? Growing up?”
Cully nodded, and resumed humming. There was no break in the flat darkness of the mountains to Cully’s side.
“Expecting someone?”
“No.”
He thought he heard Cully snort faintly. Then he slowed and scrutinized the roadway ahead.
“Around here. The road.”
“A forestry road?”
“I suppose, yes.”
“It’s just a track then.”
Cully nodded.
“Just about… there.”
He braked hard enough to scatter the gravel from the edges of the road.
“Here?”
“Yep, this is it.”
The BMW’s bonnet leaned and then dropped as it descended, lopsided, through the long puddle, the lights scouring across the undergrowth, then bobbing up to the conifers.
“There’ll be a gate,” said Fanning. “You wouldn’t want to try going up in a car anyway.”
The yellow gateposts caught the headlights.
“We’re in luck,” said Cully.
Fanning put his hand on the armrest to moderate the slow bucking of the car. He heard a metallic thump as Cully drove over a rut that turned into a low embankment.
“Won’t be much left of Murph’s car at this rate,” he said.
Cully opened the window, and cold air scented with pine needles and sodden earth filled the car. Fanning heard a swish from the front wheels as Cully steered through another puddle. The rear wheels sizzled, spinning for a few moments, spraying water and mud hard on the underside panels of the car. Cully eased off the accelerator and sat forward as if to coax the car through.
The wheels found grip then and the BMW shot out of the slough. They were in the woods now. The track took on the dull khaki colour of the needles. The trees seemed to be moving in slow procession with passage of the headlights.
“How loud does it get?” Fanning asked.
“Louder than you think.”
Cully switched off the engine.
“What about a silencer thing?”
“A suppressor, it’s called. You’re not going to get one of those.”
“Why not?”
“Let me explain something. Even if that dickhead had one to fit the piece of junk he gave you, he wouldn’t give it to you. You know why?”
“Because, I don’t know, I’d wreck it?”
“Because you’d be renting the gun to use it.”