He bent over, coughed, and spat blood onto the tarmac. His stomach and groin smoldered with a deep, hot pain.
So, this was it. No more pretending. It was time to run, time to hide, time to find a way to get McGinty and the others. He straightened and turned in a circle, looking for his nine followers.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asked the empty street.
He took faltering steps to his open front door, his arms across his belly. He didn’t have long. Even in this part of Belfast, afternoon gunfire wouldn’t go unreported. He stepped into his dim house.
“Gerry?”
He stopped at the sound of a distant, disembodied voice.
“Jesus, Gerry, what’s happening? Answer me!”
Fegan reached into his pocket and took out the phone. “Hello, Marie,” he said.
29
“You’re a lucky man,” the doctor said.
Campbell didn’t know if he was smiling or not; his eyes were screwed shut against the pain. It wasn’t the wound in his thigh, the one the doctor was currently stitching up, that bothered him. No, it was the one at his side, the one that screamed and roared every time he breathed.
“Almost done,” the doctor said. He had been summoned to McKenna’s bar shortly after Campbell limped in, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. Now Campbell lay on a table in a back room with the retired GP sewing up the neat hole in his leg.
Fegan’s second shot had creased his flank, barely taking any flesh with it, but Campbell knew enough of wound ballistics to understand the transfer of energy from the bullet was like a hammer blow to his ribcage. The doctor couldn’t be sure if it had cracked a rib, or merely bruised it, without an X-ray. All Campbell could be sure of was it hurt like hell. A gauze pad was taped over the wound, and Campbell breathed in shallow gasps, trying not to spark another burst of pain.
“There, now,” the doctor said. Campbell heard instruments being placed in a dish. “No major damage done. The bullet just nicked you, really. Sliced a bit less than an inch at the back of the thigh. Nine-millimeter wounds are always nice and tidy. It’s a long time since I treated any of you boys, and believe me, I’ve seen much worse.”
Campbell opened his eyes and saw McGinty standing over him, still wearing his black suit from Caffola’s funeral. He hadn’t heard him enter. They watched each other as the doctor washed and packed up his equipment.
“Take it easy for a few days,” the doctor said. He placed a small bottle of pills on the table. “Stay off your feet if you can, and take three of these a day. Antibiotics, in case of an infection.”
“Thanks, Kevin,” McGinty said. He handed the doctor a roll of cash. The doctor nodded and left them.
“You fucked up, Davy,” McGinty said.
“He got the drop on me,” Campbell said, wincing at the effort. “Even crazy, he’s better than I thought.”
“It won’t do,” McGinty said. “You’ve let me down, Davy. I’m very disappointed.”
“Christ, what was I supposed to do? He had a gun to my—”
“You were supposed to fucking kill him!” McGinty slammed his fist against the table, and Campbell howled as the impact resonated up into his chest. “You were supposed to do what I sent you to do instead of running away from him.”
“He would’ve killed me.”
McGinty leaned down. “You think I won’t?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. McGinty, I never—”
“Bad enough you didn’t get him, you even had him shooting up the street. The cops were called. He’s done a runner and they’ll be looking for him. Our friend in Lisburn Road Station let Patsy know. If they get him, and he talks, it’ll get out it was him killed Caffola and McKenna, and him beat Eddie Coyle’s head in. How am I going to look then, eh? The press will rip the shit out of me. I’ll be a fucking laughing stock.”
“Did anyone see me?” Campbell asked.
“Someone saw a silver car, that’s all they got out of the neighbors.” McGinty pointed a finger at Campbell’s face. “And you’re bloody lucky, ’cause if they’d tagged you you’d have a fucking bullet in your head right now.”
Campbell gritted his teeth to quell a scream as he righted himself on the table. His left leg felt heavy and wooden, and a roman candle burned in his side. “Any ideas where he went? To the woman, maybe?”
“No.” McGinty handed Campbell his shirt. “Get dressed. Patsy Toner’s parked outside her place now, keeping an eye on her. He’s going to make sure she goes to the airport and takes that flight I booked for her.”
“Why not just do her?” Campbell asked as he struggled to get into his shirt. It had a ragged hole in the fabric, underneath the left sleeve.
McGinty’s eyes flickered. “That’s my business.”
Campbell sensed that pressing the politician would be unwise. He lowered himself from the table, feeling a deep throb in his thigh. “Fair enough, but you could use her to draw Fegan out.”
McGinty thought about it briefly. “No, too risky. Not with the press conference in the morning. If anything went wrong I’d be fucked.”
“What, then? Just wait for Fegan to make a move?”
“I don’t think we have much choice,” McGinty said.
“I was right about one thing. He’s going to come after you. And me, for that matter. He talked about that cop, too.”
“The cop can look after himself.”
“Maybe,” Campbell said. “Can you?”
An hour later, Campbell lay on the threadbare couch in his flat on University Street with a bag of ice resting on his side and the phone to his ear.
“Well, this is a fucking mess, isn’t it?” the handler said.
“Oh, don’t start,” Campbell said, wincing at the sparks in his side. “I’ve been shot twice, been pistol-whipped, been roared at by Paul McGinty. I don’t need any shit from you.”
“Need it or not,” the handler said, ‘you’re going to get it.”
Before the handler could continue Campbell hung up and dropped the phone to the floor. One of McGinty’s thugs had driven him back to the flat in his Focus, leaving Campbell to struggle up the two flights of stairs. Tom the bartender had given him a large bag of ice for his troubles, most of which was now in the small freezer that hummed in the flat’s tiny kitchen.
The phone buzzed on the floor and Campbell groaned. He picked it up. “What?”
“Hang up on me again and I’ll blow your cover. I’ll leave you stranded there without a friend in the world. Understood?”
Campbell sighed. “Understood.”
“Okay. Now, what’s happening?”
“Nothing much,” Campbell said. “We’ve just got to wait until Fegan shows his face again.”
“Well, wherever and whenever that is, you better be ready to take him out.”
“Christ, I’m in no fit state to—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck,” the handler said. “You’ve got a job to do, so bloody do it. You better pray Fegan doesn’t do any more damage before you get him. This is a bad situation for everyone. Maybe we shouldn’t have sent you in there in the first place. You’ve been under too long. For Christ’s sake, don’t let it get any worse.”
The phone went dead, and Campbell threw it across the room. He covered his eyes, frustration burning as brightly as his injuries. Today he had come as close to dying as he had in fifteen years of service, and he’d had some scrapes. He’d let Fegan, a crazy man, almost get the better of him.
Almost?
No, there was no almost. Fegan would have killed him if not for the phone going off. Blind luck was all that had saved Campbell. He shuddered at the thought.
And there was a bigger question, a more troubling idea. How had Fegan known? He was dead right: there had never been a threat from the UFF boys. The Ulster Freedom Fighters were the militant wing of the Ulster Defence Association, the working-class Protestant movement that claimed to defend its people from Republicans. In reality, they were common thugs, the kind the Loyalists bred in abundance. The kind who could walk into a pub and open fire on anything that moved, or call a taxi, wait for it to arrive, and then shoot its driver. But a real hit on a dangerous target? Never. They just didn’t have it in them.
It was Delaney. Campbell remembered the night the slimy bastard had cornered him, saying he knew he was a plant. Even now, Campbell could smell Delaney’s breath and cheap aftershave.
“Get me fifty grand,” Delaney had said, grinning as his oily black hair spilled into his eyes. “Just fifty grand and I’ll forget the whole thing.”
Campbell had searched the bar with his eyes, looking for eavesdroppers.
“Even if you weren’t talking shite, where do you think I’d get fifty grand?” he asked.
“From your handlers. They’ll pay it to keep your cover.” Delaney smoothed back his hair.
“You’re talking out your arse. Go fuck yourself,” Campbell said, pushing the stocky man aside.
“I’ll give you a day or two to think about it,” Delaney called after him.
Campbell phoned his handler that night, and the plan was in place within twenty-four hours. He would take care of Delaney, and a plant in the UFF would serve up a couple of stooges to complete the story.
When Campbell went to McGinty with the fictitious plot on his life, the politician was furious. Why hadn’t Campbell kept Delaney alive? The UFF boys were to pay a heavy price. They would receive a special death, an agonising death. It just so happened that Gerry Fegan was out of the Maze for three days to attend his mother’s funeral. The honor system between inmates and their captors, the next man’s furlough depending on the previous man’s return, meant Fegan could move around freely while he was outside. There was no better man for inflicting a painful end, seeing as Vincie Caffola was on remand for assault. McGinty would take care of the arrangements.
So, seventy-two hours after Delaney took Campbell aside in McKenna’s bar, thirty-six after Campbell beat Delaney to a lifeless pulp, he and Gerry Fegan stood over two weeping Loyalists, one of whom had wet himself.
A sour smell filled the room; the stenches of sweat, piss and blood combined to make Campbell’s stomach turn on itself. They were in an empty unit on an industrial estate just north-west of the city. Hard fluorescent lighting washed the high-ceilinged room in whites and greys, and the UFF boys’ sobs reverberated against the block walls. Blood already pooled on the concrete floor.
Fegan had said little on the journey here. Someone else had lifted the two UFF boys and left them bound to chairs, ready for Fegan and Campbell to interrogate. Campbell watched the other man circle the two Loyalists. Fegan’s face was carved from stone, and something deeper than hate or anger burned behind his eyes.
Fegan used a pickaxe handle. It took an hour, and neither of the Loyalists talked. Not because they were brave or strong, but because they never knew of any plot to hit McGinty. All the while, Fegan’s face remained blank, his eyes far away. Apart from one moment, that was. When one of the Loyalists wept for his mother, Fegan might have come to himself. Campbell thought he saw a wave of revulsion or pity - he couldn’t be sure which - on the other man’s face. It was gone before he could be certain.
When the screaming was over, and there was no more blood to spill, Fegan dropped the pickaxe handle to the floor. He finished them with a .22 pistol. Its sharp report boomed in the empty concrete room.
Fegan stood silent for several minutes. Campbell noticed the tear tracks glittering on his face.
“They didn’t know anything,” Fegan said.
Campbell leaned against the wall, fighting his own churning gut. “Delaney said it was them. He named them.”
“He lied,” Fegan said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Campbell said. “McGinty wanted them dead. That’s all there is to it.”
Fegan wiped his face with the back of his hand, leaving a red smear. “I put my mother in the ground yesterday,” he said.
Campbell said nothing.
Fegan’s eyes turned glassy, staring at something miles away. “She hadn’t spoken to me for sixteen years. She told me she was ashamed of what I did. That was the last thing she ever said to me. They let me out to go and see her in the hospital. She wouldn’t let me into the room. She died hating me.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Campbell asked.
Fegan snapped back to himself and looked at Campbell, his face creased with confusion. “I don’t know,” he said. “Can we go now?”
Campbell followed him out into the darkness. As he drove them back to the city, he kept one eye on the road and one eye on Fegan, his heart thundering in his chest.
That had been nine years ago. And now Fegan knew of Campbell’s deceit. Did he know he was a plant? Campbell had to assume as much.
The handler wanted Fegan dead. McGinty wanted Fegan dead. Campbell
