19

New York City

Frank Pagan did not get the chance to think about the information he’d taken from Nicholas Linney’s computer until nine o’clock in the evening. There had been delays in Bridgehampton while Zuboric, looking extremely secretive, hung around waiting for the telephone to ring with instructions from God in Washington. There had also been a visit from two men who drove a rather anonymous van and who carted the corpses away in plastic bags. When the phone finally rang at approximately seven-thirty, hours after they’d first arrived in Bridgehampton, Zuboric spoke into it briefly then hung up. It was apparent that no new instructions were forthcoming from Washington, at least for the time being.

They drove back into the city in the green Cadillac, Zuboric subdued and thoughtful. He escorted Pagan inside the Parker Meridien, his manner that of a male nurse attending a certifiable lunatic.

‘Stay home, Frank. I’ll be in touch.’

Pagan stepped inside an elevator and was glad when the doors slid shut. He locked himself inside his room and lay for a while on the bed. He took the piece of paper out of his coat and stared at it, smiling at the idea of slipping something past the vigilant Arthur. As his eyes scanned his scrawled handwriting, he couldn’t help thinking of the dead girls again. The direction of his thoughts irked him. You could see everything through a prism of grief if you wanted to, you could dwell on morbid associations, but it was a hell of a way to live a life.

He called room service and had them send up a bottle of Vat 69, a scotch sometimes referred to as the Pope’s phone number. He half-hoped that Mandi with an ‘i’ would appear in the doorway, but the scotch was finally delivered by a young Greek whose English was riddled with fault-lines.

Pagan poured himself a generous glass, dropped in some ice. Harry Cairney. Kevin Dawson. Jock Mulhaney. All good Irish lads and perfect candidates for raising and dispersing IRA funds. Who else could they be but Nicholas Linney’s comrades? Harry Cairney, the retired Senator from New York, had been part of that Irish Mafia in Washington which included Congressman Tip O’Neill and Senator Moynihan. He had served on various committees that had pumped funds into the Republic of Ireland. It seemed perfectly natural that the retired Senator, under the surface of his public persona, would be involved in something a little darker than political gestures of good-will. And Kevin Dawson, the President’s baby brother, had made several trips to Ireland to pay homage to the Dawson ancestry. The visits were always surrounded by tight security and excessive publicity. The Irish loved Kevin and his family and adored Kevin’s loyalty to the country of his heritage. He was shown such adulation in Ireland that it must have gone straight to his brain and perhaps compensated somewhat for any sense of inferiority he might have felt about his brother’s prominence. Sigmund Pagan.

Pagan closed his eyes. The next step was the question of what to do with his knowledge. He wasn’t going to enlist the help of Zuboric, he was sure of that. Their reluctant marriage of convenience was heading down the slipway to divorce. Artie’s problem was obvious – he accepted as gospel the first solution he thought of, and nothing could make a dent. For example, his unshakable conviction that Jig was responsible for the slaughter in Bridgehampton – there was just no way in the world to make Artie consider alternatives. He didn’t have the imagination for them. Besides, it was easier to lay the blame on Jig than go to the trouble of exploring other possibilities. There was something of lazy discontent in Artie’s makeup, the death of natural curiosity, a dangerous thing for a man licensed to carry a gun and use it.

Pagan thought of the zigzagging geographical patterns involved here. New Rockford. Brooklyn. Rhinebeck. Why couldn’t it have been convenient – Cairney and Dawson and Mulhaney all under one roof right here next door to The Russian Tea Room? Sure. But what then? Would he have gone to them and sat them all down nicely and talked to them of Jig? If you happen to run into Jig, be a sport and let me know? They would deny any association with the act of collecting funds for Ireland. They were secretive men accustomed to operating furtively, and each was a public figure. They weren’t going to want their Irish activities made common knowledge. If you even broached the subject with them, they were bound to look as if they’d never heard of Ireland, let alone the Irish Republican Army.

What the fuck had really happened in that Bridgehampton house anyway? He wondered now if Jig had discovered the same names from the same source, Linney’s wonderful computer. If he had, there was no way of knowing which of the three men he would visit next. Besides, there was also no way of knowing if Nicholas Linney had been able to point Jig in the direction of the missing money. It’s buried under a tree in my back yard, Jig. It’s banked in Zurich and here’s the account number. You had to work on the assumption that Jig was out there still hunting and that sooner or later he would pay a visit to the names on Linney’s list. But when? To guess Jig’s movements was close to impossible, even for Frank Pagan who had made a study of his prey like a meteorologist examining shifts in the wind. Finally, there was just no certainty.

He stood up, moved absently around the room. Problems had a habit of multiplying. Now he thought of the man called Fitzjohn garrotted in Albany. And Ivor the Terrible sitting cosily over in the Essex House. You could play with these threads all the goddam day. You could ruin your health. The link he especially didn’t like was the one that seemingly connected Fitzjohn with Ivor. That whole FUV thing troubled him. Ivor McInnes’s presence bugged him. Why the hell was he here at the same time as Jig? And why had the FUV informed Pagan that Jig was in the U.S. anyway? He kept returning to this particular conundrum, although now it had become more complicated with the murder of Fitzjohn. He was irritable and jumpy and filled with the urge to cut through all the mystifying shit at one stroke, as if all the various questions in his mind were in reality one huge question, something that could be resolved with one equally huge answer. Give me the simple life.

What was Fitzjohn doing in Albany? Why had he been murdered? What came back to Pagan again and again was the notion that Ivor McInnes was the key to these questions. That if you could get inside Ivor’s head the mysteries would begin to dissolve. The idea of the descent into Ivor’s mind wasn’t an exactly pleasant prospect, but then nothing about this whole business was what you might call delightful. Pagan picked up the telephone, called Foxworth’s home number in Fulham, rousing the young man from inebriated sleep. Foxworth loved to dig into the data-banks, which he did with all the enthusiasm of a fanatical mechanic getting inside the engine of a car.

‘Get your arse over to the office,’ Pagan said. ‘I need some information. The name is Alex Fitzjohn. Got it?’

‘My arse is hungover,’ Foxie complained, his voice made small by distance and drink.

‘Move it, sonnie. I’ll call you back in a couple of hours.’

‘Yes, master.’

Pagan hung up. He was tired but the inside of his head had come to resemble a pinball machine in which balls ricochetted maddeningly back and forth. He looked at his precious piece of paper again. Mulhaney wasn’t far away. Brooklyn was nearer than either Rhinebeck or New Rockford, Connecticut. Would it do any good to go and talk to Mulhaney? Or simply to stake out the place where Mulhaney lived? Pagan was undecided. If Jig decided not to go to Brooklyn but went instead to either Rhinebeck or New Rockford, you would be wasting a great deal of time. This whole dilemma needed a small army of men, and Pagan knew he wasn’t going to get them from Zuboric. Nor did he want them, not if they were afflicted by Zuboric’s lack of insight. It wasn’t the first time in Frank Pagan’s career that he wished he were more than one individual. Three or four Pagans, clones, would have been useful.

Where now? he wondered. What next? He couldn’t just sit here in his room. And it made no sense to visit Ivor until he had some word on Fitzjohn.

He wondered what Brooklyn looked like at night.

He put his overcoat on and stepped out into the corridor. He rode the elevator to the third floor, got out, took the stairs. He knew Zuboric would have a man nearby, maybe Orson Cone or good old Tyson Bruno, probably seated right now in the piano bar, chewing peanuts and nursing a Virgin Mary and watching for a sight of the tricky Pagan. Crossing the lobby, Pagan found himself surrounded by a jabbering party of fashionable French tourists who were seemingly agitated about the non-arrival of their luggage from Air France and were talking litigation, in the intensely shrill way of excited Parisians. Pagan merged smoothly with the French party. It was good cover – though not absolutely good enough. He saw Tyson Bruno come hurrying across the lobby towards him, coat flapping, face anxious. Pagan smiled and gave Bruno a victory sign even as Tyson, looking altogether unhappy with the course of events, collided with one of the Parisians, a woman who might have stepped from the pages of Elle.

Pagan hurried past the front desk and out on to Fifty-Seventh Street and then he was lost in the inscrutable Manhattan night as he headed, with a bright feeling of truancy, towards the place where he’d parked his Cadillac.

White Plains, New York

The Memorial Presbyterian Church dated from the early years of the twentieth century. A large white frame construction with a steeple and a cast-iron bell that hadn’t yet been replaced by an electronic sound system, it occupied a huge corner lot of prime White Plains real estate. Its congregation had dwindled steadily over the years and now numbered about three hundred and fifty members, of which two hundred or so were active churchgoers. Adorned by stained-glass windows, an enormous organ, and polished mahogany pews, it was a rich church, a highly profitable enterprise which received generous endowments from the estates of past members. During the hours of darkness, a solitary floodlight shone upwards at the steeple, bathing the front of the church in a white light that suggested purity and cleanliness. One might imagine God himself perched up there in a place beyond the light, a materialisation of spirit just out of the range of the human eye.

John Waddell, who had always been a religious man despite the violent deaths of his wife and child – which might have damaged any man’s faith – thought that Memorial Presbyterian was like no other church he’d ever seen. He was accustomed to grubby little halls, joylessly dark places of worship in Belfast, where the hymnbooks fell apart in your hands and the congregation sang in a dirgelike way and everything smelled of gloomy dampness. Memorial, on the other hand, might have passed as God’s private residence. Waddell was awed by the artful floodlight and the shadows up there in the belfry. Inside, after McGrath had forced a rear door open, Waddell was overwhelmed by the beauty of stained-glass and the rich reflective wood of pews and pulpit and the way the pipes of the vast organ rose up into vaulted shadows. He felt humbled. He had an urge to sit in one of the pews and pray. Only Houlihan’s impatient glance prevented him.

All day long Seamus had been in a grim mood. It was connected, Waddell guessed, with the disappearance of Fitzjohn. Suddenly, in the night, Fitzjohn had gone. Nobody asked questions, though. Nobody went up to Houlihan to inquire about Fitz, because Seamus had that look on his face which meant don’t fuck with me. Now, as he ran a hand over the smooth surface of a pew, Waddell watched Houlihan move towards the pulpit. McGrath was standing and staring at the reaches of the organ pipes. Rorke, fingering the scar on his face, looked bewildered by the whole display of Presbyterian opulence. Wasn’t Presbyterianism meant to be a grim little religion with no display of ostentation? Not here in America. Nobody in the Land of Plenty wanted to buy the original Scottish package, which was spare and hard and gritty and had been exported intact to Northern Ireland by the fervent followers of John Knox and Calvin. But Americans preferred a little comfort with their God. There were even pillows lining the pews!

‘It’s like a chapel,’ Rorke said, referring to Roman Catholic churches. ‘It’s like a fucking Fenian chapel.’

Houlihan stood in the pulpit. Waddell thought he looked satanic up there.

‘Get over to the organ,’ Houlihan said to Rorke, who moved immediately, stopping only when he reached the keyboard.

Waddell, raised in a tradition where the authority of the Protestant Church was unquestionable, sacrosanct, thought it odd to hear voices raised beyond a whisper. And Rorke’s earlier profanity was wildly out of place. But there was a whole uncharted area here that confused John Waddell. On the one hand, there was the Ulster cause. On the other, the authority of the Protestant Church. Normally, these went hand in hand without causing him any kind of dilemma. But now, now that he knew what Houlihan was planning to do in this place, he felt a curious sense of division. In the end he knew he’d go along with Seamus, because that was what he always did, but the doubts he entertained were not easily cast off. The work Seamus planned to do here was something unusual for the FUV, something that ran at a right angle to Waddell’s understanding of the Volunteers. If Memorial were a Catholic church – no problem. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a Roman church.

Houlihan came down from the pulpit. ‘We don’t have all fucking night,’ he said. ‘I’d like to get this done and get the hell out of here.’

Waddell listened to the vague echo made by the sound of Houlihan’s sneakers. Every small sound was amplified inside this place. As a kid he’d imagined that if you swore in church God’s long finger – a huge talon in the boy’s mind – would come down out of the sky and pierce you. He wasn’t so very far removed from this kind of image now. He felt dread. The thing they were doing here was wrong, no matter how you looked at it. And God was still up there, sinister and birdlike, His claw ready to strike.

Houlihan approached. He seemed very tall in the dim interior of the church. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked.

Waddell said, ‘I just don’t like being here, that’s all.’

Houlihan smiled. ‘You’re a superstitious wee fart, Waddy. Because I like you as much as I do, I’m going to let you in on a secret.’ Houlihan brought his face very close. ‘There’s no such thing as God. Or if there is, he fell asleep a long time ago.’

Waddell returned the young man’s smile although rather nervously. He would have followed Houlihan to the gates of hell and back, but this was the first time Seamus had ever spoken so openly about his religious attitudes. Waddell traced the line of the organ pipes up into the ceiling. You could imagine Something stirring up there in the darkness, no matter what Seamus thought.

‘God’s for nuns, John,’ Houlihan said. ‘God’s for priests and nuns and RCs. And if he exists he’s become so bloody addicted to incense fumes by this time his mind’s addled. So let’s get this fucking show on the road. Okay?’

John Waddell nodded. Across the vast stretches of the pews he saw Rorke bent under the keyboard of the organ. McGrath, standing close to Rorke, wore a backpack from which he took an object that he passed down to Rorke. The scarfaced man grunted and took it.

‘Are we ready?’ Houlihan asked.

‘Aye. Just about,’ McGrath called back.

John Waddell held his breath. He had never wanted to be out of a place so badly in all his life. There was the sudden sound of air escaping from the organ pipes. It was a single musical note that echoed briefly.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Houlihan said.

‘Sorry,’ Rorke mumbled. ‘Accident.’

‘Clumsy bastard,’ Houlihan said.

Waddell could hear the echo of that single note, so deep, so profound, long after it was inaudible to anyone else inside the church. He had the distinct feeling that Somebody was trying to tell him something.

Brooklyn, New York

Big Jock Mulhaney had spent his professional life pumping flesh and slapping backs and eating chicken dinners at fund-raisers. He was a gregarious animal, at home in the company of men, sharing a confidence here, eliciting a favour there, joking, smoking, and yet always scanning the company for the important faces the way a bat will use radar to seek out prey.

Mulhaney, who sipped a glass of wine and chomped on his cigar, was presently seated at the head table in his own banquet-hall, a very large room inside his union’s headquarters in Brooklyn. Teamster Tower had been constructed in 1975 to Jock’s specifications. Apart from the banquet-hall, it contained a dancehall, five reception rooms, six floors of offices and, perched at the very top, Jock’s private quarters, a two-storey penthouse decorated in what Jock’s fag designer called ‘oatmeal’, but which Mulhaney referred to as porridge. He adjusted his cummerbund and stared across the diners at the other tables.

The event taking place was the annual March bash, a stag affair Jock threw for the prominent Irish members of the union the week before St. Patrick’s Day. In the course of the year, the Italians, Poles, Scandies and Latinos would all have dinners of their own, but the Irish one was closest to Mulhaney’s heart. The diners, some three hundred of them, had eaten their way through a menu of Dublin coddle, imported Dublin prawn, french fries and mint-green gelato, and now they were embarking on the important course of the meal, Irish coffee.

The Irish–Americans in the banquet hall belonged to scores of different organisations. The Loyal Order of Hibernia, The Sons of Killarney, The Ancient Order of St. Patrick, The Society of Galwaymen, The Loyal Boys of Wexford, The Clans of Kilkenny. Some of them wore green sashes with gold lettering attesting to their particular affiliation. There were even a couple of local priests, men made red-facedly benign by brandy. Mulhaney, who was a member of every society, who joined clubs and fraternities like a man with no tomorrows, had a simple green shamrock in the lapel of his tux.

The waiters moved swiftly around dispensing Irish coffee when it was time for Jock’s speech. Six brandies and a bottle of fine claret inside him, he stood up and acknowledged the round of applause from the tables. His people were blindly loyal to him. He gazed cheerfully across the faces, cleared his throat, held up his hands for silence. He had a standard speech he made every year at the same time with only minor variations.

He rambled on a while about union solidarity, made a token reference to the state of unionism in the Soviet countries, spoke with embarrassing nostalgia about his mother and the way she had with Irish stew back in the old days in Boston, and then asked for a moment of prayer for peace in the Old Country. After that, he suggested everyone adjourn to the bar and listen to the live music, which was provided every year by three middle-aged men from Cork who called themselves The Paul Street Brothers, after a famous thoroughfare in their native city. The room cleared out. The corridors become clogged with men seeking fresh drinks in the commodious bar established in one of the reception rooms, where the musicians were already singing If You Ever Go Across The Sea to Oireland …

Patrick Cairney, who sat at the back of the room alongside the contingent from Union City, New Jersey, considered the speech the tiresome kind of thing Harry might have loved. He went out into the corridor, pressed on all sides by men wearing green sashes. The cigar smoke and brandy fumes created an altogether dizzying perfume that suggested the complacency of affluence. They were all affluent men here with soft hands. There was nobody in this assembly who laid bricks or carried hods or dug ditches these days. Cairney, who had a plastic shamrock fixed to the lapel of his dark blue suit, watched Mulhaney work the crowd.

Big Jock pumped flesh vigorously, traded jokes, heard secrets whispered in his ear, promised a favour here, a favour there. He was like some pontiff strolling through a herd of lowly cardinals. It wouldn’t have been surprising to see somebody’s mouth pressed against his ring.

Now Jock shoved his way towards the bar where a waiter immediately served him a double brandy on a silver tray. Unlike the lesser prelates, the minor bishops and the insignificant abbots, Mulhaney didn’t have to stand in line. He had a confidential conversation with a member from Buffalo, he made expansive promises to a man from Schuylerville, and he swore on his mother’s grave he’d hammer certain fuckers to the wall when it came time to negotiate a new contract on behalf of his members in Wilmington, Delaware. He was basking in warmth, smoke, adulation, and the glow of good drink in his body. There was a narcotic effect here he couldn’t get anywhere else. It was the life of Riley, and he’d worked damn hard to get here, and what he felt now was that he deserved every second of it. This was his world, and he dominated it like a large red sun.

‘How did my speech go?’ Mulhaney asked one of the priests, knowing the answer in advance.

‘It was choost delightful. Delightful,’ the priest answered, happy to fawn on Mulhaney, who provided the best free cuisine in the whole diocese.

Patrick Cairney stood against the wall. The music was deafening. The hubbub of voices droned in his head relentlessly. He lightly touched the gun he carried inside the waistband of his pants. The problem here was to get Mulhaney alone. It would come. Even if he had to conceal himself inside the building until the party was finally over, the moment would come. He continued to observe Mulhaney, who was now standing face to face with a priest. Both men had clearly drunk too much.

Cairney closed his eyes a moment. He was thinking about Nicholas Linney and trying not to. And those two dead girls. That whole thing in Bridgehampton had been a disaster. No, it was more, disaster was too feeble, too mild for the carnage that had gone on in that house. He remembered Linney’s face at the moment when he’d blown half the head off, the torrent of blood, the abrupt searing of the man’s scalp, the splinters of bone and gristle that hurled themselves against the wall.

He couldn’t let these images plague him now. He couldn’t afford to. He wanted to salvage something here in Brooklyn, provided Mulhaney didn’t go in for amateur heroics. He didn’t look as if he had the kind of edge Linney had had. Just the same, Cairney was thankful he was armed. He opened his eyes, remembering Frank Pagan arriving in Bridgehampton and wondering if the Englishman were somewhere nearby now. If so, he’d have to work fast. He’d have to get information out of Mulhaney quickly if he could, which was where the gun would be useful to him.

There was a tension inside him, when what he needed most was cool. Don’t be your own worst enemy, Finn said once. A man like Jig has so many real enemies, he doesn’t need to make himself one.

Jock Mulhaney drained his brandy glass and, still shaking outstretched hands, rubbing shoulders, exchanging pleasantries, made his way out along the hallway. His bladder ached from all the drink he’d consumed. He walked quickly in the direction of the toilets. The first one he came to was jammed. Standing room only and an atmosphere heady with urine and cigars. He backed out of it. He went towards the reception area, passing silent desks and covered typewriters and unlit lamps. There was a bathroom here the receptionists used. He liked the notion of skipping inside a woman’s john.

Cairney saw the big man slip along the corridor and followed quietly. The band was playing Kitty of Coleraine. Mulhaney had paused outside a door marked LADIES. He appeared uncertain about whether to go inside or not. Cairney was conscious of the vast expanse of the reception area and the black street beyond the plate-glass windows and the limousines parked out there. Go inside, Mulhaney. Open the door, go in. Let’s be alone a moment, you and I. The moment he wanted was coming sooner than he’d expected.

Mulhaney stepped into the toilet, noticing a tampon machine and a dispenser of packaged colognes and the fact that all the cubicles were empty, their doors lying open. He moved inside one of the cubicles. He unzipped, emptied his bladder, flushed his cigar butt away. He rinsed his hands, dried them under a hot-air machine which roared inside the empty toilet, and hummed the tune the band was playing.

He was leaning towards the mirror and fluffing his thick hairpiece with a comb when the door swung open behind him. He saw a young man come in. Dark hair, blue suit, well built, unknown to Mulhaney. But with three hundred guests here, how could he know everybody?

‘Good speech,’ the young man said.

Mulhaney smiled. He slapped the young man on the back.

‘We’ve met before,’ Mulhaney said. He had a practised way of pretending to remember everyone, as if names were forever on the tip of his tongue. ‘Aren’t you with the Syracuse contingent?’

The young man shook his head. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever met.’

‘I never forget a face.’ Mulhaney farted very quietly just then, and looked cheerful. ‘Better an empty house than a bad tenant, huh?’

‘Right.’ Cairney turned on the cold water faucet full blast but made no move to dip his hand in the stream.

Mulhaney gazed into the fast-running stream of water a second. He was conscious of the way the young man stared at him in the mirror. What was about the intensity in those hard brown eyes that disturbed Mulhaney just then? He turned away from the young man, which was when he felt a circle of pressure against the base of his spine and the warmth of the man’s breath upon the back of his neck. Glancing into the mirror, Mulhaney saw the gleam of the pistol pressed into his back. Horrified, he heard himself gasp, felt his body slacken. In his entire lifetime it was the first time anyone had ever pulled a gun on him. How did some fucking mugger find his way inside this place?

‘My inside pocket,’ he said. ‘The wallet. Take the whole fucking wallet. There’s probably a couple hundred bucks in it.’

The young man jammed the gun hard against the backbone. ‘I’m looking for more than that, Jock,’ he said.

Pain brought moisture into Mulhaney’s eyes. There was an awful moment here when he felt himself slip into cracks of darkness, saw his own hearse roll through the streets of Brooklyn, heard Father Donovan of All Saints deliver the graveside eulogy in that hollow voice of his – He was a flawed man, but a good one. Even imagined the wake, for Chrissakes, boiled ham and stale sandwiches curling and flat Guinness and drunks babbling over his open coffin.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Mulhaney said. Darkness had become realisation. And realisation brought him a sense of horror. This young man was The One.

‘Linney said you took the cash.’

‘Linney?’

‘Don’t bluff it out with me, Jock. Just point me to the money.’

‘I don’t have it, Linney’s a fucking liar.’

The gun went deeper this time. Mulhaney, catching a glimpse of his face in the mirror, barely recognised himself. His big red face had turned pale like a skinless beet boiled in angry water.

‘Where is it?’ the young man asked.

‘I told you, I don’t know,’ and Mulhaney wondered why nobody was looking for him, why his goons weren’t stalking the goddam corridors for him right now. God knows, they were paid enough to take care of him.

The pressure of the gun was enormous. Mulhaney thought it would bore a hole in his spine. The young man sighed. ‘I’m tired, Jock. And I don’t have a whole lot of time.’

‘I don’t know where the money is, I swear it.’

Cairney thought about bringing the gun up, smacking it against Mulhaney’s head. Something to underline his seriousness. Some token violence. It was tempting, and he felt pressured, but he didn’t do it, didn’t like the idea of it. He just kept the pistol riveted to Mulhaney’s spine and hoped he wouldn’t have to use force.

‘Linney said you took it. Talk to me, Jock. Talk fast. Don’t make me hurt you.’

Mulhaney twisted his head around, looked at the young man. It occurred to him that he could play for time here. Sooner or later somebody was going to come looking for him. He could stall, though the hard light in the man’s eyes suggested that stalling was a precarious business. But he didn’t like the position he was in and he didn’t care for being at someone else’s mercy, and his pride, that cavernous place where he lived his life, was hurt. And he hadn’t scratched his way to the top of the union without having more than his share of sheer Irish pig-headedness.

‘You’re not going to walk out of here,’ he said, and his voice was stronger now. ‘You’re not going to walk away from this, friend. I’ve got a small army out there. I’ve got people who take care of me.’

Cairney rammed the pistol deeper into Mulhaney’s flesh and the big man moaned. ‘I don’t have time for this, Jock. Tell me what I need to know and I’m gone.’

‘Look, Linney’s a liar. Linney wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the goddam eyes. He makes shit up all the goddam time. If he sent you here it was to make a fucking idiot out of you.’

Cairney felt the intensity of fluorescent light against the top of his head. ‘Where’s the money?’ There was a note of desperation in the sound of his question. He didn’t like it, didn’t like the way he had begun to sound and feel. He know that at any moment somebody was bound to come inside this room, that his time alone with Mulhaney was very limited.

‘I won’t ask you again, Jock.’

Mulhaney thought he had seen something in the young man’s eyes. A certain indecision. The signs of some inner turmoil. He said, ‘Even if I knew anything, do you honestly think I’d fucking tell you?’

Cairney brought the gun up and smacked it against Mulhaney’s mouth. Blood flowed out of Big Jock’s lips and over the small shamrock he wore in his lapel. The pain Mulhaney felt was more humiliating than insufferable. He lost his balance and went down on his knees. His expensive bridgework, three thousand dollars worth of dental artistry, slid from his mouth and lay cracked on the tiled floor. He reached for it, but Cairney kicked it away, and the pink plate and the gold inlays and the plastic teeth went slithering towards one of the cubicles where it struck the pedestal of a toilet and broke completely apart.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Mulhaney muttered.

Cairney was trembling slightly. He felt sweat under his collar. He shoved the gun against Mulhaney’s forehead and pressed it hard upon the bone. ‘Talk, Mulhaney. And make it fast.’

Mulhaney, whose vanity was as enormous as his pride, covered his empty mouth with his hand. There were streaks of blood between his fingers. He blurted out his words from behind his hand. ‘Kev Dawson. You’re looking for Kevin Dawson. He’s the only one who could have taken it. It couldn’t have been the Old Man.’

‘The Old Man?’

‘He’s been at this game too long to start thieving now,’ Mulhaney said. He was conscious of the pistol on his brow. It was a terrible feeling.

‘Tell me about The Old Man, Jock.’

Mulhaney looked down at his blood on the white-tiled floor. ‘The Old Man had nothing to do with this,’ he said, and his voice sounded funny to him when he spoke. Without his teeth, the inside of his mouth felt like a stranger’s mouth. He’d give this bastard Dawson, but he wasn’t about to give him the Old Man immediately. He’d do it in the end, he’d be a damn fool not to, but meantime he’d hand Dawson over gladly. ‘My bet is Kev took some heat from his big brother. There was pressure. Something like that. It had to be politically too tricky for Tommy. The Old Man couldn’t have had a goddam thing to do with it.’

As Mulhaney spoke, the toilet door swung open and a middleaged man in a black tuxedo stepped inside from the hallway. He wore a frilly pink shirt and matching cummerbund, into which was tucked a pistol. The man was called Keefe and he was one of Mulhaney’s bodyguards, a Union heavy who was paid a hefty fee to protect his boss.

‘Keefe,’ Mulhaney cried out.

Keefe, formerly a bouncer in a Las Vegas nightclub, was a tough man but slow. He reached inside his cummerbund for his gun and even as he did so Cairney, possessed with a feeling of inevitability, with a sense of things sliding away from him in a manner he couldn’t stop, shot Keefe once through the centre of his chest. The sound of the gun roared in the white-tiled, windowless room. Keefe staggered across the slippery floor, his legs buckling and his hands stretched out in front of him. He collided with a cubicle door and he fell forward against the john. His gun dropped to the floor and slipped across the slick tiles to Mulhaney’s feet. Cairney watched Big Jock’s hand hover above the gun a moment.

‘Don’t,’ Cairney said. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

Jock Mulhaney pulled his hand back to his side. It wasn’t worth it. The young guy would shoot him if he even moved an inch towards Keefe’s weapon. And Jock had no appetite for violent death.

Cairney kicked the gun away. The music had stopped. The whole building had become quiet. The only sound he registered was Mulhaney’s heavy breathing.

Mulhaney said, ‘You got a problem, kid. In about ten seconds three hundred guys are gonna descend on this room.’

Cairney looked at the door. Three hundred guys. The suddenness of silence was unsettling to him. He glanced at Mulhaney, who was still on his knees. Blood ran down from the big man’s mouth.

Cairney opened the toilet door a little way. He stared across the reception room. Drawn by the sound of gunfire, men in tuxedoes were emerging slowly from the banquet room. Cairney bit his lower lip. If he acted now, if he moved promptly, he could get out of this toilet and through the reception area to the street before any of the men could reach him. Provided none of them were armed. He glanced back at Mulhaney, who was staring at him open-mouthed.

‘Get up on your feet, Jock.’

Mulhaney gripped the rim of the washbasin and hauled himself to a standing position.

‘Now move over here,’ Cairney said.

Mulhaney came across the floor.

‘In front of me, Jock. You’re about to be useful.’

Cairney pressed his gun into the small of Mulhaney’s back and pushed the big man through the door, out into the reception area. Men were still coming down the corridor that opened into the reception room.

‘Tell them, Jock. They move and you’re dead. They call the cops and you’re history.’

Mulhaney, whose vanity caused him to hold a hand up against his toothless mouth, mumbled. ‘You hear that, you guys?’

Cairney, moving sideways towards the front doors with Mulhaney as a shield, stared at the faces that watched him. Each one had the slightly imbalanced look of a man wrenched suddenly out of inebriation into sobriety. Their eyes bored into him, and Cairney realised he’d never felt quite this exposed before. It didn’t matter now. It didn’t matter because his anonymity had already been shattered by Frank Pagan. The only important thing was to get out of here in one piece. He felt fragmented, though, as if the whole reason for coming to America had broken and, like smashed glass, lay in shards all about him. He was halfway across the reception room now and none of the watchers had moved and Mulhaney, he knew, wasn’t brave enough to try and break away. He was going to get out of here, but he was leaving empty-handed, and the perception depressed him. Finn had entrusted him with a task and he wasn’t even close to achieving it. Maybe it was luck. Maybe that was it. Maybe he’d been lucky in the past and now that vein had run completely dry. And maybe he wasn’t the man Finn thought he was, that all his achievements in the past had been purely fortunate. Jig, the dancer. Why am I not dancing now? he wondered. He didn’t feel like the man who had assassinated Lord Drumcannon and had blown up Walter Whiteford on a Mayfair street. He didn’t feel daring and carefree and composed and cold-blooded. His past actions seemed like those of some other man.

‘Keep moving, Jock.’ Six feet to the plate-glass doors. The street.

He pressed the gun into Jock’s spine and heard the big man grunt quietly.

‘Only a few more feet, Jock,’ he said.

‘Fuck you,’ Mulhaney said. He was playing to his audience. He was showing that he was still a brave man who could talk back even when the pressure was on. And if he could talk to some fucking hoodlum like this, think how he could ram it home to builders and contractors when he didn’t have a goddam gun in his back!

Cairney reached the doors and knocked them open with his foot. The air in the street was cold and sharp. He wondered how much time he had before the cops arrived. He knew it was inevitable that somebody inside the building had sneaked away into an office to place a quiet call, that pretty soon the street would be filled with patrol cars.

‘Okay,’ Mulhaney said. ‘You’ve made it out of the building. What now?’

Cairney said, ‘We’ve got unfinished business. You were going to tell me about the Old Man, Jock.’

‘I gave you Kev Dawson.’

Cairney shoved the gun into the nape of Mulhaney’s neck. ‘Don’t stall, Jock.’ He looked the length of the dark street in both directions. It was silent now, but it wasn’t going to stay that way for very long. Through the glass doors he was conscious of the men inside. They stood around indecisively, but that was a situation that could change at any moment. They were Irish and they’d been drinking, and they might decide to move into boisterous action, regardless of the fact that Mulhaney had a gun at his head.

‘Hurry,’ Cairney said. And even as he said this he heard footsteps along the sidewalk and turned his face quickly, seeing somebody move in the soft shadows between the parked limousines and the wall of the building. The figure stopped suddenly and dropped to the sidewalk. There was the sound of a gun going off and a flash of light from the place where the man lay and the plateglass doors shattered, showering the air with bright splinters.

Surprised, Cairney moved back, pressing himself against the wall. He was aware of Mulhaney lunging away from him, the glass doors swinging, Big Jock thrusting himself inside the safety of the building. Cairney fired his weapon at the man along the sidewalk and heard the sound of the bullet knock upon the hood of a limousine. He backed away, sliding against the wall and out of the light that fell from the building. He sought darkness, places where he couldn’t be seen. He fired his gun again. This time the shot slashed concrete. The man returned the fire, and the air around Cairney’s head screamed.

Cairney kept moving away. He was about ten feet from the corner of the building and conscious of the need to get the hell out of this place. He saw the figure move now, scampering behind one of the parked limousines. The man’s face passed momentarily under the light that fell from the reception room.

It was Frank Pagan.

Cairney reached the corner of the buildings, where there was a badly lit side street and rows of shuttered little shops. He was seized by the impulse to stay exactly where he was and fight it out with Frank Pagan, as if what he wanted to prove to the Englishman was that he didn’t have to run away as he had done on Canal Street, but how would that have taken him any closer to the money? Priorities, he thought. And Frank Pagan – despite the fact that the man was always just behind him like some kind of dogged spectre – wasn’t top of his list.

He stared a moment at the car behind which Pagan was crouched. Then he turned and sprinted into the darkness of the side street, weaving between parked cars and trashcans, zigzagging under weak streetlamps, like a man following a maze of his own creation. He could hear Pagan coming after him, but the Englishman wasn’t fast enough to close the gap that Cairney was widening with every stride. The echoes of Pagan’s movements grew quieter and quieter until there was no sound at all. When he was absolutely certain he’d lost Pagan, he lay down beneath a railroad bridge and closed his eyes, listening to his own heart rage against his ribs.

Pagan had known about Linney. Then about Mulhaney.

Cairney opened his eyes, staring up into the black underside of the bridge. Was it safe to assume that Pagan also knew about Kevin Dawson?

Cairney sat with his back to the brickwork now. He felt the most curious emptiness he had ever experienced. It drained his heart and created vacuums throughout his mind. He knew he had to get up and make his way back to the place where he’d left his car, but he sat numb and motionless. There was an uncharacteristic need inside him to make contact, a connection with somebody somewhere. He thought he’d call Finn, but he couldn’t see any point in relating failure to the man. He didn’t want Finn to be disappointed in him. And he didn’t want Finn to think he’d sent the wrong man from Ireland. That he’d sent a man who wasn’t equipped for this task. He couldn’t bear the idea of Finn thinking badly of him.

He shut his eyes again. The face that floated up through his mind, and a warped, pellucid image like something refracted in shallow water, was Celestine’s.

Frank Pagan went back in the direction of the union building. He was breathless, and his whole body, jarred by the effort of running, was a mass of disconnected pulses. Jig’s speed hadn’t surprised him. He’d seen Jig in action before. But this time it was the manner of the man’s disappearance that impressed him. It was almost as if Jig had vaporised down one of the narrow streets. Stepped out of this dimension and into another one. For a time, Pagan had managed to keep the man in his sight, but with every corner Jig turned Pagan realised that his hope of catching up was dwindling. Then, finally, somewhere between a canal and weedy old railroad track, Jig had disappeared in the blackness, with the deftness of a rodent.

Goddam. Pagan resented the idea that Jig was swifter than he, more agile, more attuned to the hiding-places offered by the night. He envied Jig’s affinity for invisibility. Now he had the feeling that even if he were to seal off the surrounding twenty blocks, he still wouldn’t find the man. Goddam again. These close encounters only frustrated him. What also bothered him, even if he didn’t like to admit it, was the insurmountable fact that Jig must have at least ten years on him, that his own youth had long ago begun to recede, and time – the dreaded erosion of clocks – was making impatient claims on his body.

He walked slowly, like a man skirting the blades of open razors. When he reached the broken glass doors he paused, making one huge, concentrated effort to catch his breath. He stepped inside the reception room and saw Mulhaney sitting on one of the huge black leather sofas, surrounded by anxious men in evening wear and green sashes. Mulhaney had a bloodied handkerchief up to his mouth.

Pagan pushed his way towards the sofa, elbowing men out of the way. Mulhaney, enjoying the attention he was getting, peered over the top of the handkerchief at him. Pagan showed his ID in a swift way, sweeping it in front of Mulhaney’s eyes before the union boss had time to register it.

‘I’ve got a few questions,’ Pagan said.

Mulhaney dabbed at his lip. His bare gums were pink and bloody. ‘What kind of ID was that?’

Pagan ignored the question. ‘You have a private office somewhere? I’d like to talk to you alone.’

Mulhaney looked puzzled. ‘I’m perfectly happy where I am,’ he said.

‘Okay.’ Pagan shrugged and lowered himself on to the arm of the sofa. ‘What did the guy want with you, Jock?’

‘He was a mugger, for Christ’s sake. What the fuck you think he wanted?’

Pagan shook his head. ‘He was sent here from Ireland. You know that. I know that.’

‘Ireland?’ Mulhaney looked blank. He appealed to the other men around him. ‘Who is this guy? Who let him in here?’

‘What did you tell him?’ Pagan asked.

‘Hey,’ Mulhaney said. ‘Let’s see that ID again, fellah.’

‘Did you tell him where he could find the money? Or did you send him somewhere else?’

Mulhaney stood up. His eyes had a bruised, angry look. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Somebody toss this knucklehead outta here. Ireland, for Christ’s sake! My man Keefe’s been shot dead and you’re babbling about fucking Ireland!’

‘Keefe?’

‘My bodyguard. Mugger shot him.’

Another corpse. One way or another, Jig was leaving bodies strewn behind him. What had happened to the fastidious assassin? Pagan hesitated a second before reaching out to grip Mulhaney’s wrist tightly. ‘What did you tell him, Jock? Did you send him to Dawson? Did you tell him Cairney was the man to see? Or did you tell him something else altogether? What did you say to him?’

Mulhaney made a gesture of exasperation. ‘Out,’ he said.

Pagan felt various hands grab him. It hadn’t been terrific strategy to come in here and confront Jock, but on the other hand there was always the chance that Mulhaney might be taken off guard and give Pagan the answers he was looking for. Big Jock, though, was set on a course of complete denial, which wasn’t entirely surprising. Pagan wished he could have had time alone with the man. It might have made a difference in Mulhaney’s attitude. Surrounded by his sycophants, Big Jock was forceful and stubborn.

Pagan pulled himself free of his assailants. He stepped to one side. ‘It’s important, Jock. I need to know.’

‘I’ve had it with you,’ Mulhaney said. He looked at the faces of the men. ‘Toss this nut out.’

Pagan was still struggling to catch his breath. ‘If I leave here, I walk. Under my own steam.’

‘Walk then,’ Mulhaney said.

Pagan pushed his way back through the crowd towards the glass doors. He moved out on to the street, where he turned and glanced back through broken glass at the sight of Mulhaney holding forth for his audience. I hit the guy a couple of times, he was saying. Then he pulls this piece on me, which is when poor Keefe walks in.

I bet you hit him, Pagan thought.

He moved away from the building, just as two patrol cars turned the corner into the street, their lamps slashing holes in the darkness and their sirens screaming like voices in purgatory.

New York City

‘It’s raining in Piccadilly Circus,’ Foxie said, his voice unusually crisp and clear, given the great distances of the Atlantic. ‘Doesn’t that make you homesick?’

‘Why? I’m having a ball here,’ Pagan replied. The muscles in his legs throbbed from running. He lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling of his room in the Parker Meridien. ‘What have you got for me?’

‘Straight to the point, eh?’ Foxie’s voice faded a second. ‘According to my little screen, Alex Fitzjohn did time in Armagh Jail in 1977 for possession of grenades. Six months. Somewhere in this period he must have thrown in his lot with the FUV. They recruit in jails, of course.’ Foxie paused. ‘My head hurts and my throat’s dry. There are gremlins inside my brain doing things with dental drills.’

‘Don’t drink until you’re grown up,’ Pagan said.

‘Whenever. Back to Fitz. Suspected of participation in at least three border incidents. One the bombing of a pub. Two, the attempted assassination of a priest. A failure, that one. Three, a brief shoot-out with the Garda. An inconclusive affair, it would seem.’

Pagan was suddenly impatient. ‘Is there anything that ties him directly with McInnes?’

‘Ivor’s a careful sort of chap,’ Foxie said. ‘You know how damned hard it is to get reliable documentation on whether he’s running the FUV or not. However …’ and here Foxworth paused.

‘I’m all ears,’ Pagan said.

‘There is one very grubby photograph in our possession. It’s about seven years old. Somebody stored it in Fitzjohn’s file, which is on the inactive list. It really ought to have been put in Ivor’s. There’s a lot of clerical idiocy around here, Frank.’

‘Foxie, please,’ Pagan said.

‘One description coming right up. The picture shows Ivor stepping out of his church. He’s robed up to sermonise, so we can assume he’s just delivered himself of one of his brimstone jobs. Around Ivor are a few other people. There’s a lot of smiling going on. Somebody is reaching out to shake Ivor’s hand. Maybe to congratulate him on his words of wisdom? Whatever. In the midst of the people gathered on the steps of the church is one Alex Fitzjohn. He’s about five feet away from Ivor, and he’s smiling. But Ivor isn’t looking at him. Ivor’s staring at the man offering the handshake.’ Foxie paused. ‘That’s it, Frank.’

Pagan massaged the side of his head, which had begun to ache. It had been a long day, and he was exhausted now. A peculiar kind of exhaustion too, as if a rainy mist were crawling through his brain. He was thinking of Jig and how the man had managed to slide away from him once again on the streets of Brooklyn. What had Mulhaney told Jig?

‘It’s not a hell of a lot, is it?’ Pagan said. ‘I’m looking for a connection and all we’ve got is a photograph that doesn’t even show Ivor and Alex making eye-contact.’

‘It doesn’t exactly confirm that they’re bosom buddies,’ Foxworth agreed. ‘The best case you could make is that they probably knew each other. Probably.’

Pagan sat down on the edge of his bed. He’d hoped for something more substantial than an old inconclusive photograph. Something definitive. Something Ivor couldn’t possibly deny. But all he really had was a weak hand that was useful for a couple of bluffs, nothing more.

‘By the way, Frank. The Secretary popped into the office.’

‘That’s a first,’ Pagan said. ‘Did you call the Guinness Book of Records?’

‘He came in the day after you left. Quite the grand tour. He expressed some – shall we say misgivings – about your sojourn in the Americas? Doesn’t think you should be gallivanting about over there. Thinks your information from the FUV about Jig is spotty and doesn’t justify your trip. People don’t say spotty much these days, do they?’

‘Tell him to stuff it,’ Pagan said.

‘I think I hear the quiet sharpening of the axe, Frank. Furry Jake is no friend of yours. And you’ve got all those delicious enemies at the Yard who love the idea of you being away because, heaven forbid, they can make waves. Get the Sec’s ear and whisper anti-Pagan slogans into it. It’s not a glowing horoscope, is it?’

‘In other words, if I don’t get Jig, don’t come home.’

‘It’s what I’m hearing, Frank. Apropos of Jig, how goes it?’

‘I haven’t quite booked my return flight, Foxie.’

‘When you do, I very much hope you won’t be travelling unaccompanied.’

‘Take aspirins for your hangover,’ Pagan said. ‘And go back to bed.’

Pagan put the receiver down. The sharpening of the axe, he thought. You leave your desk and the vultures start to circle. You step away and suddenly it’s The Night of the Long Knives. What else could you expect? People were unhappy with him. People didn’t like the way he ran his section. People like Furry Jake thought little of Pagan’s tailor and, by extension, little of Pagan too. Scotland Yard wanted control over him. They didn’t like an upstart having power. And they revelled, God did they ever, in the idea of Jig’s eluding Pagan’s grasp.

Pagan poured another scotch. Jesus Christ, was this job that important to him? He could run security in the private sector and earn twice as much as he was paid now. But what he hated was the idea of scumbags waiting for him to fall, waiting for him to come home empty-handed because then they could pounce on him and denigrate him with that particularly wicked smugness certain pencil-pushers have for those who work out in the field, the real world.

He was agitated by the confinement of his room. He wanted to get out of the narrow little rectangle in which he was trapped. He put on a jacket and went down in the elevator to the piano bar.

Silence. The pianist had gone. The bar was almost empty. Pagan sat up on a stool and ordered a Drambuie. Mandi with an ‘i’ was cleaning the surface of a table in the corner. When she saw Pagan she smiled and drifted over to him. She was small and she moved with economy, like a dancer. It was all an illusion of coordination. Halfway towards him she dropped her order-pad and pencil and giggled as she bent to pick them up because loose change tumbled out of her pocket and went off in a series of little wheels across the floor.

He wondered what she’d be like in bed. It was the first time he’d entertained this notion quite so clearly in years and it took him by surprise. There was something else too – a small shiver of ridiculous guilt, almost as if the thought of having sex with this girl were somehow a betrayal of Roxanne. And he wondered at the tenacious hold the dead could sometimes have over the living. Could he ever shake himself free?

‘I drop things,’ she said.

‘I never noticed.’

The giggle was high-pitched and, although he wasn’t a man enamoured of giggling, he did find something endearing in it.

‘Palsy,’ she said. ‘Or is it dropsy?’

Pagan sipped his Drambuie. He studied her over the rim of his glass. She had dark hair naturally curled, creating an overall effect of a head covered with bubbles. She had a small heart-shaped mouth and straight teeth. There was humour in the face. Mandi was a woman who liked to laugh at herself. Going to bed with her would be some kind of romp through innocence, with no serious attachments, no kinks, no entanglements. Quick rapture and a fond goodbye.

‘Enjoying your stay?’ she asked.

Pagan shrugged. ‘It’s a bewildering city.’

The girl placed her hands on the surface of the bar. She had chubby, cherubic hands, dimpled. Straightforward, good-natured Mandi. An uncomplicated girl. It was all there in the hands and the brightness of the eyes. Simplicity. The uncluttered life.

‘You need a guide,’ she said. ‘If you want to see the place properly.’

There was an opening here, but Pagan was slow to move towards it. He was out of touch, rusty.

‘I’m Mandi, by the way.’

He nodded. He was going to say he knew that already but why bother? ‘Frank Pagan.’

‘Good to know you, Frank. You’re from London, right?’

‘Does it show?’

‘It’s the way you talk. It’s like Michael Caine in that picture. God, what was it called?’ She pursed her small lips and concentrated. ‘I’m hopeless when it comes to remembering names.’

No memory. Forever dropping things. Why did he find her clumsiness sweet? She must go through her life in a sweet-natured daze. She wouldn’t need drugs or alcohol because reality made her dizzy enough.

‘Alfie!’ she said. ‘That’s the one.’

‘I remember it vaguely.’

‘Are you on your own?’ she asked. Another opening.

Pagan was about to say that he was, he was about to say that he was weary of his own company, that he needed a bout of companionship and would she be interested, when he noticed Tyson Bruno sitting in a dark corner of the bar. Whatever nascent appetite he’d begun to feel abruptly shrivelled inside him. The mood was spoiled, sullied. He pushed his glass away and got down from the stool, glancing at Bruno’s hardened wooden face.

‘I’d like to be,’ he said. The waitress looked puzzled.

Pagan moved across the thick carpet of the bar and out into the lobby towards the banks of elevators. For a moment there he’d felt an old mood returning, a need rising inside him, a desire to do something simple and natural, like touching a woman, like bringing quickness back into his circulation, yesterday’s heats, yesterday’s passions, something that would slash away at his ghost. But Tyson Bruno’s face had risen out of the darkness to spoil things, reminding Pagan of the contrast between his own sorry little world where men and women died painfully and treachery was a viable currency, and the world of a cocktail waitress in a 57th Street hotel who dropped things and laughed at herself and lived an uncomplicated life. Two planets, different orbits.

He travelled up in the empty elevator, thinking of himself as perhaps the first man in history to suffer from a case of premature exorcism. When the car reached his floor, the doors slid open and he looked down the long corridor towards his room. Fuck it, he thought. He needed life and liveliness. And the real trick to that was to say no to self-analysis and no to your history. If you wanted to live, you just went out and did it.

He stepped back into the elevator and returned to the bar.

Mandi was gone.

But Tyson Bruno was still there, coming across the floor with an ape’s grace.

‘Don’t run out on me again, Pagan,’ Bruno said. ‘I don’t like being made stupid.’

‘That takes no great effort, Tyson.’ Pagan felt weary.

‘I hate smartasses,’ Bruno said. ‘Where did you go anyhow?’

‘I always wanted to see Brooklyn by moonlight.’

‘Sure.’ Tyson Bruno folded his thick arms across his chest. He had a mean, dangerous look all at once, that of a man who lives with violent solutions to tough questions. Pagan stared at the tiny eyes, which resembled the pits of a cherry.

‘See it doesn’t happen again,’ Tyson Bruno said.

‘I never promise the impossible, Tyson.’

Pagan turned away and headed back towards the elevators.

White Plains, New York

It was eight minutes past seven A.M. when the Reverend Duncanson began his Sunday morning sermon in Memorial Presbyterian Church. The congregation numbered about two hundred people, and Duncanson was pleased to see so many young people in attendance. He wondered if the Englishman who had telephoned was among the worshippers. His sermon, perhaps a little too heavy for the spring weather that had suddenly surfaced this day, concerned the confession of sins and God’s ability to refresh and cleanse the sinner. It was a dark, wintry speech, and it tended, like most of Duncanson’s sermons, to ramble through thickets of personal anecdote, non-sequiturs, and erudite attempts at word-play.

His eyes scanned the congregation as he spoke. A bright March sun fell upon the stained-glass, creating a nice dappled effect along the central pews. He spoke of confessional needs, carefully making a distinction between the inner need of man to ask forgiveness, and the outer compulsion, a Catholic notion that would bring momentary uneasiness to some of his members. The very word confession was loaded.

The Reverend Duncanson glanced at his watch, which he always took from his wrist and laid alongside his notes. He had been speaking now for thirteen minutes. He needed to pick up the pace and bring everything to a conclusion within the next two minutes. After years of sermonising he had the ability to edit his own material in his head. He sometimes thought he was like a stand-up comic who intuited his audience’s mood and shuffled his material accordingly.

Seven fifteen.

The second hand of Duncanson’s watch swept forward.

He closed his sermon after he’d talked for fifteen minutes. He nodded in the direction of the organist, a middle-aged woman who raised her hands above the keyboard, ready to strike. The congregation rose, hymnbooks open.

‘We will now sing the Twenty-Third Psalm,’ Duncanson announced. ‘The Lord is My Shepherd.’

The organist rippled off the introductory chords.

The great pipes took the sound, transformed it, scattered it through the uppermost parts of the church. It swelled, died, then came back again, a vast flood of music. As Duncanson opened his mouth to sing, he saw a sudden ball of flame rise up from the keyboard and engulf the organist, surrounding her with a wall of fire that spread upwards with a horrific crackling. The force of released heat was so intense he felt it burn the skin at the side of his face. Then there was an explosion from the dead centre of the church, a blast that shook the entire building and blew out the stained-glass windows.

Duncanson rushed down from the pulpit, unaware in all the smoke and screaming and confusion that his robe had caught fire. Another blast rocked the area around the pulpit, a violent outburst of flame and dark smoke that suggested something released from the fissures of hell. By this time, the ceiling was ablaze, wooden beams consumed by flame. The hymnbooks were burning. The pews were burning. People were burning too, screaming as they tried to rush through the suffocating smoke towards doorways they couldn’t find. Babies. Young men and women. The fire attacked everything.

And then there was still another explosion, the last one Duncanson heard. It brought the organ pipes down out of the walls, a tumble of plaster and bolts and woodwork and electrical wires which conveyed flame down into the basement of the church where the oil-fuelled central heating system was located. When the oil caught fire the air became dead air, unbreathable, filling lungs with a searing poison.

Some people made it out through the madness and the panic to the lawn in front of the church where they saw that the steeple was one ragged mass of blue flame whipped by breeze and spreading in a series of fiery licks across the entire roof. Others, trapped and suffocated inside, barely heard the final explosion as the oil-tank went up because the world of fire had become a silent place for them, all noise sucked out by a vacuum of intense heat, a scorched epicentre where no sound penetrated, no air stirred, the vast parched heart of destruction.

Stamford, Connecticut

Seamus Houlihan dialled a telephone number in New York City from a phonebooth beside an industrial park in Stamford. It was eight thirty on a sunlit Sunday morning. As he listened to the sound of the phone ringing, he looked across the street at John Waddell, who sat in the driver’s seat of the yellow rental truck. The truck had begun to bother Houlihan. It was too big, too conspicuous. They’d have to ditch it soon. McInnes had said he wanted them to dump the truck after Connecticut, but Houlihan thought it might be a damn good thing to be rid of it right now, before the next stage. Maybe he’d steal a smaller vehicle, though it would need to have a large trunk to keep the weapons in.

He winked at Waddell, who looked white. A stolen vehicle was a fucking risk, that was the snag. People actively looked for them. Their numbers and descriptions were put on lists. Cops, who wouldn’t blink at a rented truck, would be on your arse quick enough if they spotted you in a stolen car.

It was all right for McInnes, Houlihan thought. He sat in his fancy hotel and called all the shots. He wasn’t out here getting himself grubby, doing the deeds, working. McInnes was terrific at organisation, Houlihan had to admit that much, but the man was always at one remove from the centre of it all, the place where things really happened. And he was always getting his name in the papers, always basking in publicity, another thing Houlihan resented.

Over the phone, Houlihan listened to the ringing tones and wondered if anybody was ever going to answer. Thinking of McInnes irritated him. He hadn’t felt good about McInnes ever since the man had scolded him for the action in Albany. Stick to the blueprint, Seamus. Be a good boy, Seamus. Keep your nose clean, Seamus. Yessir and up yours.

What McInnes resembled at times was one of those figures of authority from Houlihan’s past. A judge. A cop. A screw. A counsellor. All the fuckers who either sent you to jail or spoke softly to you about taking your place in society. They had you coming and going, those characters did. McInnes couldn’t stand the idea of anyone else showing some initiative, some imagination. That’s what it all boiled down to. McInnes didn’t like the idea of Seamus Houlihan doing something on his own.

Fuck him, Houlihan thought. McInnes thinks he knows it all.

The phone was finally answered.

A man said, ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation. Please hold.’

‘I won’t hold,’ Houlihan said.

‘Sorry, sir. I have to ask you to wait.’

‘I’ve waited long enough, shithead.’

‘Sir –’

‘Listen close. You’ll hear this only once.’ And here Seamus paused, enjoying himself. He winked at wee Waddy again and smiled.