Burns turned to look at me. He shook his head, as though what had happened was just one of those things: a tragedy, sure, but unavoidable.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What happens now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I wanted to believe you had seen the light, son. You know that?’
‘But you knew?’
‘About what you were up to? Oh, aye. My wife told you, didn’t she?’
‘She wasn’t surprised to find herself in a police safe house.’
‘But working with this prick?’ He nodded quickly towards Griggs’s corpse. ‘You believed in his cause?’
‘I didn’t know. Far as I could tell, his operation was on the level.’
‘Do you think I killed his sister?’
‘Indirectly, yes.’
He shook his head. ‘All this time, all the time we spent together … I don’t know, I thought maybe … You get old, you get soft. That’s what it is.’ He shook his head. ‘I killed his sister … so … you killed my nephew, then.’
He raised the gun.
I took a step back. Raised my hands. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘He’s the one wanted you dead …’
‘You just want me behind bars?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘All the more reason for me to kill you, too, then.’ He raised an eyebrow, prompting a response. I didn’t have any to give. ‘My nephew’s dead because you took your eye off the ball.’
‘Your nephew’s dead because someone hated you enough to kill him.’ Sure. Great move. Piss off the man with the gun. Something I’d made a habit of over the years. My personal version of Russian Roulette. One day my luck would run out. The bullet would be in the chamber.
He didn’t lower the gun, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to shoot me, either. We had all the time in the world. We were alone. Just the two of us. And the corpse.
‘You’ve always known,’ I said. ‘That I was working with Griggs. So you must have known that whatever he told me, whatever lies he fed me, it was good enough for me to believe. Don’t claim ignorance about it, now. I know you too well.’
He nodded. ‘I have a sentimental streak. Wide as Loch Lomond, you see. Of course I fucking knew. I knew about Ernie, too. I just didn’t know this wee prick here had such a hard-on for me. I thought it was just another investigation, another example of police harassment. Happens all the time. They get bored, eventually.’
‘You didn’t have to kill him.’
‘Really? What choice did I have? Or did you have some kind of plan? Were you willing to take a bullet for me, son? Don’t make me laugh. Somewhere in there, behind all the protestations, you want me dead the same way he did. He blamed me for the death of his sister. I blame you for the death of my nephew. You blame me for Ernie’s death. Swings and fucking roundabouts. Never ends. Sooner or later, someone has to end it.’ He hesitated. ‘In a way, I sympathize. There are nights I think maybe I was to blame. I liked Ernie. Always knew he’d turn me in if he got the chance, but all the same … I wouldn’t have had him killed. You and I both know it was the crooked cunt ordered the trigger.’
‘And Mick the Mick who pulled it,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. We could play the blame game, keep going back and back and back, finally realize it was Jesus Christ himself killed Ernie.’
He smiled at that. A bloodless kind of smile.
‘So what happens?’ he said. ‘Now that we’re here, what happens?’
‘I’ve watched you kill two men,’ I said.
‘Corroboration,’ he said. ‘The one man who might back you up is dead.’
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘You’ve spent your life skating past the law. Making sure you can get away with what you know is wrong. You justify yourself. You make excuses and grand sounding speeches. About how you had no choice but to do some of the things you did. But you always had a choice. You were like the Zombie once. Maybe not as extreme, but then maybe the world wasn’t so extreme back them. But you were a killer. A murderer. You were feared like the Devil himself.’
He said, ‘The good old days.’
‘Laugh all you want. That’s what they were. When men like you were respected, not hunted down like common criminals. When you were above the law. Un-fucking-touchable.’
‘The good old days,’ he repeated.
‘Kill me, they’ll catch you. They will link you to this murder. You know they will.’
‘My days are over, son. That’s what I’ve come to realize lately. There’s no place for me in this world. Everything’s changing. It was a bloody good run, though.’
‘Bako’s in prison,’ I said. ‘The war is over.’
He lowered the gun. ‘Then let’s do it,’ he said. ‘I can’t come back from this. I’m too fucking old. Call it a stalemate.’
I reached out, took the weapon from him. He didn’t resist. Didn’t try and run. He merely accepted what was happening as though it was inevitable. As though he always knew how things would turn out. As we left, I turned to look at Griggs’s corpse. Worried that it didn’t make me feel a sense of loss. In my own way, I had become desensitized to violence and death.