It took a little over four hours from Penrith to reach the coast just below Oban. To a large and sturdy grey stone house, part castle, on Minard Point overlooking the Firth of Lorn. If it hadn’t been for Grace’s palmtop GPS, Nick would have doubted the directions he’d been given. The last mile-and-a-half took them along a rutted track filled with muddy puddles, despite relentless late-June sunshine that had put half the country on a hosepipe ban.
Nick winced as the suspension grounded over yet another pothole.
“Perhaps we should have—,” Grace began.
“If we’d come in your hulking great truck,” Nick said from between his teeth, “we’d still be on the motorway.”
“I wouldn’t dream of making any kind of tortoise and hare comparison,” she said blandly. She nodded to the house, looming large on the horizon. “Do you really think Conor O’Keefe is Bardwell?”
“Who knows?” He steered around a crater that would have happily accommodated a large dog. “But when O’Keefe left Liverpool, he cleared out his bank accounts, converted everything he owned to cash—quite a bit of it.” He glanced over. “Getting hold of the Barrett and smuggling it into the country took some funding.”
They pulled up on granite chippings outside the weathered front entrance. Even the gravel up here is hard-bitten, Nick thought. The wind came up strong over the headland. Hazy in the distance, hunkered down, was the outline of an island Nick vaguely thought might be Mull. The glittering sea between the island and the mainland was scattered with gulls.
“How did you find this place?” Grace asked as they climbed the lichen-covered steps.
“O’Keefe’s still claiming his army pension.” Nick nodded to the imposing façade. “It goes to a Post Office box number, then is forwarded on here.”
He rang the bell. Shortly after, the door was opened by a severe-looking woman in an old-fashioned white nurse’s uniform. Her elaborate cap was long at the back, like a veil.
“Yes?” She managed to inject a wary chill into the single word, without quite stooping to outright hostility.
Nick reached for his ID. “DC Weston, Cumbria CID, ma’am,” he said politely. “This is Ms McColl, CSI. We understand there’s a gentleman called Conor O’Keefe here?”
“It’s ‘Sister’, if you don’t mind.” The nurse gave a sniff that reminded Nick of the sergeant at Penrith. She took her time examining their credentials, returned them and stepped aside. “He’s expecting you.”
“Expecting us?”
She threw them a glance arctic in its disapproval. “Or somebody like you,” she said, turning on her heel. “This way, please.”
He caught Grace’s quiet amusement and pulled a face at her behind the nurse’s ramrod retreating back.
“You’re a hospice,” Grace said. “Cancer?”
“Mostly.”
“I’ll speak to my husband about the work you do here,” Grace said in an uninvolved voice. The nurse turned, eyes speculative, and Grace added with a slight smile, “He’s a noted supporter of worthy causes.”
“Naturally, we rely entirely on voluntary donations,” the nurse admitted in a fractionally more conciliatory voice. “We offer spiritual as well as palliative care.”
“Admirable.”
“Ex-husband, you mean,” Nick whispered as the nurse led the way up a wide staircase, a chair-lift fitted up one side. “And shame on you, manipulating her like that.”
“How?” Grace seemed surprised. “Max would be more than happy to write them a cheque if I asked him to.”
Nick could only shake his head. They walked along a mirror-polished corridor. Everything was painted white, as though to prepare the occupants for their vision of the afterlife.
The nurse stopped by an open doorway, gestured them inside. “Five minutes only, if you please.” She performed a rusty movement of her mouth that might have been a smile. “He tires easily.”
If Nick had thought Pete Tawney looked in a bad way, nothing prepared him for the sight of Conor O’Keefe. White and wasted, the former sniper sat swathed in blankets by the window, a shrunken little figure who stared longingly at the open water beyond the salt-splattered glass.
Without shifting his gaze, O’Keefe said, “If you’re here tae tell me he’s dead, save your breath.” His Glaswegian accent lay thick across a soft voice.
“Tell you who’s dead, Mr O’Keefe?” Nick asked.
“Mercer.” He treated them both to a strangely disinterested survey. By the side of his chair, on a tall stand, was a syringe-driver filled with morphine, the IV line snaking between a fold of the cream blankets wrapped around his body. His thin lips widened a little. “The Sisters may believe in simple clean living up here, but we still get all the satellite news channels.”
“If you already know Mr Mercer’s dead, why did you agree to see us?” Grace asked.
“Because refusing would only make you more of a nuisance and then you’d be back again.” He looked at her without emotion. “Ah’m dying,” he said bluntly. “Have been for months. Started in ma pancreas and now it’s in ma bones, so they tell me. Not one ah would have chosen, but who gets to choose?” His pale gaze flicked across to Nick. “All ah want is tae be left alone tae go in ma own way, in ma own time.”
“All debts paid?” Nick asked carefully. “All…scores settled?”
“Ah’ve put ma affairs in order, if that’s what you mean,” O’Keefe replied, without heat. “Why? You think ah might have snuck out under the wire one night and done him ma’self?”
Nick leaned against the opposite side of the window frame, looked down at him. “As well as a sniper, I understand you were something of an IED expert.”
O’Keefe’s mouth cracked into a bitter smile “So’s anyone with an Internet connection or an old copy of The Anarchist Cookbook,” he dismissed. “Don’t ask me tae shed a tear for Mercer. He was a right royal bastard, no mistake.”
“You won’t hear any arguments from me,” Nick muttered. He still remembered the sound of his own bones breaking.
Misunderstanding, O’Keefe gave a slight nod. “If you’ve done your digging, you’ll know about the boy. Fifteen that kid was when he hanged his’self. Full of hope and laughter, so excited tae be coming here…”
He broke off, his eyes drifting away as if pulled by the lure of the sea. There was a fierce brightness to them that Nick gave him time to subdue.
“Ah identified the body.” O’Keefe’s voice was almost a whisper. “They said he’d tried tae cut his wrists not a week before, and they never even put a watch on him. Fifteen.” He shook his head. “Ah had tae tell his mother, his grandparents, that ah’d promised tae take care of him, and ah’d let them down. And you know the worst of it?”
Nick gave a fractional shake of his head.
“They did’nae even look surprised. Like they had’nae really expected me tae look after the boy.” He looked straight at Nick, straight and level. “Is it any wonder ah wished ill on Mr Mercer? Hell, man, if ah were capable of it, ah’d be doing a tango on the man’s grave.”
“You liquidated your assets,” Nick said. “There’s no reason you couldn’t have paid someone else to do the job.”
“Oh, ah could, could ah?” O’Keefe gave a wheezy laugh. “What? Go tae hire-a-hitman.com, eh? Easy as that, is it?”
“For someone with your old contacts, old comrades? Yes, it probably is.”
“Gave every penny of it tae the Sisters here,” O’Keefe said. “Reckon by the time ah’ve passed over, they’ll have earned it. Ask ’em, if you don’t believe me.”
“We’ll have a forensic accountant go over the books.”
O’Keefe shook his head. “You’ve never served, have you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because if you had, you’d know you’re wasting your time trying tae chase down blood money.” O’Keefe’s hands gestured, restless, under the blankets. “Ah’ve spent ma whole adult life among men who were prepared tae kill or die for each other, and if you don’t understand that, you’ll not catch him.” He gave a wistful smile. “Some things have a price all right, but they cannae be bought.”
“You sound as if you rather admire what he’s done,” Grace said quietly. “You may have hated Matthew Mercer, but innocent people have also died for this, including a twenty-year-old policeman, and my boss.”
“Personal, is it?” O’Keefe regarded her for a long moment. “They train us tae do your dirty work, you civilians, and you can’t just switch us on and off at will. Sometimes there’s collateral damage, things happen, and we all of us fall a ways short of glory.” He paused. “But ah’m sorry—for your loss.”
The nurse who’d admitted them appeared in the doorway. “I must insist that you leave Mr O’Keefe now,” she said, ominous. “He needs to rest.”
“Ach, ah do nothing but rest,” O’Keefe complained, but his tone was gentle. She almost smiled at him, her face growing more severe as she escorted Nick and Grace the way they’d come, as if wanting to make sure they were off the premises.
On the stairs, Nick said, “Mr O’Keefe tells us he’s made a sizeable donation.”
“He’s been most generous,” she said primly. “Not that the care we provide has any such strings attached, naturally, but we were…grateful.”
Grace asked, “How long does he have?”
The nurse pursed her lips. “A few weeks,” she said finally. “Perhaps a month. Not much more. He was late to seek a diagnosis, as they often are.”
By the front door, she plucked a colour leaflet from a display, handed it across. Grace opened her bag to put it inside, pulled out a photocopy of the sketch she’d made of the man from the Retreat.
“Has this man been to visit Mr O’Keefe while he’s been here?”
The nurse took the drawing with only the faintest hesitation, gave it due consideration and frowned before returning it. “This looks like Mr O’Keefe’s brother. He came with him when he was first admitted, but has not been back since. I suppose this might be him. It’s hard to tell.” She folded back into herself. “I really couldn’t say for sure.”
She shook Nick’s hand with a brief, firm grip, using both her own to cover it, repeated the action on Grace with a little more fervour, he noticed.
“We’ll be in touch.” Nick gave her a card. “You’ll let us know if…?”
“You mean when,” the nurse said placidly. “Of course.”
They took the steps, heard the heavy wooden door close solidly behind them. Nick paused by the Impreza but Grace walked on to the edge of the gravel, arms wrapped round her body as if cold.
He moved alongside her, hands in his pockets, and they stood side by side in silence for a few moments. The sun was starting to sink, streaking the sky with the palest blues and pinks, washing the landscape mellow gold.
The wind was blowing her hair back gently from her face and she looked unbearably sad, he thought.
“He knows, of course,” Grace said. “Even if he didn’t fund it, he knows.”
“If he does, he’s planning on taking that knowledge with him to the grave.”
“And dancing on it, as he said.” She turned, eyed him. “Do you think we’ll ever understand?”
Nick shrugged. “I doubt it.” He paused. “O’Keefe doesn’t have a brother, by the way.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Grace said, in that remote voice she’d used the first time they’d met. “He has hundreds, and one of them was prepared to kill for him.”