It was late when Peter Quinn left.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ he said.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Dan Cochrane told him. ‘I just want to sit here for a while, do some thinking.’
It was afterwards, sitting by himself in the cold gloom of the tiny cottage he had rented for his mother before she got sick, that he started drinking heavily.
By two a.m. he had got through three quarters of a bottle of whisky. But instead of making him drowsy or dull-witted, the alcohol seemed to have sharpened his imagination, heightened his awareness of everything around him and stoked the fires of his resolve.
He knew what he had to do.
His ability to hold his drink was coupled with his preference for drinking alone, a dangerous combination, he knew, but fuck it, anyway.
He poured what he told himself would definitely be a last whisky, downed it swiftly, then wondered if he had been wise. Just one too many could tip the balance. He needed to be alert, to have his wits about him; he could not afford to be slow-brained and ham-fisted.
He took a deep breath. He was fine. In control. Nothing would stand in his way.
He took a last look around the little room, seeing the worn settee and the chipped wooden chairs, part of the collection of shabby furniture that the auctioneer in the village had agreed to take away. Cochrane had accepted a price that was less, he was aware, than the stuff might eventually fetch when it was sold on, but he just wanted rid of it. He had no one to share any of it with, no other family, and there was certainly no room in his own small rented flat in Belfast.
Everything he did want was in a tea-chest and a couple of sturdy cardboard boxes: his old school books, faded letters and papers of his father’s, as well as other random bits and pieces that his mother had kept in fancy biscuit tins along with her own modest jewellery.
Mostly, though, there were the photographs, either lying loose or put into albums, none of them in any way recent. There was not even one of his own graduation of a few years ago. He had received his psychology degree from Queen’s University by post. On graduation day, his mother had found herself stuck with farm chores and unable to travel to Belfast to see him get it. He had spent £12 that he could ill afford on the hire of a gown but he didn’t mention that to her, didn’t want to make her feel guilty. In the end he had stayed away from the ceremony himself, rather than suffer the lonely indignity of walking across the stage to the bored applause of people who did not know who he was and did not care.
Those pictures that there were told most of the story.
Once there had been the family farm and the four of them living on it: him, his mother and father and his sister Annette. And then one day fourteen years ago, when Annette was six and he was thirteen, their father, for some reason now long since forgotten, was driving her into Downpatrick in their new Ford Sierra when an IRA gang detonated a landmine underneath it.
Simple mistake, really. They thought it was the unmarked police car they had been expecting.
In a statement they had apologised in their usual ambivalent terms. It was ‘regrettable’ but these things happened in wartime and needless to say it was the fault of the British for creating the circumstances in which such tragedies were bound to occur.
Other people were a bit more genuinely sympathetic than that. Most of Northern Ireland, as a matter of fact. Half the country came to the funerals and it was all over the TV. But nothing anyone said made any difference. Nothing eased the grief that consumed Cochrane and his mother.
So then there were two.
And now, he thought as he got everything ready, there is one.
In truth, long before today his had been a solitary world that few people had been allowed to penetrate. He was a loner, with perhaps only one true friend, Peter Quinn, who was at home by now, sleeping, not knowing what he was up to, and that was the way Cochrane preferred it.
He looked at his watch. Twelve hours. Twelve hours since he had stood with Peter and the others by his mother’s wintry graveside, watching her coffin being lowered into the ground.
He felt anger rising and he helped its ascent by pouring himself another whisky. Just a last last one. When he had finished it he went into the hall. Two suitcases sat there, filled with his mother’s clothes which he had folded and packed carefully as if they, like she, were going on a final journey He didn’t know what he was going to do with them.
He hated this place, now that she was no longer in it. She must have hated it too when she was here alone, which was a lot of the time. It could never have been a home to her, nor had she made much of an attempt to make it one. Dampness had seeped into the air, bringing a clinging smell of despair and defeat. But she had wanted to remain in this part of the country, here, where she was born, and this was all he could afford.
It was time to go. He had a job to do. He had what he needed.
He opened the front door and went out into the night. The moon was high and huge and it bathed the countryside in an eerie light that was almost blue. He was grateful for that; it would help him in his task.
His car, a small Fiat, stood at the door. He put the things into the boot and set off.
He did not have far to travel and he met no other car on the narrow, winding roads that were barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. At this time of night, on this south eastern corner of the County Down coast, he would not have expected to encounter anyone. But in a couple of hours, the farmers would be rising, emerging before dawn to begin their day, as once his father had done and then, in later years, his mother.
He would be finished by that time. And afterwards – afterwards there would be a hell of a lot of people around all right but he would not be one of them.
About a mile from his destination, he pulled the car into a narrow laneway and stopped. He would walk the rest. He could not risk being heard driving up, his lights drawing attention. Surprise would be his advantage.
From the boot he lifted the things: a gallon can of petrol that was three-quarters full and two empty whisky bottles in a carrier bag. They clinked conspicuously, a sound that carried, and he worried that someone might hear it.
He looked down at himself. He was still wearing the dark suit he had worn to the funeral; still the black tie and the white shirt, too. He had no coat. It would only get in the way.
The moonlight guided him while he walked. As he passed a darkened farmhouse, a dog caged up in a pen began to bark and he hurried along in case it woke somebody. The wind had got stronger and it was brisk against his cheeks. It brought rushing sounds to his ears and it rustled the sturdy gorse and bracken that lined the roadside.
The coldness of the night collided with the false sense of warmth which the alcohol had provided and it began to occur to him that he was more drunk than he realised.
Then he tripped. It was a stone or something but he lost his balance completely and fell forward hard onto the rough surface, and to his dismay he heard glass breaking in the bag.
He got up and examined the damage. One of the bottles was in pieces but the other one was all right. It would have to be enough.
Steady up, he told himself, then walked on.
When he sensed the first faint scent of the sea he knew he was almost there.
The night had become a little darker. He looked for the moon. A layer of cloud had hidden it but as he watched, it began to emerge slowly, as if an unseen hand were pulling back a heavy curtain.
And in that new revealing light there it was.
On the edge of the hillside there had once been a fine house which had been built in Victorian times. The old woman who owned it had died a few years ago and the house had now gone too.
In its place there was the vast bulk of the Emerald East Hotel.
The building had retained some of the character of the old dwelling, right enough; the hard granite, the gothic angles. But it was a bloated, excessive version of what had been there before, designed to look as if it had stood for generations, an impression for which the visitors who would eventually fill its hundred or so bedrooms would fork out extravagantly.
When guests in the front rooms threw back the curtains in the mornings they would revel in the sight of the uninterrupted open expanse of the Irish Sea, shimmering softly now in the moonlight.
But at the back of the hotel lay what they would really pay for. Spreading away as far as Cochrane could see were the curves and folds of an eighteen-hole championship-standard golf course, groomed to perfection. Much of the land on which the course had been constructed had belonged to the old woman and had come with the original house. But not all of it had been hers. Somewhere out there had stood his own family farm.
The farmhouse was gone, bulldozed into oblivion along with the few acres on which his mother’s last remaining cattle had grazed. In his mind’s eye he thought back to what it had looked like not so very long ago but he found it hard to sustain the image when what was before him was the grim reality of the present: the hotel building and the devastation – that was the only way he could describe it – of the harshly beautiful land on which he had been raised, which had been carried out for no reason other than greed.
One of the consequences of that relentless greed was his mother’s death. Of that he was convinced. It was why he had come tonight. To take action.
There were no lights coming from the hotel but he had not expected any because the place was not finished. The major construction work had been done but the final touches were not yet complete. The carpenters, the electricians, the plumbers still had work to do but they did not do it at night. There would be no one here except a couple of security guards.
Dogs. He wondered about dogs. But he had been around the area a few times before and had not seen any.
The grounds on the inland side were protected by a high barbed wire fence. It was an affront in this countryside where only the most rudimentary of hedges, an occasional dry-stone wall or, in most cases, nothing at all, denoted boundaries of ownership. But the big time golf enthusiasts, the rich people who would be lured from Japan, the United States and Europe, were used to high security and they would want to see it here, especially on account of Northern Ireland’s traditional reputation, which was not entirely one of warmth and hospitality.
The main access to the hotel was through a huge stone gateway, the only visible remnant of the original property, and then along a short drive. The gates themselves were closed and locked for the present.
Mounted on the fence beside them was a large wooden notice which declared that the hotel would be open for business in six weeks time. Its official opening would be before that, however, just a matter of a few days away.
That was the plan, certainly. But Cochrane had other ideas.
He looked at what else the notice said. It announced that the building was:
Seasons Construction. He knew all about them.
Seasons Construction had not simply carried out the operation for Malone Group: it was wholly owned by Malone which also owned the Emerald hotel chain of which this would be the newest jewel in the crown.
But that was not the crucial issue. What he had discovered, what was important, what told him the whole story, was the fact that the managing director of Seasons and the chief executive of Malone Group were both directors of the same Northern Ireland bank, the bank which had loaned his mother more money than she could ever have hoped to repay and had then refused to support her as she struggled to preserve the farm.
In the end, the bank had simply called in the debt and sold the farm out from under her to Seasons Construction. It had gone for no more than she owed them, which Cochrane knew was a lot less than the property was worth.
They had no guilt, no feelings, any of these people, and he hated them.
They did whatever they liked to get what they wanted, destroying anyone in the process. They had destroyed his mother and now they had destroyed the land she had loved so much and had fought to hold on to.
It was the shame of being ruined, he had no doubt, that had brought on the stroke which had led to her eventual death.
Now it was time for retribution. And he was here to deliver it.
He walked along beside the fence until he found a suitable spot. He would approach the building from the rear, along the edge of the golf course.
From the carrier bag he took a pair of wire cutters. He already knew the fence was not electrified. There had been a row about that in the local papers. Sheep wandered at will around here and farmers were indignant at the prospect of their animals being electrocuted. Maybe that was why there were no dogs either. Anyway Seasons had backed off. No electric fence.
It made this task a little less hazardous but it was still tough. The wire was new and unyielding and it took him a good twenty minutes, during which he worked up a heavy sweat, before he managed to cut enough of it to create a useful gap.
Carrying the petrol can and the bag with the remaining bottle, he tried to pick his way through as carefully as he could but, no longer held taut, the severed wire now curled menacingly. As he stepped forward on to the golf course, a barb snagged itself in his right trouser leg and held him back. For a second he almost dropped everything, then he pulled his leg towards him irritably and felt the material rip.
When he had broken free, he examined the tear with his fingers. There was a chunk of the cloth missing, just below his right knee.
He was wasting time. He would have to hurry. In and out quickly: that was the plan and he had better stick to it.
He looked at where he had made his entrance. Two fence posts down on the left, just below the second tee. Would he be able to locate that again? He had to; and the moonlight would help him.
Crouching to keep his shape as small as possible, he ran towards the hotel. The petrol sloshed around in the can by his side. When he reached the building, he stood against the wall, breathing hard, listening, but there was just the wind, carrying the sound of the sea lapping at the shore below.
He took his bearings, trying to peer through dark and dirty windows to see what was inside. He would stay at the back. If he went round the front there was a risk of bumping into a security guard.
He found the kitchens. He tried a door but it was locked. Not unexpected. He took the bottle out of the bag and filled it with petrol. He had a lighter and . . .
A cloth. He did not have one of those. He had not brought anything that he could use.
His tie. That would do. He wrenched it from his collar and stuffed it into the neck of the bottle.
He stood for a second, staring at the big kitchen window.
He had come this far.
Tension thumped in his temples. He needed a drink and he wished he had brought the whisky with him. His courage was beginning to dry up.
He took the wire cutters and tapped them against the glass. Not hard enough. He hit the window with more power, maybe too much, and this time the bottom section of it fell away, smashing into fragments on the floor of the empty kitchen.
Jesus, it made a hell of a noise.
He began to pour the petrol through the broken window but it was taking too long so he shoved the whole can in. It fell to the floor with a crash that was like the sounding of a gong.
He heard a voice from somewhere. He had run out of time.
He lit the end of the saturated tie and threw the blazing bottle into the kitchen.
The petrol ignited in a blast of flame that filled the room and smashed the rest of the windows, throwing him backwards. The heat and the force were sudden and shocking and he could feel his eyebrows and the front of his hair being singed.
He picked himself up and began to run blindly into the darkness. And now lights came on from somewhere, security beams mounted high on the building, shining out across the golf course. Fire bells started ringing, urgent and shrill, and a voice shouted: ‘There’s someone! I see him!’
He turned for a moment and saw three security guards in uniform coming after him. They were spreading out to narrow his avenue of escape. He began to run harder.
The second tee. Where the fuck was it? He was confused and dazed and partly blinded from the explosion. Yellow spots danced before his eyes. He had no time to search for it now.
One of the guards had almost reached him. He could not let himself be caught. As the man stretched out to grab him, Cochrane wheeled and struck out wildly with his fists. Not expecting this, the guard did nothing to prevent himself running into the force of a hard left hook which hit him square on the side of the jaw and knocked him to the ground.
Cochrane ran on. He got to the fence. He had to get over it. There was only one way to do that.
He began to climb desperately, ignoring the fact that he was grasping barbed twists and that they were tearing into his skin. In his panic and his drunkenness he could not feel the pain.
‘Jesus, look at that guy,’ someone behind him said in amazement.
And then he felt hands at his ankles, pulling him backwards. He clutched frantically at the wire and the pain was there now all right as the barbs ripped deeper into his flesh, shredding the palms of his hands.
He let go and fell backwards.
‘Got you, you bastard!’