Fegan saw the first hint of dawn beyond the stable roofs as he crossed the yard. Coyle and Pádraig heaved Campbell’s limp form into the mouth of the barn. The Scot gasped and moaned as they lowered him to the ground at the edge of the pit. Downey kept the shotgun’s muzzles at the small of Fegan’s back all the time.
Five shapes followed in the emerging light, shadows no longer.
O’Kane fetched a roll of plastic sheeting from a dark corner. He brought it with him to the pit and unrolled it on the blood- and feces-stained earth. Pádraig helped him. The smell rising up clung to the back of Fegan’s throat, and he forced himself not to gag. He didn’t want to die here.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the followers. The UFF boys looked up from Campbell’s unconscious body. The woman and the butcher stood by his side. “I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
O’Kane looked up from the pit. “Are you talking to your friends, Gerry? The ones in your head?”
Fegan nodded. “Yes.”
O’Kane beckoned. “Come on, son.”
Fegan stepped down into the pit. Downey followed, pressing him forward. “You’ll let Marie and Ellen go?” Fegan asked.
“I told you, didn’t I?” O’Kane said. “Jesus, whatever happened to you? The great Gerry Fegan. You remember the last time we met? How long did you say, twenty-five years ago?”
“Twenty-seven,” Fegan said. “I was eighteen.”
O’Kane addressed the others. “He was just a kid, but he had a reputation already. The only fella ever raised a hand to me and lived to tell the tale. That was the first time we met. The next time would’ve been, oh, 1980. Those were fierce times. We had a tout to deal with. This girl from Middletown was fucking a Brit. She’d tried to run, tried to get a boat from Belfast, but McGinty’s boys caught her at the docks. McGinty and Gerry here brought her down to me. Isn’t that right, Gerry?”
Fegan remembered. “That’s right.”
“McGinty puts the gun in his hand, says, ‘Here you go, Gerry. Now you can break your duck.’’ O’Kane pointed to Campbell. “Bring him down here.”
Pádraig walked over and helped Coyle to lower Campbell into the pit. The Scot’s face contorted as they laid him on the plastic and he cried out in his stupor. Coyle drew the pistol from his waistband and put it to Campbell’s head.
“What are you at?” O’Kane asked.
“I want to do him,” Coyle said.
“All right, but you’ll do it when I tell you, not before.”
Coyle gave an impatient sigh and tucked the gun back into his waistband. Pádraig went to his father’s side.
O’Kane continued. “Anyway, Gerry here takes the gun and just looks at us. McGinty asks him what’s wrong, and Gerry goes ‘No, I can’t, I can’t.’ ’
“She was just a girl,” Fegan said, ‘no older than me. She was scared. And she was pregnant.”
O’Kane stepped closer. “Aye, she was pregnant. She had a Brit’s bastard inside her. So what? She was a tout. That’s all there was to it. And you didn’t have the guts. I had to do it for you.”
Fegan remembered her eyes, pleading, terrified. Tears burned his cheeks. “I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t stop it.”
“No, you didn’t even have the guts to watch. You ran away. You were weak. She was a tout, the lowest kind of shite that walks the earth. The kind that turn on their own people. Like you, Gerry. And touts get no mercy.”
He reached out and wiped the tears from Fegan’s cheeks. “No mercy, Gerry. Not then. Not now.”
The woman took Fegan’s hand, her fingers cool and soft. He turned to see her smile up at him, her eyes sad, the baby calm in the crook of her arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She nodded.
O’Kane took a step back. “It’s time, Gerry.”
Fegan felt the twin muzzles at the back of his head.
He closed his eyes and the woman’s fingers slipped away from his.