The Ghosts of Belfast (The Belfast Novels)

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. With this stunning debut, Neville joins a select group of Irish writers, including Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes and Adrian McKinty, who have reinvigorated the noir tradition with a Celtic edge. Gerry Fegan, a former IRA hit man haunted by the ghosts of the 12 people he killed, realizes the only way these specters will give him rest is to systematically assassinate the men who gave him his orders. Though those in the militant IRA underworld have written him off as a babbling drunk and a liability to the movement, they take note when their members start turning up dead. Meanwhile, Fegan is attracted to Marie McKenna, a relative of one of the newly slain men and a pariah to the Republicans. Can Fegan satisfy his demons and redeem himself, or will the ghosts of Belfast consume him first? This is not only an action-packed, visceral thriller but also an insightful insider's glimpse into the complex political machinations and networks that maintain the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. “Not only one of the finest thriller debuts of the last ten years, but also one of the best Irish novels, in any genre, of recent times.”— John Connolly “Neville’s novel is a coldly lucid assessment of the fragility of the Irish peace … a rare example of legitimate noir fiction.”— The New York Times Book Review "Perfect for summer—especially if you want to be reminded of what a blessing it is to live in relatively peaceful times." —Slate “The best first novel I’ve read in years…. It’s a flat-out terror trip.”— James Ellroy “ The Ghosts of Belfast is a smart and atmospheric thriller about the many causes served and corrupt pockets lined courtesy of sectarian hatred.”— Maureen Corrigan , NPR.org"Stuart Neville is Ireland's answer to Henning Mankell."— Ken Bruen “Stuart Neville's tightly wound, emotionally resonant account of an ex-IRA hit man's struggle to conquer his past, displays an acute understanding of the true state of Northern Ireland, still under the thumb of decades of violence and terrorism.”— Los Angeles Times “Both a fine novel and a gripping thriller: truly this is a magnificent debut.”— Ruth Dudley Edwards , author of Ten Lords-A-Leaping “Stuart Neville goes to the heart of the perversity of paramilitarism.”— Sean O’Callaghan , author of The Informer “An astonishing debut. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully written, Stuart Neville’s The Ghosts of Belfast is both a heart-pounding thriller and a stunning examination of responsibility and revenge. He is going to be a major new voice in suspense fiction.”— Jeff Abbott “Stuart Neville will go far as a writer . . . It’s a wonderful novel, brave and fierce and true to its place and time. I sincerely hope it sells a million copies.”— Crimespree "Stuart Nevillexa0delivers an inspired, gritty view of how violence’s aftermath lasts for years and the toll it takes on each person involved. The Ghosts of Belfast also insightfully delves into Irish politics, the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland, redemption, guilt and responsibility.”— Oline Cogdill, Mystery Scene “Stuart Neville belongs to a younger generation of writers for whom the region's darkest years are history—but that history endures, as his first novel, The Ghosts of Belfast , shockingly demonstrates.... In scene after gruesome scene, Neville attempts to persuade us that this time around, with this repentant murderer, the killing is different.” —Washington Post “Neville’s debut is as unrelenting as Fegan’s ghosts, pulling no punches as it describes the brutality of Ireland’s 'troubles' and the crime that has followed, as violent men find new outlets for their skills. Sharp prose places readers in this pitiless place and holds them there. Harsh and unrelenting crime fiction, masterfully done.”— Kirkus Reviews , STARRED Review “[A] stunning debut.... This is not only an action-packed, visceral thriller but also an insightful insider’s glimpse into the complex political machinations and networks that maintain the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland.”— Publishers Weekly , Starred Review “In this well-crafted and intriguing series debut, Neville evokes the terrors of living in Belfast during 'the Troubles' and manages to makes Fegan, a murderer many times over, a sympathetic character…The buzz around this novel is well deserved and readers will be anticipating the next book in the series.”— Library Journal , Starred Review “Explosive and absorbing ... The Ghosts of Belfast is an intense meditation on obligation, necessity, and war. Within Stuart Neville’s rich vocabulary, complacency is not a word to be found.”— Sacramento News and Review “ The Ghosts of Belfast is a tale of revenge and reconciliation shrouded in a bloody original crime thriller.... Fierce dialogue and the stark political realities of a Northern Ireland recovering from the ‘Troubles’ drive this novel. It's not difficult to read this brilliant book as an allegory for a brutal past that must be confronted so the present ‘can be clean.’”— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “In his stunning debut, Stuart Neville delivers an inspired, gritty view of how violence's aftermath lasts for years and the toll it takes on each person involved. The Ghosts of Belfast also insightfully delves into Irish politics, the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland, redemption, guilt and responsibility ... Neville delivers an emotionally packed novel that is both empathetic and savage. Neville never makes Gerry's visions of ghosts seem trite or silly. Like his countryman, John Connolly, Neville keeps the supernatural aspects believable ... The Ghosts of Belfast is a haunting debut.”— South Florida Sun-Sentinel “If you by chance have never read Stuart Neville’s Belfast Trilogy, it’s time to redeem yourself.”— Grift Magazine “A brilliant thriller: unbearably tense, stomach churningly frightening … a future classic of its time.”— The Observer “Stuart Neville's blistering debut thriller is a walk on the wild side of post-conflict Northern Ireland that brilliantly exposes the suffering still lurking beneath the surface of reconciliation and the hypocrisies that sustain the peace.” — Metro (UK) “Neville has the talent to believably blend the tropes of the crime novel and those of a horror, in the process creating a page-turning thriller akin to a collaboration between John Connolly and Stephen King.” — Sunday Independent (Ireland) “A gripping, original thriller."— Sunday Times “[Neville] is … uniquely, tragically equipped to be able to think through complex issues of justice and mercy.”— Irish Times Stuart Neville is a partner in a multimedia design business based in Armagh, northern Ireland. This novel, also known as The Twelve in the UK and Ireland, is the first in a series. From The Washington Post From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Anna Mundow The hideous, decades-long conflict in the tiny British province of Northern Ireland has inspired fiction that ranges from outstanding thrillers such as Gerald Seymour's "Harry's Game," surely one of his best, to quieter novels such as Louise Dean's "This Human Season" and Seamus Deane's sublime masterpiece, "Reading in the Dark." Stuart Neville belongs to a younger generation of writers for whom the region's darkest years are history -- but that history endures, as his first novel, "The Ghosts of Belfast," shockingly demonstrates. "Even now [that] the politicians had taken over the movement," Neville writes of the Irish Republican Army paramilitaries, "even though they were shifting away from the rackets, the extortion, the thieving, people still needed to be kept in line." Belfast in the new millennium may be a business opportunity, not a terrorist target, but organized crime and intimidation persist. There is even the odd bombing. The present is not the problem, however, for Gerry Fegan. Once an infamous torturer and killer for the IRA, Fegan has served his prison sentence, but he remains haunted -- literally -- by the crimes of the past. The ghosts of 12 murder victims shadow him day and night, demanding not remorse -- their deaths were not all his doing -- but revenge. One day, for instance, Fegan sees one of his ghosts pointing at a politician's head. "He mimed firing, his hand thrown upward by the recoil." This is a dead boy, tortured and executed decades earlier on the orders of Fegan's friend and IRA commander, Michael McKenna. But now the boy and his dead companions give the orders, and an anguished Fegan obeys as the novel opens with the first brutal killing of his new mission. We know what will follow because the book's sections are numbered like a countdown, from 12 to 1 for the avenging ghosts, but the predictable action is complicated by a clever espionage twist. British intelligence is still lurking in Northern Ireland, and these fresh murders activate an undercover agent whose path is destined to cross Fegan's. There is also a brave woman and her innocent child who may represent Fegan's last shot at redemption. This noir thriller plays out in a Belfast that, even in summer sunshine, remains oppressively gray. The clannishness of its inhabitants is vividly evoked in Neville's descriptions of a tiny rowhouse packed with mourners for a murdered man's wake or a seedy pub where the bartender has learned to look the other way when violence arrives. A riot scene, one of the novel's best, captures a new generation's appetite for blood and an old veteran's nostalgia. "Kids know nothing these days," an aging IRA thug observes before wading in to instruct the young rioters. "When we were kids we'd have had this place wrecked by now." Yet much has changed. From the deserted waterfront, Fegan contemplates the lights of a new entertainment complex patronized by those "young enough to have no memory of men like Fegan, affluent enough not to care." Former IRA paramilitary commanders are now politicians; and Fegan's revenge killings could destabilize the jittery new power-sharing government, something that neither the paramilitaries-turned-politicians nor the British government can allow. Meanwhile, when Fegan kills a corrupt priest who is related to one of the IRA's old guard, he earns himself another enemy, one with a taste for sadism. We observe this world chiefly through Fegan's eyes and later through the eyes of Campbell, the ex-British soldier turned undercover agent, both of whom are as redundant in this post-conflict world as any aging dock worker. "If there's peace, if it's really over, then what use are we?" an old paramilitary asks. Or as Neville puts it, "After eighty-odd years, this tiny country finally had a future. And Campbell did not." With the exception of Fegan, for whom we are expected to feel some sympathy, Neville's portraits of the IRA leadership and its foot soldiers are clear-eyed and unforgiving (the British officials, by contrast, are rather cartoonish). Northern Ireland's recent historical background is also deftly compressed, albeit with a few too many journalistic cliches. The moral of "The Ghosts of Belfast," voiced by the mother of a murdered boy, is that "everybody pays." Even when peace is declared and even when killers become politicians. This may be dramatically satisfying, for who does not relish a good revenge tale, but it also allows Neville to have it both ways as he sets his novel in the aftermath of mass violence and yet depicts, in repellent detail, scenes of torture and murder that re-animate that shameful past. "He had always thought of killing as work," Fegan recalls. "He hadn't considered himself a skilled craftsman, more a skilled laborer." In scene after gruesome scene, Neville attempts to persuade us that this time around, with this repentant murderer, the killing is different. [email protected] Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Maybe if he had one more drink they’d leave him alone. Gerry Fegantold himself that lie before every swallow. He chased the whiskey’sburn with a cool black mouthful of Guinness and placed the glass backon the table. Look up and they’ll be gone , he thought.No. They were still there, still staring. Twelve of them if he countedthe baby in its mother’s arms.He was good and drunk now. When his stomach couldn’t holdany more he would let Tom the barman show him to the door, andthe twelve would follow Fegan through the streets of Belfast, into hishouse, up his stairs, and into his bedroom. If he was lucky, and drunkenough, he might pass out before their screaming got too loud tobear. That was the only time they made a sound, when he was aloneand on the edge of sleep. When the baby started crying, that was theworst of it.Fegan raised the empty glass to get Tom’s attention.“Haven’t you had enough, Gerry?” Tom asked. “Is it not hometime yet? Everyone’s gone.”“One more,” Fegan said, trying not to slur. He knew Tom wouldnot refuse. Fegan was still a respected man in West Belfast, despite thedrink.Sure enough, Tom sighed and raised a glass to the optic. Hebrought the whiskey over and counted change from the stained table -top. The gummy film of old beer and grime sucked at his shoes as hewalked away.Fegan held the glass up and made a toast to his twelve companions.One of the five soldiers among them smiled and nodded in return.The rest just stared.“Fuck you,” Fegan said. “Fuck the lot of you.”None of the twelve reacted, but Tom looked back over hisshoulder. He shook his head and continued walking to the bar.Fegan looked at each of his companions in turn. Of the fivesoldiers three were Brits and two were Ulster Defence Regiment.Another of the followers was a cop, his Royal Ulster Constabularyuniform neat and stiff, and two more were Loyalists, both UlsterFreedom Fighters. The remaining four were civilians who hadbeen in the wrong place at the wrong time. He remembered doingall of them, but it was the civilians whose memories screamed theloudest.There was the butcher with his round face and bloody apron. Feganhad dropped the package in his shop and held the door for the womanand her baby as she wheeled the pram in. They’d smiled at each other.He’d felt the heat of the blast as he jumped into the already movingcar, the blast that should have come five minutes after they’d clearedthe place.The other was the boy. Fegan still remembered the look in his eyeswhen he saw the pistol. Now the boy sat across the table, those sameeyes boring into him.Fegan couldn’t hold his gaze, so he turned his eyes downward.Tears pooled on the tabletop. He brought his fingers to the hollows ofhis face and realised he’d been weeping.“Jesus,” he said.He wiped the table with his sleeve and sniffed back the tears. Thepub’s stale air clung to the back of his throat, as thick as the duncoloredpaint on the walls. He scolded himself. He neither needed nordeserved pity, least of all his own. Weaker men than him could livewith what they’d done. He could do the same.A hand on his shoulder startled him.“Time you were going, Gerry,” Michael McKenna said.Tom slipped into the storeroom behind the bar. McKenna paidhim to be discreet, to see and hear nothing.Fegan knew the politician would come looking for him. He wassmartly dressed in a jacket and trousers, and his fine-framed designerglasses gave him the appearance of an educated man. A far cry fromthe teenager Fegan had run the streets with thirty years ago. Wealthlooked good on him.“I’m just finishing,” Fegan said.“Well, drink up and I’ll run you home.” McKenna smiled down athim, his teeth white and even. He’d had them fixed so he could lookpresentable for the cameras. The party leadership had insisted on itbefore they gave him the nomination for his seat in the Assembly. Atone time, not so long past, it had been against party policy to take aseat at Stormont. But times change, even if people don’t.“I’ll walk,” Fegan said. “It’s only a couple of minutes.”“It’s no trouble,” McKenna said. “Besides, I wanted a word.”Fegan nodded and took another mouthful of stout. He held it onhis tongue when he noticed the boy had risen from his place on theother side of the table. It took a moment to find him, shirtless andskinny as the day he died, creeping up behind McKenna.The boy pointed at the politician’s head. He mimed firing, hishand thrown upwards by the recoil. His mouth made a plosivemovement, but no sound came.Fegan swallowed the Guinness and stared at the boy. Somethingstirred in his mind, one memory trying to find another. The chill athis center pulsed with his heartbeat.“Do you remember that kid?” he asked.“Don’t, Gerry.” McKenna’s voice carried a warning.“I met his mother today. I was in the graveyard and she came up tome.”“I know you did,” McKenna said, taking the glass from Fegan’sfingers.“She said she knew who I was. What I’d done. She said—”“Gerry, I don’t want to know what she said. I’m more curiousabout what you said to her. That’s what we need to talk about. Butnot here.” McKenna squeezed Fegan’s shoulder. “Come on, now.”“He hadn’t done anything. Not really. He didn’t tell the copsanything they didn’t know already. He didn’t deserve that. Jesus, hewas seventeen. We didn’t have to—”One hard hand gripped Fegan’s face, the other his thinning hair,and the animal inside McKenna showed itself. “Shut your fuckingmouth,” he hissed. “Remember who you’re talking to.”Fegan remembered only too well. As he looked into those fierceblue eyes he remembered every detail. This was the face he knew, notthe one on television, but the face that burned with white-hot pleasureas McKenna set about the boy with a claw hammer, the face that wasdotted with red when he handed Fegan the .22 pistol to finish it.Fegan gripped McKenna’s wrists and prised his hands away. Hestamped on his own anger, quashed it.The smile returned to McKenna’s lips as he pulled his hands awayfrom Fegan’s, but went no further. “Come on,” he said. “My car’soutside. I’ll run you home.”The twelve followed them out to the street, the boy sticking closeto McKenna. McKenna had climbed high in the party hierarchy, butnot so high he needed an escort to guard him. Even so, Fegan knewthe Mercedes gleaming in the orange street lights was armored, bothbullet- and bomb-proof. McKenna probably felt safe as he loweredhimself into the driver’s seat.“Big day today,” McKenna said as he pulled the car away from thecurb, leaving the followers staring after them. “Sorting the offices upat Stormont, my own desk and everything. Who’d have thought it,eh? The likes of us up on the hill. I wangled a secretary’s job for thewife. The Brits are throwing so much money at this I almost feel badtaking it off them. Almost.”McKenna flashed Fegan a smile. He didn’t return it.Fegan tried to avoid seeing or reading the news as much as he could,but the last two months had been a hurricane of change. Just fivemonths ago, as one year turned to the next, they’d said it was hopeless;the political process was beyond repair. Then mountains moved, dealswere struck, another election came and went, while the shadowsgathered closer to Fegan. And more often than before, those shadowsturned to faces and bodies and arms and legs. Now they were aconstant, and he couldn’t remember when he last slept without firstdrowning them in whiskey.They’d been with him since his last weeks in the Maze prison, alittle over seven years ago. He’d just been given his release date,printed on a sheet of paper in a sealed envelope, and his mouth wasdry when he opened it. The politicians on the outside had bartered forhis freedom, along with hundreds more men and women. They calledpeople like him political prisoners. Not murderers or thieves, notextortionists or blackmailers. Not criminals of any kind, just victimsof circumstance. The followers were there when Fegan looked upfrom the letter, watching.He told one of the prison psychologists about it. Dr. Brady said itwas guilt. A manifestation, he called it. Fegan wondered why peopleseldom called things by their real names.McKenna pulled the Mercedes into the curb outside Fegan’s smallterraced house on Calcutta Street. It stood shoulder to shoulder withtwo dozen identical red-brick boxes, drab and neat. The followerswaited on the pavement.“Can I come in for a second?” McKenna’s smile sparkled in thecar’s interior lighting, and kind lines arced out from around his eyes.“Better to talk inside, eh?”Fegan shrugged and climbed out.The twelve parted to let him approach his door. He unlocked it andwent inside, McKenna following, the twelve slipping in between.Fegan headed straight for the sideboard where a bottle of Jameson’sand a jug of water awaited him. He showed McKenna the bottle.“No, thanks,” McKenna said. “Maybe you shouldn’t, either.”Fegan ignored him, pouring two fingers of whiskey into a glass andthe same of water. He took a deep swallow and extended his handtowards a chair.“No, I’m all right,” McKenna said. His hair was well barbered, hisskin tanned and smooth, a scar beneath his left eye the only remainderof his old self.The twelve milled around the sparsely furnished room, mergingwith and diverging from the shadows, studying each man intently.The boy lingered by McKenna’s side as the politician went to theunstrung guitar propped in the corner. He picked it up and turned itin the light.xa0“Since when did you play guitar?” McKenna asked.“I don’t,” Fegan said. “Put it down.”McKenna read the label inside the sound hole. “Martin. Looks old.What’s it doing here?”“It belonged to a friend of mine. I’m restoring it,” Fegan said. “Putit down.”“What friend?”“Just someone I knew inside. Please. Put it down.”McKenna set it back in the corner. “It’s good to have friends,Gerry. You should value them. Listen to them.”“What’d you want to talk about?” Fegan lowered himself into a chair.McKenna nodded at the drink in Fegan’s hand. “About that, forone thing. It’s got to stop, Gerry.”Fegan held the politician’s eyes as he drained the glass.“People round here look up to you. You’re a Republican hero. Theyoung fellas need a role model, someone they can respect.”“Respect? What are you talking about?” Fegan put the glass on thecoffee table. The chill of condensation clung to his palm and he let hishands slide together, working the moisture over his knuckles andbetween his fingers. “There’s no respecting what I’ve done.”McKenna’s face flushed with anger. “You did your time. You werea political prisoner for twelve years. A dozen years of your life given upfor the cause. Any Republican should respect that.” His expressionsoftened. “But you’re pissing it away, Gerry. People are starting tonotice. Every night you’re at the bar, drunk off your face, talking toyourself.”“I’m not talking to myself.” Fegan went to point at the followers,but thought better of it.“Then who are you talking to?” McKenna’s voice wavered with anexasperated laugh.“The people I killed. The people we killed.”“Watch your mouth, Gerry. I never killed anybody.”Fegan met McKenna’s blue eyes. “No, the likes of you andMcGinty were always too smart to do it yourselves. You used mugslike me instead.”McKenna folded his arms across his barrel chest. “Nobody’s handsare clean.”“What else?” Fegan asked. “You said ‘for one thing’. What else doyou want?”McKenna circled the room, the boy following, and Fegan had totwist in his chair to keep him in sight. “I need to know what you toldthat woman,” McKenna said.“Nothing,” Fegan said. “I’m not much of a talker. You know that.”“No, you’re not. But a reliable source tells me the cops are going tostart digging up the bogs near Dungannon in the next few days.Round about where we buried that boy. His mother told them whereto look.” McKenna moved to the center of the room and loomed overFegan. “Now, how did she know that, Gerry?”“Does it matter?” Fegan asked. “Jesus, there’ll be nothing left ofhim. It’s been more than twenty years.”“It matters,” McKenna said. “If you open your mouth, you’re atout. And you know what happens to touts.”Fegan tightened his fingers on the chair’s armrests.McKenna leaned down, his hands on his thighs. “Why, Gerry?Why’d you tell her? What good did you think it’d do?”Fegan searched for a lie, anything, but found nothing. “I thoughtmaybe he’d leave me alone,” he said.“What?” McKenna straightened.“I thought he’d go,” Fegan said. He looked at the boy aiming hisfingers at McKenna’s head. “I thought he’d leave me alone. Give mesome peace.”McKenna took a step back. “Who? The boy?”“But that wasn’t what he wanted.”“Christ, Gerry.” McKenna shook his head. “What’s happened toyou? Maybe you should see a doctor, you know, get straight. Go awayfor a while.”Fegan looked down at his hands. “Maybe.”“Listen.” McKenna put a hand on Fegan’s shoulder. “My sourcetalks only to me, nobody else. You’ve been a good friend to me overthe years, and that’s the only reason I haven’t gone to McGinty withthis. If he knew you opened your mouth to that auld doll, it’s yourbody the cops would be looking for.”Fegan wanted to jerk his shoulder away from McKenna’s hand. Hesat still.“Of course, I might need you to return the favor. There’s work Icould put your way. I’ve a few deals going on, stuff McGinty isn’t inon. If you can stay off the drink, get yourself right, you could be a bighelp to me. And McGinty doesn’t need to know what you said to thatboy’s mother.”Fegan watched the boy’s face contort as the other shadows gatheredaround him.“Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Gerry?”“Yes,” Fegan said.“Good man.” McKenna smiled.Fegan stood. “I need a piss.”McKenna stepped back and said, “Don’t be long.”Fegan made his way up the stairs and into the bathroom. He closedand bolted the door but, as always, the followers found their way in.Except the boy. Fegan paid it little mind, instead concentrating onkeeping upright while he emptied his bladder. He had long sincegotten used to the twelve witnessing his most undignified moments.He flushed, rinsed his hands under the tap, and opened the door.The boy was there, on the landing, waiting for him. He stared into thedarkness of Fegan’s bedroom.Fegan stood for a moment, confused, as his temples buzzed and thechill pulsed at his center.The boy pointed into the room.“What?” Fegan asked.The boy bared his teeth, and his skinny arm jerked towards thedoor.“All right,” Fegan said. He walked to his bedroom, glancing backover his shoulder.The boy followed him into the darkness and kneeled at the foot ofthe bed. He pointed underneath.Fegan got to his hands and knees and peered under the bedstead.Thin light leaking in from the landing showed the old shoebox hiddenthere.He raised his head, questioning. The boy nodded.Fegan could just reach it if he stretched. He pulled it towardshimself. Something heavy shifted inside as it moved, and Fegan’s heartquickened. He removed the lid and was met by the greasy smell ofmoney. Rolls of banknotes were bundled in here, twenties, fifties,hundreds. Fegan didn’t know how much. He’d never counted it.But there was something else, something cold and black lying halfconcealedin the paper. Something Fegan didn’t want in his hand. Inthe semi-darkness his eyes found the boy’s.“No,” Fegan said.The boy stabbed at the object with his finger.“No.” The word felt watery on Fegan’s tongue.The boy’s mouth gaped, his hands grabbing clumps of hair. Beforethe scream could come, Fegan reached in and lifted the Walther P99from its nest.A grin blossomed on the boy’s face, his teeth glinting. He mimedthe act of pulling back the slide assembly to chamber the first round.Fegan looked from the boy to the pistol and back again. The boynodded. Fegan drew back the slide, released it, hearing the snick-snickof oiled parts moving together. The gun was solid in his grasp, like theshake of an old friend’s hand.The boy smiled, stood, and walked towards the landing.Fegan stared down at the Walther. He had bought it a few weeksafter leaving the Maze, just for protection, and it only came out of thebox for cleaning. His fingertip found the trigger curled inside theguard.The boy waited in the doorway.Fegan got to his feet and followed him to the stairs. The boydescended, the lean grace of his body seemingly untouched by thelight below.Fegan began the slow climb downward. An adrenal surge stirreddark memories, voices long silenced, faces like bloodstains. The otherscame behind, sharing glances with one another. As he reached thebottom, he saw McKenna’s back. The politician studied the oldphotograph of Fegan’s mother, the one that showed her young andpretty in a doorway.The boy crossed the room and again played out the execution of theman who had taken him apart with a claw hammer more than twentyyears ago.Fegan’s heart thundered, his lungs heaved. Surely McKenna wouldhear.The boy looked to Fegan and smiled.Fegan asked, “If I do it, will you leave me alone?”The boy nodded.“What?” McKenna put the framed picture down. He turned to thevoice and froze when he saw the gun aimed at his forehead.“I can’t do it here.”The boy’s smile faltered.“Not in my house. Somewhere else.”The smile returned.“Jesus, Gerry.” McKenna gave a short, nervous laugh as he held hishands up. “What’re you at?”“I’m sorry, Michael. I have to.”McKenna’s smile fell away. “I don’t get it, Gerry. We’re friends.”“We’re going to get into your car.” The clarity crackled in Fegan’shead. For the first time in months his hand did not shake.McKenna’s mouth twisted. “Like fuck we are.”“We’re going to get into your car,” Fegan repeated. “You in thefront, me in the back.”“Gerry, your head’s away. Put the gun down before you dosomething you’ll regret.”Fegan stepped closer. “The car.”McKenna reached out. “Now, come on, Gerry. Let’s just calmdown a second, here, all right? Why don’t you give that to me, and I’llput it away. Then we’ll have a drink.”“I won’t say it again.”“No messing, Gerry, let me have it.”McKenna went to grab the gun, but Fegan pulled his hand away.He brought it back to aim at the center of McKenna’s forehead.“You always were a mad cunt.” McKenna kept his eyes on him ashe went to the door. He opened it and stepped out onto the street. Helooked left and right, right and left, searching for a witness. When hisshoulders slumped, Fegan knew there was no one. This was not thekind of street where curtains twitched.The Merc’s locking system sensed the key was in range, whirringand clunking as McKenna approached.“Open the back door,” Fegan said.McKenna did as he was told.“Now get in the front and leave the door open till I’m inside.”Fegan kept the Walther trained on McKenna’s head until he wasseated at the steering wheel.Fegan slid into the back, careful not to touch the leather upholsterywith his bare hands. He used a handkerchief to pull the door closed.Tom had seen him leave with the politician, so his prints around thefront passenger seat didn’t matter. McKenna sat quite still with hishands on the wheel.“Now close the door and go.”The Merc’s big engine rumbled into life, and McKenna pulledaway. Fegan took one glance from the back window and saw thetwelve watching from the pavement. The boy stepped out onto theroad and waved.Fegan lay down flat in the cloaking shadows. He pressed the gun’smuzzle against the back of the driver’s seat, exactly where McKenna’sheart would be, if he’d ever had one. Read more