The Dead Yard (27 page)

"Fuck you. And I told you, I already have a boyfriend," she screams and runs to the
rowboat.

"What are you doing?"

"I’m going back to Plum Island," she shouts, launching the boat into the surf.

"Wait a minute," I yell, struggling to my feet and running after her. She jumps aboard and
rows away from the beach. The wind has dropped but it’s raining again.

"Come back. It’s not safe."

"Fuck you. I can do this in my sleep. Go to hell," she yells, pulling away from the shore in
broad, confident strokes.

I try a different approach.

"But how am I going to get back?"

"Walk back."

"How?"

"Follow the Merrimack and you’ll eventually come to Newburyport and then…" but I can’t hear
her anymore. I wave to her and wait to see if she’ll come back, but she doesn’t and soon she’s
way out in the channel, a disappearing speck in the gray waves.

Shit.

I watch until I’m sure she’s safe, and when she lands the boat on the Plum Island shore I pull
my hood up and begin the long walk back to town.

Four or five bloody miles by the looks of it.

"Women. Jesus," I mutter to myself.

No, not women, girls. That was the bloody problem. Stupid teenage, know-nothing wee girl.

Fuming, I walk over the dunes and out of the state park.

Back on Route 1 again. This awful bloody road. This bloody state, these bloody people. Should
have asked her about her real ma again; that always sets her off. Give her something to be really
pissed about.

’Course it’s raining, too. Typical.

I stick my thumb out but not a single person gives me a lift.

I finally reach the bridge over the Merrimack and trudge across it into Newburyport. When I
get into the center of town, I’m still fuming. A bloody cocktease, that girl, she knows what
she’s doing. Wee hoor. Beeatch, with a capital
B
. Have to wonder about anyone with the
taste to go out with Jackie in the first place. No sense at all.

I walk past the police station, the ice-cream shops, and the theater showing
Cats.

The Firehouse, Water Street, State Street. I stop outside All Things Brit.

The Closed sign is in the window but it’s only seven o’clock. It usually stays open till eight
or nine. I try the handle. It doesn’t turn. Maybe she went down to Boston to get my pardons and
the forms for my money. Come on, Samantha, I could do with a cup of hot tea.

I open the letter box and shout through it:

"Hello, is there anyone home? Hello?"

No answer.

Aye, she’s gone. Probably bloody bird-watching in Maine. That’s exactly the kind of support
you need when you’re an undercover on a dangerous assignment.

Another silly woman.

"Hello, is there anyone home?" I try for the final time.

I’m about to go when I see a shadow appear at the bottom of the stairs.

"Hello? Who is that?" I shout again.

The shadow walks towards me.

It’s Touched.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

He opens the door.

"No, the more pertinent and important question is what are
you
doing here?" he asks,
pointing a silenced 9mm at me.

"I came to get some chocolate for Kit," I tell him.

"Is that so?" he says suspiciously, closing the door behind me.

"Uh-huh. We had a bit of a fight."

"You often shout into the letter box of closed stores? Eh?"

"The wee lady who runs the place told me she’s open till nine every day," I say.

His face is cold. His eyes are the color of granite slabs cut for tombstones.

"How well do you know this wee lady?" he asks in a voice with no emotion.

"Seamus, Jackie, and I were in here yesterday and Kit took me in here once to get clotted
cream," I say as calmly as I can, for I realize now that he’s killed her. That somehow he’s found
her out. But she didn’t tell him anything. I know that because I’d be dead too by now, or if not
dead, shot in both kneecaps and being dragged screaming to the back room to be tortured lovingly
and long.

"Aye, I remember that. Well, you better come see this," Touched says.

"What’s the gun for?" I ask him.

"Excuse me, Sean, but I’m going to have to watch you very closely for the next couple of days.
Too many wee things happening at once. Suspicious, so it is, very fucking suspicious. Last night
going wrong like that and now this."

"What are you talking about?"

"Something has come up, Sean," he says soberly.

"Like what?"

"Upstairs with me and you’ll see. You first, mate," he says.

I walk up the stairs.

I can smell the blood from the second step.

On the landing, at the top, I turn right and walk into her bedroom. She has been gagged and
tied naked to the bed. Her eyes have been cut out of their sockets and she has been slit open
from her vagina to her throat.

But not deeply, not enough to kill her straightaway.

Blood is everywhere. On the sheets, on the walls, even on the skylight. There is still a
scalpel blade embedded in her thigh and Touched’s little green toolbox is open between her legs.
It’s not a toolbox at all, but is in fact a dissection kit. His instruments: knives, scalpels,
retractors, covered with skin and gore—well used.

My knees buckle and I throw up in my mouth.

"Oh God," I say.

"She was smart," Touched says. "She had no paperwork of any kind. And she denied everything,
right to the end."

"What the fuck have you done? Who is she?" I manage.

"She’s been spying on us. I’d seen her twice. I’m always watching for new people. I wasn’t
sure, though. Even tonight. I just wasn’t sure and for a while I thought I’d made a mistake."

He laughs.

"Jesus, yeah, thought I’d really fucked up and she was just a dumb tourist, nosing around the
biggest house on the island. I really thought that."

"What are you talking about?"

"I was on my way to Portsmouth and I saw that big Jag parked outside the shop here, and when I
came in to see who owned it I saw her. First thing that bothered me was that I was smoking a
cigarette and she didn’t ask me to put it out. No Smoking signs everywhere and she didn’t ask me
to put out me fag. Why?"

He looked at me. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He wanted me to think about it.

"I don’t know, Touched."

"Why? I’ll tell you fucking why. Because I’d put the wind up her, thrown her, she was afraid
of me. Why would she be afraid of me when she doesn’t even know me? Aye, Sean, I can smell it,
you know. Fear. I can fucking taste it."

"I’m sure."

"Aye. So that was the first thing. And so then I asked her about herself. And it turns out
she’s only been here a week or two and she’s British. Ask her all these questions and she doesn’t
say ’Stop wasting my time’ or ’Are you going to buy something?’ Ever see a shopkeeper who just
wants to chat? She gave herself away, mate. She was too friendly. Overcompensating. And I
realized I’d have to probe this further."

"Christ. You killed her because she was polite to you?"

Touched smiles sadly and pats me on the back, all the while keeping the gun pointing at my
belly. He runs a gloved hand through his hair and grins, licks the blood from his lips.

"Aye, Sean, for a while there this evening I thought I’d made a mistake. Tied her up, gagged
her, had my way with her, searched the place. Nothing, fucking nothing. And really that was
another mistake. I mean, everybody has to have some personal stuff. Driver’s license, passport,
library card, letters, anything. And she had nothing."

I shake my head.

"But fortunately, Sean, my instincts were right. At the very end, at the very fucking end, I
take the gag off her, and she’s hurting, oh yeah, she’s hurting and she begs me to finish it,
begs me. She says, and this is the kicker, Sean, ’Please, Touched, kill me, just kill me,’"
Touched repeats, his eyebrows raising in a look of triumph.

"I don’t get it," I tell him.

"No one calls me Touched. Except Gerry and the Sons of Cuchulainn and the lads back home. She
was FBI, Sean, or a British agent working for the FBI."

"You sure?"

"I’m sure. And that’s why I don’t like to see you shouting through the letter box as if you
and her are best pals. And that’s why we’re all going to have to split town for a while. Get rid
of this bitch. Switch to plan B like Gerry says. This is when they’ll be least expecting it. What
do you think?"

"I don’t know," I say, reeling.

"Yeah, well, whatever we do I’m going to have to keep an eye on you, mate. Very close eye," he
says with a grim face.

"I met this woman twice in my whole fucking life," I protest.

Touched nods sympathetically.

"Sean, put yourself in my shoes. You just can’t be too careful."

"I know her about as well as Kit and Jackie know her," I say.

"Aye, but they have several years of trust in the bank with me. You have less than a week. And
a bad week at that."

I catch his eye and nod.

"You’re right. I’d do the same thing myself."

He grins.

"You’re a good lad. At least I hope for your sake you are."

And we stand for a moment and stare at the bed. And suddenly I notice her chest moving up and
down.

"She’s still alive," I gasp in horror.

"Aye, but not for long now," Touched says clinically.

He’s right.

She has bled all over the floor.

Her cheeks dead white, her teeth smashed in, the breath exhaling from her body in frothy
bubbles of crimson blood.

There’s nothing I can do and anyway he has the gun.

But if you can hear me, Samantha, if you can hear me, hear me.

"If you’re wrong about this, Touched, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes."

He looks at me to see if I’m threatening him, but my face is expressionless, blank. He lets it
go and I watch her breaths grow fainter and fainter until they finally stop.

Death has ten thousand ways.

And in the minute it takes Samantha to pass, I imagine that, on Earth, about a thousand other
human beings are making that mysterious transition from life to lifelessness. Still, Touched is a
master of this art. Touched is Death’s apprentice. True, there are old people in Buenos Aires who
for a time in the 1940s were killing tens of thousands every day; and there are men in Cambodia
and Rwanda who have personally slaughtered hundreds with their own hands. He will never match
those individuals in terms of body counts. He doesn’t need to. He’s a specialist. Quick and
lethal or slow, dreadful, and terrifying. With Samantha he took his time. An hour or two, perhaps
longer. He tortured her, horribly, and there can be few alive who take such pride in the pain
they inflict in the commission of their work.

And a coup for him. A British agent. A woman agent.

Sweet.

I lean on the wall to steady myself.

Breathe in, exhale. Breathe in, let it all go.

And then the fear begins to leave me and I open my eyes to memorize the scene. The tiny
precise cuts all over her body. The eyes. The smell.

Aye. One thing, Touched. You can’t know that I also am a favored son. That I, too, have
welcomed many into the arms of Death.

Oh yes.

Let me look at you. You’re calm, relaxed, confident.

It’ll be a match, you and me, we brothers of the sword.

On that day of reckoning.

Put down that gun and you’ll have it now.

He doesn’t move.

But that’s fine, Touched.

You’re already dead. Here, in this room, as we live and breathe, and as you stare at me with
distrust in those granite eyes, and I look back to you, a cipher, I vow to meet you in an unfair
fight and spare no quarter and butcher you and cut you down.

Aye, my friend.

Joyfully, with mine own hand, will I despoil your corpse and throw your tattered carcass onto
that black barge that Death steers into the silent sea, from which none return. The day
will
come.

And it can’t come soon enough.

Touched pulled down the blinds and dimmed the lights, all the while, casually, keeping me in
eyeline, his itchy trigger finger pointing the 9mm at my chest.

Big-eyed, bloody, his face a sunburned brown, his disordered graying hair a grisly crown of
pride. He was pleased with himself. Happy.

He looked at the body.

"Aye, she’s dead now, Sean. You ever seen someone die before?"

I shook my head.

"No, I suppose not. Ok. Well, it’s only a first step. The night’s not over yet. You’re about
to get a valuable learning experience," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked, keeping the lid on the pressure cooker.

"Clean up. Have you touched anything since you came upstairs?"

"You know I haven’t, I’ve just been standing here," I said.

"And I was wearing these for most of the evening," Touched said, showing me his black silk
gloves.

"I see," I said.

"Sit down on that stool and don’t do anything for a minute," Touched ordered.

I sat down. Touched pulled out his mobile phone and speed-dialed a number.

"Aye, Gerry, it’s me…. Yeah, I took care of it. I’ll want you to come by with Jackie, and
we’ll get rid of her. Bring plastic sheets, that big sail bag, cleaning supplies, and overalls….
Nah, no problems…. Listen, mate, interesting sidelight, young Sean showed up looking to buy
chocolate biscuits. He was shouting through her letter box. I’m not sure if I like it. There’s a
chance that she was the FBI agent on the outside and he’s the inside man, so we’re going to have
to watch him, interrogate him. I think he’s kosher, he’s a good lad, but you know me, Gerry,
fucking caution is my middle name…. Aye. Listen, the sooner the two of you get over here the
better. You best tell the family we’re going to have to go up to the cabin, especially if you
still want to do plan B…. Aye, until all of this cools down…. Ok, see you, mate."