Nelligan took his cue and kicked O'Neill viciously in the
stomach before pinning him to the ground with his knee
and punching the stump of his severed arm repeatedly. He
seemed oblivious to O'Neill's screams and looked only to
Kell to find renewed vigour in his master's approval.
O'Neill's agony ended mercifully in unconsciousness. He
was no longer in Cladeen. He was sixteen years old and leaning on a fence at the farm in Valeena where he and the
family had spent their last summer holiday together. The
sun was shining and the grass was green. He could feel the warmth of it on his back as he waited for Maureen, the girl
from the village, to come across the field. He could see her;
she was wearing the white dress that he liked so much and
her hair was bouncing on her shoulders as she moved. She
was smiling and her eyes were filled with the frankness of
young love. God, it was so good to be young and in love.
Life was so good, so full of
...
icy-cold wetness and
pain . . . excruciating pain.
'He's coming round,' said Nelligan after dousing O'Neill
with cold water.
'Give him more of the same,' spat Kell.
'Stop it! This is what you want!' said Kathleen coming in
through the door. She threw the letter at Kell and pushed
Nelligan out of the way to kneel down beside her brother.
She cradled his head in her arms and said, I'm sorry, I couldn't bear what they were doing to you.'
'You always were around to wipe my nose,' gasped
O'Neill through his pain.
Nelligan moved in to separate them but first looked to
Kell for approval. Kell dismissed the notion as being unim
portant with an impatient wave of his hand and returned to being engrossed in the letter. Nelligan stood back to watch
as Kathleen continued to administer to O'Neill's needs.
Reagan and the other man returned from their fruitless
search for Kathleen and stood sheepishly by while Kell
continued to read, fully expecting to receive the brunt of
Kell's wrath when he was ready. Instead The Bairn rem
ained fully preoccupied with something else. There was
silence in the room while Kell, having finished reading,
stared into space for a long time. After a while he suddenly
appeared to become aware of the others in the room again and smiled. 'Well, well, well,' he said softly. 'So our int
ellectual friend wasn't lying after all. I think we owe him
an apology, Nelligan.'
Nelligan grinned unsurely.
'Take them to the Long House,' Kell snapped.
Reagan led out Kathleen and O'Neill at gun-point. Kell
did not bother to look up as they passed for he was deep in
thought again.
'Are we going back too, Mr Kell?' asked Nelligan
cautiously when he and Kell were alone.
'No,' replied Kell. 'I want to speak with Harrigan in Eng
land. Get him on the phone.'
The meeting with the McGlynn brothers took place in the
Council Room at the Long House on Thursday. Nelligan and
Reagan and two others stood, stony-faced, behind Kell as
Dominic and Sean McGlynn were escorted into the
room with two of their henchmen in attendance.
'Good to see you, Finbarr,’ said Dominic McGlynn.
'And you, boys,’ replied Kell softly. ‘To what do we owe
the pleasure?'
'To come straight to the point, Finbarr, we've been
thinking that the time is right for us to bury our past
differences and join forces again.'
'And what brings you to that way of thinking?' asked Kell
evenly.
'O'Donnell's death,' said Sean McGlynn flatly. 'O'Donnell
was a man we could never get on with, but you, Finbarr,
well, you are different. We think alike. We know all this
political pissing around is useless. We should be giving the
British what they understand best.'
Kell stared at the McGlynns for a moment then his face
relaxed into a smile. 'Well, boys,' he said, 'it so happens,
you could not have come at a better time.'
The McGlynn brothers exchanged glances and visibly relaxed as did everyone else round the table. 'Whiskey for our guests, Nelligan,' said Kell.
'You sound as if you have something in mind, Finbarr?'
said Dominic McGlynn accepting his glass.
'Indeed I do,' smiled Kell. 'Listen carefully.'
When Kell had finished everyone tried to speak at once in an atmosphere that had become electric. Kell held up his
hand and the noise subsided.
'But have you checked it out?' asked Dominic McGlynn.
'Of course I've checked it out. What do you take me for?' snapped Kell.
'And?'
'The place is tighter than a drum. No one is saying any
thing but no one has seen him in the last three weeks.'
'Don't you have anyone on the inside?'
'A domestic. The official story is that we have made some
kind of death threat and that's the reason for the low profile.'
'But why didn't they ask the British for the money?'
asked Sean McGlynn.
Kell smiled and said, 'It's always easier to deal with
friends than enemies.'
Dominic McGlynn, who had been keeping quiet, said
softly, 'If we had him we could bargain for anything we
wanted.'
'Exactly,' said Kell.
'Where do we come in?' asked Sean McGlynn.
'Money,' said Kell. 'You boys have always had to make
your own arrangements for "funding".' Kell paused and
smiled.
‘
The banks?'
‘
The banks,' agreed Kell.
'But we could never get that much,' said Dominic
McGlynn.
'No,' replied Kell, 'But I was thinking, if you were to hit
four banks simultaneously you could get quite a bit.'
'Four?' protested McGlynn. That would stretch us to our
limit. It would need every man we had in the field at the
same time.'
‘
This is going to stretch all of us to our limit,' said Kell.
'And what are your men going to do?' asked Sean
McGlynn.
Kell shook his head and said, 'We've lost O'Donnell, and
O'Neill has turned out to be a traitor. We're in a mess. The
best we can do at the moment is to create a diversion for you
boys, if you let me have the details.'
'Where are you going to get the bulk of the money?'
asked Dominic McGlynn.
‘
The Americans,' replied Kell.
'But they always keep a tight grip on the purse strings,'
argued McGlynn.
Kell nodded and said, 'Maybe this time I can persuade
them different.'
FIVE
It was raining when Avedissian arrived at
the hospital
and the wetness made the stonework black. The whole
building had an air of gloom about it. Avedissian picked his
way through a muddle of ambulances parked outside the
Accident and Emergency Unit and paused outside the swing
doors to shake the water from his coat before entering.
Once inside he stopped again at a barrage of directional
signs and found the one that he was looking for. It read, Dr
S. Harmon, Consultant. A & E.
The highly polished corridor led along past a waiting
room with perhaps twenty people inside and somewhere
nearby a child was crying loudly in defiance of a nurse and
its mother who were trying to pacify it. A teenage boy lay
on a trolley outside the X-Ray Department with his right
foot bare and a large swelling round his ankle. Nurses
moved quickly to and fro across the corridor, their feet
squeaking on the linoleum.
Avedissian came to the door he was looking for and
knocked once. He understood a muffled sound from within
to be an invitation to enter and stepped inside.
Harmon turned out to be a thin man in his forties with jet black hair which gave him a very dark beard shadow. He
looked at Avedissian over half-framed glasses and released
the 'record' button of the dictation machine he had been
using. 'Yes?' he asked.
'I'm Gillibrand,’ said Avedissian.
'Sit down. I'll be with you in a moment.'
Avedissian found the man's tone neutral and difficult to analyse. In it he detected neither friendliness nor hostility,
He sat down and looked across to the window while
Harmon finished dictating his letter, not that there was
much to see for the view comprised the building next door.
An occasional figure passed the window opposite and by the
time Harmon had finished recording Avedissian had
counted two nurses, and three patients wearing dressing-
gowns.
'. . . We would therefore anticipate a degree of stiffness
in the joint for some time to come. Yours etc.' Click.
'Welcome to Belfast,' said Harmon accepting the documen
tation that Avedissian handed to him. He flicked through it briefly then tossed it into the wire tray on the corner of his
desk. 'I know you're not Gillibrand,’ he said. 'This twaddle
is for administration,' he added, nodding to the paperwork.
Avedissian could now feel the animosity in the air.
‘
I’ll be perfectly frank with you,' said Harmon. 'I resent
outside interests telling me how I should staff my de
partment. I resent it deeply.'
'I can understand that,' said Avedissian.
'In Belfast we get the kind of cases that haven't been seen
since Korea. I've got a waiting list a mile long of doctors who
want to work here and I land up with a registrar who hasn't
seen a casualty department since medical school.'
Avedissian stayed silent while the lecture continued.
'I don't know why you’re here, Gillibrand
'Neither do I,' interrupted Avedissian who was beginning
to tire of being dressed down by a man who, but for circum
stances, would have been his peer rather than his superior.
'Are you serious?' asked Harmon.
'Yes.'
Harmon let out a long sigh and said, 'God, how I'm sick of
secrets and intrigue and . . .' His hands sought the air as he
searched for words. 'Charades. Some days I can't move for men
in grey suits hiding behind plastic ID cards.'
'What do you mean?' asked Avedissian.
‘
For the past month every A & E unit in the province has had an ‘intelligence presence.'
'I would have thought that normal under the circumstances,'
replied Avedissian.
'Oh, I don't mean just the usual police interest in who's
coming and going. There’s something else going on. Some
thing has happened, or is about to happen, and they're
listening. I've no idea what it is they're after and I don't think I
want to know. I just wish that they would stay out of my road.'
'Maybe it's connected with O'Donnell's death,' suggested
Avedissian. They could be listening for information about the
new hierarchy.'
Harmon nodded and said, That might have been true but for
the fact that this all started before O'Donnell died. But as you
have brought up the subject I suppose you know that we are all
sitting on a powder keg?'