Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

There was a moment’s stunned silence, the air ringing. Then Grainne gulped and began to sob. I stepped across the table, Bear’s body, the pool of blood seeping black into the carpet. Cocked the.38 and aimed at Finn’s face.

‘Harry …’

His face the colour of buttermilk. No shit-don’t-matter grin now, just those wide blue eyes filled with the horror of extinction.

‘Jesus, Harry, I didn’t know the kid was in the fucking car .’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Mr Rigby.’ Saoirse, sounding hoarse now, realising there was no fee to be paid, no more buying to be done. ‘Surely we can discuss this like-’

‘No.’ Except I was feeling it now, the sick burn, the anticipation of the jolt in my wrist, seeing Finn’s eyes widen in agony, then dull, go lifeless.

My gorge rising at the prospect.

‘An eye for an eye, Finn. It’s how it is.’

She came up off the couch with a strangled bellow, dragging the SIG free from where she’d tucked it between the cushion and the couch’s arm. The Iron Queen, raging as the pillars collapsed and the chunks of masonry went tumbling all about.

I put one in her upper chest, knocked her sprawling back the way she’d come, then swung backhanded, the.38’s butt catching Finn high on the side of the head as he drove out of the armchair. Not a brutal blow, but enough to deflect him wide, so that he head-butted my hip and sent me staggering backwards. His arms around my thighs now, trying to heave me over the coffee table. I got a good grip on the.38 and drove it down into the nape of his neck, the top of his spine, and after that he didn’t do an awful lot of anything much.

It was only then I realised the ringing in my ears wasn’t a ringing at all, but Grainne, eyes closed, arms still wrapped around her shins, screaming into her knees.

‘Shut that fucking noise now ,’ I told her. She didn’t even hear me. I hunkered down beside Finn, put the muzzle of the.38 to the back of his head, told him how it was going to be. Took a handful of shirt-collar and dragged him to his feet, pushed him towards the French windows. ‘Some kind of dispute over money, I’d say,’ I told him. ‘She wouldn’t cut you in, you blew a hole in her, couldn’t live with yourself. You know the drill, right?’

I pulled the doors open, shoved him outside. He stumbled up against the low wall, almost tipped over. I reached and dragged him back, got him steady.

‘Step up,’ I said.

‘Harry …’

‘Step fucking up or I blow a hole in Grainne too.’

Still stunned, blinking heavily, it took him three attempts to stand up on the low wall. Below, maybe forty metres straight down, the surf rolled in to break on the jagged jaws of the rocks.

He straightened, wobbled a little. Then he found himself and tensed into a crouch. A crippled kind of grace.

One last dive. One final delicious falling away from the world and all in it.

‘Harry,’ he whispered.

‘Yeah?’

‘All I ever wanted,’ he whispered but that was as far as he got. The vocal cords tend to give up the ghost pretty quick when a bullet punches through the side of a man’s skull.

He turned end over end twice before bouncing off an outcrop and pinwheeling into the surf.

‘Bell jars away, motherfucker.’

I shuffled back in from the balcony hollowed out and ready to drop. Preparing a little speech for Grainne, how she’d be needing her passport and a big wide smile for Maria whenever she tracked her down in Cyprus, this presuming she was interested, given her piss-poor experience to date, in trying the whole family malarkey again.

Too blitzed to realise the screaming had stopped.

She was gone.

Yeah, and I needed to be gone too. One last thing to do.

So I dragged myself down the long hallway, past the gallery of staring eyes. Out the front door and down the steps.

The Rav4 was gone, but there was still enough cars out front, and plenty enough petrol to be siphoned off. A jerry can in the boot of the Land Cruiser.

I made three trips, splashed the petrol through the hallway, the drawing room, the living room. Smashed some bottles of brandy.

Stinking of petrol and cordite and blood.

Back out to the steps, where I rolled a cigarette and got it sparked, tossed the Zippo in through the open door. Then I went down the steps and across the manicured lawn and took a pew on the rim of the fountain, watched the flames take hold. Panes cracking, glass splintering.

The smoke in one hand, tasting foul. The.38 in the other, and it probably wouldn’t taste any better.

Something blew deep in the bowels of the house, a generator maybe, and a million sparks went rocketing off towards the stars, heading back home, and as they glowed and dissipated and faded away I conceded that it didn’t really matter either way if I ate the gun or sat on that fountain rim for the millions of years it would take the sun to go cold and wink out, because life was nothing but a pointless bloody farce, just this impossibly brief flaring between being nothing and dead matter, everyone who ever lived just a constellation of atoms stuck together for long enough to realise it’s just that bit too aware for its own good, and how it didn’t really matter, not when you lean back and have a good long look up into that endless night, that Ben had only lived twelve years instead of surviving to shamble into a hole in the ground, deranged and broken, leaking sticky stuff from every orifice that counted.

But even if it all meant nothing I still wasn’t entitled to put myself away. Didn’t have the right. I could point the finger at Finn or Saoirse Hamilton or Gillick or anyone else I chose, it didn’t change the fact that it was my fault Ben was dead. And the very least I owed him was to live with that, to suffer that torment.

The Grange was burning so hard now my skin felt singed. The roar of the flames so loud that it took me a second or two to realise the phone was ringing.

Herb.

‘Yeah?’

‘Harry? Where are you?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Listen, Harry.’ Maybe my hearing was still off from my eardrums being blasted by the.38, or maybe it was the popping and crackling from the house. But he sounded different, something choking his throat. ‘Dee rang, there’s been a development with Ben.’

A surge of irrational hope. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. She said, uh, fair warning, she’s filing charges against you, reckless endangerment, some shit like that.’

‘Aye, right.’

‘Harry, maybe you should, y’know, take off.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘If you need anything, let me know. I can bring it anywhere.’

‘Appreciate that, Herb. I’ll be in touch.’

I hung up and heard her coming, the angry whine of an engine in reverse, then the crunch of gravel as she emerged from the trees. A gear-change, and the Rav4 came roaring around the fountain, braking hard, the tyres spitting stones.

The.38 like an anchor in my hand.

I thought she might come on raging about how someone had parked a Saab across the road, boxed her in. Instead she simply opened the door and stepped out onto the gravel.

She was her mother’s daughter, alright.

The ice-blue eyes, the iron will. The SIG pointing at my chest, both hands braced on the butt.

‘Just put it down,’ she said softly. ‘Just let it go.’

The.38 hit the grass with a muffled clunk.

She’d played me from the start. Letting me think she was a crazy, scared kid. Because we’ve all seen the same movies, haven’t we? Read the same books.

Grainne Hamilton was seventeen going on seventy and about as crazy scared as a marble slab.

Not once did she glance at the blazing house.