Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

In two minutes, I don’t hear the fire alarm, I don’t hear anything, I’m on big empty streets going anywhere. A fire truck shoots past me heading for the Eastman Ballroom.

I ride through the unfamiliar landscape of northeast Denver until I come to a bus stop. I ditch the bike, I get the bus to the airport bus stop.

I take the airport bus to Denver International.

That big teepee structure. The windows. The sun behind the Rocky Mountains. The blue sky. The stars. I queue up at the British Airways desk. I get my boarding card for the direct flight from Denver to London.

I find the toilet and throw up. I wash my face. I smack the hand dryer off the wall. What a disaster. What a terrible balls-up. I go to the gate.

I get on the plane. Sit in my seat. The plane idles for a long time, gets delayed, loses its place in the queue. The captain explains why. Something mechanical. We wait. My heart going like a rivet gun. I bite my nails. We finally get another takeoff slot. The plane taxis, turns, roars down the runway. Lifts into the night, leaving behind the city, the plains, and, eventually, Newfoundland and then North America itself.

John’s body in the landfill in Aurora and Amber safe and alive. Unharmed, and as strong and as beautiful as ever.

Through the window it’s morning. Night slinking away over the lighthouse and the milk churns and the cliff path. The moon’s breath, cold, in the gray light that in the east they call the wolf’s tail.

Across the Irish Sea, the peak of Ailsa Craig and the hills of Galloway.

A line of yellow in the sky.

A smattering of vessels, fishing boats, tankers, and big container ships waiting for the pilot to guide them to the container docks of Belfast. Closer to the shore, a lobsterman, pulling nets, swearing so loud that you can actually hear him.

A man is coming up the road.

This isn’t my house. I’ve come here, to hide as best I can. Dad was useless as usual, but Mr. Patawasti suggested their cottage up the Antrim coast if I wanted a place to rest.

There is only one way to the house.

Along the cliff, around the lighthouse. Coming over the boggy fields would be a nightmare.

An assassin has to come up the one narrow road.

That’s the beauty of the thing.

And he’s here. I can’t tell if he’s being furtive. There isn’t enough light. But I can see him. Glimpses of him between the thorns and the blackberry and the bramble bushes. Walking fast. Not running. That’s how I’d come too. At dawn. In the half-light. I would never have spotted him but for the fact that all I do in my waking hours is look out at the sea, the cliffs, the path.

And now the decision.

There is a shotgun over the fireplace. I checked it as soon as I moved in. Twelve-gauge. Nice. Clean. For shooting foxes, badgers. A box of shells near the range. It would be easy to slip out the back, circle behind the cottage, and take him as soon as he gets to the front door. Easy.

And yet.

I sit here, the gun untouched, the shells untouched.

I’ll let him come, I say, and smile. Aye, I’ll welcome him.

For I have failed in everything.

The debacle in the Eastman Ballroom. I didn’t even fire my weapon. More than a dozen people injured, two nearly died, and, of course, Charles and Amber completely unharmed. More famous now than ever while an inquiry sorts out what on earth happened. No one really knows, but they think a security guard panicked and started shooting at a man he thought had a gun.

Charles has been on 20/20 and even Larry King, displacing for a moment the round-the-clock O. J. Simpson coverage. CAW’s profile has been raised a hundredfold. I couldn’t have given them a better gift. He’s a shoo-in for Congress, a rising star. He’s got a chance of running for governor or even being the balance on the GOP presidential ticket at some point in the future.

I have fucked up utterly, in all ways.

I fell in love with heroin, I fell out of love with truth. I was beguiled by a killer, smarter than me. I let down my old love, failed her, too, failed my friend.

So come, assassin.

I’ll wait here.

Come. And he does.

Who would they get to kill me? Would they have told the IRA that I was a senior police officer, or an independent drug dealer, something like that? The IRA, the UDA, it doesn’t matter. As long as they are efficient.

I look out the window. The Scottish coast, the ships, the birds, farther up the channel the barest outline of the Mull of Kintyre.

And the worst part is, the day I got back to Carrickfergus Mr. Patawasti had come around and thanked me. Congratulated me for a job well done. Dad had told him that I had helped Hector Martinez’s lawyer get him off. Mr. Patawasti had said that although I hadn’t found the person who killed their daughter, at least I’d helped set an innocent man free, got the police looking for the real killer.

I almost threw up.

I had to get out of there. Get up here. Where I would be safe. For a while. Until now. I suppose it was inevitable they would find me. Northern Ireland is a small place.

The assassin.

Closer. I can make out a few details now. He’s wearing a parka raincoat and a flat cap.

Breathing hard.

His breath curling into the morning air.

His footsteps heavy.

His gray face.

He opens the gate and walks to the house.

He knocks on the door.

Which is slightly unusual.

I open it.

“You’re a hard man to find, Lawson,” he says.

I recognize him at once. It’s Commander Douglas from the Samson Inquiry.

Not an assassin, then, but just as bad. As good as a gun. As good as a bullet in the brain. Just more complicated.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding for the last couple of months,” he says.

It’s more like a couple of weeks, but I don’t quibble with him. He sits in the chair by the window. Lights himself a cigarette. It doesn’t calm him down.

“Well, since you’ve no phone, I thought I’d drive up here myself and let you know. I wanted to see your fucking face. You’re just like every other paddy in this fucking country. Be in the papers tomorrow, Lawson, you’re off the fucking hook.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first question you should ask is how I found you.”

“How did you find me?”

“Broke into your house yesterday, found a letter your father was about to post, careless, very careless.”

He blew smoke aggressively in my face.

“You want to get me a drink?”

“There’s only water,” I said.

“Forget it then. Typical. Anyway, so you’re off the hook, Paddy, we won’t arrest you, and your own lads won’t kill you. You’re free as a fucking daisy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Only the collapse of the entire Samson investigation into the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Only thousands of man-hours of work and millions of pounds down the drain. Only the destruction of a good man. Not to mention a couple of dozen senior Northern Irish coppers getting away with graft of the most outrageous kind. I tell you, it’s no coincidence, I see the work of MI5 in all of this.”

“Yes, but what, how?” I asked, getting frustrated.

“Samson’s been arrested for fraud, criminal mischief, falsifying documents, and, get this, statutory rape. Apparently, Tony Samson’s casebook wasn’t as clean as we all thought. He just did things every other copper did, cutting a few corners here, losing papers there, you know, fitting up a few hoods who deserved it. He’s been arrested and the whole inquiry has of course collapsed, all the preliminary findings are suspect now, it’s all going to be scrapped. The PM has already said he wants this finished, we’ve been instructed to close our files and send them to the Home Office for permanent seizure, or at least until after the thirty-year rule releases them again to the public domain. Yes, Lawson, you might have to watch your back sometime around 2025, but until then…”