Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“Have you been to Maine before, Sean?” he asked when I gave him the water back.

“Nope,” I said, grunting between shovels.

“You’ll like it. Fall in the Maine woods is a truly beautiful experience. And I think the leaves just might be starting to turn when we get up there, although it’ll probably still be too early. We’ll see.”

We dug for another fifteen minutes. When Touched called a halt, I was relieved to see that there was room enough for only one body. We laid Samantha in her final resting place and threw in our overalls and Touched’s bloody clothes. When no one was looking, I put my cell phone in one of my gloves and dropped it in too, just in case they had the wit to check the call log. Now there was no link between me and her.

I made sure my shovel was the first to throw the dirt on her. It’s not an insult, it’s a blessing, I said to myself.

We filled in the hole quicker than we dug it. Touched stamped down the sand and put his hands on his hips, admiring a job well done.

He looked at Gerry.

“The old ways?” Touched asked.

“We got time?” Gerry replied.

“Aye,” Touched said. “Come on, lads.”

Touched unzipped his jeans, took out his penis, and began urinating on the grave. Gerry began unbuttoning his fly and I saw that this was an opportunity not to be missed. I unzipped my pants and unleashed a strong stream of urine onto the grave.

“Fucking bitch,” I muttered under my breath but loud enough for the boys to hear.

Gerry laughed and Touched nodded with satisfaction.

“Come on, Jack, you too,” Touched said.

Jackie took out his prick but he couldn’t pee. He wasn’t a bad sort, Jackie, and this was all just too much for him.

“I can’t go,” he said when the three of us were finishing up.

“Forget it, Jackie. It’s enough. We better get cracking,”Gerry said.

Touched grunted and took something out of his pocket.

“I’d be much obliged if you put these on, Sean,” Touched said, passing me a pair of handcuffs.

Jackie was incensed.

“Is that really necessary? For fucksake, he’s one of us,” he said.

“Jackie, you shut the fuck up now. I’m head of security here and I’ve already explained to Sean why I’m suspicious and he understands it.”

“I don’t mind, Jack,” I told him.

I zipped my pants and cuffed my hands in front of me. Touched checked that they were tight with a tug on both wrists that made me flinch with a momentary flash of terror, for now that I was safely restrained this was another occasion for an abrupt change of mood: screaming, yelling, kicking me to the ground…

But it didn’t happen.

“All right, job well done,” Gerry said.

We walked back to the van.

Gerry drove. He dropped Touched and me back at the house on PI and gave Jackie a lift back into town for his long hours ahead. Jackie would have to scour the place of blood and any clues that she’d met a violent end. Definitely an all-nighter. But at least he wouldn’t find a fax from the FBI or MI6 confirming Samantha’s request for a million dollars and a pardon from Spain and Mexico. She either hadn’t gotten round to asking for that yet, or, like the professional agent she was, she’d destroyed the note as soon as she’d gotten it.

“This way,” Touched said, leading me not to the guesthouse but instead to a basement room in the main house.

I was relieved. If I didn’t sufficiently convince Touched and this was to be my prison cell it would be ok. Eventually the FBI backups were bound to notice that Samantha was missing and they’d come looking for me; and if I was still alive they’d find me down here. Hopefully, before Touched had a chance to work his magic.

The dead channel of the TV casting a dismal glow out into the thick air of the musky room. The blinds drawn but sunlight filtering through the gaps, illuminating the dust spirals rising from the heat of the floor. Outside crickets and grasshoppers beginning their summer song and greenheads and biting flies waking from their nighttime slumber, ready for another day of greedy torment on the human population of the island.

Morning.

I was knackered, but Touched was exhausted too. He wasn’t up for this. Asking questions without torture, where was the fun in that? Harder than it looked.

He had sat me in a comfortable old leather reclining chair, but five hours with my right hand cuffed to the radiator and the worry that one slip would mean certain death was still a dark night of the bloody soul.

Touched yawned.

“Let’s go through this one more time,” he said, rubbing at the blear in his eyes.

He’d asked about random times in my life, what school I’d gone to, my teachers, where I’d shopped in Belfast, the names of various pubs. And of course he realized that if I was an Englishman or an American pretending to be an Irishman I was impossibly good. Still, that didn’t prove I wasn’t working for the FBI. He’d asked about every year of Sean’s life, asked names, contacts, addresses. But I’d broken the back of him in the wee smalls and after that his heart wasn’t in it.

Or at least so it appeared.

One thing you couldn’t do with Touched was underestimate him.

That was ok too. I was patient and I’d wait him out. I wanted to wait him out. I was in a dangerous place, but the moment I’d seen Samantha I’d made a decision. The mission had changed. It was no longer about money or the Sons of Cuchulainn. Touched had taken it into the realm of the personal, and I’d decided that whatever else happened I wasn’t running now. I was in it for the long haul. Now it was between him and me. Let the Sons of Cuchulainn carry out their little fantasies, let them have their delusions of grandeur. Let them do what they wanted. But give me time alone with him. Before I escaped to the feds, before I got away from these people, I’d make bloody sure that he got what was coming to him. No trial for you, Touched. Gerry and the rest, yes, but I’m taking care of you myself.

Touched yawned loudly and I could see he was hamming it.

He was about to roll his final play.

“So between March 1992 and November 1992 you don’t remember where you were working at all?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head.

“It was either in London or it was Spain, I don’t fucking remember, Touched, I really don’t. I’m beat,” I said.

He stood up and got himself a drink of water from a tap in the corner. He hit the TV set to switch it off.

He turned and looked at me.

Carefully, he took his little green toolbox from an inside jacket pocket. He opened it and removed a blood-encrusted scalpel.

His eyes narrowed.

“You think you’re so fucking smart. Well, you’re not. You’re as smart as her and that’s not smart enough,” he said coldly.

He walked over, threw his arm round my neck, pulled my head back, and brought the bloody scalpel up to my eyeball.

“Tell me the fucking truth,” he said. “Tell me the truth or I’ll fucking cut you right now.”

The bloody blade touched my eyelid. It made me wince.

Fear rushed through me.

But I wasn’t going to lose it now.

“I don’t fucking remember, Touched,” I insisted.

He pushed on the blade for a horrible ten seconds but then he let go the grip around my neck, removed the scalpel, and shook his head.

He yawned.

“Ugh, it doesn’t matter, Sean, I don’t remember anything of the 80s and not much of the early 90s either,” he said with a half-laugh.

I nodded.

“So you finally believe me?”

“Aye, I think you’re ok. I have a sixth sense for these things.You’re one of us. I’ve thought so all along… There’s just that one wee thing.”