Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

I hold her and we make love again, in the near absolute dark of the forest, without a noise or an interruption. A fragile promise of me and her. The calm before the hurricane.

The woods were wild and thick and the regions between the trees were pierced by sunlight through the canopy.

The red men had taught them to tap the bark for syrup and showed them berries and the nests of bees. Drunk on sweetness, they forged between huge firs and giant elms and trees of no description yet known to civilized man.

They had seen nothing but forest since coming off the fish-swarmed shore and it was to the forest gods that the local people prayed. Fintan was here and Daana, too, and in the glades they felt the heathen presence of age-old Pan. They came sometimes upon an altar or mound or other pagan edifice, yet they were not afraid, for the knowledge of the One God sustained them.

They crossed a river of leaping salmon. They listened to wolves and spotted eagles and even vultures-a bird no monk but one from Italy had seen before.

They rang the angelus for the first time in the breadth of river valleys and laid a monument to Patrick of humble stone, humbled yet under a huge mountain. Life was so much here. Beautiful and abundant and brimming over. Sprouting forth upon all dimensions and angles. The priest from Alba mentioned the Gnostic heresy and ventured that here the world was untouched by evil or the Fall. But Brendan was quick with him and made him do penance of sacking and chastisement. He knew in his heart that beauty was a corrupter, that the monks were being seduced by the very earth itself…

I woke.

Kit was looking at me. She was fully dressed.

“You were dreaming,” she whispered.

“How could you tell?”

“Rapid eye movement,” she said, smiling.

“What time is it?” I asked, wiping the leaves off my back, shivering.

“It’s nearly twelve o’clock, lunchtime.”

“Won’t Touched be going crazy?”

“No. I walked back to where I could see the house and waved to him. And he said: ‘Where the fuck is Sean?’”

“And what did you say?”

“I shouted to him that you had a toilet emergency and were going to the bathroom,” she replied with a wee laugh.

“What did he say to that?”

“He didn’t seem that fussed; Dad and him were having a discussion about something but he told me to hurry you up.”

“Yeah, but even so, Kit, you should have woken me,” I said.

“You never wake a sleeping baby. And besides I had to do what I always do with Touched.”

“And what’s that?”

“Ignore him.”

I rubbed my eyes, sat on the log, and pulled on my boxers and trousers. I fitted my prosthesis and with some difficulty tied my boots while she watched with fascination. If she was still in the business of comparing me with Jackie, this was a mark for him.

I caught her looking at me. She blushed and turned away. But then again maybe the time for comparisons was over. Jackie was an irrelevancy now. Things had progressed from that pissing contest to a matter of life and death.

I brushed the leaves and pine needles off my T-shirt and sat on the fallen tree and stared at her until her smile fixed and she saw that I wanted to say something.

“What?” she asked.

“Kit. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. We don’t have much time.And we might not get another chance to talk. I want you to sit down on the tree next to me and listen to what I have to say. You’ve got to listen to me very carefully,” I said.

“You suddenly got very serious. While I am walking on air,” she said, mocking herself in a silly, preppy accent.

“I’m not joking. Take a seat.”

She frowned, but sat.

“Ok, say your speech,” she demanded.

“They’re going to have to kill Peter tomorrow. The Brits will not cave to Touched’s demands. There is a long-standing policy about negotiating with terrorists. Neither the Brits nor the Americans are allowed to do it. They never give in to kidnappers, ever. It’s a standing order,” I said slowly and carefully.

“Reagan did it,” Kit said.

I shook my head.

“That was a crazy one-off illegal scheme conducted by a rogue colonel. The British and American governments never make deals for hostages. Peter is not going to be exchanged for anyone. It’s not going to happen, they’re not going to release the Newark Three. I promise you that. What do you think is going to happen after that? I’ll tell you. With his credibility on the line, Touched is going to have to kill Peter and you are going to be complicit in that boy’s murder.”

“You, too,” she said.

“Me, too. All of us. For as sure as I am standing here, Touched is going to murder him.”

Kit shuddered. “I don’t think he’d really go through with it, it’s more a sort of a bluff, like in poker.”

“Touched has killed many people. Murdered many people. You know that woman who ran the All Things Brit shop? Touched killed her the night before we came up here. That’s the cleanup Jackie was talking about. Touched raped her, tortured her, and then he slit her open from her vagina to her throat and he watched while she gasped for breath and bled to death.”

All the levity had vanished from her expression now. I had gotten her attention.

I let it sink in and then continued.

“Touched is a sociopath. He’d kill you, me, anyone who gets in his way. He’s a lunatic. If you don’t believe me about the woman, ask Jackie. He was there, he saw what Touched did. He threw up when he saw it. Touched tortured her and it took her hours to die. And that kid is going to get the same fate. How old do you think he is, twenty, nineteen? And what was his crime? Nothing.”

“They said they chased her out of town,” Kit muttered, the words sounding ridiculous even to her.

“Chased her out of town? Are you joking? You don’t believe that. You’re cleverer than that. Chased her out of town? Is this a Western? You didn’t believe it when they said that and you don’t believe it now. Touched killed her. And Gerry and Jackie and I threw her body in the back of the van, dug a hole in the salt pan on Plum Island, and buried her. Buried what was left of her.”

Kit looked stunned. She must have known some of this, perhaps most of it, but she’d been hiding it from herself. In denial about her father’s business, about its ugly side. All she wanted to do was live in that big house and surf and spin romantic yarns about Ireland. Wear the green and sing rebel songs and hero-worship her freedom fighter and his old comrade-in-arms Touched McGuigan. But she knew. She wasn’t stupid. She was wavering, there were tears in her eyes again, this time certainly not tears of joy.

“The British woman wasn’t the first, not by a long shot; Touched told us that he killed a woman last year that he’d been having problems with. He said that in front of Jackie andyour da, if you want to check that out too. Believe me, Kit, when this goes wrong, which it will, Touched is going to torture and kill Peter, who looks as if he’s a goddamn hippie who never did any sentient creature any harm in his whole bloody life.”

Kit wiped away her tears and looked at me imperiously.

“My dad won’t let him kill that boy,” she said.

“He let him kill that woman.”

“She was an FBI agent.”

“That’s what Touched says. You talked to her. Did she seem like an agent to you? And so what the fuck if she was? Did she deserve that? Rape and torture and death?”

She shook her head.

“What are you saying, exactly, Sean?” Kit asked warily.

I took her hand and looked her right in the watery baby blues.

“We can stop this, Kit, you and me, we can stop it,” I said.