Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

When I was finished, it was much worse than Sonia.

The personal must have slipped in because Jackie’s neck had been severed in a huge gash that left him partially decapitated, his head hanging to his body only by the tissue around the spine.

Not so good.

A waste of effort.

I wasn’t going on a rampage like a PCP freak. I had to do the minimum effort to stay alive.

I lifted Jackie’s gun, spun the chamber, and checked the mechanism. A.22 Smith & Wesson revolver, a lovely little gun, just like the piece I’d had once in New York City.

Sweet.

I stood and limped back to the smokehouse. Peter was standing there, aghast.

“Now’s your chance, fucking run for it and raise the alarm,”I said.

“Are you hurt?”

“Are you still here? Get moving. Follow the old railway line. It’s bound to go somewhere.”

“I don’t-”

I slapped him on the side of the head.

“Go, you fucker,” I ordered.

He ran out of the smokehouse in the direction of the woods, kicking up snow, shambling, limping, but moving. I watched him disappear between the trees. I sat down and took a breather, found the other bit of toast, ate it. I reached outside, grabbed a handful of snow, and swallowed it. It was cold in my mouth. Welcome.

Now what?

There was only one course of action. They had shotguns and were professionals. Touched, at least, was strong and fit and probably a competent tracker. I couldn’t delay. A frontal assault on the house while I still had surprise.

Kill Touched, get his gun, and maneuver Gerry and Kit into a position where they had to surrender.

Simple.

I grabbed another handful of snow, bit into it.

I crawled to Jackie’s body and looked at his watch. Seven a.m. They were all early risers in this family, but yesterday- Christ, was it really only yesterday?-Gerry had slept late. And Touched was bound to be knackered after two days of torture. And they’d been wasted in the wee hours.

I reconsidered my options. If only Jackie and Sonia had been awake and the rest were sleeping, that might have changed things. Maybe I could make a run for it into the woods, after all. Or, better yet, maybe I could even steal one of the cars.

Yeah.

It wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to check it out.

I grabbed a pile of snow and threw it on Jackie’s body, shoveling it on top of him as best I could. If someone did have a quick peek out one of the bedroom windows, I wanted them to think all was normal. I stepped back. It wouldn’t do for a close inspection but it might fool them from a distance.

I limped to the snow-covered Mercedes-Benz, tried the door handle. Unlocked. I opened it and got inside. I looked for keys. I checked the glove compartment and the sunshade and the drinks holder.

Nothing.

But wait a minute. Holy shit. It was Sonia’s car, maybe the key was on that big bloody key chain she’d been carrying back at the smokehouse. It probably bloody was.

I got out of the car and closed the door.

“Where is everybody?” Touched suddenly shouted from inside the cabin. “I need me coffee.”

His voice somewhere on the ground floor.

Goddamn it.

By the time I ran to the smokehouse, got the keys, and limped back to the Mercedes, he’d be standing at the cabin door with his pistol ready to shoot me down. It would be a fair fight, but only until Gerry heard a couple of shots and appeared at one of those upper windows with his shotgun. And with me pinned in the broad, from up there he couldn’t miss.

No, forget the car.

It was either make a break for the woods right now, or the full-frontal attack while at least two of them were still sleeping.

“What’s it going to be, Michael?” I whispered to myself.But I already knew the answer and I didn’t need any more convincing to go after Touched.

Once before, long ago, I’d assaulted a big house filled with enemies and killed the occupants. Snowing then, too, come to think of it. Me, murder, and snow-fucking made for one another.

I held the gun tight and limped to the front door of the cabin.

A cigarette smell was coming from inside, limp and sweet from fresh-rolled tobacco. I listened for the sounds of conversation. But Touched was giving no one instructions. His coffee remark had been rhetorical.

Still, he was bound to be bloody suspicious.

I turned the handle and inched open the door. Touched was sitting at the kitchen table with his feet up on another chair. He was in his usual brown slacks and a mustard working jumper. His graying hair was crushed under a woolen hat and he had a tattered dressing gown draped over his shoulders.

I opened the door a little farther and pointed the gun through the gap.

He didn’t stir when I came in and he felt the outdoor breeze.

I sighted the.22.

He turned the page of a magazine called Wooden Boat and took a long draw on his cigarette.

“Pair of ya will catch your death out there,” he said without looking up.

I checked to look for the.38 but it wasn’t next to him. On the kitchen table: a newspaper, magazines, a coffeepot, but no gun. It might be in his pocket, but it might not. If I had to guess I’d say he was being careless, had left it in his room, and was in fact unarmed. Just the way I liked them.

I stepped completely into the cabin and closed the door behind me.

He turned another page of Wooden Boat. I looked for Kit or Gerry or anyone else waiting on the stairs with artillery, but there was no one, this was no trap.

I limped closer, trailing blood and snow.

“I really need some coffee…” he began and then he looked up.

In a single breath his face changed from amazement to fright to a gruesome composedness in the face of death.

He put down his magazine.

Took another puff of the cigarette.

“How the fuck did you get out?” he asked.

“Magic.”

“What?”

“Magic. Now, Touched, me old china plate. Put your hands on your head and bloody keep them there,” I said.

Touched left his fag in the ashtray and did as he was bid, resting his hands on his wool beanie hat.

I surveyed the kitchen and the stairs.

“Where’s Gerry and Kit?” I asked.

“Sleeping,” he said with a little disgusted shake of the head. Here they were letting him down again. Everybody always letting him down. Typical. And of course it was always someone else’s fault. Never his.

His eyes narrowed.

He exhaled the cigarette smoke, a bubble of nervous spittle forming on his dry lips.

“So, Michael Forsythe, killer of Darkey White, informant, spy for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, what are you gonna do now? Arrest me?”

“I don’t think so.”

He looked puzzled and then smiled with recognition. That big friendly grin, that mix of hatred and bravado.

“Ah, I understand,” he said. “It’s personal. The woman in Newburyport. Right?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Well, you certainly had me fooled. I’ll admit that I was suspicious about you and her, but when you helped us put her in the ground and you didn’t make a big song and dance about it, fuck, I didn’t think she meant anything to you,” he muttered a little louder.

“Keep your voice down, Touched,” I said. “And keep those hands on your head.”

Touched smiled again, a labored wrinkling of the face that made him lose his youthful arrogance.

And as he meekly put his hands back up I saw him afresh. The mystique had gone. The aperture of time worked its way with his features and suddenly he was just a middle-aged white guy, getter older, getting stupider, getting fatter, perplexed by the vagaries of life and the representative of the younger generation who had bested him and was, unexpectedly, about to murder him.