Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

She looked at me with first a puzzled and then a suspicious expression playing across her pretty face.

“No one broke into the car,” she said.

“Don’t scream or I’ll fucking shoot you,” I said, taking out the revolver and shoving it into her ribs.

“Are you serious?” she asked, wondering, no doubt, if this was all some nasty practical joke.

“Aye.”

“W-what do you want?” she asked, a little bit more frightened this time.

“Well, I want your car, but you’ll have to come with me, because I don’t want you reporting me and I’m not feeling well enough to drive.”

“You must be kidding,” she said, her big eyes widening in terror. Her chest heaving up and down. It was not unattractive. I pushed the gun farther into her body.

“No joke, love. Now unlock the fucking car and get in.”

“You wouldn’t kill me in broad daylight.”

“I fucking would,” I said savagely.

This was the turning point for her.

“I don’t want to get shot. I’m, I’m… I’m pregnant,” she said and began to sob.

It threw me for a second, but only for a second.

“You listen to me, honey. You’re going to live till you’re a hundred and twenty years old. You’re going to be popping champagne corks in the year 2100 and you’re going to be here when the aliens show up with all their videos of Jesus and Alexander the Great. Either that, or you’re going to be fucking dead with a bullet in your skull, thirty seconds from now. Your call. And if you die, the bairn dies too.”

She composed herself a little, looked at me, stared at the gun.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“We’re going to get in your car and you’re going to drive me to Belfast and you’re going to drive back down to Dublin and never bloody mention this to anybody. Now enough yakking, get in the fucking car and drive.”

Dublin in the rearview mirror. At last. The girl stinking of fear, sweating, not speaking, but that was ok. The journey was only two hours now that the Irish government had gotten millions from the European Structural Fund and finally built a couple of decent roads.

She was a competent driver even with a maniac kidnapper pointing a gun at her. She drove carefully and fast. It was all good. We had a full tank of petrol and in the backseat there was even a water bottle and a packet of biscuits. I ate the biscuits, offered her one, but she refused, giving me a look of utter scorn. I liked that.

The run was quick, easy, and straightforward until we hit Drogheda.

Here things were bollocksed because of a traffic jam on the bypass; the cops were diverting people into the center of town and over the Boyne Bridge. We were moving very slowly and there were about a dozen Garda milling about uselessly. I knew she wouldn’t try anything but I had to remind her.

“Honey, just because you see a lot of cops and the traffic’s slow, don’t think of being a hero. You make one bolt for that door and I’ll fucking plug ya. And don’t think I wouldn’t just because I like you. I’ve killed more people in the last twenty-four hours than you’ll kill in this and in your next half-dozen incarnations on planet Earth.”

“I believe you. You seem like a bastard,” she said bravely.

“Aye, well, we’ll all live through this and it’ll be something you can tell your wean about.”

“Don’t think I’d tell her anything about the likes of you.”

“You’d be surprised how I can grow on people. Seriously. Peruvians, Colombians, Russians, Americans, I make friends wherever I go.”

We drove over the Boyne Bridge.

The river seemed clean and Drogheda looked better than I’d ever seen it. Prosperity suited the Republic of Ireland. There were new signs up all over the town pointing to Tara, Newgrange, the Battle of the Boyne, and other wonders of County Meath.

“Ever been to Newgrange?” I asked.

“No.”

“Should go. Fascinating.”

She said nothing. We drove on for a while. The silence was irritating.

“What you studying at Trinity?” I asked.

“French,” she said, reluctant to give me any information.

“French. Old mate of mine studied French at NYU. Sunshine. He was quite the character. He was always quoting the Flowers of Evil guy.”

“Baudelaire, and it’s Fleurs du Mal,” she said with condescension.

“Yeah, well, had a bit of a sticky end, did Sunshine, although it wasn’t totally unjustified,” I said to myself.

The girl stole a look in my direction.

“Is that what you do? Terrorize women and hurt people?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I try not to hurt anybody. But sometimes, when needs arise, you have to step on a few toes,” I explained.

“Aren’t you worried about the consequences?” she said.

“What consequences?” I replied, genuinely puzzled.

“Hell,” she said.

I laughed.

“Of course. We’re in Ireland. Hell. No. I don’t think about hell. There is no hell. Hell is a place in Norway, halfway between Bergen and the Arctic Circle,” I said and popped a digestive biscuit in my mouth.

“Don’t you believe the Bible?”

“Fairy stories. I suppose they don’t teach you Darwin in the Republic of Ireland.”

“Of course they do, it’s not Iran.”

“But you don’t believe him?”

“I don’t see how believing in Darwin and the Bible is mutually exclusive.”

“It is. I mean, do the bacteria in your stomach go to heaven when they die? Eight hundred million years ago, we were those bacteria. It’s just silly.”

She slunk into silence, nodded to herself in the rearview mirror. Whatever else happened today, at least she and me were going to go to different places, even if she was an unwed mother-to-be. Still, all this talk hadn’t been good for me. Morbid thoughts of eternal punishment weren’t the things I needed to have floating through my mind when every mile was bringing me closer to Belfast.

“Is Baudelaire your favorite?” I asked.

She pursed her lips, shook her head.

“Montaigne,” she said.

“Go on, give us a burst.”

“No.”

“Go on, humor the guy who has a pistol pointed at your kidneys.”

She thought for a moment and turned to face me.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said.

“Ok, I’m listening.”

“I’ll give you a Montaigne quote if you do something for me.”

“Ok.”

“That thing is really making me frightened. Really frightened. If you put the gun away, I promise I won’t try anything. I’ll drop you off in Belfast without any fuss or problems at all.”

I put the revolver in my pocket. No one could refuse such a reasonable request.

“Now the other part of the deal. Let’s hear what that Montaigne fella has to say,” I said.

“Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.”

“Very apt, I’m sure,” I said, although the only word I understood was death.

We got through Drogheda and a bypass skirted us around Dundalk. The border to Northern Ireland, which had once been a big deal with army, police, helicopters, road blocks, razor wire, mines was now only apparent in the roadside markings which changed from yellow to white. We were in Northern Ireland a good couple of miles before I even noticed that.

“We’re in the north,” I said, surprised.

“Yes,” she said.

“I thought we’d have to bluff our way through a checkpoint, or at least customs,” I muttered.

“They got rid of all that years ago,” she said with quiet contempt.

We drove through the Mourne Mountains: bleak stony slopes, bereft of trees, people, and even sheep. Next Newry and Portadown- two nasty wee shiteholes unloved by God, the residents, and everyone else. Shit-colored housing estates where men went to the pub, women raised the kids, the TV was always on, and if it wasn’t chips for dinner there would be hell to pay.