Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

A flicker of surprise flitted across his features. He didn’t need to say anything. He’d told me.

“What are you talking about?”

“Two hit men, two separate hits, one of them a taxi driver, one got me in a brothel. The second hit was more interesting because the madam informed on me, so the word must have gone out somehow.”

“We haven’t been trying to kill you. Bridget, for whatever reason, thinks you can help find Siobhan.”

“And you haven’t taken an independent initiative?”

His teeth glinted, he shook his head.

“We’ve been ordered not to lay a finger on you.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said.

“I want you dead. There’s a lot of us who work for Bridget that want you dead. But not yet.”

“Ok.”

“But let me give you a heads-up, Forsythe. More of a heads-up than you ever gave Bob. Things have changed radically just in the last hour.”

“What do you mean?”

“A note was delivered to the hotel from the scumbags who’re holding Siobhan. They went ten million dollars by midnight tonight. A third cash, two-thirds international bearer bonds. If they don’t get it, they say they’re going to kill her.”

“Was the note genuine? How do you know it’s not just bullshit?”

“There was a lock of hair in the envelope, the cops have taken the note, hair, and envelope for DNA testing. Bridget thinks it’s Siobhan’s hair, but she can’t be sure.”

“What does the DNA say?”

“That won’t be ready until tomorrow afternoon.”

“So you’ve no choice, you’ve got to raise the ten million.”

Moran nodded grimly.

“The note said that they would call with details sometime between nine and midnight. We’re supposed to wait at the Arthur Street police station because they’re going to want specific street closures from the police.”

“Jesus, how long was this note? Have you got a copy?”

“The police have it. That was it. No details. Just the hair, raise the money, await further instructions,” Moran said, sounding tired.

“Can you raise the money?”

He nodded.

“The guy who delivered it?”

“Left it at reception, wearing motorcycle leathers and a helmet. Only said ‘Message for Bridget Callaghan.’”

“Belfast accent?”

“Apparently so… But that’s neither here nor there, Forsythe. You see that now, right? This changes things.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t see how this changes anything for me,” I said.

“Before the girl was missing, maybe she’d run away, now we know she’s been kidnapped.”

“That doesn’t affect my job, what I’m here to do,” I said.

“Yeah, it does. The deadline. Midnight tonight. Either way, if we get Siobhan back at midnight or they kill her, fair warning, pal, I’m coming after you whether Bridget gives me the ok or not.”

He rubbed his hand into his fist again, barely able to contain his hatred for me. I had killed his useless brother and he was going to get me. Bob, who never even fucking mentioned David, or, if he had, he certainly wasn’t a big part of his life. Over the years David had probably blown Bob up into a heroic and sentimental figure. It was pathetic, really. But I had to reassure him that his little fucking revenge-murder scheme would come to naught.

“Don’t worry, mate, if those fuckers kill Siobhan, Bridget’ll get me long before you do.”

He nodded, got to his feet.

“We understand each other then,” he said.

“We do.”

I stood too.

“I’ll take you to her. Please, go gentle, she’s at her wits’ end,” he said.

He led me out of the room and along the corridor to a big set of double doors. He knocked and we entered the presidential suite at last. Belfast spread out before me through the rainy windows. Black Mountain, Divis Mountain, new hotels, new offices, and the River Lagan slaking its way through the mudflats. From up here, you could see down the gray lough to Kilroot and maybe all the way to Scotland.

It was more like a command center than a hotel room. There were several burly-looking guys, a police officer in uniform, a detective, a girl carrying a water bottle, a man with a-

And there she was.

After all this time.

The most attractive woman I had seen in a decade. The most attractive woman I had ever seen.

Devastating still.

Bridget. Beyond rhetoric. Beyond words. Describing the shades of green and blue that her eyes took on in different moods could fill the book.

And, yes, she was a woman now, not a girl.

Her hair, the subtlest of copper tints. Her skin like pages from the New Testament. Her body placed on Earth by Lucifer’s minions to ruin marriages, to start fights, to cause accidents, to send four young men to their deaths in Mexico.

Think Deneuve around the time of Belle de Jour. Kelly in High Noon. Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. Beautiful, almost a little too beautiful. Blondes, but the redheads I could mention wouldn’t come close. Bette Davis, maybe, but Kidman, give me a break.

Bridget was thirty now. At the height of her powers. Every man in the room looking at her. It was impossible not to.

The eyes of a martyr, the lips of a killer, dangerous curves.

You’d run traffic lights on Fifth Avenue to get a glimpse of her. You’d propose to her on the subway.

Her black skirt was quiet elegance. Her low-heeled shoes simplicity itself. The sort of simpleness that cost fifty thousand dollars. The sort of elegance that kept Vera Wang up all night, sewing the thing by hand.

Bridget.

Where have you been all these years?

I never knew how empty I felt until this moment.

The sum multiplied by zero, the shaken Etch A Sketch, the black hole radiating itself to nothingness.

A void, a nonplace.

Oh, Bridget.

She saw me. She turned. She’d been crying.

She came across the room in slow motion.

The sun went behind a cloud.

She opened her mouth.

“Michael,” she said.

The room had been cleared. Bridget was sitting at one end of the sofa. I was sitting at the other.

Her hands folded on her lap. Her face drained of color. Her eyes ashen and restrained. She looked knackered. I could tell she hadn’t slept in four nights. She had refused the pills they had no doubt offered her.

She was sitting forward on the sofa, her bum barely on the leather cushion.

A maid brought a pot of green tea with one cup.

She closed her tired eyes, wiped the tear-clotted lashes, mouthed “thank you” to the maid, who couldn’t leave fast enough.

There’d been no hello, no apologies. Just a hand gesture and everyone had fled. She sat, I sat.

She sipped the tea.

We both waited for the other to begin.

Bridget broke first.

“Michael, I know there’s a lot of history between us…” she began, her voice trailing off into the silence.

“You don’t even need to say it,” I said.

“I do. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. I have a lot of things I want to tell you, there’s a lot of things I want to ask you. But not now. I don’t want to hear your reasons for what you did. I know you have reasons and I know you believe in them. But I don’t want this to be about you and me. I called you in because of Siobhan. I only want to talk about her.”

Her breasts heaved under her silk sweater.

So this was how it was going to be.

What was it Dan had told me? This woman is a killer, a general, an archmanipulator.

I looked at those big hooded eyelids. I don’t recall what color they used to be but now they were as dark as soot. They didn’t tell me anything.

I’d go careful.