Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

“Could be,” I began hesitantly. “But the information I have is that she’s on her last legs. Could I just go up and let him know? It really is at a matter of life and death, surely you can make an exception for that?”

I smiled at her and placed my hands in a pleading gesture.

“Well, it’s not really the done thing…”

Thank Christ, I thought, and followed her up the stairs.

I was in such a hurry now that I didn’t even admire her bum waggling from side to side as it rose up the marble steps.

The reading room was a charming little affair, with old book tables, neat shelves, and a tidy Georgian appearance. Various oddball types reading magazines, newspapers, and books. The more stereotypical iron-faced librarians, with horn-rimmed glasses and a capacity for unspeakable deeds, patrolled the reference area, enforcing the strict rules on silence, shelving, and pencils only.

“That’s him sitting at the alcove behind the window seat,” Jane said.

“I don’t see him.”

“That’s because he’s in the corner, in the alcove.”

“Ok, yeah, that’s the top of his bald head, is it?”

“Uhhuh.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

“Now please, try hard not to cause a disturbance,” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry, love, disturbances are not my thing at all.”

I thanked her and walked to the corner alcove. The most secure spot in the whole place. Walls on three sides, near the emergency exit, but his one mistake-he had shifted his chair around so that he could get more light on his book from the alcove window. Silly old fool. Now his back was to the entrance. Anybody could just walk over.

I watched him for five minutes to check for goons. Really should have been a couple of hours, but time was of the essence. No one that I saw. No one that wasn’t born before World War I, anyway.

I stood next to him.

A bald, wizened seventy-year-old, with a bit of a Parkinson shake, round reading glasses, and a wispy beard. Depressingly, this scholarly looking gent, who apparently was one of the most feared paramilitary commanders in Belfast, was also dressed in leisure wear: a white UCLA sweatshirt and black jeans. I checked that no one was paying attention and removed the.38.

“Body O’Neill?”

He looked up.

I pointed the revolver at him, real close so that he could see it through those thick lenses.

“Yes?”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

“Who are you?”

“Michael Forsythe,” I said.

Mild surprise in his watery yellow eyes.

“Ahh, I see, Michael Forsythe. For some reason I thought you might be dead by now,” he said.

“You know, funnily enough, that’s what I want to talk to you about,” I said, winking at him.

He smiled, stroked his limpid cheeks, looked around the room.

“Sit,” he suggested.

“Why not?”

I sat beside him.

“You don’t mind if I just check you for a gun?” I said.

“I would rather you didn’t touch me. I assure you, I am unarmed,” he said.

“Well, just to be on the safe side,” I said and patted him down. He did not have a gun, which was a bit odd, but there was a little lump under the L in UCLA.

“What’s that? A pacemaker?” I asked.

“I asked you not to touch me,” he said, embarrassed.

“Yes, but I have the gun,” I explained.

He frowned, looked around the room.

“You know why I like this place?” O’Neill said.

“What place, the city?”

“No, the library,” he said.

“No, why?”

“It’s eclectic. Postmen, dockers, students, everyone. You can bump into Seamus Heaney, and occasionally you’ll see Gerry Adams in here researching his socalled memoirs.”

“Now listen to me, O’Neill. I’m sure you’re just fabulous at playing for time, but I have a whole series of questions and my patience is already stretched very thin.”

“You have questions for me?”

“Yes, I bloody do. First, why have you been trying to kill me since Dublin?”

O’Neill regarded me with some distaste, not fear, but rather a condescending scowl that verged on utter contempt. I wasn’t going to let the old bat intimidate me. I was holding the gun, after all. I leaned back in the chair and rested the revolver on the book he’d been reading. I closed it with the barrel, aggressively snapping it shut.

“Better start talking, O’Neill,” I said with menace.

“The interview form is not one I enjoy, Mr. Forsythe. Question-and-answer is such a barbaric manner of discourse. If you have any questions, you should probably take them up with Mikhail.”

“And who the fuck is Mikhail?”

“I’m Mikhail,” Mikhail said, thumping my hand with a knuckle duster and removing the revolver from my grip in a fast, continuous motion. I winced and turned. Mikhail was a six-foot-six Neanderthal. Shaven head, narrow Mongolian eyes. Clearly the bloody bodyguard, fresh in from slaughtering insurgents in Chechnya.

My hand was killing me. Mikhail shoved a snubnosed silenced.22 automatic into my ribs. He passed his boss my.38.

“We don’t want a scene, Mr. Forsythe, but Mikhail will kill you stone dead if you say another harsh word,” O’Neill said quietly.

“Kill me in front of all these witnesses?” I asked.

“What witnesses? No one will hear a thing and we’ll shove you under the alcove desk and walk straight out of here. No one will find you until closing time and by then I’ll have an alibi and the case will be insoluble,” O’Neill said.

“Miss Plum knows I wanted to talk to you.”

“Look around, no one can even see us here, and I assure you, Mikhail is very nervous about going to prison. He had a bad experience in a Communist gulag. If you look even a wee bit like you’re going to shout or cause trouble, he’ll shoot without a second thought,” O’Neill said.

I nodded.

“Ok, or what?” I asked.

O’Neill looked baffled for a second. He hadn’t thought about the “or.”

“Or you come with us outside,” O’Neill said.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“In case you decide you’d like to join us, I’ll just make a phone call,” O’Neill said sarcastically.

He popped open his cell.

“You won’t bloody believe it, Tim. Meet me outside the Linen Hall right now with the van and a couple of heavy lifting boys,” he said.

I nodded at Mikhail.

“How did you get a library card, you don’t seem the literary type?” I asked.

Mikhail ignored me. O’Neill hung up, smiled.

“I’m curious, how did you find me here, Mr. Forsythe?” O’Neill said.

“I’d love to tell you, but question-and-answer is just such an uncivilized form of discourse. Spot me a couple of Manhattans and we’ll have a right old chin wag about anything you like.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll be doing much talking, Mr. Forsythe. Very little of what you could say would interest me,” O’Neill said.

“I think you’ll find you’re mistaken, I’m quite the amiable companion. For instance, I’ll bet you didn’t know that today is Bloomsday. Down in Dublin they are having a real shindig. And this might interest Mikhail: on this date in history Yuri Gagarin-”

I’d been trying to say all this in an increasingly loud voice, not so loud that Mikhail would pop a cap in my stomach, but loud enough to bring Miss Plum over. Regardless, O’Neill stopped me with a wave of his hand since his cell phone was vibrating.

“Hello… It is… Excellent… We’ll be down in two minutes,” he said.

He turned to face me with the grisly smile of an executioner.

“Stand, please, Mr. Forsythe.”

I stood.

“Mikhail, I think Mr. Forsythe and you and I will take a walk outside. We’ll go down the fire escape. I’ll want you to walk ahead of us very slowly, Mr. Forsythe, and if you stumble or fall, or cry out or do anything I don’t like, Mikhail will shoot you in the brain.”