Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

A walkie-talkie crackled.

“Aye?” the boss said.

“She’s coming.”

The man outside came running back. He passed across a pair of binoculars with a night scope on them. The boss took them greedily.

“I heard Harry on the walkie-talkie and I seen her, too, she’s on her own,” the man said.

The boss stood. He limped over to Siobhan.

“Your ma is fucking coming for ya, love,” he said, and poked at the girl.

Siobhan whimpered and retreated back into the wall. Her hands were tied in front of her, but if anything, she had underreacted to the poke. They’d obviously done something to her. McFerrin had said something about drugs.

“She’s alone, nobody for fucking miles,” the other man said, coming in from outside, brandishing the binoculars in triumph.

“Call Harry up at the lighthouse and get him to double-check for anybody following her or fucking boats or helicopters or anything,” the boss said, and again I noticed that agony with his speech, every word difficult, painful. Did I know any chain-smokers? Or someone scheduled for a larynx removal?

One of the men picked up the walkie-talkie, spoke, got his answer, turned to the boss. He was excited.

“Dave says the coast is clear. She’s coming alone and he says she’s definitely carrying a briefcase.”

“The money,” the other goon said happily, forgetting the boss’s admonition that this wasn’t about the cash. Which made me think, well, if not dough, what was it about?

The boss threw away one fag and lit another. The smoke drifted back, and now I recognized it. Tareyton. Only one person I ever knew smoked Tareyton, and he was dead.

“Game faces on,” the boss said, and the two others took off their coats. Put on black baseball caps. But with their coats off and hoods down I could see them quite clearly in the lightning flashes. I didn’t recognize either of them. Just a couple of low-level gangsters, of the type you’d find in any bar in Belfast or Derry or Dublin.

The boss took off his coat and the lightning flashed and I saw his horribly disfigured face.

I recognized him instantly.

And of course I knew immediately what this whole thing was about.

Slider hadn’t misspoken. He was going to kill Bridget and he was going to kill the girl and he was going to take the money in compensation for what Darkey White had done to him all those terrible years ago.

For the man standing there with the Pecheneg and the scarred throat and mangled mouth and patchy red hair and cadaverous cheeks was none other than my old long-deceased mate Scotchy Finn.

The last time I had been with Scotchy he was on the razor-wire perimeter fence of the prison in Valladolid, Mexico. Bridget’s fiancé, Darkey White, had set us up on a drugs buy so that the whole crew, but especially me, would get arrested and I’d be bunged inside some Mexican hellhole in order that he and Bridget could marry and Bridget would forget me forever. But Scotchy was a resourceful wee fuck. A nasty annoying pain in the ass but a resourceful wee fuck nonethe-less. He had broken us out of the nick and he’d gotten as far as the razor wire before an M16 rifle round had hit him in the back. He’d fallen onto a big loop of razor wire and from my angle the wire had nearly decapitated him. It had certainly killed him. Even if the M16 bullet hadn’t topped him, there was no way anybody could have survived a fall like that onto a loop of sharp tensile steel.

But let’s say, by some fucking miracle, you had survived and your head wasn’t taken clean off, well, then you’d die anyway when the prison guards ripped you down. They wouldn’t be careful about it. Why would they? They’d rip you down and that would tear you up and kill you.

But for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that Mother Teresa and the pope and Saint Nicholas of Myra (the patron saint of thieves) are, at that precise moment, thinking about the destiny of redheaded fuckup scumbags from Crossmaglen and they intervene personally with the Angel of Death to save you on the wire. So you live through that. But how in the name of God and all that’s holy do you survive the medical treatment that you’ll get in a Mexican prison hospital, especially when the guards were less than inclined to save our old pal Andy when he got near beaten to death?

They wouldn’t have surgeons that could save your life.

They wouldn’t give you a blood transfusion, and if they did, it would probably be the wrong blood type or contaminated with the AIDS virus.

Nah. To survive the bullet, the wire, the ripping down, the Mexican hospital, you’d have to have ninety-nine lives, be born on Christmas, find a shamrock in your crib, and do Lourdes in advance for thirteen summers.

None of which Scotchy did. And he was an unlucky son of a bitch to begin with. Stupid, quick tempered, and a bad penny with a capital P. There is no way Scotchy could have survived what I saw happen to him.

Not a fucking chance.

And yet.

And yet.

Scarred, bent over, scorched, nasty looking.

The motherfucker himself.

Scotchy.

My old nemesis.

My old pal.

The way he stood, the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he smoked.

Oh my God.

It is definitely him.

I want to get up and run over and hug the dumbass bastard. I want to shake him by the hand. Scotchy, oh my God.

I killed Sunshine for you. I killed Bob for you. I killed Darkey White for you. All for you, mate. Because you made me promise. And now what?

Now I want your blessing.

I want to kneel down before you and I want you to put your bony hand on my head and say “You done good, son. You done good.”

I need that, Scotchy.

I need to know that I did the right thing. That you approve. And I want to look you in the eye, talk to you, have a pint. I want to get in a fight with you and make up and have more pints and have you fucking steal from my wallet while I go to the bathroom.

I want to see your ugly fangs break into a grin.

I want you to call me Bruce.

Scotchy, I am so happy to see you.

My world overthrown.

You are my brother. You are the closest thing to flesh and blood I have in this world.

Well, second closest. (Tonight it was getting to be like the season finale of a Spanish soap opera.)

But, oh Scotchy, I want to go over and hug you and shake your hand.

I want to.

I need to.

But I don’t.

I sit there in the dark.

Like a rat.

Waiting.

Not the time. The time will come. But not now.

You’re going to kill her. You’re going to kill both of them. I know you, Scotchy. I know what you were capable of before. God knows what you can do now. After what you’ve been through.

And I have only a six-shot revolver.

And they have assault rifles.

And this is Scotchy fucking Finn, no mean hand in a gun battle. No mean hand.

The walkie-talkie crackles.

“She’s coming, she’s right on you,” Steve says.

“Ok, ya fucks, drop your cocks, grab your fucking guns, if wee Siobhan does anything stupid fucking shoot the bitch. I want my words with Bridget, but if there’s any fucking funny stuff, shoot her without my say-so. Safety fucking first, lads. Understood?”

The two men nod and I grin. Aye, that’s my Scotchy, no doubt about it.

His hair has been ripped out in chunks. There’s a massive scar across his throat and obviously his voice box has been badly damaged. His face has been pummeled, his nose repeatedly broken, and it looks like he’s lost an eye. I’ve seen a dozen better-looking corpses, and that’s just today.

But he’s alive.

He hadn’t been decapitated and he hadn’t died from blood loss and the Third World doctors had saved his fucking life. And then what?